A Local Habitation
Page 36

Jan sighed. “I tried calling my uncle again.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” She shook her head. “I can’t get a person. I left another message.”
“I left a message for him, too, and one for the San Francisco King of Cats. I’m hoping he can help me figure out what would have been able to get the jump on Barbara.”
Jan nodded. “Keep me posted?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Is there anything else you need?”
“Yes, actually,” I said. “I want a list of the people who had access to the cafeteria when Barbara was found. If there are any security cameras that didn’t have mysterious breakdowns just before the killings, I’ll need to see what they recorded. I also want the places where bodies have been found roped off until Quentin and I can go over them—that includes the lawn outside the knowe.”
“Done and done. Do you have any idea what could be behind this?”
“I don’t think it’s a ‘what.’ I think it’s—” I stopped as the overhead lights flickered and died. The computers along the back wall went dark, and something started beeping stridently.
“This isn’t right,” said Jan. Her posture had shifted, reflecting tightly controlled panic.
“You don’t get power outages?” Dim light slanted through the room’s single window, outlining the desks. I walked to the window, pulling the drape aside and looking out at the grounds. “Quentin, check the door.”
I’ll give him this: he moved with admirable urgency, taking up a blocking posture next to the door. He wasn’t letting Jan out until I said he could.
Jan didn’t seem to have noticed. “No, we don’t. The power never goes out.”
“The electric company does it to me all the time.” There was no one on the lawn; just the standard assortment of cats.
“We have generators that kick in before the lights even flicker. We can’t afford to lose power.” She started for the door. “We have systems that should never go off-line. April—”
“Jan, stop.” She froze. “Give me a second. Where are the generators stored, and who has access?”
“They’re in a room next to the servers, and everybody’s got access. I don’t even know if the door locks. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” I started for the door. “We need to go check the generators.”
“Follow me.” She reached for the doorknob. I nodded to Quentin and he stepped aside, letting her lead us out of the room.
The halls were even stranger in the dark, filled with shadows that didn’t quite match the objects casting them. Jan strode through them without flinching. Quentin followed close behind while I dropped back, taking the rear. Maybe we weren’t going to be attacked, but I refused to count on that when Jan was so sure the power couldn’t go out. She knew her company.
Jan stepped into the generator room and screamed.
ELEVEN
I ONLY CAUGHT A GLIMPSE of what was in the room before I yanked Jan back into the hall, slamming the door behind her. “Peter,” she said, staring at the door. “That was Peter.”
“I thought you didn’t have any night vision. How can you be sure?”
“No one else in this company has wings.”
“Damn.” I looked back toward the door. “I need to go in there.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Jan asked, frowning.
“Without backup?” asked Quentin.
“I need to see the body, and that means I need to get the generators back up. How do I do that?” Death doesn’t bother me, but murder makes me edgy, and my lack of weaponry suddenly felt like a potentially fatal mistake. If we got back to the hotel alive, I wasn’t coming here again without my knife and the baseball bat. And maybe a tank, if I could find one fast enough.
“Right.” Jan sighed. “There’s an orange switch on the second box inside the door. If there’s any gas left in the generators, you should be able to force them back online by flipping the switch, waiting thirty seconds, and flipping it again.”
“Okay.” Looking to Quentin, I said, “Stay here. If you see anything out of the ordinary or anyone acting strangely, grab Jan and run; I’ll catch up. Understand?”
“Yes,” he said. If he disapproved of my orders, he wasn’t showing it.
Jan looked like she was going to argue, but quieted when I glared at her. She was starting to display signs of sense.
“Good,” I said, before opening the generator room door and stepping inside.
The room was dark, lit only by a small, thick-glassed window, and looked deserted. That didn’t mean there was nothing in the room with me—just that anything that might be hiding in those shadows knew how to be quiet. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t such a positive thinker.
I paused, scanning the shadows while my eyes adjusted. I caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of one eye and whirled. There was nothing there. The “motion” was just the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the window and glinting along the edge of a steel girder. I stopped, taking a shuddery breath.
Finding the second generator from the door wasn’t hard: I inched along the wall until my thigh hit something sharp, stepped back, and then inched forward again until I hit something else. I wasn’t willing to move away from the wall; Peter was a dark blur at the center of the floor, and I didn’t want to step on him by mistake.
I was jumpier than I thought. I groped around until I found the panel with the switches; figuring out which one to flip was harder. The longer I stood there, the shakier I was getting, and Jan and Quentin were in the hall alone and unarmed. Time mattered. I settled for flipping the largest switch I could find, waiting thirty seconds and flipping it again. My heart thudded in my ears like a steel drum until the sound of the generator revving drowned it out. The engine coughed twice, turned over—and the lights came back on. I almost immediately wished that they hadn’t.
Peter was on his back, barely recognizable as the man we met when we arrived. Death had finally removed his human disguise. He was four feet tall, with delicate antennae and feathered gray hair, lying on a blanket made by his own gray-and-green wings. He’d been a Cornish Pixie, almost the only pixie breed large enough to interact with the bulk of Faerie as an equal.