Clearing out (old location)

[Claudia Morley]

Claudia slowly began to regain consciousness. She was lying on her back on the floor of the old hotel, her limbs sore and heavy, as if a heavy weight had been dropped on her. She moaned and opened her eyes. Everything was blurry and unfocused. Breathing heavily, she blinked several times, then tried to rub her eyes with the backs of her hands. Gradually, she was able to focus on the ceiling, which was a dingy white in color, with brown water stains and a few splatters of dried blood. With great effort, she sat up and looked around her. Tristan was lying nearby, conscious, but obviously suffering from a full body bind. She rolled her eyes. Clearly Voltaire and his stupid friends had gotten away. She swore under her breath and slowly got to her feet. She wobbled slightly, then steadied herself. Then she walked over to Tristan and kicked him for good measure. "You idiot! You let them get away!" She took out her wand and removed the spell from him. "Come on, let's get out of here. The Dark Lord has obviously abandoned this location. I know of his backup location, and I'll need to make sure those corpses I worked so hard to gather are transferred there."

[Tristan Collins]

"For Salazar's sake, do you have to kick me?" Tristan said, frowning. "I tried to stop them, OK? I hit that guy Voltaire with a bleeding spell. But someone else came up behind me and tripped me, then used the body bind. It wasn't my fault, OK? We were outnumbered, anyway." He sat up and rubbed his side where she had kicked him. "Funny how it keeps ending up as the two of us together. If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a thing for me."