Page 87 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“Alice is right,” said Thomas. “We’ll be right there.”

He offered his hand. I took it, and he tugged me along, away from the gaping Bell, over to where Istas was restraining Margaret. Sally was still keeping the other guy—we’d need a name for him eventually—pinned to the floor with her length of pipe, but both Ryan and Dominic had joined the cluster around my distant cousin, who was watching them with a mix of fear and defiance that would have been impressive even if she hadn’t been pinned to the wall by something that looked like it had escaped from a Hammer horror production. Istas was snarling, showing her substantial teeth, and Margaret, despite having wet herself earlier, wasn’t crying.

Ryan and Dominic were clearly trying to intimidate—not that they needed to bother with a waheela right there, although it was nice that they were still making the effort—but Dominic, as the only one with hands small enough to have searched her, was keeping those hands to himself. He looked relieved at my approach.

“We were friends, once,” he said. “I would much prefer not to be the one to violate her person.”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Margaret snapped.

That tracked with her believing I was Verity, after the way Sarah had scrambled her brain. “We were never friends,” I said. “Istas, hold her still.”

Istas growled, a sound I took as agreement, and I moved forward, briskly patting Margaret down. Nothing. My second search was more thorough, and peppered with occasional apologies as I had to fold bits of her clothing down or pull them aside in order to check them. Enemy combatants still deserve basic respect, even if they wouldn’t extend the same to you. And since I had woken up fully clothed, I had to assume they’d been more polite about that sort of thing than most.

I found the anti-telepathy charm under the band of her bra, held in place by a pair of safety pins that I unclipped in order to pull the charm free. It was such a small thing. She glared at me like she thought looks could kill as I took it away.

Looks can kill, but only if the person doing the looking is a gorgon or related species. I dropped the charm to the tunnel floor, grinding it under my heel. “Dominic, go make sure Cara doesn’t bring the kids out here just yet,” I said. “I have the feeling they’re not going to want to see what happens next.”

What happened next was that another door opened, and Sarah stepped into the tunnel. She looked deeply sorry to be there, an expression of such profound regret on her face that it almost distracted from the fact that her eyes were solid white from side to side and glowing even more brightly than I was. Nothing could have distracted from the way her hair was rising from her shoulders, the ends of it floating languidly like she was underwater, even though she was as dry as the rest of us were.

“I can see all of them now,” she said, voice gone distant. “You can let her go, Istas. She’s not going anywhere.”

I stepped reflexively closer to Thomas, who had positioned himself in front of Sally. This had to be even more terrifying for the two of them, who didn’t know Sarah like I did, than it was for me.

“Hey, sweetie,” I said, aware that I had taken on the tone usually reserved for addressing dangerous animals, but unsure of how to make myself stop. “How’d you get here so fast?”

“Everything is on a grid, and if you can see it, you can move through it as you need to,” she said. “I needed to be here now.”

“I . . . see,” said Thomas.

Istas lowered Margaret slowly to her feet, taking her paw away from the woman’s middle. Margaret didn’t bolt. Margaret didn’t move at all but remained exactly where she was, wobbling slightly, staring at the wall. I blinked, and glanced at the man Sally still had pinned against the floor. He had the same look on his face, and he wasn’t moving either. Finally, I turned. Bell, too, had a vacant look in his eyes and was staring into nothing, not alarmed at all by the appearance of a white-eyed woman with floating hair.

“There are always frightened children in a city this size,” said Sarah. “I wasn’t there when the captives were taken and then they were placed behind wards where I couldn’t find them. But once you escaped the wards, I could find your mind, and when you took the first charm away from your captors I could see where the others were being held. I can see them now. All of them.”

Dominic emerged from the room at the end of the hall, a tiny blonde girl in his arms and Cara close behind him. She had one of the boys in her own arms, his wings half-open and wrapped around her in a leathery embrace. The rest of the children were behind them, looking warily around as they followed the adults to safety.

One of the little girls started to cry when she saw Margaret, and I wished I’d hit the woman harder when I had the chance. Hitting her now would have been like kicking a puppy, though. She didn’t make any move to turn toward the sound, didn’t react as Sarah advanced.

“They were acting alone, these three,” Sarah said, voice still distant. “Margaret isn’t in very good standing with the Covenant these days. They sent her back here to prove that she wasn’t useless yet. Gave her two trainees to keep an eye on her, and left her here to do support work for the rest of them. She knows where all the other teams are, though—the actual teams. These three aren’t supposed to go into the field, for fear that they’ll do exactly what they just did: fuck up and reveal the rest of the Covenant presence in the area. She knows how to find them.”

“Sarah—”

“You should go now,” she said, voice never varying. “Take the children. Get them safely home. I’ll come to join you soon.”

“All right,” I said, and stepped back, reaching for Thomas’s hand. After a long beat, he took it, and I pulled him with me as I started for the door she’d arrived through, which I presumed would lead to the exit. Sally followed, Istas and Ryan behind her, and Dominic and the dragons brought up the rear.

The Covenant agents never moved as we all walked away, leaving them alone with my most dangerous grandchild.

But just before the door swung shut behind us, I heard Margaret start to scream.

Twenty

“Not all the choices we have are good ones. Sometimes the best outcome you can hope for is the one where you’re still standing at the end.”

—Juniper Campbell

Walking back through the subway maintenance tunnels to the slaughterhouse, leaving the Covenant behind

GETTING EIGHT CHILDREN, SEVERAL of whom didn’t look even remotely human, from one side of Manhattan to the other was a herculean undertaking, one that wouldn’t have been possible if Istas hadn’t convinced the boys to submit to being carried in large dog carriers purchased from the nearest pet store after returning to her humanoid form.