Chapter 17 #2
As Lienna clicked through a few unoccupied properties suitable for two rogues to sneak into and catch some shut-eye, I watched the time drain away. Fifteen minutes had come and gone.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Her lips pressing into an unhappy line, Lienna pulled a bundle from her satchel—her leather grimoire and a coil notebook. Extricating the notebook, she jotted down the rental property details, then closed the search. All that remained was the TOR browser with the mole-less chat.
The green cursor continued its relentless blinking, the rest of the window black and empty.
Lienna exited the mole chat, presumably for the last time, shut down the laptop, and pulled out the USB stick. She returned the beleaguered student’s laptop to its former position, and we slipped out of the library.
In silence, we exited the university and stepped back into the gray, overcast light of the city street. Lienna took the lead, directing us to the same underground metro station from whence we’d come.
We boarded the train and sank into our seats amid a crowd of Catalan commuters.
“So,” I said after a few minutes, “the mole can’t help us. They’re either in hiding, on the run, or captured.”
Lienna nodded. “They may or may not have had information for us, but regardless, we have no way of knowing how, when, or where to expect assassins, or if they might be tracking us with stolen mementos. So we need to keep moving.”
“And our first stop will be Dr. Ricard Ballester’s museum. We figure out where he stashed the grimoire, confiscate it, and head straight out of Barcelona.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Lienna slid her hand into mine, and I gave it a soft squeeze.
After a few stops, we disembarked and headed above ground to find our un-booked lodgings. The neighborhood was remarkably similar to the area around the university, with wide multi-lane roads, intermittent trees, and stone apartment buildings as far as the eye could see.
As we crossed the road, my thoughts flipped between the mole’s unknown fate and the grimoire that might explain how to power up my archmythic abilities. A tug on my hand brought me up short. My fingers were still tangled with Lienna’s, and she’d come to an abrupt halt.
She was staring at the ground between her shoes, her eyes wide and her expression shifting from disbelief to dread.
I looked down. The sidewalk was tiled, and on each small square was a simple carving: a flower made of a single circle with four petals. It was identical to the design on her keychain—the one we’d found the assassin carrying.
“I remember now,” she breathed. “The keychains were souvenirs from a family vacation to Barcelona. I was twelve.”
Releasing my hand, she turned in a circle, analyzing our surroundings.
“It’s got to be a coincidence, though, right?” I asked, shifting closer to her as annoyed pedestrians brushed past us. “That the keychain is from Barcelona, and now we’re in Barcelona?”
She stood there for a moment, all her attention focused inward. “I need to call my dad.”
“Now?”
“Yes.” She turned to face a café on the ground floor of the nearest apartment complex, where several patrons were seated at tables on the sidewalk, enjoying their evening meal. “Guy with the book. Cover me.”
I didn’t bother to remind her of our rule about only making calls when we were leaving a location. Rules were meant to be broken, right? Did that still apply to self-imposed security precautions while being pursued across the globe by a nigh-omnipotent and wholly amoral cabal?
Following on her heels, I created a halluci-bomb duplicate of the unsuspecting bookworm’s phone. Lienna rushed past the table, swiped the cell phone and continued onward. Stopping outside a hair salon two shops down from the café, she raised the phone to her ear.
I stood beside her, dropping the warp and double-checking that no one, the café bookworm included, had noticed the theft.
“Dad,” she said, “it’s me. I need to—yes, I’m fine. Is the house secure? Has anyone suspicious been inside?”
Her brow furrowed as she listened to her father’s answer. From farther up the street, a young man with a dolly cart full of bright orange fuel canisters wheeled his cargo toward us, banging a metal stick against them as he walked.
“My stuff from the precinct, is it in my room? Has anyone touched it?”
The distinctive clang from the cart guy grew louder. Lienna turned away from the noise, covering her other ear.
“Do you remember those matching keychain spells we made when I was a kid?” she asked. “Do you still have yours?”
Above us, a woman stuck her head out of a third-floor window and shouted something in Catalan at the young man. As he shouted back, I started a new warp—wiping out the noise for Lienna so she could concentrate.
The vociferous, multi-story discussion ceased, and the canister-hawker dragged his goods toward the building’s entrance.
Beside me, Lienna’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Okay. Yeah, thanks for checking.”
She ended the call, powered off the phone, and leaned against the wall. I reclined next to her and touched the back of her hand.
“I remembered what the spell is.” Tugging the keychain from her pocket, she held it up.
“When we were on that Barcelona trip, Mom and I lost track of Dad in a market, and I freaked out. I thought he’d been abducted or something.
So to make me feel better, we made a matching set of spells we could use like a little homing beacon to find each other.
We never actually used them, but Dad always carried his.
I did too—until I found out about the bribes. ”
“So he still has his?” I asked.
“Yeah. And he said there’s been nothing suspicious at the house—no sign of a break-in or anything.” She grimaced. “I must have left the keychain at the precinct, and that’s how the Consilium got it.”
Exhaling, I rubbed a hand over my forehead and into my hair, pushing my ball cap up. The feeling of wrongness, of danger closing in, that had dogged us through Oman still chilled my bloodstream. If anything, the feeling was even stronger.
I resettled my hat on my head, ensuring the brim was pulled low. “Let’s get some rest. Tomorrow, we have a grimoire to secure.”
Then we needed to get the hell out of this city before we found out if my paranoia was running away with me—or if this city was as dangerous as it felt.