“The door’s not warded,” Kane muttered, looking carefully. “So we might be able to get in through there.”
He returned the binoculars. I glanced through them again. No door handle, no lock. How would someone on the roof open it? The gardener had intentionally left it open while he was smoking.
“I wish we could see how it’s opened from the outside,” I muttered. “There’s probably a hidden button somewhere.”
“Watch the gardener,” Kane said. Then he began to murmur under his breath, a string of syllables I didn’t catch.
“I am watching the gardener. But the door’s open.” I gritted my teeth in frustration.
Kane’s voice rose as he chanted, the words strange and arcane. The mystical energy in the room crackled against my skin.
“Kane… what—”
And then suddenly the greenhouse door, hundreds of yards away, slammed shut.
“Did you do that?” I whispered.
“Yeah.” He breathed heavily. “God, I hate telekinesis. It always leaves me itchy and dry all over. What’s the gardener doing?”
“Mostly… swearing at the door,” I said, watching as the gardener paced to and fro, shaking his fist angrily, shouting at the door as his face grew red. Finally, he retrieved a phone from his pocket and called someone.
A few minutes later, a woman dressed as a maid opened the greenhouse’s door. She and the gardener exchanged a few words, and the gardener walked inside, closing the door behind him.
“He had to get someone to open the door for him,” I said, disappointed. “No way to open it from the outside.”
Still. It was unguarded, and there were no wards. If only we could get someone to open it for us…
The sun slowly set, plunging the mansion’s lawns into darkness. Only some lamps, few and far between, lit the main path to the front door. I could still see the front gate, and an occasional silhouette moving across one of the mansion’s windows, but that was it. My eyes were tired, my forehead throbbing. Then, just as I was about to pass the binoculars to Kane, the front door opened, and a man came out. He strode to the gate and began talking to the guards. His manner was unmistakable—the manner of a superior.
“This is probably the security chief.” I handed the binoculars to Kane. “This is the guy who has the keycard and combination to the vault. His name is Maximillian Fuchs.”
“Sounds very German.” Kane watched him for a while. “Looks full of himself.”
I took back the binoculars, ingraining his face in my memory. I regretted not getting a camera with a zoom lens. It would have been handy to have this man’s picture.
The security chief went around the yard, inspecting the walls, probably verifying that nothing blocked the security cameras. Then he marched back into the mansion, closing the door behind him. His movements had been sleek, sharp, and fast. Even after he disappeared, the guards on shift seemed more alert, as if his presence had jump-started their motivation.
Nothing much happened after that. I was tired of watching the mansion, and was already trying to decide if we needed to keep up the surveillance for much longer. I checked the time. We had thirty minutes until Isabel came to take the next shift. I handed the binoculars to Kane.
“Here, watch them. I want to shower.”
“Seriously?”
“My bathroom back home is as cramped as a broom closet. I want to be able to shower in comfort for once.”
I went into the bathroom, which was as large as my entire bedroom, and took off my clothes. I stepped into the shower and turned on the hot water. The water pressure was violent and constant, unlike the shower back home, which alternated between dribbling and spurting water as if spitting at me. I let the powerful current of water wash the tiredness from my body. I found a shampoo bottle that smelled of lavender, and washed my hair twice. Finally, my skin practically pink, I turned off the water and stepped out, dripping over the rug on the floor. I grabbed the large towel, dried my hair and my body, and wiped the steam off the mirror to take a long look at myself.
A refreshed, wet Lou Vitalis stared back at me from the reflection. I smiled at her, then looked around for my bag, which was nowhere in sight.
I’d left it in the room.
Groaning, I wrapped the towel around my body, tying it carefully. Then I slipped out of the bathroom.
Kane blinked as I crossed the room, clad in a towel, my wet hair plastering my face. Ignoring him, I bent to pick up the bag I’d left by the side of the bed.
The knot I’d tied broke free, and the towel’s edge flopped loose. Cool air breezed against my ass and my right boob. Squeaking in horror, I fumbled at the towel, my bare nipple standing to attention in the cold. I just managed to keep the left part of the towel flattened to my body, hiding my feminine charms, though probably not as thoroughly as I would have wanted. My left breast was well hidden, but given that it was quite similar to the right one, Kane could probably deduce its general shape. Finally, I managed to grab the corner of the towel and quickly covered myself, feeling all the blood rushing to my face.
Kane studiously gazed out the window, the binoculars pasted to his face. I would have liked to assume that my performance had been lost on him, but the amused smile that he failed to hide hinted otherwise.
My cheeks crimson, I hurried to the bathroom, where I quickly took off the traitorous towel and put on a pair of jeans and a dark green T-shirt. Then, retrieving a comb from my bag, I hurriedly brushed my hair a few times, giving it a semblance of order.
I strutted from the bathroom, trying to look as if I couldn’t care less about my impromptu show.
“Oh look,” Kane said, still looking out the window with the binoculars. “It’s almost a full moon tonight.”
Chapter Twelve
“No one told me hunting hippos was part of the plan,” Kane said.
We sat around the large table of the HHT meeting room. Kane peered, fascinated, at the paperweight that decorated each table in the office complex—the man with his foot on a hippo.
“We’re not hunting hippos,” I said.
“Good. Hippos are dangerous.”
“Can I start the presentation?” Sinead asked.
I blinked. “What presentation?”
“The PowerPoint presentation I made.”
“You made a… PowerPoint presentation? To explain how we intend to break into the dragon’s vault?”
“Lou,” Sinead said patiently. “I’m the CEO of Hippopotamus Hunting Trips. How do you think I got to where I am?”
“You printed a bunch of business cards that said so.”
“That’s true. But it’s also because of my amazing organizational skills. Now hang on, let me figure out how this works.”
It took a few minutes to connect the projector to Sinead’s laptop, and when she finally succeeded, the screen on the wall displayed the words The Plan for Breaking into Ddraig Goch’s Vault. A small smiling dragon stood in the bottom left corner, with a tiny orange blaze coming from his mouth.