As he finished, his two friends glanced at one another, then as if by mutual agreement, Janice told him, “You’re so full of shit.”
“Huh?”
“There’s no way it was that simple. I know you. It must have been twice as bad as that,” she explained. Tiny nodded in mute agreement.
He sighed. “Well, it was little worse than that, but it all worked out. The bad guys are dead, and I’ve got the relic.”
“Which you can’t use,” said Janice.
“Says you,” Will replied, glancing at his ring. “My advisor says otherwise.”
“Advisor?”
“My college advisor,” Will said deflecting the question.
“That makes no sense.”
Will rose from the bed, and though his throat felt a bit sore and his head swam a bit, he was otherwise fine. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, then realized his clothes were gone. He glared at his bare feet. “Not again.”
Tiny guessed his thoughts. “The boots are fine. The rest of your clothes weren’t fit for a beggar.”
“That’s my second set of clothes in as many days. At this rate I’ll be forced to go naked by the end of the week.” Ignoring their laughs, Will used Selene’s Solution to clean himself, then summoned a spare tunic and trousers from the limnthal. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have used it in front of them, but he was done hiding it, from his friends at least. They watched him intently, but neither of them asked what he had done.
They’d seen too much weirdness around him already.
Rising from the bed, Will left, and though Doctor Morris protested mildly, he made no attempt to detain Will this time. After a short walk, they arrived at his house, where the workmen were hard at it once again. The front door was in working order, so he entered in the usual fashion.
Tabitha was the first person he encountered, and she studied him as he walked down the hall. “I liked your hair better before,” she announced.
“It wasn’t intentional,” said Will wryly. For some reason Tabitha always improved his mood. Nothing dark or ominous could survive in her presence. “Where’s your father?”
“Upstairs,” she replied. “He and mother are sleeping. They weren’t able to sleep last night, so they’re finally catching up on their rest. Why?”
It was getting late in the day, but Will had come to a conclusion. “I’m kicking you out.”
“What?” His half-sister looked at him in confusion, and the looks from Tiny and Janice were similar in tone.
“Just for the night. You’ll be safer in your own home. You can come back in the morning. I’ll cook breakfast.”
“But our house…,” began Tabitha, pausing in midsentence. “Oh.”
Laina stepped into the hall from the parlor. “He means our bolt-hole.” She focused on Will. “Is it really that unsafe here?”
Will nodded. “It’s going to get worse, and they can enter the university grounds at will. I’ve become a target, and they know quite well where I live. No one would think to hunt for you in the ashes of your old home.”
“What about me?” asked Blake, hobbling in on his sprained ankle.
“Hopefully, the baron will be kind enough to accept you and Janice as well.”
“Along with Armand and Nellie,” Tabitha informed them. “It’s going to be crowded.”
Laina glanced at Tiny, then Will. “Very crowded with these two along.”
It was tempting, so tempting. After what he’d been through in the basement of the still-burning Artifice building, Will wasn’t sure how he could be considering anything that might bring him face-to-face with yet more vampires. But he was. “Tiny and I won’t be joining you,” he told everyone.
No one said anything for a moment, and Laina in particular looked thoughtful. Lifting her chin, she responded, “Darla and I will come with you.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to be doing.”
Laina’s eyes grew stubborn. “I know you need help. Just look at you!”
Will ignored her. “How is the renovation going?” he asked Blake, moving over to face the man.
Laina tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m not done talking to you.”
Blake looked at him nervously, then glanced over his shoulder.
“I’m done talking to her,” said Will. “Tell me about the basement.” The look of alarm on the manservant’s face warned him, and he barely ducked in time to avoid Laina’s swing at the back of his head. He gave Laina an annoyed look and then took Blake by the arm. They moved away several feet.
His half-sister paused when she saw a spell forming in his hand, and before she realized what it was, he had surrounded Blake and himself with a force-dome. Smiling sweetly at Laina, Will slowly turned around, putting his back to her. “Now tell me what you were going to say.”
Blake shook his head in disbelief. “That girl is going to skin you alive when we come out of here.” When Will didn’t respond, he finally answered, “The basement isn’t finished. There’s still a lot of masonry to be done, but the cage is in already.”
“Cage?”
“It’s hard to anchor chains when they’re meant to hold something as strong as a vampire. The steel might be strong enough, but whatever you anchor them to has to be just as solid. In an earthen basement with only support pillars, there isn’t much that can provide the sort of strength you need. However, there was an exotic animal dealer in the city a few weeks back and I managed to secure a bear cage that was meant for him.”
“A bear cage?”
“It’s solid. The ends are all lap welded. It’s meant to be on a wagon, for transport, but with some work we were able to get it in the basement. I’m pretty sure that if you chain a vampire up inside it, he won’t be able to get free. If he did manage to break the chains, he’d still be inside the cage.”
Will nodded. “Good thinking.”
“As far as your workshop, that will probably take another couple of months. They’re still excavating, and that will take…”
He waved a hand. “I never asked you to do that, but thank you. By the time it’s done, this crisis will hopefully be over. I’ll have to use the laboratory at the Alchemy building for what I need in the present.”
Blake kept glancing over his shoulder and Will finally asked, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t think people are supposed to be that color,” said Blake.