“C’mon, Jane. With this device, I know exactly where you are, every second you’re gone. This is not negotiable.”
I gritted my teeth, nodding once sharply.
“Fine. Let’s do it. Where do you want to stick it?”
“Somewhere squidgy. Your belly, maybe?”
“I can’t believe you called my belly ‘squidgy.’ It’s not squidgy, it’s pillowy. And sexy!”
“I’m sure it’s very sexy. Shirt up.”
“Can I lie on the bed?”
“Go for it.”
I lay down, pulling the bottom of my long-sleeved black tee up a little ways, screwing my eyes shut as Julian advanced on me with his horrible syringe.
At the end of the day, I’ve experienced much worse things than getting chipped, but not many. When Julian was done, he swiped an alcohol swatch over the pain. Then he helped me sit up, keeping his hand in mine as he stared into my eyes.
“We’ll do a test lap around the hotel before you go, but that should do it.”
I gulped. Now that the Debut du Shenanigans was upon us, I was scared shitless.
“You ready for this, Jane?”
“No,” I replied.
“Good. I’ll be, quite literally, one step behind you the entire time.”
He placed a Bluetooth device in his ear and opened his laptop as I grabbed my duffel, which was freshly packed with a change of clothes, Ryu’s GPS I’d swiped earlier, and my Clif bars.
“I’ll stay in here. Go down, get the car, and call me. When I give you the go-ahead, drive toward the Compound. I’ll let you know right away if the chip isn’t working, and you head back immediately. Got that?”
I nodded. “Got it.”
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
We stared at each other from across the room: him sitting on my bed with his laptop, me by the door with my duffel.
“Go Team Halfling,” I said, grinning over my fear.
“Go Team Halfling,” he agreed, returning my smile. “I’ll keep you safe, Jane.”
I nodded. I already knew he would.
I idled on the empty night street in front of the hotel, lowering my head under cover of searching my purse. “Can you hear me?” I whispered into the empty air. Hoping I was being watched by prying eyes, I needed to hide my lips and my own Bluetooth device with my long hair.
“Loud and clear,” came Julian’s reply. “And I’m tracking you fine so far. You ready?”
“Sure thing,” I replied before looking up. I scrolled through Ryu’s Garmin till I found what I wanted: Compound. I pressed Go, and then I went where it told me to go.
“I’ll let you know if the chip fails for some reason. But you’re fine for right now. Keep your earpiece in as long as you can, okay?”
I mmm-hmmmed in response, as I had to keep my head up and my eyes on the road to drive.
“Good, thanks. I’ll stop talking now, in case someone wakes up.”
I grimaced, envisioning what would happen when Anyan and Ryu woke up to find me missing, Julian propped up in my bed watching my progress on his laptop.
They better not kill him, I thought. Then, more nervously, I hope they don’t kill him…
I shook my head, focusing on the here and now. They weren’t going to kill Julian, and, in the meantime, I had to concentrate on making our plan a success.
Speaking of mission, I also couldn’t help but think about my own, botched attempt at revenge last week. Now that I’d embarked upon a real mission, I couldn’t help but shudder thinking about how stupid I’d been.
So many things could have gone wrong, I thought, horrifying visions sweeping through my brain like waves in a storm. And even if you’d been successful and reached the Compound, what the hell were you going to do? Kill a man in cold blood? Are you really capable of such an act?
I hated Jarl with every bone in my body. I loathed him; I thought he was a blight on the planet, a tumor to be excised. And yet, if I were honest, I knew I would never have been capable of doling out such justice myself.
Besides, what were you going to kill him with? Choke him with a Clif bar? You don’t even have any physical weapons, let alone know how to handle one.
I remembered Conleth’s face when he’d stuck that knife through my palm. He’d been a cold-blooded murderer, but lobbing fire or mage balls at someone from a distance was a fuck of a lot different than sticking a knife in someone’s back.
Good Lord, I thought. What would I have to do to become a real killer?
I mused on that while driving through the dark night, my head full of even darker thoughts.
I’d been driving about two hours when my phone rang. It was Julian’s name that popped up on my screen so, under cover of a cheek scratch, I accepted the call.
“Your signal’s still coming in loud and clear,” Julian said. “And everyone’s still asleep. Any sign of the harpies?”
I was in a very wooded, very deserted stretch of highway somewhere. I was having trouble reading the GPS, as far as figuring out where I actually was. But as long as it kept telling me where to go next, I didn’t really care. I looked around again, stretching my neck out as I peered out into the darkness.
“Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled, not moving my lips.
“’Kay,” he said. “Don’t forget to call me the second you think they’re coming. In case the Chip goes out, we need to know where you were when you were taken so we can track you on the ground. All right?”
I murmured my assent, and he was just saying good-bye when I hissed.
“Wait.”
I wasn’t sure if I was seeing things, but I could swear that I’d seen a shadow moving strangely in the rearview.
“I think this is it,” I said as I finally went under one of the highway’s sparse streetlights and, just as I’d expected, my SUV’s shadow had suddenly grown just a little bit wider. And wingier.
“Game on,” I murmured. “If this isn’t it, I’ll call back. Otherwise, expect me to have been kidnapped. Hanging up now,” I said. “Don’t lose me.”
“I won’t, Jane. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said, then canceled the call from the earpiece, unclipping it deftly and stashing it under my seat.
This is really it, I thought, trying to buck up my courage.
Despite my attempts at preparing myself, I still felt a bizarre admixture of fear, adrenaline, and expectancy when something landed on the top of the SUV. And when a fist slammed through the window to my right, I remembered only at the last minute that I wasn’t supposed to want to be captured, and threw up a shield.
From either side—one at each window—two upside-down sets of beady harpy eyes peered at me from above their small, hawk-like beaks.
The good news was that all of Phaedra’s crew had been absent when I managed to extricate all of us from the Alfar’s magical net all those months ago in Boston. So no one besides my allies knew exactly how much power I had. And, because I was a halfling, most assumed it was very little. In order to seal their assumptions, I threw a few weak mage balls at the harpies’ heads, which they batted away contemptuously, motioning for me to pull off the road.
Feigning terror (hey, it was mostly feigned, really), I did as they bade me, forcing myself to maintain my shields at their weakest level as if that was all I could produce. I slowed the vehicle as I pulled off to my right, then stopped with my hands on the wheel.
“Kaya,” I said, my voice neutral as the dun-feathered harpy on my left side dropped to the ground and opened my door. “Or Kaori,” I amended, having no idea which one she was.
The other harpy came around to join her sister, only her eyes were glowing with rage.
Graeme’s girlfriend, I thought.
The less-desirous-of-my-death harpy jerked her head to the side, indicating she wanted me out of the car. I did as she asked me, my knees nearly buckling when I finally slid to a halt.
Then, with a little giggle that sounded more than a little crazy, even to my own ears, I held up both my hands.
“Take me to your leader,” I intoned, just as the angry harpy lunged toward me, fist extended.
Then I saw stars…
And then I saw nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I woke up in a moving vehicle, with a sore jaw and unable to see. Luckily, the blindness wasn’t an aftereffect of the punching; I’d been hooded with a rough sacking that chafed my nose. My wrists had also been tied behind me, leaving me lying on my right arm. The harpies must have pushed the backseat forward to lay me out. There was quiet whispering in front of me, and the car was cold and very windy. I put together that the harpies had just bundled me into my own vehicle.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, but I was really stiff—the arm I was lying on completely asleep—and it tasted like something had died in my mouth. So it must have been quite awhile.
When the last of the muzziness had left my head and I was able to scootch around a bit to take some of the pressure off my dead arm, I tried listening to what the harpy twins were saying. I was also curious as I’d never heard them speak. Their voices were whispery and strange, with a lot of clacking from their beaks.