“Don’t you say a goddamned word about my Echo,” he said. “I understand fine; I just don’t care.”
Caryl cleared her throat. “If the two of you wish to bicker further, please do it after we’ve completed our objective. Teo, the advantage of having someone along who can direct us and potentially dispel wards outweighs the disadvantages of her physical and emotional handicaps.”
“If she’s going,” said Teo, “I’m not.”
“Very well,” said Caryl. “You are dismissed.”
I tried not to laugh at Teo’s expression but didn’t quite succeed.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one amused. “Someone got his bluff called!” sang Gloria.
“Was that a bluff?” said Caryl. “I would prefer not to waste time with such things. If you delay us further with your grievances, Teo, I’m afraid I will have to leave you behind regardless of your preferences.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Teo. “Forget I said anything. I’m fine. I’ll go.”
“I want you all to listen to me very carefully,” Caryl said in a tone that brought me to full attention. “This rescue attempt must be done entirely by the book. Our book. We will break human laws if we must, but the laws of the Accord will not be bent, bruised, or in any way trifled with. I understand that in this country it is considered harmless, even admirable, to flout authority for its own sake, but when it comes to maintaining balance between two worlds, the rules are not arbitrary, and I am the authority here. I do not want to have to give an order twice, and I do not want to be questioned. Is that perfectly clear?”
A chorus of assent followed her question, though Teo’s response was sullen. He was normally the first one spouting the rulebook at people too. I was going to have to find a time to figure out what was really eating him. Even I wasn’t narcissistic enough to think that our argument could put him in this deep of a funk.
“When are we heading out there?” I said.
“Now,” said Caryl.
44
“Now?” echoed Teo in disbelief.
“What did I say about giving orders twice, Teo?”
Teo scowled, rising from his chair. “Did it ever occur to you that some of us might have social lives or something? I gotta go make a phone call.”
“Sit,” said Caryl. “Your phone is in your pocket, and I don’t want to waste more time herding stray sheep.”
I took a cue from that and dialed Inaya, hoping she’d be as cooperative as I’d implied. I greeted her by name when she answered, glancing around the room to make sure everyone noticed. Teo wasn’t paying any attention, of course; he had his own phone out.
“I need you to get us on the lot tonight,” I said to Inaya.
“No problem.”
“There are a bunch of us, so we might want a van or something.”
“We have a van,” interrupted Caryl.
“Never mind the van,” I said. “We’ll come pick you up, and then you can just deal with security and keys or whatever when we get there.”
She replied something about private security, but I lost most of it because Teo’s voice had risen to a distracting volume, as though he were talking to someone in a noisy bar.
“A bunch of people from my stupid job are going down to Manhattan Beach tonight,” he was saying, “and they decided to drag me along. We’ll have to have that drink later.”
“Could you hold just a moment, Inaya?” I said as sweetly as I could, and then put my hand over the phone. “Teo,” I said. “Can you lower your voice, please?”
Teo flipped me the bird.
I turned to Caryl, gritting my teeth. “Can we not just leave him here?”
Caryl rubbed at one of her temples with gloved fingertips in a long-suffering way that made it easy to forget she was the youngest person in the room. “I will keep Teo under control,” she said. “Can I trust you to do the same for yourself?”
I wasn’t entirely sure that I could, but I nodded. Act as if ye have faith, and all that.
“Sorry, Inaya,” I said, putting the phone back to my ear. “You think you can get us past the security?”
“Oh, I can do better than that,” she said. “Just relax and I’ll show you some real magic.”
? ? ?
Our ride was an unmarked white van with tinted windows—not suspicious at all. Inaya rode shotgun, and Teo made a point of squeezing between Tjuan and Gloria in the back bench seat rather than taking the more comfortable captain’s chair next to mine. Poor Gloria got up with a sigh and took the chair instead. I watched Caryl calmly maneuvering the great white whale through evening traffic, and it occurred to me that when she had been appointed head of the Los Angeles Arcadia Project, she had been too young to drive without an adult in the car.
“Caryl,” I said, “how dangerous is this, really?”
“I do not know what safeguards they have set up around the Gate,” she said, “but if they are linked to Vivian’s essence and you cannot fully dispel them, we will leave them be. I have no desire to get anyone hurt tonight, especially with National’s eyes on me.”