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My gaze swept the downstairs area. It was small, cluttered, and smelled of dust and mold. There were shelves everywhere, all packed with boxes, old and new computer parts, and ancient-looking monitors of varying sizes.
Of course, mold and dust weren’t exactly good for computers or the various other bits of electronic equipment scattered about, but I’d learned a while ago that this area was little more than a ruse. The expensive items were all kept upstairs.
“I wouldn’t have bothered,” I said. “She’s going to take one look at this area and have a heart attack. Your normal state is positively pristine compared to all this.”
“Oh, she knows exactly what I’m like, but she likes me to make an effort on a personal level when she’s visiting.” His gaze scanned me pensively. “You look as if you need Coke, painkillers, and food—and not necessarily in that order.”
“One and two would be good,” I said. “We haven’t got time for the third.”
“Then I shall run ahead and get them ready.” He paused, his gaze falling on the disks I still clenched in my hands. “They for me?”
I nodded. “I need them copied quickly so I can return them before they’re missed.” And before I was missed. Rhoan might have said he’d given up resisting the inevitable, but I suspected that wasn’t entirely true—not when it came to my chasing down leads without his input.
Stane took the disks and gave them the once-over. “You’re lucky I never throw anything out. They stopped production of these disks at least ten years ago.”
“Not surprised. I just hope they’re okay—they’ve been stored in a shed for a while.”
“As long as the container was airtight and out of direct sunlight, they should be all right. They have a long life span.” He pushed to his feet. “I’ll see you both up there.”
I watched him bound back up the stairs and wished I had half his energy.
“You could,” Azriel commented, “if you didn’t push yourself so much.”
I gave him a somewhat wry look. “The lack of sleep isn’t entirely my fault, buddy boy.”
He nodded in agreement. “But I was not aware it would affect you so. Next time I shall be more cautious.”
I raised my eyebrows and tried to ignore the sudden jump in my pulse rate. “I thought you said there would be no next time.”
He studied me, his face giving as little away as usual. “It was merely a figure of speech, not an indication of intent.”
In other words, what he wanted and what he intended were two totally different things.
He rose, the movement abrupt. “Do you want help to get up?”
I put my hand in his and let him haul me upright. For several seconds the room did a drunken dance around me, and it was only his grip that kept me upright. Eventually, the pain and dizziness eased. I took a deep, somewhat shaky breath, and glanced down. My clothes, as usual, hadn’t exactly come through the Aedh shift in one piece.
My jeans had fared the best, with only a couple of small holes dotting the calf area. The dust from the missing patches clung to the skin visible underneath, giving my leg a weird blue sheen. My tank top was rather ragged around the edges and now had ventilation across my belly button, but it was at least still wearable. The same could not be said about my panties, which were little more than annoying bits caught in unmentionable places. One of these days I was going to learn to keep a change of clothes in my purse—although it wouldn’t have done me any good in this instance, because my purse was back in the shed.
“Ready to move?” Azriel asked.
I took another deep breath, then nodded and walked forward carefully. The needles in my head reacted, but not as fiercely as before, and by the time we reached the top of the stairs, I felt a little more normal. Or at least as normal as I ever got lately.
Stepping into Stane’s inner sanctum was like stepping into another world—a world that was clean, shiny, and filled with the latest in computer technology. In fact, Stane’s system dominated the main living area and wouldn’t have looked out of place on a spaceship. There was a bathroom to our immediate left, and a bedroom farther down, although I doubt he used it much—he seemed to spend much of his life stationed at his bridge.>“Yeah,” I agreed, although in all honesty, I’d stopped smelling it after the first half hour. What did that say about me?
Jak unlatched the side gate and waved me through. I walked down the concrete path, then around the back of the house. Two small garden sheds sat in the far corner.
I opened the door of the first one and looked inside. It was all garden tools and whatnot. “Any luck with that one?” I asked Jak as I relocked the door.
“Yeah,” he said, disappearing inside. “There’s lots of plastic tubs.”
I stopped just behind him. “Plastic tubs containing micro disks, no less.”
“Hundreds of them. We could be here for months.” He flashed me a grin. “Not that I’d mind being stuck in a tiny room with you for that long. I reckon I could break down your resistance to my obvious charms by the end of it.”
I nudged him with my elbow. “You start at that end, I’ll start at this.”
He nodded and walked to the end of the shed, pulling down the first of the tubs and quickly breaking the seal. It didn’t take all that long to find disks dated the day Nadler was married—all the tubs were categorized by year and month, so it was simply a matter of checking the dates of the first couple.
