“Um,” she said, frowning. “Over there?”
I extended my senses and felt the subtle weaving of magic in the air around the doorway, cobweb fine. It was a kind of veil, designed to direct the attention of anyone approaching it away from the doorway and toward anything else in the room. It made the refreshment table look yummier. If Andi had spotted a guy, he would have looked a lot cuter than he actually was.
I’d been having a powerful faerie sorceress throwing veils and glamours at me for almost a year, building up my mental defenses, and a few months ago I’d gone twelve rounds in the psychic boxing ring with a heavyweight-champion necromancer. I hadn’t even noticed the gentle magical weaving hitting my mental shields.
“It’s an enchantment,” I told her. “Don’t let it sway you.”
“What?” she asked. “I don’t feel anything. I’m just hungry.”
“You wouldn’t feel it,” I said. “That’s how it works. Take my hand and close your eyes. Trust me.”
“If I had a nickel for every time a bad evening started with a line like that,” she muttered. But she put her hand in mine and closed her eyes.
I walked her toward the doorway and felt her growing tenser as we went, but then we passed through it and she let out her breath explosively, blinking her eyes open. “Wow. That felt … like nothing at all.”
“It’s how you recognize quality enchantment,” I said. “If you don’t know it’s got you, you can’t fight it off.” The hallway we stood in looked much like any in any office building. I tried the nearest door and found it locked. So were the next couple, but the last was an empty conference room, and I slipped inside.
I fumbled the crystal out of my little clutch and said, “Bosley, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Angels,” came Waldo’s voice. Neither of us used real names. The crystals were probably secure, but a year with Lea’s nasty trickery as a daily feature of life had taught me not to make many assumptions.
“Were you able to come up with those floor plans?”
“About ninety seconds ago. The building’s owners filed everything with the city in triplicate, including electronic copies, which I am now looking at, courtesy of the hivemind.”
“Advantage, nerds,” I said. “Tell them they did good, Boz.”
“Will do,” Waldo said. “These people you’re visiting are thorough, Angels. Be careful.”
“When am I not careful?” I said.
Andi had taken up a guard position against the wall next to the door, where she could grab anyone who opened it. “Seriously?”
I couldn’t help but smile a little. “I think our lost lamb is in the wing of the building to the west of the reception hall. What’s there?”
“Um … offices, it looks like. Second floor, more offices. Third floor, more offi—Hello there.”
“What’d you find?”
“A vault,” Waldo said. “Reinforced steel. Huge.”
“Ha,” I said. “A reinforced-steel vault? Twenty bucks says it’s a dungeon. We start there.”
“Whatever it is, it’s in the basement. There should be a stairway leading down to it at the end of the hallway leading out of the reception hall.”
“Bingo,” I said. “Stay tuned, Bosley.”
“Will do. Your chariot awaits.”
I put the crystal away and began putting on my rings. I got them all together, then began to pick up my wands, and realized that I couldn’t carry them in each hand while also carrying the little clutch. “I knew I should have gone for a messenger bag,” I muttered.
“With that dress?” Andi asked. “Are you kidding?”
“True.” I took the crystal out and tucked it into my décolletage, palmed one of the little wands in each hand, and nodded to Andi. “If it’s a vault or a dungeon, there will be guards. I’m going to make it hard for them to see us, but we might have to move fast.”
Andi looked down at her shoes and sighed mournfully. Then she stepped out of them and peeled the little black dress off. She hadn’t been wearing anything underneath. She closed her eyes for a second and then her form just seemed to blur and melt. Werewolves don’t do dramatic, painful transformations except right at first, I’ve been told. This looked as natural as a living being turning in a circle and sitting down. One moment Andi was there, and the next there was a great, russet-furred wolf sitting where she’d been.
It was highly cool magic. I was going to have to figure out how that was done one of these days.
“Don’t draw blood unless it’s absolutely necessary,” I said, stepping out of my own torturous shoes. “I’m going to try to make this quick and painless. If there’s any rough stuff, not killing anyone will go a long way with the svartalves.”
Andi yawned at me.
“Ready?” I asked.
Andi bobbed her lupine head in a sharp, decisive nod. I drew the concealing magic of my top-of-the-line veil around us, and the light suddenly went dim, the colors leaching out of the world. We would be almost impossible to see. And anyone who came within fifty or sixty feet of us would develop a sudden desire for a bit of introspection, questioning their path in life so deeply that there was practically no chance we’d be detected as long as we were quiet.
With Andi walking right beside me, we stole out into the hallway. We found the stairwell Waldo had told us about, and I opened the door to it slowly. I didn’t go first. You can’t do much better than having a werewolf as your guide, and I’d worked with Andi and her friends often enough in the past year to make our movements routine.
Andi went through first, moving in total silence, her ears perked, her nose twitching. Wolves have incredible senses of smell. Hearing, too. If anyone was around, Andi would sense them. After a tense quarter of a minute, she gave me the signal that it was all clear by sitting down. I eased up next to her and extended my senses, feeling for any more magical defenses or enchantments. There were half a dozen on the first section of the stairwell—simple things, the sorcerous equivalent of trip wires.
Fortunately, Auntie Lea had shown me how to circumvent enchantments such as these. I made an effort of will and modified our veil, and then I nodded to Andi and we started slowly down the stairs. We slipped through the invisible fields of magic without disturbing them and crept down to the basement.
I checked the door at the bottom of the stairs and found it unlocked.
“This seems way too easy,” I muttered. “If it’s a prison, shouldn’t this be locked?”
Andi let out a low growl, and I could sense her agreement and suspicion.
My mouth still tingled, much more strongly now. Thomas was close. “Guess there’s not a lot of choice here.” I opened the door, slowly and quietly.
The door didn’t open onto some kind of dungeon. It didn’t open up to show us a vault, either. Instead, Andi and I found ourselves staring at a long hallway every bit as opulent as those above, with large and ornate doors spaced generously along it. Each door had a simple number on it, wrought in what looked like pure silver. Very subdued lighting was spaced strategically along its length, leaving it comfortably dim without being dark.
Andi’s low growl turned into a confused little sound and she tilted her head to one side.
“Yeah,” I said, perplexed. “It looks like … a hotel. There’s even a sign showing fire-escape routes on the wall.”
Andi gave her head a little shake, and I sensed enough of her emotions to understand her meaning. What the hell?
“I know,” I said. “Is this … living quarters for the svartalves? Guest accommodations?”
Andi glanced up at me and flicked her ears. Why are you asking me? I can’t even talk.
“I know you can’t. Just thinking out loud.”
Andi blinked, her ears snapping toward me, and she gave me a sidelong glance. You heard me?
“I didn’t so much hear you as just … understand you.”
She leaned very slightly away from me. Just when I thought you couldn’t get any more weird and disturbing.