“Why don’t you come with us,” I said. “Show us where it is.”
“Okay,” Bernie said, surprising me. “Let me lock up my office.” He turned and walked down the hall.
“That guy seem weird to you?” Harper asked.
“Hella weird,” Levi said.
I stepped out of the office and saw Bernie disappearing not into one of the offices in the hall but through the stairwell doors.
“Shit, he’s running,” I said.
We bolted after him, Harper and Levi leaving me in their dust as we raced for the stairs. Bernie Barnes flew down those steps ahead of them, outpacing even shifter speed with his lead. Of course, even with super-speed, there’s only so quickly they could charge down four flights of stairs.
Make that five. Bernie headed for the basement and there we lost him.
The bottom floor stairway opened into a cramped hall with three doors leading off. No sign of Bernie. The hum of a furnace room greeted me as I slid to a stop beside Harper.
“Which door?” Harper said. She sniffed the air. “I can’t smell him. Just dampness.”
The air was humid and clammy. I assumed the door with the vents in it was to the mechanical room, so that left two others. Levi pulled open one and revealed a janitorial closet. Not that way. The other door opened to a set of iron stairs that led even further down. We listened at the top of those steps but heard nothing from below over the noise from the old furnace.
“I think that might lead to the steam tunnels. I vote that way.” Harper started down the steps.
“Unless he’s hiding in the mechanical room waiting for us to go away. Maybe we should split up,” Levi said.
“Because splitting the party always leads to win, right?” I said. “Oh, wait, no, it usually leads to death.”
“This isn’t a game,” Levi hissed at me. “My brother could be down there. That guy knows something. He could be the evil behind all this.”
“That guy?” Harper said. “But he’s so chubby and… nerdy.”
“Oh right, so evil can’t look like a dopey professor? Do you even read comic books?”
“You trying to accuse me of being a fake nerd girl? Seriously?”
“Hey, you two, stop it.” I stepped between them. They were both irritated, their shoulders thrown back, heads forward, posturing like they wanted a fight. Sure, Harper and Levi arguing wasn’t unusual but they didn’t generally do it in a way that looked like they were about to shift and tear each other apart.
Levi’s lips peeled back and his eyes went from dark brown to golden as he gathered his power. He was about to shift.
That’s when I sensed the trap. Magic, the same shadowy magic that was binding Rose, coiled around the room like a snake waiting to strike. Waiting for the two shifters to reach into that other world where their animal selves waited and shift. I had no idea what the trap would do to them. I doubted it would freeze them like Rose, it would take a lot more power than I felt in this room to do something that complicated, but I’d put money on at least knocking them out. It was a pretty hefty spell gathering here.
“STOP,” I yelled at Levi as Harper growled behind me and Levi tensed to spring.
The trap sprung as he went from man to wolverine in less then a heartbeat. I threw as much power as I could yank up from within myself into another silver circle around all three of us and threw myself into Levi’s furry body.
Shadowy power swirled around my circle and then dissipated with a discordant chime that rang inside my head as I held onto the image of a silver protecting circle even as I tried to hold back a wolverine almost as big as I was. Levi’s claws ripped into my back and then he was a man again, holding me instead of me holding him.
“Shit. Jade. Shit. I’m so sorry.” Levi shook in my arms as he pulled away and then reached out again, his hands bloody.
“It’s okay. It was a trap,” I managed to say.
“Jade. Your back,” Harper said. She knelt behind me and reached for the shreds of my shirt.
“It’s not so bad,” I said, though it felt pretty unfun. The pain was not the white-hot stabs of the bullet wound the night before but a more twisting ache. I’d already used too much magic warding off and diffusing the trap. What was a little more? I called on more power and it came even easier than the day before, my sorceress skills apparently not as rusty as I’d thought. I sealed myself off from the pain, pushing power at the wounds and imagining I was a cleric casting a cure moderate wounds spell.
“Shit,” Harper said. “How did you do that?”