“What are you doing?”
“Augghh!”
A head shoved through the door at me, but I somehow kept my balance. Even with the sight of those evil red eyes staring into mine from all of an inch away. Which was less of an ick factor than the neck ending in a working black mass, like a million ants were trying to consume it.
I swallowed.
“If you’d given me a moment, I would have opened the door,” Lawrence said mildly.
“Yeah, well. You failed to mention that.”
“I wouldn’t leave a partner behind,” he told me. Which would have been more comforting if the ants hadn’t taken that moment to swarm over his face, molding to the features until they were just nose- and mouth- and chin-shaped protrusions in a horrible, squirming mask. Until even that winked out and the door opened, so abruptly that I stumbled through his body on the other side.
It took everything I could do not to wipe frantically at my skin as the boiling black mass spun up around me. And then coalesced a few feet away into a vampire in a dark-colored suit. He looked like he had all the requisite parts, but my mouth still felt full of ash, my throat clogged with it, my heart beating double time because, damn.
“Take the back; I’ll cover the front,” he told me, as if nothing had happened. I just nodded. The sooner this was done, the better.
There wasn’t much to see in the living area, which was decorated in stark black and white. Plush white couches sat on gleaming black hardwood, which also supported a white baby grand. Black and white and red art prints were scattered over walls, although there weren’t any of the kind of personal photos that might have been expected. There weren’t any personal touches at all that I could see, except for a carved raven perched over a door, its gleaming obsidian feathers catching the light through a porthole.
Very literary, I thought, staring up at it. But not very reassuring. There also weren’t any signs of a wanted ex-lieutenant, so I moved on.
Down a flight of stairs were the bedrooms, five of them facing each other along a short hall, with the master at the end. I tried to scent something out of place without actually going into the rooms, because if there was going to be a ward or trap, it would likely be inside. But all I smelled were teak and beeswax, bright lemon cleaner and vinegary nail polish, the tang of ozone and expensive perfume and—
Nothing.
I paused outside the door of one of the smaller cabins near the end of the hall. Unlike the others, it didn’t appear to have been used recently, with no bright living scents cutting through a layer of dust. That wouldn’t have been a big deal—maybe the owners used it for storage or just didn’t have that many guests. Except for that Nothing: a gaping hole in the middle of the room’s scent story, like someone had come along with a giant pair of scissors and simply cut it out.
There were a couple of things that could do that, including a shield that hid smells like the one I was using hid sounds. It was often employed by bad guys brewing up illegal potions and people storing otherworldly ingredients or merchandise, the smells of which were so distinctive that they’d tell anybody with a nose that something was up. And considering that we were after a bunch of smugglers, that was probably all it was, just a shield in case the local War Mage Corps got curious about somebody’s stash.
But then, there was one other thing that left a big blank hole in the world.
I was about to call the expert when I felt an insubstantial hand materialize on my shoulder. “You found something.”
“Maybe. It could just be somebody’s cache of fey wine.” Which I would, of course, have to confiscate to teach them proper respect for the law.
But Lawrence shook his head. “No.”
“You’re the expert,” I said, and kicked in the door.
And okay. That wasn’t wine. The problem was that I wasn’t sure what it was, and judging by his caution as he walked over and knelt beside it, neither was Lawrence.
It didn’t look particularly threatening—just a square hole in the floor, like a trapdoor. But this door was open, and a square column of strange underwater light was shooting out the top and puddling on the room’s ceiling. Lawrence stuck his head in the hole, the light splashing his dark coat and thin features. I took my time, checking the room for nonexistent snares, before joining him.
The trapdoor turned out to be…a trapdoor. It was what was below that was interesting. A hole had been carved through the floor of the cabin and into a crawl space, and then kept on going right down to the hull. But instead of water gushing out to flood the room, there was only a film of light across the top, eerily similar to the waves outside in the way little ripples were chasing themselves across the surface.
It didn’t really look like the portal I’d been halfway expecting, which should have been either invisible when closed or a swirling mass of color when opened. But it didn’t look like anything else, either. It also still gave off no scent that I could name, but it looked like Lawrence might be having better luck. Because he’d jumped down and stuck his nose within an inch of the shining blue surface, which was ill-advised.
And then through it, which was crazy.
I followed and
jerked him back. “What are you doing?”
He looked up in mild surprise, the first expression I’d seen him use. “Going inside.”
“Going inside what?”
“This is a portal—”