them?” he said flatly. “That thing? No it won’t. It won’t do nothing.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she said at last. “I’ll be careful. Still if … if you could please give me the details of those, of the animal Armageddon … I think someone I know might be there.”
Chapter Sixty
ON THE CAMPUS OF THE SUBURBAN UNIVERSITY, BILLY AND Dane’s vaguely purposeful scruffiness was camouflage. It had not taken long at an Internet café to check which room was Professor Cole’s. They knew his office hours, too.
While they were online Billy had poked around to find and check Marge’s MySpace. He saw the picture of Leon, the call for help, the number that was not her number, must be some dedicated phone. It shocked him how much it made emotion fill him. He printed more than one copy.
“If this bloke’s such a powerful knacker,” said Billy, “why’s he work at Shitechester Central Poly? And is it not a bit nuts for us to go up against him?”
“Who said we was going up against anyone?” said Dane. “Is that the plan? We’re just looking for information.”
“We might. Like you said, it sounds like this might all be down to him. The fire, the everything. So what can we—”
“Yeah. I know. We might.”
Wati would not come. The strike was dying, and even now his first allegiance had to be to his members.
“We don’t have time to wait. We have to find out whatever there is to find out,” Dane said. “This is the first lead we’ve had. So yeah.” That long stare had come with him out of the basement. “We do what we have to, and we be ready.”
Every one of their moves now might plausibly be the last, but they could not do everything, could not take care of all business. They did their best, just in case there was an aftermath. Dane spoke to rabbi Mo, a quick connection through stolen phones. Simon was curing. They were purging him of all those angry ex-hims. “He’s drained and weak, but he’s getting better,” he said she had said. “Good.” As if it were likely that it would, ultimately, make a difference.
Billy and Dane waited in the corridor, forcing smiles when Cole’s secretary, a middle-aged woman, and the three students waiting glanced at them curiously. Cole must have protections. They had made what desperate plans they could. When at last the student who had been with the professor left the room, they walked to the head of the waiting line. “You don’t mind, do you?” Billy said to the young man in front. “It’s really important.”
“Hey, there’s like a queue?” the boy whined, but that was all he did. Billy wondered passing if he had been so feeble at that age.
They entered, and Cole looked up. “Yes …?” he said. He was a middle-aged man in an ugly suit. He frowned at them. He was cave-pale, and his eyes were shaded ridiculously dark. “Who …?” His stare widened and he stood, grabbing at the clutter on his desk as he came. Billy saw papers, journals, books open. A photo of a young girl in school uniform between Cole and a bonfire.
“Professor,” said Dane, smiling, holding out his hand. Billy closed the door behind them. “We had a question.”
Cole’s face went between expressions. He hesitated and took Dane’s hand in his shaking own. Dane twisted and pulled him down.
“I ain’t going to take him if we go knack to knack,” Dane had said when they prepared. “If he’s what we think. At the very least it sounds like he knows what’s going on, and just in case he is the burner … the only chance we’ve got is to be stupid, and brutal, and fucking base.”
Dane brought Cole’s body down beneath him, expelling the man’s breath and locking him into place. He struck Cole twice with the weapon he pulled from his pocket. The way he held him Cole could make no sound.
“Billy?” Dane said.
“Yeah.” Billy found two places in the doorway where there were drill holes. He gouged with the knife he had brought, uncovering a scrap of flesh and thin chains, a wire figurine. He could see no other magics. “Done,” he said.
“Exit?” Dane said. Billy went fast to the window.
“One floor down, onto grass,” he said. He aimed the phaser at the groaning Cole.
“Professor,” Dane said. “I’m sorry about this, genuinely, but I’ll do it again the second I think you’re knacking. We need you to answer some questions. What