I smiled. Something like being able to admit one’s own ignorance. Expressed in the simplest possible form: asking a question. And, as I now knew, my mother had not been called “LeFay” for nothing.
“Godmother,” I asked calmly. “Did my mother leave anything for you to give me when I was ready for it? A book? A map?”
Lea took a very slow, deep breath, her eyes luminous. “Well,” she murmured. “Well, well, well.”
“She did, didn’t she.”
“Yes, indeed. But I was told to give you fair warning. It is a deadly legacy. If you accept it, you accept what comes with it.”
“Which is?” I asked.
She shrugged a shoulder. “It varies from one individual to the next. Your mother lost the ability to sleep soundly. It might be worse for you. Or it might be nothing.”
I thought about that for a moment, and then nodded. “I want it.”
Lea never took her eyes off me. She lifted her empty palm, closed her fingers over it, and opened them again.
A small, gleaming ruby, bright as a drop of blood, carved in a pentagon, lay in her hand.
“It is the sum of her knowledge of the Ways,” Lea said quietly. “Every path, every shortcut, every connection. She developed enough skill at searching them out that she was eventually able to predict them. Ways may change from decade to decade, but your mother knew where they were and where they would be. Very few of mine own kind can say as much.” She narrowed her eyes. “That knowledge is the burden I hold in my hand, child. Mine own belief is that it will destroy thee. The choice must needs be thine.”
I stared at the gem for a long moment, forcing myself to breathe slowly. All the Ways. The ability to travel around the world without concern for geography. Knowledge like that could have won the war with the Red Court almost before it began. Whoever possessed that knowledge could regard laws with utter impunity, avoid retribution from mortal authorities or supernatural nations alike. Go anywhere. Escape from damned near anything. Gather more information than anyone else possibly could.
Hell’s bells. That gleaming little gem was a subtle strength that had the potential to be as potent as any I had seen. Such power.
Such temptation.
I wondered if I’d be able to handle it. I am not a saint.
At the same time, I had never seen a tool so obviously intended to help a man Show Up for his little girl. No matter where she was, I could go to her. Go to her and get away clean.
Maggie.
I reached out and took the gem from my godmother’s hand.
Chapter 16
“Harry,” Molly called from up in the living room. “I think they’re waking up.”
I grunted and lifted my pentacle necklace to examine it. The little pentagonal ruby had been quite obviously cut for this particular piece of jewelry. Or it had been before I’d been forced to use the necklace as a silver bullet. My little pentacle, the five-pointed star within a circle, had been warped by the extremes of stress I’d subjected it to. I’d been straightening it out with the set of jeweler’s tools I used to update Little Chicago.
The jewel abruptly snapped into the center of the pentacle as if into a socket. I shook the necklace several times, and the gem stayed put. But there was no point in taking chances. I turned it over and smeared the whole back with a big blob of adhesive. It might not look pretty from the front after it had dried, but I was pressed for time.
“That’ll do, pig,” I muttered to myself. I looked up to Bob’s shelf, where Mister was sprawling, using a couple of paperbacks for pillows while he amused himself dragging his claws through the mounded candle wax. I reached up to rub his ears with my fingertips, setting him to purring, and promised myself I would get Bob back soon: For the time being, he was, like the Swords, too valuable and too dangerous to leave unguarded. In Lea’s bloodthirsty garden, they were probably safer than they had been in my apartment in the first place.
I left my mother’s amulet and the glittering ruby sitting on my worktable so that the glue could dry, and padded up the stepladder.
I had hefted Susan up onto the sofa and fetched a pillow for her head, and a blanket. Molly had managed to roll Martin onto a strip of camping foam, and given him a pillow and a blanket, too. Mouse had settled down on the floor near Martin to sleep. Even though his eyes were closed and he was snoring slightly, his ears twitched at every sound.
While I had been in the lab, Molly had been cleaning up. She probably knew where all the dishes went better than I did. Or she was reorganizing them completely. Either way, I was sure that the next time I just wanted to fry one egg, I wouldn’t be able to find the little skillet until after I had already used the big skillet and cleaned it off.
I hunkered down next to Susan, and as I did she stirred and muttered softly. Then she jerked in a swift breath through her nose, her eyes suddenly opening wide, as if she were panicked.
“Easy,” I said at once. “Susan. It’s Harry. You’re safe.”
It seemed to take several seconds for my words to sink in. Then she relaxed again, blinked a few times, and turned her head toward me.
“What happened to me?” she asked.
“You were mistaken for an intruder,” I said. “You were hit with a form of magic that made you sleep.”
She frowned tiredly. “Oh. I was dreaming. . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I was dreaming that the curse was gone. That I was human.” She shook her head with a bitter little smile. “I thought I was done having that one. Martin?”
“Here,” Martin slurred. “I’m all right.”
“But maybe not for long,” I said. “The apartment’s wards are down. We’re naked here.”
“Well,” Martin said in an acidic voice. “I think we learned our lesson about where that leads.”
Susan rolled her eyes, but the look she gave me, a little hint of a smile and a level stare with her dark eyes, was positively smoldering.
Yeah. That had been pretty good.
“Did you guys find out about our tail?” I asked.
“Tails, as it turns out. Three different local investigative agencies,” Martin supplied. “They were paid cash up front to follow us from the time we arrived. They all gave a different description of the woman who hired them. All of them were too beautiful to believe.”
“Arianna?” I asked.
Martin grunted. “Probably. The oldest of them can wear any flesh mask they wish, and go abroad in daylight, hidden from the sun in the shadow of their own mask.”
I lifted my eyebrows. That was news. I wasn’t even sure the Wardens had that kind of information. Martin must have been a little groggy from his naptime.
“How long were we out?” Susan asked.
“I got here about five hours ago. Sun’s down.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if bracing herself for something, and nodded. “All right. Martin and I need to get moving.”
“Where?” I asked.
“The airport,” Martin said. “We should be able to be in Nevada by very late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Then we can move on the warehouse and look for more information.”
“We discussed it, Harry,” Susan said quietly. “You can’t take a plane, and we’re counting the minutes. A jet will get us there in about seven hours. The car will take two days. There’s no time for that.”
“Yeah, I can see your reasoning,” I said.
Martin stood up creakily and stretched. “Entering the facility may require a reconnaissance period. We’ll have to determine its weaknesses, patrol pacing, and so on before we—”
I interrupted him by slapping a piece of notebook paper down on the coffee table. “The storage facility is set into the side of a stone hill. There are some portable units stored outside in a yard with a twelve-foot razor-wire fence. A road leads into the hill and down into what I presume to be caverns either created for storage space or appropriated after a mining operation closed.” I pointed at the notebook paper, to different points on the sketch, as I mentioned each significant feature.