“Holy crap!” Jenks exclaimed, darting to the front. “What happened to you?”
Nick turned in the driver’s seat, his teeth showing strong against his makeup-darkened skin. “Shellfish,” he said, patting his swollen cheeks. He had gone further in his charmless disguise, dying his hair a metallic black. With his dark complexion and his swollen face, he looked nothing like himself. It was a great disguise, which wouldn’t set off a spell checker.
“Hi, Ray-ray,” he said, his eyes bright. “How you doing?”
“Great,” I lied, jittery. I shouldn’t have involved him, but Trent’s people knew Ivy, and he had insisted. “Sure you want to do this?”
He put the van into reverse. “I’ve an airtight alibi. My time card says I’m at work.”
I looked askance at him as I pulled off my boots. “You’re doing this on company time?”
“It’s not as if anyone checks up on me. As long as the work gets done, they don’t care.”
My face went wry. Sitting on a canister of bug killer, I shoved my boots out of sight. Nick had found a job cleaning artifacts at the museum in Eden Park. His adaptability was a continual surprise. In one week he had gotten an apartment, furnished it, bought a ratty truck, got a job, and took me out on a date—a surprisingly nice date including an unexpected, ten-minute helicopter tour over the city. He said his preexisting bank account had a lot to do with how fast he had found his feet. They must pay librarians more than I thought.
“Better get changed,” he said, his lips hardly moving as he paid the automated gate and we lumbered out into the sun. “We’ll be there in less than an hour.”
Anticipation pulled me tight, and I reached for the white duffel bag with the lawn care service logo on it. In it went my pair of lightweight shoes, my fail-safe amulet in a zippy bag, and my new silk/nylon bodysuit tightly packaged into a palm-sized bundle. I arranged everything to make room for one mink and an annoying pixy, tucking Nick’s protective, disposable paper overalls on top. I was going in as a mink, but I would be damned if I was going to stay that way.
Conspicuous in their absence were my usual charms. I felt naked without them, but if caught, the most the I.S. could charge me with was breaking and entering. If I had even one charm that could act on a person—even as little as a bad-breath charm—it would bump me up to intent to do bodily harm. That was a felony. I was a runner; I knew the law.
While Nick kept Jenks occupied up front, I quickly stripped down to nothing and jammed every last bit of evidence that I had been in the van into a canister labeled TOXIC CHEMICALS. I downed my mink potion with an embarrassed haste, gritting my teeth against the pain of transformation. Jenks gave Nick hell when he realized I’d been naked in the back of his van. I wasn’t looking forward to changing back, suffering Jenks’s barbs and jokes until I managed to get in my bodysuit.
And from there it went like clockwork.
Nick gained the grounds with little trouble, since he was expected—the real lawn service had gotten a cancellation call from me that morning. The gardens were empty because it was the full moon and they were closed for heavy maintenance. As a mink, I scampered into the thick rosebushes Nick was supposed to be spraying with a toxic insect killer but in actuality was saltwater to turn me back into a person. The thumps from Nick tossing my shoes, amulet, and clothes into the shrubs were unbelievably welcome. Especially with Jenks’s lurid running commentary about acres of big, pale, naked women as he sat on a rose cane and rocked back and forth in delight. I was sure the saltwater was going to kill the roses rather than the aggressive insects Jenks had infected them with, but that, too, was in the plan. If by chance I was caught, Ivy would come in the same way with the new shipment of plants.
Jenks and I spent the better part of the afternoon squashing bugs, doing more than the saltwater to rid Trent’s roses of pests. The gardens remained quiet, and the other maintenance crews stayed clear of Nick’s caution flags stuck around the rose bed. By the time the moon rose, I was wound tighter than a virgin troll on his wedding night. It didn’t help that it was so cold.
“Now?” Jenks asked sarcastically, his wings invisible but for a silver shimmer in the dark as he hovered before me.
“Now,” I said, teeth chattering as I picked my careful way through the thorns.
With Jenks flying vanguard, we skulked from pruned bush to stately tree, finding our way in through a back door at the commissary. From there it was a quick dash to the front lobby, Jenks putting every camera on a fifteen-minute loop.
Trent’s new lock on his office gave us trouble. Pulse pounding, I fidgeted by the door as Jenks spent an entire, unreal five minutes jigging it. Cursing like a furnace repairman, he finally asked for my help in holding an unbent paper clip against a switch. He didn’t bother to tell me I was closing a circuit until after a jolt of electricity knocked me on my can.
“You ass!” I hissed from the floor, wringing my hand instead of wringing his neck like I wanted. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You wouldn’t have done it if I had told you,” he said from the safety of the ceiling.
Eyes narrowed, I ignored his snarky, half-heard justifications and pushed open the door. I half expected to find Trent waiting for me, and I breathed easier upon finding the room empty, lit dimly from the fish tank behind the desk. Hunched with anticipation, I went right for the bottom drawer, waiting until Jenks nodded to tell me it hadn’t been tampered with. Breath tight, I pulled it open to find—nothing.
Not surprised, I looked up at Jenks and shrugged. “Plan B,” we said simultaneously as I pulled a wipe from a pocket and swabbed everything down. “To his back office.”
Jenks flitted out the door and back. “Five minutes left on the loop. We gotta hurry.”
I bobbed my head, taking a last look at Trent’s office before I followed Jenks out. He buzzed ahead of me down the hallway at chest height. Heart pounding, I followed at a discreet distance, my shoes silent on the carpet as I jogged through the empty building. The fail-safe amulet about my neck glowed a nice, steady green.
My pulse increased and a smile curved over me as I found Jenks at the door to Trent’s secondary office. This was what I had missed, why I had left the I.S. The excitement, the thrill of beating the odds. Proving I was smarter than the bad guy. This time, I’d get what I came for. “What’s our clock?” I whispered as I came to a halt, pulling a strand of hair out of my mouth.
“Three minutes.” He flitted up and then down. “No cameras in his private office. He’s not there. I already checked.”
Pleased, I slipped past the door, easing it closed as Jenks flew in behind me.
The smell of the garden was a balm. Moonlight spilled in, bright as early morning. I crept to the desk, my smile turning wry, since it now had the cluttered look of one that was being used. It took only a moment to find the briefcase beside the desk. Jenks jimmied the lock, and I opened it up, sighing at the sight of the discs in neat, tidy rows. “Are you sure they’re the right ones?” Jenks muttered from my shoulder as I chose one and slipped it into a pocket.
I knew they were, but as I opened my mouth to answer, a twig snapped in the garden.
Pulse hammering, I jerked my thumb in the “Hide” gesture to Jenks. Wings silent, he flitted up to the row of light fixtures. Not breathing, I eased down to crouch beside the desk.
My hope that it might be a night animal died. Soft, almost inaudible footfalls on the path grew louder. A tall shadow moved with a confident quickness from the path to the porch. It took the three steps in one bound, moving with a content, happy motion. My knees went weak as I recognized Trent’s voice. He was humming a song I didn’t recognize, his feet moving to a spine-tingling beat. Crap, I thought, trying to shrink farther behind the desk.
Trent turned his back to me and rummaged in a closet. An uncomfortable silence replaced his humming as he sat on the edge of