Page 98 of Demon's Bluff
“Win-win. You okay? You look…” She shifted her shoulders like she had a spider on her back.
“I’m fine,” I said, but I wasn’t. Seeing Trent had shaken me almost as much as seeing Kisten. In a few hours, I was going to piss Trent off more than anyone had ever done in his life. At the time, I’d been pretty proud of myself, but thinking back on it, it had probably been the closest I’d ever been to death. I just hadn’t known it.
“Let’s get you looking like Bob,” I said as I took the transposition stone in hand, and she nodded, shuddering when I did the spell.
I only had Elyse’s satisfied “mmmm” as she eyed herself in the one-way mirror to tell me that it worked. We had a few minutes before someone arrived to relieve me, and the need to get the real Bob and Madison in the back lockup and out of sight was pressing.
“Big guy first,” I said as I grabbed Madison under his shoulders, and we half dragged, half carried the man to the small short-term holding room. The placard on the door saidmedia room three, but that was for the inspectors. It was a cell.
“The door locks, right?” Elyse said as we laboriously lugged Madison into a comfortable chair, the woman totally missing that it and the coffee table were bolted to the floor and that the floor-to-ceiling partition hid a tiny sink and toilet.
“It locks,” I said, and we hustled back to get Bob. Three minutes later, he was propped up against the wall, his ID now on Elyse’s collar. The thought to glamour them flickered as I shut and sealed the door, but wasimmediately dismissed. The only people to lift an image from were me and Elyse. And besides, Quen might waste hours trying to break a spell that didn’t exist if he thought the “intruders” had made themselves look like his security.
“Your bag lost its disguise,” Elyse said when we returned to the control room. I hadn’t broken the spell. It must have been rubbed out when I took Madison’s image.
“That would have been awkward,” I whispered as I pulled my bag close. “Hand me that satchel, will you?”
Elyse tossed me the oversize carryall with the Kalamack logo on it, and I stuffed my shoulder bag into it. The woman had taken not one but two spell pistols from the weapons caddy, looking like she knew what to do with them as she checked the hoppers and wedged one at the small of her back and the other in a borrowed holster.
Damn it, Jenks, I miss you,I mused as I grabbed a key to one of the golf carts. There was a second, smaller parking lot on the estate side of the wall, only this one held electric carts to make the one-mile drive manageable.
The sun was just as warm, the breeze just as pleasant, but it felt different as I pushed out the door and into Trent’s estate, safer, even as we were under more threat should we be discovered. I’d spent too many weekends here to feel anything but pleasure as I matched the key to the number on the cart.
“Car would be faster,” Elyse said as she jogged to catch up.
“Madison would use the cart,” I said. “We need to be well within the labs before this goes sideways.”
“They wouldn’t wake up at all if—”
I turned to her, disappointed. “If I had what? Killed them?”
Elyse frowned. She still looked like Elyse to me, a little young, a lot overconfident in her I.S. sweats and dusty shoes. Like Vivian, she could probably spell me into the ground. What she lacked was the ability to weigh cause and effect, the knowledge that she’d have to own the outcome of her actions and act accordingly. But then again, she was coven. Maybe she didn’t have to.
“Knocked them out with something stronger,” she finally said, but it was clear they weren’t her first choice of words. Annoyed, I slid behind the wheel of the cart and fitted the key.
“Light footprint, Elyse,” I said as I got the cart in motion and headed up the main road at a brisk twenty miles an hour, woods on one side, pastures on the other. “When we leave here, I want nothing to link to you or me that might change something. Right now, we’re simply two enthusiastic reporters trying for a story on Trent’s wedding.”
“Ahh…right,” she said, her attention fixed on the black car coming toward us.
I immediately pulled to the middle of the road and came to a halt—as if I had all the time in the world. “It’s okay,” I said, recognizing the blah-black sedan. “It’s your relief.”
Tires a soft hush, the car came to a halt, the window already whining down. “You left the gatehouse unmanned?” the woman behind the wheel accused, and I shrugged.
“I wanted backup and Kalamack is already through. I knew you were on the way. Hey, leave the two spelled and in holding until Quen returns. He’s going to want to talk to them himself.” I visibly shuddered. “Remember the last time he caught someone on the grounds?” I said, and the woman winced. “They’re glamoured,” I said to explain why two of Trent’s finest were locked up in a conference room. “I wouldn’t mess with it. Quen will want to see them before it’s broken.”
“Ah, yeah.” Her gaze was on the nearby gatehouse. “Dr. Scrim will meet you at the elevators. Take you around. You’re just doing a quick check, right?”
“An hour at the most,” I said, and she puffed her air out in relief.
“Good. Kalamack isn’t expected on-site until almost four a.m. I donotwant to be at the gate when they return.”
But that four-a.m. arrival was likely going to be pushed up to midnight after I trashed Trent’s plans, and I waved to her as she put her window up and headed for the gatehouse. Trent would not be dancing with his new wife come midnight but be getting bailed out of jail by Quen. Ellasbethwould be on a plane heading home, pissed that her wedding day was ruined. If we weren’t gone by then…
I put the cart back into motion, and Elyse exhaled. “This is criminally easy,” she whispered.
“Easy?” I barked. “No, this is me spending the last two years learning Trent’s system from the inside out, the right phrases, when to banter, when to not, the SOP for intruders, not to mention the code to cut off the alarm and that the media room is really a cell.” A twinge of guilt took me, and my grip tightened on the plastic wheel. “This isn’t easy at all, and that you think so means you don’t know shit, Elyse. Open your eyes. Maybe you’ll learn something and we will survive long enough to get home.”
Her lips pressed together, but she said nothing, scanning the pastures with the mares and foals as we passed the stables. As promised, the parking lot there was busy. Everyone would be gone in a month, but a feeling of vindication found me when Elyse grimaced, realizing I’d been right again.