Page 73 of Backpacking through Bedlam

Verity looked between us with wide eyes. “Dad is starting to make so much more sense,” she said.

I snorted.

“Sorry to interrupt this delightful look into the history of my new family, but weren’t we supposed to be moving by now?” Sally folded her arms. “Honestly, with the way you people like to talk, it’s a miracle you ever got around to having kids, much less selling your souls to the crossroads and winding up in horrible bottle dimensions.”

“That’s specific,” said Verity.

“The mice will tell you all about it,” I said. “Sally’s right. We need to go. I know you’re not coming, and I know Sarah’s not coming, but is anyone else actually going to come along with us as backup?”

“The dragons are refusing,” said Verity. “They don’t trust you. They also don’t want you looking for their children alone, so Istas and Ryan will be going with you.”

“Istas . . . isn’t that the waheela you used to work with?”

She nodded, looking pleased that I’d remembered. “Yup, and Ryan’s her husband. He’s a tanuki. They make it work.”

“Okay. Cool.” I pushed my hair back with one hand. “Where are we leaving from?”

“Come on. I’ll show you.” She turned to leave the room.

The rest of us followed.

Ever since she was a little kid, Verity had been drawn to the highest point in her environment. My grandparents used to joke about me pursuing an arboreal lifestyle, with as much time as they spent fishing me out of trees, but compared to her, I had always kept my feet firmly on the ground. If she had a life motto, it was probably “I can climb that.”

It’s normal for the Aeslin mice to play around with titles for a little while after a new baby is born to the family, since we can’t really know what kind of person someone is going to be until they’ve had a little time to grow into themselves. Verity was dubbed the Arboreal Priestess by the time she turned three, and there has never, to the best of my knowledge, been any clerical question of changing that.

Taking all that into consideration, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise when Verity led us up three flights of stairs to the slaughterhouse roof, which had been partially converted into a rooftop garden, complete with herb beds, a pigeon coop, and several boxy things I thought were probably beehives. It managed to surprise me all the same. Sometimes the least surprising things manage to turn themselves around and become the most surprising of all.

Three people were already up there, waiting for us: Dominic, now wearing charcoal-gray leggings and a matching turtleneck, the Inuit woman I’d seen before, who had changed into a rose-pink-and-cherry-red confection of a dress, including matching shoes and parasol, pink-streaked black hair tied up in curled pigtails, and the man whose lap she’d been sitting on downstairs, whose clothing matched Dominic’s. All three looked over at our approach, Dominic stepping forward to meet us.

“Are they ready?” he asked.

“I’d ask why you were so sure we’d be going, but that would just waste time, so instead I’m going to ask how we’re supposed to get down from here,” I said. “Even if I were big on parkour, which I’m not, Sally’s had no training in jumping off buildings, and Thomas is out of practice.”

“I assume you can all handle a ten-foot drop?” Verity gestured over the edge of the roof. “The nightclub next door belongs to venture capitalists who reinforced the hell out of the place in order to get away with violating noise ordinances on a nightly basis. I’m not really sure how they expected that to be cost-effective, but whatever, I’m not a rich twenty-something who made it big in tech. Anyway, jump down to there and you’ll be fine. They won’t hear you land, and if you cross to the back of the building, there’s a fire escape that goes all the way to the ground on the block behind this one. Unless someone’s there and looking up when you exit, they won’t see you leave.”

“Verity is trustworthy on the matter of exiting via overland routes,” said Istas, almost serenely. “Her acquaintance with the ground is fleeting at best.”

“We have roughly another four hours of daylight,” said Dominic.

“Do you have any idea where these teams are based?” asked Thomas. “They won’t all be clustered together. That would be bad operational security.”

“There’s one in Hoboken, on the other side of the river,” said Dominic. “We think there’s another in Brooklyn. The third is likely somewhere in Midtown. They may be based out of a hotel, or doing a long-term lease on one of the illegal sublets that people advertise online. But they won’t bring a bunch of kidnapped children back to the place they’re living and operating out of, they’ll have secured a separate location or locations.”

“The fact that you listed those three areas first tells me you think they have the children somewhere in the fourth,” said Thomas. “Where would that be?”

Dominic actually looked faintly guilty before squaring his shoulders in an almost-military posture, turning to Thomas, and saying, “The East Village, sir. We’ve based our assumptions off verified activity and where it seems to be centered. There are too many incidents in that area to explain by assigning them to the other teams. It would make sense for the fourth team to be based there.”

“We’ve both retired from the Covenant, son,” said Thomas, voice gentle. “I’m not your superior. You don’t need to hesitate before you speak to me, and you don’t need me to approve of your ideas before they can be voiced. You know this city and we don’t. We’re following you into the field.”

Dominic glanced to Verity, then Istas and Ryan, as if looking for confirmation. When all of them nodded, he returned his attention to Thomas, standing a little taller and a little less rigid at the same time. “We’ve spotted an agent we believe to be a woman named Margaret Healy with the team in the East Village. More than anything else, that makes me believe they’re the central command. Margaret has been dispatched to New York before, and as you say, knowledge of the territory is essential if you want to succeed in your mission.”

“Then we go to the East Village,” I said. “Just show us how to get there.”

“That, I will do,” said Istas, and stepped up onto the edge of the building. Ryan hurried after her and actually jumped down first. She turned to face us and fell backward off the ledge a moment later, as nonchalantly as if she plummeted off buildings every day. Which maybe she did. I’ve never spent much social time with a waheela; I don’t know what they do for fun.

Dominic was the next over the edge, pausing to kiss Verity on the cheek before he went. I followed him, getting a running start. I’m not necessarily afraid of falling, but I’ve always found it just a little easier if I’m moving quickly when it happens. Like making my own carnival ride, only you don’t need a ticket and there’s no safety rail.

Ryan was standing with Istas in his arms when I landed next to them, having apparently caught her before her impractical shoes could cause a problem. He set her on her feet as I straightened, and she turned a small, satisfied smile on me.