surprised to discover the farmhouse abandoned by the time she got back.
Hammer dropped in the coins, got the operator, and gave the number that Crow had supplied. The connection wasn’t very good. She got a man that didn’t identify himself, and when she asked for Crow, he told her to hold. Two minutes of background echo later, Crow answered. “Hammer? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I lost the trail for a while, but I’ve picked it back up.”
“We found your car.” Truth. “I was worried you’d been hurt.” Lie.
“I thought they’d spotted me at one point, so I switched vehicles. I was wrong, though. It wasn’t them.” For somebody with magic based in truth, she could be an extremely convincing liar.
“Where are you?”
She scanned the empty road and the quiet store. There were no witnesses, but he had a government agency full of professional investigators. Surely he’d have somebody talk to the operator to figure out where she’d connected from. “Northern Virginia, but the trail’s cold here. They’re a day or two ahead of me and heading south. I’ll check back in when I get closer.”
“Fine. Try to wrap it up. We’re about through with him. The German’s been scheduled to die in forty-eight hours.” Truth. “So new sources would be helpful.”
“I’ll do my best…”
There was a sudden thump against the glass. Hammer jumped. Somebody was right outside the booth and she had no idea how’d they’d gotten there. A pair of grey eyes were gleaming at her from under a gigantic straw hat. It was the Traveler girl. Excited, Faye jerked the door open and Hammer instinctively put her hand over the mouthpiece. Faye mouthed the word, Wait!
Crow was saying goodbye. She uncovered the mouthpiece. “Wait,” Hammer said, then covered it back up.
“Ask about Francis!” the Traveler whispered.
“What is it?” Crow asked.
“One thing… Just thought of something. I saw in the papers about that rich guy in New York. Stuyvesant?”
“Yeah?”
“Was that one of our captures?” She liked the choice of the word our. It made her sound like a team player. “I mean, it identified him as Grimnoir. Did we get him, or do I need to be on the lookout for him too?”
“We got him,” Crow said proudly. “He’s downstairs with the German.” True.
“Okay, good to know.” Hammer looked at the Traveler, who was nervously biting her lip. “I’ll be in touch.” She hung up the phone. “They’ve got your friend. The German dies day after tomorrow.”
“Gosh dang it.” Faye wandered off, hands on her hips, and kicked the brick wall of the corner drugstore. “I told him not to do anything stupid. Now I have to go save him too.”
“You followed me.”
“Of course,” Faye said indignantly. “I’m not dumb. I wanted to see if you were going to fink us out.”
“And if I had?”
The Traveler just smiled, weird grey eyes narrowing. “Bad things would have happened.”
“What are you, twelve? Are you threatening me, girl?”
“I’m eighteen… I’m pretty sure.” Faye folded her arms indignantly. “Listen, lady. Mr. Sullivan said that your magic makes it so you can always tell when folks are lying, so try this one on for size. If you had told Crow where to find us, I would’ve killed you extra hard. I would have killed you so fast that you wouldn’t have seen it coming. I’d have killed you and made it extra messy as a warning to anybody else that was hunting my friends, unless I decided to make it look like an accident, because then I’d have just Traveled you over in front of a truck and left you there… Basically, lady, you do not want to mess with me.”
The terrifying little girl was absolutely telling the truth, and it didn’t bother her in the least. “How many people have you killed?”
Faye shrugged. “I’ve lost count. Around a hundred or so, give or take twenty. It can get pretty confusing sometimes and I don’t always stick around to see if they’re all the way dead or only mostly. So, you mind if I ride back with you? Traveling to keep up with a speeding car is hard work and I didn’t sleep much last night so I’m plumb tuckered out. Come on. Not magic tired, that’s fine, I mean my body is tired.” Faye began walking for Hammer’s car. “What? Come on already. We’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s going to be a super-busy day.”
“You just threatened to kill me…”
“Only if you were a fink, but you didn’t tell on us, which makes you okay far as I’m concerned, so now we can be friends. Hurry up, Pemberly. Can I call you that? Pemberly is a real pretty name.” Faye opened the passenger door and climbed in. “Don’t make me start honking the horn. I’m a fugitive, you know, and that’s very embarrassing.”
Hammer followed the strange girl and got into the car. “Back to the farm?”
“Nope. The others just got back, so some of us are going on a top secret mission. I think Washington is supposed to be that way.” Faye pointed the wrong direction. Hammer pointed the other way. “Okay. Great. I’ve never seen Washington, D.C. before. We’ve got a jailbreak to plan!”
Bell Farm, Virginia
She woke up riding in the military truck. The rumble of the Big Fight was silent for the first time in days. Somewhere behind her, everyone she’d ever known was gone because of the killer with grey eyes. The man that saved her noticed she was awake.“My name is Jacques Montand.”
She tried to talk, but her voice didn’t want to work. Finally, she was able to squeak out, “Are you a policeman?”
He could probably barely hear her over the loud engine, but he shook his head. “No. I lied to those American soldiers. My papers are forgeries. I am something different, though we also try to help people, just in a different way. Especially people with magic. I have magic and I can tell you do too. So now I’m going to try to help you. Do you have any other family, friends I can take you to?”
She shook her head no.
“I would offer to drop you off at your local church, but it appeared that a dirigible from the front has crash- landed on top of it.”
“I have nobody,” she whispered. “The monster took them.”
“Yes, he was a monster. His name was Anand Sivaram. We called him the Warlock. He’d cursed himself with a terrible spell. It was that spell that made him what he was and you were very brave to face him. Very brave, indeed. He’s gone now… What is your name, child?”
“Coline,” she answered softly.
“What? I’m sorry. I can’t hear you. You will have to speak up.”
She tried again, but her sadness caught up, and then she couldn’t talk anymore.
“It’s alright. You are very quiet. It is fine to be quiet if that makes you more comfortable.” He turned to her and tried to give a consoling smile. “How about for now, I simply call you Whisper?”
Her eyes opened. Sad memories of her seven-year-old self were replaced by her twenty-two-year old present. Whisper sat up in bed and listened. The decrepit farmhouse was silent. The second floor felt empty. Most of the others had left on a fool’s errand. She had told them that she was exhausted from the drive and needed to rest, and that was mostly true, but there was also another matter she needed to attend to privately.
There was a mirror in the bedroom, but it had been cracked long ago. It didn’t matter, though, since she found one corner that was large enough to work on. This particular door did not have a lock, so Whisper braced a chair against it. She had the glass shard prepared in a minute. The Grimnoir elder that had sent her on this mission appeared quickly.
“Whisper. Oh, thank God. I was worried.”
“I’m fine, Jacques.” She had to smile. He had always been quick to worry about her. “You taught me too well. It’ll take more than one gigantic demon to do me in.”
“You were a fine student and an even better knight,” he said proudly. “But an old man is allowed to fret over our loved ones. That’s what we do best.” His manner turned grave. “Any new developments with the Spellbound?”
Whisper noted it was no longer Faye or even the Traveler, it was simply the Spellbound. “She’s growing
