He was looking at me with a smile, like the cat who ate the canary.
“What did I do with my other shoe?”
“You’re holding it.”
“Ah.” I sat down on the couch and put my boot on.
Curran slipped on his T-shirt and went to the door. I followed. Curran opened the door, revealing Jim. His cloak was back on. Andrea stood behind him. The right side of her face was black and blue as if she’d been hit by a five-pound dumbbell. She looked ready to kill something.
Jim’s face was grim. “The Keepers activated the device at Palmetto.”
“When?” Curran snarled.
“Half an hour ago.”
Curran swore.
THE JEEP BOUNCED OVER A METAL PLATE IN THE road, went airborne, and landed with a crunch. Jim drove the way he did everything—just on the edge of reckless but never out of control.
In the front seat Curran rolled the window down and leaned, trying to read a grimy road sign. “Three miles.” He rolled the window up before the roar of the Jeep’s enchanted motor made us all deaf.
The Roosevelt Highway rolled past the window, the trees one long greenish smudge. Next to me Andrea held her crossbow. We didn’t have a chance to talk, but we didn’t need to. We just needed a target.
“The Keepers brought the device in sometime during the night,” Jim said. “The Spring Farm Fair is in town this week. That’s where most of Palmetto makes a good chunk of their money. School is canceled for the week and all the church services are moved to eight o’clock to accommodate the fair. The Keepers set the thing up in the middle of a busy street and bailed. The Fair has two fields’ worth of weird magic crap. Nobody would’ve given Kamen’s device another thought.”
The people of Palmetto had walked right past the ticking bomb and watched it charge. And then it activated and killed them.
“Why not hit the fair itself?” Andrea asked.
“Because they wanted witnesses,” Jim said. “People will travel in for the fair, see a dead town, and rush back to spread the panic.”
“So it’s over?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Jim said. “We had people combing through the town yesterday, looking for Leslie. This morning I sent a man from the Keep to brief them on the Keepers and tell them to clear out. They were on the road to Atlanta when they saw the light behind them. They stayed the hell away from it. From what they say, white light appeared above the town, glowed for several minutes like the northern lights, and vanished. The whole thing took about ten minutes.”
To the left, four hyenas, two wolves, four jackals, and a weremongoose burst from the brush and flanked the car. Barabas, Jezebel, and others. The entire bouda clan howled for blood.
“Our source says the device can’t be moved by a water car,” Jim called out over the engine’s noise.
Good call not mentioning Saiman by name.
“He says it kills the enchantment in the water. And they can’t carry it—too heavy. They have to move it by cart and horse. There are four roads out of Palmetto. Used to be five but Tommy Lee Cook Road is shut down. There is a gap across it a quarter of a mile wide. I have people on every road. The machine pulls magic in a circle starting from the perimeter and going inward. The perimeter of the blast zone is clearly visible. They aren’t getting out.”
“Can we enter the zone after the blast?” Andrea asked.
“The source said he walked through the blast of the first prototype. He seemed no worse for wear,” I told her.
An old billboard loomed from between the trees, advertising some gun show.
Jim stood on the brakes, spinning the wheel. The engine sputtered and died. The Jeep’s tires squealed and the vehicle veered left and screeched to a stop. Fourteen bodies lay across the road. Men, women, children, dressed in good clothes. To the right, a church rose, its doors wide open. A preacher lay on the stairs, his Bible still in his hand. On the other side of the road, in a wide enclosure, carts waited for the owners who would never come. Horses snorted and whipped their tails at flies.
“Dear God,” Andrea whispered.
They must’ve been Seventh Day Baptists, going to church for the Saturday-morning service. Whole families. Adam Kamen was right. If you had enough magic, the shock of losing it killed you.
Why? Why the hell were the Keepers doing this? What the hell were they hoping to achieve?
A naked man ran out from behind the church and made a beeline for us. Short brown hair, lean build . . . Carlos, one of the rat scouts. He came to a stop next to us and bent over, out of breath. “Can’t go into it in a half- form. Turns you human or animal. You’re weaker, too.”
Carlos strained. Fur sprouted along his back as bones snapped. A moment and a wererat stood in front of us. Carlos opened his long jaws. “Thank Goshhh. I wash worreed.”
A distant wolf howl echoed through the air.
“South.” Curran pulled off his clothes. His skin split. Muscle boiled, fur sprouted, and he dropped to all fours, dark stripes like whip marks over his pelt. Jim shrugged off his shirt and a jaguar in warrior form landed next to Curran.
The monstrous lion head opened its jaws and Curran’s voice rolled forth, the words perfect. “We’ll cut across the fields, along the edge of the blast zone.”
“I’ll take the car.”
Jim threw the keys at me and I snapped them out of the air.
“Don’t break the device,” I said. “You break it, it explodes, we all find our wings in a hurry.”
Curran growled. “Later, babycakes.”
I jumped into the driver’s seat. Andrea pulled a rifle from under the passenger seat and hopped in to ride shotgun.
Curran dashed into the field, powerful muscles carrying him off. The shapeshifters followed him in a silent flood. I turned the key and the gasoline-burning motor purred in response. No magic. Right.
I made a wide circle around the bodies and stepped on the gas. The vehicle shot forward, picking up speed.
“Whoa.” Andrea rubbed her face. “It’s like somebody put a bag over my head. I can’t hear that well. I can’t smell anything either.”
“What happened to your face?”
“She made me leave,” Andrea said through clenched teeth.
I glanced at her.
“Aunt B. We needed to have the talk. Oh no, she couldn’t wait to have that talk. She had to have it right away, so she could explain to me in detail how I needed to become one of her girls. I shouldn’t have gone, but I wanted to avoid a fight in front of the children. We sat at Mona’s and ate pie, while the render tore the kids apart, so her ego would be satisfied. I told her this. You know what she said? She said it was my fault because if I had run over like a good little bouda when she first called me, we wouldn’t be in this mess. So I slapped her.”
“What?”
“When we got to the Keep and I found out about Julie, I walked up and slapped Aunt B in the face. In front of everyone.”
Holy crap. “Have you lost your mind?”
“You should’ve seen the look on her. It was worth it.” Andrea threw me a defiant glance. “Then her face went all psycho. The old bitch backhanded me. I don’t actually remember being hit. I just remember rolling down the stairs. I guess she knocked me off the landing. She is fucking strong.” A crazy light sparked in Andrea’s eyes. “I’d do it again. I’ll make it my mission in life to take her down.”
And people said I was nuts.
Andrea raised her hand. “This is the hand that slapped Aunt B.”
“Maybe you should have it gold-plated.”
