Chapter 15

15

C hloe was half wrong. There’s no cheap motel, but there is an incredibly weird one less than a hundred feet away from the chop shop, with a fountain of a wolf head and an actual roller coaster that winds around the building. The tracks of the coaster are coated in rust, cobwebs everywhere, and the fountain is a toxic sort of greenish brown, foaming out of the wolf’s mouth.

It’s still about an hour away from the base, but Chloe sits in the car as Killian spools out his power, picking through the rooms with a scan that feels like someone's pushing on her chest, before he nods at her.

“No traps,” he confirms, and Chloe shivers to get rid of the overwhelming power creeping over her. “Eighteen humans currently in the building, last time a Wight stepped foot inside was about four months ago, no demons in years.”

“Not surprising,” Chloe says, chewing on her lip and staring at the fountain. “One, it’s hideous, and two, that anti-teleport trap. How fast can you make it safe?”

He gives her an honest to god dirty look.

“I mean you can stay wherever you want, I just want someplace to wait and not draw attention,” Chloe says. “My research stays with me.”

Of course Killian follows her in, trailing behind her like a scowling specter, as she checks in, getting a room.

It’s a far bigger hotel than his eighteen human count would suggest, faux wooden beams on the ceiling and a very real stuffed grizzly bear in the corner, next to a felt approximation of forest trees and a plushie gift shop. The bored clerk at the front desk has wolf ears sloppily glued to his ballcap and a bright green polo shirt as he glumly tells her the hours of the buffet and the pool before handing her the key card.

There’s a kid’s climbing wall, a miniature museum of wolf facts, and a twenty-four-hour access ice cream machine, and Chloe gets the distinct feeling that this place would be overrun with families if it was summer and not the ass-crack of frozen winter.

As it is, despite them being the only people in the foyer, Killian shies close to her, glaring daggers at the clerk who has absolutely no idea, before following a step too near as she walks up the two sets of stairs to the room.

“He was staring at your cleavage,” Killian announces, the moment she closes the door behind herself. “And wrote his phone number on the back of the receipt.”

“Gross,” Chloe says, turning it over anyways. “He’s like a decade younger than me.”

The room is, unsurprisingly, forest green and dark wood, with a garish painting of three wolves over the bed, all howling at a hilariously large moon. Silhouettes of trees adorn the walls, sketched on by hand, the quilt has snowflakes stitched into the hems. The sheets and curtains are camo print edged in neon orange, perfect for disguising stains and discolorations.

If the situation had been less dire and the demon less interested in warding the door, Chloe would love it. The preteen Chloe from the middle of corn fields in Ohio would’ve gone feral over it.

She flops onto the bed, and there’s a souvenir T-shirt rolled up on the pillow, watching as Killian sketches rune after rune on the doorframe. A rune to wake them up if someone touched the knob, a rune to stop people from sneaking in, a rune to stop other demons from arriving unannounced, and even more that she’s never seen before.

It’s exhausting to watch.

“So, your kid,” Chloe starts, after a good forty-five minutes of silence, and he jumps, like he forgot she’s laying there. “How is she caught up in all of this?”

“I’m not telling you,” he replies gruffly.

“Okay,” Chloe says, staring up at the painted wooden beams on the ceiling, like they could solve the boredom. “Why were you last here?”

“Are you trying to start a conversation because you’re bored or because you want to know?” he asks, shaking out his hand after setting another rune in place along the light switch.

“Yes,” Chloe says, and she doesn’t have to be looking at him to know he’s rolling his eyes. “It’s intel, at the very least.”

“Why would any demon be near here?” he says instead, skating around the answer, before crossing the small room in three strides and starting the runes on the window, pushing aside the camo curtains.

“We’re on the third floor, is that necessary?” Chloe asks and gets a dirty look in return. “I doubt the college will use drones to get at us.”

“You’re the one who asked for protection,” he responds, sketching a few runes along the cold glass. “I’d do the whole hotel, but it’s…a fair bit bigger than I can do while camouflaging our existence.”

She nods. Ambra’s said as much.

“When were you here?” Chloe asks, and he sighs, stepping away from the window and evaluating his work. “That at least could give us a time frame on what to expect for changes.”

“Four years ago,” he says, his tone a warning against additional questions, a warning she’s absolutely going to ignore. “Just long enough for tests.”

Chloe levels a look at him, and he meets it, crossing his arms.

“So just for tests and you thought you could swing in and take it down, got it,” she says, and she knows she’s probably being unfair, that there’s almost certainly some sort of trauma inherent in his time at the base.

Chloe certainly had nightmares for the three weeks after they took down Toronto, and Ambra flinches whenever they mention some of the bases she was held at, even if she doesn’t think she does.

His lips thin.

“I’m just saying, we should plan better than that,” she continues, softening her voice to go against the harshness of the knot in her chest. “Brute force will only get you so far.”

He points a finger at her. “Brute force can get you pretty damn far.”

“Sure, for you,” Chloe says, then sighs, staring up at the blessedly empty ceiling, before hauling herself up to the ubiquitous closet safe. “So you can’t teleport at all right now or is it just teleport in and out?”

He says nothing, so she ignores him, digging out her set of plain lockpicks from her bag.

“Wanna bet I can get this open in thirty seconds with no magic?” she says, weighing her picks in her hand. “Locks like this usually have sloppy tolerance.”

His gaze lays heavy against her shoulders, so she flashes the lockpicks to him, like a circus performer with cards.

“Go ahead, pick one,” she says, and he crosses his arms, leaning back. “Or don’t, I’m just trying to entertain myself.”

“By picking a safe?” he asks, skeptical. “A safe that would be easy for you to transform the walls into cardboard?”

“That’s not fun, though,” Chloe says, picking up her tension bar and the rake instead. With a few seconds thought, she closes the safe and engages the electronic lock, then steps back, showing him her hands.

He’s flatly unamused.

So she rolls her eyes, then inserts the tension bar, and pops the lock open with a few seconds of the rake.

This, at least, makes him raise his eyebrows in a flash, almost impressed.

“See,” Chloe replies, trying and failing to not be smug. “Easy.”

“And that’s just a skill you have? Not alchemy?” He would know, she’s one hundred percent sure he can tell when she’s using power. “Just for fun?”

“Had it before the college found me, certainly wasn’t gonna let that skill go away,” Chloe says, then closes the safe again, repeating the process. “I was not, as you say, a well-behaved child.”

He makes a sound suspiciously like a laugh, and she quirks an eyebrow at him, not even watching her hands as she pops the safe open a third time.

“Locks make sense,” she says, instead of anything else, closing the safe again, and nobody would be able to tell if it had ever been tampered with. “Most are laughably simple, and the ones that aren’t still have cool logic behind them.”

He doesn’t say anything, settling back against the chair, just observing her steadily. It’s obvious, not the sort of undercover surveillance she felt at the compound, like he’s not even hiding it.

“Would you be able to open it?” Chloe asks, gesturing to it. “Without destroying it or rendering it unusable?”

“Most likely not,” he responds finally. “Most of my peers don’t occupy themselves with preserving the usability of human items.”

“That sounds like an understatement,” Chloe says, and his lips almost twitch up, like he’s about to smile but finds it a poor idea.

Before he sits up straight, his spine ramrod stiff, and his eyes flash red at her.

Chloe jerks back, almost instinctively, her heart jumping in her chest.

And nothing happens.

She waits, breathing as quietly as she can, but the air remains still, without a mote of dust dancing in the cheap lights. His eyes don’t change, but slowly, he nods, gesturing her over.

Every part of him thrums with power, and it sticks in Chloe’s throat as she creeps closer to where he sits, until his hand closes over hers, gentle.

He holds her palm as if she’s delicate, as if he’s worried about breaking her into many, many pieces, and she marvels about it for a few seconds.

Until the room floods with power.

She flinches, but his hand holds her tight, his eyes flashing. The power’s not from him, it flows through the hotel, twisting down the hallways and infiltrating each room. It creeps from under the door before swirling around their ankles, seeping out in the cracks from the windows.

He keeps her hand in his until the last bit of magic drains from the room before he releases it, slumping back in the chair.

Chloe clutches her hand to her chest, heart pounding.

“What was that?” she whispers, finally, when nothing else moves.

“Roving scan,” he answers grimly, rubbing his face. It’s such a human motion, at odds with the double appearance. “Randomized blanket scans to dig up any visiting magician or creature they don’t know about.”

She inhales, before forcing it back out.

“I disguised us,” he says, matter of factly, as if that was the easiest thing in the world. “I almost didn’t feel it coming, but it tripped on a rune I laid in the foyer. Got a warning.”

“Wow,” Chloe says out of a lack of anything else. “Not a good scan if you can camouflage yourself.”

“Most demons aren’t as paranoid as me,” he mutters. “Most demons don’t attempt to do…that.”

“Good job?” Chloe asks, then shakes out her hand, as if that could help the disquiet growing in her. “Can you teach me how?”

His lips part, just a hair, before he shakes his head firmly. “It’s not human defense magic.”

“Aww,” Chloe says flippantly, even though her heart still pounds too hard and her hand tingles. “That seems useful.”

For a few moments, she thinks he’s about to smile, but it slips away before she can get it.

“There are alarms you can learn,” he starts, which is way more of a spellweaver’s skill set than hers, “runes you can write to mask yourself, but not like that.”

“How often do the scans go out?” she asks, sitting on the bed, cross legged. “What’s the safety for going out of this room between them.”

“Less safe than staying in,” he says, which isn’t great. “Not prohibitively dangerous, I can keep my feelers out, it’ll just take…concentration.”

“Concentration, got it,” Chloe says, shifting on the bed, the itch already getting underneath her skin. The itch to move, to leave, to get someplace outside of a watchful eye. “Would they pick me up or just you?”

To this, he tilts his head, evaluating obviously, and his slow careful consideration prickles at the back of her neck.

“What do you think the likelihood that they’ve already found a way to track those who have been brought back by Necromancers?” he asks, and his voice is honestly curious, not judgmental. “And do you think it’s trackable to them based on which Necromancer, or would it be a blanket track?”

“Oooh, good question,” Chloe responds, and he wrinkles his nose at her. “Even with enhanced view of demons and other things, I couldn’t tell the others who’ve been raised from normal people.”

“Do you know for certain that they’ve never experimented on the others?” he asks, almost gently. “Has any of the others disappeared for any amount of time, to your knowledge?”

Chloe opens her mouth, then closes it. “Look, it’s just me, a spellweaver who’s dating a Wight, the first Necromancer's little bro, her boyfriend, and her cat.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “And the second Necromancer's boyfriend and the boyfriend’s mom. I think.”

“Are you talking about Alette?” he asks, way too sharp. “Or is there another?”

It sits uneasily with her that he knows that much already, so she shifts on the bed.

“That Necromancer is very well protected,” he says, crossing his arms. “I’m not so stupid that I’m planning an attack on her, she’s killed at least three demons.”

Chloe only knows of two of them, but she’s not going to quibble on that.

“Yes, Alette,” Chloe says, instead of commenting on that.

“So no one on that list would go unnoticed if they were captured, is what you’re saying,” he says, then looks away, snaking out a little bit of his power towards the window, like he’s checking his work almost unconsciously. “Then they probably won’t be able to scan you. Unless it’s just generic ‘all magicians.’”

The very air in the room seems to shimmer with some unspoken tension, and it’s not his power, not this time, but it settles poorly in Chloe’s stomach.

“So what do you want to do right now?” Chloe asks, as brightly as she can, but her voice wobbles. “We have thirty-six hours, wanna watch a movie? This hotel probably has HBO.”