Trickster's Girl: The Raven Duet Book #1

CHAPTER 3


“YOU WANT ME TO ROB a museum?” Kelsa asked incredulously. “No way!”

Raven had put on the cotton shirt she’d retrieved and the rain pants Kelsa kept in her hiking pack. The combination looked a bit odd, but not enough to draw the attention of passing hikers to the shade of the tree where they’d settled. Because, Raven said, it was likely to be a long discussion.
It was going to be shorter than he thought if he didn’t say something more sensible than that.
“It’s not really robbery,” he told her. “They don’t even know—”
“Is the museum going to be locked?” Kelsa demanded.
“Well, yes. But I can take care of that.”
“Are we taking something without permission, and with no intention of returning it?”
“Yes, but they won’t care—”
“Then it’s robbery. And no way.”
The dark eyes met hers directly. “Not even to stop the tree plague?”
“There’s no excuse … The tree plague?”
It had begun over two years ago, when a small group of terrorists had released a mutating bacterium into the South American rain forest, promising to provide the antidote when their demands were met.
Given the importance of the rain forest to the planet’s slowly recovering ecosystem, the authorities had taken them seriously: they’d captured the terrorists’ compound and all their scientists’ notes, along with the scientists themselves, and offered them a chance of parole—someday, maybe—if they produced the antidote right now. And the terrorists had. But it hadn’t worked.
“Only about a third of the trees have been affected, outside of the initial kill zone,” Kelsa told him. “And it was just detected in Mexican forests a few months ago. They still think some trees will develop natural defenses and fight it off. And every botanist on the planet is looking for a cure.”
“Only a third of the trees in the Amazon rain forest have died,” Raven corrected. “They’re all infected. And they’re not fighting it off, and no one’s going to find a cure, because the real source of the problem isn’t that vicious little bacterium at all.”
Because of her father’s interest in the tree plague, Kelsa knew more about it than most, and she’d heard nothing of this. “Then what is the source of the problem?”
The dappled sunlight leaking through the pine boughs cast irregular patches of light over Raven’s face and hair. “Magic.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
He said nothing, but a not entirely suppressed smile tipped up one side of his mouth.
Kelsa had seen him change from a fish into a man. Seen it. In a place and from a distance that left no possibility that it had been faked. Still…
“That’s crazy! It was started by bioterrorists!”
“Oh, the bacterium’s exactly what you think it is,” the dark-haired boy told her. “But the reason the trees aren’t fighting it off—as they should, and your scientists are right about that—i’s because the leys have been so badly weakened they can’t support the forest.”
“The laze? What—”
“L-e-y. That’s the English word for them. Or at least, the word that comes closest. Leys are … think of underground rivers of natural and magical energy running through the surface of the world. Most humans don’t even know they exist. Though there have always been a handful of exceptions, hence a name for them in English. In other languages too. Unfortunately, the fact that most humans aren’t aware of them hasn’t stopped you from mucking them up.”
Humans. You. Kelsa wished her com pod wasn’t at the bottom of the river.
“What are you?”
She was half prepared to run if he took offense at the question, but he only smiled.
“In this part of the world, I’m Raven.”
“Raven.” If you were crazy enough to accept magic, the logic was inescapable. “The Native American trickster spirit, Raven? But he’s been here for hundreds … thousands…”
He looked like a teenager, but he’d never talked like one. Nor quite like someone for whom English was a first language.
“Not thousands,” he said. That smug smile was beginning to annoy her. “And we’ve strayed off the subject. The weakening of the leys, which is what’s keeping the trees from fighting off this bacterium, was caused by human interference with nature and magic, and it’s going to take human magic to fix it. That’s why you have to steal the medicine bag from the museum.”
Kelsa’s head was spinning. “Medicine bag? Like pills and stuff ?”
“No, a medicine bag that a Navajo shaman named Atahalne made back in 1897.”
“A shaman?”
“I told you some humans understood the leys. The leys were becoming fouled, even back then. Now, of course, the problem is critical. But Atahalne,” Raven rattled off the choppy syllables fluently, “saw the problem at the very beginning, and he knew how to fix it. One of the last humans who possessed that knowledge, I might add, and a man of considerable courage, whether they admit it or … Anyway, he put together a medicine bag strong enough to heal the leys. Do you know what that is?”
Given the context, she did have a vague idea. “It’s a small bag full of pollen and … and things, isn’t it? Navajo people used them”—she’d seen the phrase on a card in a tourist trap—“to keep the person who wore it in harmony.”
“Exactly,” said Raven approvingly. “This one is mostly filled with sand from a place where several of the leys that run through this continent meet. But there were other things mixed in, things that tied him into its power. Atahalne set out to deliver the dust to nexus points all along the ley that runs from Colorado to Alaska.”
“Nexus points?” Kelsa asked dazedly. Half her mind was still trying to take in the fact that the kid sitting in front of her was hundreds of years old. And by his own admission, not human.
“A nexus is … think of it as a valve along the ley line. Power can flow through and be strengthened, or it can be weakened and choked off. Atahalne set off in 1892 to revitalize the nexus points. But before he reached the first point he caught smallpox, near Salt Lake City, and died. His possessions—”
“He set out for Alaska, from New Mexico, in 1892? Walking?”
“He was in his fifties,” Raven said. “It would have taken him years. And illness wasn’t the only danger he faced along the way.”
Kelsa wasn’t a history geek, but she could see that a lone Native American trying to cross a large stretch of territory that was still being conquered by white people had faced a lot of danger.
“And you won’t even rob one little museum.” For once, Raven sounded like a teenager.
“His medicine bag ended up in the museum?” Kelsa asked.
“It did. So it’s up to you … ah…”
“Kelsa Phillips,” she supplied. He was asking her to commit a felony, and he didn’t even know her name?
“It’s up to you, Kelsa Phillips, to take up Atahalne’s medicine pouch, journey to Alaska, and complete his quest. Will you do it?”
“No way.”
He had argued as she hiked back down the trail. He’d claimed that the fate of the whole planet was in her hands, because they had to start at the edges of the disruption, where the leys weren’t so badly damaged, and work back toward the source. If this ley wasn’t healed first, the rest couldn’t be healed at all.
“Then why don’t you do it?” Kelsa asked. “Turn into mist and flow through the keyhole or something?”
“I told you, humans did the damage, so humans have to fix it.”
“Why? Is that some sort of magical law or something?”
“Or something.” But his mobile face had closed.
“Fine,” said Kelsa. “If it’s a magical law, then you can magically change it.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
He didn’t board the bus with her. The backwash from its stabilizing jets kicked up a puff of dust and ruffled his thick black hair. He was still standing there, scowling at her, when the bus pulled away.
But even if she believed him—which she didn’t!—she was only fifteen! She had a bereaved mother and a brother who needed her. She couldn’t even rob a museum, much less take off for Alaska by herself!
To tell her that trees weren’t the only living things whose immune system had been weakened by the corruption of those so-called leys was a low, dirty blow. Even if the doctor had admitted that cancer rates were on the rise, and the medical community didn’t really understand why.
***

Her eyes were dry again by the time she reached her shuttle stop, but she knew they were still red, and that her mother would see it and be concerned.

Kelsa was hoping to sneak up to the bathroom and apply cold water before her mother saw her. So when she let herself in and heard the silence that meant no one was home, her first reaction was relief.
Then she realized that her mother should have been home from church several hours ago.
First, she checked for a message on the com board. Nothing, but her mother had probably sent the message to Kelsa’s com pod—which thanks to that lunatic whatever he was, was now at the bottom of the river.
The house com board had been programmed as a backup for all their pods, so after running her fingers through the menu for a few moments Kelsa was able to check her pod’s messages. Only there weren’t any messages.
She called her mother’s pod and got the signal that it was turned off or out of range, so she left a message for her mother to call home and signed off, trying not to panic.
Kelsa had always known, abstractly, that anyone could die. Levcars crashed. Planes malfunctioned. But when her father died, her subconscious conviction that the universe couldn’t do that to her, to her family, had shattered. Her family could be taken from her. Even Joby, young as he was, could be snuffed out, and she wouldn’t even know about it till the hospital called. Till the police came to knock on her door.
Her mother must have gotten stuck in traffic on the way home from church … for almost two hours? OK, then her com pod was out … and she hadn’t been able to borrow someone else’s or find a public board?
Kelsa paced between the kitchen and the front door, arms wrapped around her body to keep the seething emotions in check.
Of course, her mother might simply have forgotten to call and leave a message. And if that was the case, then Kelsa would simply kill her when she got home and solve the problem for good!
After her father became ill, the rule that if you were delayed coming home you always called to let the family know where you were had become ironclad.
Which must mean that her mother couldn’t call.
That didn’t stop Kelsa from calling again—still off/out of range. Or smashed in some horrible car crash?
Kelsa was pulling up the contact button for the nearest hospital when her common sense kicked in. Her mother was less than two hours late. It was too soon to start calling hospitals, and the police would laugh in her face.
Anyone could be delayed for a couple of hours.
Kelsa went back to pacing. And it wasn’t really a coincidence that when the security system finally chimed to signal the approach of a card it was programmed to accept Kelsa was bringing up the hospital’s contact button—she’d brought it up six times in the last half-hour.
She paged out to the welcome screen and turned to face the front door, her heart drumming with anger and relief. She would wait on the anger, because her mother might have a good excuse.
The door opened and Kelsa’s mother came in. She was smiling down at Joby, the sunlight shining on the neat straight hair her son had inherited. She still wore her church suit, and she looked tidy, healthy, and happier than she’d been when she left that morning.
At least she wasn’t stupid. She took one look at Kelsa’s face, and horrified guilt wiped away her smile.
“Oh honey, I’m so sorry. I forgot. I turned off my pod because I was talking with Jemina, and I just forgot to call. I’m so sorry.”
Her mother hadn’t called her honey since she’d come home two months ago carrying the brochure for the Healing Hands Wellness Retreat. And Jemina Judson was the church’s grief-support-group leader. But that was no excuse.
“It wouldn’t have taken you thirty seconds to call in and leave a message.” Kelsa tried to sound cool and controlled, but her voice shook.
“I know.” Joby was looking from one of them to the other, a worried frown wrinkling his forehead. “I’m sorry,” her mother went on. “We’ll talk in a minute. Joby, why don’t you find a vid you like, and I’ll make you a snack. PB crackers?”
Peanut butter was one of Joby’s favorites—an excellent bribe. Kelsa had no desire to let her anger spill onto Joby.
She stalked up the stairs and paced in the hallway while her brother settled in front of the d-vid.
Her mother had apologized. She’d been talking to Jemina, gotten involved in the conversation, and forgotten the time. Forgotten to call in, even though she was the one who’d declared the rule ironclad. Even though Kelsa had never forgotten to call if she was delayed.
This wasn’t some sort of subtle revenge against Kelsa for supporting her father when he’d refused to go to the retreat. Her mother wasn’t cruel. She’d simply forgotten.
“Come on down, Kel,” her mother called from the foot of the stairs. “You might as well have a snack too.”
Kelsa’s stomach was in knots, but when she reached the kitchen, her mother was setting out a plate of crackers and slicing some cheese. As if she thought Kelsa could eat. As if she cared.
Because if she cared, she’d have called home!
“One of the things I talked to Jemina about was your idea of going off to visit Sarabeth,” her mother said. “We figured it had pros and cons.”
She pushed out a chair for Kelsa and seated herself at the kitchen table.
Kelsa remained on her feet. “And that kept you from calling in?”
Her mother sighed. “I’ve apologized for that three times already. I’ll apologize again if you want. But I’m not going to apologize for letting your father go to the hospice. It was the right decision for all of us, and—”
“Not for me,” Kelsa hissed. “I told you—”
“Your father agreed.” Anger dawned in her mother’s eyes. “He knew perfectly well he’d need more nursing than I could provide, and the hospice is there to care for the dying. You’re the one who said we had to do it all his way. To let him make the choices.”
“He only agreed because he knew it was what you wanted,” Kelsa said. She’d once considered those words unspeakable. Unforgivable. But she’d used them before. Used them when she realized how miserable her father was in the hospice, how much he wanted to be home with his family, no matter what he said.
Her mother had ignored her. And that was something Kelsa couldn’t forgive. No more than her mother had been able to forgive her for not insisting they try everything.
Kelsa’s mother took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair, disarranging the neat wedges.
“I told Jemina that we’d work through it, but maybe she was right. Maybe some space between us, for a few months, would be a good idea. For both of us.”
“Getting rid of family when they become inconvenient is your system, isn’t it?” Kelsa demanded bitterly. “Well, I certainly don’t—”
Her mother’s hands slammed down on the table. “I’m sorry!” Her voice was as loud as it could be without disturbing Joby. “I’m sorry I forgot to call, all right? I’m not perfectly reliable, like you. I’m not perfect! And you’re going to have to learn to live with that.”
“Fine.” Kelsa turned and stalked up to her room. She didn’t slam the door, because she didn’t want to upset Joby any more than her mother did.
But part of her wanted to. Part of her wanted to scream, to smash things, to bring the whole world down in flames.
Perfectly reliable.
“Go to hell.”
***

She had no way to contact Raven, but whatever else he was, he didn’t strike Kelsa as a quitter. She left her bedroom window open, and she wasn’t even surprised when she heard leaves rustling in the tree outside.

A lot of rustling. He climbed the tree in human form, stopping several feet short of the branch he’d perched in so precariously the other night.
“Well?” he asked. “I should have told you that I can help. Not just with the robbery, but with the whole journey. I’ll have to, since you can’t find the nexus points without—”
“I’m not going all the way to Alaska,” said Kelsa. “That’s just crazy. But if you need a human partner to get that medicine pouch out of the museum, you’ve got one.”
***

She hadn’t expected it to happen that night. Maybe he didn’t want to give her a chance to change her mind.

Kelsa had to admit she might have changed her mind. Her counselor had warned her that a death in the family could change people, make them do things they ordinarily wouldn’t. She’d added that Kelsa should think carefully before doing anything she might later regret.
Maybe her counselor was right. Maybe this dark desire to break the old patterns of her life was a product of grief and loss, and one day she’d be sorry.
But right now, Kelsa didn’t care. She was ready to walk on the wild side.
She left a message for her mother that she couldn’t sleep and had gone out. The last thing she wanted, as she set out to commit her first felony, was for her mother to call the police and report her missing.
The rumble of the rising garage door would certainly have awakened her mother, but her motorbike was narrow enough to fit through the side door.
The old-fashioned rubber tires made the bike a bit conspicuous on city streets, but there were a lot of off-roaders in Utah. And her helmet would make her anonymous, even to the thousands of security cameras that made up the grid.
Of course, the numbered plate hanging from the back of the seat would erase that anonymity in an instant, but Kelsa had some ideas about that. Her father had claimed that if he wanted to use it, he had an excellent criminal mind, and that Kelsa had inherited that, along with the hair.
A roll of white adhesive tape and a few snips of the scissors transformed a three into an eight. A few more snips, and a tiny triangle of dark electrician’s tape turned a D into a reasonably good B.
The best computer in the world wouldn’t trace the license number BAF-482 back to Kelsa’s bike. Assuming the police had any reason to try to track her down, which Raven had promised they wouldn’t.
Raven, whom the Native Americans had named Trickster. If he was who he said he was, which she still couldn’t believe. Even if she had seen him change from a fish into a man.
She grabbed her father’s helmet for Raven, wheeled the bike out to the street, straddled it, and punched in the start code.
Raven met her at the corner of the next block, as they’d agreed. He looked at the bike with more interest than he’d ever looked at her.
“Why does this have wheels still, when other vehicles fly?”
“They don’t fly.” The hum of the electric engine was softer than their lowered voices, nothing to draw attention. “They levitate on a magnetic current between their generator plate and the road. So if you want to go where there’s no pavement, you’ve got to have tires.”
She handed him her father’s helmet, trying not to imagine what her father would have said about this. She’d have been grounded into the next century! She still would be if her mother caught her.
Raven fumbled a bit with the helmet straps, but he flung his leg over the bike and settled himself behind her as if he knew what he was doing.
“The museum is affiliated with that big university in Provo,” he said. “Do you know where it is?”
“Of course. My father worked there.”
Kelsa took off down the quiet street, her heart hammering as if she was already committing a crime. But even if one of the street cams happened to be on—or more likely, someone who knew her mother was looking out the window—all she’d done so far was set off on a bike ride. With a strange boy. A really strange boy! That would get her grounded for only a year or two.
And at least her mother would never call her “perfectly reliable” again.
Kelsa ran the bike’s speed up a bit in celebration, though not enough to trip a traffic sensor into report mode.
***

They reached the campus in about twenty minutes; traffic was light this late on a Sunday.

Kelsa even remembered where the museum was, though having little interest in the history of the Southwest, she’d never gone there. It was in the oldest part of the campus, housed in several well-remodeled buildings that had been built as private homes a few centuries ago.
“Take your bike into the alley between those houses.”
She was driving so slowly that Raven hardly had to raise his voice to be heard through the helmets. “There are no cameras back there.”
The alley was only four feet wide, and very dark. When Kelsa turned into it, the bike’s headlight illuminated several trash cans, and trash cans usually meant…
The door was just in front of the cans. Kelsa pulled the bike past them and made sure it couldn’t be seen from the street before shutting it off.
In the absence of the headlight the alley became very dark. She removed her helmet, then took a few seconds to bring up her night vision, running her fingers through her flattened hair.
“I’ll let you in.” Raven dismounted and handed her his helmet. “It will only take a few minutes.”
“What about the alarm?” Kelsa murmured. “And the security cameras?”
“It won’t be a problem.”
Even with her night vision engaged, she couldn’t make out the details of the transformation. Perhaps it was too horrifying for her to want to watch closely. But only moments later a huge black bird struggled out of a pile of cloth and flapped upward.
Kelsa shook her head. Either she was completely deranged, or the world was even more full of wonder than her father had taught her. And if she wasn’t crazy…
If the Native American spirits were real, what about other mythical creatures? Was she about to encounter dragons and vampires? And werewolves, oh my?
She reached down and picked up the discarded clothing. The fabric felt real, with the rough softness of cotton and denim, the heat of his body still lingering in the folds.
If she wasn’t crazy, did the power to stop the tree plague really rest in her hands?
Kelsa’s heart was pounding. When the door opened, she jumped and barely suppressed a yelp.
“That was fast!” She handed Raven his clothes and stepped inside, averting her gaze from his nakedness. “How did you get in so quickly? In fact, how did you get in without tripping the alarm?”
“The same way I did the other night, when I first located the medicine bag.” His voice held none of the fear that tightened her throat. “Someone who works in one of the upstairs offices likes fresh air. They leave the window open about three inches.”
“Even at night?” It was embarrassing listening to him dress. They were standing in a narrow hall, which led to what had once been a kitchen and now looked like some sort of workroom. A security camera hung from one corner of the ceiling, but its power light was dark. He must have handled it, just like he’d promised.
“The window’s fastened so it can’t rise any higher,” he told her. “And it’s not in a place a human could reach without a ladder. But I had to tear the screen again, and that may raise questions, so I’d like to finish here tonight. This way.”
Alarms on the screen were unlikely. Kelsa followed him down the hall, through the workroom, and into a room filled with cabinets of pottery and informative signs. It should have felt reassuringly mundane, but…
“This is creepy,” Kelsa whispered. “Everything’s so old.”
“Not all of it.” Raven drifted over to a display of shiny black pottery. Kelsa had once been told the name, but she’d forgotten it. “Much of this is modern. Beautiful, though.”
Maybe he had reason to be a history geek, but still…
“Shouldn’t we get this over with?”
“You’re right, of course.” He turned away from the pottery and led her through another room, where the walls were covered with maps and flat panels that contained clothing, jewelry, and small artifacts. Nothing looked like you could black-market it for millions, so maybe this museum didn’t have high-tech security. Kelsa relaxed a trifle.
In the next room a case of kachinas caught her eye—one in particular.
“Was that you?” She gestured to a small statue of a dancer, masked in black, with black feathers dripping from his arms.
Raven barely spared it a glance. “That’s Crow Mother. She’s not a bad woman, but she hasn’t yet made up her mind.”
Hasn’t yet? Kelsa’s sense of reality fractured once more. “Hasn’t made up her mind about—”
Every com board in the building chirped at the same moment. Kelsa almost jumped out of her skin. “What the—”
An eerie glow shone through the doorway to another room as a com board on the desk activated.
“Museum of the Southwest.” The woman’s voice was crisply professional. “This is Tri-metro Securicorp, and we have an alarm activated in your building. Please give us your security code and password.”
“I thought you took care of the alarm!” Kelsa whispered furiously.
“I did.” Raven sounded concerned, but not nearly as panicked as he should have. “The big red bell by the front door hasn’t—”
“The silent alarm, you—”
“Please, get on a board and give me your security code and password.” Professionalism was giving way to impatience. “If you’d repaired your security cams, as we requested two days ago, I wouldn’t need confirmation. But this is the third time in four months you’ve forgotten to notify us when someone was working late, and I must remind you that according to your contract one more false alarm will result in a raise in your rates. So if you’re still there, you’d better get on and verify immediately, or I’ll be forced to call campus security. Which, as you know, means an automatic fine.”
It had happened three times in four months? Kelsa took a deep breath to steady her nerves.
“Don’t do that!” she called. “I have Professor Hammond’s permission to be here, and everything.”
“Who is this, please? I don’t have a Professor Hammond on my staff list.”
“Well, he let me in,” Kelsa said. “He said it would be OK. He had a key card.”
“It must have malfunctioned,” the woman said. “But I still have to verify that he has access. Tell him to get to a com board, please, and give me his security code and password.”
“He’s gone now.” Kelsa took Raven’s arm, pulling him back toward the door, but he didn’t budge. “The professor just let me in to work on the signs. Extra credit.”
She pulled harder, scowling. Raven shook off her grip.
“It’s this way.” He strode quietly through the doorway at the far end of the room. Kelsa glared after him.
“Well, someone has to give me a security code in the next two minutes, or I’ll have to call campus security,” the woman said. “It’s procedure. Would you come to the com, please? If you have a student ID, at least I could identify you.”
“I can’t,” said Kelsa desperately. “I’m, uh, I’m holding some glued stuff. If you’d just call Professor Hammond…”
“I’m calling campus security. Now.”
The light from the com board winked out.
Kelsa raced through the doorway where Raven had gone. “She’s calling security! Where are you?”
“Down here.”
She followed his voice into another narrow hall, and down a set of steep, winding stairs. The basement was clearly used for storage, and Raven was standing beside a pile of boxes.
“It’s in this one.” He pointed to the second-lowest box in the stack.
“I don’t care about your stupid medicine bag,” Kelsa snarled. “She’s calling campus security! They’ll be here in minutes!”
“Then we have only minutes,” said Raven. “So you’d better get started.”
“I’m leaving,” said Kelsa.
“I’m not.” There was no yielding in his face or voice. “Not until we’ve got what we came for. And if I get caught, I’ll name you as my accomplice.”
“You wouldn’t. I can’t turn into a crow and fly out the prison window, like you can.”
“Then you’d better…” He sighed, his shoulders suddenly slumping. “No, I wouldn’t. But we can get it now if you’d just get a move on. I won’t let you get arrested. I promise. Please!”
Kelsa took one step toward him, then rushed across the basement and dragged the first box off the stack.
“You said you’d taken care of the alarm too,” she grumbled.
“And the alarm didn’t ring,” Raven said. “I still don’t know how that woman knew we were here.”
He took the second box off the pile and put it on the floor. “It’s in this one. In a tin box, in the front right corner near the bottom.”
When Kelsa raised the lid, the box was filled with other boxes and objects, probably priceless irreplaceable artifacts, swathed in ordinary bubble wrap. She plunged her hands through them with ruthless haste.
“Why couldn’t you do this? You could have had it out by the time I got down the stairs!”
“I told you, humans caused the problem, humans have to fix it.”
“But this isn’t magic! It’s just moving a couple of—”
Her groping fingers touched a metal corner.
She had to lift out half a dozen anonymous bundles to extract it, and when she did the tin box rattled. It held several bits of worked flint, an old pipe, a sheaf of faded photos of people wearing the long hair and loose jeans of the mid-1900s, and a soft leather pouch about the size of a flattened golf ball. It was tied shut, the rest of the cord forming a loop designed to be worn around the neck. The few beads still stitched to its surface were about to fall off. This was clearly far older than the photos. Kelsa was afraid to touch it.
“Come on!” Raven was looking at the ceiling, as if he could see what was happening above them. “I did some work on the leather when I was here before. It won’t fall apart on you.”
Kelsa picked up the bag and squeezed it gently. It squished under her fingers, but the leather felt fairly sturdy. Still…
“It’s too old. It’s probably valuable. We shouldn’t handle—”
The sound of a door opening in the building above wasn’t loud, but it froze her in her tracks.
“Tarnation,” Raven muttered. “Nothing else for it.”
“What are we going to do?” Kelsa whispered. Visions of handcuffs and barred windows flashed through her head, even though in modern prisons the windows were covered with steel-threaded tempra glass.
“Don’t look so panicked.” Raven was repacking the box. “We’ll have some time before they get down here.”
Footsteps crossed the floor above them. The old boards creaked.
“Can you shapeshift me into a raven too?” Kelsa asked, though remembering how horrible that had looked, she’d almost rather go to jail. “Can you—”
“No,” said Raven. “And a huge bird flapping around in here would make them a lot more suspicious than a false alarm with nothing out of place. Help me get these boxes back together.”
Kelsa flung the cord over her head and helped him replace the artifacts. Then they restacked the crates.
“Now what?” she demanded.
“Now we hide.”
Raven went over to an old closet and opened the door. Despite the long rolls of plasti-board, and more stacked boxes and bins, there was room for a couple of people inside. He bowed and gestured for her to enter.
“They’ll look there,” Kelsa said.
“Not if it’s locked and they don’t have the key.”
There was an old-fashioned keyhole under the doorknob.
“You don’t have the key either! Even if you did, you couldn’t lock it from inside.”
Raven scowled. “Do you always argue like—”
He stopped, listening. Footsteps started down the stairs.
Kelsa shot across the room and into the closet, even though it was stupid, even though it would delay their discovery by only a few more minutes.
Raven stepped in after her and closed the door. Even enhanced night vision needed a bit of light to work with. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but he bumped into Kelsa several times as he knelt in front of the door.
She didn’t dare speak, even in a whisper, so Kelsa laid a hand on his shoulder. The muscles under the cloth of his shirt were tense, which meant he wasn’t as unconcerned as he pretended. Which didn’t exactly reassure—
A soft click came from the lock, and the tension in his shoulders eased.
How did he do that? Even if he’d had the key, closets weren’t designed to be locked from the inside. Was she going to have to cope with even more magic than shapeshifting? The sound of voices came through the door, and Kelsa stopped caring about magic.
“Nothing down here either.” The woman sounded irritated. “I told you. Just some grad student coming in without the code. I bet she freaked when the desk paged in.”
“Then how did she get out?” a man’s voice demanded.
“Out the back door,” the woman said. “She probably left it wide open. These kids don’t give a carp about the trouble they cause for other people. All they care about is picking up their study notes, or their com pod, or whatever they left behind.”
“But Nadine’s board shows the door closing after the alarm went off,” the man protested. “It’s logged as closed when she talked to the intruder at—”
The door rattled as someone tried the handle. Kelsa’s heart tried to batter its way out of her rib cage.
“Eleven fifty-two. It hasn’t opened again.”
“So maybe the sensor on the door is glitched,” the woman said. “It wouldn’t be the first time. I don’t care what Nadine’s board says. We’ve been through the whole place. There’s no one here.”
“I suppose.” The man’s voice was growing fainter. “But it’s weird.”
The voices receded into silence.
“You might as well sit down,” Raven said softly. “We should give them time to get away from the building before we leave.”
Kelsa was glad to sit down. Her knees were shaking. “Suppose they find my bike in the alley?”
Raven shrugged. “Then someone must have left a bike there. There’s nothing to say it’s yours.”
There would be if they peeled the tape off her license plate. But someone who didn’t know about silent alarms probably wouldn’t know about license plates either, and Kelsa had tucked it out of sight behind the cans. They might well miss it.
“How did you lock that door?” she asked.
His laugh was warm and deep in the darkness.
“You’d call it magic. But it didn’t take much. The lock is designed to open, so it wants to.”
“But if you can do that, why didn’t you get the pouch out yourself, the first time you broke in here? And don’t give me that carp about magical rules, and a human having to do it. What’s the real reason?”
“The rules are the real reason.” There wasn’t enough light coming under the door for her to see his face, but he sounded serious. “I’m bound to them, or it all fails. Why do people these days swear by a fish?”
“By a fish? Oh, carp.”
“A carp is a fish.”
“Not really. It’s a euphemism. About sixty years ago, the people who didn’t want anyone swearing on vid, or anywhere, really, got a law passed that you couldn’t use bad language on the net either.” Kelsa squirmed away from a box corner that was poking into one shoulder blade. “They got the software companies to put in a program that whenever someone typed in profanity, it changed a few letters. Which was stupid, because it still means the same thing.”
“It is stupid,” said Raven. “But it’s not new. They used to say ‘tarnation,’ but ‘damnation’ was what they meant.”
He’d said “tarnation,” she remembered. And Jehoshaphat. Was he really that old?
“It didn’t work either,” Kelsa told him. “Because people started using carp or carpo, and frack to swear. So then the people who believe in dirty words decided those were dirty words too and tried to ban them. But by that time there was a new government in office, and they haven’t been able to get the software companies to change their program again. They’re still trying.”
“You’re a stubborn folk.” Raven’s voice was full of amusement. “That will be to your advantage, on the way to Alaska.”
“I’m not going to Alaska,” Kelsa said. “I told you I’d help you rob the museum, but that’s it.”
“But you owe me. Because I kept you from getting arrested, just as I promised. The least you can do now is finish the job.”
“I owe … You’re the one who got me into this!”
“Deeper than you know.” Raven reached out and lifted the pouch, then let it thump down on her chest. “You’re bound into the healing magic now. I mixed some of your father’s ashes into the dust.”
“You what?”
“I’m sorry if you’re upset.” He didn’t sound sorry. “Atahalne would be appalled. The Dineh won’t have anything to do with dead bodies. They—”
Kelsa didn’t care about the Dineh, whoever they were. “You mean my father … his ashes are here?”
“And that matters to you,” Raven said calmly.
“You bet it does!”
“Which is why those ashes bind you into Atahalne’s magic. Which will make it possible for you to use it.”
“You’re crazy.”
But if he wasn’t…
She’d seen him lock a door without a key. She’d seen him shapeshift too, but somehow the small click of that lock had convinced her of his reality, of his magic, in a way that seeing him change hadn’t. Perhaps because the lock was something real, something from her world. She didn’t owe him anything. That was outrageous. But he had kept them from getting arrested. Maybe…
“Where is the first nexus?” Kelsa asked cautiously.
“It’s in TuTimbaba,” he said. “The lava fields north of here. Craters of the Moon, they’re called now. There are lava tunnels there, perfect for an earth nexus.”
Craters of the Moon was in Idaho. “If all you need is a cave, how about Timpanogos. It’s only about an hour’s ride. We could do it tonight if you could find some way to get us in.”
Raven shook his head. “It has to be in the lava tunnels at TuTimbaba. It’s not that far. Little more than a day on that bike of yours.”
Craters of the Moon National Monument was just over the state border, but it would be a full day’s ride and a full day back. And she’d need to find an excuse to get away from her mother, and…
“One nexus,” said Kelsa, making up her mind as she spoke. “After that, you’ll have to find someone else.”