Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Bright and early on Monday morning, I pushed through the revolving doors of Dark Enterprises with Ms. Crenshaw’s Starbucks order in my hand.
I’d dressed in my favorite cardigan, and I held my head high as I marched across the lobby for the last time.
I was doing the right thing, I told myself.
The heroic thing. I felt heroic, too, as I gave the receptionist a firm nod—she didn’t notice, but that was fine—on my way to the elevators.
I’m saving everyone in this building, I reflected humbly, by turning myself in. God, I was so brave.
I’d called Eric on my way into work, just to hear his voice one last time, but he hadn’t picked up.
He hadn’t responded to my texts, either.
Maybe he was in an early-morning meeting about finance or whatever.
I was going to try again, and keep trying, until I spoke to him.
I’d already planned what I was going to say, something beautiful and inspirational whose real meaning he would only appreciate after I was gone.
Then he would treasure those final words for the rest of his life, weeping softly whenever he recalled them.
Maybe he would have them tattooed somewhere sexy, like across his chest or around one thigh.
I was thinking about Eric’s thighs when the building’s wards snapped shut around me.
It was a strange and terrifying sensation, the air itself tightening like an invisible shroud across every inch of my body.
I froze midstride, one foot in the air, as sigils made of purple light etched themselves onto the floor beneath me, causing the stone around them to sizzle.
My gaze darted wildly as I struggled to move.
The young woman seated behind the receptionist’s desk at the center of the lobby was certainly watching me now.
Other employees gave me curious glances as they walked past, but no one stopped to help.
I wouldn’t have, either. Best not to get involved with someone who wouldn’t make it to the end of the day.
I should have anticipated this. Of course DE wouldn’t let me stroll up to the thirteenth floor as if this were an ordinary day. They’d already sent a death squad after me—they weren’t taking any chances.
I stood there for what felt like hours until one of the elevators chimed and disgorged a team of four Security personnel.
Dressed identically in black suits and sporting the plastic earpieces I associated with the Secret Service, they surrounded me without saying a word.
One of them bent down to tap the burning sigils with a narrow silver rod and I lurched forward, no longer supported by the air.
Strong hands gripped my arms, keeping me upright, as someone plucked the coffee out of my hand and someone else grabbed the messenger bag off my shoulder.
Then I was hustled into the elevator so fast that my shoes barely touched the ground.
The four of them practically filled the elevator by themselves, leaving me crushed between their hulking forms as the doors rolled closed.
My heart hammered away in my chest and I tasted bile in the back of my throat, but I didn’t speak as the elevator began to rise smoothly.
I was determined to meet my fate with dignity and calm.
We came to a halt almost immediately at the second floor, home to Janitorial Services as well as Security.
Despite my best efforts at self-control, I started breathing in short, harsh gasps as they dragged me down a dimly lit corridor.
I couldn’t see anything except for the broad back of the guard in front of me, but everything was quiet apart from the brisk, heavy footsteps of the people around me.
It was too quiet, in fact. Where were the screams, the pleas for mercy?
I expected to hear them here of all places, and their absence was the scariest detail of all.
The four Security personnel brought me to an unmarked door and then into a small room that looked like it had been ripped from a darkly Scandinavian police procedural—sleek metal table, harsh lights, walls covered with a mosaic of panels in ten different shades of gray.
I was shoved into a chair at the table with such force that my teeth clicked together, and then three of the towering people left.
The one who remained was the biggest, with a neck significantly wider than his head.
“Please make it quick,” I said in a shaking voice as he took up a position behind me.
“Be quiet,” he rumbled.
“Okay, but—”
“If you don’t shut up,” he said in an accent that was pure New York, “I’m gonna break your teeth.”
I shut up.
Minutes crawled past as I sat there, hands twisting anxiously in my lap.
When the door finally swung open and Ms. Crenshaw walked in, I experienced a rush of terror mingled with relief.
The moment had arrived at last. I’d hoped to speak to her alone, to explain why I’d done what I’d done, but this would have to do.
Her gaze was icily dispassionate as she stood across the table from me, arms folded. “Good morning, Colin.”
“Ms. Crenshaw, I need to tell you—”
All she did was lift a hand, but it stopped my breathless words far more effectively than any threat of physical violence.
“When you entered the building this morning, our protective wards detected the signature of certain unwelcome magicks. Upon investigation of your bag, our people found this.” Leaning down, she placed a small object on the table in front of me.
Mouth dry, I stared at the pendant I’d picked up from the ground the day before. “I don’t understand.”
“Why do you have this?”
“They dropped it.”
“ ‘They’?”
“The Firing Squad.” She stared at me, expressionless. “They came for me yesterday. You must know that.”
The silence deepened. “Why would the company send a remediation team after you?” Ms. Crenshaw finally asked.
I opened my mouth and then closed it again.
“Have you done something that merits termination, Colin?”
“N-no,” I stammered instinctively. “Of course not.”
“And yet you believe the Firing Squad attempted to detain you.”
I watched her uncertainly. “They’ve been following me. Two of them. And yesterday they—” I trailed off under her impassive scrutiny.
“If our people wanted you gone, Colin, you would not be here now.” Ms. Crenshaw said that with a calm certainty that made my skin crawl. “Where did this happen?”
“Fort Tryon Park.”
“You were alone?”
I held her gaze with effort. “Yes.”
“And you said there were two assailants?”
“A man and a woman. I’d seen them both before. Following me.”
“How did you evade them yesterday?”
“Some other people showed up,” I lied, thinking fast. If the company hadn’t targeted me after all, I had to keep Eric out of this. “They scared them away. Then I found this lying on the ground.” I nodded at the pendant on the table.
She studied me carefully. “And you brought it here this morning. Why?”
“I was going to hand it in. Along with myself. To you.”
“Because you believed the company wanted you dead.”
I hesitated. “Because I couldn’t imagine any other reason why I would be followed.”
“I see.” Ms. Crenshaw stayed completely still, arms folded, weighing me with icy consideration.
Then she picked up the pendant and studied it.
“We would never issue something so ostentatious to our people. This belonged to an agent of the Seraphic Conclave. It’s imbued with basic magicks intended to locate the person carrying it.
” One corner of her lip curled upward in an eloquent expression of disdain. “Rather like microchipping a dog.”
“Wait,” I started to say, “so—”
“It wasn’t us who came after you, Colin. You were targeted by dangerous idealists who want everyone in this building dead.”
I stared at her, jaw slack.
Ms. Crenshaw held the pendant in the palm of her hand and spoke a rapid series of syllables. Then she tossed it back onto the table in front of me where it began to smoke and twist, the metal bubbling until it had been reduced to a smoldering piece of slag.
My heart raced as I looked back up at my boss. Would she destroy me next? “Ms. Crenshaw, I didn’t know,” I blurted. “I really didn’t.”
“Bringing a Conclave talisman onto the premises constitutes a serious security breach. If I suspected you knowingly smuggled it in here…” She let the rest of that sentence hang unsaid in the air between us.
“I didn’t! I swear!” Sweat beaded on my forehead as she watched me.
The moment stretched, tension building until I wanted to scream, before she said, “I believe you.”
I slumped in my chair as if someone had cut the strings holding me up. Lowering my head, I took several deep, shaky breaths while my terror slowly ebbed away.
“What I want to know,” Ms. Crenshaw added a moment later, “is why the Conclave targeted you in particular.”
I had to swallow a couple of times before I could speak. “Is this what they do?” I asked hoarsely. “Stalk our employees?”
“The Conclave has been a thorn in our side for a very long time. Centuries, in fact. They were established during one of the early Crusades to hunt down practitioners of dark magicks among the so-called infidels occupying the Holy Land. But unbeknownst to the medieval Church, they became practitioners themselves after one of our own people gave them the secrets of the Oldest Ones.” Ms. Crenshaw’s jaw tightened.
“They tell themselves that their righteous ends justify a reliance on the black arts, but they’re hypocrites, as are all supposed do-gooders. ”
I listened in growing dismay. Eric and I had been attacked by modern-day Crusaders? “So they’re evangelical Christians? The kind that burn books?”