"The passage isn't warded," Bella said, watching the map. "Can your little minions take pictures?"

"I wish," Elyssa said. She noticed the map hadn't grown in a few seconds and realized why. "The doors below must be sealed tight because the roaches haven't mapped the area beyond."

"What a bloody conundrum," Stacey said, hand on hip.

Elyssa checked the status of her spy-bots and saw the hallway remained clear. The guy with the broken printer would probably be back at any minute. She looked at the map again, desperately searching for a vent or anything else that might lead down into the basement. The map outline showed a wide vent shaft angling straight down, but the map ended a few feet down—not far enough to be anywhere close to the bottom. It probably had a ward similar to the levitator killing the roaches before they made it very far.

Elyssa checked the time. Ten minutes left.

Her eyes wandered back to the map. A potential weakness caught her eye. "Follow me," she said, leading the others left, down the hallway, and to the door of a supply closet tucked into the back. The door was locked.

Elyssa jerked hard on the handle and felt the lock snap. She was sick of every little thing in this place blocking access.

"I know how you feel," Stacey said with a smirk.

The closet held a mishmash of items including boxes of blank parchment against the back wall. "Help me move those out of the way," Elyssa said.

"What exactly are we doing?" Bella asked.

"Getting into the shaft."

It took two minutes to clear the boxes. Elyssa tested the wall with her knuckles, rapping lightly. Ordinary drywall. "Can you cut this open, Bella?"

The other dhampyr nodded, withdrew her wand. A thin purple beam intersected the wall. She flicked her wrist in an approximation of a square, leaving a black line. With a jerk of her wand, the section of drywall fell to the floor. A concrete wall confronted them. Stacey stowed the sheet of drywall to the side.

"It appears to be normal concrete," Elyssa said, running a finger across it. "Reinforcing everything with diamond fiber would have been prohibitively expensive."

Bella dug into her satchel and withdrew several vials of liquid. She held up a pink one, shaking it. "I believe this potion will do the trick." After uncorking the vial, she screwed a nozzle to the top, and sprayed fluid all along the concrete. The surface bubbled. An odor not unlike burnt popcorn filled the supply closet.

"I hope that guard doesn't come back," Stacey said. "Because he'll smell this from a bloody mile away."

It took less than a minute for the concrete to sag into a soupy gray mess, revealing the back of the levitator car. On this side, however, a gap wide enough to squeeze through presented itself."That's not going eat through the floor, is it?" Stacey pointed at the puddle of concrete on the floor.

Bella poured a vial of blue liquid into it. "Not anymore." She produced another vial and sprayed the air with it. The popcorn odor faded. "Much better."

Elyssa looked down the shaft, flicking on her night vision.

Only seven more minutes.

She couldn't see the bottom. A small glowball she dropped down the shaft fell for at least three stories before stopping. Too far to jump. The levitator had no cables to slide down. Wasting no more time, Elyssa withdrew a circular object about as big around as the palm of her hand from her satchel, and pressed it to the inside of the shaft. It sent a spike into the concrete with a distinct thunk, locking it in place. A hook protruded from a hole in the side of the device. She pulled on it, unspooling a foot or so of diamond fiber from within.

"I'll go first," Elyssa said. "Hopefully I can force the doors open at the bottom."

"How are we supposed to get down there after you?" Stacey asked.

"When I signal the all clear, just touch the button in the center," Elyssa said, pointing at it. "Or, if I can't get the doors open, it can pull me back up."

"Good luck," Bella said as Elyssa slid into the narrow gap between the shaft wall and the levitator car.

Some of the goopy concrete material got on her hands. She hoped it didn't melt her skin. Elyssa let go of the ledge and pushed out, feeling her hair brush the bottom of the lift. The rope played out, allowing her to rappel her way down the shaft wall until she reached the bottom. Once there, she inspected the doors.

Sealed tight. Reaching down, she unsheathed a thin dagger from her thigh, and jammed it into the seam. A quick jerk wedged the doors open a fraction. She quickly grabbed a very short but wide bar from her satchel, and placed it inside the opening, then pressed the center.

"Five minutes," Bella hissed from above.

The bar lengthened, pushing the doors open a little at a time. Each elapsed second felt like a winch tightening her nerves. No time to waste. She unhooked the rope and, using the glowball she'd tossed down earlier, flashed a signal to the other women. The rope retracted. Seconds later, Stacey dropped down beside her and signaled for Bella to follow.

By now, the wedge had opened the levitator doors most of the way, revealing a large room with black marble floors, walls, and ceiling. Hexagonal tiles spaced evenly in the floor drew Elyssa's attention. She looked at the diagram from Adam's program and realized they must be the nodes. But how was she supposed to interact with them if they were in the floor?

Only three more minutes.

Bella looked flummoxed. "Most of the heists Stacey and I pulled off were strictly low-tech," she said, looking around the room. "Perhaps I should devote a decade or two to educating myself."

"I wonder if those are the high-security nodes," Stacey said, pointing to a patch of gray hexagons near the center of the floor.

Elyssa looked at the map and judged the number of grids to be about right. "I'm a little leery about walking out there." What if the floor was warded?

Bella flourished her wand, winding it through a quick pattern. Purple butterflies popped into existence, fluttering across the room, painfully slow. Elyssa's stomach tensed. Could they do this? Or had they bitten off more than they could chew? The first butterfly reached the gray marble tile in the center. It popped like a bubble. The same thing happened to the others that entered the gray area, whereas the rest of them made it to the other side of the large room without incident.

"Bloody hell," Stacey said. "Now what?"

Elyssa ground her teeth in a very unladylike way. While she could appreciate stealth, sometimes it made her feel better just to beat the crap out of someone. She pulled out her arcphone and marched across the floor to the forbidden zone, tempted to find a good sledgehammer and smash it to bits.

Less than a minute remained before the Obsidian Arch reopened. It wouldn't take Kassus and crew more than five minutes to make it back to Darkwater headquarters from the way station. How could they possibly open this thing and hack it in such little time?

Bella caught up with her. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know yet," Elyssa admitted.

"I wouldn't step on that part of the floor," she said, looking worriedly at the gray tiles not ten feet away.

"Not planning on it."

Bella stepped closer to the border of black and gray. A thin pedestal sprang from the floor in front of her. She yelped and jumped back a foot, pressing a hand to her chest. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the device. "It's an access card reader," she said, and pulled the administrator's card from within her outfit.

"What if his card fails and triggers an alarm?" Stacey asked.

"We're running out of time," Elyssa said, unable to stop looking at the timer as it reached zero.

As if right on cue, a text message from Christian appeared on the screen. Obsidian Arch is cycling on. Kassus and at least thirty mages are on the way back. I think they figured out this is a diversion. If you're still at their HQ you need to get out now!

"No choice," Elyssa said. "Just do it."

"I agree," Bella said. "I feel distinctly inadequate for the technological side of this heist."

"I do feel a bit out of place," Stacey said with a sour look. "We've stolen more magical artifacts from museums than I can bloody count, but stealing something from a ruddy computer is more work than I thought it would be."

"We should have asked Adam to come," Bella said in a dejected tone. "But we were so eager to prove ourselves, I guess we just let pride get in the way."

Elyssa furrowed her brow. "Don't you dare tell the boys that, Bella, or I'll let Cutsauce pee on your bed. And you know how bad hellhound urine stinks."

Bella threw up her hands in a defensive gesture. "Don't be silly! I would never let Harry or any of them know we needed them for something."

Stacey laughed. "I say we go for it. If it fails, we run like bloody hell. If it works, we come out of this looking like superstars."

"Agreed," Bella said, looking to Elyssa. "Well, what do you say?"

"We're out of time and an army of angry battles mages might march in here at any minute." Elyssa felt a slow grin creep over her face. "Let's do this."

Bella took out the card and swiped it.

Chapter 24

Elyssa

An alarm rang the instant the card touched the reader.

"Bloody hell!" Stacey yelled.

"Madre de dios!" Bella said, stamping her foot.

Elyssa flung a few choice expletives at the infernal device. If that didn't bring Kassus and crew running back at top speed, nothing would.

A crystalline structure with a touchscreen terminal popped from the floor, and the ringing noise abruptly stopped.

Welcome, Administrator Minh Wan.

"It—it worked?" Stacey said, staring incredulously at the screen. "But the alarm—"

"Maybe it was just a warning noise about the terminal popping from the floor," Bella said with a shrug. She looked up at Elyssa. "Let's break this puppy open."