Carrie Vaughn - Dreams of the Golden Age

Then she was gone.

“You saw that, Mark?”

Anna wished she could hear Paulson’s answer. She had to wait as they made some kind of plan. The next step was obvious: figure out who the people were and identify their car. As nondescript as they all were, there had to be some kind of identifying marks, and some kind of database they could check against. License plate, mug shots, something. They could follow the car, but traffic and security cameras could do only so much once you got out of the downtown area. The police could do this, they had the resources. Now that Paulson knew something was wrong, he could handle it.

But it might be too late. Anna wanted to find Celia now.

Bethy was glaring at her. “You couldn’t tell me? All this was going on and you couldn’t say anything? Not even a little? I kept asking if you had powers—”

“It was for your own good,” Anna said lamely. “To protect you.”

Bethy blew out a disgusted sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Anna pleaded. “I was wrong, I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not,” she muttered.

“All right, Captain. Thank you … No, I don’t think I can promise that, but I will let you know when something happens.” Arthur ended the call, dialed up a new one, while Anna and Bethy watched, entranced. “Suzanne, it’s Arthur. Would you be able to come home now?” A pause, listening. “Yes, it’s trouble. The old kind, I think. Celia appears to have been kidnapped … Yes, I know, that’s what I thought. All right, then. See you soon.” He turned to face his daughters, and Anna couldn’t tell if he really was that supremely confident, or if he was just putting on a good face for them. He was keeping his emotions under iron-fast control—he didn’t radiate anything. Not self-assurance, not fear. Just a solid, wall-like implacability. “Don’t worry, girls. We’ll find her. We’ll bring her home safely.”

“How do you know?” Bethy said, glaring and petulant.

“Because we always do,” Arthur said.

CELIAwoke up tied to a chair, because of course she did. If she lost consciousness in the course of a kidnapping, she woke up either tied to a chair or strapped to a sleek metal table that was part of some fearsome device of unknown purpose. The chair was always better, because it meant she was dealing with ordinary criminals with ordinary motivations and imaginations and probably not much of those. The metal table and fearsome device meant a mad scientist, someone with ambition and imagination. When the Destructor kidnapped her, she ended up strapped to a metal table under a mysterious device full of copper wires and glass domes, believing that whatever torture he had planned for her was undoubtedly worse than death.

This was a chair. She was upright. The nylon straps binding her wrists and ankles to the arms and legs of chair were tied in knots, improvised. This was a standard kidnapping and nothing to be worried about. Probably.

—Arthur, you can come looking for me now. Anytime.—

He didn’t respond. That didn’t mean anything. He might not be looking for her yet. She’d just keep thinking about him until he did start looking for her. Not hard to do. —Please, Arthur. I love you.—

Near as she could tell, her wig was still in place. The itch made it feel like it was still in place, so she’d probably been upright most of the time, the two goons carrying her between them. Her captors hadn’t blindfolded her, which meant they assumed she was powerless and that nothing she could observe would hurt them. Fair enough. She was in what looked like the unfurnished floor of an office complex, a wide-open space waiting for the partitions that would create a farm of cubicles. Evenly spaced posts held wiring and outlets, and along one side of the space was a wall of windows. They were high enough up, and she was far enough away from the windows, that all she saw was gray sky through the tinted glass. The décor was aggressively corporate: gray Berber carpeting, off-white walls, fluorescent lighting with an almost imperceptible flicker. The kind of thing you wouldn’t notice unless you had to work under it for eight hours a day. A few orphaned desks and office chairs stood here and there. Her own chair was isolated. Air-conditioning hissed through a vent somewhere. She was alone, facing away from any doors.

All she had to do was wait, practicing calm, so when her captors finally showed themselves, she wouldn’t flinch. She wouldn’t show the least bit of surprise, and certainly not fear. The old skills came back, even though she hadn’t done this in twenty years. The old habit, being the unresponsive captive, not giving them the fear they wanted. To keep that power for herself. She could be superior, even tied to a chair, looking up at them, whoever they were.

The question of why they’d kidnapped her would have to come later. That was fine, she could wait. She passed the time by studying the ceiling and seams along the walls, looking for where any secret cameras might be hidden. A small black globe in the corner of the far wall got her bet. A three-sixty fisheye in there could survey the whole room. She stared at it a moment, willing some awareness of her to whoever was watching, then looked away. Shifted to get some feeling back into her muscles and hoped she looked bored.

Her captors left her sitting there for at least an hour after she regained consciousness. She could be bored, or worried, and she refused to show them worried. She saved that for Arthur. —This is getting less fun. I have no idea who these people are. Can you hear me?—

No answer.

They might have gotten him, too. He might be unconscious, unable to hear her. But no, that was impossible, because no one could sneak up on Arthur, ever. No one ever got the jump on him. He was fine, just fine. Maybe he was distracted, and at that her thoughts spun out of control, because the only thing she could think of that would distract him from looking for her would be if something had happened to the girls. Maybe he was busy looking for the girls because if she could be targeted, so could they. Please, let nothing have happened to Anna and Bethy …

Voices approached, and she flinched, startled, exactly like she didn’t want to do. But she focused on her approaching captors, and she wasn’t worried or scared. She had progressed to a slow-burning fury. She heard low voices, footsteps padding on carpet, a door closing, maybe to an adjoining conference room. They approached from behind, and she suppressed a chill along her spine. They were watching her, studying her, and she had to not care. She’d done this before, she’d be fine. She settled an expression of cold superiority on her features. She would bury them at the first opportunity, oh yes.

Finally, they moved forward, around her chair to stand fanned out before her. There were five of them. The man and woman who had kidnapped her entered first. Two more men, young toughs with a polish that made them at home in the office setting. They’d have been out of place in a back alley brawl, but here they were sharks.

The fifth, standing in the middle of the group, was Danton Majors. His suit jacket and tie were gone, his expensive starched shirt was unbuttoned, revealing the top edge of what looked for all the world like a shimmering black skin suit.

“Danton Majors.” A statement. She wasn’t at all surprised.

“Celia West,” he said, crossing his arms, gazing down on her with a triumphant sneer. “Welcome.”

She looked at the straps binding her wrists and snorted. “I can’t swing you an invite to the country club, if that’s what you’re wanting.”

The curl on his lips twitched to a frown. “Be amusing as long as you can. I’m here to do business.”