Of Shadow Born (37 page)

“Indeed it does,” Deven said. He raised the diagram up on their monitors to expose sub-basement three. “And it’s the focus of our concerns this evening. David thinks, and I agree, that this magical mystical Widget is in that room.”

“I don’t understand,” said Jacob. “If Hart doesn’t know Morningstar is after this thing, why would he have it so heavily protected?”

“I think he knows what he has,” David replied. “I don’t think he knows there are a bunch of humans after it, or that Jeremy will try to get it. He certainly doesn’t know when. As far as he’s aware, Jeremy just wants his head, not his Widget. But if you look at the system he’s got in place: Notice there are no Elite guards on the room, which means he’s not anticipating an immediate burglary. The system has been in place for at least five years, so he’s confident it’s enough.”

“How can you tell it’s been there five years?”

“Can you tell what it is?” David asked. “Look closely.”

“Well . . . there are about three dozen or so separate devices placed along the walls and about two dozen cylinders that penetrate into the wall. Other than that, I have no idea. Schematics aren’t really my area.”

“Stakes,” David said. “They’re stakes. Each of those devices is a motion sensor. They’re placed at random along both sides of the hallway. Each one triggers a stake launcher built into the wall. They’re all wired individually, so the only way to deactivate them is to do it one by one, by which time the cavalry will arrive—there’s an alarm connected to the junction box that will report a drop in power. They have a backup generator, so cutting the power to the whole building won’t help. Here’s the fun part: Some of them are dummies. They’re electrified but not connected to stakes, so you could waste your time deactivating one that wasn’t a threat. It’s really rather ingenious.”

Jacob sounded impressed. “There’s no way Hart came up with that. He must have contracted out to a security firm. But how do you know it’s five years old?”

“Two things—the signal quality and strength are identical to those of a particular model of transmitter, which is a five-year-old model. Also the kind of launcher he’s using is modified from a type of spear gun that uses nitrogen canisters, and those date back about five years as well.”

“You’re a little terrifying, you know that,” Jacob told him.

“Yes. The point is, you don’t create a system like that for a room you go in and out of a lot. It’s the only part of the Haven set up that way. I doubt the magical Widget is the only thing in there, but I’d lay odds everything in there is extremely valuable to Hart.”

“So let’s go over this plan of yours,” Jacob said.

There was a soft knock at the workroom door, and Miranda stuck her head in and mouthed,
Clear?

David nodded and gestured to the other chair; she sat on it backward, leaning her chin on the back and listening intently.

Deven made an uncertain kind of noise and said, “I know you’re both going to look at me over the Internet like I’ve sprouted a second head, but I feel I should put this out there . . . We could warn Hart.”

Miranda grinned at the look on David’s face. “Close your mouth, baby,” she whispered. “You look like a fish.”

The astonishment was just as evident in Jacob’s voice. “Wait . . . you’re suggesting we save Hart?”

Deven sighed as if bracing for their inevitable reaction. “Yes.”

“Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Prime Deven?” Jacob demanded.

“If he knows to anticipate Jeremy, he can move the Widget and himself elsewhere, and that way Morningstar can’t get their hands on it. Anything else we do has the potential for a massive loss of life, not just Hart’s.”

“I’ll be damned,” David muttered. “Deven and Jacob seem to have switched personalities.”

Miranda gave him a look, and he raised an eyebrow and mouthed,
What?

She just shook her head. “Leave him alone,” she replied.

David held back all fourteen sarcastic retorts he had already come up with for Deven and went with a less combative one. “You raise a . . . good point, Dev. We need a cost/benefit analysis of the situation, assuming we either take out Hart or allow Jeremy to do so. Cost one: potential deaths among Hart’s Elite. Cost two: potential death for Olivia, who I think we can all agree deserves better.”

“A caveat—if we warn Hart to expect them, Olivia will most likely be killed anyway,” Jacob pointed out. “Benefit one: We get the Widget, and Morningstar doesn’t. Another thing we agree on: Whatever the Widget is, we don’t want Morningstar to have it. I’d also like to note that I’d really prefer Hart not have it either.”

“Benefit two,” David picked up. “We’re finally rid of Hart, who enslaved Cora and countless other women; who had Miranda shot; who sent Jeremy to kill us in the first place; and who is a rabid donkey dick.”

“Fine, do what you want,” Deven said sharply; then his voice immediately switched to something like weariness. “I concede your point. I just had to put it out there.”

David had no idea how to respond to that, so he went on. “All right then, if you will both keep your eyes on the screen, I’ll go through the other important features of the security system, and then we can get into the plan itself so you can offer your suggestions . . .”

Nearly two hours later, when they all disconnected, he felt Miranda watching him while he shut down the web chat program. He could also feel the twist of emotions she was feeling, and he knew what had brought it on.

“You have to admit it was weird,” he finally told her.

She nodded. “I’m not disputing that. When was the last time you heard Deven suggest abandoning a plan in order to lower the body count?”

David frowned. “Pretty much never. But you said yourself he’s been acting differently since I died. People do change.”

“You’ve known him for most of a century. Has he ever changed before?”

“Only externally.” David powered down the computer he’d been using and returned it to its slot on the shelf with the others. “My question is this: Can we really make any kind of assumptions about someone seven hundred years old whose history we don’t fully know? Maybe once a century he has an existential crisis.”

“The thing is, I can feel something from Jonathan, too—whatever’s up with Dev is wearing Jonathan out. He’s hiding it well, but it’s exhausting him emotionally.”

He thought back through the last time he’d seen Jonathan—the way the Consort had spoken, tiny alterations in his appearance that added up to a person who was frayed around the edges. He’d looked and sounded tired, and his trademark cheer was just a tiny bit dimmed—as Miranda had said, it was nothing obvious, but Jonathan was much easier to read than Deven, and the Consort was a canary in a coal mine when it came to his Prime.

Finally, David nodded. “All right. Once this thing with Jeremy is over with, maybe we can sit them down and see if there’s something we can do to help.”

Miranda seemed satisfied with that, at least as satisfied as she could be when she was worried about friends. She changed the subject: “Are you guys sure about this plan? An awful lot depends on trusting Olivia.”

“I have faith in her,” David said.

The Queen smiled. “Then I do, too. After all, she did help you get back to me.”

He held his hand out to her, and she took and squeezed it. “How’s Stella?” he asked.

“Back in her room. Lark’s with her, and her father was here this afternoon. She says she still doesn’t remember much of what happened, but other than that she feels great.”

“Where have I heard that story before?” David said wryly. “And how are you feeling?”

She considered, then answered, “Okay. I’m not completely sure what to do with all of this. The enhanced hearing is doing odd things to my music; everything’s taking longer because all the new layers I can hear make work that would have sounded fine before completely inadequate. But give me a few weeks and I’m sure I’ll get used to it. Not to mention, it does make the finished product amazing. You?”

He smiled. “So much better. Having you back in here, I finally feel like myself again, although I’m having some of what you’re describing, too—I can pick out all these details in code that I would have passed over before, but it’s a good thing for me. I catch errors right away so I don’t waste time trying to bug-hunt later.”

“Do . . .” She looked uncertain about asking the question, but went on anyway: “Do you have any idea what all this is for? I get that Persephone wanted us to be megavamps or whatever, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a specific reason she picked the alterations she picked.”

“I have no idea.”

Miranda frowned. “You didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Well, no. I was a little more concerned with getting back here than with debating the finer points.” He was trying not to sound defensive, but he could tell by her expression that he wasn’t entirely succeeding. “Plus I . . . I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but . . . I trusted her. I just had this inner conviction that she would take care of us, especially after everything we lost because of her.”

Miranda eyed him critically for a moment, then nodded and said, “Fair enough.” She let go of his hand and stood, pulling her leg over the seat of the chair as she straightened. “I have to call my agent in a bit—what are you up to for the rest of the night?”

“Dastardly planning. We’ve got three days before Jeremy and Olivia hit Hart—I want to make sure every aspect of the plan is seamless. Jeremy caught me by surprise once already. This time we have the upper hand.” David stood as well; his next stop was a meeting with several Elite officers. “This time I leave nothing to chance.”

* * *

“Hand me the mocha toffee chip.”

Stella had never been so hungry in her life; she wolfed down the dinner the servants brought her—even eating Lark’s leftovers—and then dragged her friend down the hall to the ice cream study.

“Are you sure we should be in here?” Lark asked.

“Shut up and get spoons!”

Quite happily ensconced in the plush chairs, the two Witches swapped pints and compared notes about the Drawing Down ritual.

“I don’t remember a lot,” Stella admitted reluctantly. “I remember I saw Persephone, but she didn’t jump into my body—I went to her.”

“What exactly did that accomplish?”

“Since she couldn’t directly reach out to the vampires yet, she used me as a speaker, basically. The information she wanted to give them went through me to David. He would say I downloaded it, then brain-mailed it to him. But it was too much information for my puny human brain, so it blew my microchips or whatever.”

“And you’re okay now? Just like that?”

“All I really needed was rest. Profound rest. Then Miranda came in and plugged up the last couple of holes in my energy so I could wake up again.”

Lark pondered her strawberry shortcake ice cream for a moment, then asked, “Do you ever wonder what normal people talk about?”

Stella snorted. “Normal as in normal Witches who don’t know vampires, or normal people who aren’t Witches?”

“Either.”

“Whatever they talk about, it’s probably pretty boring compared to all this.” Stella crunched down on a toffee chip. What, she wondered, was Miranda doing tonight? Was she happy now that she was . . . whatever David was?

Stella knew they’d gotten their bond back, and that was good, but . . . seeing Miranda for the first time when she woke from her coma, she had known immediately she was no longer looking at the same vampire Queen she had known. She was almost certain that neither Miranda nor David had any idea just how deep the changes ran . . . or what they’d gotten themselves into.

“Do you remember what she was like?” Lark asked.

Stella took a breath and said, “She was fucking scary, Lark. Nothing like any deity I’ve ever worked with in Circle or seen Drawn Down by other Witches. She was a hundred percent darkness, but . . . the kind of darkness that heals, if that makes any sense. The darkness that comes from sleep and dreaming—and death, too, but . . . I don’t really know how to describe it. But she was also kind. Really considerate of me and the fact that I’m not a vampire so I was taking a huge risk doing what I did. She made sure that it was an informed decision on my part.”

Both Witches were silent for a while, each attending to her ice cream. Then Lark said, her voice a little hushed, “Something big is coming, isn’t it? What we’ve seen is just the beginning.”

Stella caught her friend’s eyes. “Yes.”

Lark nodded. “I guess there are worse reasons to die.”

Stella grabbed her arm. “Lark . . . you don’t have to be involved in this stuff. I’m really grateful that you helped me, but I don’t want you to get hurt. When I opened myself up to Persephone I pretty much signed up for this crap, but you don’t have to.”

Lark chuckled, set down her ice cream, and put her hand over Stella’s. “Sorry, sugarbean. You’re my best friend. Where you go, I go.”

Stella sighed. “You’re certifiable, you know.”

“I’ve been told.”

They grinned at each other.

“So,” Lark asked, “got any sprinkles?”

* * *

Olivia had always found New York fascinating. She had visited many cities in her time, and had lived in several, but Manhattan confounded her; it was so packed with people living so closely together, with everything imaginable at their fingertips, most of it available for delivery.

She stood at the hotel window staring out at the waves of skyscrapers that spread out in all directions. She had no idea how people lived here, yet millions did, and moreover, they had a loyalty to their city and its relentless energy that reminded her of the loyalty Elite had for a Signet. To New Yorkers, there was no other place worth living.

“I haven’t been here since the mid-1950s,” she mused. “Even then I thought it was a strange place.”

Jeremy, over at the room’s nondescript desk, looked up from his phone. “I’ve always hated it here.”

She took hold of the plastic rod that drew the curtains and shut them, then turned to him. “Are you all right?”

He held her gaze for a long moment. “I’m fine.” Jeremy smiled slightly and added, “Tense, I suppose, about tomorrow.”