No one's sure whether Aeslin mice are extinct except for the family colony, or whether they just like their privacy. Whichever the answer, most people have only heard of them in pa.s.sing, and they're largely regarded as a weird sort of fairy tale, Cinderella's mice without the vegetable transport and poor footwear choices. But they're the only species of talking mouse that anyone has found so far, and so there wasn't much question about what Uncle Mike was holding. The only question was how.

"h.e.l.lo, mouse," said Istas, sounding pleased.

"What the . . . ?" said Kitty.

"Is that an Aeslin mouse?" asked Joe.

"My hair is hungry," announced Carol.

That brought the conversation to its second screeching halt in as many minutes, as everyone turned to stare at the gorgon. Carol blushed, ducking her head slightly while radiating embarra.s.sment. She was telling the truth about her hair; the individual snakes were stretching toward the mouse, their mouths open and their tongues scenting the air.

"This just gets better and better," muttered Ryan. I didn't disagree.

Uncle Mike ignored them all in favor of focusing on what mattered-the plan-rather than what didn't-everything else. "We've got half a dozen volunteers from Verity's resident Aeslin colony. They're going to go in, scout the place for traps, and report back. That lets us get a feeling for the lay of the land before we put ourselves in harm's way."

"You mean she wasn't just bragging when she said she had a colony of Aeslin living with her?" asked Kitty.

Dominic snorted. "Bragging? No. Complaining vociferously? Almost certainly. While she is quite fond of her resident rodents, she seems to enjoy complaining about them as she does little else."

"The family has coexisted with Aeslin mice for generations, which brings us to the one possible flaw in this plan," said Uncle Mike. "We don't know for sure that this Margaret woman doesn't have a colony of her own. It seems unlikely, given the Covenant's stance on cryptids, but the original colony was harbored before the family defected."

"If we encounter heretics while on the search for our brave Priestess, we will smite them down with the Fury of a Thousand Angry Rolling Pins!" squeaked the mouse.

"Don't know what that means, really. I've got to a.s.sume it's pretty dire, since it's coming from a talking mouse," said Uncle Mike. "Now I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to go and rescue my niece from the Covenant of St. George. Who's with me?"

"I am," said Dominic.

"It will be a pleasing diversion," said Istas.

"Verity's my friend," said Ryan.

"These people give humans a bad name," said Angel.

"We're with you," said a voice from the back of the room. I turned to see Priscilla standing in the door to the hall. She must have been speaking for the dragons while Candy's pregnancy kept her confined to the Nest. More dragons stood to either side of her, both the European and Chinese varieties. Several of the lizard-like servitors that Verity insisted on calling "Sleestaks" were behind them. All of them were holding weapons.

"All right, then," said Uncle Mike. He sounded pleased. Who wouldn't be, when they had just been handed their very own cryptid army? "Now we're cooking with gas. Let's go get Verity back."

This time, when the mouse cheered, so did everybody else. One way or another, it was time to go and face the Covenant of St. George. Hang on, Verity, I thought, wishing there was any chance at all that she was in a position to hear me. We're on our way.

Just hang on . . .

Twenty.

"I'll never understand why people think kidnapping is a good way to solve their problems. Near as I can tell, it just makes more problems that you need to solve, and who are you going to kidnap then?"

-Frances Brown An unknown location in the city of Manhattan, returning to our original narrator, who has just regained consciousness after a nasty blow to the head I KNEW THREE THINGS even before I opened my eyes: that I was somewhere enclosed, probably no larger than a bathroom stall, that someone had changed my clothes-nothing was riding the way it should have, which probably meant my weapons were also gone-and that I was in serious trouble. Then I raised my aching head, opened my eyes, and added a fourth thing to the list: wherever I was, it was pitch-black. No natural or artificial light, and I'm not a bogeyman, I can't see in the dark.

Well, s.h.i.t, I thought. I was smart enough not to say it out loud. There was no point in letting my captors know I was awake before I absolutely had to.

The last thing I remembered was Margaret Healy's gun slamming into the back of my head, and the meaty, deadweight sound of my body hitting the rooftop. Not the sort of thing I like to go to sleep on. I'm more of the "dance until you can't feel your knees, two or three rounds of really fun s.e.x, wine cooler, bed" school of thought. Still, we all have to work with what we're given in this life, and what I'd been given was a crazy cousin from England who seemed to think my skull was a pinata.

At least she hadn't managed to hit me hard enough to make the candy come out. I could turn my head easily enough, and while I couldn't see a d.a.m.n thing, I was reasonably confident that it was due to a lack of light, not because she had somehow knocked my optic nerves offline. I sat up a little straighter. The gesture caused the chains holding my wrists to the wall to pull up tight, clanking faintly.

"d.a.m.n," I whispered, not bothering to internalize it this time. I hadn't even realized I was chained until I tried to move. That was an amateur mistake-I should have a.s.sumed I was bound the second I woke up, and planned accordingly.

Not that there was much I could have done in the dark, presumably unarmed, and with a head sore enough to make me suspect concussion. Maybe I was being hard on myself . . . and maybe that didn't matter, since Margaret and her goons weren't going to go easy on me just because I wasn't feeling at the top of my game. I took a deep breath, ignoring the sick swimming sensation in my head, and tugged against the chains that bound me. There was barely a foot of give, and by chaining me to a wall, rather than tying me to the chair that I was sitting in, the Covenant had managed to deny me the leverage I might have otherwise used against them.

My left leg was free. My right leg wasn't. That made sense, too. It didn't totally immobilize me, and if they wanted me to stay functional for any length of time, they were going to want me to have some capacity for movement. Enough to keep the blood flowing at least, since bedsores and gangrene are n.o.body's friends.

That was a sobering thought all by itself. People who plan to kill you quickly don't worry about tying you up so that you can still move enough to keep your circulation good. People who plan to torture you for everything you can tell them about your family and the cryptids you've spent your whole life protecting do. And if what I knew about the Covenant was accurate, they wouldn't view torturing me as a bad thing. G.o.d told them it was all cool, as long as when it was over, they got to kill a dragon or two.

Antimony suggested once that we should all carry suicide pills, just in case a situation like this one came up. Alex and I both laughed at her. I told her that there was no way I'd ever let a situation like this one be a problem. "I'll die before I let myself be taken that way"-those were my exact words. Yet here I was, captive for the second time since I arrived in New York, and this time it wasn't just a harmless little snake cult intending to use me as a virgin sacrifice. This time it was the Covenant of St. George.

Worse, this time it was family. And as many people have pointed out over the years, there's n.o.body in this world who can hurt you like family can.

I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down before carefully tugging on each of the chains in turn, looking for differences in how they moved. The Covenant was pretty good at chaining people up; I had to give them that. I doubt I could have done a better job. (Antimony probably could, but that's because Antimony focused on keeping people as far away from her as possible, and when she couldn't do that, she liked to be sure they'd stay where she put them.) Okay: so I was chained up, in the dark, with no idea of where I was. I shifted a little, feeling loose fabric around me, and added "wearing a bathrobe instead of real clothing" to my list of problems. The material was rough enough to be cheap, meaning it had probably been purchased from a gift shop, not stolen from one of Sarah's high-end hotels. My feet were bare. If they'd taken my clothes, they'd taken my weapons. I was as close to helpless as I was ever going to get, and that p.i.s.sed me off.

Taking another slow breath, I closed my eyes and thought, as hard as I could, Sarah? Can you hear me?

There was no response, and I realized that even the low-grade telepathic static of her presence was gone. I pushed back a surge of panic. There was no reason to suspect that they'd managed to track Sarah down while I was unconscious, and that meant one of two things. Either I was still under the influence of Margaret's telepathy-blocking charm, or the Covenant had already moved me out of New York, and I was outside Sarah's normal broadcast range. She'd be looking for me-they all would-but if I was too far for her to find telepathically, she wouldn't know what to do. She wouldn't have another way to start looking. If she was smart (and Uncle Mike would make her be smart, if he had to), she was already on a plane back to Ohio to hole up with her parents. Two cuckoos in one house meant the Covenant would never find them, no matter how hard they were looking. Sarah and Angela have been the family escape plan for a generation now.

I realized I was thinking like I was already lost, and I embraced it. It wasn't the same as giving up; I didn't expect the Covenant to kill me fast, and the longer they kept me alive, the better my chances became. But if my family thought I was out of reach, they might give up on me, and we might be able to minimize the damage.

There was no way they were going to do that. But it was a nice thought.

There was a soft click from one wall, like a lock was being turned. Nice as it would have been to stare defiantly at the door as it opened, I wasn't in the mood to have my retinas seared after sitting in the dark for this long; I turned my face to the side. It was a bad choice. The actual door was in the wall I was facing now, and as it swung open, a blast of industrial white light streamed into the room, framing the outline of Margaret Healy.

"I see you're awake," she said pleasantly. That was more frightening than any threats she could have made. "That's good. We've got quite a lot to talk about, you and I."

"You could have invited me to coffee," I said, squinting as I waited for my eyes to stop watering. "I don't know how you do things in Europe, but here in America, we usually start our family reunions with something a little less high-impact than a.s.sault and kidnapping."

"You hit me first," Margaret shot back. Her pleasant tone didn't waver. "Besides which, you're not much of one to talk, since the first thing you ever did was lie to me. Where did you leave that girl who was with you? Sandy, I believe you said her name was?"

There was no way I was going to remind her that Sarah was the one who hit her, not me. "She has nothing to do with this," I said. "She's just someone I met at a dance cla.s.s. Leave her alone."

"That's the thing about traitors and liars. You can't believe a word they say. She lied for you. She tried to cover for you. Now why would she do that if she had nothing to do with this?" Margaret flipped a switch next to the door. The overheads came on, filling the room with more light. This didn't hurt as much. My eyes were adjusting. "Your name isn't even Valerie, is it?"

"Does it matter?"

Margaret smiled. "Oh, it matters. It matters a great deal. We'll need to know what name to bury you under, when we're finally done with you. If you're worried for your life, don't be. You'll be with us for quite some time."

"I gathered." I forced myself to relax, trying to look unconcerned. "What makes you think I'm going to talk?"

"I have a better question for you: what makes you think you've got a choice?" Margaret lunged across the small distance between us, grabbing my hair before I had a chance to move. She yanked my head back, making it pound even harder. "No one knows you're here. No one's coming to save you. You're going to get what you have coming to you, finally, and you're going to tell us where to find every other stinking rat in your hole."

The pain in my head helped me focus on what mattered: she was right. I was her captive, and I was pretty sure the Covenant wouldn't slap her wrists for using excessive force on me. All the advantages were hers. I put on my best tolerant reality television smile, trying to look like I wasn't even a little bit concerned about my situation. "Oh, Christ, you're a metaphor villain, aren't you? You're the ratcatcher, I'm the rat, you're here to exterminate the vermin, is that it? Wow. Do they have a cliche course that they make you guys go through before they release you into the field? Or maybe you're naturally talented. I mean, that happens, right?"

Margaret's eyes widened in confused indignation before she let go of my hair and shoved my head hard to the side. My neck audibly cracked. I somehow managed not to squawk. "You may think you're funny now, heretic, but you won't be laughing for long."

"You may as well kill me," I said, aiming for boredom rather than bravado. I wasn't sure that I was managing either. "I'm not going to tell you anything."

"Aren't you?" Margaret smiled. "You've already told me plenty."

My stomach sank. "Oh?" I asked.

"You're a traitor from a bloodline of traitors, but no Healy has ever been a coward. You wouldn't be telling me to kill you if you didn't have something to hide." Margaret's smile grew, chilling me. "You're not the last of your family. And you're going to tell me where to find them all before I let you die for your sins."

I was so busy watching her face that I didn't see her tense her arm until her hand lashed out, her fist catching me square in my unprotected jaw. The lights went out-for me, at least-and for a little while, the world went away again. My last thought before I lost consciousness was that I really, really hated this girl.

The sound of the door opening again woke me. I cracked my eyes open just enough to see that the lights were on, and that the person standing in front of me wasn't Margaret. It was a man, slim, dark, about my height. Dominic. The sight of him made me sit up a little straighter and open my eyes all the way, my heart thudding painfully in my chest. Thankfully, I managed to bite my lip before I could say his name.

It wasn't him. This man was the right height; that was where the resemblance ended. His hair was dark red, not brown verging on black, and his eyes were a cool, implacable blue. His skin was pale, spattered with freckles . . . and he was smiling.

"Why do you people smile all the d.a.m.n time?" I asked, and was instantly ashamed of how shaky my voice sounded. Head injuries and unknown periods of captivity without food or water will do that to a girl.

"Because, love, you're our unicorn," he said. His accent was Irish, and heavier than Margaret's. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"Wait, so first I'm a rat, and now I'm a unicorn? If you're going to be metaphor villains, maybe you should have a meeting first. Come up with a nice theme and stick to it."

The man clucked his tongue, looking amused. "Oh, you've got a mouth on you, don't you? I hoped you would. You look enough like the family standard that I a.s.sumed some other bits might breed true." He leaned closer and murmured, with evident satisfaction, "You may have thought you were hiding, but you never stood a chance. You look too much like your ancestors."

"And yet you people lost track of us for two generations. That sounds like a pretty good chance to me."

"It was always borrowed time." He leaned in and grasped my chin, turning my head so that he could study my profile. "You've got the Price blood in you, too. Oh, won't those stuffed shirts be horrified to realize that their little disappearing scion really did marry the American Healy girl? You get to disappoint both sides of your heritage before you die, love. There's people who'd love the chance to horrify their families like that."

He was standing close to watch me squirm. My left leg was free. And I'm a trained salsa dancer.

My leg swept upward at a speed that would have seemed superhuman to anyone who'd never watched compet.i.tion ballroom dance, catching the man from the Covenant squarely between the legs. The squishing feeling of his s.c.r.o.t.u.m compressing against my knee was more satisfying than it probably should have been, but I didn't worry about it much. When someone chains me up and tries bargain bin intimidation tactics on me, I figure I'm allowed to take a little pleasure in their pain.

"Ack," said the man from the Covenant, his eyes going wide and gla.s.sy. His mouth dropped open as his hand fell away from my chin, letting me pull my head out of his grasp.

"Is that so?" I asked, dropping my leg slightly before ramming it back up into his b.a.l.l.s.

His answer this time was much less coherent, and substantially higher in pitch.

"Huh. Think that's something I can discuss with my long-lost family?" I dropped my leg, preparing for a third hit. You know what they say-third time's the charm.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said a male voice.

I froze, leg still held straight out between the Irishman's legs, and looked toward the door. The older of the two men from the Covenant was standing there, regarding me contemplatively. There was something that looked almost like sympathy in his eyes.

"It's just that Peter doesn't care for having pretty girls smash his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, and while two hits you might be able to write off as having been scared and disoriented, three sort of implies premeditation." The man-Robert, by process of elimination-had a Welsh accent, and was wearing wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, hiding the color of his eyes. His hair was a nondescript shade of sandy blond, slowly fading into gray. I could easily have lost sight of him in a crowd. That just made him more unnerving. Covenant representatives should be easy to spot, and easier to avoid.

I let my foot drop to the floor.

"Thank you." Robert walked over to Peter, putting his hands on the other man's shoulders and pulling him backward. Peter went willingly, dropping his hands to cup his crotch as he moved.

"Ack," he said.

"I think that's the right response, mate, but you shouldn't have been hara.s.sing the lady. You know she's Maggie's kin, and Maggie requested quite properly and deferentially that I not allow you to mess about with her. She understands chain of command." Robert led Peter to the wall, where he let him go. Peter promptly leaned against it, folding forward as he continued to clutch his wounded genitals. "Sorry about all this, miss . . . ?"

It was a leading question, designed to give him my name. I had to admire that, even as I had to question the wisdom of a good cop/bad cop routine that put the bad cop in a position where he needed to take a nut-shot. "Nice try," I said. "I appreciate you stopping me from making an enemy out of an enemy. But I'm not going to tell you my name."

"Your last name is 'Price,' like your paternal grandfather; your first name starts with the letter 'V,' which rather limits the possibilities, since there aren't that many names for women that start at that end of the alphabet." I must have stiffened. Robert smiled a little. "We all have our training. You give yourself away every time you open your mouth, every time you move. I'll sort you out from top to bottom while you still think you're restricting yourself to noncommittal answers and sa.s.sing back. I'm sorry about that."

"If you're sorry, don't do it," I said. "Unlock these chains and let me the h.e.l.l out of here."

"Even if I wanted to, I couldn't do that. The Covenant has a need for your services, Miss Price, and your family took an oath many generations ago to answer when they were called upon. You may not uphold your oath willingly, but you will uphold it. Now please. This would be so much easier if you worked with us, rather than against us."

"I'm going to kill her," said Peter. He still sounded strained, but at least he was managing words now, and sentences. I probably hadn't done any permanent damage. He turned a glare on me. "I'm going to kill you."

"I heard you the first time," I said dismissively, and looked back to Robert. "You're not going to win. You can intimidate me as much as you want, but you're not going to win."

"I'm sorry," said Robert. "We already have."

He supported Peter with one arm as he led the other man out of the room, and closed the door behind them. Once again, the sound of the lock engaging came from the wrong wall, like they had some sort of speaker set up just to disorient me. I waited for the click, and then forced myself to mentally replay the first verse and chorus of Lady Gaga's "Lovegame"-roughly thirty seconds of music. When that was done, I allowed myself to glance up, and smile.

The lights were still on.

Don't get me wrong: I can get a lot done in total darkness. Blind fighting is a part of the standard training package where I come from, and there was a whole summer where I wasn't allowed to eat any meal I couldn't prepare blindfolded. (Lessons from that summer included "never let Verity make spaghetti with a blindfold on" and "never eat anything Antimony prepares with a blindfold on." How she got the blessed cedar ash into the oatmeal is something the world may never know.) But at the end of the day, I prefer working in the light, and it's hard to case a room that you can't see.

Robert Bullard said that I was giving myself away with every word I said-or didn't say. Fine. This room was doing the same thing, and I didn't even need to ask it questions. All I needed was the luxury to look around.

For one thing, the walls were matte white, with no staining or discoloration of any sort. My chains weren't bolted to anything that I could see; they pa.s.sed through holes cut into the wood. That, combined with how little leverage I had, told me I was in a false room, probably constructed in the middle of something much larger. Each wall was about five feet long, giving my captors room to move, but not giving me much opportunity to get away.

I hadn't been able to see much through the open door when Peter and Robert arrived, but what I'd been able to see gave me the impression of industrial gray. Either my false room was in a shipping container, or we were in some sort of unused factory or warehouse. I'd never actually been shipped anywhere-that was one exciting life opportunity I'd worked hard to avoid-but I was reasonably sure that I would have been able to feel the pull-and-roll of the tides moving the ship if we'd been at sea. So no matter which option turned out to be the right one, we were staying in one place.

For now. If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that complacency is a killer. I had to a.s.sume that they'd be moving me at any moment, and putting me in a false room opened the potential for moving my surroundings with me. I needed to get these chains undone. But how? Most of the common cons wouldn't work on these people; they were the ones who taught them to my family in the first place. If I faked a stomach ache, they'd force charcoal and Pepto-Bismol down my throat until I stopped. If I faked demonic possession, they'd just dump holy water over my head. And so on, and so on. Getting them to untie me was going to take something totally new and original, something they'd never seen before.

It was really a pity that I had absolutely no idea what that something was.

As for fixtures, there weren't many; this wasn't a place they were planning to keep me long-term, not if they wanted me to stay functional, and the setup argued for them wanting me to last. The chains were thick and solid-they must have brought those with them, because the chair I was sitting on was a piece of c.r.a.p that looked like it was originally from Ikea. It was bolted to the floor. I leaned forward enough to study the bolts. They were generic hardware store issue, nothing special or unique. The Covenant was improvising. That was good for me. I can improvise with the best of them, and I've always gotten high marks for my freestyle.

The lights on the ceiling were more generic hardware. The false room had taken work, but they hadn't been ready to put someone into it. Not yet. There was bound to be a weak spot somewhere, and I would find it . . . later.

My head hurt. I was chained to a wall. I was going to need to eat, and pee, before too much longer. But for the moment, there was nothing I could do, and so I closed my eyes, cleared my mind, and let myself slip slowly into the restorative arms of sleep. Never fight tired if you don't have to, and never let a captive recover their strength if you have any other choice. I was following the rules. Margaret wasn't. And when she came back to resume her little question-and-answer session, she was going to find out just how important some rules really are.