Twenty-two
“Never forget that I loved you, and I did the best by you I could. You can forget everything else about me, but please. Don’t forget that.”
Hiding from the Covenant of St. George in a warehouse somewhere in Manhattan
THE FIRST THING I needed to do was find a way out that didn’t involve going past the Covenant. There’s nothing dignified about racing naked across the rooftops of Manhattan—for one thing, without a bra, I was going to wind up in a world of pain, and that didn’t even start to go into the situation with my feet—but that wasn’t going to stop me. If I had an exit, I was going to take it. The trick was going to be finding that exit without coming out into the open.
I carefully extracted myself from my position between the boxes and began climbing again. Higher ground helped my nerves. Margaret and the others wanted me alive, for the moment, and that meant they’d be reluctant to shoot me; it’s never a good idea to shoot someone you’re not intending to kill, no matter how good of a shot you think you are. That’s something I learned from my grandmother, and she’s the best shot I’ve ever known. “Even when you’re aiming for the hand, you’d best assume you’re shooting to kill,” was what she’d said, and she was right. Shooting to wound was only a few inches from missing your target entirely, and a different few inches from killing them. Assuming the Covenant had similar training (a big assumption, but I had to go with something), they’d try to use other means of getting me down.
Besides, once I was high enough, they’d be even less likely to see me without my wanting to be seen, and there was something to be said for that. I didn’t want them to take me alive. I didn’t want to die, either. That meant I needed to escape.
The boxes were piled high enough that I could see the rafters overhead, but not so high that I could reach them. I couldn’t even jump with any assurance that I’d hit my target—not with my feet in their current condition—and a misjudged landing could send the entire stack of boxes toppling. That wouldn’t be exactly what I’d call “subtle,” and it would bring the Covenant rushing back to find me, instead of wasting more time searching the upstairs.
I wish to hell I had some backup,I thought grimly, frowning at the unreachable rafters. That triggered a whole series of thoughts I’d been trying to avoid—like why couldn’t I feel Sarah if we were still in Manhattan? I should have been able to tune in on her “static,” even if she was too far away to communicate telepathically. I wasn’t wearing Margaret’s anti-telepathy charm anymore. Hell, I wasn’t wearing anythinganymore. It wasn’t likely that Sarah would have left town while I was unconscious. So where was she?
If Sarah was unlikely to have left town, the Covenant was even less likely to have found her without me to lead them to her hiding place. She was a cuckoo. She was probably terrified by whatever feedback she picked up when Margaret knocked me out. That would have been enough to activate her automatic defenses, and once those were up, they’d never be able to catch her. That meant they were still blocking her telepathy somehow. It was the only explanation for her ongoing radio silence.
There was no way they’d have been able to telepathically shield an entire warehouse. The resources required would have been massive, and it would have meant bringing in several witches, if not a witch, a sorcerer, and some variety of exorcist. So they had to be telepathically shielding me. I wasn’t wearing anything . . .
But that didn’t mean I hadn’t been forced to swallow anything. I put a hand on my stomach, feeling suddenly queasy. Okay, Verity, settle down,I thought sternly. Even if you ate it, it’s not poisonous. They wanted to bring you back to the Covenant alive, and that means they’re not going to have fed you any mercury-based charms.
Oh, I hoped I was right about that. Sure, keeling over because I’d been poisoned would be a dandy way to prevent myself from telling them any of the family secrets, but it wasn’t exactly on the top of my “to do” list for the day. (It wasn’t a guarantee of my silence, either. The phrase “dead men tell no tales” doesn’t hold that much water in my family. We know a lot of ghosts. My Aunt Mary died years before I was born, and no one, living or dead, has any idea how to shut her up.)
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down, and went back to looking for things that could help me get up into the rafters. The boxes weren’t high enough, and I didn’t want to start rearranging them—there was no telling how heavy they were, or how many of them were rotten on the inside. That left the hooks that hung from the ceiling. I looked at them, assessing the distance I would have to leap. If I could just grab hold before I fell, I could climb the chain to reach the rafters. Tetanus would be a risk, but hell, in my line of work, tetanus is alwaysa risk.
“Only die once,” I muttered (that wasn’t quite true, either), and started climbing back down the boxes. It was a stupid plan. It was a potentially suicidal plan. It was the only plan I had, and so I intended to go for it. Never allow for the possibility that you might fail, and you’ll succeed just because the universe is too embarrassed to admit that it painted you into a corner.
My feet hurt worse than ever by the time I reached the floor. Every bend of my toes was agony, and putting my weight down on my heels was like standing on hot coals. Ballet helped with that. After years of pointe classes, where bleeding toes were considered a status symbol, a little bruising wasn’t going to slow me down. I hit the ground running, a naked blonde streak heading as fast as I could for the false room that had been my prison, and would now hopefully be my salvation.
As long as I didn’t slow down, I could use the pain in my feet to motivate me. I was going to pay for that as soon as I stopped—the limits of the human body are something that I am intimately familiar with—but for the moment, adrenaline and inertia were both on my side. I assessed the pain as I ran, letting it serve as its own diagnostic engine. The bruising was as bad as I’d thought it would be, maybe a little worse, but that was all. It didn’t feel like they’d actually managed to crack any of my metatarsals, which was a relief. Bruising was going to be a lot easier to work around than broken bones.
I didn’t slow down as I approached the side of the false room. Instead, I aimed myself for the doorway, leaping at the last moment to grab the top of the frame. I let my own momentum carry me into a forward jackknife, then whipped myself backward and flipped up onto the roof. I landed silently, my bare feet actually helping with the action.
“If you wanted to keep me, you shoulda broken my fingers,” I murmured. Then I straightened, turned, and started running again before my feet could fully realize that I had stopped. This time when I jumped, I launched myself into empty air.
For a moment, I was flying, arms outstretched, like a Lady Godiva superheroine aiming for the sky. Then my hands hit the big metal hook dangling from the ceiling. I grabbed hold, clinging as tightly as I could while the force of my leap sent the whole chain swaying. The extra ten feet of height I’d been able to gain from the false room had been enough to boost me to the necessary level. Thank God. If this hadn’t worked, I probably would have wound up with a broken leg, and that would have been a lotharder to work around.
The chain creaked as it swayed, but quietly; it was too heavy to get up any real momentum, and that was keeping the noise down. For the moment.
“Gonna need a tetanus shot when all this is over,” I muttered, and began climbing up the still-swaying chain, heading for the ceiling. It was time to get out of sight.