Page 30 of Magic for Nothing

“We have Made Contact,” she said, irritation forgotten now that I was speaking to her again. “Mork will travel with me across the Great Water, and he will speak to the Council of Lineages, and we will decide among ourselves what is to be done. Now that we know they were not Lost, merely Misplaced, we can begin planning properly.”

She was such a small mouse, talking so earnestly about finding a way to reunite her people, even though they were continents apart. It would have been inspiring, if it hadn’t been so damn terrifying.

It might also be useful. Aeslin mice saw everything, heard everything, and remembered everything they saw and heard. Depending on where the colony lived in the building, Mork could be an invaluable resource.

I’d worry about that later. “Apart from your lost colony, what have you found?” I asked.

“They do not suspect your origins, Priestess; they are still confirming that you are as you claim to be, but they do not question the shape of your eyes or the color of your hair,” said Mindy. “There is one here who is related to you—”

“The Impassioned Priestess,” supplied Mork. “She dedicates herself to finding and destroying her colony’s lost ones.”

I could only think of one person who would fit that description. “Margaret Healy,” I said grimly. “That’s great. That’s just awesome. What’s she doing here?”

“Assisting in the education of the young,” said Mindy. “You will need to mind yourself in her company.”

“Got it,” I said. “Anything else?”

“The kitchen stocks a wide assortment of cheeses,” said Mindy.

I smiled. “I believe it. Mork, it was lovely to meet you.”

“Likewise, Priestess,” he said reverently.

“Mindy, keep looking. We need to know anything the Covenant is planning for North America, and everything they think they know about us. Nothing is too small, all right?”

“Yes, Priestess,” she said. She bobbed her head once, then turned and ran into the shadows under the bed. Mork lingered, studying my face like it was the most impossible thing he’d ever seen. Then he ran after her, and I was alone with Chloe, and Chloe’s snoring.

I climbed back into bed and stared at the ceiling. It took a long, long time for me to go to sleep.

The sound of the door slamming woke me. I sat up in the bed to find Chloe already gone, and a note on her pillow:

ARE ALL AMERICANS AS LAZY AS YOU? BREAKFAST DOESN’T WAIT FOR SLUGABEDS, YOU CLOD.

She hadn’t signed it. To be fair, she hadn’t needed to. She obviously hadn’t come anywhere near my bed while she was getting ready—that would have woken me immediately—and since she hadn’t opened the door until she was leaving, there hadn’t been anything else my brain would register as an automatic danger sound. Chloe was the only possible person who could have left that note. Chloe who snored all night, and then was shitty about me sleeping in.

Chloe, whose nose would probably make an awesome crunching sound if I got the opportunity to accidentally punch her in the face.

If the Covenant had a dress code—and let’s face it, the Covenant probably had a dress code—no one had gotten around to sharing it with me yet. I dressed as fast as I could, yanking on jeans and a sweatshirt and running a brush through the tangled mess of my hair. I still felt naked without a weapon. I was still smart enough not to carry one. This was enemy territory, no matter how much it tried to look like a boarding school for weirdos; if I put so much as a knife in my pocket, I risked blowing everything.

My family knew they’d been asking a lot of me, asking me to do this. They had. But I don’t think any of them really understood what it would be like for me, opening a door and stepping into a hallway with no way to defend myself, no knives or guns or cleverly concealed pit traps. My older siblings have been complaining about playing with me since I was a little kid and realized they would gang up unless I escalated things as fast as possible. What they’d never seemed to realize was that I was smaller than them, and already on the outside of the closed unit they formed. I’d been trying to protect myself. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Here, now, I couldn’t protect myself, and I couldn’t count on anyone else to protect me. All I could do was continue forward, and hope I could build up enough momentum to let me get away.

Thankfully, I’ve always had a good memory for directions. I followed the hall to a stairway, narrower and shabbier than the one at the front of the house, and descended it to the room where I’d eaten dinner the night before. Then I stopped, dumbstruck.

The room was massive, easily the size of the high school gymnasium where I’d learned to do a double-tuck back handspring. But the night before, dinner had been me, Leo, Chloe, and Reginald, sitting in an awkward foursome around the edge of one of the long dining tables, making awkward conversation over lamb stew and home-baked biscuits. Apparently, that was either because I’d been in some sort of social quarantine, or because everyone else had been hiding.

They weren’t hiding now. The room was packed with people, ranging in age from a large group of teenagers that surged around two full tables—and each table could seat at least twenty people—all by themselves, to a cluster of decorous, much calmer senior citizens. There had to be a hundred and fifty Covenant members present. Most were seated, but some were still in line for what looked like a breakfast buffet, chatting among themselves as they waited for their turn.

I realized the people nearest where I’d frozen were looking at me, some curious, some wary, none of them especially unfriendly. There was no uniform: while the teenagers were all dressed in some variant of black and white, with skirts and slacks combined with plain polo shirts, everyone else seemed to have gone with the “whatever I want” school of fashion. A few men wore kilts. One of the women—Kumari, I presumed, although she was too far away for me to be sure—was wearing a sari. They looked like they’d dressed to be comfortable, not to impress.

My legs didn’t want to start working again. I forced them, descending the last of the stairs before anyone could come over and ask if I needed help. A little cluelessness was all to the good, but I needed to avoid letting it look like I was scared of these people, even though I was. They’d been remarkably accepting so far, maybe because my cover story was solid and believable, and maybe because they were the honey badger of evil asshole organizations: they were big enough that they didn’t need to give a fuck. If I tried to challenge them, they’d take me out, no fuss, no muss, and certainly no chance of my surviving the experience.

But Timpani wouldn’t be afraid. Timpani would see these people as the key to avenging her family. I tried to keep that in mind as I walked across the room to the buffet line, ignoring the way people turned to watch me go. This was . . . this was ridiculous. There was no way all these people lived here. There had been a crowd in the gym, but it hadn’t been anything like this. I should have seen more of them the day before, unless the Covenant had sent everyone on a holiday to London or something to keep them from being seen by the new girl. That didn’t make any sense at all. This was their home. Why would I be allowed to turf them out?

Rescue appeared in a semi-expected form: Leo, stepping up next to me in the line, with a glass of grape juice in his hand. He was dressed similarly to the teenagers, which made me suspect that he was spending the day at Penton; Reginald would never have allowed him to go to work dressed like that.

He was still looking at me like I was a useful tool. That was good. That meant I would never make the mistake of relaxing in his presence. He was nice enough, but something about him still made my skin crawl.