cleared a peephole, I saw a dark storage room with a massive box blocking the door.
What had Stranz wanted in that room?
I’d come back later. For now, I needed to catch up with—
The hall vanished. There was a moment of darkness, no longer than an eye blink, then I was staring at a wall. I turned slowly.
I was in a small, empty room.
The Fates have been known to reach out and grab me. Very inconvenient. But this wasn’t their waiting room, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. Not wrong enough to be worthy of their attention—they’ve learned to employ a sliding scale with me, which slides ever further toward ignoring most of what I do, because calling me on every broken rule is really too much work. On this mission, though, I’d actually been behaving. Was that the problem? I’d gone too long without getting in trouble and they were growing nervous?
No. They wouldn’t dump me in a small, empty room. I’m a little claustrophobic. The Fates can be a pain in the ass, but they’re never cruel. I paced around the room once and—
Another flicker of darkness and I was back in the museum hall. I’d walked into a dimensional slip—just as Stranz must have. Step on the right spot and in you go. Like a magical version of those bookcases that spin into a secret room.
But the secret room had been empty. Was it a dimensional hiccup? An unused pocket? Or had I missed something? Had that pocket been Stranz’s destination? Did that explain why he’d cut through these back halls?
I put my hands out, ready to start looking for that doorway again. Then I stopped. Stranz. He was on the move. This pocket wasn’t going anywhere. I hurried off to find my target.
• • •
I caught up with Stranz on the far side of the second floor, where he met his former ayami—now his wife. A blur spell got me close enough to hear him apologizing for being late. He’d come up the stairs, turned the wrong way and had to circle around the entire floor before he realized his mistake.
“So, what do you want to see?” he asked her.
“Vikings.” She smiled up at him. “I want to see Vikings.”
“Then you shall.” He looped his arm through hers. “When do we need to meet Ted and Anna?”
“In two hours at Seven Dials. There’s a lovely little pastry shop there . . .”
They wandered off. Two hours of Vikings followed by a visit with friends just a few blocks away. Perfect. That gave me time to check out that dimensional pocket.
• • •
I found the room easily this time. There was a certain spot you needed to step on. I did that and was teleported to the pocket, which was . . . still an empty room.
I set about methodically searching the pocket. I walked over each bit of floor and peered through the wall, but it was like looking out into a black hole. Same with the floor. Yet whenever I passed one section of wall, I felt a buzz, like a low-grade shock. A magical, Hey, there’s something here.
It took some work, but I found the source. A hand-sized section of wall just above the floor. I put my hand against it and—voila!—a dimensional door popped me into . . . another room.
For a moment, I thought it was the same one. Except when I paced it off, I realized that this room was a couple of feet smaller. Some searching located the door back to where I’d come in. I also found a door into yet another, slightly smaller room.
“Seriously?” I muttered as I paced the new one, bending slightly to keep from hitting my head on the ceiling. “What is this? The Russian nesting doll of dimensional pockets?”
I found another door, into a smaller room, then another, this last one taking me into a long crawlspace, so narrow I’m sure my heart would have been pounding—if it still beat. I crept along on all fours, ignoring the jabs of panic, reminding myself that I knew the way out. Then the crawlspace ended. I crouched there, hitting the walls, then . . .
The floor gave way and I tumbled down into
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