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She stepped out into the hallway, then turned and looked back at him.
“Go!” Archibald urged.
She mouthed something Archibald didn’t quite catch, but it might’ve been “I’m sorry.” Then, she shrank into a petite, solid black cat, blinked once with her perfect blue eyes, and disappeared into the darkness.
Archibald stood stiffly, staring at the open door, and wishing he could will it shut from where he was. He sighed. Telekinesis wasn’t a skill granted to cats, and wishful thinking never did any good.
Foot falls echoed down the hall Pixie’d just disappeared into, and Archibald’s tail swished in time with the echoing steps. He backed up instinctively, wanting to put as much space between himself and whoever was striding toward him.
It was only when his back paw slipped off the edge of the metal table that he realized the barrier around him was just as absent as the wards on the door.
He jumped off the table, darted into the corner closest to the open door, and shrank himself into the smallest, readiest ball of fluff he could manage. If he’d thought to test the barrier before Pixie left, they would both already be on their way out. Instead, he made fear-based assumptions and almost ended up trapped for no good reason.
He still might be trapped, if whoever was on their way got the wards up again before Archibald got out.
Archibald tensed, held his breath, unwilling to give away even the smallest sound of breath, and waited.
Almost…
A brown, tasseled loafer stepped halfway into the room and halted. After a few nerve-wracking moments, the door was pushed all the way open so violently that it bounced off the wall, nearly catching the person in the face on the rebound.
A low, muttered curse in a language Archibald didn’t understand was the cue, and the feet stomping to the table where Archibald had been held was his chance.
He sprung forward, leaping out the door and barely evading the inhumanely fast grab from the man in the room. He ran full speed down the hall in the direction Pixie’d disappeared. He hadn’t gone more than three steps before a loud klaxon rang. Doors slammed shut, echoing down the dark corridor. And that’s when he knew why Pixie was able to escape.
The alarms weren’t for her. They were for him.
Pixie wasn’t the only one after him. She was right, after all. He had made more enemies than he’d realized, and it’d be a miracle from Freya and Frigg themselves if he escaped this alive enough to stand trial in the Heart of Ásgarðr.
Lights blared to life in the corridor, and someone screamed, “I see him! Hallway four!”
After that, there was no time to contemplate his eventual fate. Immediacy was all he had.
He channeled all his magical cat power, no matter how low-level he was, and he ran.
Chapter Five
The quietude of well past midnight settled over the alley, and Archibald’s pulse slowed with each minute of silence.
Along with the lessening of the adrenaline that came with the cessation of the chase came the return of his other senses that had been redirected to flight and hearing. Most particularly, his sense of smell was back online, although he wished it wasn’t.
He’d finally found refuge in a garbage dumpster behind a dive bar. There’d been just enough of a gap between the two, large flaps for him to slip into, and after rousting a couple of opossums, he’d settled into the back corner and hoped that the improbability of a large cat like him fitting through such a small opening, the dark, and the stench would throw off any pursuit.
It’d worked, but now he was covered in putrid garbage. He tried not to think about the odors that might be omnipresent in the leavings of a low-brow drinking establishment, but he couldn’t avoid the combination of vomit and stale beer that enveloped him.
Archibald exerted every bit of self-control he could muster to keep from leaping from the dumpster, hacking and gagging. Going this far and wallowing in this much filth needed to count for something, and he would not let himself be caught because of an offensive smell.
A scene from Frankie’s favorite movie flashed through his memory. “What a wonderful smell you’ve discovered,” he muttered.
Once he was reasonably sure the alley was empty of any living creature other than a few rats scurrying around, he pulled himself through the opening in the dumpster and jumped down, quickly diving into the shadows and holding perfectly still.
Nothing disturbed the night. Fog rolled in, low and thick. It was an unpleasant feeling, matting his fur even more than the garbage already had, but it further muffled his already barely audible footsteps and hid him from the view of all but the most sharp-eyed predators.
A poem popped into his mind. A far cry from Star Wars, but Carl Sandburg had correctly described fog. Most of it, anyway. This, however, wasn’t most fog.
A surge of power swirled through the fog, enveloping him further. His fur tried to stand on end, a feat the damp and refuse disallowed.
Footsteps echoed through the fog. Archibald shrank into a dank, shadowy alcove in the alley and waited.
