A/N: Because I have a rough posting schedule I like to keep to, I am cranking out another chapter more or less on time, although it's shorter than the others, which maybe isn't a bad thing. For those of you who may be wondering if there's an end in sight to the fic, there is. I can't really quantify it in terms of chapters because I don't think in terms of chapters, but we're getting closer. Once I've finished this - and it will have a true end, I promise - I am thinking of taking this particular Helena and Myka into a new story, jumping ahead a couple of years. But I'm still trying to work out its semblance of a plot.
A/N 2: As always, thanks for reading.
An artefact retrieval in Atlanta had gone wrong, and Myka was charged with cleaning up the mess. A Civil War era relic that gave the possessor limitless courage but an appetite for foolhardy stunts, and which had been passed around by the college student who found it, had people trying to fly off the roofs of buildings and walk through fires. One of the Warehouse agents sent to retrieve the artefact succumbed to its effects and, though the artefact was neutralized before the agent could walk a tightrope stretched between two high-rises, it wasn't neutralized before national news teams were sent to cover the "bizarre" events and videos were uploaded to YouTube.
Stopping by Helena's apartment after dropping off Drew and the dog with Pete, Myka, after wheeling her roller bag into the living room, had buried her head in her arms at the breakfast bar, muttering imprecations, but Helena couldn't tell whether she was grumbling at having to placate various state and city officials, without really explaining what had caused the bursts of irrationality, or spending several days in Georgia at the end of June. Helena had attempted some placating of her own, which inevitably led them, or so it seemed these days, to the apartment's small bedroom. Myka had balked at the threshold, hissing "Pete," but Helena had arched an eyebrow and pointed out that Pete's apartment didn't border the bedroom and, unless Myka planned, in what would be a departure for her, to scream at the top of her lungs, it was unlikely that he would be able to hear anything. Myka had sulkily responded that it wasn't the noise she made that concerned her as Helena innocently blinked at her. She remained reluctant to venture into the bedroom until Helena slipped arms around her from behind and deftly unbuttoned and pushed down Myka's blouse; breathing, very lightly, against the column of Myka's spine, Helena brushed her lips and the tip of her tongue against the bump of each vertebra, and then Myka had turned around, pulling Helena onto the bed with her. An hour later, Myka rushed from Helena's apartment, the roller bag swerving from side to side behind her, and her blouse only half-tucked into her pants.
Not having to fly to Atlanta and soothe government officials or scrub social media sites of evidence of the artefact-induced madness or, for that matter, plant stories with the networks that had covered the events attributing the behavior to unanticipated side-effects from a drug trial, Helena enjoyed the luxury of having only to worry about replicated artefacts. Or so Claudia tried to tell her until Helena reminded her that the replicated artefacts could present a PR nightmare that would dwarf all previous ones. They were in the war room of the Warehouse, which looked remarkably unchanged since the last time Helena had seen it. The computers were newer, and there were more of them, but otherwise the room had the same cramped, tinny feel of a compartment in a WWII submarine. The occasional thump or clank from somewhere in the vast interior of the Warehouse didn't dispel the illusion that they were underwater rather than buried in the Badlands, this fusty operations center with its cranky, eccentric systems and the cranky eccentrics who maintained them (less cranky, perhaps, now that Artie was gone) being all that kept the Warehouse from plunging to the depths.
"So, how does it feel being here?" Claudia asked, Converse-sneakered feet pressed against the edge of a table, her office chair tipped back at a precipitous angle.
"Are you expecting me to say it feels like home?" Helena asked dryly, from a loveseat that could have been new or bought at a thrift store. The fabric had a not-quite-industrial nub that would show a certain degree of wear and no more for millennia.
"I'm not expecting you to say anything, it's whatever you want to volunteer."
Helena frowned. She wasn't sure she wanted to volunteer, wasn't sure she could. She had been nervous on the drive over from the B&B. It was one thing to feel the Warehouse's thrum from a Univille hotel parking lot, it was another to be walking on its territory, going through its umbilicus. It was the difference between being invited by an acquaintance you hadn't seen in a long while to drop by her house sometime and actually dropping by. Regardless of the motive behind the invitation, once you were at her home, she would have to decide how welcoming she wanted to be. Or maybe she would hide in the bathroom as you fruitlessly rang the doorbell because she hadn't known, until she saw your car in her driveway, watched you walk up to her front door, that she didn't want you there at all. But as Helena had entered the Warehouse proper, she smelled apples, and the thrum that reverberated in her core seemed more organic than not, as if the Warehouse might be chuckling to itself. The rage that burned through her then had caught her by surprise, caused her to take a step or two to the side to hide her swaying, and when Claudia, from the doorway of the war room, had asked her if she was all right, Helena had said only that the heat must have gotten to her. She hadn't felt the full intensity of that rage since her early days with 13 when the prospect of being in the Warehouse day after day, when she wasn't on assignment, had her throwing up in the B&B's communal second floor bathroom.
She hadn't expected the Warehouse to register the changes that Christina's death had caused in her. At least not initially. One didn't weep in the Warehouse and expect it to offer a handkerchief or a comforting pat. Its recognition of kindred spirits, or however its identification of potential caretakers was characterized, wasn't the harbinger of a relationship in which the Warehouse acted as a benevolent guardian, looking out for its chosen ones and protecting them from danger. Smelling apples wasn't some talisman against injury or death, and the Warehouse wouldn't have been shaken to its foundation (assuming it had something so prosaic as a foundation) if she had died on a retrieval.
But when she began her own hunt for Christina's killers, conducting it with the same obsessive care that she used in plotting and refining her attempts to undo Christina's death, she expected some shift in their relationship. Because she knew what she was going to do to the men when she found them, despite her assertions to herself - and to Caturanga when she asked for the leave to travel to France - that she was only going to assist the police inspector, Michaud, in his ongoing search. It wasn't that the Warehouse didn't tolerate killers; it tolerated many of them. Most were imprisoned in bronze but a few strolled its cavernous space as agents. Helena knew of, and had been partnered with, agents who preferred to complete an assignment as quickly and easily as possible, and if it was less work to kill the poor sod who was refusing to give up an artefact than to disable him or to talk him into surrendering it, they would. That hadn't been her way before Christina's death, and it wasn't the approach she adopted afterward - she had helped Tesla invent his blasted Tesla, after all - but she was less inclined to prevent an agent from using his revolver instead of his Tesla. The smell of apples never lessened, and perhaps in the Warehouse's view, should it have one, killing some malnourished factory worker to get at an artefact she had hidden underneath her skirts was no better or worse than convincing her to give it up. The artefact had been retrieved, that was the essential thing.
What she did to the men, however, to Poule and Lebecque, especially Lebecque, wasn't in service to anything other than her desire for revenge. There had been no artefact to take from the blood and gore she had spilled, no disaster averted by leaving Poule and Lebecque broken and still, eyes forever fixed wide and staring. Yet when she returned after she had murdered Lebecque, his screams echoing in her mind, she sensed no change in the Warehouse's reception of her. Artefacts didn't fall off their shelves, the electrical discharges that caromed off the roof weren't more violent than normal, and, if anything, the smell of apples was more pungent, of apples being pressed for cider, sharp and sweet simultaneously. How could something so sensitive to imbalance, of emotion, of energy, not react to the derangement within her? She had had principles - morals, the more sentimentally inclined called them - lines that she wouldn't cross, acts that she wouldn't stoop to commit. Yet she had crossed and stooped. If she had changed after Christina's death, she had changed again after Lebecque's. There was nothing, she knew now, that she wouldn't do because there wasn't anything that was inconceivable any longer.
When her last despairing attempt to negate Christina's death caused the death of an agent, the only thing she found worse than her own blank acknowledgment of her culpability was the greater blankness of the Warehouse's response. She had grimly welcomed the suspension from duty that followed the incident as the regents investigated and determined whether they should take action against her. But their investigation concluded and no action taken, she had returned to the Warehouse to find she couldn't rid her nostrils of its stench, of something sickly sweet and decaying. The rage she had harbored since Christina's death and turned on Christina's killers, she now focused on the Warehouse. The purpose of the Warehouse was to store artefacts and objects like them, she had been told upon starting out as an agent, not to pass judgment on them. But that was just an excuse for what it actually did, which was to shelter them. It sheltered criminals like her, artefacts that by themselves or in combination with others could level cities and wipe whole populations from the earth. That refusal to pass judgment didn't elevate it but made it complicit. The Warehouse had been as much a part of her impulsive, clumsy cruelty to Poule and her much more meticulous and thorough torture of Lebecque as if it had stood beside her as an accomplice. And when she made the decision to be bronzed, it wasn't lost on her that, in some sense, she was forcing the Warehouse to swallow her, to carry her and the evil in her in its metaphorical belly for eternity. But even then the Warehouse had had the last laugh because the last thing she took with her into the bronzer was the smell of apples.
Meeting Claudia's curious gaze, Helena said lightly, "It was like meeting an old friend." Or enemy.
Closing her eyes and tilting her head, breathing in as if Helena's response had a certain bouquet of sincerity or, conversely, disingenuousness that she wanted to examine, she asked, "Should I leave the two of you to catch up on old times?" Her head rolling back into position, Claudia rubbed her neck. "Can't say that the Warehouse and I have the same relationship, but then it didn't choose me so much as I was pushed into the line of succession. There's something of the favored one about you, the Warehouse version of Star Wars, with the Warehouse being the Force and you being, I don't know -"
"Anakin Skywalker?" Helena supplied.
Claudia's eyes grew big. "Dude, don't tell me you actually watched the prequel, all three of them." At Helena's abashed nod, she groaned, "You are truly making me lose all respect for you, H.G. But yeah, Anakin's right on. Talented and beautiful and . . . twisty." She paused. "I shouldn't have said that, about you being twisty. I mean, with you and Myka, you know." She bumped the ends of her fists together a couple of times. "Myka wouldn't . . . if you were still twisty."
"But I am still twisty, as you call it. Just because I'm not planning the end of the world doesn't mean the twistiness has gone away. It's still there, it will always be there." She had said it with a wry little smile, but Claudia was looking too serious, so Helena bumped her fists together. "And this means?" She said leadingly.
Claudia looked at her in disbelief. "You're just pulling my leg because we were getting too sad. I know you know what this means." She clenched her hands into fists and bumped them in slow motion. "You and Myka, this afternoon before her flight. I had to turn the stereo on in my B&B to drown out the noise."
Helena felt her mouth dropping and a blush rising in cheeks. "Weren't you already here. . . how could you have heard. . . I am not the type who swings screeching from chandeliers, but with her. . . ." She faltered to a stop as Claudia was blushing violently herself.
"H.G. I was just having you on, I mean, I didn't know, I was throwing darts in the dark." She ran a hand through her hair. "Wow, Myka . . . like before her flight?" She shook her head wonderingly. "Ms. If We're Not There Three Hours Early We're Late? You are rocking the Mykaverse, H.G., I'll give you that."
With a primness that surprised her, Helena found herself saying, "If we could change the subject, please."
"With pleasure," Claudia muttered. "I love her and I think I may be falling back in love with you, H.G., but I think you just ruined the B&B for me." She rolled her chair over to the loveseat and tugged at Helena's hand. "I asked you down here so I could show you something, so pull up a chair."
Helena took a chair from another table and set it next to Claudia's. Claudia hit a few keys on her keyboard and a security camera view of the interior of the Warehouse flashed on the monitor. "There are security cameras all over this place. There isn't an artefact anywhere, not even in the Dark Vault, that isn't on view somewhere. The DHS insisted on it. It also insisted that we never destroy or record over footage. This is footage from five years ago." She hit another key, and the only way that Helena could tell the video was playing was from the scrolling of the seconds in a corner of the screen.
"Yes, I can tell it's recording activity, or the lack thereof, in some artefact sector. I'm also assuming this is one of the places where the time artefacts are stored." Helena tried to keep the impatience out of her voice.
"A little more appreciation for the hours I spent scouring security cam recordings would be nice," Claudia complained.
"But you didn't spend hours, Claudia. You created a program that did the scouring for you, looking for anomalies," Helena said chidingly. "But I fail to see what anomaly it is that I'm supposed to be seeing."
"I try to have a life outside this, you know," Claudia said mildly, raising her hand in a looping motion that was, Helena supposed, to encompass the Warehouse. "Do you know how many. . . never mind," she sighed. "It's like being a redwood among bonsai. Unlike you, however, I can let my genius go unremarked."
Helena rolled her eyes. "Yes, as you're doing now. Tell me what I'm supposed to be admiring."
"How cleverly someone's who's not me erased the fact that there were visitors in this part of the Warehouse five years ago. My program knows they were here, it also knows that approximately 15 minutes of surveillance are 'poof' gone." Claudia closed her fingers then spread them wide in imitation of something magically vanishing. "Over the past five years, this has happened a half-dozen times."
"Any other way of finding out who these visitors were?" Helena asked.
"I've checked the audit reports of the visitors to the Warehouse on those days to see if they were altered." Claudia leaned back in her chair. "Lots of visitors, busy, busy, busy." She sidled a glance at Helena. "Scientists, DHS, politicians. Congressmen Jaffee and Perkins and their staff. Senator Lester's people. My guess is our visitors didn't sneak in, they're part of one or more of those groups, because, as far as I can tell, the audit reports weren't changed." Claudia noisily exhaled. "You're right about who's interested in the time artefacts."
"What makes you say that?" Helena said, frowning. "It could have been a few lowly Homeland Security functionaries taking in the sights."
"Don't rub it in that you're not rubbing it in. Some DHS supervisor tooling around the Warehouse on his lunch break wouldn't have thought to have his gawping at the artefacts erased. More importantly, he wouldn't have had the clout to get someone this good with this kind of access to mess with our systems." Claudia tapped the monitor. "Whoever did this is very, very good. And to get the clearance to the Warehouse to let their fingers do the walking - we're looking at a Jaffee or a Perkins or a Lester." She reached over and drew a manila folder that was on the corner of the table closer to her. "And speaking of politicians and things political, Jacqui's been doing some research into that PAWL connection."
As she opened the folder, an African-American woman bounced into the war room, waving a greeting at Claudia and looking with interest at Helena. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing shorts and a scooped-neck top. She was dressed too casually and Claudia was too relaxed in her presence for Helena to mistake her for someone from the DHS. Spinning away from the table, Claudia held out the folder to the woman. "Since you're here, Jacqs, why don't you do the honors?"
Jacqui took the folder and perched on the edge of nearby table. She thumbed through the folder's contents and then set it aside. "Not sure why I need the refresher," she said, wrinkling her forehead. "There's not a whole lot to be found - or said - about PAWL. It's a nonprofit, it's actually called the Foundation for the Preservation of the American Way of Life, and it's main activity seems to be holding power breakfasts for the rich and well-connected in Washington."
"Basically it's a fundraising tool for right-of-center politicians," Claudia interrupted with a derisive laugh.
Jacqui shrugged, spreading her arms, palms out, in a 'What else can you expect?' gesture. "Its membership list isn't publically available, and its officers are the type of corporate shills you typically see fronting organizations like that, but I did find some names that repeatedly crop up in association with it." She took a sheet of paper from the folder and handed it to Helena.
Helena scanned the names. "Several congressmen, I see, including Representatives Jaffee and Perkins." She hesitated, then turned a wry smile on Claudia. "Wade Farraday, and a few of my clients as well. Is this your way of telling me that I'm still under suspicion?" Still smiling, although she felt it becoming increasingly wintry, she looked down at the list. "I have no relationship with Wade Farraday, unless you want to make something of the fact that I've slept with the curator of his family's art museum. As for my clients, I put their money in my pocket, not their political beliefs, and were I plotting something nefarious, such as replicating artefacts, they're hardly the ones I'd contact first."
"Easy there, old timer," Claudia said, taking the sheet of paper from her. "I wanted you to see it because I'm beginning to think you're right about the political connection. I'm not ready to go all Three Days of the Condor or The Manchurian Candidate on you, but Jaffee and Perkins, in particular, have been sounding the alarm about us - saying we're still too independent, too secretive. What better way to crack open the Warehouse goodie box than by using the cover that it's some sort of anti-American enterprise?"
"What do we do now?" Helena asked, uncertain whether she was still offended.
"We continue digging until we hit something solid." Claudia folded the page into a paper airplane and threw it toward Jacqui. "Don't the procedurals always have the cops following the money trail? So let's follow the money. Who are Jaffee's and Perkins' backers? How much money is associated with PAWL? It ain't cheap to replicate artefacts." She leapt up from her chair and restlessly paced the office, stopping to look out at the Warehouse's expanse. "It makes me wonder what else our visitors did while they were here. What other records have been altered?"
"They wanted to know how certain artefacts work. They wanted to know which ones agents were still hunting. I don't think they tried to remove any," Helena said slowly, thoughtfully. "It would have been arduous enough to have someone manipulate the recordings to erase where they went, what they looked at. I don't think they would have wanted to take on the extra risk of actually stealing artefacts. They just needed to find the ones still known and still out there before we did."
"Did you hear yourself, H.G.? You said 'we.'" Claudia grinned.
"Senior moment," Helena said.
"Uh-huh." Claudia wagged her finger at Helena admonishingly. She tugged her phone from her pocket. "We'll pick this up later, but right now I have a conference call with the regents"
"What, they're not holding their covens at the diner anymore?"
"Meow." Claudia looked at Jacqui but pointed at Helena. "It hurts her to be nice. Don't let her touch anything. If you need me, I'll be in the Bat Cave." She inclined her head toward Artie's bedroom.
Had been Artie's bedroom. Surely was something else now. As if she had heard Helena's unspoken question, Jacqui volunteered, "It's Claudia's office." She slid off the table, and held out her hand as she approached Helena. "No one bothers with introductions around here, but I think they're only good manners. I'm Jacqui, Warehouse agent, tech help, and researcher extraordinaire."
Helena shook her hand. "Helena, or H.G., if you prefer, nineteenth century transplant, black sheep." Jacqui's eyes were the brown of pennies and held a similar glint, despite the engaging smile with the dimple at either end. She might describe herself as a researcher, but Helena was pretty sure she could handle herself in the field.
"I've been with the Warehouse three years, and every time Myka asked me to find something out for her, she had the answer before I did. But not since you've been here. I've actually heard the words 'I didn't know that' from her, and for that, I'm eternally grateful." Jacqui, with the bounce that seemed to speak more to a coiled energy than it did to a bubbling disposition - though she could have that as well, Helena conceded, never mind her own jaundiced view that the Warehouse crushed the optimism of anyone who served it long enough - crossed the room to an alcove furnished like a kitchenette. "Can I get you something? Bottled water, soft drink?"
"Nothing, thanks." Helena left her chair to stand in the war room's doorway. Extending for as far she could see and beyond were the shelves and vaults and rooms that contained centuries' worth of found items, essentially. But with one notable difference, the curious-looking piece of metal you picked up from the sidewalk was, in here, the curious-looking piece of metal that could enable you to see the memories locked in others' minds or, conversely, that could cost you your own.
"So, did they use the 'endless wonder' recruitment speech back then, too?" Jacqui was beside her, holding a bottle of iced tea. "I was an anonymous analyst in Homeland Security when my manager called me into her office, and there were Myka and Mrs. Frederic."
"Please don't tell me Myka used the term 'endless wonder.' I might have to break up with her."
"Myka was pragmatic. 'There's a lot of traveling,' 'You'll have to move to South Dakota,' 'It's not a 9 to 5 job.' The last was familiar. I used to work for a DA's office." As Helena smiled affectionately at the image of Myka underscoring all the realities of being a Warehouse agent, Jacqui added, "She told me that it would be the best job I would ever have and the worst. She said that the things I would see, the people I would meet, they'd break my heart more than once."
"And have they?" Helena asked quietly.
"I've been on a few rough retrievals, but I'm still here." Jacqui took a long swallow of iced tea. "So far the good's outweighed the bad, and the good, when it's really good, it's been, I have to say, wonderful." The look she gave Helena was tinged with old sorrows, but as her eyes turned to the Warehouse that yawned before them, her expression lost its sadness and became suffused with something that Helena could describe only as contentment.
Seeing it, Helena felt something else she hadn't felt in years, envy.
...
It wasn't the knocking at the door that made her look up from her apartment's ridiculously small and flimsy desk (Were these quarters for working staff or not?), it was the panting and anxious woofs. Shep. Which meant Drew. Grinning, she opened the door as Drew was poised for another knock.
"Didn't your father warn you to stay away from the cranky old lady in 3C?"
Drew squinted up at her in puzzlement. "You're not in 3C."
Helena sighed. "You are your mother's son." Shep poked his large, inquisitive head into the living room as Helena tried to body block him. "What can I do for you, Master Lattimer?"
"Dad said I could ask you to come play Call of Duty with us."
Helena put a finger to her lips, pretending to be deep in thought. "The game your mother doesn't let you play at home? If I spoke to her, I would hate to have to lie about what we did tonight. Are you prepared to buy my silence?"
Drew frowned, then his face cleared, and he gave her a cunning smile. "I bet my mom wouldn't like it if she knew you let me play Call of Duty. I'd hate to have to tell her that."
Helena laughed. Nudging Shep back into the hallway, she slung her arm around Drew's shoulders. "I believe there's hope for you yet."
...
What was the old joke she had heard about hockey? "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out." A night spent playing Call of Duty with the Lattimer men was more about what went on between the desultory firing at enemy combatants than the game itself. There were food fights, wrestling sessions (which were mainly Pete tickling his son until Drew erupted into shrieks of laughter), farting contests, and chases around the apartment that had Shep barking and galloping after them. Helena was willing to fling popcorn and pretzels and bat away the incoming missiles from Pete and Drew, but she begged off the competitive farting and there wasn't the slightest chance in hell that she would let Pete tickle her ribs. When father and son ran their circuit around the apartment,she crawled as high as she could up the back of the sofa to avoid a lunging, jumping Shep.
Collapsing on the sofa beside her after sending Drew off to get ready for bed, Pete said a little breathlessly, "Can't say I don't know how to show a girl good time."
"A ten-year-old girl possibly," Helena said as she dug out popcorn between the sofa cushions.
"Could be that's why I'm having a hard time getting dates." Pete swept his hand over his hair, brushing away pretzel fragments. A phone began vibrating and beeping on the coffee table in front of them. "Hey, Mykes." He walked toward the bedroom Drew had disappeared into. "How's Atlanta?" A pause. "That fun your first night there, huh. By the way, your girlfriend's here. Drew and I thought we'd treat her to a night of Lattimer charm. Have to say she doesn't seem all that impressed. . . ." The door closed, cutting off the rest of the conversation, although Helena could hear an excited chirp of "Mom!" from Drew which suggested that Pete had just handed over the phone.
Restless, she rose, trying to avoid crushing potato chips into the carpet. Pete's apartment was a larger version of the Pete Cave, unsurprisingly, decorated with framed posters of superheroes and dominated by a large tv (although not as large as the one in Bergstrom's apartment). A relationship with Myka would always be four-sided, Pete almost as inextricably a part of her life as her son. Complications had always been for artefact retrievals, equations, trial runs of her inventions; her sexual relationships Helena had tried to keep as uncompromisingly simple as a straight line - from Warehouse or home to borrowed (sometimes rented) room and back. Some of the agents of 12, the more forward-thinking ones, had teased her about her "string of lovers," joking that she needed a version of a dance card to keep them in order, but she hadn't found having multiple lovers a complication. It was only another kind of geometry, the shapes her going from one lover to another made. And the spouses to whom many of them were attached existed in her mind only as impediments to be overcome. They weren't people to her, not in the end, nor, sadly, were many of her lovers. Whims, needs, the occasional preoccupation. She had found the habit dispiritingly easy to resume when she left Boone. She should have found it dispiriting, anyway.
"You can't bring that long face into my son's bedroom," Pete teased, rejoining her in the living room, but the dark eyes were more concerned than merry. "Seeing something that sad might give him nightmares. He wants to say goodnight."
Helena summoned a bright smile. "Better?"
Pete waggled his hand. "It'll do." He hesitated. "If there's something bothering you, I can sit still enough to listen. But if it's about you and Myka. . . ." He screwed up his face and stuck out his tongue. "Ewww, no."
"Old memories. They'll pass."
Drew's bedroom was smaller than his one at home, and considerably more messy, but the bed was exactly the same, except that the sheets were Batman instead of Superman, as were his pajamas. As Helena sat on the edge of the bed next to him, he asked, "When are we going to start on the treehouse?"
"Soon," Helena said, "when your mother comes home."
"Like this weekend, maybe? Because Dad could help if he's here." He wriggled under the sheet. "It's going to be great. I've been telling my friends at soccer about it. They want to see it when it's done." He looked up at her. "Do you think all of them will be able to fit into it?"
"At the same time?" At Drew's nod, Helena pretended to give his question serious thought. "Perhaps. But if the tree starts to fall over, that means there are too many of you, and some of you may not be able to get out in time."
His eyes grew round for a moment, but then he saw the quirk of her mouth, and he began to laugh. "The tree's not going to fall over."
"No, it's not, but your friends may have to wait their turn to climb up to the treehouse. It's not going to be as big as a real pirate ship, you know."
"That's okay." His expression turned hopeful. "Maybe it'll still be nice enough out that we can hold my birthday party in it."
His birthday was in October, Helena remembered. There could be three feet of snow on the ground by then. It was South Dakota, after all. "We'll have to see."
"You can come," he said, "to my birthday party." The look he gave her then was pure Myka. "Will you?"
"Of course." It didn't feel like a lie, it felt like the truth.
Drew took it as a promise, rolling onto his side, dismissing her. "Goodnight, Helena."
She thought he might have fallen asleep by the time she reached the door, his breathing soft and even. Her hand moved up the wall, too high. She had been seeking the gas light, as if she had just finished saying goodnight to Christina. But this was Drew's room, and she needed to move her hand down to the switch plate. The centuries righted themselves, and her trembling fingers found the switch, turning the light off.
...
It was after midnight, and next to her arm there was a cup of cold Earl Grey that she was never going to finish. The source of power for the replication had to be an artefact or artefacts, but what were they and where had they gotten them? Helena rubbed her eyes. Despite her words to the contrary, perhaps artefacts had been stolen from the Warehouse. When was the last time there had been a full audit of the Warehouse's artefacts?
Her phone rang. Most likely it was Claudia calling about another discrepancy her programs had found. The phone was. . . somewhere. In her bag? Couldn't be, the ringing didn't sound muffled. Kitchen? Breakfast bar. Helena didn't like the stiffness she felt in her knees as she went to the counter and picked up her phone. Bloody student desk. Bloody cheap government agency.
"Myka? I'm the insomniac, not you." Stiffness forgotten, annoyance dissipated, Helena dropped onto the sofa, and then immediately regretted it as her head banged against the sofa's unforgiving arm.
Myka sounded uncertain and embarrassed. "I know, it's been, what, only 12 hours since I saw you, but I couldn't sleep." She sighed, "God, this is adolescent."
"I think I remember you telling me you didn't have any boyfriends in high school," Helena said with an impish smile that she could at least pretend Myka could see.
"All right, yes, I didn't have any boyfriends or girlfriends to call at inappropriate times in the evening when I was in high school, but Tracy did and some of my friends did, and, yes, even then I thought it was silly," Myka said, exasperated.
"Yet silly as it is, you're calling me."
"Yes, we've established that. I feel silly and stupid, and I can't not call you, although, truthfully, you're being kind of a putz right now."
Helena's smile grew wider. "I want you to say it, to say that you're gobsmacked. Just a little."
"Pete said you won the farting contest." Myka could be endearingly stubborn. Sometimes she could just be stubborn. Helena wasn't sure which she thought Myka was being now.
"Turn up the volume and put the phone down," she said crisply.
"We are not going to do this. I am not going to tell you where I am or what I'm not wearing. The times Pete and I tried this, we always started laughing." Her voice dropping, Myka said, "Besides, you never know when you're being recorded."
"All the better," Helena countered. "I've never minded an appreciative audience."
"I don't even know what to do with that."
"And that's precisely why you called me. Myka, put the phone on the nightstand, and do exactly what I tell you, no more no less."
"This will never work," Myka grumbled.
But it did.