“If-” I started. I paused, frowning, thinking in more depth.
“Think fast,” Peter said.
“I need access to the rest of the house. The others are in, kind of a makeshift panic room. If Andy and Eva are still up there, that means they probably don’t have access. They’re upping the pressure, or guarding things. In maybe about an hour, things get really ugly.”
Peter nodded slowly. Roxanne, still keeping one eye closed, frowned, but she looked at Peter and decided to take his lead.
“Ugly in the sense of…” Peter started.
“If I don’t have access to my friends upstairs, it’s probably over,” I said. “That’s all those two are doing up there. Just before the clock hits five or so, they’ll probably pack up and leave. Because those two pale in comparison to what’s coming.”
“The machete wielder who stomps on a twelve year old and the kid with the bombs are pale?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’ll take your word for it. We have a time limit then?”
“Yes.”
Peter approached me. Evan ruffled his feathers and opened his beak, but Peter ignored him, picking up the mirror.
“Careful,” I said.
“You’re not heavy. I’m not going to drop it.”
“I’m not that worried about you breaking it. Point it at the ground more than the ceiling, and hold it steady.”
He did.
“Roxanne, Christoff, go look for picture frames and mirrors. Stay on the ground floor, be ready to run or hide. Move slowly and carefully.”
“Evan,” I said, “go with.”
The other three left, nearly silent. I could see how Roxanne held her one arm off to one side, trying not to swing it around.
“You’re really not going to share the real dirt?” Peter asked. “Because you, right here, not technology. If you could somehow bestow some of that on me? It’d help.”
He smiled wide. It was more genuine emotion than I’d seen from him… ever.
“It’s not technology,” I said. “I can’t give you it. Those guys up there? They’re witch hunters. You’re almost stronger against them like you are, than with anything I could bestow.”
He nodded slowly. “Right now, I’m thinking I could run. I could probably defuse the bomb on the plywood, even if I couldn’t re-arm it. I’ve got this poker. If there was a commotion, I could probably get the nails out, slip outside.”
“They’d be able to find you,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“They have ways,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. All I need from you is a promise. Because I feel like this is what I’ve been waiting for for half my life.”
I bit my lip, looking away.
Further away, I saw a patch of light open up.
“Lie to me,” he said. “Tell me you’ll do it, break the promise later.”
“Why would it matter if I was lying?” I asked.
He remained silent.
Time was too short.
“I’ll tell you more later, but it takes time, on a lot of levels.”
“Uh huh,” he said. “That works.”
“What works?” I asked.
“The way you phrased it, and I’m pretty good at reading people. That sounded genuine. Which tells me a lot. I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not, but I believe you when you say it takes time. And that tells me a lot more. Time… is really important, in a lot of ways.”
“Sure,” I said, impatient. The way he was acting, he’d ask questions until Eva decided to make another trip to check on the prisoners.
“The fastest route to victory,” he said. “Taking out those two?”
“They’ll beat you in a fight, and whatever you’re thinking about, they’ve probably run into it before, and they handled it before. They’ve been doing this for a while, against people far more hardcore than you.”
“What, then? Time is of the essence, how do we win?”
“Get the bird and the mirror into the hallway, with the witch hunters elsewhere.”
“Hm. Hard to do without-”
Heavy footsteps upstairs, getting louder as they approached the staircase. They stopped, then resumed again, getting quieter.
Another patch of light appeared. The bathroom in the hallway. Fuzzy, oddly distant, like any patch that wasn’t continguous to a patch I was in could be.
With a number of fits and starts, the light reoriented, and extended. The angle had changed to have more coverage, the little picture frame pointing out into the hallway.
Maybe it was Evan doing his part.
“Hard to do without a distraction, and if they find any of us, they have a hostage.”
“Just need more windows or mirrors,” I said. “Reflective surfaces.”
“Uh huh. Which does what?”
Roxanne appeared, Christoff following, Evan perched on Christoff’s head.
“Need knives,” she said.
“Not objecting,” Peter replied.
When Roxanne was gone, he commented, “Man, dad wasted Roxy, using her like he did. Jessica’s fault, probably. All that time spent doing stupid shit? Horseback riding and dance classes and music?”
“I don’t follow,” I said.
Roxanne passed beneath me, carrying a cleaver and a dusty bottle of olive oil.
“Oil?” Peter murmured.
“Basement stairs,” she said. She disappeared from view.
“Such a waste,” Peter commented, more to himself than me.
Christoff, delayed, headed in Roxanne’s direction, holding one knife in both hands, pointed at the ground as if it were ten times as heavy as it really was.
“Her!” he said, too loud.
Eva.
Peter moved immediately, back pressed against the wall by the door, poker in one hand.
“Andy!” Eva called up. “They escaped!”
I didn’t catch his response.
I could hear her footsteps. I relocated myself to the bathroom.
I had the Hyena. I just didn’t have the opportunity to use it. If I could get her close to a reflection…
She stalked forward.
She easily sidestepped the thrown bottle of olive oil. Glass crashed against the floor at the base of the steps that led upstairs.
A patch of light opened up. The glossy olive oil reflected.
A door slammed.
There was a pause, and then she headed back the direction she’d come. Where her footsteps had been audible earlier, they were virtually silent now, heel-toe.
She’d accepted that the kids had disappeared downstairs, or that they were cowering at the end of the hall. Her focus was on the living room and kitchen.
I heard flapping wings.
“Ahhh,” she said. “The bird? Oh, that’s messy. That raises questions, Thorburn!”
Talking to me.
I moved to Peter’s mirror. Evan was working his way into the spot between the bookshelves and the ceiling. From Eva’s lack of reaction or response, she hadn’t seen it.
“Andy!” she called out.
“I’m standing watch!” he responded. “How bad?”
“They’re hiding!”
“Let them hide! Forty minutes! Keep the plan simple!”
“Fuck that,” she said, no longer shouting.
I relocated, switching between mirrors. I saw her head for the living room. Peter was in the corner, hallway to his left, kitchen to his right.