Page 55 of Taken for Granite
“Seven days!” She counted out the days. “You have to be at the mountain in god-knows-where moose-infested Canada on Halloween?” She pulled up the map function on her phone and searched for directions to Calgary, the only Canadian city she could name at that moment. “Calgary is thirty-three hours from here. We can leave in the morning.”
“We cannot stay here,” he said. The holographic display vanished along with the red light. “The Rose Syndicate is able to track the sigil.”
“Is there any way to stop them from tracking that thing? Can we block the signal?”
Tas turned the device over in his hands and frowned. “Perhaps, but I do not have the skill. My friend, Frelinray, always tinkered with human tech, trying to rebuild what was damaged. If it is possible, he would know.”
“I’m guessing from that frown we can’t exactly pick up the phone and ask him,” Juniper said.
Tas opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment, Chloe exited the bathroom in a cloud of steam, vigorously rubbing a towel over her wet hair. “Why not make a Faraday cage?”
“A what?” Juniper asked.
“It stops electromagnetic fields.”
Juniper and Tas stared at Chloe. She stopped drying her hair. “What? I know stuff.”
“How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I saw it on TV. You know, that show where a plane crashed on an island that wasn’t purgatory but then it turned out to be purgatory after all.”
“How do we acquire this cage?” Tas asked.
Chloe shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe there’s a YouTube tutorial.” She reached for Juniper’s phone, sitting on the charger. “Cool. You finally got a new phone.”
Juniper snagged it out of her sister’s hands. “This is a burner phone. Do not call anyone back home. No texts. No social media tweets. We don’t want the number associated with us.”
Chloe wrinkled her nose. “I’m not stupid, and no one tweets anymore. Only old people and bots do that.” Thirty seconds later, Chloe announced, “It was the first hit. I love the internet.”
According to the video, they only needed three items, a galvanized bucket with lid, a rubber bucket, and aluminum tape. They would tape up the seams, put the rubber bucket inside the metal bucket, and that was it.
“We can stop at a hardware store in the morning,” Juniper said, as it was too early for any stores to be open. Until then, they needed to move.
19
Juniper
Juniper knew little about the northern part of her home state. She found I-80 and took it west. Tas refused to sleep until they could make their Faraday cage. If the Syndicate found them, he needed to be alert. He had a point. She couldn’t wake him from his last stone sleep and she didn’t want to be caught with a stone gargoyle snoozing in the backseat. Also, he would be stone and heavy. That couldn’t be good for the suspension or the gas mileage, either.
Nothing had really gone smoothly and she felt like she was constantly two steps ahead of disaster, but that was how she felt in her everyday life. The stress was different—but not so different she couldn’t handle it.
As she drove, her stomach rumbled, so she stopped for coffee and a bagel sandwich. Woman couldn’t live on Halloween candy alone, though Chloe was trying.
Tas ate his fair share of the candy, too. The two bickered over the rapidly diminishing bag.
“I am using a great deal of energy to maintain this disguise. I require sustenance,” he said, wearing his human form.
“Well, I’m a growing girl and I’ve been traumatized. I need chocolate and caramel to cope,” Chloe retorted.
Juniper could not pull into a big box hardware store fast enough. When Tas climbed out to join her, she said, “No shirt, no shoes, no service. Put a shirt on, man.”
He grumbled but shuffled into the toucan shirt. Chloe insisted on a selfie with him. With that important activity taken care of, Juniper set off in search of the items the video recommended. Tas and Chloe reappeared, arms full with bags of Halloween candy.
“Energy,” he said.
“Trauma,” Chloe said, adding her pile to the conveyor belt.
“I’m not paying to fix your cavities,” Juniper muttered sourly as she paid the bill.
