Reap the Wind (Cassandra Palmer 7)

And then breathing a sigh of relief when it didn’t fall off.

Well, that’s a first, I thought, slightly shocked.

Until a glass paperweight hit the floor behind me, bounced across the boards loud as a cannonball, before smacking into the side of a glass-fronted cabinet.

And shattering it.

Damn it!

I grabbed the box, grabbed Red’s coat, and took a flying leap off the desk. And then ran across the room, opened the window, and shoved the box out onto the sill. But it was still visible, so I shoved it onto a nearby stretch of roof instead and hopped out after it. And then dove back into the box, because footsteps were coming this way, and there was no chance they wouldn’t see me otherwise.

I sat there, in the dark once again, chewing my nails—if I had nails in here, which I probably didn’t, but it felt like I was chewing them.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And damn it, Rosier was going to be dead or back in hell by the time I got to him, because Lara Croft I wasn’t. What if I couldn’t get back in the window? What if the wards were smarter than a two-bit crook gave them credit for? What if I got attacked by a bunch of crazy-ass birds as soon as I reappeared?

Because the latter actually happened.

There was a huge flock of them, which had decided to take refuge from the storm on the roof where an overhang gave some protection. To them. I had no protection at all, other than what was offered by the coat, which was damned little when I reappeared and startled them. And they rose up in a clawing, flapping, furious cloud all around me, and I suddenly understood why Hitchcock made that stupid movie, which wasn’t sounding so stupid anymore.

I didn’t scream, but mostly because I couldn’t. There were about a thousand beating wings in my face and feathers up my nose and sharp little bills pecking and sharp little claws digging and I couldn’t see and I could barely breathe and any second now I was going to fall off the roof. And screw this!

A second later, there were no more birds. Just me and the blowing rain and, okay, one last fat pigeon that must have been out of the box’s range and was perched on top of the eaves, staring at me. Before it abruptly flew off, I guess before whatever happened to the others happened to it.

I clutched the box.

And belatedly realized that I’d grabbed the wrong one, the one with the two mages in it. Which now also contained a crap ton of angry birds. But they probably wouldn’t interact . . . right?

I peered back in the window. There were a couple of mages still in there picking up the mess but not appearing particularly alarmed. Maybe because it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. The desk was a wreck, but it kind of looked like it might have been anyway, and most of the papers had somehow stayed on top.

One of the guys bent over and grabbed the paperweight, and said something to the other that I couldn’t hear because of the storm. But he must have been blaming the wind for the calamity. Because he walked over a second later, forcing me to quickly flatten myself against the side of the building.

Right before the window was firmly shut, leaving me out on a rain-slick roof all by myself in the middle of a thunderstorm.

And still needing to pee.

I looked skyward with my eyes closed, letting the rain hit me in the face for a minute, telling myself to calm down. I didn’t want to be Lara Croft, I decided. Lara Croft sucked. I wanted to be home, in a soft bed, with a warm cup of something seriously alcoholic. Like Irish coffee. Yeah. Irish coffee would be really great right now.

But I didn’t have an Irish coffee. What I did have, when I opened my eyes, was an empty room beside me, because the mages had left. And, okay, I’d take it.

I finally got the window up enough that I could get a hand under it, and my body back through it, and my feet onto the slick wood floor. I tiptoed over to the dumbwaiter, because the mages had left the door to the hall slightly open, and was serenaded briefly by some very distinct curses that were starting to float up from far below. At least they were until I stripped off the coat and dropped it down.

The curses stopped. That left me with Red’s wool number, which I hadn’t needed except I was damned tired of being naked. I pulled it on.

And then I went in search of Rosier.

And this time, I found him.

He was in the middle of a large room, surrounded by a circle of war mages, who were busy doing what they probably called enhanced interrogation and I called torture. He had two eyes so black that it looked like he was wearing a mask, the rest of his face was either red or purple, his nose was seriously off to one side, and his lip was less split than pulverized. I felt my hand come up to my own neck; I didn’t know why.

Maybe because I was having trouble breathing.

He had to be.