Chapter 25

Sharpay and Jesse rejoined us about an hour after that, and we walked across campus to the large lot used by most of the student body, we weren't really supposed to park there without a decal either, but we were hoping we wouldn't get another ticket.

"Let me tell you, that whole picking a lock with a hair pin thing doesn't work." Sharpay said once we got in the van.

"Shar, you didn't?" Ryan said from the driver's seat.

"She did." Jesse said from the back.

"Did anyone see you?" Joey asked.

"Please. Give me a little credit." Sharpay said.

"Sharpay, what if there was an alarm system?" I asked.

"Not on the interior doors. They don't seem that paranoid. And I'd like to think that after supervising the installation of one for their cage," she pointed to the back seat, "I'd at least recognize that much."

"I hope you're right, Sis." Ryan said, turning to drive out of the parking lot. "So what are we doing for dinner?"

"Café?" Jesse asked, perking up.

"Ugh. No. Not again. Find somewhere else." Sharpay said. "And not pizza either."

"Fine. We'll just go through a drive-thru and then back to the hotel. Does that suit you?" Ryan said.

"Whatever, Ry." Sharpay said with a glare at the back of his head. We pulled through a Taco Bell and then headed back to the hotel. "So, fearless leader, when do we move?"

Ryan shrugged. "Don't you think we should scout around some more first?"

"We've been over all the public areas, and I think we've all attracted too much attention already. Well, except Jesse, are you sure you're not a were-mouse?" She asked turning from Ryan to the boy seated behind her.

"Pretty sure, yeah."

"So, do any of you think that spending more time scouting will help at all?" Ryan asked.

"Not unless we get lucky and someone goes into that office or they just happen to move it right in front of us. Not that we'd even recognize it for sure." I said.

Ryan nodded. "Okay. Well tonight would be too obvious, and I think tomorrow will be too. Our best bet is going to be to hide in a bathroom or something until after they close the building for the night."

"What about the Fourth of July though? Everyone will be distracted." Jesse said.

"Yeah, but we'd have to break into the building." Ryan said.

"Unless we could steal a key." Joey said.

"My performance as the Artful Dodger not withstanding, I'm not a pickpocket. Are any of you?" Ryan asked.

"Well, no." Joey said.

"Then unless you're suggesting that we jump someone with a key, I don't see how that's going to work."

"We could, you know." Sharpay said.

"No. First, we're not beating someone up. Second, it'd attract too much attention when they woke up and went to the police. What do we do if the person we jump gets a look at us? And so help me if you suggest killing him I'm disowning you." Ryan said, pulling the van into the motel's parking lot.

"What if we drugged them?" Jesse asked.

"Do you have any drugs?" I asked him.

He shook his head.

"Do you know where we can get some?" I asked.

He shook his head again.

"If it's a guy I could just try flirting with him and getting him drunk." Sharpay said.

"No, he'd still remember you." Ryan said.

"What if I died my hair?"

"No, Sharpay." Ryan said with finality.

Sharpay huffed and stormed up to her room with her bag of food, slamming the door behind her.

"Does she practice that too?" I asked.

"That depends; do you count our childhood as practice?" Ryan said with a grin. "Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to lay low until Thursday, then we'll sneak into the building before it closes, and wait until it's clear. Then we'll hit the professor's office, hope that we find something useful, and then start looking for the tablet. Also, it's the night of the new moon, so Sharpay will be at her most useful. Sound good?"

Everyone nodded.

"Good. We'll let Sharpay know later."

"So, should we try the plum tonight, or stick with mint?" Jesse asked, holding up both containers of tobacco.

"Don't look at me. I've made enough decisions for one day." Ryan said.

"Let's try the plum I guess, but I'm not sure how I feel about smoking something that turns into prunes." Joey said with a slight look of disgust on his face.

I looked from Joey to Jesse. "Yeah. What he said."

Jesse nodded and began the process of unwrapping the untried tobacco. "They really do seal this stuff, don't they." He mumbled while cutting into the second internal bag."

Ryan nodded. "At least we know no one's tampered with it."

When Jesse got the hookah setup, Joey's and my worst fears were realized. It did taste like smoking prunes. To my horror Ryan seemed to like it though.

We passed the next few days in boredom. At least scouting around campus had given us something to do, now we had nothing to keep us occupied but a handful of cable stations and summer reruns. Worse, Joey insisted on making us watch So You Think You Can Dance, citing it as his favorite show.

"How can you like this?" I asked.

"How can you not? Look at it, all those moves, the brutal judges, it's like American Idol but a thousand times sexier."

"Wait, didn't you say you auditioned for it once?" Sharpay asked, Joey had insisted we not smoke when the show was on so he wouldn't be distracted and so that Sharpay could enjoy the show with us.

Joey blushed and looked at the floor. "Uh, yeah. Last season."

"You didn't make it?" Ryan asked.

"Nigel said I didn't dance enough like a guy."

"That's bullshit. You're a great dancer." I said.

Ryan placed a possessive arm around my shoulders. "Hey now. No complimenting the competition."

I rolled my eyes and gave him a pet on the cheek. "You know you're the only man for me."

"So why do you still watch it?" Sharpay asked.

"Well, I was thinking of trying out again. This year was kind of out, but there's always next year." Joey said looking at the screen again.

We had to steal his cell phone to make sure he didn't try to vote. What was worse, we had to miss the results show; it was on Thursday night after the anthropology building was already closed. Joey groaned the whole time about how much he hated to miss it.

"Worst werewolf hunter, ever." Ryan said as we were looking for good hiding places.

"Yeah, yeah. Now I'm campaigning for gayest werewolf ever." Joey said with a look that seemed halfway between a smile and a glare.

"Please. I've had you beaten for that since the moment I was bit." Ryan said leading us up the stairs.

"So where are we going to wait? Bathrooms?" Sharpay asked.

"I don't think that's a good idea. They'll check those. Not that what I'm thinking of is a good idea either." I looked around and found that we were standing in front of the dead professor's door. "Sharpay, do you think you can break this open without making it look like it's been broken?"

She shrugged. "I can try."

We all turned and looked up and down the empty hallway. There was a night school class in session, but the building was otherwise empty. I watched as the muscles in her arm swelled in size and she grasped the doorknob. It turned with ease, I didn't even hear anything break. She gasped and released it. "Uh, it's unlocked." She said.

"What?" Ryan said, turning from the hallway to his twin.

"You heard me." She turned the knob again and opened the door.

We all went in and looked around, it looked like the small office had been ransacked. Jesse closed the door behind us, being careful not to let it make any sound.

"Shit." I said.

Ryan nodded.

Sharpay sniffed the air. "A Nagual has been here. Recently."

"How recently." Ryan asked.

She took a deep sniff. "Yesterday at the latest, but I think sometime today." She sniffed again. "And it was a man. He smells cute."

Ryan sighed. "Great. Jesse, keep watch, everyone else start looking and stay quiet; let's hope it didn't find what we're looking for."

I went to the desk, the drawers were all hanging half open, and it looked like one had been turned upside down. "Weird. They went to all the trouble of picking the lock, but left this place a mess."

I started looking through the scattered papers for any mention of the dig at Lava Springs.

"Someone's coming." Jesse hissed from a crouched position by the door, and we all scattered to places that couldn't be seen from the window. Ryan joined me beneath the desk, while Joey and Sharpay pressed against the wall.

We heard footsteps pass in the corridor, they didn't stop but just walked by. When I couldn't hear them anymore I let a small sigh escape my lips.

"Okay, it's clear." Jesse said.

"Lock the door." Ryan told him.

Jesse nodded, and turned the lock, then gave the knob a slow turn to verify that it was locked and nodded at us.

Ryan powered on the dead archaeologist's computer. "Great, password protected."

"See if you can guess it." I suggested while looking over another sheet of paper. It looked like some sort of expense report; I noticed tickets to Mexico on the list and discarded it.

"Hey, look at this." Joey said, handing some papers to Ryan.

Ryan flipped through it. "What is it?"

"I think it's an article she was writing about the dig. Look at the last page, there's a picture of the tablet."

Ryan turned to the last page and whistled. "That looks big."

I took it from his hands and looked at it. The picture was in black and white, and then printed out on a crappy printer, but I could just make out some familiar looking squiggles on the dark object. If the scale on the picture was right, the thing had to be at least 3 feet tall. "Ouch. Feeling buff Sharpay?"

"You know it, Teen Wolf."

I looked at the picture again, and noticed that there was a number next to it. I scanned the text looking for the number, and found it. "Uh, guys. You might want to listen to this."

"What?" Ryan said looking down at where I was still sitting on the ground.

I held it up and read the section I'd found. "The most curious object at the site was a chiseled metallic tablet bearing pictographs of a distinctly older style to those found elsewhere in the dig. How the tablet came to be there remains a mystery as it masses approximately four-hundred kilograms. Preliminary analysis suggests the material is meteoric iron."

"Four-hundred kilograms? That's like nine-hundred pounds." Jesse said.

"Okay. I don't know if I'm feeling that buff." Sharpay said with her eyes wide.

"Someone's coming." Jesse said, and we all resumed our hiding places. This time whoever it was stopped to jiggle the knob before continuing on.

"Why'd he check the door?" I asked.

"Probably security closing down the building." Jesse said.

"Which means that whoever broke in here, definitely did it today or the guard would've found it last night." Ryan said.

"Unless he forgot to check this door last night, or it's a different guard." Joey said.

"You just can't let me sound like I know what I'm doing, can you?" Ryan asked.

"Not if I can help it." Joey said with a smile.

"Jesse, good news, you're getting promoted from Omega." Ryan said with a smirk.

Jesse did a silent fist pump while mouthing the word, 'Yes.'

Joey shot them both a glare.

"Omega?" Sharpay asked.

"Wolf thing, don't ask." I said.

She nodded and resumed looking.

We spent about half an hour going through everything in the office before Sharpay found what we were looking for, at least we hoped it was. "Guys. I think I found it." We all turned to look at her, she was holding up a small book. "It lists a bunch of things and then has numbers written in the margin." She held it up so we could see. "They look like room numbers."

Ryan leaned in and looked at it. "Iron Tablet, date unknown, 36." He turned to look at Jesse. "Is there a room 36?"

Jesse pulled a print out of the building's map from his pocket and looked at it. "Yeah, it's in the basement."

Ryan nodded and looked out the window at the empty night sky; no stars were visible through the city's glow. "Do you think we've waited long enough?"

"Let's give it a little longer." I said looking through the window and into the small parking lot. "There's still some other cars down there, let's wait for some of them to leave." I noticed something flapping on our windshield and sighed. "And we got another ticket."

"Okay. Let's see if we can figure out if anything is missing. Maybe we can find out what the Nagual was here for." Ryan said and we resumed searching, except for Jesse who kept his ear pushed to the door.

"You know what. I think we're looking at this the wrong way. We need to look for what's missing, not what's still here." I said.

"How would we know what's missing, Troy?" Sharpay asked.

"Well, except for this expense report." I held up the document I'd found earlier. "Has anyone found anything mentioning why she was going to Mexico?"

Everyone shook their heads.

"He's right." Ryan said. "The Nagual must've been here because of what happened to her."

"Trying to cover something up?" Joey asked.

"I… have no idea." Ryan said.

"He missed one thing though." Jesse said, pointing to the computer.

"Yeah, fat lot of good it does us." Ryan said glaring at the keyboard.

"Not right now. But maybe later." Jesse said.

"We can't just slip it under our shirts and walk out with it." Joey said. "We're going to have our arms full with the tablet."

"We don't need the whole thing. Sharpay, take over here." Jesse said, standing up and approaching the desk. He unplugged all the cables from the back of the computer and grabbed a bronze letter opener from the desk.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Getting the hard disk." Jesse said as he fumbled with one of the screws.

Sharpay kept her ear to the door, and when Jesse had retrieved the computer's hard drive and shoved the bulky thing into a pocket Ryan decided it was time for us to go. We locked the door behind us, hoping that it would keep security from discovering the pair of break-ins for a while and then we crept downstairs.

"Shit." Ryan said. "What if there's security cameras?"

"There aren't I checked. And you're just now thinking of that?" Jesse said.

"Hey, it's my first burglary, cut me some slack."

"Well there aren't. We can thank the university's lack of funding for the practical sciences for that." Jesse said as we continued into the basement.

Sharpay grabbed the door knob to room thirty-six, and this time I did here the lock's mechanism break as she turned it and forced the door open. We went in, and shut the door behind us. There were lots of wrapped things in the room, but we were able to ignore all the smaller things and crates. We found it without too much trouble, but none of us were able to budge it.

Sharpay sighed and handed her purse to Ryan. "What would you boys do without me?"

"Be possessed by an evil god?" Jesse asked.

Joey, Ryan, and I all tossed glares in his direction, then looked back to Sharpay who was already gaining in height. She reached down and grabbed the wrapped thing, several of the bubbles in its bubble wrap popping as her claws sank into them. She heaved, and moved it maybe a foot. She grunted, and her muscles grew even thicker, ripping through her top. She heaved again, and lifted it maybe an inch off the ground before it fell to the ground with a muffled clang.

"Careful with that, Sharpay." I said.

She turned and glared at me through brown cat's-eyes.

"Joey, go bring the van around to the back entrance. Jesse, you've changed during the new moon before, think you can do it again?"

"Uh, no?" Jesse said.

"Wrong answer." Ryan said. "Sharpay's going to need your help with it. Try thinking of hyenas or something."

"Uh, I'd rather not."

"Look man, it's hyenas now, or evil god later. Take your pick." I said.

Jesse sighed and closed his eyes.

"Troy, go with Joey and be lookout." Ryan said.

I nodded, and followed Joey out the door, closing it behind us.