Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(100)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Hurry, before anyone comes back!" Jenks prompted from the top of the ladder, and Trent tentatively put his weight on the lowest rung. The oak felt old, but it was the rope holding it together that he was concerned about; holding his breath, he edged himself upward, trying not to shake or stress the bindings more than he had to.

The heat grew with ever step. He was sweating by the time he reached the top and clambered into a narrow four-by-two room, solid rock on all sides, ceiling, and floor-except for the narrow one-foot slit that led to the back of the fireplace. An orange glow of heat poured through it, and Trent tried to breathe shallowly as Jenks sat on the top rung of the ladder and basked.

"I got this," he said as his wings hummed into invisibility and he lazed into the air. "I’ll shout when it’s safe. Don’t dawdle. It doesn’t last long."

Dawdle? Trent thought, pulling his hand back from the wall when he touched it and found it hot. He liked the warmth, but this was like a sauna turned death trap.

The orange glow on the walls dimmed, and he moved to the slit, shoulders stiffening. "Now!" Jenks’s voice came faintly.

"God help me, I’m trusting a pixy with my life," he whispered, then plunged through, his back scraping. He stopped, shocked as he ran into the heat as if it was a wall. No wonder they hadn’t put a guard here. His toes were almost in the fire, the firebox not as large as the one in his great room, but large enough to put his desk into-and seemingly every inch of it was near the ignition point. The coals glowed dully, and the blackened wood smoldered under Jenks’s dust. On the far side of him, flames flickered still. Beyond the hearth was an industrial-looking kitchen with several cooking stations, bright lights, stone walls, and very high ceilings with ventilation slits among the waist-thick support beams.

"Move your lily white elf ass!" Jenks shouted from the nearest stainless steel counter, and Trent jolted into motion.

Hair lifting from the draft, Trent lurched over the chunks of smoldering wood, smelling his shoes start to melt. Grimacing, he leaped out of the firebox, landing on the raised hearth made of natural stone. Behind him, the fire whooshed upward, Jenks’s dust spent.

"Jenks, that is as impressive as anything I’ve ever seen," he whispered, dumbfounded and grateful as he watched the three-foot-high flames, feeling as if he had been baptized by fire. But then both his and Jenks’s heads came up at the noise in the hall-military steps and a woman’s voice raised in complaint.

"Crap on toast," he muttered, then blinked, wondering when-on the coast-to-coast excursion he’d been on with Rachel-that he’d picked that up.

"Let’s go, cookie maker," Jenks shrilled, but leaning against the counter, Trent pulled his melted shoes off and tossed them back into the fire. "Come on!" the pixy shouted, and Trent ran a hand over his ash prints on the hearth, then wildly looked for something to hide behind. There was nothing, and plucking a pan that had to weigh at least fifteen pounds from a rack, he made a dash for the only door to the place, his sock feet slipping on the smooth slate.

"No, here!" Jenks exclaimed as he hovered before an industrial-looking freezer door.

Trent skidded to a stop. "You’re kidding."

"It’s a pantry!" Jenks said, hovering as he made a "get-in" gesture. "A root cellar. Come on! I wouldn’t make you hide in a Tink’s frozen titties freezer."

He ran, bringing the pan with him. Heart pounding, he yanked the locking pin out and slipped inside, not looking in the tiny, thick window first. Breathless, he eased the door shut as the voices became loud. Jenks hummed in satisfaction as Trent leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, relishing the cool damp of the clearly temperature controlled room. Damn, that had been close.

"Sorry, I should have told you about the pantry earlier," Jenks said, hovering so that just his head was showing through the window, in effect, an invisible watcher.

"You think?" Trent said sarcastically. How Rachel did this for a living was beyond him. To be honest, though, she didn’t break into millionaires’ estates very often-unless you counted the times she’d broken into his.

The smell of mushrooms pulled his eyes open, and as the woman’s muffled voice complained of the elaborate precautions this last week, he looked over the racks of roots and tubers, baskets of apples, and bottles of wine-and row upon row of jars of organic baby food.

Trent looked at his watch, panicking. He’d planned to get her at her late-morning feeding, and now he was standing in the very place that they were going to be coming into!

"She’s not old enough for creamed peas yet," Jenks said dryly, not turning from his spying at the window. "Chillax, dude. I wouldn’t point you to a bad hiding spot."

Chillax? Trent thought as his emotion soured into disgust, not liking that the pixy could read him so well. Had he told him to chillax?

"We got three people in the kitchen," he said, then waved Trent off with a rude clattering noise when he leaned to the window to see. "You can hear the woman. She’s about Rachel’s age, I think. You all look alike to me unless you have wrinkles. Man, that girl doesn’t stop complaining. She looks athletic, though. Definitely not your average nanny. She’ll take you out if the other two don’t. Guns, uniforms, attitudes." Jenks looked at him, grinning. "Should be fun."

The knot in his gut eased, then tightened right back up. It had been a miracle to have gotten here in time. It would take another to find Lucy and escape. Twenty minutes, he thought, glancing at his watch. It would be over in twenty minutes. Give me the strength to succeed, and I will die trying to be the man my father wasn’t. It was frightening because he believed it. He had to.

"Okay, we’re down to one guard," Jenks said, still hovering at the window, gazing out as if it was TV. "The big guy went back into the hall. I think the woman told him to leave. Dude, that is one bitchy nanny."

Trent fingered his doppelganger charm, tucking it into the sleeve of his biking suit for quick retrieval. He had to have more control, less anger. More control led to less damage, less need to kill anyone. The pantry had a lock. Once he knocked the guard out, he could shove him in here and be done with it. The woman would go down under the sleep charms. He only needed ten minutes to finish this, a lifetime in the art of child abduction.

Taking a breath, Trent reached for the handle.

"What do you need for your glamour?" Jenks said as he turned, still hovering before the window. "Hair? Rachel always needs hair."

Lips parting, Trent hesitated. "Ah, yes," he stammered, then glanced through the window to see the woman with her back to him, warming up a bottle on the stove. "I was going to get it when I down the man."