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She hand
s me a box with one red button.
“Get ready,” she says, shutting down her electronics. “Hit it.”
I press the button. Nothing happens for a second. Then a dull thump echoes through the street. All the lights in the neighborhood go out.
“There’s an EMP device in the trailer. We just blew their power and all their electronics. They’ll come back up, but not until we’re gone.”
“You are diabolical.”
“Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment. Now get us inside.”
“It’s too dark. I need a shadow.”
Across the street, guards are coming out of the Pickman Building, gazing up at the truck. Some fiddle with their walkie-talkies. Some are trying to use their phones. None look happy.
Julie leads me into a toilet in the back of the store and snaps a glow stick.
“Is this enough light?”
“Barely. But it’ll work.”
I push my arm into a shadow just to make sure. I hear Julie draw in a breath.
“You’ve never seen this trick before?”
“Not this close.”
“You might want to close your eyes. It can be a little weird the first time.”
She closes them and I take her hand.
“Ready?”
“Definitely.”
I pull her into the shadow and out onto the tenth floor of the Pickman Building.
JULIE WAS RIGHT. There aren’t any guards on the tenth floor. All that’s there is a small room, a plastic cube in the center of the empty floor. This would be a cakewalk except that the floor is covered in magic circles. It was dumb luck that we came out between two of them.
“Don’t move,” I say. “This is why I don’t like going into places I don’t know. Step in any one of these circles and you’re dead. Probably we’re both dead and I’m not in the mood for that tonight.”
“Damn. What do we do to get around them?”
“It’s too dark for me to see them clearly, so I can’t draw a countersign.”
“I have climbing gear. We can go across the ceiling.”
“Easy, Catwoman. That will probably be hexed too.”
“What do we do?”
“If I knew what kind of hoodoo these were, I could answer that.”
“These might help,” she says, and pulls two sets of goggles from her pack.
I put mine on and find a button on the side. The room blazes with the light, showing every nook and cranny protected by hoodoo power. The only thing glowing brighter than the circles is Saint Nick himself in the plastic cube. I guess that answers Wells’s question. I get the feeling he’s locked up tight. Nick is no guest.
