Jane snorted. Chloe Polanski had made “educated guesses” about Jane’s mother on the air, making it seem Boo had run away from an abusive home. The woman would have known that Kajo had taken Boo. Polanski’s smear of Jane’s mother was simply a way to keep people from thinking about possible kidnappers.
“Everyone at WTAE is afraid that the elves are going to show up and behead everyone at the station.” Makayla reached for her box of tissues.
“They let her walk all over people right and left,” Jane said. “They had to know that sooner or later, she’d piss off the elves.”
“You’re one to talk, missy,” Virginia murmured as Makayla loudly blew her nose. “Hal was plowing through people even before the conflict started. You’ve only gotten worse since nature boy number two showed up.”
Virginia meant Nigel, who most of WQED saw as being the same make and model as Hal. Nigel might be as heedless of his own danger but he was much more cautious of other people’s safety. It had been the discovery that the oni had been behind Boo’s disappearance that made Jane’s team’s behavioral pattern “worse,” not Nigel.
Just like Chloe Polanski, if things went south with Jane’s team, everyone at WQED would bear the weight of suspicion.
“I’m sorry,” Jane whispered.
“We’ve got your back,” Virginia answered. “But please, be careful.”
Jane nodded.
Virginia focused her attention back to her bawling paralegal. “Polanski might have lied about why Princess Tinker was at the Squirrel Hill tunnels, but the vicereine did make a gate that opened to Onihida. If she can make one, she can make another.”
Jane knew for a fact that the EIA had cleared the tunnels in expectation that Tinker would use them to reconnect Pittsburgh to Earth. After the museum shoot-out, Director Maynard seemed to see Jane’s team as a trustworthy pest-removal unit. He’d called them several times that summer to deal with Elfhome’s deadlier flora and fauna. Jane had helped clear the tunnels of steel spinner nests while Taggart worked cameras. They hadn’t used the footage yet because the powers that be — Tinker, Maynard, and Jin Wong — weren’t sure that Tinker should attempt to build a gate. At least, not until the elves won the war against the oni. If Tinker accidently linked her gate to Onihida instead of Earth, the army that the oni had amassed could push through her gate before she could shut it down. The general consensus was that Tinker domi should wait until the elves could spare the firepower to deal with an incoming army.
It was possible that Polanski had reported Tinker’s plan to create pressure on the girl genius. The entire off-world population of Pittsburgh wanted the city to be reconnected to Earth. Hopefully no one tried to act on the information. Jane wasn’t about to explain what she knew to the emotionally distraught Makayla.
“I want to go home!” Makayla wailed. “I miss my mom and dad! I miss New York! The people here don’t even understand how small this world is. I keep dreaming that it gets smaller and smaller and then just disappears totally.”
Jane didn’t want to trust Makayla with her family secrets. The woman was emotionally unstable and desperate. “Things will work out,” Jane said, preparing her escape. “Just give it time.”
“I turned twenty-four last month!” Makayla sobbed. “I had a schedule all worked out. Graduate college by twenty-one. Work off-world three years to get money for law school, work experience that would make me stand out, and glowing recommendations from a wide range of people. Since I’d be a whole different world from my friends and family and the Internet, I’d devote all my time to studying for my LSAT. Leave Elfhome in November of this year and take my LSAT and apply to Yale.”
“You’ll be the only applicant that lived through an interdimensional war between three universes,” Virginia said.
“‘Lived’ is the key word here,” Makayla complained darkly.
The lights flickered.
All three of the women looked up at the overhead lamps.
“Is Hal experimenting with an electric fence again?” Virginia asked.
“I don’t think so,” Jane said slowly. She didn’t want to explain that Hal was preoccupied with a deadly snake loose in the offices. “I’ll go check on him.”
She headed back through the building as the lights flickered again. “Hal?”
“That’s not me!” Hal called back, somewhere near the break room.
Jane was in the big windowless room of the news bullpen when the lights went off, dropping her into darkness.
“Still not me!” Hal shouted, definitely in the break room itself.
Jane swore softly. She was still in her dress clothes for the meeting. She didn’t have her flashlight on her. Around her various uninterruptable power units signaled their distress with loud chirps. In the sea of darkness, lights started to appear as people turned on their phones and tablets to see. She didn’t want to run down her phone battery. She fumbled her way toward the break room. Despite Hal’s assurance that he had nothing to do with the blackout, she had a sinking feeling that things had just taken a turn for the worse.
“Can I have some light in the restroom?” a woman’s voice called out, muffled by a door.
There was a thud and a soft curse as someone walked into something.
“Come on! Can we have power?” a woman called.
“Where’s the snake?” Joe McGreevy called out with an edge of fear in his voice. He sounded close to Hal in the breakroom.
“Someone kick the generator!” Dmitri shouted from the direction of his office. “Get us back on the air!”
There was a deep, nearly inaudible rumble as the big diesel generator in the parking lot kicked on. The lights snapped back on.
“Where’s the snake?” Joe repeated in a slightly more stressed voice.
Jane headed for the break room, hoping said snake was in an opaque container as she recognized Joe McGreevy on a verge of a meltdown. Jane was fairly sure that the broken wrist had taught Hal not to tease Joe, but Nigel and Taggart didn’t know of the man’s phobia. The British naturalist might try to “educate” Joe.
The WQED breakroom was a large windowless room designed to be a kitchen for the incoming staff to use as a place to cook real meals until they got settled. It had a range, a dishwasher, pots and pans, dishes, and any number of storage containers. Some were small clear Rubbermaid. The others, like the Disney souvenir cookie bucket that Nigel was holding, were recycled larger containers.
“I had nothing to do with the blackout,” Hal said calmly, ignoring the fact that Joe stood trapped in the corner farthest from the door, looking like he wanted to phase through the wall.
“Jane, we need to talk,” Taggart said and glanced toward Joe. “Privately.”
“Where is the snake?” Joe shouted.
“It’s safely contained,” Taggart focused back on his laptop.
“You really don’t want to know,” Hal said calmly, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “If you were really concerned, you wouldn’t be in the same room as us.”