“Got it.” Sonja motioned them out of the administrative building and toward a sleek black SUV parked in the lot just outside. Cordelia reminded herself to bolster her shield as they approached the shared fleet vehicle. Brendan opened the front passenger door, but to Cordelia’s surprise, didn’t slide into the car himself.
He jerked his head towards the front seat. “In you get.”
“Your legs are longer than mine, you take the front seat,” Cordelia said.
“Woman, you are all leg. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. And it sounds like this visit could be a lot harder on you than it is on me. I’ll be fine. In you get,” Brendan said.
“That’s very nice of you,” she said, climbing into the car, ducking to hide the flush in her cheeks. It had been far too long since she’d received a compliment from an attractive man. Blushing like this was just embarrassing.
“I think your standards are low,” Brendan replied.
Sonja drove the car out of the town proper and into the swampier areas of the parish. She was wearing an expensive silk wrap dress the color of goldenrods, stockings, and exquisitely crafted cognac leather ankle boots—not exactly the sort of outfit you would wear on an outing into the backcountry.
As if she could read Cordelia’s thoughts, Sonja said, “You two are lucky. We used to have to hike out to the rift site, but since we had to put up the temporary building anyway, we decided to put down a gravel road to make the approach easier. The locals weren’t thrilled, but we tried to make it as non-invasive as possible.”
“I thought the briefing said that the artifact had been moved away from the rift site to an undisclosed location?” said Cordelia.
“We thought it would be better to move the casket to Bael’s to prevent further fraying of the rift, but then Dani felt it starting to cause a gravitational anomaly near Bael’s cave. The last thing we needed was another rift,” Sonja said.
They turned off the paved road and onto the gravel path. Cordelia noticed that the plants weren’t so much “interesting” as bigger. Everything seemed overgrown and thick, getting thicker the farther they got from civilization. And she could feel something rippling along her nerve endings, like a bow across violin strings. Whatever they were driving toward, it was big and scary, and she would need every bit of her shield. She closed her eyes, picturing it, a bubble made of Kevlar encasing her entire body, protecting her from whatever was making the hair on her arms stand on end. She appreciated that Sonja and Brendan seemed to recognize her need for quiet and remained silent as they crunched along the gravel.
When the car rolled to a stop, Cordelia opened her eyes and saw a much more substantial-looking trailer parked with solar panels on the roof. Another gravel path led to the trailer and there was an older blonde woman standing outside the trailer with some piece of equipment that looked like a circa 1953 Geiger counter.
Sonja hopped out of the SUV. “Mother! What are you doing out here alone?!”
Cordelia climbed out of the car, watching Sonja travel the gravel with much more grace than Cordelia could manage in heels. It sounded like Sonja was lecturing the blonde, but Cordelia couldn’t make out what she was saying at the distance. Cordelia noticed a four-wheeler parked near the edge of the road and wondered if the stately looking lady had ridden out to the site on that contraption.
“Did she say ‘mother?’” Brendan asked.
“I believe she did,” Cordelia said.
“Her mam just happened to be here, waiting for us? Is her mam psychic, too? Fecking weird, this whole town,” he sighed, making her snicker. “Are you sure you’re ready for this, then?”
The soft, concerned nature of his voice was enough to make her knees a little weak. Or maybe that was just the rift. She could see it in the distance, a bright watercolor stain in the air, shifting constantly between blue and purple and green. She felt the pressure of it squeezing at her temples like a vise, a dull ache that alarmed more than it hurt.
“I don’t know, but honestly, it doesn’t sound like I should wait around and twiddle my thumbs,” Cordelia said.
“Remember what Dani said. When you think it might be time to go, we go. No stalling. No pushing yourself for a few more minutes,” Brendan said.
By this time, Sonja and the blonde woman, resplendent in khakis and an elegant cranberry blouse, were walking back toward them. Sonja still looked very annoyed, but the older woman’s arm was wound through hers.
“Honestly, darling, I was only getting some readings,” the woman exclaimed. “I was well behind even the safe distance line for humans. There’s no reason to get so commanding with your mother.”
“I have every reason to be commanding when you have been told many times not to come out to the site alone,” Sonja lectured her. “It’s not safe. Multiple people have been either killed or almost killed out here. Your own daughter was nearly killed out here. There are snipers out here for a reason.”
Cordelia’s eyebrows rose. “Did she say ‘snipers?’”
Brendan pressed his lips together and nodded. “I believe she did.”
The woman shot a soft look at her daughter, a remorseful angle to her lips. She sighed. “I’m sorry, darling. I shouldn’t have come out here by myself—even if I did leave word with several people, including your father, where I was going and when I was expected back—and I shouldn’t have scared you. I was wrong.”
Sonja looked at the others and told them, “I’m going to need you both to sign sworn statements that you witnessed those words.”
Her mother snickered. “I blame your father for this overdeveloped sense of the dramatic.”
“Brendan O’Connor and Cordelia Canton, this is renowned physicist, Dr. Yelena Fong, who happens to be my mother.” Yelena raised her hand to shake Cordelia’s, but Sonja deftly took it and held it, covering her mother’s unintentional gaffe. The two of them seemed completely at ease together. While Sonja was obviously exasperated with her mother, that irritation came from a place of love and fear that Yelena might come to harm. There were no long-brewing resentments showing in their eyes, only fondness and concern. For a moment, a pang of envy hit Cordelia so deep in her belly, she had to lean back on the car for support. “This is Brendan and Cordelia. They’ll be working here at the rift site and if they spot you out here by yourself again, they will tell me. And then I will tell Dad to stop making your favorite dumplings.”
Yelena gasped, “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me,” Sonja shot back.
Brendan cleared his throat. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
“You two, go on to the trailer. Your thumbprints should be programmed into the biometrics already. Speaking of which, you and only you have been programmed into the door locks and the locks to the casket storage case. Some of our best engineers built that thing to be bullet-proof, explosion-proof, and maybe even Zed-proof. It’s as comfortable as we could make it, climate-wise, which is important considering Cordelia’s vital signs will be constantly monitored. Be sure to remember to switch on the overhead cameras before you do anything. The League is asking for a complete record of interactions with the casket. Just hit the big red button on the wall that says ‘RECORD.’ Now if you don’t mind, I’m just going to wait here. Frankly, this place gives me the creeps, what with the aforementioned almost dying here. And I’m going to lecture my mother some more. She’s normally so reasonable and careful that I don’t get an opportunity like this very often,” Sonja said.