Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
CHAPTER 15
By the time we made it back to the van, the sky had grown a few shades darker. The sight of Zelda’s blue paint filled me with relief. The van hadn’t been incinerated or otherwise demolished. So long as Eleriss and Jakatra hadn’t decided to pay us back with slashed tires...
Perhaps fearing the same thing, Simon jogged ahead. While he was doing a lap around the van, his gaze toward the tires, I noticed that the driver-side window had been rolled up. It had been down before, hadn’t it? Yes, and I’d cracked the one on the passenger side a few inches too. Now all of the windows were up.
“I think our friends may have visited the van again,” I said.
Simon followed my gaze to the windows, then he tried the side door. We’d locked it, but he opened it without needing a key. “I knew it! I’ve got those punks now!”
He jumped inside, his fists balled, then lunged for the corner where he kept the Dirt Viper.
“Huh, it’s still here,” he said.
I climbed inside. “If they found their sword, they wouldn’t need a metal detector anymore.”
“Their sword?” Simon asked.
“You didn’t hear that part?”
“Must have been when I was grunting and straining to get out of that hole.”
“When they left, Temi saw them carrying a bundle she thought might be a sword,” I said. Temi had fallen behind on the jog back to the van, but she was limping out of the riverbed now. I gave her a wave, then turned the motion into a scratch of my jaw and peered around the van. “If the metal detector is here, what’s missing?”
“I’m... not sure. But I can find out.” Simon headed toward the front. “Could be they enjoyed the springiness of our seat cushions the last time they broke in and came in to rest their feet.”
“Yes, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to jump into random people’s cars to take a load off, if only I knew how to pick the locks.”
Simon had left his MacBook on the dashboard, but he frowned when he got up there. It was upside down on the floor. “Weird.”
I sniffed. “Does the van smell like cleaning solution to you?”
“Now that you mention it... yes, which is odd. Because we don’t clean.” He picked up the computer and prodded a key, bringing the screen to life, though it brightened gradually instead of simply flashing on, like usual.
“Hey, I sweep out the bread crumbs now and then.”
Temi leaned inside. “Perhaps we should discuss this from the safety of town. It’s starting to get dark, and it took us a while to drive out here.”
“Good idea.” Even if the monster was twenty miles to the north, I didn’t relish the idea of navigating the tangle of unmarked forest service and logging roads in the dark.
“Wait,” Simon said. “Let’s see what my camera footage caught.”
“You recorded the interior of the van?”
“Knowing those thieves were parked right up the gully? Of course, I did.”
I gave him a quick look, wondering if it was “thieves” he’d hoped to catch footage of. Maybe he’d thought the monster would be out here and that the riders had been heading out to deal with it. And maybe his recording had less to do with getting me a language sample and more to do with catching that thing on video.
Simon plopped into the passenger seat without meeting my gaze and brought up the webcam software.
Temi looked at the woods, then climbed in and shut the door. “Can you drive, Delia?”
“Yes, if someone didn’t lose the keys in the river.” I poked Simon in the shoulder.
He was fast-forwarding through footage of the van’s interior. Without taking his focus from the screen, he fished the keys out of his pocket and handed them to me.
I didn’t get further than plugging the right one into the ignition when he said, “Ah ha!”
My curiosity got the best of me again, and I leaned over to watch. One figure in a black leather jacket hopped into the van, then the other followed. Jakatra carried the bundle Temi had mentioned. That did look like a sword hilt sticking out of the fabric wrapping. The camera had recorded the sound of them speaking, though it was hard to make out because they hadn’t been anywhere near the built-in microphone. But maybe with enough enhancement...
“What language is that?” Temi drew closer, tilting an ear toward the laptop.
“I haven’t figured it out yet,” I said, “but Simon’s going to save that video for me. With an mp3 of the audio, I bet I can find some language identification program out there to run it through.”