Warehouse 13: A Touch of Fever (11 page)

A stop sign warned of an approaching intersection. The Harley didn’t even slow down, despite an oncoming station wagon with the right of way. The wagon slammed on its brakes as the bike cut in front of it, risking a collision. The driver honked his horn in protest. Pete gave him an apologetic wave as he blew through the crossing after the bike.

The problem with high-speed chases was that they always endangered any innocent drivers sharing the road. Pete’s temper heated up. Jim and Nadia weren’t risking just their own skins now.

An open straightaway gave him a chance to zoom past the cars between him and the chopper. He pulled in behind the bike, which was right ahead of him, hammering down the road. Pete honked and flashed his headlights to try to get them to pull over. Too bad the rental car hadn’t come with a siren. Or a tractor beam.

The riders ignored his signals. Instead, to his surprise, Nadia stood up behind Jim and
climbed over
her boyfriend’s shoulders even as he scooted backward to make room for her up front. The daring high-speed acrobatics were like something you’d see in a circus—or a carnival. Pete’s jaw dropped. Nadia and Jim traded places atop the speeding chopper. She grabbed the handlebars, taking control of the bike. It swerved wildly for a second but then got back on course. The bike kept on rolling.

“What the hey?” Peter muttered. He couldn’t figure out what they were up to.

The answer came in the form of a flashing blade. With Nadia now steering the bike, Jim’s hand was free to pluck a throwing knife from his belt and hurl it back at Pete. The blade caught the gleam of the Subaru’s headlights. Pete ducked involuntarily, but Jim wasn’t aiming at him. Instead of striking the windshield, the knife plunged toward the car’s front tires instead. The knife struck the driver’s-side wheel with a jarring bump. Air hissed from the punctured tire.

More knives followed, one after another. Both front tires blew. White knuckles gripped the steering wheel as Pete lost control of the car. He hit the brakes, and the car swerved to the right, clipping a mailbox and crashing into a ditch. An air bag inflated explosively, swallowing his face. Abused metal crunched noisily before falling silent. The Subaru came to rest nose down in the ditch. Broken glass tinkled across the mangled hood. Smashed headlights went black.

Pete guessed he wouldn’t be getting his deposit back.

Over the ringing in his head, he heard Nadia open up on the throttle.

The chopper sped away into the night.

Artie didn’t like what they had to tell him.

“You lost the artifact? It got away?”

“I’m afraid so,” Myka admitted. She and Pete shared their Farnsworth while, a few yards away, a tow truck extricated the battered Subaru from the ditch. A second car, which she had “borrowed” from the carnival parking lot, was parked nearby. Unfortunately, she had not arrived in time to keep Nadia and Jim from escaping with the glove.

On the brighter side, her ankle felt good as new.

“At least we know what we’re looking for now,” Pete pointed out. His face was scratched and bruised from the crash, but otherwise he seemed to be in one piece. His hair and clothes had looked better. “If not where it came from.”

“That’s progress,” Artie conceded. “A glove, you say? Of antique design?” He scratched his beard thoughtfully, sounding intrigued. “Hmm. Let me look into that. In the meantime, you two need to get a lead on that girl. What about her fellow carnies?”

Myka shook her head. “They’re not talking. Turns out the Mafia has nothing on the sideshow code of silence. Plus, they all seem to regard Nadia as a genuine saint. She’s been using the glove to relieve their aches and pains for weeks now. They’re not going to flip on her.”

Pete squirmed uncomfortably. “Speaking of which, Artie, I’ve gotta ask: Are you sure we’re doing the right thing here? Nadia really does seem to be helping a whole lot of people.”

“Are you serious?” Artie acted surprised by the question. “How long have you been working here, again? Since when do we leave unidentified artifacts at large?”

“You weren’t there, Artie,” Myka said. She understood where Pete’s doubts were coming from. To be honest, the same reservations had crossed her mind. “You didn’t see how happy those people and their families were after Nadia healed them.”

“But at what cost?” he said sternly. “I’m sure that this Nadia person means well. People who find an artifact, or are found by one, often do. But we absolutely, positively cannot let this go. That kind of thinking never ends well.” A grave look came over his bewhiskered face. “Look what happened to MacPherson.”

James MacPherson’s schemes to exploit the power of the artifacts had ultimately gotten him killed, along with plenty of innocent people. And it had all started when he used a dangerous artifact to save one woman at the expense of others. That had been the end of his career as an agent—and the beginning of a tragic tale of death and betrayal.

“Point taken.” Myka wished it was otherwise—that they could just let Nadia keep on healing people—but she’d been an agent long enough to know better.

So had Pete.

“Don’t worry, Artie,” he sighed. “We’ll track her down, just like we always do. It just kind of sucks sometimes, you know?”

Artie smiled sadly. “Do I ever.”

Pete tried to lighten the mood. He peered into the Farnsworth, trying to see around Artie’s head. “Is Claudia around?” He fished the cheap plastic binoculars from his pocket. Miraculously, they had come through the wreck unscathed. “I got her a souvenir, just like I promised.”

Oh, boy,
Myka thought. She could just imagine Claudia’s excitement . . . or lack thereof.

“Sorry,” Artie said. “She and Leena are doing inventory.”

In other words, they could be busy for a while. . . .

7

WAREHOUSE 13

“Queen Victoria’s wedding cake?”

“Check.”

The Warehouse seemed to go on forever. Aisle after aisle of overstuffed shelves and storage areas stretched further than Claudia could see. Wooden crates, metal drums, cardboard boxes, steamer trunks, Tupperware bins, plastic coolers, picnic baskets, and other containers were piled several stories high. Labels, ranging from handwritten index cards to sophisticated electronic video units, attempted to impose order on the sprawling collection, which threatened to fill up every nook and cranny of the vast, cavernous space. The sheer size of the Warehouse could take one’s breath away. Claudia had been apprenticed here for over a year now, and she was still stumbling onto new areas and artifacts she had never seen before. Maintaining an accurate inventory was a Sisyphean task, despite her continuing efforts to update Artie’s stubbornly antiquated records and filing systems. Like, a card catalog . . . seriously?

“D. B. Cooper’s parachute?”

“Check.”

She rode a rolling metal ladder along the towering shelves, calling out the artifacts in front of her, while Leena strolled down the aisle below, checking the items off on a clipboard. They had been at this for hours now, but had yet to find anything out of place or missing. Claudia fought a yawn. If it were up to her, she’d be on the road with Pete and Myka rather than stuck here doing scut work, but Artie had been insistent. Given recent security breaches by the likes of MacPherson and H. G. Wells, he wanted to make sure everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. A reasonable precaution, she had to admit, even if that didn’t make the job any less mind-numbingly tedious.

“Sigmund Freud’s cigar.” Claudia paused. “What does
that
do?”

Leena made a face. “You don’t want to know.”

“Okaaay. Moving on . . .”

It was hot, thirsty work, especially since there was no air-conditioning on the main floor of the Warehouse (which, granted, would be a budget buster). The musty, dusty atmosphere seemed unusually stuffy today, like she was stuck in the world’s biggest sweatshop. Her mouth was dry and she kicked herself for not bringing along a can of soda. There was a small fridge back in Artie’s lair, but that was umpteen aisles, half a dozen stories, and at least a thirty-minute hike away.

Maybe after they finished this shelf?

She tried to focus on the task at hand. Leaving the skeevy cigar behind, she checked out the next item: a battered tin pot resting right side up. A faded paper label identified it as once belonging to John Chapman (1774–1845), a.k.a. “Johnny Appleseed.”

Right,
she thought. A storybook illustration of a scruffy, barefoot wanderer planting an orchard in the wilderness popped from her memory banks.
Dude used to wear his pot as a hat.

Talk about a bold fashion choice!

But that wasn’t all the pot was good for. Intrigued by the description pinned to the shelf beneath it, Claudia couldn’t resist lifting the pot from its perch. As she brought it toward her face, the interior of the pot magically filled with swirling golden-brown liquid. The enticing aroma of fresh apple cider tickled her nose.

Her mouth watered. She licked her lips.

She lifted the pot to her lips. One little sip couldn’t hurt, right? It was just like using the snow globe to cool her drinks back at the office. . . .

“Claudia?” Leena called out from below. “Everything okay up there?”

She blushed guiltily. On second thought, maybe she should pass on the cider. Messing with artifacts was seldom a good idea. Look what happened that time she tried to use Volta’s lab coat to change a lightbulb. . . .

“We’re copacetic,” she assured Leena, a little too quickly. She lowered the pot from her lips, hoping that Leena hadn’t seen. “Strictly professional all the way.”

She started to put the pot back where it belonged. Just then, a burst of azure energy flashed into existence farther down the aisle. Crackling like ball lighting, the thunderous discharge threw off spidery blasts of electricity as it came racing toward her.

“Holy moley!” She had seen this before. Sometimes the sheer accumulation of tangential energy in the Warehouse kicked up a little static, as Artie liked to put it, which could be extremely hazardous to your health. “Duck and cover!”

The roiling electrical storm rattled the shelves. The metal ladder turned into an elevated lightning rod. Grasping the danger just in time, Claudia leaped off a rung and grabbed onto the edge of the nearest shelf right before the energy bolt struck the ladder, sending it spinning across the aisle away from her. Sparks cascaded down the ladder’s length as the grounded energy dispersed into the floor. Within seconds the crisis was over.

Except, of course, that Claudia now found herself dangling some ten feet above the floor, hanging on by her fingertips. Her feet searched for purchase but couldn’t quite reach one of the lower shelves. Gravity tugged on her legs. Not for the first time, she wished she were a few inches taller.

“Er, Leena? A hand, please?”

The other woman had thrown herself facedown onto the floor, her hands over her head. She lifted her eyes cautiously and looked around to make sure the coast was clear. Then she jumped to her feet and ran over to the displaced ladder. Playing it safe, she pulled on a pair of protective purple gloves before taking hold of the ladder and wheeling it back under Claudia. “Here you go,” she said. “You okay?”

“I think so.” Claudia lowered her feet onto a metal rung, which felt reassuringly solid compared to empty air. She let go of the shelf. Her aching fingers thanked her. “You?”

“Just a little dusty.” Leena smoothed out the wrinkles of her dress. She had worked at the Warehouse longer than any of them except Artie. It took a lot to rattle her. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Claudia scrambled down the ladder, grateful to set foot on the floor again. Her heart was still pounding from her near brush with electrocution. She was too young to go to the great chat room in the sky just yet. Ozone lingered in the air, along with a faint aftertaste of fudge. That soda back in Artie’s office was sounding better and better.