the handle. Kelsa's heart tried to batter its way out of her rib cage.
"Eleven fifty-two. It hasn't opened again."
"So maybe the sensor on the door is glitched," the woman said. "It wouldn't be the first time. I don't care what Nadine's board says. We've been through the whole place. There's no one here."
"I suppose." The man's voice was growing fainter. "But it's weird."
The voices receded into silence.
"You might as well sit down," Raven said softly. "We should give them time to get away from the building before we leave."
Kelsa was glad to sit down. Her knees were shaking. "Suppose they find my bike in the alley?"
Raven shrugged. "Then someone must have left a bike there. There's nothing to say it's yours."
There would be if they peeled the tape off her license plate. But someone who didn't know about silent alarms probably wouldn't know about license plates either, and Kelsa had tucked it out of sight behind the cans. They might well miss it.
"How did you lock that door?" she asked.
His laugh was warm and deep in the darkness.
"You'd call it magic. But it didn't take much. The lock is designed to open, so it wants to."
"But if you can do that, why didn't you get the pouch out yourself, the first time you broke in here? And don't give me that carp about magical rules, and a human having to do it. What's the real reason?"
"The rules are the real reason." There wasn't enough light coming under the door for her to see his face, but he sounded serious. "I'm bound to them, or it all fails. Why do people these days swear by a fish?"
"By a fish? Oh, carp."
"A carp is a fish."
"Not really. It's a euphemism. About sixty years ago, the people who didn't want anyone swearing on vid, or anywhere, really, got a law passed that you couldn't use bad language on the net either." Kelsa squirmed away from a box corner that was poking into one shoulder blade. "They got the software companies to put in a program that whenever someone typed in profanity, it changed a few letters. Which was stupid, because it still means the same thing."
"It is stupid," said Raven. "But it's not new. They used to say 'tarnation,' but 'damnation' was what they meant."
He'd said "tarnation," she remembered. And Jehoshaphat. Was he really that old?
"It didn't work either," Kelsa told him. "Because people started using carp or carpo, and frack to swear. So then the people who believe in dirty words decided those were dirty words too and tried to ban them. But by that time there was a new government in office, and they haven't been able to get the software companies to change their program again. They're still trying."
"You're a stubborn folk." Raven's voice was full of amusement. "That will be to your advantage, on the way to Alaska."
"I'm not going to Alaska," Kelsa said. "I told you I'd help you rob the museum, but that's it."
"But you owe me. Because I kept you from getting arrested, just as I promised. The least you can do now is finish the job."
"I owe ... You're the one who got me into this!"
"Deeper than you know." Raven reached out and lifted the pouch, then let it thump down on her chest. "You're bound into the healing magic now. I mixed some of your father's ashes into the dust."
"You what?"
"I'm sorry if you're upset." He didn't sound sorry. "Atahalne would be appalled. The Dineh won't have anything to do with dead bodies. They - "
Kelsa didn't care about the Dineh, whoever they were. "You mean my father ... his ashes are here?"
"And that matters to you," Raven said calmly.
"You bet it does!"
"Which is why those ashes bind you into Atahalne's magic. Which will make it possible for you to use it."
"You're crazy."
But if he wasn't...
She'd seen him lock a door without a key. She'd seen him shapeshift too, but somehow the small click of that lock had convinced her of his reality, of his magic, in a way that seeing him change hadn't. Perhaps because the lock was something real, something from her world. She didn't owe him anything. That was outrageous. But he had kept them from getting arrested. Maybe...
"Where is the first nexus?" Kelsa asked cautiously.
"It's in TuTimbaba," he said. "The lava fields north of here. Craters of the Moon, they're called now. There are lava tunnels there, perfect for an earth nexus."
Craters of the Moon was in Idaho. "If all