Haley had an edgy kind of charisma. Teenage girls always went for the bad boys. This was looking better and better. But Jess was suspicious when things looked too good to be true.
Haley smiled, as if reading her thoughts. “Look. Whether you believe me or not, you're not risking much. My presence or absence won't make much difference in the end result. If I'm telling the truth and we do a deal, you'll be saving all your skins. Trust me. Everybody dies if McCauley uses the Dragonheart.”
“You'd betray your friends?” she asked, thinking, Why not? It was, after all, the wizardly thing to do.
“Better betrayed than dead,” Haley said. “We can negotiate amnesties once this is over.”
“Of course,” Jess said smoothly. “When do you plan to go?”
“Tonight,” Haley said. “I'll come through the outer gate just after midnight. Make sure you have my get-out-of-jail-free card ready.”
Stone Cottage was deserted, as was usual these days. It took Jason less than an hour to gather his things and stuff them into a duffle. He wouldn't need much.
It was a long, spooky walk through near-deserted streets to the park. Jason kept to the shadows, hoping to avoid running into anyone he knew. The Trinity safety forces had entered the mines along with the citizens, maintaining the fiction that they were evacuating because of “radiation contamination.”
A few ghost warriors patrolled the streets to prevent looting. It seemed a waste of effort to Jason. The town would be toast before long, given the Roses' proclaimed scorched-earth policy.
The hands on the clock tower scissored together as he cut across the vacant commons. The bells pealed out twelve times.
The usual motley of warriors stood guard at the Weirgate. Jason nodded briskly as he walked past, hoping to discourage conversation, but Jeremiah Brooks stepped out from their midst. “Mr. Haley, i'nt it?”
Jason raised his hand in a kind of salute. “Brooks.” He kept moving, which he hoped would convey the message that he was on an urgent mission. But the warrior left his comrades and kept pace with him.
The night breeze carried the warrior's scent to Jason: a faint miasma of sweat, leather, old blood, and tobacco. He'd painted his face and stuck a few feathers into his hair, giving him a fierce, primitive look.
“So where you off to, then?” Brooks asked, a lilt in his voice betraying his eighteenth century Brit origins.
“Thought I'd have a look around outside,” Jason said vaguely. “See if there's any movement along the boundary.”
“Right,” Brooks said. “Well, then.” He rubbed a finger alongside his nose. “You take care out there. The Roses— they're right tricky.”
“Right,” Jason said. “See you.” He passed through the gate and into no-man's-land. The skin on the back of his neck prickled. He couldn't help wondering if Longbranch would really play, and if the plan had been communicated to the wizards on guard. Otherwise this might be a very short journey. He resisted the temptation to recheck the location of all the sefas hidden on his person.
As he approached the outer wall, he saw a half-dozen White Rose wizards collected around the wizard-wall gate. Longbranch's house. No sign of the Red Rose.
The sentries barred his way. “Name?”
“Haley.”
Silently, they parted to allow him through.
The gateway yawned before him. Jason took a step forward, then another, expecting at any moment to be incinerated by some trap they'd forgotten to disarm. Five more steps, and he was through. He looked back. The White Rose wizards stood watching. He turned and kept walking, through the maze of wizard pavilions, past the camps of the Roses. Fifty more paces and he was well hidden in the woods. He paused a moment to brush away all the magical spyware and tethers that had been attached to him at the gate.
He moved ahead at a trot. Amazing how much stamina he had now that he'd quit smoking. He'd have to find a house, appropriate a car. He didn't have much time.
He looked back only once more, as he topped a small rise. Trinity swam uneasily in a sea of wizard mist like a fairy castle, the turrets of Mercedes's wall punching into the sky. Dark clouds rolled in from the lake, casting deep shadow over the town and thickening the night.
He turned, and ran faster.
Chapter Thirty-one Armageddon on the Lake
Maybe we should've met at Jack's house, Seph thought. Just now it seemed perilous to be perched on an outcropping of rock at the edge of the lake.
The wind howled, flinging foam-speckled waves against the breakwater, ripping slate shingles from the roof and sending them spiraling away into the darkness. The trees in the garden bent double under glittering skins of ice. Sleet clattered against the leaded windows of Stone Cottage, the witchy wind screamed down the chimneys, and thunder and lightning clamored over the lake. They had to speak loudly to be heard over the din.
It was worse for Seph than for anyone else. The aelf-aeling made him hypersensitive—to the conjured storm, to the lowering cloud overhead, to the legions of wizards that drew close around the walls, like darkness around a shuttered lamp. It was as if his nerves had been sandpapered to exquisite tenderness. The magical activity at the boundary was a constant flickering, just out of his field of vision. He could see all of the possibilities, and they all looked bad.
He thought of the refugees out on the Sisters, and wondered how they were faring. They must think the world was truly coming to an end.
“Wonder what the weather people are saying about this one,” he muttered.
“One can only imagine,” Nick observed dryly, from his place by the fire. “Given that it is their habit to make a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm sound like Armageddon.”
The old wizard had drawn a wool blanket around his shoulders. He and Leesha sat, a chessboard between them. Either she was really good or Nick was letting her win. He seemed to be working really hard at cheering her up, for some reason.
Jack and Ellen came banging in, shaking off the sleet and rain like dogs. And after them came Will and Fitch.
Seph looked from Will and Fitch to Jack and raised an eyebrow. “Aren't these two supposed to be on the Sisters?”
“They were hiding out,” Jack explained. “But it's not like they haven't been busy.”
“They've been mining the no-mans-land between the walls,” Ellen said, grinning, slapping Will on the back, sending ice flying in all directions. “We've been providing cover.”
Will and Fitch resembled high-concept members of the French Resistance, clad in black jeans and hoodies and black knit caps, faces smudged black so as not to shine out in the dark.
“The Roses are looking for hostages, you know,” Seph said. “Not a good idea to be out there.”
“Been hostages, done that,” Fitch said, poking in the refrigerator and coming up with a bottle of juice.
Seph turned to Jack for help. “Aren't you afraid of blowing up our own warriors? I mean, we're out there patrolling that area.”
“The motion sensors will tell us someone's out there,” Fitch said. “But nothing blows up until I say so.” He produced an electronic device, small as an MP3 player, and dangled it in front of Seph.
“Anyway. We're not going into the salt mines,” Will said, thrusting his chin out belligerently, as if anxious to put the issue to bed. “So forget it.”
“You don't have a chance against wizardry,” Seph said.
Will's response was something like “Hmpf.”
“All right,” Seph said. “Thanks. But don't get killed, okay?” He made a mental note to try and put them out of harm's way when the bad stuff happened. One more thing to think about.
Mercedes had come in while they were talking. So they were all there except…
“Anyone seen Jason?” Jack asked, looking around in an exaggerated fashion.
“Jason?” Seph shrugged. “He'll be here. Probably got hung up. Why?”
“He was supposed to meet us two hours ago,” Ellen said. “To go over the layout of the camp outside the walls. He didn't show.”
There was a long, charged pause, full of throat clearings and significant looks. “What are you suggesting?” Seph said testily.
“I just think it's strange, that's all.” Jack thrust the tip of the poker into the flames on the hearth. Sparks spiraled up. “I mean, he's been a loose cannon all along. Crazy to leave.”
Seph waited for someone to disagree. No one did. “Jason's been frustrated, yeah, but that was because he thought he could do more good in Britain than here. He can't still believe that.”
“So where is he?” Jack asked.
“Hey.” Ellen frowned at Jack. “Ease up.”
Silence crackled among them.
“Brooks saw him outside the perimeter just before midnight,” Jack said, propping the poker against the hearth. “He was headed for the Wizard Gate. No one's seen him since.”
“What are you saying?” Seph asked. “That he ran out on us?”
Jack shrugged.
“He wouldn't just leave,” Seph said flatly, feeling some of the old friction with Jack.
Without meaning to, Seph reached out with his mind, looking for the angry spark that was Jason. And did not find him anywhere within the perimeter. Could he have gone out to the Sisters? Was he somehow incapacitated so he couldn't be detected?
If not, how would he have breached the outer perimeter and navigated the wizard lines outside?
“He wouldn't run out on you,” Leesha said suddenly. They all turned to look at her. “He wouldn't,” she insisted, shoving the chess board away so the pieces toppled onto the floor.
Jack gave her a look and rolled his eyes, as if to say, Consider the source.
“Nobody said that,” Seph said, looking around at the others, daring them to disagree. Jack fixed him with his blue-eyed gaze, but said nothing. Seph remembered what Ellen had told him, more than a year ago. Jack's more wary than he used to be. Before Raven's Ghyll.