8
It was another fifteen or twenty minutes before our ghostly spy made her way back to the doors where we waited. By that point, she was mostly a cold mist, a fuzzy outline of the girl we’d seen a little while ago.
“She’s fading,” Naya said, standing up as Temperance came through the door—literally.
Temperance tried to speak, but the sound was a tinny whisper.
“She’s communicating that the place is big,” Naya said. “She saw only a little of it, but thinks there’s more to see.”
Temperance suddenly pulsed—her light completely fading before she popped back into the visible world again.
I looked around. “Should we try another dose of power?”
Jason stepped beside me, gaze on Temperance. “I’m not crazy about that idea,” he said. “You’re still pretty drained, and we still need to get back to the enclave. If you totally burn out now, that leaves us without even a chance of firespell on the way back. And we’re taking the long way back.” He gave Detroit a pointed look.
“I can fix this,” she said. She opened her bag and pulled out a small black box. She put the box on the floor, then fiddled with it until it began to hum, and the top slid open. A lens emerged from the top and a cone of pale, white light shined upward toward the ceiling.
Detroit frowned at it, probably tuned in to some kind of mechanical details the rest of us couldn’t even see, then sat down on her knees beside it and began to adjust dials and sliding bars on the side. “I wasn’t really keen on using it this go-round—it’s a new prototype. But since we can’t use firespell, might as well try it out.” She sat back on her heels and glanced up at Naya. “Okay, you’re ‘go’ for launch.”
Naya nodded, then closed her eyes and offered an incantation. “By the spirit of St. Michael, the warrior of angels and protector of spirits, I call forth Temperance Bay. Hear my plea, Temperance, and come forth to help us battle that which would tear us asunder.”
The light flickered once, but nothing else happened.
I glanced sideways at Scout, who shrugged.
“Temperance Bay,” Naya called again. “We beseech you to hear our request. There is power in this room. Power to make you visible. Come forth and find it and be seen once more.”
A rush of cold air blew across our little alcove, the box vibrating with the force of it. My hair stood on end, and I clenched Jason’s hand tight. However helpful Temperance might have been, she carried the feeling of something wrong. Maybe it wasn’t because of who she was, but of what she was, of where she’d come from. Whatever the reason, you couldn’t deny that creepy feeling of something other in the room.
“The power is here, among us,” Naya said.
The air began to swirl, the cone of light flickering as Temperance moved among us trying to figure out how to use Detroit’s machine. The light began to flicker wildly like a brilliant strobe before bursting from the box.
And it wasn’t just light.
Temperance floated above us in the cone of light, again in her brown skirt and sweater. I wondered if those were the clothes she’d worn when she died—if she was doomed to wear the same thing forever.
She began to talk, and we could hear the staticky, far-away echo of her voice from Detroit’s machine. “I am here—here—here,” she said, her words stuttering through the machine.
“Temperance,” Naya asked, “what did you see?”
“It is a sanctuary,” she said.
I gnawed on the edge of my lip. That was so not the news we wanted.
“How do you know it’s a sanctuary?” Scout asked. Her voice was soft.
“The mark—mark—mark of the Dark Elite is there, but dust has fallen. The building is quiet. Quiet.”
“Keep going,” Naya said, her voice all-business. Not a request, but a demand. Her own magic at work.
“It’s like a clinic,” Temperance said.
“What do you mean, a clinic?” Michael asked.
“Instruments. Machines. Syringes.”
“That can’t be right,” Jason put in. “The Reapers don’t need medical facilities. Their only medical issue is energy, and they’ve already got that covered.”
A sudden breeze—icy cold and knife sharp—cut across the corridor. Temperance’s image glowed a little brighter, her eyes sharpening. Without warning, her image blossomed and grew, and she was nine feet tall, her arms long and covered in grungy fabric, her hair streaming out, her eyes giant dark orbs. “The unliving do not make mistakes.”
There were gasps. But I remembered what Naya had said—Temperance was an Adept of illusion. The image, however creepy, wasn’t real. Naya’s eyes were closed again, probably as she concentrated on keeping Temperance in the room, so I took action. >
“Temperance,” I said.
She turned those black eyes on me. I had to choke down my fear just to push out words again.
“He didn’t mean to offend you. He’s just surprised. Can you drop the illusion and tell us more about what you saw?”
The giant hag floated for another few seconds, before shrinking back to by Temperance’s slightly mousy appearance. “There are needles. Bandages. Monitors. It looks like a clinic to me.”
I bobbed my head at her. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Lily.”
“Well, that’s definitely new,” Scout said, frowning. “What could Reapers need with medical facilities?”
“The Reapers get weaker over time,” Jason pointed out. “Maybe they’re trying to figure out some way to treat that?”
“Maybe so,” I said. I liked the idea of Reapers turning to medicine—instead of innocent teenagers—to solve their magical maladies.
But I still had a pretty bad feeling about it.
We couldn’t avoid a return to the Enclave. Not with that kind of information under our belts. We also couldn’t risk another trip through the Pedway, so after meeting up with Jamie, Jill, and Paul, we took the long way back, Detroit checking her locket every few hundred feet to make sure we were on track. The route was definitely longer, but it was also vampire-, Reaper-, and slime-free. Thumbs-up in my book.
Daniel, Katie, and Smith jumped up from the floor when we walked in, their smiles falling away as they took in our expressions.
“It’s all bad news,” Scout said. “Might as well cop a squat again.”
When we were all on the floor—the JV Adepts exhausted, the Varsity Adepts in preparation for the shock—we laid out the details. We told him the slime was gone, but the Reapers had been there. We told him about the new sanctuary—the medical facility—and the other things Temperance had seen.
Daniel rubbed his forehead as we talked, probably wishing he hadn’t taken over the unluckiest of the Enclaves.
“We didn’t see anyone the entire time we were there,” Jason pointed out. “And Temperance said the building looked unused. So that means they’re gone, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Daniel said. “Sometimes they rotate sanctuaries, especially if humans get too close. They move around to decrease the odds they get discovered, so an empty sanctuary doesn’t mean an abandoned sanctuary.”
“We planted a camera,” Detroit said. “We’ll have Sam call you if there’s anything to report.”
“Sam?” I asked.
“Sam Bayliss. Head of Enclave Two—and Daniel’s girlfriend,” Detroit helpfully threw in. All eyes went to Daniel; Scout let out a low swear. So much for her happily ever after with Daniel.
“Thank you,” Daniel grumbled. “If that’s all—”
Scout held up a hand. “Before you send Enclave Two off into the sunset, you’ll probably want to hear the rest of it.”
“The rest of it?”
“I’m gonna throw a word at you.” She mimicked throwing something at him. “Vampires.”
Daniel’s expression turned stone cold. “Spill it.”
“Well,” Scout said, “as it turns out, we needed to use a little, tiny, eentsy bit of the Pedway, and ran into a couple of warring nests of vampires. Long story short, I used a charm to rile them up against each other; then Lily doused the lights so we could escape back into the tunnels. Oh—and Detroit’s great with locks and such.”
“Warring nests of vampires?”
“Turf war,” Jason said. “Two covens. Nicu and Marlena. I think she said she made him.”
Daniel frowned. “She must have made him a vampire. He was in her coven, then broke off to start his own. Covens don’t split very often. That’s probably not good news.”
“Especially if we want to use the Pedway,” Detroit mumbled. “Double your vamps, definitely not double your pleasure.”
Daniel made a sound of agreement.
“You know,” Scout said, “those things that attacked us had fangs. First we see them, and now we find out vampires are in some kind of turf war? That’s a lot of fangs for a coincidence.”
“That’s a good point,” Daniel said. “Not a happy one, but a good one.” He looked at Smith. “Do some research. Figure out what you can about the vamps, about the coven split.”
Smith flipped his hair out of his eyes, an emo “yes.”
“And us?” Jason asked. “What are we going to do?”
“I’ll be in touch,” Daniel said. “In the meantime, stay away from fangs.” He rose, then walked to the Enclave door and opened it.
“Go home,” was all he said.