The plan would fail if we kept piping in music here too. We had to centralize it, and, I guess, mobilize it.
“Good call.” He jogged over to Smythe. “Time to take your show on the road.”
“We’ll have to hurry.” He stared off into the shadows. “They’re coming.”
A shudder rocked me head to toe. Martian Roaches were hard to kill, but I had seen Smythe control one. I had to believe this idea would work to scale, and that we could perform one mass extermination.
What could possibly go wrong, right?
Together we shoved his equipment into the back of the ice cream truck and ran the audio through the built-in speakers. As we loaded Smythe into the passenger seat, the first roach scuttled into view, antennae bouncing in time to the music.
“That’s our cue.” Bishop cranked up and strapped in. “How long will it take the others to arrive?”
A second and third roach rocked out beside the first, and all three of them boogied our way.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the first pair of red eyes winked into existence.
“W-w-what is that?” Smythe clutched the dash. “I don’t understand.”
“Hadley’s boyfriend is a gwyllgi.” Bishop kept it low-key. “The pack offered to help us herd the roaches.”
“Oh.” Smythe nodded. “That’s all right then.”
A rustling, whispery noise assailed my ears, and now it was my turn to ask, “What is that?”
“They’re coming.” He bounced on his seat. “They’re…glorious.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth.” Bishop failed to hide his cringe. “That is a lot of roach.”
Two dozen by my count, and the weird sounds kept coming.
“Am I imagining things,” I asked Bishop, “or do those four have numbers painted on their backs?”
“Technically,” Smythe said, “you mean their carapaces.”
Ignoring him, I counted up six with numbers ranging up to twenty-five. “That’s not good.”
Remy pounded her fist on Bishop’s half door, and I leaned around him. “What’s up?”
“See those painted pests?”
Smythe choked on his indignation, but I was getting better at blocking him out. “Yeah.”
“I spotted one and got curious, tracked it back to its source.” Her eyes brightened. “I think I found the coven’s home base. These guys? They broke out of a holding pen. They must be the dairy cows for Faete.”
“That is fantastic news.”
“Except four coven members were home at the time, and they lost their shit when the bugs escaped.”
“That is less than fantastic news.”
We already had our hands full, and we didn’t need more trouble.
“Hey.” I caught her before she left. “Why not call with updates?”
“We only have one phone.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s quicker to run to you than to One.”
The way she replicated herself, copying her clothes and hairstyle with each self, I hadn’t stopped to think it wouldn’t extend to technology. I would have to find a workaround for that. Maybe walkie-talkies. A fix that wouldn’t end up with me paying six more phone bills on the company dime.
“Let us know when the coven mobilizes.” I waved her off then faced Bishop. “This complicates things.”
A line bisected his brow. “We need those—”
Hearts.
That’s what he was thinking. I was too. I didn’t like it, but it was going through my head.
“Yes, we do.” I cut my eyes toward Smythe. “But we’re going to have our hands full.”
Coven members held the advantage from the get-go. Fighting multiples at once? That was a recipe for disaster. Considering they must have had some measure of control over the roaches or they couldn’t have used them against us, I had no illusions this wasn’t about to go south on us. Fast.
“Enough are gathered to leave a rich chemical trail.” Smythe fiddled with the controls in his lap. “We can lead them out. The rest will follow.”
With the coven on our heels, I didn’t have time to second-guess him. We might not get them all, but we could strike a blow to their Faete supply, not to mention save the lives of future hosts.
“You heard the man.” I gripped the back of Bishop’s seat and held on for the ride. “Roll out.”
The truck puttered forward as Bishop tested the roaches’ speed and the distance at which they heard the music, for Smythe’s sake. We got up to a comfortable forty-five miles per hour, and I could only imagine how our procession must have looked from the outside.
An ice cream truck that had seen better days, blasting a noise that fell between a cat fight and the death of a stringed instrument, while dozens of man-sized roaches scurried in our wake.
I was going to have nightmares about this for years.
Since Bishop had things under control, I checked in with the sentinels and then with the cleaners. Anca had drawn surveillance duty on the OPA side of things while Lisbeth and Milo kept an eye on the city for me. They didn’t have full control of the cameras, like Bishop did from his command center, but they could make do. Especially with Remys on the ground.
Please don’t let this blow up in my face.
I really did not want to have to explain to Linus how I let this happen if it all went sideways. Don’t get me wrong. The Giant Martian Roach Parade that Swarmed Atlanta would make a fantastic creature feature. I would totally hit a matinee for that. But I would prefer making Linus proud to making him wonder if I had been inhaling bug spray to dream up this cockamamie idea.
Baying rang out all around us, the pack at work keeping the roaches on the straight and narrow. I caught glimpses of Midas here and there. He was keeping an eye on me, and yeah, it made me all warm and gooey inside like caramel brownies fresh from the oven to know he was there if I needed him, but I tried not to read more into it than that.
No more surprise visits from Remys let me hope that meant the coven situation was under control. They
