Golem in My Glovebox (17 page)

I had intended to search Kathleen’s cell for clues, but I didn’t feel up to it. Riley could do it, maybe. I couldn’t go back in there. Whatever they’d done to dampen Kathleen’s powers was too strong for me to handle. I trotted down the hall to the office.

All three golems lifted their heads again when I walked in.

“Hey,” I said, breathless from the jog. “What’s with the gremlin?”

They continued to stare at me for a minute, then went back to their work without answering.

God, I hated golems.

I scanned the room and found a file cabinet in the corner. No one objected or tried to stop me from thumbing through the files, which were arranged by cell number. I pulled out the file for the gremlin, then grabbed Kathleen’s file, too.

“I’m just going to take these with me to my room,” I said, knowing nobody was paying attention to me. “I’ll be back later to steal the petty cash and drink all the water in your cooler.”

No reaction.

“Seriously, guys. Why do you even have a water cooler?”

They failed to answer before I left.

* * *

With the sort-of-stolen files tucked under my arm, I had one more stop to make. The last time I’d been here, I hadn’t been allowed to see anything other than my room. Well, then the dining room and Bernice’s office, once Maurice had broken me out of my luxurious jail cell.

This time, I had full run of the place, and I had every intention of poking around—partly for the sake of curiosity and partly because the place never felt right to me.

I’d asked Art ahead of time, and he’d given me directions to the correct building. I climbed the rickety steps of an identical cracker-box house and let myself in.

Of course, the layout was totally different again. The first room was a bit like a reception area, though there was no receptionist on duty, and only a few chairs lined the wall. I continued through to a maze of cubicles, all populated with serious-faced goblins wearing headsets and staring at computer screens.

A couple of goblins strode up and down the aisles, hands clutched behind their backs, eyeing the operators, pausing here and there to discuss possible findings.

One supervisor goblin with an unruly mop of black hair saw me and made his way over. He stood about waist high to me, and had dark skin and pointy ears. I’d taken care of two wonderful goblin kids a few months before until we’d found and rescued their mother, Rene.

“May I help you?” He asked, tipping his head to look at me.

This was a different from the golems in the prison. Instead of feeling like I had a right to go anywhere I wanted, I felt bad for disrupting their work. After all, I was a civilian intruding on their space. Aegis or not, it didn’t give me the right to barge in unannounced.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize there were so many real people in here. I won’t interrupt.”

I turned to go, and the goblin grabbed my wrist and spoke in a soft voice. “You’re Zoey, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

He smiled. “Please stay. I would love to give you a tour of the call center, and I doubt there’s a person here who doesn’t want to meet you.”

So much for thinking I was nobody. I’d have to be careful to avoid getting a fat head.

Randall, the call center manager, took me around to each station and introduced me to the operators. He also took the time to explain exactly what was going on in there.

Because they worked inside the compound walls, the goblins were some of the few people who knew that the Board members had been murdered, resulting—among other things—in the O.G.R.E. squads wandering off and Hidden breaking the one cardinal law: Stay Hidden.

The goblins had always monitored the outside world for problems, but in the current circumstances, their workload was ten times what it had been. They monitored traditional media, supernatural and conspiracy-theory blogs, surveillance cameras, phone calls—everything they had to in order to keep the Hidden safe from the public.

“Doesn’t this upset people, knowing you’re watching their every move?”

He shrugged. “They don’t really know. Besides, look at this room. Does it look like we have time to listen in on intimate conversations?”

“I guess not.” It all seemed familiar in a way I didn’t want to think about. I read newspapers. The Hidden world wasn’t so different from the human one after all.

“You did a good job getting that under-the-bed monster off the street. We saw a video on a blogger’s post. Quick thinking.”

“Not very effective if a blogger posted it.”

“It’s been taken down. We sent him threatening emails that said the performer didn’t give permission to share the video and that we would sue him.”

“And that worked?” I gave him a cynical look.

“People are very sensitive these days about getting sued for using images they don’t own, yet they really don’t know what they can and cannot do. If he’d stood his ground, we’d have hacked in and corrupted the files instead.”

“You can do that?”

“We’re the Division of Truth Diversion. We can do whatever it takes.” He paused a moment and brushed his hair from his eyes. “I just wish we could have helped you with the auction.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Bernice had all these resources available, and she hadn’t mentioned them even once. “Could you have helped?”

“We tried. The Hidden were always kidnapped away from cities, which meant away from cameras. I had a whole department scouring Sausalito for you, trying to find the truck the Collector’s men used. Somehow, they evaded us, no matter how hard we tried. I’m sorry.”

I smiled. “Thank you for trying. It means a lot that you had my back, even if I didn’t know it at the time. She got the drop on all of us, Randall. Don’t feel bad.”

We stopped at the desk of a goblin girl named Annabelle. Her hair fell down her back in a single braid, and she smiled at me with wide eyes before shaking my hand.

“I’m such a big fan,” she said. She shoved a notebook and pen at me. “Would you mind giving me your autograph?”

I glanced at Randall in a panic, but he was no help. He grinned and shrugged, so I wrote her a little something and signed my name.

What a weird thing to have to do.

“You know,” Randall said as we walked into his office. “Annabelle is second or third cousins with that woman you saved.”

“Rene?”

“Yes. Rene. I don’t think they’re close, but they’re family. That makes it all the more personal that she got to meet you.”

We sat in his office and drank a cup of coffee together. I was torn between being freaked out at the level of surveillance going on in the Hidden world, and feeling extreme gratitude that an entire call center was watching out for me.

I placed my empty cup on Randall’s desk. “How much surveillance goes on within the compound? Do you have cameras inside the prison?”

He shook his head. “There used to be, but with all the golems around, there’s no point. Nobody comes or goes without their knowledge.”

“Nobody but the murdering psychopath they were keeping prisoner.”

“Were?” He leaned forward in his chair. “Did she die? Please say she died.”

This was seriously bad news that the eyes and ears of the Board were blind and deaf within their own compound. Also, I found it suspicious that internal security had been reduced to golems only.

“She didn’t die. She escaped.”

Randall stared at me. “How is that even possible?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. I have her file here. If there’s anything in it to help me, I’ll find it.”

His dark lips paled. “She’s the one who killed the Board members then, isn’t she?”

“Yes. And she’s the one who took the Aegises from the Collector.”

Randall pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and closed his eyes. “Why wouldn’t Mrs. Abernathy tell us about this as soon as she knew?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” One I suspected no one but Kathleen Valentine could answer.

“The Covenant can’t hold up much longer like this.”

I put my palms on the edge of his desk and looked him square in the eyes. “Randall, what happens if the Covenant is broken? Nobody will tell me, other than overdramatized doom-and-gloom vagaries.”

He swallowed hard and folded his hands in his lap. “Nobody really knows. But before the Covenant, it was chaos. All sorts of dangers roamed the earth. Humans and Hidden alike were eaten or infected with terrible conditions like necrolosis, lycanthropy or sanguinitis.”

“I don’t want to know what those are, do I?”

“Probably not.”

“We’re talking about the zombie apocalypse, aren’t we?”

“Among other things.”

My throat was dry. I gave my empty coffee cup a sad look. “I have to fix this.”

Randall’s phone rang, and he picked it up. “Yes? Oh. What have you got?” He jotted something down on a pad and glanced up at me while he talked.

I gestured out the door to ask if I should leave, and he shook his head, holding up his hand for me to wait. “And what’s the address? Uh huh. All right. Great job. Keep me posted.” He hung up and checked something on his own monitor. “Well, dragon balls.”

“Is it something really bad?” I asked.

“It’s not great. Not only do I have a rogue Bigfoot, I’ve got a timeshare scam taking advantage of it.”

“Is there an O.G.R.E. squad in the area?”

“Yes, but they’re on strike until we get them new contracts and back pay.”

I nodded. “We ran into that same situation in Idaho. Gris sorted it out.”

“I don’t have any teams in the area right now.” He tapped away at the keyboard. “I could reroute the banshee sisters, but I really needed them in Seattle. The mothman/djinn team you worked with are knee deep on an Indian reservation in Mississippi at the moment, so I can’t call them.” He ran a hand through his hair, causing chunks of it to stand up in spikes.

I touched the back of his hand to get his attention. “Randall, where is it? I can do research on Kathleen in the car on the way.”

His shoulders relaxed, and his fingers stopped flying across the keys. “You don’t mind?”

“It’s better than sitting around here waiting for the end of the world.”

He nodded his understanding. “Well then.” He tore off the sheet of paper he’d been writing on. “How do you feel about Branson, Missouri?”

Chapter Twelve

Riley was on board. I had the feeling he and Art had been getting on each other’s nerves—they both seemed eager to get us the hell out of there. Bernice, embarrassed from having been caught in a lie about visiting the prisoner, didn’t have much to say on the matter.

Maurice, however, was a problem.

“I’m going with you,” he said.

I stood in the dark hallway outside my room, blinking at him. “What?”

“I’ll ride in the back. The windows are dark. Nobody will see me.”

“What about the house? And Stacy?” The concept had taken me so by surprise, my thoughts flailed around in my head looking for something solid to grab hold of. “What if Sara needs you?”

He chuckled. “Zo, they have phones, you know. Besides. All we need is a broom closet and I can be back there in seconds.”

“I don’t understand why you’d even want to go.”

“I’ve never been anywhere interesting. I always have to stay behind. I don’t pass for human, so I don’t get to go anywhere exciting, like Branson or Vegas. I want to see the lights, Zoey.”

For a minute, I actually thought he was going to cry. Maybe it was the low light of the hallway. “If it means that much, I guess you can come with us. But only until you see it, okay? It kind of makes me nervous that neither of us are at the house.”

“Andrew’s doing okay.”

“I’m sure he is, but I feel better when you’re in charge.”

Lunch had already come and gone before we left, but Branson was less than eight hours away, and with Maurice in the car, it made sense to arrive after dark anyway. He could see all the bright lights, and nobody could see him.

Now that we had another passenger, Gris insisted on sitting in the backseat with Maurice—which added Fauntleroy to his already unruly moniker once he introduced himself.

Gris and Maurice chattered constantly through the drive, sang show tunes, and then argued for eighty miles over whether Neil Diamond sang “Red, Red Wine” before UB40.

By the time we reached Springfield, my head pounded and Riley gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles.

“What is that weird noise?” I asked, turning toward Riley in my seat.

A scowl the likes of which I’d never seen on him before carved deep lines across his face. For the first time, I could see how maybe reapers might be scary.

“Tire’s low.” He signaled and pulled to the shoulder. “Might be flat.”

Maurice unbuckled and sat forward. “What’s wrong? Why are we stopping?”

“Tire,” I said, getting out. “Stay put.”

“Where would I go?”

Gravel crunched under my feet. Riley came around to the passenger side, and we both stared at the puddle of rubber pooled beneath the wheel. Cars whizzed past on the highway, and my hair flew in every direction with their passing.

“Well, I’d say that’s flat.”

Riley nodded. “Guess so.”

We had to pull out the luggage to get to the spare. I had AAA, but between us, we could change the tire in less time than it would probably take for a mechanic to get there. The sun hadn’t gone down yet. We could do it.

Riley had the dead tire off and carried it to the back of the car to stash it when a police car pulled up behind us. I smiled at him and prayed he didn’t feel it necessary to stay long to chat.

Or glance in the back seat.

The windows were tinted, sure. But the car wasn’t a limo. If a person really looked, they could see shapes. A cop might ask about who was in the back seat.

And then he’ll want me to open the door for him.
He’ll see Maurice and the entire Hidden world will be exposed.
He might try to haul Maurice off somewhere for experiments.
And then
,
oh
,
hello!
Zombie Apocalypse.

Having totally freaked myself out, I smiled at the officer coming toward us, praying that I didn’t look like somebody trying to hide a dead body.