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“Thanks,” Margot said, and wrapped her fingers around the mug. “I’m all right,” she said. “Go on back to work.”
“A good idea for everyone,” said a voice behind us.
Delia, the House’s physician, stepped forward. She wore pink scrubs and tennis shoes beneath a white doctor’s jacket, and must have just come in from the hospital. “It’s doctor-patient time.”
“She’s the real boss,” Ethan said, and bent down to press his lips to the top of Margot’s head. “We’ll just be down the hall. Call if you need us.”
“Ditto that,” I said, and squeezed her hand. She nodded gratefully, then let Delia get to work, the doctor’s dark hands moving carefully across Margot’s face, checking for injuries.
Luc, Lindsey, Malik, and I followed Ethan back to his office.
“She wouldn’t let me call you,” Lindsey said when Ethan closed the door. “She’s really trying to downplay it.”
“Why do you think that is?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. You know Margot’s solid,” she said. “She knows how to take care of herself, and she doesn’t scare easily. But this has her twisted, maybe because of how it felt, maybe because she didn’t see anything afterward. No one wants to look foolish or cowardly, especially in front of a Master and Sentinel.”
That made me feel worse.
Ethan looked at Luc. “The security footage?”
“We haven’t checked it yet. We don’t keep the tunnels on the main monitors, but the cameras have motion sensors. They’d have been triggered when she went down there.” He looked at us, eyes narrowed. “You know something here, hoss?”
“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “Let’s see what the video has to say first.”
• • •
We moved downstairs to the House’s basement Ops Room, where Luc pulled up the surveillance video. It was in color, and clear enough for us to see Margot step inside Tunnel Three.
The space looked bigger than the others, which were just passages into darkness. This tunnel opened into a large, round chamber before narrowing at the other end.
“It’s big,” I quietly said.
“We believe it was a trunk for the municipal tunnels,” Ethan said without taking his gaze off the wall screen. “Possibly where coal delivery trains could be turned around.”
Margot walked to a set of dark wood shelves, presumably the wine storage, and ran her fingers across the ends of the bottles. Then she stopped moving, fingers still extended like a dancer perfecting a position. She glanced over her shoulder, the motion slow and careful, as if afraid she’d alert whatever had startled her.
But there was nothing there. Nothing but tunnel, Margot, and shelves.
She looked behind her for a moment longer, then turned back to the wine, shaking her head and smiling sheepishly, embarrassed she’d been afraid. And when she exhaled, her breath came out in a cold fog.
“The temperature dropped,” Luc said, and fear knotted in my gut.
That was only the beginning.
“Jesus,” Ethan murmured as something smoky and gray and sinewy snaked across the floor toward his Novitiate. The power of his concern, the buzz of his magic, filled the air around us.
While Margot picked through bottles—turning some to view the labels, checking what I guessed was an inventory list on the end of each row—the thing moved closer to her, the fog coalescing into something that looked almost solid and was nearly, but not quite, the shape of a man . . .
Margot selected a bottle, turned for the door.
The man, or the ghostly approximation, rushed toward her, hand extended, and shoved her forward. The bottle flew from her hand, smashing on the concrete a few feet away and throwing up a spray of wine as she fell, striking her head on the edge of a shelf.
She stayed there for a moment, obviously stunned, before gathering up the nerve to look. By the time she did, the man had dissipated into haze and disappeared again.
Margot rose to her feet unsteadily, pressed a hand to her head, stumbled a bit as she took a step. Pity burned my throat at the sight of her, of the confusion and fear and pain in her eyes. But she seemed to steel herself, took a breath, and headed for the door. She didn’t glance back again.
The video went dark, and silence fell in the Ops Room.
