That left me free to pursue the main reason I’d come to Hedon. I clutched the gold token and thought of a Bookworm.
It brought me to an abandoned amusement park.
The wooden coaster glowed in the moonlight like the ribs of a beached leviathan. I picked my way through the ruins of the park, my breath unnaturally loud and my shoulder blades prickling.
A rusted scrambler ride cast distorted shadows, its cars listing sideways, while at the shuttered Floss Shack, a painted grinning clown munched on cotton candy the color and fibrous consistency of insulation. I jumped over broken cables, sidestepping a horse fallen off the carousel, whose smile was more of a grimace. I inched closer. Were those fangs?
Since I’d become allies with the Queen, or more accurately, bribed Moran with puppy time, he’d shared some of Hedon’s history with me, though he refused to get into Her Majesty’s rise to power.
The business district was the original part of Hedon, created about sixty years ago by Nefesh with Architect powers, including a young Abraham Dershowitz, purely as a black market for the magic criminal fringe. Over the years, more was added based on a combination of demand and whimsy. Some ideas worked out better than others, though I had yet to come across a section that was abandoned like this park.
Given the size, there couldn’t have been more than a dozen rides here, tops. About half had been removed, with only black smudges on broken concrete marking where they’d once stood. On the face of it, this amusement park might have seemed like a dead end, but the Queen had been raised in a carny family and she’d lied when asked about a Bookworm. It had clues to yield.
I rounded the Pirate Ship, the wood now rotted through, and stopped abruptly at the mouth of a long tunnel, which was surrounded by large wooden pink hearts affixed to the frame. The entrance was locked tight with a solid metal corrugated gate. I stepped over patchy weeds that sprouted in clumps and into the dry riverbed made of concrete that ran under the gate, surrounding the tunnel like a moat.
A small placard announced that the Tunnel of Love was closed until further notice.
“Tunnel of Love?” a man said. “Who knew that existed outside of old cartoons?”
I spun around with a sigh. “Hello, Reasonable Facsimile Dad.”
Adam grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling. He wore jeans with scuffed-up runners and his favorite faded Beatles T-shirt, the exact outfit that had been captured on film in our last outing to the Pacific National Exhibition, Vancouver’s amusement park.
I’d lost my dad twice: once when he’d left us, and the second time when I’d learned that Isaac Montefiore had murdered him. This empty illusion held little comfort for me, and still, I wrapped my arms around myself so I wouldn’t hug him.
“You okay, little jewel?” The pet name grated.
“Shouldn’t you be buried once and for all along with your real-world counterpart?” I kicked a piece of gravel at him. “You’re dead. I am under no delusions that I’m going to find you again, so why are you still bothering me here?”
“That would be up to you, seeing as I’m in your head. Candy?” He proffered a round tin of lemon drops to me.
I helped myself, my mouth puckering at the sour burst of flavor. “Don’t blame your appearances on me. You are a byproduct of Hedon. The knock-off purse of fathers.”
He pocketed the tin. “I don’t think that’s been true for a while.”
“I’m not the one conjuring you up. To what end? Our visits are cryptic at best and traumatizing at worst. I’m not that masochistic.”
“You miss me.”
“I miss my real father.” Like a phantom limb that wouldn’t stop throbbing, except in my heart. “You I can take or leave. Preferably leave.”
“Then it beats me,” Adam said. “Could be I’m some kind of coping mechanism?”
“Or I’m on the trail of something the Queen doesn’t want me to find and she’s sent another head trip. Since you’re here, make yourself useful. Where would I find a Bookworm?”
He crunched his candy. “If I told you, you’d already know the answer.”
Ass. I walked back into the middle of the park, but I’d already done the grand tour. There was no Bookworm visible on any of the rides, and the only locked structures to explore were the Floss Shack and the Tunnel of Love. I grimaced. Breaking into the abode of the candy-pimping psycho clown could be my second option.
The tunnel didn’t have a ward on it. I jumped back into the dry cement riverbed, picked the lock on the gate, and hefted it up with a grunt.
Inside was pitch dark with a prominent aroma of mold.
“You go first,” I said. If on the slightest off chance I was sliding the slippery slope to crazy, might as well let the figment of my imagination be the one to bite it first.
Adam stepped into the mouth of the tunnel. “Remember when we went to that exhibit at Science World when you were six with the maze that we had to go through blindfolded?”
“Vaguely. Something about other heightened senses coming into play.”
“You were so stubborn. Had to go first, even though it meant you ended up mashing your nose on the maze walls a few times because you refused to hold my hand.”
I crossed my arms. “Your point being?”
Adam held out his hand.
“I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman with magic. I don’t need to hold my fake dead dad’s hand. Think of this as a coal mine and you’re the canary. Get moving.”
He shook his head, his eyes soft with an almost painful disappointment, standing his ground. “When did you get so hard, little jewel?”
“Diamonds are made under pressure,” I retorted and pushed past Adam into the darkness.
I barely breathed. The tunnel swallowed all moonlight mere feet inside it, gloom pressing in like a heavy weight. My ears strained for the slightest whisper of danger, my steps slow and cautious. I kept my right hand on the wall, grimacing every time I hit a pocket of slime.
There was a pop of sulphur, a reddish-orange surge, and the left sleeve of my leather jacket was engulfed in flame. Cursing, I beat the fire out against the cement walls.
My spiky head-to-toe blood armor slammed into place in time with an explosion of motion from my left. A foot nailed me in the head, the blow knocking me back a few steps. Dazed, I shook my head, my fists up, but I couldn’t see shit.
A ball of flame shot from the darkness and I threw myself sideways. It caught my right shoulder, danced briefly over the short stubby spikes, and died out.
Approximating my assailant’s position, I lunged—and closed my fist on empty air. Two sharp daggers sprung into my hands.
“Come out, come out, whoever you are,” I said in a singsong voice.
No one stirred, but the tunnel grew hot and tight. The sulphur stench worsened, making my eyes water. It was as if all oxygen was being sucked out. I spread my arms out to reassure myself the walls weren’t closing in and dragged in a deep breath, but failed to get a good lungful of air, because my armor seemed to have shrunk and was now crushing my ribs. If I got rid of it, however, I’d be a sitting duck. The pressure grew and I crashed to my knees, bent over double with my head pressed to the concrete.
With a roar that echoed off the walls, a plume of water jetted into the riverbed, propelling me down a twisting channel, half-drowned, and all in virtual blindness. I battened down the terror that filled my lungs, scrabbling at the walls to gain purchase.
My fingers scraped over a wire and a peal of psychotic laughter ripped through the tunnel. Bursts of epilepsy-inducing pink lights lit up as the water slowed and I bumped to a stop against a wall, my hand pressed against my heaving chest.
“Tiptoe Through the Tulips” sung in falsetto and accompanied by electric organ streamed through the space, sending shivers up my spine. If you told me the singer was a serial killer who made clown suits of his victims’ skins while fashioning balloon animals engaged in torture porn tableaux, I’d nod, because that sounded about right.
> A figure leapt over me, spinning fireballs in both hands. Maybe they could dry off the rivulets of water running off my armor.
The person turned, revealing Isaac Montefiore’s leering face. Unlike with fake Adam, I welcomed this illusion. Isaac wouldn’t have been in Hedon, nor did he have any powers. This attacker wore his face, that was all. I jumped to my feet and rushed him.
The fight played out against a cacophony of pink spotlights, lending a disjointed, jerky quality to our movements: fire pitched in stuttering strokes, a punch with a time delay between landing on his chin and his head snapping back, all to that hyena-like crooning.
Spinning in under his guard, I manifested a pair of daggers, swinging upwards to slash his jugular and end this.
Light danced across Isaac’s face, turning his blue eyes bright as a lazy summer day, while the play of shadows hid the silver at his temples and made him look younger. I jerked sideways, the blades whistling harmlessly past his face.
My heart hammered in my chest. If I couldn’t deal the killing blow to an illusion because of the resemblance with Levi, the real fight was over before it had begun.
Another large ball of fire flew toward me, but I’d caught the bunching of his shoulder as he threw it. Willing myself to ignore any traces of Levi in his father, I dropped to a crouch and swung my foot wide in a sweeping kick the way that Miles had taught me. Fancy. It caught the attacker in the back of his knee. His leg buckled and he crashed to the ground. Making my armor vanish, I jumped him and sliced across his neck with my dagger with no hesitation.
Blood dribbled out in a Rorschach pattern along the concrete riverbed. Filled with savage satisfaction, I fired a red silky ribbon of magic inside him, ready to hook it to his magic and finish this Isaac doppelgänger off.
Isaac’s face changed to Adam’s and the song cut out into sudden and discordant silence.
I scrambled off him so fast that I crashed into the other side of the tunnel.
Adam dragged in a wet breath, his eyes cloudy. He held one hand to his bleeding neck and the other out to me. “Stay with me. Please?”
I’d done this. The least I could do was own my actions and bear witness. Except I couldn’t watch someone I love die. Not when I’d already dreamed my father’s death over and over again. Those nightmares were supposed to stay in the dark, not follow me into this rose-tinted light. So what if I wanted revenge? I’d been called on by the goddess Asherah to take Chariot down. It was my calling. It was justice. It wasn’t supposed to keep costing me over and over again.
“Ash?”
My vision grew blurry. “I’m sorry,” I whispered and ran.
A stitch flared up my left side, but I didn’t stop until I hit a heart-shaped door.
Was Adam still waiting for me to take his hand or had the light faded from his eyes, dead and alone? I glanced over my shoulder.
A single straight length of tunnel ran between me and the open mouth, where moonlight streamed in. While pink lights glowed softly in tiny bulbs about three-quarters of the way up the walls, there were no twists and no Adam. No body of any sort.
Had it all been an illusion? I checked my sleeve. A black scorch mark ran vertically along the leather and it smelled faintly of smoke.
Illusion plus tangible fire magic equaled one hell of a deterrent. Tenderize intruders with the mind-fucking, attack them, and then when they were injured and whimpering on the ground, bring out the big flambé finish. Had it not been for my armor, I’d have made an excellent tiki torch.
What was so valuable—or awful—on the other side of this door?
Making short work of the lock, I steeled myself and stepped through.
Chapter 10
Given a thousand guesses, I’d never have nailed what lay before me. My childhood bedroom hadn’t been particularly fanciful, but had I run with the Disney princess crowd, I would have garroted someone with a skipping rope for this room. It was a space designed to play and dream in, painted all-pink with a bed featuring a massive ruffled canopy top. A girl could hide away with the giant smiling teddy bear sitting on the rocking chair or spend hours reading the dog-eared books like Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia with their worn spines that were stacked neatly on white shelves.
For the older lass harboring fantasies of being locked away and rescued, this room served that purpose, too, complete with its own prisoner princess. The beautiful woman in her early twenties with a spill of dark hair sat blank-faced and cross-legged in the middle of the canopy bed.
A milky film covered her eyes, her lids madly flickering and barely visible through the blue data stream that surrounded her like a cumulus cloud. Instead of binary numbers, it contained floating words and phrases in every language that grew brighter before dissipating into wisps that unfurled into new words in an endless bloom. Chemical equations morphed into Arabic phrases and then into IKEA assembly instructions and a snippet from Winnie the Pooh. It possessed a surreal beauty, but the sheer potency of magic in this room raised the hairs on my body.
I was very uncomfortable asking her for help when she was being held prisoner, but she was my only hope to learn more about Olivia’s insurance policy. I inched closer to the woman, but she didn’t register my presence. This must have been how supplicants to the Oracle of Delphi had felt.
“Hello. My name is Ash. May I ask you a question?” Should I have brought an offering? A rose? An apple? My Netflix password? “I’m trying to find written proof of some criminal activity.”
Neither the Bookworm nor the word cloud gave any kind of response.
Rafael had warned me about the data overload and the rare lucid moments. If speaking didn’t work, should I touch her to alert her to my presence?
I reached out and hesitated.
Did she always look this way, indefinitely hooked to this global knowledge stream like some IV drip? Or was this the Queen’s doing? Any effort on my part to rescue her would terminate a very useful partnership in bringing down Chariot.
I massaged by temples, frantically working through plans. “Are you being held against your will?”
No response. Figured.
I toyed with the gold token. Would the Bookworm be better off in my care? What damage might moving her do and where could I even take her? House Pacifica was right out. Levi’s hesitancy to stay on Team Jezebel aside, he couldn’t strike out against the Queen.
Still, despite thwarting Her Majesty’s use of this woman and raining heaps of shit upon myself, I couldn’t leave her here.
“I can help you get away.”
She didn’t react.
I sidled a bit closer and my knees hit the side of the mattress. It was then that I knew with a stone-cold certainty that this wasn’t right. Whoever this girl was, she deserved a normal life, whatever that meant for her.
No one deserved to be locked in a weird fun house, especially not this one.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. What did a normal life mean to me? The only thing I was certain of was that this fight with Chariot had gone on for four hundred years and I had to be the one to end it, otherwise what was the point of all my suffering? I rubbed the scar on my right thigh. Everyone believed I was in it for revenge, when I was in it for meaning.
But truth be told, I was scared to have it end. Ending meant conclusion, no more. If I didn’t have a concrete goal to take out Chariot, if I finished tying up these loose ends, what would I have left?
“Are you able to respond?” I leaned forward to place my hand on her shoulder, and as my fingers passed through the cloud, an earsplitting sound filled the room. Bright, buzzy, and a bit harsh, it was reflected in the data cloud jumping and pulsing wildly. I tried to pull away, but couldn’t.
The woman swung her head in an unblinking stare, made Children of the Corn–creepy with that milky film that prevented me from seeing her eyes. She opened her mouth and a high-pitched scream joined the buzz.
My ears were ringing. I screwed my eyes tight and fumbled for the gold toke
n with my free hand, but I couldn’t move. I was trapped, this cacophony drilling into my brain.
The noise rose to a sharp crescendo and just when I thought my head would split in two, my hand disengaged from her shoulder and I vanished.
I was back in the amusement park—or some version of it.
Lit up in a cascade of colors, the dozens of rides were crowded with fairgoers, and cheerful carnival music played through loudspeakers. Food vendors hawked cotton candy in soothing pastels, fries, and giant hot dogs on sticks, the air spattered with hot grease.
I stood among them, a stone in a river of people, getting my bearings on uneven ground, while screams from delighted coaster riders swooped overhead.
Where was I?
“Visit the midway! A carnival of delights!” a voice called out from up ahead.
The crowd shifted, forcing me toward an archway cut into a huge Queen of Hearts card. The other side was empty save for a single tent and a young blond boy in his mid-teens, who beckoned me over.
“Let Serafina see into your heart,” he said, with a Russian accent.
“Moran?”
He gave me a funny look, like I’d called him by the wrong name. “Two tickets for entry.”
“I don’t have—” The tickets lay in my palm. I clutched them tightly. No good ever came from the Queen seeing into my heart.
The gold token and wooden ring still were threaded on the chain around my neck. I might be able to use one of them to get out of here, but I was curious. My last thought before touching that data cloud had been about having a normal life. If Adam was the ghost of my past, was this to be the vision of my future?
I handed young Moran the tickets. Moving the beaded curtain to the tent aside, he motioned me in with a flourish.
A lone floor lamp cast a pale glow in the corner, but otherwise the tent was empty.
“Hello?”
Fabric rustled behind me. I spun around and—
I was in my office.
I ran a finger over the framed photo of Priya and me at our university graduation, frowning at the monitor with a highlighted passage of an insurance document on it. The Sherlock covers still hung on the wall but there was no dart board and no other desk, only the client chairs.
Revenge & Rapture: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 4) Page 9
