Quinton ducked through the open doorway with the fire extinguisher from my kitchen and killed the flames in a powdery stream of chemicals. The oily wad of rags smoldered a bit, but didn’t reignite.
Reaching up with the yardstick, Quinton poked the alarm’s reset button. There was still one squalling from inside my condo, but as we stood in the hall it wound down and stopped with a sad whine.
“You all right?” he asked, looking me over.
I stooped to pick up my ruined jacket. It was a good thing I’d bought another one in London, since I seem to be death on outerwear. “Fine. But we’re going to have to get out of here.”
Quinton looked around the hall, silent now as the neighbors were all off at work and the smoke had begun dissipating. “Yeah, I guess that wasn’t too subtle.”
I peered at him, not quite sure in my dopey sleep-deprived state if I’d understood him.
He poked the partially burned rags and gave the stains on the wall a significant look. “The goons are rattling your cage.”
“And I need some quiet if I’m going to stay out of their hands. And keep you out of them, too.”
He considered that before heading back into my condo. “You think they’ll try to split us?”
I nodded and followed him inside. “It’s in their best interest to keep me isolated and off-balance, even to grab whatever leverage they can get.”
“We need to talk.”
“We do. But not here. They’ll keep coming at us so long as we’re someplace they can find us.”
“You think so?”
I nodded, feeling dizzy from the motion. At least my ears had stopped ringing and Grendel was acting subdued, sticking close to us but not begging for attention. The smoke seemed to have damped his spirits as much as it had ours.
Quinton took my steel wastebasket and swept up the mess in the hall as I started pulling out the bags and the ferret’s traveling kit. The living room reeked of smoke.
As I put the necessary pet supplies together, Quinton returned and poked at some of his equipment. “Slag,” he muttered.
“Huh?”
“This stuff near the window. The smoke got in it. Most of it’s kacked. Including my Grey detector. Well. At least that’s something less to carry.” He sighed. “What’s the plan, then, supergirl?”
“Bug out, find a safe place, get some sleep. Then go after them while they think they have us on the run.”
“Risky. What if they grab you? I mean . . . they do intend to grab you, don’t they?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. But I don’t plan to give them any more chances. I’m making mistakes, but if I can get some sleep before they can catch up to us, get some information, then I may have the upper hand. If I move fast.”
Quinton nodded, starting to smile. “We’ll attack them first—gives us the options to act while they only have the option to react. I definitely like that scenario. Much better than the alternative.” He picked up a pair of bags and slung them up onto his shoulders.
He threw a handful of objects into another bag and zipped it up while I snatched my one bag and the animal kit. I went back to the bedroom to fetch the ferret and returned to see Quinton grabbing the handles on his last bag with one hand and Grendel’s leash with the other.
“What are we going to do with the dog?” he asked.
“Ben and Mara have a yard . . . and I want to talk to them anyway.” They’d been my first instructors in dealing with the Grey, and their home would be more than just a place to hide; I was pretty sure I would need their knowledge and help before this was done.
Quinton looked thoughtful. “Wygan must know you’re friends with them. And their place is close to the broadcast towers.”
“It’s the best I can come up with. We’ll just have to be careful.”
“It’s worth a try.” Quinton twitched the dog’s leash and Grendel trotted out like he’d been Quinton’s pet all his life. Dogs seemed to do that for him; I guess they knew he loved them.
We secured the condo and bundled our gear downstairs and into the truck. I only wished I’d had the energy to move it into the garage the previous night so it was less obvious to any watchers that we were leaving, but that couldn’t be helped. If we grew a tail, we’d lose it, and there wasn’t anything in terms of electronic tracking they could do that Quinton couldn’t defeat.
We drove away from my building and I wondered if I’d ever see it again.
FOUR
It took more than forty minutes to get to the Danzigers’ house on Queen Anne Hill. We had to shake off a tail and check the truck for tracking devices once that was done. Then we were able to continue, but we knew we’d have to check for anyone watching their house. I didn’t know how many resources Wygan had to throw at surveillance and for causing me trouble, but I assumed it was plenty. I didn’t want to draw his attention to the Danzigers if it wasn’t there already. Mara was good at protecting the house with her magic, but the whole family couldn’t just stay home for as long as it took me to wreck Wygan’s plans.
Total destruction was my goal. Even in my bleary, sleepless state, my mind was clear on that. Whatever his plans were, the consequences wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone and I couldn’t let him win.
We both checked the area for watchers, Quinton by eye and scanner, me sinking into the Grey and looking for signs of energy out of place, ghosts, or the ashen signature of those who consorted with vampires. I found one harsh sigil on the sidewalk just outside the reach of Mara’s own protective spells. I left it intact so as not to alert its caster and circled around through the silver mist and ghost light of the Grey to the back of the house. The alley had a few shreds of deep-red blood magic, hot with anger, festooned across the back gate. It was amateur work, done in a hurry and easy to bypass. I wished I could show it to Mara and see what she thought, but I’d have to unmake the nasty little screamer spells to get past them. Whoever had set them hadn’t bothered—or hadn’t known how—to attach them to the grid so they would let him know if they were taken apart. They only went off if tripped. I’d just have to not trip them.
I fetched Quinton to watch my back while I went deeper into the Grey to dismantle the spell. I’d taken Grey things apart before; spells were generally out of my league, but these were rudimentary things and I didn’t have to work too hard to sort out the one thread of magic that held the things together. I grabbed onto the kernel of the thing in the Grey, feeling the muttering of the grid and the hot/cold burn of it through my bones as I did so, and pulled with an even, firm pressure. The fury of the spell ripped along my nerves like a spray of decompressed Freon, and the strands of magic fell apart. It wasn’t too bad, but I stumbled a little as I reemerged back into the normal world.
Quinton caught me. “You all right?”
“Yes.” I tried to brush him aside, but he wasn’t having any. “We can go in now.”
“Maybe we should catch our breath first. You look a little . . . pale.” I might have looked something worse than pale, like maybe not quite solid. Maybe it was just fatigue, but that worried me a little. I only got ghostly when I was very close to the Grey, and here I believed I was all the way out. I brushed the thought aside and let myself through the gate to the Danzigers’ backyard. The gate gleamed with a tracery of pure gold energy I recognized as part of Mara’s magical perimeter. I guess it was used to me after all this time since it didn’t do anything as we stepped through its complex lattice. I heard it whispering pleasing lullabies as we passed.
I’d never seen the back of the Danzigers’ house before; I’d always kept to the interior rooms. The big pale-blue house had a wide, slightly wild back garden, a little tamer than the tumbling wilderness in front, overlooked by a full-width screen porch that overhung the deep stone foundation. The yard was quiet, though we could hear some domestic noises from the house. Quinton tied Grendel to a tree that supported a half-built play platform and we finished the trek across the yard alone.