“Tell me about it.” I spotted Jax’s familiar figure, still a little way off but making his way toward us. “Speaking of, are you and Guyer . . .” I let it trail off.
“Well, we sorta are.” Harris shrugged, almost bashfully. “We’re a good pair. I needed someone fun to show me around town.” As he talked about Guyer, his grin settled into something warmer, a genuine affection. “And she’s a good match for a farm boy like me. You can see it when she gets done up to go out on the town—her heart’s not in it. She thinks she needs to be at galas and receptions, but she’d rather be on a dirt bike, kicking up dust.”
Jax was almost on us. I waved, and Harris turned, surprised. He was still new enough that he didn’t have cop radar. Another reminder of how skilled Jax was with only a few months of experience.
Harris wore dark jeans and a biker jacket. I was dressed in jeans and a black pullover, topped by a dark canvas windbreaker. Jax was wearing tan slacks and a green button-up shirt that looked like it had been freshly ironed. I shook my head.
“Kid, it’s a good thing you carry a gun, because otherwise this city would chew you up and spit you out.”
He snorted. “There’s no dress code for this kind of thing.”
Guyer pulled up on her bike. She wore jeans and a dark shirt with a leather jacket. Jax looked away, pretending not to notice.
“Where’s your little friend?” Guyer asked me. “I thought she was going to cover the city center with Harris.”
“Gellica’s there already.” I turned to Harris. “You won’t see her. But trust me, she’ll be watching.” There was no time to explain Gellica’s ability to slip into the shape of a large cat creature. Besides, I had enough trouble keeping my own secrets straight.
Harris climbed onto his bike and turned his easy smile toward Guyer. “Fine. I’m not planning on letting anyone see me, either.”
I spoke a little louder. “Okay, are we all clear on the timeline? We’re about to be out of communication, so we have to hit this like clockwork.” There was no chance that walkie-talkies would work that far below ground, nor would pagers get a signal.
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that,” said Guyer. “You still have that notepad you’re always carrying around?”
I pulled it out of my back pocket.
“Great.” She handed me a half slip of carbon paper.
“The twin of that carbon slip is in here.” She flashed a similar notepad, then tossed it to Harris. “Whatever you write on one pad will appear on the other.”
“Huh.” I slipped the carbon paper beneath the top sheet, then grabbed my pencil and tried it out.
Harris glanced at his pad, then looked at me. “You never even met my mother.”
“That was expensive,” Guyer snapped at us. “Use them in emergencies, and if the paper gets hard to read, slip the carbon onto a new sheet.” She dropped her kickstand and dismounted.
Harris unzipped a pocket, dropped the notepad inside, and came out with two small silver objects. “I worked a little magic myself.” He held one of the objects out to Guyer. The streetlights gleamed on the reflective surface. “Paired bells.”
Guyer squinted. “Is that wax on the clapper?”
“Yep.” Harris closed his jacket pocket. “It’s a stopper spell.”
“Clever!” Guyer said. To me, she added, “The connection between the bells won’t take effect until the wax is pulled off one of them. It’s like a bottle stopper, or the safety on a gun.”
“I’ve heard of them.” Of course I had. They’d been used by the sorcerer who helped Vandie Cedrow kill Bobby and Saul.
“Once they’re active,” Harris said, “the bells will ring louder the closer they are to each other. I figured it might come in handy if we all get separated.”
Of course, he hadn’t given one to all of us. If the light had been better, I might have thought Guyer was blushing.
“Be careful,” she told him.
“Always am,” Harris said, then pursed his lips as if reconsidering. “Mostly.” He grinned his goodbyes, winked at Guyer, and roared off on his bike.
“Well. That was sweet,” I said.
Guyer shoved the bell into her hip pocket, and opened a side saddle on her dirt bike. She traded the leather jacket for her cloak, pinned up with a brooch into a kind of poncho, giving her more freedom of movement. “Something else about that carbon paper. It’s bound with next gen manna. You can still do your battery trick. In case something happens to me.”
I wanted to tell her that wasn’t necessary, that we were all going to walk out of this fine. But I still remembered Klare’s look of contempt in Weylan’s tent, and I wasn’t quite ready to make another round of empty promises.
The three of us made our way toward the back access alley where we’d confronted Vandie’s workers a few days earlier. A dozen paces away, a dingy white box truck sat idling at the curb. I caught the driver staring at us through the side-view mirror, a saucer-eyed human no more than twenty. He looked like a roughneck, with a broken nose and overly thick coat.
“Hey Jax, how did you say the Barekusu would need to get around without being seen?”
We paused at the alleyway; the driver gunned the engine and departed. Streetlights reflected on the side of the truck, revealing a slightly different sheen where an old logo had once sat. We watched as the box truck reached the end of the block and turned the corner.
Jax whistled and said, “That’s ominous.”
“Do you remember if we’ve seen anything like that at the transformation
