Dragon Down (26 page)

“Can we move the portable universes around? I mean in theory they are portable. This way the thieves couldn’t be sure if they had the right coordinates or not. Lauren, what do you think?”

“I think you might be on to something. I don’t have enough power to move them. But, the council of wizards could keep them moving. They could assign a group of wizards to keep them moving, so no one would know exactly where they were at any given time. I’ll contact Jason and see what he thinks.”

I left and went to my office to touch base with Jason. I needed to summon him which meant I needed my Dragons Eye sculpture. It didn’t take long before a loud pop announced his arrival. I went out to stand with the others and Jason was already there. We shared our concerns and what we had in mind. He thought it over and told us he was sure they had enough wizards to keep the portable universes moving. Then he was off as fast as he had come.

“Does anyone else have concerns about our mini universes?”

Corbin had been quiet through most of our discussions. And he looked like he was lost in thought.

“Corbin, is something troubling you?”

“I was wondering how we were planning to secure our mobile universes. Once they are finished designing them we will need to secure them. We may move them but, if they’ve been bugged or compromised in any way they can still be infiltrated.”

He had a point. Tokem and Traygen could go over them thoroughly before we moved them. Yet, if they missed anything the fox would definitely be in the hen house. We had four portable universes and only five on our team. We were going to need an additional crew. I wanted to put no fewer than two people within each universe. And it could not be our team. We would be protecting the design team during the games.

“I’ll ask Jason for an additional team so we can place two of our best people inside each universe. Tokem and Traygen you two will need to sweep the portable universes before we seal them and put our teams in place.”

“No worries Lauren. Traygen and I will get anything left inside. You can count on it. Those PU’s will be safe with us.”

“P.U.’s?”

“Yes, portable universes.”

We all groaned and I think Corbin threw something at him.

“Easy does it bat boy.”

“If you two are finished we have work to do. You will need to coordinate your sweeps with the teams we’re leaving to guard the P.U.’s. Traygen, you can work it out with Jason.”

“Will do. Do we know when the design team will have the portables ready for inspection? This will likely take us a while, so the sooner they are ready the better.”

“I’ll find out but, my guess is in the next forty-eight hours. The opening ceremonies are less than a week away. While you two workout your security issues Corbin and I will finish the background checks on the design team. Then we’ll look into the security at the Four-Courts. We will meet back here at nine PM when Jason will review our plans.”

Corbin and I spent the next couple of hours reviewing and flagging any person on the design team or their families with anything sketchy in their files. There were three men and a woman on the design team. They were all married and a few had children. All told there were an additional ten people. It broke down to four spouses and six children. There were two people whose files caught my attention. One of the women on the design team had lost a parent to a rogue vampire. The other was the wife of one of the designers. She was heavily in debt. It seems she liked to shop. Definitely, a woman I could relate to. We decided we would interview all the designers and the shopaholic wife. We went to the Four-Courts and told the design team what we were doing and set up an interview schedule.

“Lauren, how do you want to do this?”

“I think we should ask them all the same questions. When they talk and believe me they will, nothing will seem out of the ordinary. You read the files more thoroughly than I did. Why don’t you ask the questions and I’ll watch for any unusual responses.”

“I can do that. I thought I would ask how they were chosen for the design team and what their responsibilities were on the team. I’ll follow-up by asking if they had any negative experiences with any of the sups competing. With the family members, I’ll change the first question and ask what they think about their family member designing the course.”

“Good. I’m going to spell the room so it will tell me if anyone is lying. It should prove helpful especially with the designer and the shopaholic wife.”

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, who do we have first?”

“The lead designer is first. Her name is Tenos.”

We interviewed all fourteen in two and a half hours. Corbin was skimming his notes and I was reviewing my spell. I was checking to see who if anyone set it off. I found four times when it got hit. Our shopaholic was nervous about her debt which in my opinion was normal. The designer who had lost a family member to a vampire definitely didn’t like vampires but, she also didn’t respond differently to Corbin than she did to me. I was pretty sure vengeance wasn’t an issue for her. The other two hits came from the design team. One of them was hiding something about a sup and the other wasn’t truthful about why he was on the team. These two would bear watching.

Corbin and I compared notes and he had picked up on our two design team members because their responses didn’t line-up with their files. Everyone else’s answers lined up pretty closely with what we’d found in their personnel files. It didn’t give us much to go on but, I thought that was a good thing. It looked like the fae had assembled a pretty good team. We thanked the design team and their families. We assured them we would return tomorrow to brief them on our security plans. Finally, we transported back to my house to rejoin Traygen and Tokem. When we got there they were wrapping up their security plans.

Traygen ordered pizza and we’d just finished our dinner when Jason popped in. We filled him in on our plans. He asked a few questions and then he gave us the green light. Our orders were to report to Tri Na nOg tomorrow morning. Corbin and I shared our concerns with the others about our interviews and our worry about two of the fae. For their part they told us how they would be searching each portable universe and how they were going to transfer security to our other team. Satisfied, we all turned in early. We would have an early start tomorrow.