“How shocking for our world leaders.”
“I want you to go up to Rainier, see if you can find proof that dark elves are there, and if they are, keep them from dropping bombs on the glaciers or whatever their plan is.” Willard shook her head. “Probably something more sophisticated than that. It looks like they’ve been researching this for a long time. They could do a lot of damage.”
“No kidding. The goblins in Idaho nearly brought a town to its knees, and they’re a lot less menacing than dark elves.”
A delighted cackle came through the door. Maybe Gondo had found another tasty flavor of paper.
“A lot less menacing than anyone,” I corrected.
Willard pointed at my chest. “You had cold-weather training in the army, right?”
“Almost twenty years ago and aimed at pilots who might crash, yeah. I got to practice building snow forts in Fort Wainwright.”
She didn’t look impressed.
“It’s not going to be that cold up there in August.” I shivered, remembering Fairbanks in November and sticking MREs under my jacket for an hour before eating to try to thaw the contents.
“At the summit, there are glaciers and ice caves all year around, and, yes, there are blizzards in August. Rainier is a tough climb.”
Ice caves? Ugh, that was probably exactly where a bunch of dark elves would hang out too.
“Before we start prepping, why don’t you send your dragon to look around the mountain to see if he can sense the dark elves up there and how many we’re dealing with?” Willard suggested. “Maybe he could even bring back proof that they’re there. It’ll be easier for me to make calls and convince people if I have more than a list of numbers stolen from a monitoring station.”
“My dragon isn’t on Earth.”
“When’s he coming back?”
I closed my eyes, an unexpected lump of emotion swelling in my throat. “He’s not.”
“Val.” Willard sounded more disgusted than sympathetic. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Give me the CliffsNotes version.”
I did. I hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and I still didn’t, but I also didn’t want her to think some lovers’ spat was what had prompted me to send Zav away.
At the end, Willard groaned. “He finally becomes a somewhat reliable ally, and when we need him most, he’s gone. This is as much his mission as ours. I thought he was supposed to get the two dark-elf leaders and all those other criminals.”
“He was. He is.” I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what will happen.”
Zav would probably tell his mother why he’d failed to complete his mission, and she would end up hating me—more. And what would happen if she tried to send some other dragon to finish Zav’s duties? A less reasonable dragon?
“All right,” Willard said. “Then it’s back to the way it was. Just us.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll gather a team of reliable people to go with you. If you have any personnel requests, let me know. I saw the pictures of the remains of the dark-elf lair in Seattle. You can’t handle them alone, not if there are more than a few. They’re all warriors and wizards, right?”
“Even the scientists.”
“Brilliant. I wish I could send you up there right this minute, but it’ll take time to gather a team and appropriate gear. You need a favorable weather forecast too.” She looked toward the rain outside the window. “It’s probably snowing up there right now. I’ll do my best to get everything together today and check for openings in the weather. The earliest you’ll leave will be tomorrow. I’ll get a helicopter pilot on standby.”
“I could drive up to Rainier in two hours.”
Willard gave me a scathing look. “You could drive to the parking lot. The trail to the summit involves a nine-thousand-foot elevation gain. It’s as much as from the Everest base camps to its peak. Your Jeep isn’t driving you there. You do have climbing experience, right?”
“Not in snow, but yes.” I preferred city work, but a lot of the magical races were far more likely to take up residence in the wilderness, and wyverns and rocs loved mountain caves. Beach caves, too, as I’d learned on the mission where I’d met Zav. “I have climbing gear in my storage locker if someone hasn’t stolen it.”
“That’s something anyway.”
I eyed her. “You haven’t by chance climbed our volcano, have you?”
“When I was first stationed at Fort Lewis, yes. A few months before I got moved up to this office. I’ve never done any of the epic climbs around the world, but I’ve done Denali in Alaska.”
That sounded plenty epic to me.
“Then, my friend—” I put a hand on her shoulder, “—my personnel request is you.”
Willard stared at me. “I can’t leave for however long this will take. The whole place would be filled with shredded paper and siege engines made from office supplies.” She waved in the direction of the occasionally-cackling Gondo.
“Didn’t that Major Cecil just get assigned up here? I’m sure he’s ready to prove himself capable of running things. He can wrangle goblins and answer phones for a couple of days.”
“What about my cat?”
“You can board her.”
“I can’t board Maggie.” Willard sounded as indignant as if I wanted the cat sent to a slaughterhouse and made into tiny steaks to feed my tiger.
“Because she’ll be emotionally scarred or because she complains the whole time and the boarding facility has blackballed her?”
“Ah, I remember, you’ve spent time with my cat.”
“Two six-hour car trips, yes. My eardrums are still recovering. Don’t you have a new neighbor who can watch her? This is kind of important.”
Willard chewed on the inside of her mouth. She hadn’t rejected the idea outright. That was something.
She had soldiers in the office with experience fighting magical beings, but I bet the list of people who also had experience climbing glacier-covered mountains was a shorter one. I’d only been vaguely aware that snow-capped Mount Rainier was that big of a deal. For me, it was something I admired in the skyline on a clear day, nothing more.
“Remember the adventures we had when you first got put in charge of this place?” I asked. “And you thought I was a sarcastic blonde smartass that you didn’t want to work with?”
“You are a sarcastic blonde smartass.”
“True, but you like working with me now.”
“No, I like the results you get. You’re a pain in the ass and every supervisor’s nightmare.”
I grinned at her. “I get warm fuzzies thinking about you, too, Colonel.”
She looked contemplatively out the window. “Yeah,” she said finally. “If you go without someone experienced, I’m terrified you’ll fall into a crevasse before you even see a dark elf.”
“Excellent.”
Willard had combat experience and knew as much about dark elves as I did. More. And I had Sindari, Chopper, and my new lucky charm. Maybe that would be enough for us to succeed.
“While you’re finding us a ride,” I said, “I’ll go visit Nin and put in an order. And I’ll get you a gun. What’s your preference? Rifle? Handgun? Howitzer?”
Willard snorted. “I’m not carrying that nine thousand feet up a trail.”
“I thought we were taking a helicopter so we don’t have to do that trail.”
“Ah, that’s right.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
“Just get me whatever she has that will pierce dark-elf armor. And plenty of ammo.”
“Will do.”
A knock sounded at the door. I’d been engrossed in planning and hadn’t noticed the approach of an elven aura.
“Expecting Freysha?” I asked.
Willard glanced at the time. “Yeah. It’s nine. Everybody should be at the office now.”
She opened her door.
Freysha, still in overalls, her hair in two braids today, walked in carrying a stack of books almost as tall as she was. “Good morning, Colonel. I’ve finished going over the translations from these tomes. Your translator was largely accurate. I found a few corrections to make. I apologize for the dampness of the books. I don’t yet have a domicile that is completely waterproof, but I did my best to keep the rain off them.”
Willard took the books and put them on her desk. “You’re sleeping outside?”
“Yes.” Freysha’s eyebrows drew together. “The weather has been mostly quite acceptable, but these last few days have been very wet. It has, however, meant there was no need to bathe in the fountain.”
The fountain?
“Gondo, where are you sleeping?” Willard peered out—the goblin was half-buried in a new pile of shredded paper. Was Willard getting rid of all sensitive material because the dark elves had proven themselves capable of getting in? “Do you have room for an elf?”
Gondo’s pointed ears swiveled toward us. “I sleep under a bridge. I showed Freysha the fountain. I’m a good host.”
“Willard, your interns are homeless. How many bedrooms does that apartment of yours have?”
“One.” She gave me a dark look. “How many does yours have?”
“One. And it’s broken into regularly. Clearly your lodgings are superior.” I almost pointed out that she wouldn’t need them while she was on our adventure, but she could say the same to me. And these two characters weren’t trustworthy enough to leave in my apartment.
Freysha looked at me curiously, her gaze shifting to my neck. “You acquired a new charm?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged, pretending it wasn’t odd that she’d paid enough attention to me during our first meeting to spot a new charm. I was pretty sure Zav hadn’t noticed it, though the power of my trinkets had to be inconsequential to a dragon. Chopper was the only one of my magical tools he’d ever shown interest in. “Know anything about it?”