“They sent her here because somebody suspected you’d been compromised, didn’t they?” asked Uncle Mike. He sounded almost gentle. Dominic’s obvious distress was getting to him. It was definitely getting to me; it was rolling off him in waves, making the air seem thick and heavy. Some emotions are harder to handle than others.
“Yes.” Dominic looked from me to Uncle Mike. “I don’t know how. I don’t know what I did, or didn’t do, or said, or didn’t say. I was so careful . . .”
“Kiddo, they’ve got charms and telepathy barriers on these people. They’re loaded for metaphysical bear. For all we know, they’ve got a witch or something back at headquarters who did some remote viewing on you when you didn’t even realize you were being watched. That would explain why they were able to drop Margaret at Sarah’s hotel. But just because they got suspicious, that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.” Beyond joining their goddamn cult in the first place.
I try not to eavesdrop on other people’s minds most of the time; it makes me feel a little sleazy, like I’m living down to their expectations of my species. Still, that thought was loud enough that there was no way I could miss it. “Uncle Mike, he didn’t join,” I said. “He was born into the Covenant, the same way all of us were born into our lives. Please don’t take that out on him. Not right now.”
Uncle Mike flinched a little, glancing in my direction. There was a brief flicker of apology in his emotional state. Then he focused back on Dominic, and said, “What matters now is that you’re here with us, not there with them, and you’re going to help us get her back. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re on the up and up, we’re cool, you and me.”
A small throat was cleared from the center of the folding table, audible only because it was timed to come at the exact end of Uncle Mike’s statement. I turned to see one of the Aeslin mice standing there, waiting to be noticed. It was the one Verity referred to as the Head Priest. He was wearing a sequin-spangled cape that used to be part of one of her dance costumes, and his whiskers were as white as if they’d been baby powdered. They hadn’t been. This was a very old mouse. Two other mice, younger, wearing unspangled capes, crouched a foot away from him. They must have been sent to assist him on what would be, to a mouse, a very dangerous journey.
“I come to speak the Will of the Colony,” announced the mouse priest.
“Hello, mouse,” said Istas calmly, looking entirely unsurprised by the sudden intrusion of talking rodents on the conversation.
“Hello, carnivore,” said the mouse priest. He turned and bowed to Uncle Mike and Dominic. “Hail to the High Priest of Goddammit Eat Something Already, and to the God of Hard Choices in Dark Places.”
Ryan blinked. “What?”
“It’s a mouse thing, just roll with it, you’ll be happier that way,” I advised. “Hail,” I added, to the mouse.
He sat up a little straighter, wrapping his pink thread of a tail around his feet, and adjusted his grip on the carved pencil he was using as a staff. “The Colony has discussed the disappearance of the Arboreal Priestess,” he said. “We have further discussed the words of the Priestess before she was Taken from us, and have decided that we will Abide by her Wisdom.”
“What?” I asked.
Uncle Mike blinked. “Are you sure?” he asked the mouse.
The mouse priest nodded, the squirrel skull perched atop his head making it look like he was going to topple over. “We have served in this capacity before. We will serve in this capacity again. We are at your disposal.”
“Before Verity left, she talked about using the mice as spies,” said Ryan. “She even said that they were pretty good at it. Being mice means they can get into a lot of small spaces.”
“We do not wish to leave our Priestess in the grip of the false Priestess who has taken her,” said the mouse priest. “We understand that it will be dangerous. We do not mind the risk.”
“None of us do,” added Ryan. “Verity’s not my family, but she’s my friend. Whatever has to be done, I’m going to do it.”
Dominic nodded. “Then perhaps there is a chance after all. But we need to move, and we need to move quickly.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Uncle Mike. “Let’s get started.”
We all stopped interrupting Dominic after that—even the mice were quiet—as we allowed him to get down to the business of properly explaining what he knew. According to Dominic, Margaret had been working on her own when she set the trap that eventually snared Verity: the anti-telepathy charm we took off her unconscious body was laced with a compulsion spell that forced Verity right back into her nasty little clutches. It was a neat trick. I might even have been impressed by it, if it hadn’t been so likely to get Verity killed.
Dominic only knew that Verity had been taken because he’d been with one of the other Covenant agents—Peter Brandt—when Margaret called and asked for backup. Peter had gone without him, and Dominic had followed at what he guessed would be a safe distance. “Thanks to Verity and her maddening insistence on taking the rooftops whenever possible, I had a whole set of routes open to me that they barely realized existed. I was not seen.”
Privately, I wasn’t so sure, but I didn’t interrupt. We were out of time for interruptions.
There are times when I wonder how humans get anything done. Talking is so slow compared to the speed of thought. I could have told everyone everything Dominic knew in a few seconds, if I’d been attuned to them all and willing to risk bruising their brains a little bit. And then I realize that thinking like that just proves that I’ll always be a cuckoo, no matter how hard I try not to be, and I have to force myself back into the slow, comforting safety of speech.
“Where’s Verity being held?” asked Uncle Mike.
“An old warehouse that the Covenant purchased during the last purge. Much like this locale,” Dominic indicated the Nest, “it has been in private hands for so long that most have ceased viewing it as a building. It has become a part of the landscape.”
“Well, then, I guess we’re landscapers,” said Uncle Mike. “We’re going to need some muscle for this.”
Slowly, Ryan smiled. “I think I can help you with that.”
Istas looked up at him, her thoughts turning quizzical. Then she smiled as well. “Oh, lovely,” she said. “I do so enjoy spending time with my coworkers in a social setting.”
Ryan was on the phone with Kitty, explaining why he needed to borrow half her staff for a potentially deadly mission, when my own phone started ringing. Phones are tricky. They have no minds for me to read, which makes them a good exercise in telling what people mean from nothing but tone. That also makes them frustrating as hell, and a bad idea when I’m already stressed. I pulled it out of my pocket, checking the display to see who was calling. I was about to press “ignore” when Uncle Mike’s hand landed on my shoulder.
“Take it,” he advised. “You need to talk to him, and it’s not like you’re going anywhere dangerous.”
“Right,” I said, not sure whether I should be annoyed with him for meddling or grateful for the excuse. I pressed “answer” instead, bringing the phone to my ear as I started walking away from the others. If I was going to have this conversation, I was going to have it in “my” room. “Hi, Artie. What’s up?”
“I hadn’t heard from you in a few hours, and you’re not online. You’ve got the Covenant in town, Verity’s not answering her phone, I got worried, hey-presto, I’m calling you.” Artie’s voice was a warm, familiar presence in my ear, conjuring images of afternoons spent lying on his bedroom floor arguing about whether Wolverine’s claws could pierce Captain America’s shield. (They so could, assuming Wolverine cared enough to try. And the fact that I know that is why Artie and I get along so well, and why Verity despairs of me ever going on a real date, with a non-virtual boy.)