CHAPTER 129

"I accept," he said, hoping this wasn't a huge mistake.

To his relief, Bigfoot grunted in approval. Even if they were both wrong, he at least felt better making a mistake with a friend by his side.

No, many friends. He took Velvet's hand and squeezed her fingers. He didn't have a word for their relationship yet, but he looked forward to figuring it out.

"Let's get out of here," he said, then turned to face the owl-woman. "Do you think the children of the forest will help us with Leeds?"

She nodded. "Some will not. They abstain and wait for the victor. Please do not fault them, for it is their way. But you have my vow that I shall not rest until the Devil of Jersey has been captured."

Bigfoot held out his hand to the owl-woman, like he was expecting her to slap him five. She timidly placed her claw over his.

"I misjudged you," he told her. "You see, I used to take my duties to the forest seriously, but was blessed to become part of a family. Instead of wandering the land and fixing its ills, I indulged in matters of the heart and felt myself grow in ways I never imagined. Knowing now how that feels, I can understand why you did what you did."

"Thank you." The owl-woman withdrew her hand, which disappeared into her feathers. "In that case, let's go meet with some of the others. I have an idea on how to capture Leeds, but we must move quickly. He will likely return in a day or so."

They walked away from the cave, but Mike hung back. He turned one last time to shine his light on Tink's words.

"I'm coming home, goblin wife. Just hang in there." Setting his jaw, he turned to join the others and descended to the bottom of the goblin's pit. When he got to the mouth of the cavern, he stopped and looked back. His goblin in-laws were in there somewhere.

He wished their spirits well, then hurried after the owl-woman to catch up.

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It was nearing the middle of the night when the back door of the house opened. Eulalie leaned away from her computer to see Sofia and Sulyvahn walk inside with Cyrus in tow. The man's head was back inside the pillowcase, and they directed him over to the couch.

The lights in the kitchen had been unscrewed. Even with his eyes unhindered, Cyrus would have trouble making out her form in the shadows.

"I hear you've had a productive day," she said. Other than sneaking a nap earlier, she had watched as Cyrus was led across the property. Naia and Amymone had hidden away once the man was out back with the idea that the less he knew about everyone else, the better.

"That's a matter of opinion." Cyrus scratched his head through the case. "I think I ended the day with more questions than answers, though."

"Success isn't always a feature of productivity." She looked up at Sulyvahn, who handed her a diagram that Cyrus had drawn. It was a map of the grounds around the house. There were several little dashed lines done in blue ink all over the property and inside the house. However, a thick red line had been drawn along the back where the gate was. "What am I looking at here?"

"That's a great question. Hard for me to tell you with this thing on." He gave the case a tug. "Don't suppose--"

"Nope. A girl's got her secrets."

"What is a rat queen, anyway? Other than the obvious, it's not a title I'm familiar with."

She smirked, then used the tips of her front legs to create a clicking sound that sounded very much like the grinding of teeth. It was a noise that had driven her parents and her sister nuts. "Oh, you definitely don't want to see what I've got going on. I'm all hair and teeth, and you will be driven mad at the sight of me."

"I've seen worse," he offered.

"No, I mean you will literally go mad. Part of my magical charm. It's a feature, not a bug."

Cyrus went quiet for a moment, then sighed. "Okay, whatever. Your rules. What are you asking about?"

"Let's start with the lines." She had heard some of his answers while spying with the drones. It had been child's play to attach a microphone to one and then land it around the yard while he did his work, but she had been unable to capture any good audio while flying. In retrospect, it should have been easy to write a Fourier Transform program to account for the changes in current to the rotors of the drone. Knowing the exact speed of the rotors could give her the frequency needed to generate the proper sound-cancelling technology to clean up the signal.

However, the microphone wasn't that great to begin with, and if she had started such a project, she would already be arguing in a chat room full of like-minded programmers about why it should be technically feasible. Finding a way to blend engineering with programming was a special form of madness that she didn't have the patience for.

"Okay, well, the small ones are remnants of extraplanar activity. A small, healed wound on the space-time continuum, or however you want to put it. There are a few on the grounds themselves, but even more inside. For instance, there was one on the closet inside the front door. Means that a portal was there at some point, for a long time. It's left a mark, but it's gone now."

"Go on." What he said made plenty of sense. The home had its quirks, after all. A parallel universe greenhouse with a shortcut built into the front yard. An enormous Labyrinth in the basement. And what she assumed was access to the fabled Library of Alexandria.

And that was just the stuff she could remember off the top of her head.

While looking at the dotted lines, she saw the pattern emerge. Using a pencil, she connected some of the outermost lines together. It didn't take her long to realize that she was essentially sketching the borders of the house before it had changed. The lounge with all the Egyptian crap was clearly outlined on the map before her, and if she pretended that the house was twenty feet longer, the back wall of the home now lined up with the dots.