The Edge of Ruin

by Melinda Snodgrass

  The darkened glass in the large oval mirror with its floral-patterned gilt frame swirled with purples and black ribbons of color. She waited for her father to speak, but the mirror returned to its nonreflective state. Suddenly viscous drops of black and purple oozed from the crystal pendants on the chandelier. Hundreds of drops pattered like a blighted rain onto the polished marble floor. Madoc’s body appeared like pulled taffy. The human form stabilized, and he gave his collar a twitch.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while,” Rhiana said, trying to keep her voice level and the tone casual.

  He offered no excuse or explanation, just said abruptly, “How are you coming on securing the paladin and the sword?”

  “It’s coming,” she replied.

  “Well, it just got easier because Oort is in Washington.”

  Rhiana sat up. “Any idea why he’s come?”

  “We presume it’s to sound the alarm to your kind. We’ll be monitoring who he meets, and try to limit his contacts, but you should act quickly.”

  His exit was more conventional than his entrance. He walked out the door of her Georgetown mansion. Rhiana wondered if he’d noticed that he’d lumped her in with humanity. Two months ago it had all been how special she was, how superior she was to humans, how much they valued and treasured her.

  Your kind.

  TWENTY-SIX

  There hadn’t even been time to unpack before Richard had shooed her out of the homogenized condo. The condo had good-quality leather furniture, a flat-screen TV hung on one white wall, and pale gray carpet underfoot. The only unusual feature was a baby grand piano in the living room. The big armchair near the gas fireplace was beckoning, and she pointed out that there were only two hours left in the business day. He had overruled her, and in a particularly snotty way.

  “I’ve got two people in jail. I know it’s a huge effort, but maybe you could try.”

  “And what are you planning to do? Sit around and play the piano?” she’d shot back in her nastiest tone of voice.

  She didn’t know why finding that damn piano in the rental had irritated her so much. Maybe it was the way Dagmar petted and accommodated her brother. But Richard wouldn’t fight. He just turned and walked away from her, back toward his bedroom. Which was another sore point for Pamela. Richard had a bedroom to himself while everyone else had to share. Even with five bathrooms Pamela foresaw many arguments with four women sharing the space.

  Which brought her around to Angela. The little coroner had followed Richard into his bedroom, but emerged a few minutes later looking upset. Pamela would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

  Without Dagmar’s gift for artless patter, and Sam and Syd’s affectionate squabbling, it would have been a tense and silent ride to the various government buildings. They had dropped Angela off at the FDA, where she had an old friend from medical school. Dagmar had an acquaintance who was now an Under Secretary at Treasury. She thought she’d just try dropping in to see what she might learn. Since it was so late in the day Pamela and her father began at State, where they could at least start the paperwork for Tanaka’s passport. Sam and Syd went on to FBI headquarters to beg forgiveness for Syd’s sudden departure and do a little reconnaissance.

  Everyone, except Sam and Syd, had rendezvoused back at the condo for dinner, which had consisted of a stack of pizzas. Grenier had managed to eat one of the extralarge pies by himself. Then, after bestowing a garlic-and-pepperoni-laden belch on them, he had demanded money from Richard. When Richard balked, Grenier pointed out that the town ran on rumors. Rumors abound in bars, and alcohol always helped to prime the pump. Like the two agents, he was also still absent.

  Pamela was snuggled under the down comforter reading a travel book about Tuscany and still tasting the too greasy pizza. There was a light tap on the door. Pamela recognized the pattern. It was Richard.

  Holding her place with a forefinger, she closed the book and said, “What?” She didn’t make it sound welcoming.

  The door opened, and Richard walked in. He was dressed casually in blue jeans, boots, and a ski parka.

  “You’re going out?”

  He nodded. “I’d like you to come with me. It’s time you see what we’re up against, and accept that it’s real.”

  The feather comforter felt suddenly even cozier. She held up Under the Tuscan Sun. “I’m reading. And I’d have to get dressed again,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “This is really important?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

  “No.”

  Richard when he was laconic irritated her more than all the other times, but she got up and dressed.

  They were escorted by Rudi and Estevan. As they stepped out into the hall, their only neighbor on the floor was also leaving. His dog, a tiny white ball of fluff, began yapping shrilly. Her owner was a tubby little man who wore three-thousand-dollar suits and pink-tinted glasses. He gave them a look, sniffed, thrust his button nose in the air, and tried to march past them, but Rudi cut him off and chivvied him up against the wall. The man’s complaints were as shrill as his dog’s.

  “Hey, you should have sold out, man,” Estevan said with a grin.

  And Pamela remembered Dagmar saying something on the plane about how she had tried to buy his tiny condo for Joseph, Estevan, and Rudi to share, but the owner had refused.

  Bet he’s sorry now. We really are a menagerie. I wouldn’t want to live next door to us.

  The doorman held the door, and Joseph held open the back door of the limo. Rudi slid behind the wheel, and they pulled out into Washington’s insane traffic. Even at this hour of the night the city pulsed with energy. They seemed to just be driving aimlessly, moving into suburban hell. Up ahead was a multiscreen movieplex with its surrounding growth of chain restaurants like mushrooms sprouting at the foot of a dying tree. They were soon tangled in three lanes of heavy traffic trying to leave the theater, and finally they were stopped among the cars.

  Rudi suddenly ordered tersely, “Go!”

  Richard grabbed her wrist, and they ducked out the back door of the limo. White streamers of exhaust filled the air as if this were a herd of steel buffalo exhaling all around them. Mingled with the reek of exhaust was the hint of brine from the ocean, and Pamela realized how much she’d missed the smell of the sea during the weeks in bone-dry New Mexico.

  Richard pulled her into the backseat of a beat-up Neon. It was being driven by Sam. The light changed, and the herd rolled forward with a rumble and a growl. Brake lights flashed and flared as drivers jockeyed for position. A small opening appeared in the lane to their left, and Sam sent them rocketing through it.

  The young agent drove with a mad flair. Pamela had a death grip on the panic strap above the door, and a particularly fast turn sent her careening into Richard. He hissed in pain as she fell against his injured thigh.

  “Could you slow down!?” Pamela snapped at Sam. She got the expected response.

  “Nope.”

  Just because it was expected didn’t make it any less irritating.

  They ended up somewhere in Baltimore, in a neighborhood that wasn’t quite residential or quite urban. There were a number of three- and four-story buildings and lots of shotgun houses in between. Dumpsters, overflowing with hunks of drywall, lumber, and old appliances, lined the street. Renovation and gentrification were under way.

  They pulled into the driveway of a two-story house. Sam flashed the headlights, and the garage door opened. She rolled in. The door closed, plunging them into total darkness. For an instant Pamela had a moment of irrational, throat-closing panic. Then the overhead fluorescent lights came on.

  A tall, powerfully built African American man stood holding open the door into the house. He waved and beckoned. Sam hopped out and opened the back passenger door. On Richard’s side. The young agent offered her hand to help him out. Forgotten, Pamela opened her door and climbed out.

  Despit
e the cold, Sam wore only a bolero-style leather jacket over a silk shirt, a short jean skirt, and sharp-toed, high-heeled boots. She bounced up to the man in the doorway, and he enfolded her in a bear hug.

  The big agent released Sam, then turned to the Oort siblings.

  Richard inclined his head. “Agent Franklin.”

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Oort,” the black man said and offered his hand. Her brother’s slender hand disappeared into the man’s broad one.

  “Thank you for offering us this help,” Richard replied.

  “Oh, there’s a price,” Franklin said. He glanced at Pamela. She hated that measuring, suspicious look that every law enforcement person she’d ever met seemed to cultivate. “You brought an extra.”

  “My sister Pamela,” Richard said.

  “Bob Franklin.” They shook hands. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” the agent said.

  “And you,” Pamela responded. Now that he faced her Pamela could see the heavy bags hanging beneath his eyes. They were so pronounced it looked like he’d been punched.

  “Please come in,” Franklin said.

  Despite the late hour there were a lot of people in the house, among them Syd. Many had that hyperaware quality that marks cops of every stripe, but there were a number of spouses and children. Franklin’s wife was a good deal younger than the agent, and their three children ranged in age from two to seven. Pamela guessed it was a second marriage and a second family.

  The air was rich with Cajun spices and the yeasty scent of beer. Logs crackled in the fireplace, and a few older kids were shaking an old-fashioned popcorn popper over the flames. The opening kernels sounded like small explosions, and the scent set Pamela’s mouth to watering.

  On the overstuffed sofa four little kids slept among the flowered throw pillows. The little round faces were red from the heat of the fire and the effort of sleeping so deeply. Nestled among the floral pattern they looked like elfin children asleep in a garden.

  It would have seemed like a party but for the grim expressions that formed lines around the agents’ mouths and lurked like shadows in the backs of their eyes. Bowls of gumbo were shoved into their hands. Pamela accepted a beer. Richard declined.

  Pamela drifted through the crowd, picking up fragments of conversation. Much of it centered around the power vacuum that was forming at the heart of the federal government. Rumor had it that the White House was divided, with some staff urging the President to address the nation, set up an international conference, take action. Another faction argued that what was occurring could not be handled by ordinary human agencies, and so a stream of religious leaders were parading through the West Wing. There was a nod at inclusiveness, but most were of the president’s traditional Protestant denomination.

  Wilder rumors circulated around the Pentagon that the military was planning to take control. No, the President would be imposing martial law, it wouldn’t be a military coup. Congress dithered, passed resolutions, debated, tried to pass additional spending bills, hire more police, reinstate the draft, demand the president work with our European and Asian allies. In short nobody seemed to have a clue about what to do.

  And Pamela realized that all these people had gathered because they thought maybe her brother would know. She circled back to Richard, and found him in a knot of agents.

  “… talk to local law enforcement,” Richard was saying.

  “And tell them what?” a woman agent asked, and her tone was sharp and brittle.

  Richard’s tone stayed patient and even. “To keep visible. Maintain a presence in their towns and cities. If we’re AWOL it will only add to the sense of fear and chaos. We’re the guardians, the bulwark against chaos,” Richard concluded, and amazingly it didn’t sound pompous or overly dramatic because he believed it so totally.

  Maybe he didn’t become a policeman just to outrage the family, Pamela thought. But then why did he?

  “We got a report out of South Dakota that angels have been appearing in some little town, and the people have been giving them their children,” said a burly young man wearing a SWAT gimme cap. “By the time a team arrived from Pierre they found the town deserted. Everybody was gone, two thousand people, just gone. Poof. Their sheriff and deputy didn’t help them.”

  “Crime is up everywhere,” another man offered. “Way past what any of us can cope with. The President needs to mobilize the National Guard.”

  “And I ask again,” the woman broke in. “To do what?”

  “Yeah,” came a mutter from the back of the crowd. “The National Guard worked so well down in Virginia.”

  Richard dragged a spoon back and forth through his untouched gumbo. He had lost that certainty and fervent zeal, and had what Pamela thought of as the stricken fawn expression.

  “I’m going to be meeting with senators and representatives,” Richard said. “We’ll find someone who’ll … who’ll …”

  “What?” a voice demanded.

  “Listen,” Richard said.

  “I don’t want ’em to listen. I want ’em to do something.”

  “Okay, folks, let’s go into the study,” Franklin called.

  All the hard-faced cop types shuffled into a room at the back of the house. Pamela was carried along with them. French doors offered a view across a small backyard crowded with a swing and slide set, a sandbox, and a big gas grill. There were a surprising number of books on the shelves, and the desk was dominated by a twenty-three-inch computer monitor. Cables snaked from the computer to the sixty-inch flat-screen television hanging on the far wall. A skinny man whose hair was rumpled like a pale brown haystack slouched in the desk chair, keyboard on his lap, fingers flying across the keys. He appeared to be playing an online game.

  Franklin laid a hand on the bony shoulder of the man at the computer. “Ready, Danny?”

  “Yeah, like, ages ago.”

  “You’re sure they won’t suspect?” Syd asked.

  Danny made a face and pressed the palm of his hand against his chest. “Am I not the best? Seriously, I built in a trapdoor, and set up an automatic routine to imitate a hacker. They’ll be chasing my little myth while we take a look at the satellite feed.”

  “Okay,” Syd said vaguely. “I guess that makes sense.”

  There was the quick clatter of keys, and an image stabilized on the computer screen and the television. From her vantage Pamela couldn’t see the monitor. Unfortunately she had a great view of the television. The largest topographical features—hills, a cliff face—were veiled in mist … or smoke, it was hard to determine which. Deep within the shifting tendrils of gray was the outline of a massive structure. But the form seemed subtly off, making it very hard for her brain to make sense of the image. Figures that defied description moved through the coiling mist.

  Pamela had seen her share of special effects movie monsters, computer magic designed to terrify and disgust. Compared to what she now saw slithering through the shrouding mist, the special effects houses might have been working with hand puppets and paper cutouts. What she was seeing was wrong and dangerous, and she responded to it at the most basic of levels. Fear shivered deep in her gut; her breath came shallow and quick. She wanted to run, to hide, to cry, to scream.

  “We’re down to orbital cameras now.” Franklin’s voice carried through the room. “People come apart—mentally—in there. Then we tried sending in predator drones, but they all crashed.”

  “Technology doesn’t work where there’s an Old One, or that much magic,” Richard said.

  Around her there was a soundless reaction like the shifting of muscles on some large animal from the thirty people crammed into the room.

  The image clicked away from the cliff face, and there was a flare of golden light. “There!” Richard said. He pointed. “Can you magnify that?”

  More clicks, each one making the image larger, brought into focus a curving wave of glass resting in the center of a small meadow. Inside the glass there was a pale glitter like gold and diamond dust. On
one side of the glass structure loomed a great gate. On the other was a black opening that hung in the air. The image on the television flickered and rolled as Danny sent commands to the satellite cameras and tried to get an angle into the opening.

  “That’s the best I can do,” the computer tech said.

  There was another shift from the crowd, and this time a murmur of distressed comments, for what they seemed to be seeing was a distant sun against a backdrop of stars.

  “What the hell is that?” someone called.

  “A galaxy far, far away,” someone else replied. There was a smattering of hollow laughter.

  Richard said something to Franklin and Syd. A man in the crowd called, “Speak up, we can’t hear you.”

  Pamela saw the blush as Richard turned his back on the television and faced the crowd.

  “I said, they don’t seem to have altered the terrain around Kenntnis. And he doesn’t seem to be guarded.”

  “Does the acres and acres of crazy-making crap count?” Sam asked blandly, and Richard’s blush got even deeper.

  Franklin looked over at him. “Syd says if we free this Kenntnis guy these gate things will vanish. Is that true?”

  “I don’t think it’s quite that easy,” Richard said. “But their effects will certainly be diminished. And we’ll have the help of somebody who knows how to close the gates, and fight the Old Ones. He’s done it before. A long time ago.”

  “But nobody can go in there and keep functioning,” another person called from near the back of the room.

  “Speaking of, could we turn that off?” a woman standing next to Pamela said as she pointed at the television. “It’s making me …”

  She couldn’t seem to bring herself to say it.

  Apparently female machismo wasn’t limited to Sam in this crowd. Pamela said it for her. “Afraid. It makes us afraid.”