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For a minute, I thought about abandoning the wizarding biz and taking up a career that would let me crawl under rocks and hide, professionally.
"You needn't attempt to keep your inner self separate from your physical self," Lasciel said in a reasonable tone. "I should be happy to advise you from the outside, so to speak."
"Oh, no," I said, keeping all the conversation on the inside. "I've got problems enough without adding a sentient hallucination to the mix."
"As you wish," Lasciel replied. "You are, I take it, seeking a way to overcome the bindings of the thorn manacles?"
"Obviously. Can it be done?"
"All things are possible," Lasciel assured me. "Though some of them are extremely unlikely."
"How?" I demanded of her. "This is not the time to get coy with me. If I die, you're coming along for the ride."
"I am aware," she replied, arching an eyebrow. "They are a crafting of faerie make, my host. Seek that which is bane to they who made it."
"Iron," I said at once, nodding. "And sunlight. Trolls can't stand either." I opened my actual eyes and glanced around the interior of the garage. "Sunlight's out of town for a few hours yet, but we've got lots and lots of iron. Rawlins has a free hand. If I get a tool to him, maybe he could shatter a link of the manacles' chain. Then I could break his cuffs or something."
"Point of logic," the fallen angel pointed out. "Given that you are not free to retrieve a tool, getting one to Rawlins seems problematic."
"Yeah, but-"
"In addition," she continued, "you are exhausted, and it is reasonable to assume that Crane will finish his negotiations shortly and turn you over to one of your foes. You have insufficient time to recover your strength."
"I guess-"
She continued in the firm tone of a schoolteacher addressing a stubborn child. "You have in the past expressed much frustration and doubt that your control of physical forces was precise enough to break handcuffs without breaking the person held in them."
I sighed. "True, but-"
"The only egress from this place is chained shut and you do not have the key."
"It isn't-"
"And finally," she finished, "lest you forget, you are being guarded by at least one supernatural being who will hardly stand gawking while you attempt escape."
I glowered. "Anyone ever told you that you have a very negative attitude?"
She arched a brow, the expression an invitation to continue the line of thought.
I chewed on my lip and forged another couple of links in the chain of thought. "Which isn't helpful. But your ass is as deep in alligators as mine, and you want to help. So..." My stomach sank a little. "You can offer me another option."
She smiled, pleased. "Very good."
"I don't want it," I said.
"Why ever not?"
"Because a freaking fallen angel is offering it, that's why ever not. You're poison, lady. Don't think I don't know it."
She lifted a long-fingered hand to me, palm out. "I ask only that you hear me out. If what I offer is not to your liking, I will of course support your efforts to form an alternate plan."
I upgraded the glower to a glare. She regarded me in perfect calm.
Dammit. The best way to keep yourself from doing something grossly self-destructive and stupid is to avoid the temptation to do it. For example, it is far easier to fend off inappropriate amorous desires if one runs screaming from the room every time a pretty girl comes in. Which sounds silly, I know, but the same principle applies to everything else.
If I let her talk to me, Lasciel would propose something calm and sane and reasonable and effective. It would require a small price of me, if nothing else by making me a tiny bit more dependent upon her advice and assistance. Whatever happened, she'd gain another smidgen of influence over me.
Baby steps on the highway to hell. Lasciel was an immortal. She could afford patience, whereas I could not afford temptation.
It came down to this: If I didn't hear her out and didn't get out of this mess, Rawlins's blood would be on my hands. And whoever was behind the slaughter around the convention might well keep right on escalating. More people could die.
Oh. And I'd wind up enjoying some kind of Torquemada-esque vacation with whichever fiend had the most money and the least lag.
When a concept like that is an afterthought, you know things are bad.
Lasciel watched me with patient blue eyes.
"All right," I told her. "Let's hear it."
Chapter Twenty-seven
We plotted, the fallen angel and me. It went fast. It turns out that holding an all-mental conversation gets things done at the literal speed of thought, without all those clunky phonemes to get in the way.
Barely a minute had passed when I opened my eyes and said very quietly to Rawlins, "You're right. They'll kill you. We have to get out of here."
The cop gave me a pained grimace and nodded. "How?"
I struggled and sat up. I rolled my shoulders a little, trying to get some blood flowing through my arms, which had been manacled together underneath me. I tested the chain. It had been slipped through an inverted U-bolt in the concrete floor. The links rattled metallically as they slid back and forth.
I checked Crane at the noise. The man kept speaking intently into his cell phone, and took no apparent notice of the movement.
"I'm going to slip one of these manacles off my wrist," I told him. I nodded at a discarded old rolling tool cabinet. "There should be something in there I can use. I'll cut us both out."
Rawlins shook his head. "Those two going to stand there watching while we do all that?"
"I'll do it fast," I said.
"Then what?"
"I kill the lights and we get out."
"Door is chained shut," Rawlins said.
"Let me worry about that."
Rawlins squinted. He looked very tired. "Why not," he said, nodding. "Why not."
I nodded and closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and began to concentrate.
"Hey," Rawlins said. "How you going to slip your cuffs?"
"Ever heard about yogis, out east?"
"Yogi Berra," he said at once. "And Yogi Bear."
"Not those yogis. As in snake charmers."
"Oh. Right."
"They spend a lifetime learning to control their body. They can do some fairly amazing stuff."
Rawlins nodded. "Like fold themselves up into a gym bag and sit inside it at the bottom of a pool for half an hour."
