Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville) (27 page)

“Are you
sure
you’re okay?” Ben asked, like he had a dozen times a day since rescuing me from the mountain.

I squeezed his hand. He’d be able to feel the lingering stress, not so much about what had happened in the mine, but about what would happen next. He’d know I wasn’t quite telling the truth when I said, “I’m okay.” But as long as he kept asking, I would be. “I wish I could talk to Rick.”

“You don’t have any way of getting in touch with him?” Ben said.

I imagined trying to send a letter to Rick, of the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows, care of the Vatican, but I didn’t imagine him actually receiving said letter. I couldn’t consult the people I most wanted to, Rick and Anastasia, who had departed on their own personal crusades. I had to be satisfied knowing that they were out there, somewhere.

Ben added, “Not even an e-mail address?”

“Nope. Though I suppose we could do something crazy like post Amy’s book of shadows online with a big header saying, ‘Rick, please read this,’ and see what happens.”

As soon as I said it, I suddenly wanted to do it. Just to see who else it pulled out of the woodwork. Because it didn’t seem any less crazy than anything else we could do. Roman had his Hand of Hercules, the demon bounty hunter—he had everything, now, and we had nothing to lose.

I waited for either Cormac or Ben to tell me it was a crazy idea, and under no circumstances should we post a powerful magician’s book of shadows on the Internet where everyone could see it. But they didn’t. Ben donned a thoughtful look, brow furrowed and lips pursed. Probably thinking about whether posting the book would get me sued. But he didn’t say anything. Cormac just raised an eyebrow. Right, if
they
weren’t telling me it was a bad idea—what were we all missing?

Then I thought, this kind of knowledge had been kept secret by arcane practitioners for hundreds of years. Maybe it was time to see what crowd sourcing could do with it.

“I mean,” I said, thinking out loud now. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You really want an answer to that?” Ben said.

“It might be like reading out loud from the Necronomicon,” Cormac said. “But shit, I’m game.”

That should have been a warning right there.

“You might be showing your hand,” Ben said. “Telling Roman how much we really know about him.”

And how much did we know, really? Didn’t seem like much. But if we could make him think we knew more than we really did—I’d love to see his reaction. Yeah, Kumarbis and company had poked him with a big old stick. I wanted to keep poking.

I said, “Maybe now’s exactly the time to show him how much we have. Keep him nervous.”

Neither one of them tried to argue against it. So we made a plan.

*   *   *

I
TALKED
to the webmaster at KNOB about what we needed, and she referred me to a friend of hers who knew more about the security aspects involved in the project. Anonymous servers, untraceable IP addresses, jargon that I sort of knew about in the abstract, but not really. We needed a level of protection between us and the big wide world of the Internet, so that it looked like the book of shadows just appeared online and couldn’t be immediately traced back to me. Not foolproof, but it was something. For a while now, I’d been trying to get the word out about Roman. Telling people what I knew about him, not just so he couldn’t work anonymously anymore, but also so I wouldn’t feel alone. Could be, the book of shadows would languish online, one of those weird backwater websites that haven’t been updated in a decade and no one ever visits except to admire the wackiness. Could be, the thing would do exactly what we wanted, and attract the attention of people who could help. Not just warn the world that Roman was out there, but raise an army to stand against him.

We edited, leaving out most of Amy’s personal diary. I’d only met her at the very end of her road, when she’d been overwhelmed by her quest, a crusader with one central purpose. I hadn’t met the real Amy, I decided, and reading her diary made me wish I had. She’d been a true explorer, fascinated by every culture and locale she encountered. She’d loved learning, but she’d also been searching for meaning. For a purpose for everything she was learning. Kumarbis had provided
something,
and she’d embraced his quest. That part of her journey didn’t need to go on the website.

But her raw knowledge and the extensive, encrypted notes she’d made, we uploaded directly. It took a few weeks to prepare it all, but at last, the website went live.

Then we waited.

TOR BOOKS BY CARRIE VAUGHN

Kitty Goes to War

Kitty’s Big Trouble

Kitty’s Greatest Hits

Kitty Steals the Show

Kitty Rocks the House

Discord’s Apple

After the Golden Age

Dreams of the Golden Age
(forthcoming)

About the Author

CARRIE VAUGHN
had the nomadic childhood of the typical U.S. Air Force brat, with stops across the country from California to Florida. She is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the Kitty Norville books, and she lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her website is at
www.carrievaughn.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

KITTY IN THE UNDERWORLD

Copyright © 2013 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Craig White

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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New York, NY10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

e-ISBN 9781429956048

First Edition: August 2013