Angela appeared at her elbow. “Now that this thing with the Gibsons is handled, we need to talk about next steps.”
“I know,” Roslyn replied. There were always next steps, even after what was supposed to be a victory.
“The Gibsons got something they wanted,” the prima continued. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t want us to get the hell out of their territory.”
Rather than reply immediately, Roslyn glanced over at the house. In the early morning light, it looked pretty much like what it was — a big old house that had been under magical assault for the better part of twelve hours, its outer defenses wrecked, its entryway scorched. She was also certain that it was now indefensible. Victoria might have retreated, but she would regroup at some point. She had resources, and she had pride, and Roslyn knew enough about the Van Horn prima by now to understand that the word “defeat” wasn’t in her vocabulary.
“We need to move the collection,” Roslyn said.
Angela didn’t argue with that statement, which told her the prima had already reached the same conclusion and had been waiting to see if Roslyn would get there herself. “Yes, to Jerome. Tricia and Allegra have already found a place for it — there’s a house on Juarez Street that’s been empty for almost two years. A couple of civilians bought it a while back and started to fix it up, but they ran out of funds.” She paused there and then grinned, a sort of fierce smile at odds with the smudges of soot on her face and her wildly messy hair. “I authorized Tricia to make them an offer they couldn’t really refuse. Anyway, the house is in pretty decent shape, since the plumbing and electrical have already been updated, and I think the wards should integrate well with the existing protections we already have in place in town.”
Roslyn shifted her weight. “What about Victoria? Moving to Jerome won’t make her stop wanting the collection. She’s spent seventeen years convinced it belongs to her. Why wouldn’t she just come after us in Arizona?”
Angela’s smile faded a little…but only because she was now shifting from satisfaction at the outcome of the battle into more practical concerns. “She might. But there’s a difference between attacking a banished warlock living alone in another clan’s territory and attacking us in the Verde Valley. Astoria was a strike-team operation. Arizona would be a war.”
Roslyn waited, because she could tell the prima had more to say.
“Victoria lost people last night,” Angela continued. “I don’t know the exact count, but at least four of her fighters won’t be coming home, and most of the rest are walking wounded. Her elders aren’t going to be too thrilled about that, no matter how much she tries to rule with an iron fist. She came here thinking she was reclaiming her clan’s property, and she left without the property and without a third of her strike team. The only reason she’s even still alive is that Malachi chose mercy over taking her out with that artifact. That’s not the kind of loss you bounce back from in a month.”
This sounded fair enough, but….
“And in a year?” Roslyn asked.
Angela shrugged. “In a year, the collection will be integrated into the town’s existing wards, and any attack on it will be an attack on McAllister property in McAllister territory. The Wilcoxes have a vested interest in not letting the Van Horns expand their reach into Arizona, given the history. And my daughter Miranda and the Castillos in New Mexico will back us if it ever came to that. Victoria knows the math as well as the rest of us. She’ll posture, and she’ll probably let it be known that the matter isn’t settled, but she won’t actually move on Jerome. Not without losing more than she’d gain.”
“You sound very sure,” Roslyn said.
“I’m sure enough,” Angela replied. “And we’ll keep watching. That’s what primas do.”
It did seem as if the prima had thought all this through, and Roslyn also had to admit that the house on Juarez Street seemed like a pretty good deal. But….
“Does Malachi know about this?”
Angela’s smile didn’t fade. “He will.”
Roslyn turned to look for him and saw him standing in the open doorway, which was the same place he’d been when she left him. He hadn’t moved. Now he was watching her in that way he had, and she’d learned to read that attention well enough to know he’d heard most of what she and Angela had just said.
“A house in Jerome,” he commented as Roslyn walked back to him. “Your elders have already decided this.”
“They identified a property. Nothing’s been decided without you.” She paused, because that wasn’t entirely true, and of course he knew that as well as she did. “But the collection needs to move. You know it does.”
He looked past her at the yard, at the shredded perimeter and at the scorch marks on the outer wall that marked where the fireballs had hit. She watched him take it in with the analytical thoroughness he brought to everything and saw him arrive at the same conclusion she already had.
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
That was all he said before he turned and went back inside. She followed him.
There was no part of her that was willing to let him out of her sight right now.
Getting Belshegar and Levi into the same room to discuss logistics took twenty minutes, partly because Connor had opinions about the plan that required Angela’s intervention, and partly because Levi had been standing at the perimeter boundary doing something that Roslyn couldn’t quite figure out but which apparently needed to be finished before he could be interrupted. By the time the six of them were assembled in the study, the morning had advanced to the point where the sun was fully up, even though the day outside remained damp and gray.
She couldn’t wait to get back to the Verde Valley and its bright, sunny skies.
“A dimensional corridor between here and Jerome,” Belshegar said after Malachi laid out the idea.
“A stable one,” he replied. “Not a transit point. It has to be a sustained passage that can stay open long enough to move a hundred artifacts, most of them individually contained…and several of them extremely sensitive to dimensional fluctuation.”
Belshegar looked over at Levi. Some kind of unspoken communication seemed to pass between them, and then Levi tilted his head, as if to indicate he was considering something far beyond the physical plane.
