The example spread a chill across my skin. One by one the hairs on my arms stood up.
“Was I about to die?”
“No. I mean yes, kind of. I don’t know. Your aura is hard to read. It’s almost like you’re already dead.”
That blow should have knocked me to the ground, but oddly, it didn’t. I wasn’t surprised to hear that assessment. Cataplexy tickled at my stomach like laughter, but it didn’t spread. I thought of all the medicines Dr. Suni had prescribed. Some had eased my narcoleptic symptoms. I could enjoy a good joke without collapsing. My CPAP machine helped me sleep without suffocating. Even Gr…Grayford had helped me function better. But nothing would ever close the crack in my mind. The grave was always with me. It waited for me.
“Why did you rescue me? You could have just followed me until something bad happened.” It was a weird thing to say to someone, but there it was.
“Because I’m not a monster.” She stared, but it sounded like she was informing herself more than me. Prim made a sound that could have been a soft chuckle. “Besides, one human death isn’t exactly a feast. I mean some can survive as—say, a hospice worker, sustaining themselves on small, infrequent snacks, but some of us require more.”
“There are a lot of you?”
“Some.”
The sudden urge to reevaluate my own plight was very tempting.
“Getting you away from them hasn’t changed anything, though. There is still an impending sense of doom about you. Calamity is rolling off you in waves.” She faced me again. “Intoxicating waves.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“What am I supposed to do about that?”
Primrose shrugged.
“Let’s start by getting that bracelet off your wrist.”
“Can someone in there help me get it off?” I pointed to the doorless wall.
“Wrong kind of help. You need someone who can break a spell and pick a lock at the same time.”
Just as well—I wasn’t sure I’d survive another visit to Santuario. I turned the weighty bracelet on my wrist until I could make out its complex clasp. The clockwork pieces glinted in the faint light.
“I want to help, if I can.” Prim’s clean, sharp features softened to convey the honesty in her offer. It felt as though everything she’d told me, as unfortunate as it was, was truthful. Maybe this was her way of redeeming herself for feeding on misfortune.
She stepped from the shadow of the wall. “It’s not far.”
I nodded.
“Can I just ask one thing?”
“Sure,” she granted.
“Does your cell phone have an international plan?”
****
Primrose stood guard at the mouth of the alley while I paced the shadows, counting the jangling rings. I’d shown Grayford how to answer his phone, but it kept ringing. Eventually, it switched to the option to leave him a message. His warm, masculine voice washed over me as he invited me to leave my calling card and statement of business. The suddenness of it, his voice, his old-fashioned words, the strangling love I felt for him, wrapped my vocal cords in mute desperation.
“Grayford!” I finally pushed out. My knees buckled and my jaw unhinged. I sobbed into the phone like a child. “I…I’m okay.” More sobbing. “I’m in Barcelona. They were trying to take me to a hell gate. It’s in the mountains of Andorra,” I lisped. “I got away. I have help.” Tears strangled my voice. “Please call this number. I love you.”
My arm fell. I dropped the phone as I collapsed to the dirty cobblestones. The heavy hand of narcolepsy pressed my face into the grimy center of the alley. My tears mingled with the trickle of sooty water flowing under my cheek.
Prim shook me gently.
Some prayers I can answer, and some I cannot. St. Jude’s musical voice echoed down into darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bedrooms, Buses, and Pastures
Grayford
I skittered along the earth’s seam as if some great force had pulled me back and released me from its slingshot. The landscape was a blur of dark, late-summer greens and rugged moorland browns. Towns came and went in balding blasts of cement and stone. I passed through the wind, through hillside and garden wall. I slipped through bedrooms, buses, and pastures. I was, once more, as immaterial as a ghost.
Vast fields of energy skipped and danced in the distance, warping out from Neolithic stone circles and pooling below massive mounds. So much magic.
The magnetic pull of the ley line yanked me from side to side like a violent subway car. Something crackled on the horizon, and the ley line rattled beneath my feet. Geysers of energy fountained ahead. As I drew close, my spirit eyes made out the giant standing stones. Stonehenge loomed to the right.
“Good God,” I whispered to myself as the ley line ripped me past the massive font of power.
My stomach lurched, and I fell into a pond of waist-deep water. A bright new day spread above me as I looked out at the windswept landscape. Clusters of sheep drifted like clouds across a rolling pasture. I was in the southern hills.
A set of stone stairs, roughly three feet wide, led up out of the pond. I did not climb them.
“Stay in the well, Will,” I reminded myself.
A stone wall, constructed of the same field stones as the stairs, drifted over a hill to my right and disappeared. I turned to my left, taking in the empty, sun-washed landscape.
“What do I do now?” I asked the empty air.
I received an answering bleat from just behind me. I turned and met the gaze of a freshly sheared sheep. Next to the sheep stood a slack-jawed man, holding an electric shear.
“I beg your pardon,” was all I could think to say. I stepped toward the stairs, and a burning-hot energy lanced through me. An invigorating sense of strength rode the heat. My hands clenched into fists. The energy sought to carry me north to other lands that needed conquering, other causes that needed championing. It was intoxicating, but my journey led east and south. My path led to Melisande. I took another step and the heat drained from my body. A cooler, calmer energy caught me up and tugged me away.
The hillside vanished behind me as I skimmed along the edge of more populated areas. Larger towns zipped past as I bumped and zagged through the dense habitation. A tingling rode my skin as energy tangled all around me. Massive structures rose to my left, and suddenly I was engulfed by a cat’s cradle of artificial ley lines. The buzzing web of London’s energy pulled at my molecules. The city suckled at the land and the river. It drank the sky. The metropolis sapped everything that came close and fed the newfound energy to its whirring, screeching, clanging parts.
The pressure inside me stirred as if responding to a siren’s call. I grasped my insubstantial form. Molecules of magic slipped through my skin. My head began to spin as bits of my consciousness leeched away. I’d been to London many times and never detected a force like this. The ley line must have reduced me to pure energy in order to move me, and now that energy was being siphoned to feed the growing beast that was the capital city.
I pulled my arms tightly around my waist and dropped into a pool of darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Winking white flowers whispered a celestial secret.
Melisande
“Wake up,” my second-grade teacher barked. Her impatient voice twisted into my mother’s.
“Wake up,” the EMT insisted as he bent over me at my surprise sweet sixteen party.
“Mel, wake up,” Josh urged.
“Wake up!”
My eyes shot open as deep, brown spirals frosted blonde at the tips by the sun, or a particularly talented hairstylist, hung over me. Prim tucked the frizzy wealth of hair behind her ears and tugged at my arms.
“You’ve got to get up now. I can feel them. They’re near.”
“Whoa, easy.” I lifted my head from my chest, and the alleyway spun like the bottom of a tequila bottle.
“They’re almost here. If we don’t mask that spe
ll, they’ll sniff us out in minutes.”
“Okay. Wait. Grayford! Did he leave a message?”
“No message. You can try again once we’ve reached a Veil.”
“A what?”
“Talk later. Run now!”
My will to escape was weakening again. Shadows crept at the edges of my vision. I reached out instinctively, and tiny chains of ice slithered from my palms. The hissing tendrils fastened on the scurrying wraiths.
“Up,” I whispered, and their tiny forms pulled me to my feet. I bounced and swayed to the mouth of the alley, then crushed the chains in my fists. A piece of my will to fight had returned. I spun from the flaring streetlights and buzzing crowd to find Prim several paces behind me. Her hazel eyes were circled with white. Her mouth shaped into a question, but nothing came out.
“Talk later. Run now,” I reminded her. She dashed past me, weaving into the crowd. I launched after her before the compulsion spell could rob me of my inertia. We tripped along the sidewalk, then cut across the sea of taxis and motor scooters clogging the Rambla. A small courtyard enclosing a thirty-foot sculpture of barbed wire opened up on the opposite sidewalk. We dashed under the installation and threaded through a tight corridor of shops and bistros on the other side. Smoke and music drifted on the air as we wound deeper into the canyonland of narrow streets. The five-story buildings crept closer and closer until the passages between them grew thin enough for their balconies to almost touch. A jungle of colorful flags and overflowing flowerpots dripped down from the darkness above our heads as we twisted away from the crackling festivities.
Prim turned a corner, then grabbed me as I blundered into the blackness of a blind alley.
“We’re almost there. Wait here while I speak to the Veil.”
I nodded, happy for the break. I leaned against an ancient wooden door with a high-tech number pad built into its stone archway. Once I’d caught my breath, I peered across the dimness. Slowly my eyes adjusted enough for me to see Prim bent over a stooped figure. Wisps of their quiet conversation teased at the edge of my hearing. After a moment, Prim trotted back to my side.
“She’s agreed to veil you while we’re in the Thieves Market.”
“None of that sounds good.”
“Trust me, it is.”
“Lead on.” I gestured sarcastically, and I followed her into the shadows.
The tiny woman wrapped in black muslin followed me with her eyes as we passed by. She sat on a short stool and squeezed her eyes closed. I slapped at my skin as the tingling touch of spiders traveled up and down my body. I reached forward for Prim’s hand, and she took it without a backward glance. I hadn’t held a woman’s hand this much since I was a child trying to match my mother’s wide gait with my little strides. We slipped beneath an ornate archway with a carved stone bridge that connected two buildings.
“The Bishop’s Walk,” Prim muttered as we passed beneath its buttressed weight. I had a brief moment of disorientation as the last of the light bled from the passageway. We shuffled forward blindly until a golden glow unfurled ahead of us. Between one step and the next, a gaslight flickered into existence, followed by another. The leaping light of lanterns pricked to life all around us, and with it came the dissonant rumble of a bustling crowd.
We emerged into an open-air plaza of tents and tables, and carts laden with boxes, barrels, and brightly woven baskets. Something spicy and mouthwatering rode the dry ocean breeze. Gongs and chimes and merchants’ calls directed our attention to every table we passed.
My eyes roved the collections of jewelry and trinkets that glittered from every tabletop. Inside every candlelit tent, a fortune in designer purses, watches, and sunglasses spilled forth. Interspersed between the merchandise were food vendors hawking delicacies from my wildest dreams. My stomach growled loud enough for heads to turn. That’s when they saw it.
My wrist jerked and pulled in all directions as every pickpocket in the place had a go at the diamond cuff. A crowd clustered around us hemming us in until our backs were pressed against each other.
“Ouch!” Hands twisted my arm and yanked at my wrist.
“El alto!” Prim shouted. “Embrujada!”
The hands left my arm so quickly I fell to the tiled floor of the courtyard. A lumbering white form shuffled toward us through the parting sea of bodies. Cataplexy shot through me as the bandaged figure drew close. Gummy eyes roamed over me from between tightly swathed bandages. This was not a leper. An otherworldly vibration pulsed beneath the gauzy fabric that covered him from head to toe. If it weren’t for the oozing spots, I’d say that he was wrapped, stamped, and ready to be shipped to Egypt and placed back in his sarcophagus. Except mummies weren’t real.
Like vampires, ghosts, and denizens of hell weren’t real.
I’d just add this gentleman to the list.
The sweet scent of herbs found me first, followed by expensive men’s cologne. Then, the rot hit me like an anvil. My narcoleptic brain was sure I was asleep and quickly paralyzed me from head to toe. I couldn’t blame it. How could this be anything other than a nightmare?
A brittle string of Spanish words scraped from the man’s bandaged mouth. Prim answered him in a hushed and reverent tone. He assessed my puddle of quivering muscles and jerking limbs. I struggled to arrange myself into a more dignified pose, but there was no hope for it.
I went still as the mummified man bent stiffly and reached for my wrist. His sheathed fingers hovered over the twinkling band. The elaborate clasp clicked and whirred but held its place against my skin. He turned his head in what must have been curiosity, then, with an audible pop, he straightened.
“Come with me,” he instructed in a heavy accent. He turned and made his way back down the path the crowd had carved for him.
“Are you okay?” Primrose’s eyes darted over my slack face. “Did you faint?” She looked from me to the limping form retreating from view. “Los Ladrones have agreed to see us. They will help you get that off. I’m assuming you’re okay with the bracelet acting as payment for breaking the spell.”
If it had been a question, I couldn’t have answered. She looked me over.
“Come on.” She rose to leave, then turned back to me. My eyes burned with old anger and fresh embarrassment. My jaw wobbled as it struggled to fit itself back in place. I no longer wore my medic alert bracelet because regular people didn’t know to look for it. Since I rarely collapsed around EMTs and ER doctors, what was the point?
I waited until my seizing muscles could respond to commands again, then dragged myself to a sitting position.
“What happened?” Prim knelt to help me up. I twitched and wobbled my way to my feet and brushed at my clothes. By the time I could speak clearly, the crowd had closed around us again.
“I have narcolepsy.”
“Narcolepsy?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at me for a long moment then said, “Are you okay to walk?” No request for me to explain what that meant. No jokes about people laughing and going to sleep. No questions at all.
“Yeah.” I straightened my top and followed her into the congregation of prying eyes.
****
The bandaged man waited for us on the other side of the plaza next to a curving colonnade choked with potted plants and white sweet-scented flowers. We followed his lurching form behind the stretch of columns and down the perfumed path to a set of open doors. The softly lit space inside was the width of two gracious rooms and filled with the same star-shaped flowers. The intoxicating shrubs were bunched together in heady clusters, creating pathways through the elegant chamber. Tiny birds hopped from perch to perch inside giant birdcages along the walls.
We followed a central path which led to a wooden screen so delicately carved it almost looked like lace. Figures moved behind the screen, silhouetted by a flickering glow.
Our guide shambled to a stop and whispered through the screen. He stepped aside and gestured for us to move close to the whittled divider. Labore
d breathing threaded through the thin partition, and with it came the reek of wasted flesh. It was a rare and unmistakable odor. I tried to occupy myself with remembering where I’d smelled that particular stench before. A sunken squirrel in the attic? A sunbaked turtle carcass on the beach? Contemplating any tiny horror from my past was so much better than comprehending the skeletal shapes creaking on the other side of the separator.
“Señores Ladrones,” Prim began in sultry Spanish, then glanced in my direction. “Thief Lords of the White Sea,” she continued in English. “We thank you for the wealth of your notice. We seek a spell-breaker.”
I fought the urge to cover my nose and mouth as a spindly creature approached the screen. Two narrow forms followed it. Their twig-like fingers fluttered busily as they wound strips of cloth around the first figure’s limbs. They worked quickly at concealing the withered arms and desiccated hands, but not quickly enough. My stomach lurched at the partially obstructed view of wilted skin hanging like paper-thin drapery from brown bones and shriveled sinew.
“We are honored by your presence, Doomsayer. What is your payment?”
Doomsayer? What was a Doomsayer? I nearly leapt out of my skin when Prim grabbed my wrist. She thrust my arm at the screen so that the glittering circlet could be seen.
The two figures to either side turned, looked at the bracelet, then resumed wrapping the center figure.
“I have many diamonds,” the central figure announced in its brittle male voice. I traded a look with Prim. How rich were these thieves? Not rich enough to make up for their repulsive existence, I guessed. “You possess a far more worthy payment than this trinket.” The lengthy statement wafted a putrid cloud through the looping curls of wood. I held my breath and fought the urge to lean away.
Prim went very still. So did the central figure. They stayed that way long enough for the two assistants to finish their bindings. They tied quick knots, then produced long, stiletto-thin scissors and clipped the remaining bits of cloth. A moment later the screen split in two and the divided pieces rolled away to either side.
A Shiver of Shadows Page 12
