Riley saved her, tipping the entire table over on his master. The boy, too, was stronger than he seemed. The table’s edge landed squarely on Garrick’s shin, splintering the bone.
“What?” said Chevie. “You’re on my side now?”
Riley held up his left hand and Chevie saw blood congealed on the thumb.
“Always,” he said, and Chevie understood. The boy was a magician’s apprentice. He had pierced his own flesh, not Duff’s, risking Garrick’s wrath to save the agent’s life.
“We should go, Agent,” said Riley urgently.
“Yeah,” said Chevie, then rubbed her throat and coughed. “Yep. Going would be good.”
She tucked the Timekey inside her blouse and ushered Riley toward the door.
Shots punched through the table and into the ceiling. Garrick was still fighting, in spite of the terrible agony he must be feeling.
“We should have killed him,” said Riley. “Killing the devil cannot be a sin.”
Until quite recently, Chevie would have scoffed at this statement for its superstition and dubious morality, but now she was coming around to the idea.
“Later,” she said. “Later.”
They were close to the stairway when half a dozen shots ripped into the bannisters, showering them with wood chips. Chevie grabbed Riley’s collar and shunted him behind the sofa.
Riley fell and saw between the sofa legs that the lady was recovering her senses and had rolled onto her elbows. “Victoria is alive.”
“Good. I doubt Garrick will spend a bullet on her when we are the ones breaking his bones with furniture.”
The broken bone did not hurt Garrick as much as it would a normal person. The quantum magician instructed his nerve endings to hush their messages to the brain, which took a little of the white-hot pain from his injury. He was perfectly aware of the damage done to his limb. His internals were clearer to him than the calcium tungstate photographs those Frost brothers had used to see inside mice. He was suffering from a compound fracture of the tibia inflicted by his own boy. He tried to heal himself, but the process was infuriatingly slow, and he could feel it draining his energies.
Garrick felt the injustice like rising nausea.
“Riley!” he called. “Riley.”
Riley ducked low behind the sofa as if the word could harm him.
“We need to be leaving,” he whispered to Chevie. “You’re the expert in these matters, being some form of agent. Lead on, I says.”
Chevie did not feel like much of an expert.
I am only seventeen, she wanted to say. I shouldn’t even be here. I am not even a legitimate FBI agent, and my program was canceled. But she didn’t voice these thoughts. Agent Chevron Savano considered herself a teenage professional, and Riley was depending on her.
She wiggled past him, making sure to keep her head down.
“We need to help Victoria.”
“Draw Garrick away and that will save her life—he don’t care a fig for her. It’s us and that Timekey he wants. Garrick will follow his target every time.”
Riley was right.
“Okay. We go out the back way.”
There had to be a yard, or a doorway. If she could make it to a phone, then Garrick was dead and buried, no matter how many faces he had.
Then I am going to home to California, where the sun shines and there are no death-dealing magicians from the past.
Garrick took a few more shots, but he was firing blind, just trying to corral them to the kitchen.
Chevie squatted on her hunkers, pulling Riley’s face close to hers.
“Here’s the plan. We run to those back stairs and see where they go.”
“Is that a plan?” asked Riley. “Strikes me more as a notion, or a smidge of an idea. Plans have stages and steps. Jinky twists and the likes.”
“Zip it, chatterbox. You ready for the plan?”
Riley nodded.
“Right. After three. Run like the devil himself is on your tail.”
Which in a way he was.
Chevie counted to three, then hurled a handy vase toward the wall, where she thought it would smash and distract Garrick.
She thought wrong.
Garrick shot the vase out of the air as it twirled, being a practiced marksman from his years in Her Majesty’s army.
Perhaps this is not a brilliant plan, thought Chevie, but it was too late, as Riley had already bolted for the stairs. Luckily the boy kept himself low and out of Garrick’s sight line.
He won’t have a restricted sight line for long, she realized. Once he gets that leg free, we’re as good as dead.
Chevie raced after Riley, feeling the gunfire impact the wall over her head before she heard it. They ran pell-mell down the stairs, barely managing to stay upright in their haste. The staircase was narrow and dim, but with familiar-looking thick power lines running along the skirting board.
No, thought Chevie. No, no, no.
The steps led down to a small basement. Chevie and Riley tumbled into the room, instinctively searching for an exit. There was none. The only natural light came from barred windows at pavement level. The legs of shadowy pedestrians threw stick shadows on the wall.
Chevie actually stamped her foot. “No way out! I don’t believe it.”
Riley patted the walls with his palms, hoping for a secret passage.
Chevie cast around the room, searching for something, anything, that could be of use to them.
Riley pointed to a blocky shape under a tarp in the corner. “I would wager that if we remove that waterproof sheet . . .”
“I know what it is!” shouted Chevie. “I know. But . . .”
Riley glanced anxiously toward the stairwell. Victorian oaths and grumbling echoed from above.
“My master is not happy.”
“I gathered that.”
“He is coming.”
Chevie paced a little. “Yeah, I know. Death the magician is coming.”
“Should I zip it?”
“Yeah . . . No.” Chevie balled her fists in frustration. “I’m not even a proper agent, kid. I was supposed to keep an ear open in the lunch hall, that’s it. No one ever said anything about time travel.” Chevie slapped her head. “This is insane. I can’t do this.”
A shot smashed into the bannisters, then there was a guttural roar—no words, simply emotion.
Riley twisted a splintered banister free, brandishing it like a stake.
“Chevie. I’ll guard the stairs, perhaps even get a lucky blow in. You must activate the machinery.”
Chevie knew the boy was right. She dragged the tarp, revealing the WARP pod underneath.
From upstairs: “Riley! You broke my leg.”
“That ain’t a happy man,” said Riley, pointing with his makeshift stake.
He grabbed another corner of the tarp with his free hand, and soon the pod was uncovered. “Make it work, Chevie.”
Riley decided to get the show on the road himself and began pounding buttons on the computers rigged up to the pod.
“No, no,” said Chevie, elbowing him out of the way. “You need this.” She took the Timekey from around her neck and slotted it into a computer drive on a console that was smaller than the one in Bedford Square.
Perhaps it will be too complicated, she half hoped. Maybe I won’t be able to fire it up.
No such luck: as soon as the Timekey clicked into place, the pod shuddered into life, expelling steam from various vents, setting the power lines humming. Damper barrels vibrated on the floor.
This one is smaller, realized Chevie. Version 2.0.
The Timekey activated a tiny screen with yellow graphics that wobbled every few seconds. The screen crackled.
That sounds like wires burning.
No. Don’t think about that. It’s just warming up. To confirm this thought, a little cartoon bird appeared on the screen. The bird was without feathers and shivering. A speech bubble popped out of his beak: I’m just warming up.
Chev
ie gave Riley a thumbs-up. “All systems go. No problems.”
Slowly the bird sprouted feathers. It seemed as though Charles Smart had had a sense of humor.
From the top of the stairway there came a meaty slap as something lurched across the entrance.
“Riley,” cried a rasping voice that seemed full of pain, both emotional and physical. “My son, no longer. My partner, never again.”