Bullshit.
“I don’t blame you. The moon is so beautiful tonight.” George looked up. The moonlight spilled from the sky, bathing him, and George’s yellow hair seemed to shimmer, almost white. The freckled girl stared at him, googly-eyed. Jack rolled his eyes.
“You must be tired,” George said. “Why don’t we sit down? I think I saw a bench somewhere.”
“There are a whole bunch of benches in front of that building.”
“That’s wonderful!” George’s voice pulsed with joy, as if she’d given him a present. Jack would have grimaced if he could. “You know this camp so well.”
“My mom works in the cafeteria. I’m stuck here for the whole summer. There is nobody to talk to except the Bible-heads and the runaway kids, and all of them are assholes. It’s so boring.”
“Not anymore, I hope.” George smiled.
“No, I guess not.”
They turned right and walked away.
“So tell me about yourself,” George’s voice floated on the draft. “What’s your name?”
“Lisa.”
“That’s a lovely name. What do you like to do?”
“I like to read. I read about vampires a lot . . .”
Jack sprang from under the bed and dashed into the woods. The tree trunks and branches blurred. He ran and ran, as if he had wings. In that moment, with the moon rising over the treetops, the forest was his for the taking. He was the king of everything he saw.
Three hours later, when he crawled back into the room, having recited everything George had told him into Kaldar’s recorder, George was already in his bed. George waited until he shifted back into his human body.
“How did it go?”
“It’s done.” He had met Kaldar and Audrey near the Edge boundary and recited everything George told him into a recorder.
“Good.”
“How did it go with the freckled girl?”
“She thinks I’m a vampire.”
Jack snickered and fell asleep.
“WHAT do you think?” Gaston held up two disks made of pale brown plaster.
Audrey examined the disks. The three of them had worked on the fake disks for the last two hours. Jack’s recount only confirmed what they already suspected—stealing the Eyes of Karuman out of the camp was too risky. The wards guarding it had been rooted too deeply into the soil, and even assuming they did somehow break through the magic defenses, the camp was filled with children and armed guards. If anything went wrong during the heist, the chances of a child’s being hurt in the confusion were too great. Even Kaldar wouldn’t risk it. They had to go with the Day plan—replacing the real Eyes of Karuman with a fake copy—and hope they got out of the camp alive.
Forging the stones for the Eyes had been easy; George had recognized them as the Weird’s pillow cut, which was just another name for the antique cushion cut, halfway between an oval and a square with sixty-four facets. Both she and Kaldar had handled enough gems in their lifetimes to reproduce the stones of the correct cut and size. Two thousand dollars at a specialized glass shop got them two chunks of glass that looked close enough to pass a cursory inspection. The disks were harder. For one, they had glyphs, and while Gaston was a wizard with clay and brush, the glyphs proved tricky.
The disks resembled what Jack described; he was very thorough, but that didn’t change the fact that all they had to go on was a description and a picture in a book. In the picture, the disks were squares and the stones were green.
“So?” Gaston asked.
“They have to look like gold,” Audrey told him. Next to her, Ling watched them with her small black eyes. She and Jack’s cat had made friends finally. The cat was off hunting in the woods, but instead of going with him, Ling stuck to Audrey like glue, almost as if the little beast sensed her anxiety.
“They will, once I magic them up.”
The bushes parted, and Kaldar made his way into the clearing. “Got it.” He handed her a thick gold chain. Audrey held it up to the picture.
“Close enough,” Gaston said. “Once I put this together, it will look like the real thing.”
“I’ve been breaking my head about how we’ll make this switch.” Audrey pointed to the diagram on the piece of paper, which she’d drawn after listening to Jack’s recording. “I’m guessing he goes into the room, puts the device on, does the service, goes back, and takes the device off. The guards likely watch him the whole time.”
“So we hit him before or after the service,” Kaldar said.
“After won’t work,” Audrey said. “You saw him, he goes off to the back. It has to be before, when he is doing his hug and handshake bit.”
Kaldar nodded. “Not only that, but if we let him mind-rape the congregation, and he realizes we’re up to something, they will tear us to pieces. Also, I don’t know about you, but I’m not eager to sit there and let him magic me into thinking he’s the new messiah.”
Hitting Ed before the service was risky, they both knew it. The device was his most prized possession. He knew its weight and feel like the back of his hand. If he realized that something had gone wrong, there would be hell to pay.
But they were in too deep to back out now. They needed Ed Yonker’s gadget to get the invitation from Magdalene, and they needed the invitation to get into de Braose’s impregnable castle and steal back the bracelet diffusers. It felt like tumbling down the stairs—once started, they couldn’t stop, and each step sent them deeper and deeper into danger.
“I can distract Yonker,” Audrey said. “But stealing the device isn’t my thing.”
“I’ve got it covered,” Kaldar said.
Really. “So what, you’re a pickpocket, too?”