I shimmy down to the ledge, steadying my balance with a healthy helping of gathered ephemera. After eyeballing my destination through the quickening thud of my heart, I poise and spring across.
I know how to be careful. My plan is to check thoroughly for protective enchantments while I’m braced outside the window, before I even touch the pane of glass.
Normally, that’s all I’d need to do. But the second my feet hit the window frame, my hands flying up to grasp the edges, a current of magic hitches through the soles of my boots.
My pulse hiccups with it. Shit. I know a magical alarm system when I feel one.
What the hell are they doing in this place that they have even the outer ledges of the upper windows in the security system?
I don’t have time to curse out the irritatingly over-cautious people who own the building. Ignoring the pang in my muscles at the hasty exertion, I twist around and fling myself back toward the building next door.
One more quick boost of ephemera heaves me to the roof. I scramble all the way to the fire escape without waiting to see who’ll answer the alarm.
If they’re so paranoid they monitor their window frames, I can’t trust that they won’t sense and break the spell that’s hiding me.
I trudge down the fire escape, grumbling inwardly at the failed attempt. All I learned is that the people who run the place guard their secrets as tightly as the men in black.
I take a slow stroll to the end of the block and past the fronts of the buildings again, as if I’m coming up on the mystery mansion for the first time. When I reach it, there’s no activity by the window I assaulted.
If they investigated the disturbance, they must have decided it wasn’t an emergency.
Now what?
I hang around by the architecture office for a while longer, worrying at my lower lip. Debating possible magical means of getting a glimpse into the building and dismissing them one by one.
As my imagined schemes move from unwise to outright absurd, two more men shove into view—out the side door rather than the front. Even as my hand jerks my phone up automatically to take their picture, I note their clothing: white dress shirts and gloves, black vest and slacks, not quite as well-fitted as the clothes of the people who headed in the front.
A staff uniform. These must be some of the people who cater to the upper-crust customers.
Both of them look to be twenty-something. They hustle past me, one with his hands clenched and his face flushed in blotches, the other’s gaze twitching nervously toward his companion. Something’s riled them up.
I think I’d like to find out what.
Thankfully, the business’s employees don’t have access to the same car services as their patrons. They march off down the street on foot.
For the first few blocks I follow them, they remain silent—stormy on one side, apprehensive on the other. Then the pissed-off guy rakes his hand through his black hair and seems to decide they’ve gotten enough distance from their place of employment.
His voice bursts from his mouth, hushed but forceful enough that I can hear him from several paces back. “Those sadistic dicks! Who the hell do they think they are? I’ve put up with enough. This is the limit.”
“Chuck,” his companion says in a pleading tone, raising his hands. “You know they’ll have forgotten about it by tomorrow.”
“Iwon’t forget. The job is supposed to be to get them their drinks and their coats or whatever, not to put up with that shit.”
“Just ignore them.”
“No. I can’t anymore. I’m never going back there. And Danvers can fuck himself if he thinks I’m going to bother giving notice.”
He stalks a little farther to a beat-up pick-up truck he yanks open the door of. His coworker watches him go with a sigh and tramps onward.
As the truck peels away, I let them go. I’m not going to hear any more details when they’re apart.
“Get them their drinks and their coats and whatever.”Is the place some kind of pub? Why wouldn’t it have a sign?
I turn toward the building I left, but my spirits have sunk. I’ve wasted another couple of hours hanging around here following the leads my double left me, and can I say it’s gotten me anywhere?
I have to get out of this reality. Away from all the pompous pricks I have to pretend to be like and the matches who have no idea they should do anything but glower and snark at me.
How much more is it going to take?
