Seanan McGuire - Midnight Blue-Light Special

“Where is she?!” Peter’s voice blasted into the warehouse, loud and sudden enough that I nearly flinched. I managed to restrain myself, the large muscles in my thighs jumping frantically as I struggled not to panic. “Where’s that little Healy bitch? I’ll strangle her with my bare hands!”

“Your interest in doing things with your bare hands is how we lost her in the first place,” snapped Robert. His voice was a whip crack in the quiet of the warehouse. Margaret was still creeping along, moving like she thought there was no chance I’d have seen her. I pressed myself deeper into the crevice, barely allowing myself to breathe as I watched Margaret inch her way along.

In the movies, this would be where I inevitably had to sneeze, triggering an exciting chase scene. In the movies, I wouldn’t be stark-ass naked, and I’d have a machine gun or something, not a single stolen knife. I didn’t sneeze, and below me, Margaret moved on by, still searching for my hiding space. When she looked up, the shadows—faithful to the last—made me look like just another part of the wall. God bless the limitations of the human eye.

She passed out of my sight, her footsteps moving to join the others.

“She must be in the upstairs,” said Robert.

That was news to me. I hadn’t realized there was an upstairs.

“Well, let’s go get her,” snapped Margaret. “We need to get her back into custody, now .”

“I’m going to kill her,” said Peter.

“No,” said Robert. “You’re not. We’re going to enlighten her. I think you’ll find that she enjoys that far less.”

The three of them moved off together. Their footsteps faded into silence, until I finally heard a door close in the distance. I still stayed where I was for another five minutes, measuring the time by counting off the steps of a proper Viennese waltz in my head. Finally, I was satisfied that I was alone, and I allowed myself to unlock my shoulders, sagging into a sitting position on the box where I’d been standing.

I was alone, naked, practically unarmed, and terrified. I might not have much time, but I had long enough. Bending forward to press my forehead against my knees, I closed my eyes, and cried silently until the tears ran out.

When I was sure that I was done leaking, I unfolded and stood, not bothering to wipe my cheeks. These assholes from the Covenant wanted to play? Oh, we’d play. And they’d lose.

Hiding from the Covenant of St. George in a warehouse somewhere in Manhattan

THE FIRST THING I needed to do was find a way out that didn’t involve going past the Covenant. There’s nothing dignified about racing naked across the rooftops of Manhattan—for one thing, without a bra, I was going to wind up in a world of pain, and that didn’t even start to go into the situation with my feet—but that wasn’t going to stop me. If I had an exit, I was going to take it. The trick was going to be finding that exit without coming out into the open.

I carefully extracted myself from my position between the boxes and began climbing again. Higher ground helped my nerves. Margaret and the others wanted me alive, for the moment, and that meant they’d be reluctant to shoot me; it’s never a good idea to shoot someone you’re not intending to kill, no matter how good of a shot you think you are. That’s something I learned from my grandmother, and she’s the best shot I’ve ever known. “Even when you’re aiming for the hand, you’d best assume you’re shooting to kill,” was what she’d said, and she was right. Shooting to wound was only a few inches from missing your target entirely, and a different few inches from killing them. Assuming the Covenant had similar training (a big assumption, but I had to go with something ), they’d try to use other means of getting me down.

Besides, once I was high enough, they’d be even less likely to see me without my wanting to be seen, and there was something to be said for that. I didn’t want them to take me alive. I didn’t want to die, either. That meant I needed to escape.

The boxes were piled high enough that I could see the rafters overhead, but not so high that I could reach them. I couldn’t even jump with any assurance that I’d hit my target—not with my feet in their current condition—and a misjudged landing could send the entire stack of boxes toppling. That wouldn’t be exactly what I’d call “subtle,” and it would bring the Covenant rushing back to find me, instead of wasting more time searching the upstairs.

I wish to hell I had some backup, I thought grimly, frowning at the unreachable rafters. That triggered a whole series of thoughts I’d been trying to avoid—like why couldn’t I feel Sarah if we were still in Manhattan? I should have been able to tune in on her “static,” even if she was too far away to communicate telepathically. I wasn’t wearing Margaret’s anti-telepathy charm anymore. Hell, I wasn’t wearing anything anymore. It wasn’t likely that Sarah would have left town while I was unconscious. So where was she?

If Sarah was unlikely to have left town, the Covenant was even less likely to have found her without me to lead them to her hiding place. She was a cuckoo. She was probably terrified by whatever feedback she picked up when Margaret knocked me out. That would have been enough to activate her automatic defenses, and once those were up, they’d never be able to catch her. That meant they were still blocking her telepathy somehow. It was the only explanation for her ongoing radio silence.

There was no way they’d have been able to telepathically shield an entire warehouse. The resources required would have been massive, and it would have meant bringing in several witches, if not a witch, a sorcerer, and some variety of exorcist. So they had to be telepathically shielding me. I wasn’t wearing anything . . .

But that didn’t mean I hadn’t been forced to swallow anything. I put a hand on my stomach, feeling suddenly queasy. Okay, Verity, settle down, I thought sternly. Even if you ate it, it’s not poisonous. They wanted to bring you back to the Covenant alive, and that means they’re not going to have fed you any mercury-based charms.

Oh, I hoped I was right about that. Sure, keeling over because I’d been poisoned would be a dandy way to prevent myself from telling them any of the family secrets, but it wasn’t exactly on the top of my “to do” list for the day. (It wasn’t a guarantee of my silence, either. The phrase “dead men tell no tales” doesn’t hold that much water in my family. We know a lot of ghosts. My Aunt Mary died years before I was born, and no one, living or dead, has any idea how to shut her up.)

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down, and went back to looking for things that could help me get up into the rafters. The boxes weren’t high enough, and I didn’t want to start rearranging them—there was no telling how heavy they were, or how many of them were rotten on the inside. That left the hooks that hung from the ceiling. I looked at them, assessing the distance I would have to leap. If I could just grab hold before I fell, I could climb the chain to reach the rafters. Tetanus would be a risk, but hell, in my line of work, tetanus is always a risk.

“Only die once,” I muttered (that wasn’t quite true, either), and started climbing back down the boxes. It was a stupid plan. It was a potentially suicidal plan. It was the only plan I had, and so I intended to go for it. Never allow for the possibility that you might fail, and you’ll succeed just because the universe is too embarrassed to admit that it painted you into a corner.