I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the bathroom. “Now, we get the hell out of here.”

Chapter Fifteen

The tear gas was quite a bit thinner in the living room, and it cleared out pretty quickly once we shut the bedroom door, opened up the windows, and turned on the kitchen vent. The door to the hallway was open, but there were no gawkers. Any initial snoopers probably ran as soon as they caught sight of the armed mercenaries, and any other potential lookie-loos certainly fled at the sound of gunfire.

“We need to rinse you off,” Garth said, gripping my arm and pulling me toward the kitchen. We’d both discarded our masks as soon as we were out of the bedroom. “You’re covered in chemical burns.”

“I’ll heal,” I said, twisting my arm so it slipped free. Considering the singed state of my skin, a few layers might have slipped free as well. But, damn it, it was my turn to grip his arm and drag him somewhere. “What we need to do is get the hell out of here. There’s bound to be more of them.” Plus, the mercs that had only been knocked unconscious wouldn’t stay that way forever. I pulled him to the wall, where my drawing of the kids’ sick room in the Tent District was still intact, if not exactly as I’d left it.

There appeared to be some sort of an evacuation going on, with pairs of people carrying kids out of the room on their cots. I gripped my throat and muttered, “Oh, shit,” under my breath. The tear gas must’ve passed through the gateway. Those poor kids . . .

Garth stared at the living drawing on his wall, his eyes saucers and his expression rapt. “What is this?”

I figured it was best to work with a minimalistic approach, explanation-wise. “Think of it like a doorway,” I said, right before I pushed him through the wall. He stumbled onto the other side, then turned around and marched right back toward me. And then he disappeared.

I smirked, though my heart wasn’t in it. One-way gateways, and all that . . .

“Find Dorman,” I called through the gateway, hoping he could hear me. “I’ll join you soon.” A moment later, I retrieved the can of touch-up paint from the shelf above the washer and drier in the laundry closet and splashed the entire can on the wall above the ink-drawn gateway. The moment the off-white paint dripped across the drawing, the whole thing crackled like a live wire touching water, and in a blink, it reverted to being just a picture. Just lines drawn in black permanent ink. Nothing more.

I rushed back to the couch and opened up my backpack, pulling out a wad of freshly washed clothing. I dressed as quickly as possible, ignoring the singed state of my skin, shoved my feet into my boots without bothering to tie the laces, strapped on the sword harness without buckling it, then grabbed my backpack and leather jacket and the bag filled with my soiled clothes from the Carmichael incident. Hands full, I ran to the broken-in door.