Page 100 of Demon's Bluff
“I don’t have clearance,” he said, his gaze darting to the card reader next to the door. “You want to see the animal labs?”
“I think you do,” I said, hand moving fast as I snatched the ID card from his waist and ran it. The beep shocked through me, and I reached for the handle, feeling as if a stopwatch had just clicked on. I was sure the door was wired into some kind of security. They wouldn’t bother Quen for it apart from a quick update possibly—but someone would come and investigate even if they knew Madison and Bob were down here checking things out. Especially, maybe.
“Hey,” Scrim protested as I pulled the door open, and I gave him his card back.
“I want to see it take the watch off my hand.” Elyse pushed past me, and we were in.
Scrim caught the door, holding it open as he lingered in the hall. “Ah. I don’t think we should go in.”
“Relax.” Elyse pressed close over the dark keyboard, then hit a button to make the screen light up. “Three-day weekend, right? Let’s have some fun.” She turned to me, suddenly worried. “You know how to switch this on?” she whispered.
I eased to a halt beside her, lower lip between my teeth. “How hard can it be?” I mean, there weren’t that many buttons, and one of them was green.Green means go, right?
“Hey, um, you shouldn’t mess with that,” Scrim said, ignored as he came in and let the door close.
Elyse frowned at me. “I thought you said you’d done this before.”
“It was already running the last time. I’ve never been in this room.”
“Ah, excuse me,” Scrim said faintly, the man pale as he realizedsomething wasn’t right. “I need to check on something,” he added, voice high as he inched to the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“Bob, he’s yours,” I said, and Elyse practically crowed.
We were too deep for a line, but as Scrim made a mad dash for the hall, she pulled a wad of energy as if from nowhere and threw it at him with an exuberant“Captus!”
I jumped at the loud pop, remembering being at the wrong end of her spells before.
“That wasn’t from your chi,” I accused when Scrim collapsed as if his strings had been cut. “How…” And then I got it, squinting in annoyance at her smug expression. “One of those crows out there is your familiar, isn’t it. Damn it,Bob. You are making it very hard to trust you.”
“Trust?” the young-seeming woman said, chin high. “I am the coven. You are—”
“The one getting you home!” I exclaimed as I knelt to check on Scrim.Breathing, check.“And you are making my job harder than it needs to be.” I stood up, frustrated. “This is not a contest over who knows the most magic, and if you keep withholding from me, we might be stuck here.” I grabbed Scrim’s shoulders and dragged him out of sight of the hall window. “He’s okay, right?”
“He’s fine,” she said, clearly annoyed. “I do not kill people.”
“Yeah, you only incarcerate them and feed them magic-killing amino acids.” Uneasy, I left him there to go back to the screen. It wanted a password, and I typed in the nonsense word written on the side of the keyboard. “We’re in,” I said as several windows opened and a prompt asked me what cycle I wanted to run.
“He’ll be out for a few hours.” Elyse stared down the empty hallway. “Wake up on his own with a headache. I didn’t hurt him.” She hesitated. “Can you turn it on?”
“I think so.” Lip between my teeth, I told it to run the last program and tapped the enter key—only to get an error prompt. “Mmmm. Hit that green button.”
Elyse went to the machine, her steps silent in her ever-after-red sneakers.“This one?” she said, punching it—and then we both jumped as an odd sensation rippled over my aura.
“Pixy piss, I think that’s it,” I said when a faint whine blossomed in my ear. On the screen, data began scrolling past, the machine asking for information I had no clue about. But when I reached for the ley line, it was there.
“It moved!” Elyse exclaimed as if she only now believed I’d been telling the truth. “It’s working! The line is there. It’s like right there.”
Excitement tingled down to my toes. “Let’s move.” I grabbed my bag and headed for the hallway. “We have to be in and gone before someone gets curious enough to try to unspell Bob or Madison and figures out they aren’t.”
Elyse bolted into motion, pushing past me and into the hallway.
“Yeah, now you’re in a hurry,” I added as I followed, wishing again that Jenks was with me. The pixy would have put the camera at the ceiling on a loop, but I’d have to break it—which would tell them exactly where we were.
“Which way?” Elyse halted at a junction, fidgeting as she looked one way, then the other.
“It’s behind a set of wooden double doors.” Exhaling, I sent my senses searching for a hint of ley line power.
Elyse’s eyes widened. “You don’t know where it is, do you.”