Alarmed, Fen said, “Not necessarily. Ransom was your last resort—that means you haven’t tried any of your first ideas. At least get a good night’s sleep before you make any decisions.”
“Where? We can’t get a motel. They’ll think I’m concealing a weapon. A real hotel would be even worse. We could run into paparazzi. And a plane is out of the question.”
“An AirBnB with a no-contact check-in?”
“I guess,” he began, then snapped his fingers. His claws clicked together on the pop. “I know! If we keep driving toward Refuge City, there’s a place we can stay while we figure things out. It does have some… er… risk factors, but we’d be guaranteed not to be disturbed.”
“What risk factors?” Fen asked nervously.
“Me,” said Carter glumly. “It’s a prototype for a fully automated house I designed. So everything will probably short out as soon as I walk in. But the beds will still be sleepable even if the massage function doesn’t work.”
“Is there more than one bed?” Fen asked.
“Yes, it’s designed as a family home.”
“Excellent. Don’t come near one of them, and I’ll get a massage.”
For the first time, his gloomy expression lightened. “You’ve earned it.”
He was silent and depressed as she drove, and there was nothing to distract her from her worries. They bounced around her head like ping pong balls, skittering from one to the next.
Was there anything Balin and Eunice would accept to fix Carter other than him becoming a Dark Knight? What did a Dark Knight have to do, exactly? Was Precious still in the case, or was she escapingright now?What if none of Kerenza’s charms worked, and even her spell on Norris was only temporary? Would Norris care if he was now permanently a fish? Was Carter wrong about her having ADHD, and she really was just lazy and absent-minded and not trying hard enough? If she was really brilliant like he thought, wouldn’t she have figured out how to fix this?
She barely noticed as the road began to climb upward and the air got colder until Carter touched her arm. “You’re shivering.”
“I am?” She barely got the words out. Her teeth were chattering. “I guess I am.”
He closed the sunroof and turned on the heat. She glanced around in surprise. “Your automated house is on top of a mountain?”
He nodded. “It’s full of experiments and prototypes, so I wanted to put it somewhere remote. I haven’t been here in a while, but it’s fully maintained. And it has an alarm system, of course. I told the caretaker to take off for the weekend.”
“You did?”
“I texted him while you were driving. You seemed pretty focused on the road.”
“I was the opposite of focused,” she admitted. “Except on everything I’m worried about.”
“Join the club.”
It lifted her spirits marginally to know that at least she wasn’t alone in spending the entire time obsessing about depressing things. Marginally.
From the outside, the experimental house looked like a beautifully designed vacation home, not like something out of a science fiction novel. She parked and got out. Carter struggled out, wincing as his wings caught on the roof. Fen came around and helped him disentangle them.
"Do they hurt?"
"Not exactly. They’re sensitive. They feel new. Strange."
"Do you think you can fly?"
Carter shrugged. He didn't seem to care, which surprised her. He was a pilot, after all. He'd said he loved to fly. She'd have thought he'd have been eager to try out the wings. It saddened her to realize that having them was so depressing for him that he didn't even care if they meant he could fly.
"Let's go inside," he said. "It's freezing out here."
They grabbed their luggage and went to the door.
Carter eyed it and groaned, his eyes flashing a frustrated pink. "It's supposed to respond to a retina check, but obviously that won't work."
"Got any alternate ways of getting in? After all, you don't want to be trapped outside your house if there's a power outage."
