Seanan McGuire - Midnight Blue-Light Special

“Oh,” said Ryan suspiciously. He didn’t shrink back down to his original size. I guess some things take time.

“As I was saying: no, the Covenant will not kill her. It would be, if you will forgive me an unpleasant turn of phrase, wasteful. Verity Price represents something they have not had in generations. She is a source of information about her family, and about the cryptids of North America. They will break her, through whatever means necessary, and then they will drain her dry.” Dominic shook his head. “I love her. I do. But believe me when I say that the Covenant of St. George is extremely good at breaking people. She will do her best to withstand them, and I believe she’ll be able to hold out much longer than many people could. In the end, she’ll break. In the end, everyone breaks.”

“So what do we do?” asked Angel.

“The Covenant is using a dockside warehouse as their temporary headquarters while here in town. Their hotel rooms have already been abandoned; presumably all three of them have moved into the warehouse to supervise their prisoner, and to fortify their defenses against me.” Now Dominic’s voice turned even grimmer. “I didn’t tell them Verity existed; I vanished when she was taken.”

“And our family has a history of converting Covenant agents to our way of thinking,” I said. “They’ve probably already decided that Dominic is no longer on the right side.”

“This is true,” said Dominic. “In their eyes, I am as much of a monster as any of you, if not more. After all, I saw the light, and turned it aside.”

“Congratulations,” said Istas primly.

Nervous laughter spread through the room like a stain. Uncle Mike allowed it for a moment before stepping forward, saying, “Okay, folks, get it together. My niece needs saving.” He glanced to Dominic, who nodded. Uncle Mike nodded back before he continued, “We know where they are, and we know how many of them we’re going up against. We also know they may have bitten off more than they could chew when they took Verity. If they’re hoping to get information out of her, that means they’re keeping her awake and reasonably aware of what’s going on. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve seen that girl kick a boundary imp’s ass when she had a concussion and a broken arm. If they think she’s just going to sit there and let them ask their questions, they’re going to find themselves with a nasty surprise. That works in our favor.”

“If things are so slanted in our favor, what are we still doing here?” asked a Pliny’s gorgon I vaguely recognized as being one of the newer members of the staff. He crossed his arms, posture daring Dominic and Uncle Mike to come up with an answer he’d believe. The snakes on his head hissed ominously, twining themselves together in a sinuous braid which undid itself just as quickly. I thought his name was Joe. Maybe. Whatever his name, he was tall, unfriendly, and crowned with venomous snakes. That alone made him worth listening to, if only so his hair didn’t start biting people.

“Because there’s this little factor called ‘the unknown,’” said Uncle Mike. “We need to worry about what we don’t know.”

“The three Covenant operatives are highly skilled in their own areas, and are not going to be inclined to go gently on us,” said Dominic. “Peter Brandt is a demolitions expert. Robert Bullard is a tactical specialist. Between the two of them, they’re very likely to have turned the warehouse into a death trap for anyone coming in without knowing how to avoid the trip wires. Margaret . . .” He hesitated.

“Margaret is a Healy,” I said. Several heads turned toward me, like everyone had forgotten that I was there. Sadly, they probably had. Stupid cuckoo powers. “For those of you who don’t know what that means, she’s like an evil Verity. She won’t stop hitting you just because you say you’re going to be good, you changed your mind, and you’d like to go home now. That means that no matter how heavily weighted we think this equation is in our favor, we have to be better than the probabilities. We have to be absolutely certain of what we’re walking into.”

“Nobody’s absolutely sure of anything, cuckoo girl,” said Kitty, sending mutters through some of the staffers who had managed to forget what I was. Stupid, stupid cuckoo powers. Sometimes I get tired of apologizing for my species to the same person a dozen times. “How are we supposed to know that we’re not all walking into a trap?”

“We employ spies,” said Uncle Mike, dipping his hand into a pocket.

When he pulled it out again, one of the younger mouse priests was standing proudly on his palm. “Hail!” squeaked the mouse.

Silence reigned.

No one’s sure whether Aeslin mice are extinct except for the family colony, or whether they just like their privacy. Whichever the answer, most people have only heard of them in passing, and they’re largely regarded as a weird sort of fairy tale, Cinderella’s mice without the vegetable transport and poor footwear choices. But they’re the only species of talking mouse that anyone has found so far, and so there wasn’t much question about what Uncle Mike was holding. The only question was how.

“Hello, mouse,” said Istas, sounding pleased.

“What the . . . ?” said Kitty.

“Is that an Aeslin mouse ?” asked Joe.

“My hair is hungry,” announced Carol.

That brought the conversation to its second screeching halt in as many minutes, as everyone turned to stare at the gorgon. Carol blushed, ducking her head slightly while radiating embarrassment. She was telling the truth about her hair; the individual snakes were stretching toward the mouse, their mouths open and their tongues scenting the air.

“This just gets better and better,” muttered Ryan. I didn’t disagree.

Uncle Mike ignored them all in favor of focusing on what mattered—the plan—rather than what didn’t—everything else. “We’ve got half a dozen volunteers from Verity’s resident Aeslin colony. They’re going to go in, scout the place for traps, and report back. That lets us get a feeling for the lay of the land before we put ourselves in harm’s way.”

“You mean she wasn’t just bragging when she said she had a colony of Aeslin living with her?” asked Kitty.

Dominic snorted. “Bragging? No. Complaining vociferously? Almost certainly. While she is quite fond of her resident rodents, she seems to enjoy complaining about them as she does little else.”

“The family has coexisted with Aeslin mice for generations, which brings us to the one possible flaw in this plan,” said Uncle Mike. “We don’t know for sure that this Margaret woman doesn’t have a colony of her own. It seems unlikely, given the Covenant’s stance on cryptids, but the original colony was harbored before the family defected.”

“If we encounter heretics while on the search for our brave Priestess, we will smite them down with the Fury of a Thousand Angry Rolling Pins!” squeaked the mouse.

“Don’t know what that means, really. I’ve got to assume it’s pretty dire, since it’s coming from a talking mouse,” said Uncle Mike. “Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to go and rescue my niece from the Covenant of St. George. Who’s with me?”

“I am,” said Dominic.

“It will be a pleasing diversion,” said Istas.

“Verity’s my friend,” said Ryan.

“These people give humans a bad name,” said Angel.

“We’re with you,” said a voice from the back of the room. I turned to see Priscilla standing in the door to the hall. She must have been speaking for the dragons while Candy’s pregnancy kept her confined to the Nest. More dragons stood to either side of her, both the European and Chinese varieties. Several of the lizard-like servitors that Verity insisted on calling “Sleestaks” were behind them. All of them were holding weapons.