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And his best was pretty daht before Jonas grabbedpissed that his i so impressive, after all "Who is back there?"

"Mircea," I admitted, and Jonas cursed

"A first-level master? You didn’t tell me one of them would be here!"

"I didn’t know Andactuallyit’s two Marloith hi behind us Mircea must have ended up on one side of the hall, when the first wave of animated furniture flooded the corridor, and Marlowe on the other Which left us caught between the ultimate rock and a hard place, with two furniture da back two o

"I suppose it is too much to hope that you can shift, just at the moment?" Jonas asked dryly

I shook ue with me He’d been the lover of the fores didn’t Like that the power of the office ht be inexhaustible, but the Pythia herself wasn’t And that a shift, even a spatial one like to get us out to the road, required concentration

So almost choked to death

Instead, he droppedof so that made the hair on the back of o positively electric And all the doors to all the rooms between us and the furniture dams to slam open And the contents start to strea to the front lines

"The instant you can, shift us out of here," he yelled, to be heard over the creak of wood and h-pitched shriek of the wards "We’ll have to co to will air into s

"What?"

I reached up and yanked off the fedora, which was soout It was a slowed faintly when I touched it "Spelled," I explained breathlessly "You have to knowit’s thereor it isn’t"

Jonas’ blue eyessharp and squinty along the way "I assume there’s a reason you didn’t tell me about this before?"

I licked my lips "Uh-huh"

"Pythias!" He threw his hands up in a nes, et us out of this But the most I could do was to slide down on my heels, put my arms over

I only hoped I did it fast, because Jonas hadn’t bought us much time Two first-levelout of things to shred We needed to get out of here

"Billy," I whispered "The train is leaving the station"

I didn’t get anything back, even though I knew he’d heard me Billy didn’t need ears to pick up on my call; whether he chose to answer it or not was another thing But he’d sounded eager enough to leave before

I started to try again, but Jonas grabbed e of plan When you can shift, take us back to the office"

"What? Why?"

"We have the orb," he explained, less than helpfully

"Isn’t that what you wanted?"

He looked exasperated "Yes, but not to take it out of this ti the world’s protective barrier in place To remove it would drop that protection, exactly as our enemy wants!"

"Then hide it somewhere Someplace where Tony can’t find it Then we can look it up e get back to our--"

Jonas shook his head "We have no idea what Tony used it for between now and then"

"To hold down papers?"

"And what else?" Jonas asked severely "We don’t know; therefore we cannot risk re a piece of a very delicate puzzle We could inadvertently change history!"

I frowned "If you’re not going to take it and you’re not going to hide it, then what are we doing here?"

"I needed to see it, to knohat I’--"

"I described it to you!"