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Kit felt her pulse skyrocket but counted her breaths and forced her heartrate to slow down. She could only be invisible if calm. In-two-three. She was the darkness. Out-two-three. She was not here. In-two-three. She was in the in-between. Out-two-three. She was in the elsewhere. She felt herself calm down to the zone of performance, the hollow focus that came at the point you pulled the trigger. She could do this. Thank you, Ulrich, for teaching her invisibility. Thank you, Holzhausen, for teaching her to control her panic. Thank you, Jis Tamarisk, for giving her a groundwork in faerie sorcery. Where would she be without her teachers? Where would she be once she had proven to Sorrow she was worthy to be his apprentice?
What time was it? She looked at her phone, wincing at the too-bright light in the total blackness of the basement. Quarter after six. What time did sun set here? She looked at the weather app. Sunset at seven twenty-three, with a high today of 116, which meant that even if she could go outside, she’d probably die if she couldn’t find water and shade.
Plan. Make a plan. First, stay invisible.
Second, find the keystone and destroy it. In the confusion, get out, and then Fain and his people could take over from here. True, she said she’d remain in the house after destroying the ward, but that was nonsense. She wasn’t going to stick around once she’d done what she came to do. She’d break the ward, then get Medina to unlock the doors for her so she could escape.
Maybe her teek? Kit blindly groped to the place where she thought the door was, trailing her hands along the wall to keep from kicking things in the dark. She fumbled her way to the door and put her hands on it. One, two, three, go! Nothing. Not even a window rattle. Maybe Sorrow could teach her how to control it. Being able to deliberately unlock doors would come in very handy right about now.
Kit took two slow, deep breaths. Stay calm, stay invisible. First, find the keystone. No, first, she needed to see. Kit set the backpack on the ground and swapped out her sigil log for the Christmas present Fenwick had given her, as expensive as a nice piece of jewelry but far more useful. Putting it over her head and fastening the straps, she clicked the power on button and the basement lit up with greenish light. Pool table. Door to bathroom. Stairs. Couches. She was afraid the goggles would make that noise like they always did in the video games, but they were silent. This wasn’t so bad. Yes, she was being hunted by at least three vampires in a large, dark house that they knew well but which she had never been in. Yes, they could see in the dark and had super acute hearing. Yes, they were faster and stronger than her. But she was invisible. She had stakes in an emergency. And if she could finish before sunset, and if they could get in and shut off the power so that the doors would unlock, she could escape outside. Surely, she could find the keystone and destroy it before sunset?
But she had to avoid the vampires. Where would they expect her to be? Would they expect that she had followed the tech to the basement? She had to get to the ground floor. That’s where the keystone was, in the master bedroom or near it. Kit visualized the map that Fain had laid out on the dining room table, trying to place herself in it.
The door to the basement opened, and heavy footsteps trudged down the stairs. It was a vampire she didn’t know, about six and a half years old. He was a tall man, broad shouldered with a scraggly beard and hair that begged for a barber. He carried himself like a whipped dog. Behind him came a slightly older vampire whom she guessed must be Eric. Eric was laughing.
“Dude, he’s just kidding, Jay. He’s not gonna cut your ear off. Where have you been, anyway? I thought you left town.”
“He’s tortured us,” Jay said casting about the room. He went to the couch and peered behind it, then started lifting cushions as if Kit might be small enough to fit under one. “And he will cut our ears off, or worse. I have to find her.”
Kit crept quietly behind them, wishing there were more carpet and less stone. At least she’d worn athletic shoes instead of the hiking boots she’d originally considered. She emptied her thoughts, remaining as calm as possible, pulling herself into the invisibility which had been her first and most reliable spell.
“He’s just messing with you, man. There’s no one here. The tech left. I saw him drive off on the cameras.”
Jay lifted his nose and sniffed. “She’s here. I smell someone. Someone female.”
Both vampires went to the bathroom, and Kit took the opportunity to ascend the stairs. The door at the top of the stairs made very little noise as she opened it, and she managed to shut it most of the way, creeping back down the hallway towards the vestibule.
The hallway opened into a great room with a grand piano, an enormous television set, and heavy wooden furniture with ornate scrollwork that looked as though it had been commissioned for a ducal palace. A towering stack of pizza boxes cantilevered over a heavy wooden coffee table, and a stone urn in an alcove had been filled with empty beer cans. The great room was at a slightly lower level than the hallway, and low iron balustrades separated her from another young vampire, who was peering under tables and behind couches. This one was only a few months old, turned in her mid-twenties, chronologically about the same age as Wolfe, Eric and Jay. This must be Stephanie.
What must have once been a long wall of windows had been barricaded with plywood, sealed around the edges with duct tape. The only light in the room seemed to come from the LED lights on the television. The young vampire lifted her head as if someone had called her name, and Kit turned to see what the vampire was looking at.
At the end of a very long hallway was a fainting couch. The hallway was wide enough to accommodate a car, or at least a golf cart, and it had been lined on either side with narrow sideboards and ornate mirrors. The high ceiling had chandeliers hanging down every fifteen feet, so dusty that even in the greenish light of the night vision she could tell it was thick with cobwebs. Walking towards her was a vampire about eleven years younger than Fain. This must be Crispin.
He looked like a teenage boy, with a gangly walk and a knobbiness to him. Behind him, a dainty wooden chair had been pulled up to one of the sideboards. A giant vase of silk flowers had been set on the ground and a laptop placed on the marble surface. The screen had been divided into four quadrants, each showing a monochrome interior scene. Three of the images flickered, switching between cameras. One remained the same, showing the door next to the fainting couch at the end of the hallway. Kit was certain that door led to the stone.
Crispin came just far enough down the hallway to block Kit’s view of the laptop screen. He spoke to the young vampire in a voice too low for Kit to eavesdrop. Kit thought she might sneak past him and into the room guarded by the camera, but she hesitated. A second later, just as Kit was about to enter the field of vision, Crispin glanced over his shoulder at the laptop screen, and Kit jerked back out of range of the camera. She was so skittish from her near-miss that she almost lost her invisibility. She backed slowly away. Something in her backpack clacked against something else, and she winced at the noise.
She found her way back to the vestibule, but this door was also locked. She gave a halfhearted attempt to teek it open, but as she’d told Fain, it had never ever worked at her command. Past the door to the basement, Kit found the kitchen. She might have been able to tell it was the kitchen by the smell of rotten garbage and fryer grease, or by the way the sound echoes changed, even if she didn’t have her night vision goggles. To the left of the kitchen were stairs. She climbed the stairs, hoping that Crispin was distracted enough by whatever he was telling the young vampire that she’d get enough of a window to sneak through. At the top of the stairs was another bathroom, and Kit ducked inside, guessing that there weren’t any cameras in the bathroom, at least.
She texted Fain. They know im here. Crispin and others are looking for me. Get Medina to shut off cameras!
Fain didn’t text back right away. She’d always hated that about him when they were dating. She’d text him something important and hours or sometimes days would pass. He said if it was important, she could call. Yeah, right. Kit climbed into the bathtub, but it was too noisy. What was worse, being seen by cameras, or being heard by vampires? She sent Fain three more texts.
Can you shut off power?
Wi-fi?
They are hunting me!!!
Fain didn’t text back. Asshole.
Kit carefully unzipped her backpack one tooth at a time. The chisel and the hammer were clanking against each other. She climbed out of the bathtub and opened the cupboard, finding some washcloths and hand towels to wrap around the tools. A dark oval clung to one of the towels and when it moved, she realized it was a cockroach. Shuddering in horror, Kit shook the towel to free it from any more bugs, then carefully wrapped up her tools. Her log was still in there, and when she reached in to put the tools back in, she got jabbed by something sharp. She pulled at it and with a splintering sound, a kindling-sized shard of the wood came off, as sharp as a stake, even if it wouldn’t kill like hers would.
Fain texted back. We’ve been locked out of the wi-fi. He changed the password. She can get back in but not until dusk. She needs to be within a few hundred feet of the property.
Not until dusk. Great. She could be dead by then. What about power? If the power is shut off, will the doors unlock?
Fain’s response came about five minutes later. Wolfe says yes, the doors can be unlocked if the power is off, but there’s a backup generator which is inside the ward. Get the ward down.
Fain’s people couldn’t get in until dusk. Medina couldn’t tinker with the wi-fi until dusk. But she couldn’t get anywhere near the door Crispin was guarding if she couldn’t tinker with the wi-fi. He’d know she was coming because he’d see her on the cameras. She couldn’t even get close enough to stake him without him seeing her, and if he saw her, she was sunk. He was much faster and stronger than her. They all were. Crispin wasn’t the strongest of them, just the cruelest. Cut off an ear. WTF? What kind of a sicko did that? They’d probably be grateful if someone staked him. Maybe not Steel Fang. He seemed to relish this almost as much as that psychopath did. And the young vampire was ensorcelled to the gills. But what about Jay? He told Steel Fang he’d been tortured.
The enemy of my enemy was my friend. Kit took out one of her stakes and set it on the counter in the bathroom, on top of a washcloth. She carefully rummaged among the miscellany on the top of the sink until she found some mascara. Lipstick would be best, but mascara would do. She didn’t want to be in the bathroom when they came upstairs. Even invisible, they’d find her for sure.