The Door
And under “Crew” I put:
Sky
Dad
Charles
Liam
Tuck
“Hey, why did you list Liam before me?” Tuck asked.
Benden
“Are you in?” I asked Benden.
“You’ve offered me a new life,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll burn stuff for you.”
Gabriela?
“We need her to get through the wyvern detection spell,” I said, “but I don’t know if she’ll do it again. I need to visit her and ask.”
“No way,” Charles said. “Can’t risk you being seen. You’re dead, remember? You need to stay out of sight. If Mr. Keene hears you’re alive, he’ll know you came through the Door.”
“I’ll go get her,” Tuck said, standing.
“What are you going to tell her?” I asked.
“As little as possible,” he said, and then he left the kitchen and jogged toward his car. I saw him out the window as he peeled out of the garage.
I added to the whiteboard:
Ryan?
Tapping his name, I said, “He’ll help if he can, but we aren’t going to be able to communicate with him ahead of time, so we can’t plan on it.” And then I wrote:
Mom
“Obviously she can’t help until she’s back,” Charles pointed out.
Getting up, Benden added to my list:
Novi
Other exiles
“Good.” It was a much larger crew than last time, so that had to help. Of course, it was a more complicated heist. We had to execute it while every wyvern in the West was there.
Charles started another list, this time with “Security” at the top.
I ran down the different security measures that led to the vault. “Benden fried all the security cameras, so that should be fine. There’s a wall of fire on the stairs…Do we have any fire protection potion?”
“Yeah,” Tuck said. “Got some leftover from when I took cooking lessons—the chef was human.”
“Good.” Gabriela would need it. Really, really hoped she’d agree to come with Tuck.
