Waylaid

  “She confuses me, too.” Rachel rubbed her forehead as if in concern. “The candle makes a great source of active energy, but we need something for the core. Peri, do you have anything that embodies great power, sort of like the sun? A battery, maybe?”

  “Have to be one big-ass battery,” Jenks muttered. “We want to make a magic rock, Rache, not a flashlight.”

  Peri’s brow rose. “I’ve got a stone from Bikini Beach,” she said, rising as a flash of memory came and went of her and Jack firebombing a mutated mold from the walls of a cave. “It’s where they tested some of the first nuclear bombs,” she added at Rache’s wondering expression. “The thing is still radioactive, which is why I have it in a box.”

  Peri rose, returning with the tiny lead tin set behind a vase of faded paper flowers she got in Mexico. “I set off about three different detectors trying to get it through customs until I wrapped it in wet towels and a lead bag.”

  Peri put it on the table, and Jenks walked over, his wings a blur of motion. “Trent told me about this,” the small man said, arms crossed his chest as he bent over it. “He said if they could figure it out, it would be like catching the power of the sun.”

  “Do yourself a favor,” Peri said as Rachel opened it up. “Don’t figure it out.”

  Rachel hesitated in her reach for the flat-black stone, and Peri took it from its foam-fitted, lead-lined box and dropped it into Rachel’s slim, pale hand. “It’s hot, but a small exposure won’t hurt you.”

  “Shit!” Rachel exclaimed, flushing as she dropped it and it hit the table with a thunk. “Jenks, come feel this,” she said, clearly embarrassed as she carefully picked it back up.

  “You can feel radiation?” Peri asked, but it was obvious by Jenks’s screwed-up face and bright coppery dust that they were sensing something.

  “We have our center of power,” Rachel said, shuddering as she put it back in the box and shut the lid with a snap. “Now all we need is something that embodies communication.”

  “Peri’s phone,” Jenks said, his feet a bare inch above the table as he spun to her.

  Peri reluctantly put it on the table. “And some magic words, I suppose?” she guessed, and Rachel started, looking at Peri as if she were stupid.

  “Not for earth magic,” Rachel said.

  Peri eased back into the chair, wishing Jack was here. He might be able to figure this out, she thought, then was glad he wasn’t. Maybe she was going crazy, the first signs of overdrafting.

  “Wax would be a good inert media.” Rachel carefully pried one of Peri’s tea lights out of its metal base and dropped it into the bowl.

  Am I really going along with this? Peri thought. But then she looked at Jenks and shut her mouth. It couldn’t be a dream, and she wasn’t hallucinating. No more impossible than being able to replay time.

  Rachel looked up from picking the wick out of the tea light. “Thank you for believing in this,” she said softly, as if she could read Peri’s thoughts.

  “I’m just curious how you’re going to take a radioactive stone and turn it into a crystal,” Peri said, and Jenks chuckled, rising up to look into the copper pot.

  “Me, too,” Rachel said, then smiled grimly at Jenks. “Well, what do you think?”

  He shrugged, still in flight. “Try it. There’re a lot more mystics than just an hour ago.”

  Confused, Peri watched as the woman settled the large candle under the bowl, pinching the wick between her thumb and finger. Peri’s lips parted as Rachel let go, a tiny flame growing in strength between them. “H-how . . .” Peri stammered, shocked at Rachel’s long, content sigh.

  “Damn,” the woman said as she perched herself on the edge of the seat. “That felt good.”

  “Nice job, Rache,” Jenks said, then laughed at Peri’s open mouth. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, babe.”

  “Magic?” Peri said, pulse fast. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Fortunately, you don’t have to,” Rachel said as she pushed the melting tea light around. “Wax is a great inert carrier of intent. The stone represents the power of the accelerator we’re trying to duplicate.”

  Peri jumped at the ting as Rachel dropped the stone in.

  “Your phone is sympathetic to how the accelerator carries information,” Rachel said, sliding it off the table and watching Peri closely as she set it in the pot and wax slowly engulfed it.

  “I’m not getting that back in working order, am I,” Peri said, and Jenks gleefully shook his head.

  “And a drop of blood to activate it,” Rachel said, taking a diabetic stick from her bracelet. It had been hanging there all the time, lost in the bangles and trinkets. Charms, Peri corrected herself, lip curling when Rachel pricked her finger and squeezed a drop in.

  Rachel smeared the remaining blood from her finger, her smile bland and without meaning. “Now all we need is your memory to give it substance,” she said.

  “Me!” Peri exclaimed, and Jenks darted into the air.

  Voice loud, he whispered, “Rache, this isn’t going to work. I thought you saw it.”

  “I did, but it’s not what it looks like. It’s what it feels like,” Rachel said, waving him away. “Peri can do this. She makes reality out of thought all the time. It’s her job.”

  “She does what?” Jenks shrilled, and Rachel calmly blew his dust away before it got into the pot.

  Peri had never thought of it like that before, and she sat before Rachel, the candle-warmed pot of wax between them. Oh, God. What if Bill calls? she thought, seeing her phone in a puddle of soon-to-be-radioactive wax. “What . . .” she began. “I don’t . . .”

  “That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Rachel asked, her eyes flicking to Peri’s talismans.

  It was, but Rachel was talking about changing form, not imprinting a memory trigger.

  “You touched it,” Rachel said. “Felt its energy. Put your hands around the bowl.”

  Peri didn’t move, and she jumped when Rachel took her hands, trapping them between her palms and the warm pot. “Remember what it was, and store the memory in the stone, like a talisman,” Rachel said. “Just do it, Peri.”

  Peri looked from Rachel, who clearly thought she could do this, to Jenks, who clearly thought she couldn’t. They’re absolutely nuts.

  “Or do nothing, and you’ll not only have a wax-covered radioactive stone and a busted phone, but two new roommates,” Jenks said.

  Immediately Peri closed her eyes, focusing on the memory of Jack stealing the accelerator from the lab’s safe, marveling at it in the faint light before he tossed it to her to put in her purse. The shock of it thumping into her palm rang through her, the scent of ozone from the massive servers, how the flat facets of the cut crystal seemed to prick against her palm with tiny shocks, the weight of it akin to the weight of an egg, and how she felt it held the promise of a new beginning, much as an egg did.

  “Peri?” Rachel whispered.

  But she was lost, remembering Jack, his laughing eyes as he saw her react to the stone and the fact that they’d done the impossible again: his pride in her, his confidence, his trust.

  “Peri.”

  And her soft, up to now forgotten, niggling question of why the accelerator had been locked in a lab safe alone. No prototypes. No notes. Nothing.

  “Peri. Open your eyes.”

  A soft, suffused gray pulled away from her, and as reality impinged once more, Peri opened her eyes. Rachel was waiting, her focus frighteningly intent as her hair draped about her face, making her appear ominous. “Look,” Rachel said, and Peri’s attention dropped.

  Gasping, Peri took her hands from the pot. The stone and phone were gone. In their place was an egg-size lump of wax. “You switched it,” Peri accused. “Give me my phone.”

  Jenks laughed as Rachel calmly picked the lump up and peeled the wax off like an eggshell. “Wha
t an ass,” the small man said. “She did it herself, and she still doesn’t believe.”

  “Give it a rest.” Rachel flicked the wax from under her nails. “She doesn’t have the background to believe.”

  Peri took a breath to tell them to get out, but it faltered when Rachel dropped the peeled wax into the bowl. In her hands was the accelerator. It was dull with wax smears, and dark, but it was unmistakable. “Close?” Rachel said as she set it into Peri’s grip.

  Peri jiggled it, reluctant to hold the prickly thing, but immediately she realized it was dead. It might look the same, but it didn’t feel the same, and somehow that was reassuring. It wasn’t the accelerator. “It doesn’t feel alive like the real one,” she said, and Jenks landed on her hand, his dust making it glow.

  “That’s because it isn’t the real one,” he said, kicking it once before looking up at Peri, his head cocked. “So, we doing this, or do we go down to the post office for some change-of-address forms?”

  Peri’s pulse quickened. They might be rival agents trying to get her to steal the stone back for them, but somehow she couldn’t force herself to believe that. “Yes. Let me get my keys.”

  4

  The three-lane road to the front gate of Opti Health was well maintained and brightly lit, the clandestine government agency hidden in plain sight in one of Detroit’s new tech industry parks set out among a mix of old and new trees. The regular rise and fall of the land showed where there had once been homes, and the largest trees were in regular rows where streets once ran. Nothing but the sewer and underground electric lines remained, having been repurposed to industry.

  The remaining road was heavy with cameras, and Peri drove through the wide, multilane, general entrance with an unusual quickness, appreciating that there was no traffic at this hour. The light was brightening at the horizon, but it was still dark, and fatigue tugged at Peri, pushed aside by practice and a lingering worry.

  Jenks had perched himself on the rearview mirror almost as soon as they had gotten in the car. He’d been silent most of the way, watching the droneway lights with an intent curiosity that begged Peri to ask what he was thinking. The fake accelerator was in her purse on the passenger’s seat. Rachel was in the trunk. Convincing her to get in it hadn’t been easy.

  Jenks’s wings hummed for balance as Peri took the soft right that led to Opti’s small cluster of buildings where an elementary school had once been. The small man was swinging his feet, which were wrapped up in a tissue to ward off the cold, and somehow managing to look like he was all that—with caramel sauce and sprinkles.

  “Rachel says you have a lot of kids,” she said, not comfortable with the silence as they wove through the trees and Opti’s technological, hidden fence. On average, it killed three deer every year, mostly in the winter.

  Jenks shrugged, his dust shifting to a pretty gold. “Used to. They’re on their own now.”

  “You don’t look old enough to have kids, much less any on their own.” Peri’s grip on the wheel tightened as the road shrank to one lane. It was heavily monitored, and if they couldn’t pull this off, the cameras would likely analyze her trip in, seeing her car was riding low.

  His attention coming back from the brightening skies, Jenks smiled. “I’m over twenty. Oldest pixy in existence.” His flash of pride vanished, replaced with a lingering sadness.

  He’s alone, even with his friendship with Rachel, Peri realized. “Well, I appreciate you convincing Rachel to get in the trunk. I know it wasn’t easy for her, but there’s no other way to get her past Opti’s gatehouse without alerting them. You they’ll overlook, but a tall redhead with attitude will be remembered, and once that breaks, I lose my job. Everything.”

  Her pulse quickened at the sight of the brightly lit guardhouse, Opti’s buildings beyond. Getting Rachel past the front desk without her being seen was going to be difficult as well, even with Rachel’s plan of distract-and-evade. Peri could draft to fix a mistake, but if he were awake, Jack would feel it and know something was wrong.

  Peri forced her grip on the wheel to relax. This was so stupid. Why was she helping them?

  “Hey, ah, thanks for this,” Jenks said, clearly knowing where her thoughts were. “Trust comes slow for Rachel, but a lot of people have screwed her over, so I don’t blame her. She likes you, though.”

  “Thanks,” Peri said softly.

  “It’s been better since she’s hooked up with Trent,” the small man was saying, feet swinging in his silver dust. “He has a lot of weight to swing around, protect her from the worst her mouth gets her into. I pick up the rest.”

  Peri eyed him, imagining what he could do if that plastic sword he’d taken from her kitchen were real. “We’re almost there. You might want to hide.”

  “Sure.” Wings clattering, he flitted to the visor and crawled between it and the car’s roof.

  She didn’t have to fake her worry as she pulled up to the guard shack, her skin prickling from the cameras and hidden defenses as she toggled her window down. “Hi, I’m Peri Reed,” she said as she handed the woman her ID. “I’m checking on my partner, Jack Twill. He came in earlier to Opti Health.”

  “Good evening, Ms. Reed,” the woman said as she hit a button and the bar went up. “I hope your partner is okay.”

  “Just a bump on the head.” Peri smiled as she took her ID back. A slip of dust was falling from the visor, and Peri blew it to nothing, disguising it with a wave to the attendant. She accelerated smoothly, exhaling as they left the first barrier behind.

  “See?” Jenks said as he unwedged himself and jumped to the rearview mirror. “Easy as finding troll turds under the Cincinnati Bridge.” He hummed happily as he checked his wings for tears. “Which building are we headed to? I’ll put the cameras on a five-minute loop. They won’t have a record of you getting out of the car, but they won’t see Rache, either.”

  Rachel had insisted he could do it, but Peri didn’t see how he could find all of them, even if the man said the electronic squeal they put out gave him a headache. “It’s the one with the blue stripe on it,” she said, chin rising to point it out, and Jenks’s wings hummed into motion.

  “Got it,” he said, pushed back by the new wind when Peri opened the passenger window. “I’ll dust blue at the light by the door when you’re clear.”

  He vaulted out the window, and Peri shivered, watching his faint trail of dust make a beeline to the building. She’d never have seen it if she hadn’t been looking for it, and Peri was starting to realize where Rachel’s confidence in him was coming from.

  The tires popped bits of gravel on the wet pavement as she slowly parked in the visitor lot. There were only a few cars, most at the outskirts. Her pulse quickened at Bill’s extravagant SUV. No sound came from the trunk, and when the light turned blue, she popped it, having to trust the pixy. “I hope you’re not making a mistake you can’t draft your way out of, Peri,” she whispered.

  The car shifted as Rachel shoved the trunk open, and, feeling as if she was treading on new, chancy ground, Peri grabbed her purse with the accelerator and got out. Rachel was already waiting beside the back of her car, one of Peri’s larger purses at her feet. The mouth of the wine bottle poked out of it, and Peri could hear the clink of a glass when she picked it up. “There’s more room in there than it looks,” Rachel said as she gentled the trunk lid down and the latch engaged. “It holds what, two bodies?”

  Peri’s flash of shock vanished. “Three, if they’re friendly.” Hands in her pockets, she nodded to the front door. “Jenks is good. I didn’t think Opti’s cameras could be altered.”

  Rachel was smiling as she came even with Peri. “It’s what pixies are second best at.”

  “What are they best at?”

  Rachel’s smile widened. “Making more pixies.”

  Peri was too worried to laugh. Adrenaline spilled through her as she saw Harry through the
wide glass windows, the big, wide-shouldered man looking more security than receptionist, but then again, that’s what he was. There was a reason he was on the night shift, and it wasn’t because he was stupid. The man was an anchor, meaning he’d know if she drafted, remember it while she forgot. He’d have a weapon under the counter along with his reception data pad, and Peri eased Rachel to a stop in the shadows outside the door.

  “Okay,” Peri said as Jenks dropped down and settled on Rachel’s shoulder. “Just like we talked about. I keep him occupied as Jenks makes his computer wonky, and, Rachel, you slip in when he goes to fix it.”

  “No problem,” Rachel said, drawing deeper into the shadows. “It doesn’t even look like the door is locked.”

  “It’s not locked because he’s got a handgun under the counter and a gold star from his shooting coach. I mean it, Rachel,” Peri said, and the woman raised her eyebrows in question. “Don’t hurt anyone, and try not to be seen. It’s not just my job. I know these people, work with them. They trust me. I don’t have anything else to fall back on. This is my life.”

  Rachel grimaced, and Peri heard Jenks’s wings clatter. “Yeah, I got it,” the woman said sourly. “I won’t hit anyone. Though it’d be a hell of a lot easier if I did.”

  Isn’t that the truth. Peri started when Jenks shifted to her shoulder, his wings cold as they tickled her neck. “We’ve got this, Rache,” he said dryly. “Cool your jets and wait for the signal.”

  Satisfied, Peri went in. Harry looked up from his tablet at the sound of the door opening. “Hi, Peri,” the soft-spoken man said as he pushed back from his desk. “I saw Jack come through earlier and figured you weren’t far behind.”

  Arms swinging freely, Peri came forward to sign the visitors’ book, her expression freezing when she caught sight of Jenks flying low to the floor, swinging around behind the desk. “Bump on the head. I had to clean up the wine before it set. You don’t know where he is, do you?”