Game of Cages

by Harry Connolly

  “Good Lord, Steve, what’s going on?” she said when she was a few paces away.

  “People are going crazy, Pippa, and the crazy is spreading.”

  I kept my mouth shut, letting Steve take the lead. She stopped next to us, breathing hard. “Explain. No, wait. First, who are you?”

  She stepped close to me. She may have been past sixty and barely five feet tall, but she looked at me with the same bullish challenge I’d gotten from cops and prison-yard toughs.

  I didn’t answer. “Ray Lilly,” Steve said, “this is Pippa Wolfowitz, mayor of Washaway.”

  “Nice shiner you got there. You’re the fellow who got himself carjacked last night.”

  “I am.”

  “Funny how all this happened just as you came to town.”

  I was about to tell her it wasn’t funny at all, but I didn’t. For all I knew, one of the bodies I’d found today was a member of her family. She was entitled to be a little testy.

  “Pippa, Ray here saved my life. Penny tried to chop me down like a tree, but he stopped her.”

  “Big Penny?” Pippa looked at the back of Steve’s car. “What’s she got against you?”

  “Not a thing as far as I know. It’s like I said: everyone is going crazy. It started at the Breakley place, then somehow got to Isabelle’s house. Isabelle brought it here, and it got to Penny and Little Mark.”

  “It? What it got to all those people?”

  Steve looked at me, his mouth working. “We don’t exactly know yet.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Steve Cardinal. I’m too old for that stuff.”

  “Sheriff get here?”

  “No, and don’t change the subject.”

  “It’s all the same subject. You need to call the state police and have them block the roads. We can’t let this spread.”

  “Block the …? The festival is tomorrow! People here need this festival. They have bills to pay!”

  “Pippa—”

  “Is this about November, Steve?”

  “For goodness sakes, would you listen to me?” His voice got high and whiny when he was angry. “This has nothing to do with the election.”

  He was losing her, and the more I thought about it, the less it seemed to matter. What could she do, anyway? Organize a posse? Warn people to stay indoors? I wasn’t even sure how useful a roadblock would be.

  What I did know was this: I was wasting time listening to these people. I backed away from them and looked up at Penny’s house. It was dark and quiet.

  I went inside and took out my ghost knife.

  I searched the house from basement to attic but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. The sapphire dog certainly wasn’t hidden there, and Penny didn’t have any spell books I could find. The only things I found were a pair of tabby cats cowering under the bed and an old police-band scanner in the kitchen.

  When I went back outside, Pippa and Steve were standing at the back of Steve’s car, talking to Penny.

  I walked toward the Neon. Pippa heard me coming and held up her index finger, signaling me to wait. I ignored her and kept walking to my car.

  Pippa frowned and followed me. “So, this is your dog?”

  “Nope.”

  “But you know about it,” she said. “What’s wrong with it? Rabies? Why is it blue?”

  “Steve and Penny both saw it. Why not ask them?”

  She stepped too close to me again. I’d have suspected she was clueless about personal space if it hadn’t been for the look on her face. “I have. Now I’m asking you.”

  Steve had felt the effects of the sapphire dog. I’d talked to him because he already knew enough to get killed. With Pippa, things were different.

  And I didn’t like or trust her.

  The ambulance siren chirped as it pulled out.

  “Come on, Pippa,” Steve said. “He saved my life and he’s trying to help.”

  She ignored him. “I don’t trust you. When the sheriff gets here, I’m going to have you locked up until the real truth comes out.”

  “Well, you should call him, then.”

  “I think I will.”

  She walked away, putting her cellphone to her ear. Steve came close. His expression betrayed his embarrassment, but he didn’t apologize.

  “Once Penny’s locked up,” he said, “we’ll talk again. Go back to the Sunset, okay? You look like you could use some sleep anyway.”

  “You’ll block those roads, right?”

  “Right,” he said. “Pippa will order it. I’ll make sure.”

  He started toward his car, but I wasn’t finished. “Steve, what happened to the Breakleys?”

  He glanced around to make sure Pippa was still on her cell. “They were home when the fire broke out,” he said. “The fire chief said he saw them in the basement window while the crews were dousing the barn. They wouldn’t come out, though. A couple of hours later, I went back to check on them.

  “There was a hole in the stone foundation of the house, like someone had tunneled through. They were all dead. They’d killed each other, starting with the little ones.”

  “Any white marks?”

  “The parents each had one, and the grandmother.”

  “But not the kids?”

  Steve shook his head, got into his car, and did a U-turn to head back to town.

  Parents killing their own children. I tried not to think about that. The sapphire dog hadn’t touched the two little girls. Maybe it hadn’t gotten the chance, or maybe they were too young. Steve had said the girls were seven and nine, and while Little Mark had a white stain, he was at least fourteen or fifteen. The baby Steve had given to the paramedics hadn’t been marked, either. Maybe the predator needed its food to be ripe.

  After a quick circuit of the rental car to make sure the predator hadn’t materialized in the backseat, I drove farther out on the road. There were no more houses or buildings out this way. I passed several signs telling me the highway turnoff was coming up, and I saw a couple of scattered businesses, a campground, and a turnoff for the church and fairgrounds. Another banner told me the Christmas festival was taking place at the fairgrounds, and a little sign below told me the church was having a benefit lunch … well, it was happening right then, as it turned out.

  I drove by, passed the school grounds, and entered the town from the other side. I hadn’t seen the turnoff for the highway. I did a U-turn and drove back. I missed it a second time. Maybe some joker had moved the signs.

  This time I pulled into the fairgrounds. The church was off to the right on a low hill; it looked like exactly the sort of church I’d expect in a little town: small with a peaked roof and a steeple. I parked below the church in the fairgrounds parking lot, a wide asphalt patch that overlooked the fairgrounds below. The grounds were slightly larger than a football field, which I thought surprisingly small until I realized that level ground must be a pretty scarce commodity around here.

  I shut the engine off and sat in the car. The sapphire dog had not come this way by accident. It was possible that Clara had chosen the route, but I didn’t believe it. Little Mark had tried to chauffeur the predator, too, and I remembered the way it felt to be near that thing. Whatever it would have wanted, I would have wanted, too. The sapphire dog was the one in control.

  But why this way? Maybe it wanted to go camping. Maybe it wanted to go to church. Maybe it wanted to get on the feeder road—which I couldn’t find—to the highway and then hit the big city, where there were hundreds of thousands of people to make crazy. But it had failed.

  Now I was looking across the fairgrounds at a cinder-block building. The door kept swinging open as people went in and out. Why go all the way to Seattle to feed when it could stop off right here?

  I climbed from the car and walked along the parking lot. I passed an old fire engine; the firefighters had probably stopped off for lunch after the Breakley fire.

  To catch this predator, I’d have to figure out what it wanted. Eat and reproduce was the
simple answer, but Catherine and her songbird story had made me realize that this wasn’t as simple as it seemed.

  Maybe it just wanted its freedom. Maybe the most important thing to it right now was not to be captured and starved in a cage again. Then, once it was far away, it would do its thing. Maybe it would call more of its kind here. Or start a cult. Maybe it would create an army and install itself as Pet Emperor.

  Unless I destroyed it first.

  The cinder-block building was painted white, and I walked inside feeling like a man with a bomb strapped to his chest. I had come eagerly to this little town to kill and possibly be killed, and none of the old ladies smiling at me as I dropped fifteen dollars of Fat Guy’s money into the food-bank kitty had any idea how dangerous I felt. There was a second door right in front of me, and behind the welcome table on the right was a long hall filled with lawn equipment.

  I accepted a tray in exchange for my donation and went into a much larger room. As I moved down the line at the kitchen windows, a heap of mac and cheese, a pair of chicken drumsticks, succotash, home-baked rolls, and broccoli-cheddar bake were put on my plate. I said thank you. No one had white marks on their faces, and no one seemed likely to go on a murder spree.

  The sapphire dog hadn’t come here. Not yet.

  As I stepped away from the serving line, I scanned the room. There were a dozen round tables set up and ten chairs at each table. Most of the seats were full. At the center table, a half dozen firemen were holding court. They were tall, well-muscled men ranging from their mid-twenties to mid-fifties. Several women—two dozen or so in all—sat at their table or chatted with them from an adjacent table. I wondered if I could sit close enough to hear what they knew about the Breakleys.

  “Oh, please join us,” a gray-haired woman said from the table nearest me, at the edge of the room. She was sitting with three people: an Asian woman who looked just a few years younger; a brown-eyed toddler wearing tiny earrings; and a woman I assumed was the toddler’s mom, plump, with dark hair and a lot of eyeliner.

  The gray-haired woman, who had the whitest skin I’d ever seen, introduced herself as Francine, then went around the table and introduced Mai, Estrella, and Graciela. I told them my name was Ray, and Mai immediately asked me if I was the one who had his car stolen. I retold that story, because it would have seemed odd to refuse. The women clucked their tongues and made a fuss over my black eye. Then conversation turned to the Christmas festival.

  Just as I was about to steer the topic toward the Breakley fire, another woman stopped by the table. The others called her Catty, which startled me. For a moment, I thought they had copied my habit of giving descriptive names to people, but no, it was just an unfortunate nickname. They traded forced pleasantries until Catty left, then Graciela admitted that she felt obligated to buy some of Catty’s jewelry at the festival because Catty had helped her out so often.

  Mai kindly told me that Graciela’s husband was serving overseas, and while the whole town was happy to help her out, only Catty hinted that she deserved some sort of repayment. Graciela listened to this without looking up from her plate.

  They chatted about the display Catty would have and how much Graciela should spend. I wasn’t a part of the conversation, but it was too late to move to another table. I was not getting any closer to finding the predator.

  I had looked into the sapphire dog’s eyes only an hour before. After I’d seen something so alien and beautiful, the everyday chatter around me made me feel utterly out of place.

  Then Hondo stopped by. He greeted everyone enthusiastically, especially little Estrella. Turning to me, he said: “I take it your lady friend decided not to leave after all.”

  Someone on the other side of the room laughed uproariously. People were having fun. “What do you mean?” I said.

  He was a little surprised by my tone. “Your friend. She paid me a pickup fee for the train station, but it only takes a half hour to drive out there. I’m still waiting for her call.”

  Francine noticed the look on my face. “Maybe she has a problem with her phone,” she said in a soothing tone.

  Now Hondo was looking concerned, too. “I don’t think so. Arliss at the station knows my cars. He says it’s not there.”

  Catherine didn’t arrive at her destination. I dropped my napkin onto my plate. “Excuse me.”

  “Hey, man,” Hondo said, “do you need help?” Everyone at the table looked ready to jump up and join the search.

  “Thanks, but no. I’m sure she’s fine. I just need to make certain for my peace of mind.”

  I pushed my way toward the door. As I passed the firefighters, I heard one of them say he had to get back to his family for Christmas, then they stood, too.

  I made my way back to my car. It was nearly three-thirty, and Catherine had left around noon. I had to find out what had happened to her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I parked across the street from the B and B. Two people on stilts came down the shoulder of the road. They were dressed in silver costumes, with white masks over the top half of their faces and delicate dragonfly wings on their backs. The costumes were decorated with snowflakes and reflective tape. The rented Acura was nowhere in sight.

  I went into the Sunset, still feeling like a bomb ready to explode.

  Pro Wrestler was sitting at the little desk in the living room entering figures into a computer. He hunched over the keyboard, carefully tapping the keys with thick fingers, and I felt a startling yearning to be like him. To hell with feeling like a bomb. I’d rather be a human being. I walked up to him and extended my hand. “Thank you for your help this morning,” I said. “I’m grateful. My name is Ray.”

  He already knew my name from my credit card, of course, but he took the hint. “I’m Nicholas. Those clothes look a little loose on you.”

  We were smiling. “Yeah, but they’re warm.”

  “Good to hear. Staying for the festival?” He looked around the little lobby. I did, too. A man in a long tan coat and a wide-brimmed tan hat sat by the fire. Nicholas’s expression was slightly disappointed. Obviously, he’d hoped for a bigger crowd. “Sure,” I said, because why not? “Sounds like fun.”

  I was about to ask if he’d heard from Catherine when Nicholas said: “I almost forgot.” He took a manila envelope from the bottom drawer of his desk and handed it to me. My name was written on it in sweeping lines of delicate brown ink. The envelope held something bulky and small.

  “Where did this come from?” I asked.

  “Nadia found it on the front porch.”

  I tore open the envelope. It was a cellphone wrapped in a sheet of notepaper. It was Catherine’s, but I turned to Nicholas and said: “Someone found it. That was nice of them.”

  “Does it say who?”

  I said the note was unsigned, thanked him, then went to my room. Once the door was locked, I sat on the corner of the bed and opened the slip of paper. It read PRESS REDIAL in the same sweeping hand.

  What the hell. I’m good at following directions. The phone rang twice. “Hello?” It was Well-Spoken Woman, and she had me on speakerphone.

  “Thanks for the phone,” I said. “I have a pal in Tokyo I’d like to call.”

  “We know your name, Mr. Lilly, and we know why you are here. If you would like your friend to live through the night, come to the Grable Motel. It’s out past the Breakley farm. Come right away.”

  “Give me an hour or so to wrap up.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  “I have to wash the blood off,” I said testily. If they really did know why I was here, they would believe that.

  “All right then.” She sounded hesitant, which was what I wanted. We hung up.

  The bed smelled like laundry soap, and the plug-in pine scent made the air close. God, how good it would have felt to lie back and close my eyes …

  There was a knock on the door. I opened it, figuring Nicholas must have another envelope for me.

  It was the man in the tan coat. He
was a little shorter than me, even with his hat still on, and his skin and hair were the color of sand. “You’re Raymond Lilly, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t like the way he was smirking at me. “Yeah. Who are you?”

  “I’m Talcott Arnold Pratt. The society sent me here to clean up this mess.”

  His coat was open, presumably to give me a glimpse at the sigils burned into the lining. A peer! An honest-to-God peer had finally come.

  I must have let my relief show. He gave me a sour, condescending smile and pushed into the room. “Shut the door,” he said. I did.

  Everything about the guy gave off contempt, but I was glad he was there. A peer in the Twenty Palace Society ought to have the power to take out the sapphire dog, not to mention the bidders.

  “The investigator who brought me here is—”

  “I know who she is. I’ve read her report and don’t need to talk to her.”

  “You don’t understand. She’s been kidnapped. I need your help to get her back.”

  “I don’t rescue people. I kill predators.”

  Of course not. I hated this guy already, but there were bigger things at stake than my feelings. “Okay. What can I do—”

  “I don’t answer questions from wooden men. Are we clear?”

  I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle. Was I going to have to throw down with this guy right here? “We’re clear.”

  “Has anything happened since the last supplemental report?”

  “I don’t know when Catherine made the last supplemental report,” I answered. I kept my tone neutral.

  “It was this morning.”

  “Then yes.”

  Pratt was getting annoyed, too. “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, something more has happened since the last report.”

  He glowered, then looked away and laughed a little, shaking his head. He loosened his coat, probably to give me another look at his sigils. “Has she told you what’s at stake here?”

  “Wait … let me guess. End of everything that matters to us, right?”

  “That’s right. Creatures from the Empty Spaces are terribly inefficient predators. They invade a habitat and hunt it to destruction. They don’t have any balance about them.”