said. "For what it's worth, I really did have the hots for your blood type. And I was right that you'd taste like clarified blue blood. Awesomely rare."
A gourmand vampire? Euww.
"What do you want in Sheena's car?" I asked.
He nodded at two briefcases on the floor mat. "My share."
"Forget it," I said. "I'm shutting Sheena down. You don't want to ever show your sorry face in Kansas again."
He scrambled into his Prius and lurched away at top speed.
As he left, I spotted a sudden hailstorm heading for us through the lot. Sheena was still watching the exterior. No way was that witch going to ice-blast the pristine finish on my vintage car. Taking my job and my rental house was one thing, but Dolly was family.
Also pretty much Detroit tank.
I gunned her over the curb and the lawn, cutting across to the concrete canopy sheltering the station's main entrance. The hailstorm passed over, tinkling down a few stray ice crystals.
Now that Dolly was safely parked out of the elements, Quick and I headed into the eerily rainless storm for the broadcast tower.
I'd always taken this five-hundred-foot Eiffelesque structure at the station's side for granted. Now, it was scary. A fan of lightning bolts as tall as the tower itself grew from its top, glowing so white-hot the tendrils looked pink against the night sky.
The tower sat on a concrete pad next to a shack unsavory enough to house an illegal still. Dozens of thin guy wires anchored the mass for hundreds of feet around. Toppling the tower would be impossible. Cutting off the dark artery of cable that ran up it would not, but this electrical storm could ground itself through me, a process called electrocution. I so wished I had paid more attention in those required science classes. Luckily, it wasn't raining. Yet.
Maybe that was why the silver familiar wasn't morphing into something handy like a hedge trimmer or hatchet or a hacksaw; using it would kill me. Or it just didn't do yard work.
Quick's sharp bark drew me around the shack's side to where the metal conduit housing the cable met ground to run into the shack. Simple. Cut the power to the tower by hacking the conduit and interior cable in half. I needed a real tool. ...
The shack's exterior toolbox was filled with goodies I pawed through by lightning flash. If I had a hammer. ... I picked up one with a rubberized handle. It wasn't suitable for cutting a coax but reminded me that tools around here would need insulated handles. I finally lifted up an awesome little Tin Man hatchet with a wooden haft.
Hoping that the nonmetal handle would interrupt a lethal electrical shock, in seconds I was hacking at the conduit like a demented ax murderer. I'd cut through the outer metal and was denting the rubber insulation when Quicksilver growled and rushed something behind me.
Sheena stood screaming beside me, her blond hair flaring in the wind to show her brunet roots. "Stop that, Street! That hacking is giving me a throbbing headache."
I ignored her and kept slinging my hatchet, counting on Quicksilver to keep her at bay.
Suddenly a hurricane gust of wind lifted me off my feet while Sheena yanked me back by my windblown hair. The hatchet flew from my hand into the dark as Sheena and I fell struggling on the concrete. Another lightning flash showed Quicksilver nosing at the half-cut-through cable.
No! He could electrocute himself. I kneed Sheena in the stomach and swung her off me by her hair, struggling to my feet in the straight skirt and heels. I'd never wear a business suit anywhere again.
"Quicksilver," I screamed. "Leave kitty!"
Everything happened in jerky slow motion, as if lit by a nightclub strobe light.
Quicksilver regarded me with calm, stubborn doggy inaction.
By the next flash, Quicksilver had lifted a leg.
A rear leg.
I shut my eyes.
"Quick, no!" Water would short out the cable, of course, but Quicksilver would be fried.
Sheena was clawing at my skirt to pull me back down, but I back-kicked her away and charged for Quicksilver ...
Just as lightning flashed and showed his hair snapping with static into a gorgeous electric-blue halo, leaping toward me ...
As the tower-top lightning streaked to ground with the sound of berserk electrical snapping. The wet cable shorted out the tower, making it a dazzling firecracker flaring, and then fading to disappear against the night sky.
Sheena was moaning behind me. "You witch! My coven's been grounded. You've broken my perfect storm."