“Wow,” I breathed. What the hell was she?

Frida gave me a small smile, then rose creakily to her feet. She shooed us away, mumbling, “Nap time,” as she shut the van door in our faces.

I gave Anyan a quizzical look as we headed back to the main table.

“Frida is a drude,” he explained as we walked. “They can separate themselves into two halves—one earthly and one incorporeal. The incorporeal half can spy, or run messages, or possess humans for short periods of time. It’s where the myth of demonic possession came into being. But Frida’s existence on the Alfar payroll is top secret, so don’t advertise.”

I nodded, marveling at what I’d just seen. Every time I thought I was getting used to supernatural surprises, I met a new creature, or saw a new power, that completely floored me.

Suddenly realizing that Anyan and Isolde had walked well away from me, I trotted after them and listened as Isolde continued to brief Anyan on the mission. They were using a lot of jargon, but the plan seemed to boil down to capturing the bad guys and freeing the women. I approved.

After we collected a few more of the people dressed all in black—a female satyr and an incubus—from the command post, we headed toward the tactical command post. When we arrived, we saw about fifteen supernaturals milling about wearing SWAT gear. I was surprised at that, especially at the fact they had the usual guns and big black shields I’d seen in the movies.

Guns? I thought. Nobody said anything about guns.

The assault force commander was Isolde’s second, an ifrit named Ezekiel. I couldn’t help but shiver when I saw his flaming figure, causing Anyan to cock an eyebrow at me. Trying to reassure myself as well as him, I gave him a tight smile and reminded myself that Conleth was dead, and this ifrit had nothing to do with what had happened in the past.

Anyan and Ezekiel shook hands, once the ifrit had pulled the fire back from his arms.

“Anyan, sir, it’s an honor to have you with us. Will you be participating?”

Anyan nodded. “Yes, we’ll need gear.”

“Is the halfling participating as well?” the ifrit inquired, giving me a rather dismissive once-over.

“Ezekiel, you know damned well that this is Jane True, and that she is with me. So, as I said, we’ll need gear.” At Anyan’s obvious irritation, the ifrit looked suitably chagrined. And I had to clamp down on the smile that was pulling at my lips.

I don’t think I’ve ever, once, heard Anyan use that word, I realized. He always says half-human, or half-supernatural, but never “halfling.”

When we were led toward an equipment van, I again asked Anyan whether my taking part in the raid was the best idea.

“You have to learn. We were all green once, and at some point we all had to take part in something like this for the first time. You’ll be with me the whole time, and we’ll be embedded in the middle of the assault force. There’s only a few perps to deal with and rather too many of us, to be honest. You probably won’t even have time to make a mage ball, let alone shoot one at anybody. So all you have to do is help us hold the line and secure the women. You’re strong, Jane, but what you need is confidence in yourself and your abilities. You’re only going to gain that through experience.”

I gulped, trying my best to look competent as Anyan paused to think.

“That said, we won’t be giving you a gun. You’d probably shoot yourself in the foot.”

I nodded; he was right. But that did remind me of the question I’d been itching to ask: “Yeah, what is up with that? Why are you guys using guns and not mojo?”

“ ’Cause we’re going in human. Otherwise, they’ll feel our magic and know we’re coming.”

To punctuate his point, Anyan let a tiny thread of his power shiver over my skin, giving me goose bumps.

I gulped. I’d been scared enough when I thought everything was just gonna be magical, but the sight of all those assault rifles had totally freaked me out. I really didn’t like guns.

There was no time to sort through my antigun feelings, however, as we were already at the van with all the gear. The barghest led the way, sorting through everything till he found things that would fit us. We were both already wearing dark clothes, so we didn’t worry about those, thank goodness. He was so big and I was so small we would never have found anything that fit. But the barghest did strap me into an overly large bulletproof vest (in case of friendly fire, he explained) and a helmet that kept slipping over my eyes. I felt like a little kid playing dress-up, but I let him have his way.

Anyan was, after all, the badass of our little operation, while I was part seal. I knew when to smile and nod.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The next half hour was this bizarre combination of the longest and shortest moments of my life. The lead-up to the assault itself felt like it was happening in fast-forward. We went from dressing ourselves in the van to hightailing it to the final assault point. Everyone fanned out into position.

The laboratory was in the final building of the strip mall, and it had two entries: one in the back, and one in the front. Each of these areas had two teams ready to move: The first was a two-supe breaching team that would take down the door, and the second was an entry team that would sweep past the first team and secure the premises. We were in stealth mode and not using any magics, so the breaching team had the same kind of combined battering ram and shield jobbies they use on TV. One person rammed while the other person covered him with a rifle. As for the entry teams, Anyan and I were on the team going in the front door. Both entry teams were going in using a “stick” formation—which just meant a single-file line. I was sandwiched, toward the end, between Anyan and another experienced operative, a small woman who handled her assault rifle with the familiarity of a lover.

The breaching teams were hitting both entry points simultaneously, as neither of the doors were booby-trapped, according to Frida. Not happy with using only two points of entry, however, the supes were creating a third: a “porthole” between the building we were attacking and the empty shop with which it shared a wall. Earlier that day, two of our team had climbed up the far side of the strip mall, crawled to the empty shop neighboring the lab, and entered through a skylight. One of the supes, a nahual, was an explosives expert, and he’d set a detonating cord—a superthin tubing filled with powdered plastic explosives—into a small circle that he’d blow when the breaching teams struck. The hole wouldn’t be anywhere near big enough to crawl through, but it was big enough for the other supe—a stone spirit whose calm nature made her an excellent sniper—to shoot through.

As for what we’d do when we were inside, that was simple. Our rules of engagement, or ROE, in this scenario were what was called “direct to threat,” meaning we had to neutralize the perps first to minimize the danger to the hostages. In other scenarios, without civilians at risk, we’d put our own safety first and go in slower. But because of the threat to the women contained inside the lab, Anyan explained to me that we had to think in terms of speed, surprise, and violence of action.

As I was used to thinking in terms of going slowly and carefully, always calling ahead first, and avoiding violence at all costs, the barghest’s calmly stated goals were anything but comforting.

Not that I had a lot of time to ponder my situation, for one minute I was walking with Anyan from the van, and the next I found myself standing in a single-file line with a bunch of people carrying guns. Every time I looked at one of the assault rifles, I physically cringed. As if to hammer home to me just how much I wasn’t meant to be there, my helmet kept slipping down over my eyes, and I really, really needed to pee. While I knew it was just my nerves, that didn’t matter.

If I pee my pants I am going to be so pissed, I thought, just as time stopped.

Seriously, time just—stopped. It was like everything up to our getting into that line was moving at three times the normal speed, but as soon as we were standing there it felt like some great thumb, a la Martin Amis, came from nowhere and turned off time.

All the silence helped contribute to that feeling. The windows of the former shopfront-turned-lab were all bricked in, and the glass doors had been replaced with large steel ones. Unlike the labs we’d come across in Boston or in Borealis, this laboratory was so far off the beaten track that the creatures running it hadn’t even tried to camouflage it as a clinic. In other words, we didn’t have to worry about being seen, but we did need to worry about being heard. So the entire trip from the FAP to the doors, everyone was communicating only with hand and eye signals while tiptoeing as quietly as possible.

Even more eerily, however, was that everyone was magically silent. I’d become so accustomed to a constant undertone of power humming through me, my friends, and the supes around me that to be suddenly without that hum was startling. It was like I’d had a slight case of tinnitus that had miraculously cleared up, leaving me marveling at how quiet the world could be. I was also struck by how—without their flaming mage balls or blue-flamed swords—the supes around me, even the ones who were physically so different, like the satyr, looked so very human. Clutching their weapons, their bodies tense and their eyes bright with anticipation, but without that slight sheen of supernatural power gleaming around them, they could have been any SWAT team about to start a raid.