Paul pushed at the long bar across the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Locked,” he said, glancing back at us.
“There’s an access pad,” Jill said, gesturing toward the small white box that sat beside the door. “You need a card to open the door.”
Scout pointed at Detroit, before casting a nervous glance back at the hallway. “Can you do something, or do we need to have Paulie rip the thing off its hinges?”
“I’m on it,” Detroit said. She moved to the wall and elbowed the panel. Just like in the movies, the plastic cover popped off. She whipped out a set of tiny tools from her leather jacket, and then she was working. A tiny screwdriver in each hand, she began to pick and pluck at the sensor’s insides.
“You okay?”
I looked over and found Jason behind me, worry in his eyes. “I’m good.”
He touched a fingertip to my thumb. “Good. Otherwise, I’d have to run back and take a bite out of crime, if you know what I mean.”
“Show-off.”
He winked.
“Got it,” Detroit announced. She pressed the plastic cover back into place, then waved her giant black watch over the pad.
For a moment there was silence, and then the door clicked as the mechanism unlocked.
Detroit pushed through the door.
“Nice job,” I said, passing by as she held the door open.
“It’s not firespell,” she said, “but it works for me.”
No argument there.
7
Detroit and Paul stayed by the door until we were done, then pulled it closed until it clicked shut again behind us. We filed down the stairs. A steel bar stretched across the final landing, probably to keep folks out of the basement and the tunnels. We hopped over it to reach the tall, metal fire door that punctuated the dank bottom of the stairwell and waited while Detroit jimmied the lock on a chain on the door.
I’ll admit it; I was impressed. Detroit had skills that made caper movies look low budget. But I wasn’t the only one pleased with our trek so far.
“Nice job back there,” Scout said, nudging me with her elbow. “I’m calling that Adepts, one. Vampires, zero.”
“Agreed,” I said, holding up a hand. “I’m gonna need some skin on that one.” She reached out and high-fived me.
It took only a couple of seconds before Detroit tripped the tumblers and was pulling the chain away. “All right,” she said. “Last part of the trip.”
“And this was supposed to be a shortcut,” I muttered.
“At least we got to spend some quality time together.”
I gave Jason a dry look. “Be honest. You were hoping I’d use firespell. You wanted to see it.”
“Well, if you want me to be honest, then yeah. I wanted to watch you work your mojo.”
“Jeeeez, you two,” Scout said. “Make out somewhere else.”
“Spoilsport,” I told her.
The fire door led back into the railway tunnels. Maybe the Pedway architect figured they’d put be put back into use someday.
“We’ll stay here and watch your back,” Paul said, pointing between himself, Jamie, and Jill. “We can ice out the vamps if they make it in, make sure you have a clear path back to the Enclave.”
“Especially since we’re taking the long way home,” Jason advised.
Detroit grumbled, but seemed to get his point.
From there, it was only a couple hundred yards before we reached a ramshackle wooden door.
“This is it,” Detroit whispered, opening the door and giving us a peek of a walkway between our wooden door and a set of metal double doors at the other end of a long corridor. The walkway’s ceiling was covered by grates, and we could hear the sounds of music and engines above us as cars passed by.
“This is what?” Jason asked, confusion in his expression as he surveyed the hallway. “What are we supposed to be seeing?”
Naya’s face fell. “It’s gone.”
“The slime,” Detroit said. “This is where we saw it.”
“I definitely don’t see any slime,” Scout said, cramming beside me in the doorway. She was right. I mean, we were underground, so it wasn’t like it was sparkling clean in there, but there was definitely no slime.
Detroit looked crestfallen. “I don’t understand. This is really where we saw it. It couldn’t have just disappeared.”
Jason gestured toward the double doors at the other end of the corridor, which were marked with those pointy biohazard stickers. “No,” he said. “But someone could have cleaned up the slime.”
“Reapers?” I wondered. “You think the Reapers know something about the creatures?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “After all, we didn’t, not until we saw them last night.” He looked at Michael. “What can you tell us?”
Michael nodded decisively, then rubbed his hands together like he was getting ready to roll some dice. He stepped forward into the corridor, put a palm flat against the wall, and closed his eyes.
“It’s muddy,” he said. “Unclear. So many coming and going. So much birth and death. Change . . .” But then he shook his head.
“I can’t read anything else clearly.” When he opened his eyes again, there was defeat there. “I can’t see anything else.”
“What does that tell you?” Scout asked, tilting her head at him. “What does it mean if you can’t read anything?”
Michael shook his head, clearly flustered by whatever he’d seen—or hadn’t seen. “Could be that too much went on—too much magic for any one message to filter through. Or could be some kind of blocking spell.”
“We’ve seen those before,” Detroit agreed. “Spells to erase the magic’s fingerprints, scramble the magic’s DNA. Reapers use obfus for things like that.”
I lifted a hand. “Sorry. What’s an ‘obfu’?”
“Obfuscator,” Detroit explained. “Something that obfuscates—makes it hard for Michael to get a read on the building.”
“Any chance you’ve got a magic detector in your bag of tricks?” Scout asked.
“Oh!” Detroit said, fumbling through the pockets of her leather jacket until she pulled out something tiny and black that was shaped like a pill. She held it up between two fingers.
“Magic smoke,” she said. After Scout pulled Michael back into the doorway, Detroit leaned forward and tossed the pill into the hallway.