Part 7 (2/2)

”Great. You think they'll let you use this Nest?”

”I may have to sell a kidney to pay what they're going to ask for it, but there's a chance.” I ran a hand through my hair, leaving it sticking up in untidy spikes. ”I need to call home and give Dad an update on the situation. You want to listen in, so I don't have to do it twice?”

”Just put the phone on speaker,” he said. ”I'll take care of the pot roast while you deliver the bad news.”

”Thanks, Uncle Mike,” I said-and I meant it. Having another person with combat training standing next to me made the odds feel a little less imbalanced, and a little more survivable. Maybe I was kidding myself. But there's nothing wrong with some healthy self-delusion once in a while, especially when there's an ancient organization of monster hunters involved. Since my boyfriend was one of the monster hunters, and they considered my family a type of monster, I figured I was ent.i.tled to a double dose.

With the mice swarming around my feet and periodically cheering for no good reason that I could see, I finished trekking to the living room. It was time to bring the rest of the family up to speed. And when that was done, I could start packing.

Nine.

”I know that we're supposed to be the better people and all, but sometimes I just want to stop playing nice and start playing for keeps.”

-Alice Healy A semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village, twenty minutes and a lot of shouting later ”OKAY, DADDY,” I said, over the sound of my mother and father yelling at each other, and my little sister yelling at no one in particular. Sometimes I think Antimony yells just so she won't feel left out. ”Daddy? Okay. I'm hanging up now. Uncle Mike says the pot roast is almost ready, and I haven't had anything to eat today.”

”Why are you eating pot roast?” demanded Antimony. ”It's not even lunchtime yet!”

”We're probably going nocturnal for the duration, and shut up. You think cold pizza is a breakfast food,” I said.

”Only if you put Captain Crunch on it,” she replied.

There was a moment of silence as all of us considered this. Even the mice stopped their chattering, although they were probably less horrified than reverent. Finally, my mother said, ”I want you to listen to your uncle, Verity. I know you're supposed to be doing your journeyman studies, and I wouldn't dream of impinging on your independence, but there's being independent, and then there's being stupid. If you get yourself killed, I'll never forgive you.”

The idea that she wanted me to just hand my city over to Uncle Mike stung. Still, she was probably right, and so I forced the rancor from my voice as I said, ”I know, Mom. We're going to relocate soon-and no, I'm not telling you where we're going. I'll keep in touch via email as much as I can.”

”I've left a message for your grandmother, but I haven't heard back yet. She's in one of the border worlds right now, and she may not get back in time to help you,” said Dad. He didn't push the issue of where we were going. He knew as well as I did that when you try to drop off the grid, the fewer people who know your location, the better. ”The same goes for your Aunt Mary. The routewitches say they'll notify her if she pops up on their radar, but . . .”

”It's okay, Daddy. I have Sarah, the gang from work, and Uncle Mike. We'll be fine.” My paternal grandmother, Alice Price-Healy, spends most of her time wandering around various parallel dimensions looking for her missing husband, Thomas Price. The rest of us are pretty sure he's dead, but try telling that to a woman who's abandoned everything she ever cared about for the sake of bringing her true love home. As for Aunt Mary, we know she's dead-she's been a crossroads ghost since she was run off the road in 1937. Not that it's slowed her down any. Like Uncle Mike and Aunt Lea, she's not actually a relative, but she fills the same ecological niche, and ghosts are always fun at Halloween parties.

”I'm still not happy about leaving you there on your own,” Mom said.

”I know, Mom, but I really do need to go, or we're not going to have time to eat before we have to go and negotiate for a new place to hole up. Email if you're sending anyone else. I won't be here to meet them.”

We exchanged our farewells-even Antimony sounded worried about my well-being, which was sort of terrifying-and I ended the call, triggering more cheering from the mice. This discussion was probably about to become a permanent part of their religious canon-the Holy Ritual of the Phone Call Home. I sighed, but I didn't tell them to shut up. This sort of thing was the whole reason I had a colony in Manhattan with me.

Mice-especially intelligent, tool-using mice-are hard to kill, and it would practically take a nuclear strike to wipe out the entire colony. If things went wrong and I didn't make it out of the city, the Aeslin mice who lived with me would be my little black box. They would tell my family what happened, because they would be the only ones who'd been there.

With that particularly cheerful thought in mind, I turned and walked back to the kitchen, where Uncle Mike was busy carving his roast. I stopped in the doorway, not wanting to crowd the large man with the knife. ”Did you hear all that?”

”Every word,” he said, and held his knife out toward me, a chunk of steaming red meat impaled on the tip. ”It's too bad we can't get Mary out here. She'd be great for recon work.”

”Right up until she got exorcised,” I replied, and plucked the piece of roast from the knife, popping it into my mouth. I made appreciative noises as I chewed, and flashed him a thumbs up.

”Pot roast is easy,” he said, dismissing the praise. He still looked pleased. ”You should try my lasagna.”

I swallowed. ”Maybe next time we have a few days in the same place without the specter of imminent death looming overhead.”

”That'd be a change, huh?” He opened a cupboard, and frowned. ”Where do you keep your Tupperware?”

”I mostly live out of takeout containers,” I said. ”I don't even know if there is Tupperware.”

”I don't know how you haven't starved to death, I honestly don't.” He pulled a roll of tin foil from the cabinet above the stove. ”What's our next move?”

”Head for the Freakshow. A bunch of the dragons work there. I can ask them about renting the old Nest.”

”How much authority do they have?”

I smiled a little, leaning over to s.n.a.t.c.h another piece of roast. ”Well, one of them is the current Nest-mother and first wife of their male, so I'd say they have plenty of authority.”

Mike paused and blinked at me. Finally, he said, ”When you decide to mess with the status quo, you don't think small, do you?”

”Not really.” Prior to discovering William asleep under Manhattan, everyone in the cryptozoological community had a.s.sumed that the dragons were extinct, and that the dragon princesses were the cryptid equivalent of oxp.e.c.k.e.r birds-a species of symbiotic hangers-on who had evolved to live alongside the dragons, and didn't know what to do with themselves once their hosts died off. Finding out that dragon princesses were really female dragons changed everything . . . except for the dragons themselves, who continued on their single-minded path toward total control of the world's gold supply.

Now that the old Nest wasn't necessary for the safety of the Manhattan colony, Candy would probably let us use it, as long as we paid what she considered a fair price. If we talked to her at the Freakshow, I could get Kitty to arbitrate, and make sure that Candy's ”fair price” didn't wind up being something that would bankrupt my entire family for the next hundred years.

”You Price girls, I swear.” Mike produced a loaf of bread from one of the brown paper bags cl.u.s.tered on the counter. ”I'm going to pack some roast to go and make a few sandwiches. You're too thin. Then we should get moving. I want to be out of here by nightfall.”

”Works for me.” We'd have to come back to the apartment at least once. I wouldn't be crushed if I wound up leaving the majority of my possessions behind-it would sting, but I've done worse. There was no way that we could move the mice without having a place to move them to.

And there was no way we could move the mice at all without their permission. I turned and walked down the hall to the linen closet, leaving Mike to his roast. The mice who had been in the living room followed me, cheering again as I opened the closet door.

Most of the closet was taken up by a modified Barbie Dream House. All the windows had been punched out and replaced by wooden scaffolding, which twisted around and around the house like a ribbon around a maypole. The pink paint was entirely gone, covered by a thick coat of gunmetal gray nail polish. The mice had done that part themselves. All I provided was the heavy lifting.

I knelt, putting myself on a level with the top windows of the Pantheistic Cryptid Mouse Dream House. ”I request audience with the Head Priest,” I said. ”I don't have any cheese, or cake, but there's pot roast in the kitchen, and we'll share.”

For once, there was no cheering. Instead, the mice sat silently, and more tiny rodent faces appeared in the other windows, all of them waiting to see what was going to happen next. Finally, a white-whiskered mouse with a squirrel's skull atop his head stepped laboriously out onto the scaffold in front of that top window.

”Your audience is granted,” he squeaked, in a voice that used to be sonorous-by mouse standards, anyway-and now barely carried past the lintel of the closet. ”What do you require, O Arboreal Priestess?”

Aeslin mice live a long time by normal rodent standards, but their lives are short by human standards. I remembered when this Head Priest was young and vital, and full of potentially blasphemous ideals. I grew up, and he grew old. There would be a new Head Priest soon. That knowledge made me deeply sad. ”The Covenant of St. George is here,” I said.

He nodded. ”I know. The G.o.d of Questionable Motivations is one of theirs, at least in body, if not in heart or mind.”

I decided not to think about that too hard. ”They know where we live. They have this address.”

”Ah,” he said, sagely. ”You are here to tell me that we must leave this pleasant home and move to somewhere new, that we might survive to carry the gospel to another generation.”

”Something like that,” I said. ”Can the colony pack up and be ready by tonight? We want to move as soon as possible. It's not safe here anymore.”

”If I tell them we must go, they will be ready,” he said. He reached out one grizzled paw, clearly beckoning. I held my hand out to him, and he placed his paw gently on the tip of my index finger. ”Do not trouble yourself with us, Priestess. We exist only to serve.”

”You do a d.a.m.n good job,” I said. ”Get them ready. I'll leave the pot roast outside the closet, so you can provision yourselves for the trip.”

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