Labyrinth

by Kat Richardson

  I didn’t want him to see it and tried to turn aside, but I felt his arms come around me as he slid down onto the floor. I kept my face down and pressed it into his shoulder. Oh, gods, I was going to stain his shirt. . . .

  He stroked my hair, shushing me as I hiccuped on the tears I tried to hold back. “Hey, hey . . . it’s all right.”

  I let the awful feeling go, let it roll out and over me and tumble away on a series of shaking breaths. “Y-you know I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it,” I cried.

  “I do. I know.”

  “You’re afraid of me.”

  “I’m not. I’m not.”

  I raised my face. His eyes flashed wide and he jerked back a little before he caught himself. He blinked a few times. “All right . . . that’s disturbing.” He took a deep breath. Then he shrugged and pulled me back into a hug. “You know, in horror movies that’s usually just a picturesque trickle. . . . You kind of look like someone broke your nose.”

  I mumbled against his chest. “Oh, thanks.”

  “Do you remember what you were dreaming?”

  I shook my head. “No.” It wasn’t like the disturbing dream-sendings I’d had about Will; this was a regular dream, if a horrible one. Pieces came back as I thought about it, but not the whole and none of it made sense alone. The only thing that seemed clear was the lingering sensation of electricity across my fingertips and a soreness at my neck and shoulders as if I’d been hanged.

  “Maybe you should take a shower and then call Phoebe back,” Quinton suggested. “She left a message on your phone.”

  “Oh, damn. What time is it?”

  “After ten.”

  I cursed and scuttled for the bathroom, confusion and upset pushed aside for more practical concerns. I focused on the routine: wash, brush, dress. . . . I extracted Chaos from my right boot, from which she was trying to remove the insole, as I simultaneously juggled the phone to make the call.

  “Hello, Harper.”

  “Hi, Phoebe. Did you get the ball?” Chaos gave me a dirty look as I took the insole away.

  “Yes. And I want to get rid of it fast as I can. Somet’ing ’bout it make my skin crawl.”

  That made me frown as I stood up, watching the ferret attack my reassembled footwear from the outside. “I can be down at the store in about twenty minutes—”

  “No. I’ll bring it to you. I just want this t’ing gone.”

  Her response surprised me, but I gave her the Danzigers’ address and she hung up.

  Quinton watched me. “So she’s bringing it here? Is that safe?”

  I bit my lip before answering. “I hope so. I mean, it should be safe for Phoebe. If she’s being followed or something, it’s not so safe for the rest of us, but she was adamant about getting rid of the ball as quickly as possible.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, thinking. Was there something I’d never noticed about the puzzle ball or was it something about Phoebe? Or maybe something about the ball had changed since I’d seen it last. . . . I scooped up the ferret and went upstairs to find Mara. Quinton followed.

  It was Saturday, so there were no classes to teach and the Danzigers were both home, entertaining Brian. Or rather, watching Brian be entertained by Grendel in the backyard. There was a lot of running in circles and rolling on the ground going on, in spite of a lingering morning cloud cover that kept the day unusually cool for late May. The adults wore extra layers, but Brian made do in just a shirt, jeans, and sneakers—little boys being their own heaters.

  Mara looked up as we came onto the back porch. “Morning. There’s coffee and brekkie in the kitchen if y’like.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get it in a minute,” I said. “My friend Phoebe wants to drop something off for me here.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “She may be here pretty soon and I hoped you’d take a look at it when she arrives.”

  “Oh?” Mara looked curious. “What sort of thing is it?”

  “It’s a puzzle ball—a large one that used to be on a newel post in an old house. It might or might not be part of a back door into the Grey.”

  “Now that’s an odd sort of thing to have layin’ about.”

  “Will gave it to me. Phoebe picked it up from my condo this morning, but she says it gives her the creeps. It’s never bothered me, but . . .”

  “You’re wonderin’ if there’s more to it.”

  “Yes.”

  Now Ben was watching us too. “You think it could be dangerous?”

  “I never thought so, but my place has been empty for a few days and I don’t know what’s been going on while we’ve been gone.”

  “Ah. All right then,” Mara said. “We’ll take a look.” She stood up and started inside, tossing one end of her woolen shawl over her shoulder. “Let me get a few things. Ben, don’t let the mud monster into the kitchen without a rinse down.”

  “No problem. I have the hose right on the porch.”

  I started to follow her and Quinton caught my eye, raising a questioning eyebrow. “I just want a second with Mara,” I whispered and passed him the ferret.

  He nodded and sat down near Ben, watching the boy and the dog out in the yard, while the ferret took possession of the table and went hunting for crumbs. I headed for the kitchen.

  Mara was climbing a step stool to get to the top of a cabinet. Even with her height, the shelf was well over her head in the lofty old kitchen. “If I toss this down, will y’catch it?” she asked, without turning her head. It was disconcerting that she always knew when I was in the room.

  I stopped next to her. “OK.”

  She dropped a round black thing about the size of a salad plate toward me. It was heavy and I almost dropped it in surprise. It was a thick disk shape with some kind of black cloth stretched over it and a stubby handle on one side. She made a sling out of her shawl and piled a few more things into that before she stepped down.

  I held up the disk. “Why couldn’t you put this in the shawl?”

  “Shouldn’t mix with the herbs. Devil to clean off, and if it’s dirty, it shan’t shut down.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s an eye. Sort of a magic magnifyin’ glass. But like a convex lens, it can concentrate light and energy. Tends to set things on fire. You can see why I keep it as far from Brian’s busy little fingers as possible.”

  “Mara . . .” I started.

  She stepped off the stool and laid her hand on my arm. “Don’t vex yourself. I’ve been thinkin’ on what I said before. After last night, it seems to me it’s a bit of omelets and eggs. Things will get broken when there’s wicked magic afoot, and you’ve been the one to take the brunt when it must be done, but it will splatter about sometimes. I don’t say I like it, nor that it’s all right, but ’tis better you do the things you do than that you stand aside and let worse happen.”

  This was about 180 degrees from what Carlos had implied. Or was it . . . ? I found myself frowning and shaking my head.

  “Never mind. You’ll do what you have to.”

  I would have asked her what she meant, but the doorbell rang and, still carrying the eye, I followed her into the front hall. Mara opened the door and started to say hello.

  Phoebe, holding a sack and looking horrified, lunged forward, knocking us both down as a shot cracked off the doorframe. The open portal flushed red, the house rang with an alarm, and the door tried to slam closed. Mara and Phoebe were scrambling on the floor to clear the doorway. I was to the right of the frame, on the knob side, and I grabbed Phoebe, the closer of the two, and hauled her to me along the polished floor. Mara rolled away and the unobstructed door snapped closed as a second shot made an odd crackling sound against the scarlet haze between the lintels.

  Brian shrieked in the backyard. The house was still making noise. I reached for my pistol, but it was not on my hip. I cursed: I’d left the gun downstairs when I finished dressing.

  Mara snatched the eye off the floor where
I’d dropped it and pulled the cloth off it as she flew to her feet and charged toward the kitchen. I jumped up to follow her and something crashed against the front door.

  “Dat’s him,” Phoebe croaked, her voice and accent were so thick with fear I could barely understand her. “Dat mon what was in your house. He say he gwine t’kill you.”

  I pointed at the basement steps. “Go down there and lock the door. No one is killing anyone today. There’s a gun on the bedside table. You hold on to that until I come downstairs for you.” The door bulged and cracked as something rammed against it. “Go!” I gave her a shove along the floor and Phoebe scrambled the rest of the way on her own.

  I had no idea what I was going to do. The alarm was still howling and there was noise from the backyard that I didn’t have time to investigate. I cast a quick glance sideways into the Grey and saw the shape of the house touched in crimson at the front and back, wavering as something attacked it both physically and in the Grey. To the rear, two small black shapes wrestled in the center of three white ones with one more white shape and a tower of emerald green bearing down on them. Outside the front, something indigo and red reared back to make another strike at the buckling door.

  I crouched, tight as a spring, wrenched the door open, and leapt forward, keeping low and ramming my shoulder into Bryson Goodall’s midsection. He lurched backward into the porch rail. I ducked down and yanked his legs upward, sending him over the barrier and into the rosebushes below.

  A pitiful scream came from the backyard and the alarm shut down. A moment later a stink of singed hair rose on the wind as I stepped down to haul Goodall to his feet.

  He was hard to see: He’d learned the vampire trick of sliding into the Grey so his normal shape was dim in the real world, but see him I did and I reached for him in a hot rage. But I didn’t grab him by the shirt or shoulders. Instead, I let my hand pierce through the shell of his thrashing, thorn-pricked body and into the whirling colors of his energy corona. I don’t know what I did or how but I closed my hand around the core of his strength and yanked him upright by it. I didn’t think it would tear away and it made as good a handle as anything.

  He made a strangled gurgling sound and I shook him like a rat. I felt like I could have snapped his neck with a flick of my wrist and I dropped him only long enough to change my grip to his throat. The shouting chorus of the grid roared in my ears like a conflagration. The voices were obscured individually, but their collective urged me to go ahead and kill him. I quivered, resisting. I wanted to, but I knew I shouldn’t, though why was lost in the crackle and gust of noise. I shook him again. He clutched my forearm and I shoved him back toward the street, watching the flashing, writhing threads of his power try to crawl up my arm. I flicked them off with my other hand and squeezed his throat.

  “Harper, don’t.”

  I ignored the voice behind me and kept pushing Goodall backward, cutting off his air as I went. He glared pure hatred at me and clawed at my arms, but the dark blue of his aura didn’t move so strongly this time; it only flickered at my grip like the tongue of a dying snake. I could just take that energy, I could push it into the earth like a grounded wire. . . .

  “No. Harper, don’t do it. Let the creep go.”

  I knew that voice. . . .

  “Harper . . .”

  I’d pushed him almost to the arch of roses at the peak of the stairs leading to the sidewalk. A gun—a stubby, small-bore rifle with a collapsing stock—lay across the top step, just outside the weak gold line of Mara’s magic. That made me angry, but it was my own, pure anger this time, not something pouring into my head from the Grey.

  I opened my mouth to speak and the voice that issued out of me echoed with a dozen strains and cries. “Tell your master I’ll come when I’m good and ready.” The voices in my head changed pitch and volume, singsonging “alone, alone, alone . . .”

  I let him go, dropping him, staggering, onto his feet at the stone landing. I was just about to give him a push when a bright bolt of light flashed past me and hit him in the shoulder, setting his shirt on fire. He slapped at it, turning and letting out a gasping cry as he stumbled down the stairs.

  “And don’t come back y’feckin’ bastard, or I’ll burn y’to a crisp!” Mara yelled from the porch. She had the eye clutched in her hands, the disk flashing and smoking as the sun touched it. Her shawl was gone, her hair was wild, and her face was streaked with black. Quinton stood beside her with a bucket. Behind them, just inside the doorway, Ben, shocked pale, held Brian against his chest. The boy had turned his face away from the scene and buried it in his father’s jacket.

  As Goodall escaped down the street, Quinton took the eye from Mara’s hands and dropped it into the bucket, where it sizzled and hissed with a watery splash. Mara sat down in a boneless heap on the porch. I picked up the rifle and started back up the walkway. I climbed the porch steps and handed the gun to Quinton. He dropped the magazine, cleared the chamber, and slung the rifle over his shoulder like he’d been doing it all his life. I sat down next to Mara.

  “Hell of a morning,” I said. “And nice shooting.”

  “I thought y’were gonna kill him.”

  “I thought you were.”

  She shook her head and looked queasy. “I think I’m gonna be ill.” She threw herself full length across the step and vomited into the battered rosebush. We gave her a minute to finish and rinse her mouth with a handful of warm water from the bucket and then Quinton and I helped Mara up and back into the house. She flopped again into the first couch in the living room and Ben sat down beside her with Brian still in his arms.

  The three of them curled into a shivering ball as Quinton and I retreated to the hall.

  “What happened in the back?” I asked.

  “A couple of . . . I don’t know. Stumpy little doll-like things tried to grab Brian. The dog got one and Mara got the other. Or maybe Ben did. I don’t know if it burned up or if Ben kicked it to death. They must have jumped in at the same time that shot went off out front. I guess Mara’s perimeter wasn’t designed for a coordinated attack from multiple points. What about Phoebe?” he added, stooping to pick up the paper shopping bag that was lying on the entry floor.

  “She’s downstairs. Goodall was at the condo when she got there and I’d guess he made her call and then sent her to the door to lure me out. He tried to shoot us, but Phoebe knocked us down. The spell on the house might have bent the bullet’s path, but Phoebe probably saved our lives.”

  Quinton looked into the bag. “She brought the puzzle.”

  “She’s going to be really mad at me this time. And she’s got a gun.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mine is down there. I told her to take it—in case anyone made it through.”

  He sighed and then gave me a quick, soft kiss on the lips and glanced at the basement steps. “You want backup?”

  “Want? Yes. Taking? No. She’s my friend and it’s my fault she’s scared. I’ll take care of it.”

  He nodded and let me go.

  Phoebe did not shoot me, though she was very jumpy when I knocked on the basement door. She let me in, looking over my shoulder and all around for any new creeps who might do something nasty.

  “It’s all right,” I said, taking the pistol from her gently and putting it back into the holster that should have been on my hip to begin with. “We sent him packing. I’ll talk to the cops about him later—I think I know who he is. How are you doing?”

  She was still a little shaky, but she drew her shoulders back and stood up as tall as possible. “I’m OK. Not happy, but OK. Store’s been robbed before. That ain’t the first time some no-good waved a gun at me.”

  “I’m sorry.” I was saying that a lot lately. “I wouldn’t have asked you to go if—”

  “I know that. Now you tell me what that man wants with you. Why he’s willin’ to shoot three women in plain sight.”

  I shook my head. “It’s complicated, but . . . he works for someone wh
o wants me to do something pretty bad. I mean, he wants me to do something that might hurt or kill a lot of people. I won’t do it. I guess that’s not the answer he wants to hear.”

  “You aren’t gonna change your mind?”

  “No. And I’m not going to let it happen, either.”

  “What are you gonna do, then?”

  “I’m working on that. I need more information first and that puzzle ball may help me get it. Then . . . we’ll see.”

  “ ‘We’ll see’? That’s a plan?”

  “Not by itself, but there are other considerations.” I thought for a moment about how much to tell her and what might help keep Phoebe safe and sane. “That man may have helped kidnap Edward Kammerling of TPM, but since Kammerling’s still missing, the situation’s delicate.”

  She goggled at me. “I knew he looked familiar! I saw him on the news: He’s that security guy! He kidnapped his boss?”

  “Helped. Probably. And he thinks I know something or have something he wants.”

  “Why?”

  “I just got back from doing some work for TPM in London.”

  “And do you know something?”

  I cocked my head over and made a disapproving face. “Phoebe,” I chided. “You don’t want to know that.”

  “Oh, all right.” She started for the door, then stopped and turned back to me, still a little pale. “You think it’s safe? To go back home?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I think it’ll be fine. So long as you stay away from my place and stay away from here, no one should bother you any further.”

  She made a dismissive grunt in the back of her throat. “Better be right about that. Or I’ll tell Poppy to poison your food on Sunday.”

  “Tomorrow Sunday?” I questioned, thinking there was no way I could risk going to the Masons’ family dinner at this point.

  “No, not this Sunday. I said next Sunday, didn’t I? Don’t you know the difference between this Sunday and next Sunday?” She snorted and tossed her head. “Next Sunday.” Then she turned and marched up the stairs. I followed her back into the entry hall.

  She paused and pointed at Quinton, who was still standing near the door. “Next Sunday. Don’t you let her forget, or I’ll find someone to put a curse on you both so bad your hair’ll fall out.”