I couldn’t help myself. “What else did you see?”
Victor shook his head. “Just the car, slammed into the doorway. And no, I don’t know how they manage it. The car, and the door broken into pieces on the floor, and the frame twisted so you can see bits of metal and glass embedded in it.”
I nodded. I’d seen the door trap installed, and that’s what it had looked like. It seemed so fragile now.
I didn’t want to look at my phone again, but I could feel the minutes slipping away. I remembered being in a car accident with Malcolm, how time had slowed so I saw every second of us sliding across the freeway. This was the opposite of that, this feeling that the seconds had shrunk to nothing, and at any moment I’d hear the squeal of wheels on pavement, speeding out of control…
Dark shapes hurried past the windows. Someone flung open the door. I sprang to my feet as a dozen men and women in fatigues poured through the doorway, spreading out to both sides. None of them carried drawn weapons, but they held themselves like experienced fighters, and it made my leaden heart feel feather-light.
Then Malcolm came through the door, dressed in the suit and tie he’d worn when he left the house that morning, and I sank back into my chair, all my joints suddenly too weak to support me. Malcolm came straight to my side and knelt, taking me in his arms. I clung to him and blinked away tears. I didn’t want to cry in front of the Wardens. “About time,” I sniffled.
“If I could have ward-stepped here, I would have,” Malcolm said. “We’ll take care of this. Go into the office.”
I shook my head. “I need to see this, or I’ll…it will stay in my nightmares for a long time.”
Malcolm hugged me once more, then stood. “Are you armed?” he asked Victor.
Victor patted his right thigh. “No knives. Just the gun.”
“That will be enough. Take a position on the left.” Malcolm put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll stay with you, love. Don’t worry.”
I nodded and clung to his hand. I felt weak and sick and embarrassed and angry all at once. Those bastards, thinking they had a right to our world and its magic. How many people had died, over the centuries, because of them? Not just the ones the invaders actually killed, but the ones whose deaths had been indirect, or at the hands of the Mercy? I felt a sudden hot rage flash over me, and with it, a desire to be someone capable of damaging them directly. Instead, all I could do was sit and tremble like some fainting maiden in one of the stupider fantasy stories.
A distant humming grew louder and deeper until it was obviously a car’s engine, one running hard and fast. I clutched Malcolm’s hand and saw he’d drawn his gun with his other hand. The noise grew and grew until it filled the air. Two people had stopped outside the window and were pointing up the street to the left. “Make them move!” I shouted, but they were already running, and I heard screams that were barely audible over the roar of the engine.
Then everything happened at once—the squeal of tires, the stink of exhaust and burning rubber, a blue flash of motion as a car sped past, impossibly spun, and accelerated into the front door. I screamed. The door blew inward, narrowly missing a couple of Wardens, and splintered chunks of it skidded across the pale cream linoleum toward me.
The hissing of a broken radiator filled the silence the impact had left. The car was an old Cadillac convertible, like something out of a ‘50s movie, probably made of solid steel and weighing more than a ton. Two women sat in the front seat, easily visible through the door thanks to no airbags and the roof being down. Neither of them looked even bruised.
They climbed out of the car without opening the doors and headed straight for the store, expressionless like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2. Without a word, the Wardens opened fire. The tremendous noise echoed through my skull, and I let go of Malcolm’s hand to cover my ears. I hoped some of those Wardens were paper magi, able to create powerful illusions to fool hearing as well as sight. If not, we would have a hard time covering it up—armed vigilantes shooting two innocent women? No, Malcolm would have made sure to bring paper magi.
The women jerked and thrashed as bullets found their mark dozens of times. One of them fell backward onto the hood of the car, while the other sank to her knees on the pavement. The shooting stopped, and four Wardens clambered through the empty doorway, drawing long steel knives. I gasped as one of the fallen women opened her mouth wider than should be humanly possible, and a sickly green thing began to emerge. Two of the Wardens bore down on her, stabbing the invader before it could leave its human suit fully. The others stood guard over the second woman, but she just sagged limply in death.
The screams had started again. Malcolm patted my shoulder and said, “I’ll be right back.” He walked toward the door and beckoned to the Wardens. I could barely see, past them, the four knife-wielding Wardens lifting the bodies and carrying them to the car. I breathed out in relief. The Wardens would make it look like the “women” had died in the crash, and everything would be all right.
Malcolm returned to my side and helped me stand. “It looks like people are calling 9-1-1,” he said, “and the police will be here shortly. I’m sending most of these Wardens away, to make it easier on the paper magi, but there will be guards for as long as they’re needed. Where is Judy?”
“I sent her away,” I said, “just in case…”
Malcolm put two fingers beneath my chin and raised my head so I had to meet his eyes. “Helena, you’re in shock,” he said. “Go upstairs and lie down. Judy won’t mind.”
“But I have to be in the store.”
“I will call the Board and inform them that Abernathy’s will have to close for a few days while we repair the damage. You can’t be expected to work under those conditions.” Malcolm put his arm around me and steered me through the office and upstairs to Judy’s bedroom that had once been mine. “I’ll talk to the police on your behalf. We’ll tell them no one was in the store when the accident occurred.”
“Thanks.”
Malcolm kissed me, so sweetly, and said, “Try to rest. I’ll take you home as soon as things are settled here.”
I lay on the bed in the darkened bedroom after he was gone and stared at the ceiling. I’d stopped shaking, but it felt as if the shakes were hanging out just around the corner and might come back any second. That had been close. If Victor had ignored his vision, I would likely be dead now.
In all my preoccupation with wards and Diane’s horrible death and the fate of the Well’s custodian, I’d forgotten what that invader had told me one Christmas Eve day: all it would take to destroy Abernathy’s was one invader in a human suit walking through the door and abandoning its disguise. We’d need some other way of warding the store. I should warn the other custodians of the possibility. I didn’t know if that sort of destruction was enough for what the invaders wanted, but did that really matter?
What the invaders wanted. I didn’t know that either. No one did, unless Ms. Suzuhara had had a breakthrough. It did seem an unusually direct attack, though. Maybe that mattered. They hadn’t wanted me dead before—both the intelligent invaders I’d spoken to had been clear on not wanting me dead. How many times had I come close to death in the nearly three years since becoming Abernathy’s’ custodian? Ross Dunlop had held me at gunpoint…the giant invader had nearly killed me before I became the oracle, which also could have killed me…I’d been kidnapped and left to die in an abandoned warehouse… I realized I was shaking again, and tears leaked down my face. That had been in the space of only six months, and there had been more—so much more—