LIGHTNOVELONLINE The Hole in The Wall
Josie stepped off the elevator alone. She stood in a foyer. She looked over her
shoulder. Jack waved at her with a grin on his face.
The door closed on his expression.
She frowned as she opened the inner door. She stepped into a round room with a
round bed on one side. Closet doors stood next to the bed. She opened them,
frowning at the dresses and shirts hanging on hangers. A box on one side of the closet
said dirty. A matching box on the other side said clean. She counted three different
types of shoes and boots on the floor of the closet. She looked at the shirts with the
back of her hand as a divider. They all had her lightning bolt on them.
She looked at some of the dresses. They resembled Mary Marvel’s costume. She
frowned at that.
Red and gold were okay, but she wasn’t exactly a dress wearing woman.
She found a giant bathroom opposite the closet. She wondered what a bath would
look like after all this time. She sniffed the soap and thought it smelled like Irish
Spring.
She planned to give the sunken tub a workout when she was done with all of this.
She walked over to the other door off her bedroom. She found an office with a desk
and chair. A picture of Captain Marvel hung on the wall beside a picture of Robby
Reed from his heyday. She had a picture of the night sky beside those two. She
paused as she watched a cloud gently move at the edge of the scene.
She wondered if Jack had made window screens to look out of the Hangar despite
being underground. It seemed like the kind of thing he would do.
She sat down at her desk. She noted it was the right height for her. She wondered if
she should get a book reader too. She mentally put it down as convenient but not
really necessary.
She smiled at the red and gold walls. Jack had done a good job with this remodel. She
had thought he would make everything like a hamster warren. She had
underestimated what he could do.
She stood. Her eyes fell on a black case on the side of her desk. She opened it, and
smiled. Jack had transported her guitar from her former quarters.
Or he had built one from scratch and left it for her.
She shook her head. She had to get back to the Hole in the Wall so they could reshape
it for the Queen. This has been a long day and she was ready to get some sleep before
the morning arrived and she had to get ready to send June home for her fight.
She needed to go down and get Jack moving. He and Elaine might already be using
their new bedroom. She hated to cut into their personal time, but she didn’t want
to waste time when they needed to get the rest of the thing done before they could
rest.
She went to the elevator and went down one floor. She found Her Majesty standing
outside the foyer door. She paused.
“I think they are arguing,” said the Queen.
“Really?,” said Josie. “Elaine usually has Jack wrapped around her little finger. I
wonder what they could be arguing about.”
She knocked on the door in her best policeman style. She had used it a lot when she
had to get the band up and moving. Nothing gets things going faster than police are
at the door, and they want your drugs.
The door slid open and Jack blocked her view, while looking over his shoulder.
“What can I do for you, ladies?,” Jack said.
“What’s going on?,” asked Josie. She squinted at him as he scratched the scar over
his eye.
“Elaine is miffed at one of the pictures that showed up,” said Jack. “I was trying
to explain it isn’t my fault.”
“Elaine?,” called Josie. “Can we see the picture?”
“No,” said Elaine. “It is embarrassing.”
“Then take it upstairs and burn it,” said Josie. She wondered what the picture showed.
She decided not to indulge her curiosity. “If it is too embarrassing to look at, then
it is too embarrassing to keep around.”
“I think that will be good,” said Elaine. “We will never speak of this picture again.”
“Lois and I didn’t even hear of a picture,” said Josie.
“I agree wholeheartedly, Elaine,” said the Queen.
Jack was silent.
Josie kicked him in the shin out of annoyance. It was a light kick. He jumped and
rubbed his shin with a hand.
“Josie’s right,” said Jack. He made a face at her. “Burning it is the right thing to do.”
“All right,” said Elaine. “Help me fold it up, Jack. I don’t want the girls seeing this.”
Josie guessed the picture would not be approved by the Comics Code Authority from
that comment. She felt her eyebrows go up.
Jack stepped back in the room, and let the door close.
“What do you think is in the picture?,” said Lois.
“I have no idea, and I have a feeling that I don’t need to know,” said Josie. “It would
probably be better for me to have never had the conversation we just had, so I am
going to do my best to forget it.”
Josie had several guesses, and she decided to put them out of her mind. If Elaine
wanted her to know, she would tell her.
“Let us dispose of this,” said Elaine as she came out of the bedroom. She had a board
broken in two and folded under her arm. “It is a good thing that we are getting
married, or we would be having a talk.”
“Yes, hon,” said Jack. He looked embarrassed.
Josie had never seen him embarrassed before. She squinted at him. What kind of
picture had his magic made for them.
They took the elevator up to the hangar part of the Hangar, and then the steps to the
open sky. The moon lit the grass and trees around the open hole. Elaine marched to
a spot away from the training dummies that June had put up. She put the board on the
ground.
“Stand back,” said Jack. He turned into the Human Torch and set the boards on fire.
He let the persona go as the picture went up. He watched as the flames reached for
the sky.
“That is good,” said Elaine. She took a deep breath. “It was a touch too much, Jack.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “You looked beautiful in it.”
Elaine started to say something, but looked at Josie and Lois standing off to one side.
She leaned over and whispered in his ear. He smiled.
“I can’t wait,” said Jack.
“You still have to work to do, lover boy,” said Josie. “Put out this fire, and let’s go
about our business. Also why the Mary Marvel dresses?”
“I have no idea,” said Jack. He called on the Human Torch again. He reached into
the flame and pulled it into his body. He let the persona go when the fire amidst the
ashes of a picture were out.
Josie covered the remains with her Geomancer. Then she ushered them back down
in the Hangar with her hands. She could feel the new bath calling her to be used.
“Let’s get the rest of this done,” said Josie. “I’m looking forward to trying out the
new tub.”
“So are we,” said Jack. “Not your tub, ours.”
“Let’s do this,” said Josie. “Did you put the windows in all the rooms downstairs?”
“Maybe,” said Jack. “The magic did all the heavy lifting.”
“All right,” said Josie. She made sure the top of the Hangar was closed down. “We
don’t have a lock for this to keep people out.”
“The fear ring should keep people away, but maybe it won’t work on everybody,”
said Jack. “I’ll put a lock in as soon as we’re done with the Hole in the Wall.”
“We’ll let the girls know about it so they know to lock after themselves if they go
out,” said Josie.
“Do you think the city wall can take an extensive change?,” asked Elaine. “I
remembered thinking no way were there rooms when Jack first showed me the
apartments.”
“The magic will buttress things,” said Jack. “You’re right about the place. How
did the Montrose install their own dungeon there inside an outer wall like that?”
“They could have openly smuggled women and girls out of the city since the Duke
and others were in on the trade,” said Josie. “I wonder why they would bother with
a way station like that. I didn’t ask Snidely about it. I was too angry to worry about
questions.”
“It always bothered me that Guin was extorting them for money,” said Jack. “Why
didn’t the Duke crush him?”
“Maybe we missed something,” said Josie. “We know Guin didn’t have any other
dealings with them. Maybe he’s a bigger wheel than we thought.”
“Or maybe some of the Montrose were doing things that allowed them to be extorted
by local criminal syndicates so they wouldn’t face problems,” said Jack. “I have no
problem believing that Guin would have arranged for an accident to happen, and his
most direct competition was the guy I took out.”
“You could ask Guin since he is helping you,” said Elaine.
“It can go on the back burner,” said Josie. “As long as Guin is helping us and not
hurting too many people, we can let some of his thing slide. I think he knows where
the line is. And we can’t pull him up, just like we can’t pull up the Exchange. I mean
we can decimate his whole organization, but do we keep doing that to everybody who
steps in his shoes?”
“I have a feeling that he isn’t going to like the King being focused on Hawk Ridge
for the next few months while we negotiate this princess romance,” said
Jack. Josie made an irritated noise as Jack grinned at her annoyance.
“I think our talk with Ropel has exposed more than what we thought was going on,”
said Lois. “And the meeting with the Duke indicated that the Royal Auditors have
been suborned.”
“So more than one duchy has been diverting money from the treasury?,” asked Jack.
“I think that is what Rickard believes,” said Lois. “I have a feeling that we are going
to see a huge bubble of corruption that will need to be lanced by the end of this.”
“The Society will give us quests if it gets too out of control,” said Jack.
“But not for ordinary corruption,” said Josie. “It has to be something major like a war,
or a disaster. I think we are changing things with our methodology and quests we
would have picked up are things we are already doing.”
“So we might be right about stalling the Shemmarians?,” asked Jack.
“I like it as an explanation even if it’s wrong,” said Josie.
They stepped through the gate and back at the Hole in the Wall. Josie took a moment
to breathe in the air. This was where they had started things. She hated that she had
been chained to a wall, but she didn’t regret the killing spree she had started her
campaign with.
“Let’s change this for Lois,” said Josie. “Then we have to get ready for tomorrow.”
“Compared to the Hangar, this should be a snap,” said Jack.
Josie checked her watch. She nodded at it being at full power.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” said Josie.
Jack took on his persona, becoming human formulae. She pulled on Zatanna. She had
gotten so much better with her magic since she had started. Adding the birds to help
her aim had improved her targeting.
They sent out their magic to shape things the way they wanted. The office came
downstairs with the model and archives being copied for use at the Hangar. The stairs
were moved to the other end of the office before the space was sealed up from the
rest of the apartment. The space upstairs became two rooms with full beds and
cabinets. The living room became a small dining room and kitchen. The bathroom
remained in place next to that.
The birds made sure everything was cleaned for their guest before they vanished.
“I think we should look the place over,” said Josie. “If the front door and window
shutters still work, we can pull them down for protection for the Queen.”
“We should ask Eric to send over some guards,” said Jack.
“I got it,” said Josie. She led the way upstairs. She checked both rooms. They were
in the front with windows facing the city. She didn’t know which way the sun would
be rising, but if the windows were facing the right way, it would be shining into the
rooms and lighting up the beds.
She tapped the window with her fist. She nodded at the sound that came back. She
thought that they could break through easily enough, but the normal weapons of the
time would need some effort to break the glass.
“Bulletproof,” said Jack. He nodded at her expression. “If Caroline is staying here
on her own, I didn’t want any Joe Schmoe breaking in.”
“What do you think, Lois?,” asked Josie.
“I’ve slept in worse places,” said the Queen. “What about these boxes in the closest?”
“You put your dirty clothes in the dirty box,” said Jack. “You pull your clean clothes
out of the clean box. It’s my way of getting around doing laundry.”
Lois’s eyes flickered to the portrait of her and Rickard holding hands, and grave
expressions.
“Let me put down security,” said Josie. “They won’t do anything but keep people
out of the Hole in the Wall, but that should be enough for you to open the gate
and come back to the Hangar if there is trouble.”
“Do you think there will be?,” asked Lois.
“You are under our protection and I would rather be ready for another Brant, than get
caught off guard,” said Josie. “And if someone did break in now, they are either after
you, or us. Either way, they will need to be dealt with in the course of things.”
“How did you decide on exploding heads?,” asked Jack.
“Put in a doorbell that reaches the Hangar,” said Josie. She shook her head. “The idea
came up with a talk with Eric.”
“And?,” said Jack.
“I was thinking about guided missiles,” said Josie. “Doorbell? I am going to put in
the security after that is done.”
“All right,” said Jack. He shook his head. She thought she heard him muttering
guided missiles under his breath as he went downstairs.
“Make sure you put a push the button and talk sign on it,” she called after him.
“Yes, Mom,” he called back.
“What was the picture, Elaine?,” asked Josie.
“I will take that secret to my grave,” said Elaine. She made a chagrined face.
“All right,” said Josie. She put the matter aside. Maybe she could find out from Jack
later. She checked her watch. “Let’s put down our sentries, and then we can get some
sleep and get ready to move Caroline in and June and Mister Warner home for the
time they need to get things done.”
“What are you thinking?,” asked Elaine.
“Birds,” said Josie. “Watch birds.”
She pulled on Zatanna. She inscribed runes at the windows and at various places
around the office. She put two more at the gate. She let her persona go as the devices
said they were on watch and ready to go.
Anyone breaking in would have to deal with their face exploding. It would be loud
and messy, but as fatal as she could make it.
“We’re going to head back to the Hangar, Lois,” said Josie. “We’ll pick you up and
take you to the hospital tomorrow, and you can help us move Caroline, and maybe
hang out with Case. Like I said, you can stay for June’s send off, or I can send you
home so you and Rickard can watch things develop from afar.”
“My presence would be a nuisance, wouldn’t it?,” said Lois. She gave Josie a stern
look.
“If you want your daughter to break up with Case, you have to let them work that
out,” said Josie. “Some people can’t make things work no matter how hard they try.
That might be the case here. On the other hand, outside pressure might be enough to
push them together in opposition to what you want. I don’t want a quest to find
Caroline every time she gets into trouble because she ran away from home and her
responsibilities. I want to grow this enough that they decide what they want to do, and
they are off my hands. After that, it will be on them to make it work.”
“If Case becomes the king?,” said Lois.
“Then he knows better to cross me on a bad day,” said Josie. “We’re leaving you on
your own. The kitchen should have food in it if you get hungry again. Please stay out
of trouble until I can get you back to the capitol.”
“I do expect some kind of news,” said Lois.
“I will ask Caroline to write you every night,” said Josie. “She might be able to teach
the kids some things.”
“All right,” said Lois. “I would appreciate that.”
“Remember, if the security goes bad, come down to the gate and step through,” said
Josie. “The birds will buy you enough time for that. Then Jack will take care of the
rest.”
“Doorbell is done,” said Jack. “Even tested it.”
“Good,” said Josie. “Good night, Your Majesty. We will see you in the morning for
breakfast. Then we will get started with the day.”
A letter appeared in the Queen’s hands. She read it silently.
“Rickard is asking for the armies to be deployed to shut the borders,” said Lois. “He
is thinking about putting a bounty on these tattooed men.”
“That will make the adventurers happy,” said Josie.