way I was going to search them all unless I had to. And I didn’t. I slid the ghost knife back and forth until it cut the latch. The trunk opened.
I loved my little spell.
Inside, I found empty halogen floodlight packages along with a car battery wired to an AC adapter and a three-pronged plug.
It had to be part of a carrier for the sapphire dog. The real question was simple: Where was the cage itself? I hoped Steve didn’t have it. He’d be tempted to use it, and nothing good would come of that.
Or did Issler—I had to get used to thinking of Tattoo by that name—and Zahn have it? More important, were they still here, and could we kill them in their sleep?
I backed away from the trunk. It couldn’t be closed again, so I left it up. That was a good thing, though. I was the wooden man. It was my job to draw attention to myself so Annalise could attack from behind.
I strolled back to the cars and the front of the cabin, doing my best to fake a casual calm I didn’t feel. Issler might be aiming a gun at me from one of those darkened windows, or Zahn might have sent him to fetch the lightning rod.
Or maybe they were sitting in the back office playing cards. Why didn’t I ever imagine good things?
I stepped up onto the wooden porch and tried the doorknob. The door wasn’t locked. It swung inward, letting sunlight into the darkened store.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The smell had gotten worse—the door and windows had been shut for hours, letting the stink of blood, shit, and spoiling meat seep into everything. I flicked on the light switch by the door and saw that the bodies were still there. Steve had pulled camping blankets off the shelves to cover them, but no one had come to take them away.
What the hell did it take to get help in this town?
I looked around. Zahn and Issler were not napping among the dead. I went into the office. The interesting goosenecked lamp was on, which was strange, but there was no one there. I went out the back door and flicked on the porch light. Yin was covered with a heavy tarp weighted down at the edges with skis.
I shooed away the crows that were trying to get under there, and if the squawking they gave me didn’t draw enemy fire, there was no fire to be drawn.
Annalise came out of the underbrush. “Nothing?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
She stepped up onto the porch. “You came through the building pretty quickly. You checked the second floor, too?”
“There is no second floor,” I said.
She gave me a funny look and went into the office. “What do you call that?” She pointed at the wall.
“A wall.” If it had been anyone else, I would have thought she was joking. She gave me a funny look again, then her brow smoothed as if she’d had an idea. She went to the wall.
Whatever. The light over the desk was still on, which I still thought was strange. Something about the light was—
Wood cracked and splintered. I spun around, startled, feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted off me.
Annalise was standing beside a flight of wooden stairs. She pointed at the broken bottom step. Black steam fizzed out of it. “See that sigil?” I looked at it, although every time I did, I felt an unbearable urge to look away. The urge grew less and less powerful as the magic drained out of it, and I felt much less fascinated by the very ordinary desk lamp across the room. My iron gate ached.
“Oh, crap.” I rubbed my face. Issler could have shot me from that step, and I wouldn’t have seen it coming.
“These are on the roads in and out of town,” Annalise said. “No one leaves and no one comes in, and they all think it’s their own idea. Let’s go.”
I followed her up the creaking steps. She reached under her jacket and took out a green ribbon.
There was a yellow door at the top of the stairs. She pushed it open and went inside.
I followed her into a small living space. To the right was a kitchen that was little more than a dent in the wall and an open door that led to a bathroom. To the left was a chair and three mattresses on the floor. Blankets were bunched in the corner, but there were no suitcases or clothes nearby. A threadbare couch sat beneath the far window.
“Pretty spartan,” Annalise said.
“Boss, could they still be here? Could they be watching us from a corner where we can’t see them?”
“Yes,” she answered. Then she sighed. “I think they’re gone. There’s no luggage, no vehicle out front. They might come back, but—”
“What’s that?” I led her toward the kitchen. Beside the sink was a heavy tarp wrapped around something big. I peeled it back, expecting to find another body. It was just an oven.
Someone had bent the seal on the metal door so it would close over a thick black electrical cable. Light shone out through the dirty window on the oven door. An electric hum made the floorboards vibrate.
“What the hell have they done here?” Annalise asked. With one hand, she shifted the fridge to the side. It was unplugged; the heavy black cable had been plugged into that socket. Someone had put a powerful light—or several powerful lights—into the oven. I peered through the oven window, trying to see inside. It was no use. Then I remembered the halogen-lamp packages out in the car.
“The cage the sapphire dog was kept in for all those years was ringed with lights,” I said.
She knelt and peered at the gaps in the door. She didn’t have to ask the next question:
