Seanan McGuire - Midnight Blue-Light Special

It wasn’t really Grandma, but my imagination definitely talked like her. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and shifted to my hands and knees. My imaginary grandmother smiled before she disappeared. I smiled back.

And then I started crawling.

The beam was rough and splintery in addition to everything else; I’d barely gone five feet before my knees were bleeding. I was going to need more than a tetanus shot when this was all over. Still, I was moving, and that was better than I’d been managing a few minutes before. Infection was something to worry about after everything else was taken care of, like the three Covenant agents who knew my name and face.

I was going to have to kill them. I couldn’t see any way around it. Maybe not right now—right now, escape was a bit more of an immediate priority—but there was no way I could let them live. I’d never be safe again if they were out there, and if I wasn’t safe, I couldn’t go home. I might be able to go and hide with Grandma Baker in Ohio, but the rest of my family would be lost to me. The Covenant has taken too much away from us since the day that we decided we had to leave. I wasn’t going to let them add me to the list.

Maybe it was a flimsy justification for murder, but we’ve always argued that cryptids deserved equal treatment with humans, and I was raised to believe that a cryptid who represented a clear and present danger to another sapient species had to die. Predators don’t get a free pass just because it’s in their natures. The Covenant agents were predators. I was their prey. Fighting back didn’t make me a bad person. It made me someone who was willing to practice what I preached, and treat them like any other dangerous creature. If they lived, I, and a lot of innocent cryptids, would die. So they had to die. End of story.

The beam terminated where it met the wall, joining with the rest of the building’s support structure. I stood again, gritting my teeth against the pain in my feet, and pressed my hands against the wall as I leaned sideways to examine the window. My heart sank as I realized that there were no latches, no hinges, no way to open it at all. The windows were made to let in light, not fresh air. It made sense; who would be climbing up here to open them? I mean besides a naked girl with bruised feet and a stolen knife, of course

I looked up to where the window frame met the ceiling. The Covenant was up there, searching for me. Somewhere above them, the roof was up there, too.

I only had one shot at getting out of here, and that meant finding a way up. Assuming I could manage it. That was a big assumption: I knew nothing about the warehouse where I was being kept, other than that it had a large downstairs, and a second floor . . . I paused, suddenly feeling like an absolute idiot.

I knew nothing about the warehouse, except that it was a warehouse , and it was built before they had cheap and dependable elevator technology. That meant all the floors would need to be connected by some sort of hatch system, to enable them to move things from one floor to another. I turned and started scanning the ceiling, looking for the telltale outlines of a removable panel. I found what I was looking for about halfway across the room: a square where the cobwebs didn’t quite match the ones around them, maybe due to drafts blowing down through the ceiling/floor. More tellingly, that was one of the only patches not used to anchor anything at all, and there were no beams crossing in the space below it. That had to be one of the transportation hatches.

Now the only challenge was getting to it. I could crawl and risk shredding my hands and knees further when I might still need them, or I could try to walk. Neither option seemed like it was a particularly good one, and so I went for the better of two evils: I would walk. Maybe that would make my feet go numb enough that I’d be able to escape without tripping. If it didn’t work, well. I’d find another way. I took a deep breath, centering myself as I found my balance, and began walking slowly down the beam toward the hatch.

Balance beam was a part of my earliest gymnastics classes. I always excelled, because I had no fear of falling. This was different. If I fell, there was nothing I could use to catch myself, no convenient handholds or ways to redirect my inertia. I walked slowly, all too aware of how much space stretched between me and the floor. I didn’t look down. That would have been suicide, and all appearances to the contrary, I’ve never particularly wanted to make a splash when I died.

Step by painful step, the hatch came closer. I was almost there when a door slammed behind me and I froze, only long practice at navigating rooftops and high places keeping me from losing my balance.

“—she not be there? There’s no way she made it out of this building!” The voice was Margaret’s.

“You’re right, and she’s not going to get past us.” Robert. That was actually a good thing. Peter might be the one who’d been most willing to harass me, but he wasn’t the planner of the bunch. If he was the one guarding the second floor, my odds had just improved. “The front door is locked. The back door is locked. The basement has been sealed off for years. She’s trapped.”

“I hate her.” There was a note in Margaret’s voice that might have been grudging respect, under different circumstances.

Robert actually laughed. “Not for nothing, but I bet she’s not too fond of you, either.”

Please don’t look up. Please, please don’t look up. I remained frozen on my beam, listening as they passed below me. I was filthy enough that I would probably blend into the ceiling by this point, but that didn’t mean I needed to start tempting fate. I was so focused on keeping still that I was barely even breathing. Just keep going.

“Has there been any sign of De Luca?” Robert asked the question calmly, almost casually, like it was of no real importance.

“No. You were right. The little whore turned him traitor,” snarled Margaret. “He’s just as bad as she is.”

“Peace, Margaret. We’ll catch him next, and deliver them both to our superiors. He’ll have a great deal of explaining to do.” The footsteps stopped almost directly below me. I forced myself not to move. In a way, my damaged feet were almost a blessing. If I hadn’t been hurt, I would almost certainly have run.

“What is it?” asked Margaret suspiciously.

“I just don’t understand how we could have lost her like this.” The footsteps didn’t resume. “There’s no way out of this room. There’s nowhere she could have run. But she’s gone, all the same. It’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” said Margaret.

“Apparently not,” said Robert.

The footsteps started again. I waited until I heard a door slam on the far end of the room before relaxing enough to start breathing. I still counted silently to a hundred before I peeked over the edge of the beam . . .

. . . and found myself looking straight down into Robert Bullard’s smiling face.

“Gotcha,” he said.

I straightened up, and bolted for the hatch.

Pain is a powerful motivator. So is panic, and when the panic is extreme enough, even pain can find itself set by the wayside. I forgot about the ache in my feet, the distance between me and the ground, and everything else in my hurry to reach the only chance I had of getting to the second floor. Below me, Robert was barking orders to Margaret, who was no doubt figuring out her own route to the rafters. But since neither of them could fly, I still had a few minutes, and I was going to use them for all that I was worth.

The beam didn’t run directly under the hatch—that would have made it difficult to use—but it came close enough. I grabbed one of the vertical supports, leaning out as far as I could without losing my footing, and thrust my other hand into the cobwebs until it banged against the ceiling. The wood shifted slightly. I hit it again, harder, and felt it lift up.