Which might not be to her benefit.
Olivia switched to Elvish. “I need someplace to live close to Prince True Blood’s encampment. You have empty apartments. I don’t see the problem here.”
He took a deep breath and glanced to the Wyverns again. After a minute, he wet his lips and stated carefully in Elvish. “We demand that people meet certain requirements. They have to be employees or students of the University.”
“I can take a class,” Olivia said.
He opened and shut his mouth a few times.
Olivia scanned the apartment offerings on the wall. They would need room for her and Forest Moss and eventually the baby. A scrape of boot against tile added in a horde of elves, at least at the start. Three bedrooms. There was only one such offering on the wall.
“That one.” Olivia pointed to the flyer. “I want to see it.”
“The penthouse at Webster Hall Apartments?” The agent’s voice threatened to break.
“Yes.”
He named the monthly rent, which given another situation would have had her fleeing the building. It was thousands of dollars a month. How did anyone afford such a place? She swallowed down her fear. First things first: make sure it was acceptable and then see if the Wind Clan truly would foot the bill.
“Show it to us.”
His gaze flicked to the Wyverns again and then slowly he half-bowed. “Yes, certainly.”
Webster Hall was a stately sandstone building on Fifth Avenue next to St. Paul’s. Olivia suppressed a familiar twinge of guilt at the sight of the cross on the steeple. She hadn’t wanted to get married to Troy, had resisted months of bullying before agreeing, had been legally too young, and he had six wives already. She had, however, said vows before God and witnesses. She meant those oaths at the time. And yet, here she was, more or less married to an elf.
Troy’s God might have been the type that damned an abused child to hell for adultery, but Olivia’s God didn’t. In fact, her God might be the reason there were so many tornadoes in Kansas.
Squaring her shoulders, she marched into Webster Hall. Forest Moss, the five Wyverns, and a real estate agent trailed behind her. Thankfully the marines stayed outside.
There was a spacious lobby with expensive-looking leather sofas and a wall of gleaming bronze mailboxes for the tenants. Beyond a locked security door, there was an elevator to the upper floors.
They left two Wyverns in the lobby and squeezed into the elevator car when it arrived. It deposited them in a tiny hallway on the penthouse level.
The front door opened into a small foyer. A small galley kitchen was immediately to the right with a small refrigerator, electric range and a microwave. Closed off to make the most of wall space, the room would be pitch black in a power outage.
Olivia walked into the living room, trying not to like the fact that it was one long wall of high windows. They’d been having Indian summer and the sun baked the room in warmth. Come winter, though, heat would escape through the glass at an alarming rate in a power outage.
“How is the building heated?” Olivia asked.
“There’s central heat and air conditioning.”
All electricity-dependent then. Olivia knew that electricity was fairly easy to take out. One good storm or a well-placed bomb, and a section of the city could be without power for hours, maybe days. The oni had tried to take out the city’s power plant once. There was no fireplace, wood burning or gas, so there wasn’t another way to warm the apartment. She wished she had thought to ask before demanding to see the apartment.
There were three bedrooms, just as stated, but the smallest would hold little more than a crib and a dresser. If the Wyverns continued to sleep within sword’s reach, then the apartment was far too small. Since it had been the largest apartment listed, then this was a dead end.
Olivia sighed and leaned her forehead against the glass. The wall of windows gave the apartment a better view of the Rim than the taller cathedral. She could clearly see the line of destruction running from horizon to horizon in a sweeping arc, marking where a fifty-mile-diameter circle had been punched out of Earth and dropped onto Elfhome. The Rim sheared through city sprawl, streets and buildings reduced to rubble by the transfer. To the northeast lay virgin Elfhome forest: towering ironwood trees and nothing else for hundreds of miles. To southwest, Pittsburgh lay, under siege by oni and alien vegetation, and losing the battle.
Looking at it made her feel completely alone.
She closed her eyes. Please, God, help me. I don’t know what to do.
The real estate agent had gone into professional mode, babbling about the benefits of the apartment. “It’s an amazing view of the old CMU campus. I have always loved Hamerschlag Hall. It’s the one with the rotunda on the roof.”
She opened her eyes to peer at the far hillside. There were several large old classical-looking stone buildings. The one with the rotunda was stunningly beautiful. She hadn’t heard of a second school in Oakland. “CMU campus?”
“CMU was Carnegie Mellon University. Well, still is, only it moved to Earth.”
Maybe she was thinking too small. She had a small army trailing behind her. They could take over a large building. Not this one; it was too dependent on electricity. Something they could install wood stoves in. They could do radical infrastructure changes on a big building. Fortified areas. Escape routes. Hydroponics.
“Hammerslag?” She pointed because she knew she was butchering the name. “Is that empty?”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “The EIA uses the campus as overflow offices and barracks. Director Maynard’s offices are downtown at the PPG castle, but during Shutdown, there’s an EIA-only access road open directly to the campus. That way their personnel aren’t caught in the traffic jams.”
She had her hands full with the elves; she didn’t want to add the EIA. Still there were dozens of old stately buildings on the hillside. “The EIA uses everything over there?”
“Everything except the old Phipps Conservatory; that building way to the right.” He pointed to the glimmer of glass through the trees.
“Like a greenhouse conservatory?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How old is old?”
He spread his hands to indicate ignorance. “Over a hundred years old. I think it was built in 1890—so—a hundred forty years. It didn’t fare well after the first Shutdown. It was very dependent on admissions to stay open. It was a big drop from a population of two million people living within an hour drive time to sixty thousand.”
“So it’s closed?” she asked.
“Yes, it closed a few years ago.”
“Perfect.”
The Phipps Conservatory was like something out of a fairy tale, an elegant and fanciful expanse of glass that glittered in the Indian summer sun. It sat on a hill by itself, separated from the rest of Oakland by a deep ravine spanned by a wide stone bridge. Remnants of banners rustled in the wind as they hiked up the hill toward it, offering hope that the neglect to the building wouldn’t be too extensive. She could make out vague shapes of towering plants within.
Getting past the locked front doors proved to be simple for impatient elves with magically sharp swords. Better yet, once they could unlock the doors from the other side, Forest Moss was able to repair the damage done to the door with a few gestures and words.
The front of the building was set into a hillside and capped with a great glass dome that washed the area in sun. Judging by the dozen round tables, each hosting four chairs, there had been a café on one side of the foyer. A quick exploration revealed a small working kitchen. Across the hall was a denuded gift shop with one giant garden gnome looking forlornly at the empty shelves. There were also bathrooms with multiple stalls.