horse took two more steps off the trapdoor. At least Trent's horse liked me. I should write him a letter and tell him. It would make his day.
Ivy came in, and Jenks, eying the blowing horse as she found the lever and swung the small trapdoor open. Clearly the horse was used to it, making only a snuff at the artificial light at his feet. His head dropped as if searching for a familiar face coming up and perhaps an apple. Ivy started down the metal stairs, her vamp reflexes making it easy one-handed, but Nick was still in the hallway.
Jenks put his hands on his hips and hovered. "What's wrong, crap-for-brains?"
Her head even with the floor, Ivy hesitated. "You don't have to come."
Grimacing, he eyed me and the horse. His hand on the gate prompted a sudden shifting from Tulpa, but I pushed him back. Horses were great. Once they accepted your dominance, there was no question. They sort of seemed to like it.
"Just get down the stairs, Nick," I said, and he slipped inside, almost skating down the metal framework in his haste. Jax was with him, and it was with an odd reluctance that I left Tulpa, giving him a pat before taking the stairs and unwedging the rod that had propped it open.
"Thanks, Tulpa," I said wistfully as the door shut, inches from my head. The last sight I saw was a floppy pair of lips with bristly whiskers snuffling at the narrowing crack. I turned and went downstairs, sighing at the thumps of his hooves overhead. I'd forgotten how much I liked horses.
Jenks was waiting for me, his hands on his hips as he hovered in his black thief outfit, looking better even if his grief was just out of sight in the back of his eyes. "You really get off on the big dumb animals, don't you," he said.
"Shut up, Jenks," I muttered, pushing past Nick and starting down the long, unremarkable hallway slanting downward. I couldn't help but wonder if I had picked out of my forgotten memory the word "Tulpa" as my word to spindle energy in my head. Probably.
"Cameras?" I asked as I came even with Ivy. The walls were white and I could feel the faint brush of air vents. I still thought using the ductwork would have been easier.
"No," Jenks said, wings a soft hum, then amended, "Well, just one where the elevator is. We've got a half-mile hike."
I nodded, feeling the strain of matching Ivy's vampire-quick pace. Nick gave up and began to jog, which made Ivy smirk. We looked out of place among the white halls and taupe carpeting, all of us in black but Jax: Ivy and me in leather, Jenks in his silk body suit, and Nick in a faded T-shirt and dark jeans. God, couldn't the man have dressed up a little for the occasion?
The end of the hallway was almost unrecognizable until we were on it. "Dad?" Jax questioned, and I jerked to a halt when Jenks flew in front of us.
"Yeah," the pixy said as he flushed. "Give Jax and me a minute to get the doors open without triggering something. 'Kay?"
The two pixies darted around the corner, gone. Fidgeting, I adjusted my belt pack, feeling the tiny ampoules of potion through the fabric. What if I ran into Ceri looking like her? This was so illegal it wasn't funny. Illegal, but in no stretch of the imagination deadly.
The whisper of pixy wings gave me bare warning as Jenks flew back around the corner. "We're good to go. Ivy, can you get the elevator doors open?"
Nick pushed forward around me. It's always the token dumb human who gets it first in the movies. I followed to find the hall dead-ended with the familiar silver doors of an elevator. Nick was trying to wedge the dead doors apart. Muttering "damn testosterone," Ivy strode forward, and with their joint efforts, the doors slid open to show an empty shaft. Jax hovered by my ear as we all looked up, and then down.
"Down, right?" I asked, thinking that if we had had more than a day to plan this, we could have swiped an entry card or something. No one said anything, but Jenks dropped into the darkness. Nick, too, swung into the shaft, easily grabbing the service ladder. I looked up, wondering how often they used this thing. "Down," I whispered, wishing it had been up. That half-mile hike had probably put us across