Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 37

"Look, I just want... I mean. f.u.c.k it. Be careful, okay?"

"Yeah. You, too."

He nodded and hurried after the others.

"You know," Leah said thoughtfully as she zipped up her jacket, "I was thinking it was just you, but I was wrong. You're both pathetic."

"Leah..."

"Don't bother saying it. I'll meet you in the car."

Tony listened to the soft sound of her footsteps die away. He shrugged a backpack strap up onto one shoulder and looked Henry in the eye. "Vicki told me to call you. You know, back when this started."

Henry smiled. "I know."

"You're a hard man to be separate from." Tony wasn't sure he understood that, but Henry seemed to.

"I know."

"With any luck, I'll close those three spots before they open, and you'll have a quiet night." Didn't cost any more to look on the bright side.

"Good luck, then."

Cool fingers rested for a moment against his cheek and, just for a moment, Tony longed for the days when he was the sidekick.

"Yeah. You, too."

"I can't believe you don't know how to pick locks," Leah muttered, one hand flat against the steel door, the other working the pair of straightened bobby pins back and forth.

"Why would I know how to pick locks?" Tony demanded quietly.

"Well, you're clearly a man with a past." "And my entire B&E career consisted of heaving a brick through a grocery store window and then sprinting two blocks carrying a watermelon."

"Two blocks?"

"Ran into a cop. Big guy. Splat. Knocked me flat on my a.s.s."

"Hmmm."

The noise may have been in response to his story or to the lock on the apartment door, Tony wasn't sure. He glanced down at the open laptop, silently ran over the words to the Notice Me Not one more time, and hoped he wouldn't have to use it. Not only because new magic was always an exciting c.r.a.pshoot, but also because he needed to h.o.a.rd as much personal energy as possible given what the immediate future was likely to hold. Although he'd topped the tank with a double bacon cheeseburger and large fries on the way to the first site, he had no idea how long that would last. He probably should have bought a second milkshake, just to be on the safe side.

Leah's dimples had gained them access to the high-rise as an elderly gentleman was leaving. Ignoring Tony entirely, he'd held the door open and waved her through, making a rather explicit suggestion that Tony very much doubted he-or any man over sixty- would have the stamina to carry out, little blue pills or no little blue pills.

Dude, if yours are lasting more than four hours, someone should check for rigor mortis.

Finding the right floor had been simple. They'd taken the elevator up one floor at a time until Leah's gut had pinged. Finding the actual weak spot had been a little trickier, but they were about 90 percent certain it was inside apartment 708. Unfortunately, it seemed the tenants weren't.

Or fortunately, given how little he'd been looking forward to explaining what was going on.

"You'd think it'd be in apartment 666, wouldn't you?"

"Like I keep telling the vampire," Leah snorted. "Wrong kind of demons."

"Hey!"

"I'm picking a lock here, Tony. If someone hears us, the words vampire and demon will be the least of our problems."

She had a point.

He could hear at least one television-maybe two-and a couple of different kinds of music, but at just after nine on a Friday night, most of the people who lived on the seventh floor seemed to still be out. Or they were sitting silently in the dark behind their locked doors. Tony had no intention of ruling the latter out.

The hall smelled like sausages and a spice that bounced around the back of his nose like a pinecone, doing multiple points of damage with every landing.

"That's it." Leah rocked back off her knees and stood, reaching for the door handle. "But if there's a chain..."

There was. It was dangling down inside the door, unlocked.

"Nice to see they're taking home security so seriously."

"You come home drunk and the chain's a pain in the a.s.s to get open," Tony explained as they moved inside and closed the door behind them. "And why do you know how to pick locks?"

"I hang around with a bad crowd in the fifties." "You mean hung around."

"No. I mean that every century, I hang around with a bad crowd in the fifties. I like having a schedule." She didn't sound like she was kidding. Reaching back, she flipped on the lights. "Good lord."

Tony snapped his laptop closed and raised his left hand, palm out, rune in defensive position. "What!"

"It looks like your place: beige walls, cheap furniture, and an overpriced entertainment system."

"That was it? I thought you saw something dangerous." He started breathing again and his heart rate began to slow.

"No, just bland." Walking out into the living room, she shook her head. "And if it wasn't so bland, the similarities would be frightening."

"First of all," Tony muttered, sliding his laptop into the backpack, "that's a sheet on the window not a flag, and second, this has a separate bedroom."

"Which is probably beige."

"Hey, he has a set of RexTeck speakers-3-D sound effects and an awesome ba.s.s boost." Leah's silence pulled him around.

"What? I've heard great things about them."

"Heard great things about demons taking over the city?"

Oh, sure. But she could take the time to discuss interior decorating. Half turned from examining the speakers, he paused. "The weak spot's right there." He could see the shimmer hanging just in front of the floor-to-ceiling shelves of DVDs. "But I thought there had to be something missing?"

Leah moved closer and examined the shelves. "He's missing the third Aliens movie."

"He's not missing much."

"And Star Trek, the Motion Picture although he has all the rest."

"Motionless picture," Tony grunted.

"Oh, my G.o.d, he's got a copy of The Princess Diaries. One and Two!"

"Maybe I should just close this up before he comes home and finds you dissing Julie Andrews." Setting the backpack on the floor, he wiped damp palms on his thighs and pointed a finger to start the first rune. A horrible groan came from the far wall. "What the h.e.l.l was that?"

"The elevator."

"Is it... ?"

"Him?" Her gesture made it clear she meant the usual occupant of the apartment. "How should I know? Just wiz."

"Wiz?"

"Wiz!"

The first rune went through the wall of DVDs with no problem. So did the second. The third got stuck.

"Stuck?" Leah moved away from her listening post by the door and glared at him. "It can't get stuck if you've done it right." "It's right."

"Are you sure? Check the cheat sheet."

"I didn't bring it."

"Oh, for..." She came farther into the apartment, and hauled up her track jacket and the shirt under it. "Check the original, then."

Tony gave the rune another ineffective shove and dropped to his knees, thumbs hooked behind the waistband of Leah's track pants to pull them low enough to see the rune. Head c.o.c.ked to one side, squinting a little, he moved so close he could feel the air between them warm.

The apartment door opened.

Tony glanced up to see a young man blinking at them blearily, keys dangling from one hand. When he finally managed to take in the tableau, he grinned and flashed a double thumbs-up. "Dude!"

"Ignore him," Leah snapped, tapping the tat with one scarlet-tipped finger. "Check the rune."

"Wait a minute." He was sounding less bleary by the word. "Why are you in my..."

"Got it."

"... apartment?"

Tony stood as Leah turned, dimples flashing an offer no straight boy could refuse. He tugged the center of the glowing blue line farther out from the center of the pattern then pushed. With a sizzle and a faint smell of burning plastic, the rune slipped the rest of the way through.

One more.

Half finished with the fourth rune, refusing to be distracted by what was happening on the sofa, Tony felt the hair lift off his body- his entire body, not just the back of his neck. Man, never going to get used to that. Turning, he got an eyeful of Ryne Cyratane and had barely made the very short trip from appreciation to apprehension when a spray of red-and-purple sparks arced out into the room.

They were coming from the shelves of DVDs.

c.r.a.p!

Tony finished off the fourth rune so fast he nearly sprained his wrist. Left hand flat against it, he shoved it after the others.

And stumbled forward unable to lift his hand.

A heartbeat later, he was wrist-deep in the DVDs.

"Leah!"

"Busy."

"I don't care!" Yanking back only threatened to dislocate his elbow. "Le-!"

Hands closed on his shoulders, fingers digging in painfully tight. Next thing he knew he was flying. A short flight and a bad landing.

Lying in a crumpled heap on the ruin of a cheap coffee table, Tony checked to make sure his arm had actually come with him. "Time to go."

"Ow. Ow! OW!" Protests didn't seem to matter. Leah hauled him to his feet and hustled him toward the door. Seemed like everything worked. Not quite to the original specs, but he was up and moving. He snagged his laptop case as they pa.s.sed. "What about... ?"

"He got a great memory and a broken coffee table," Leah snapped, dragging him out into the hall and shutting the door. "I think he came out even. Come on. If we get into the elevator before he gets his pants back on, he'll never know what we looked like."

"What if we have to wait for the elevator?"

They didn't.

She shoved him in, charged in after him, hit the b.u.t.ton to close the door, hit the b.u.t.ton for the first floor, and sagged against the stainless steel wall. "What did you do?"

"Me?"

"That spot wasn't close enough to blow like that."

"It was plenty close."

"Not close enough. I'd have felt it!"

They glared at each other for a moment.

"Okay." Tony flexed the fingers of his left hand. The scar felt hot. "Let me think about this for a minute."

"Don't strain anything," she muttered, adjusting her clothes.

"Nice. I think we hit a metaphysical overload."

"A what?"

"Between that weak spot being so close, you and your tat, me and my..." He waved the scar. "... power, then the whole distracting with s.e.x invoking your Demonlord, I think we reached a point where things started to happen."

"That actually makes a certain logical sense."