I heard Red say something, and then there was a sharp sound of something being hit, and a grunt of pain.
“Red! Red,” I screamed into the phone. “What’s happening?
“What are you doing to him, you bastard?” I moved two feet to the right, and suddenly the line was clear. There’s a difference between magical force fields and cell phone range, but not a big one.
“I just remind him who is in charge, cherie. He’s pretty tough, though—I been hitting him a lot, and he don’t complain much.”
“Why are you doing this?” Stupid question, but it just popped out. When you’re really in crisis, that’s when the clichés come out. Nuance, originality, subtlety—those are luxury items. As if to prove my own point, I added, “Please, can’t you just leave him alone?”
Bruin laughed. “But Red, he would not leave me alone, would he? Non, he put wards and shit all over the damn place. Also, I notice you don’t ask about your other friend, eh? You don’t mind what I do to her.”
Lilliana. Oh, God, how could I have forgotten? “Is she all right?”
“She is much better than all right; she is delicious. Now, why don’t you come on home and you can see them both?”
In the background, I heard Red say something. Bruin laughed. In the distance, the sky flashed light, then went dark, and a few moments later, there was a thunderous boom. I held my phone a little farther from my ear, thinking that with all the supernatural activity going on, it would be ironic to be electrocuted during a lightning storm.
Suddenly, I heard Red’s voice; somehow, he’d managed to wrench the phone from Bruin. “Don’t come home. Lilliana’s fine—he won’t kill her, he’s half in love with her. And as for me … I don’t need your help.”
Tears stung my eyes, and I was suffused with a feeling of such love and admiration that I could barely speak. “I understand,” I said, choking a little. I understood that he was in trouble, and being brave, and that I needed to gather help and go and rescue him. And Lilliana, of course.
“No, Abra, you don’t understand.”
I looked at the phone for a moment in confusion. “Red?”
“I don’t want you around here. Go fucking help Malachy if you want.”
My stomach clenched. He knew. Somehow, he knew. “Red, I can explain …”
“Yeah. I know. But guess what? I’d rather have Bruin here beat me up a few more times. At least with him, I can see it coming.”
And with that, the line went dead.
“Well,” I told the dogs, who were lying on their stomachs, looking nervous, “I finally reached Red.”
As if on cue, the skies opened up and the rain lashed down. I put my hand on the doorknob, and turned.
It was locked. “Hello!” I pounded on the door, and then gasped as I saw the shape of the dark clouds. “It’s Abra. You have to let me in, I think there’s a tornado forming!”
“Sorry,” said a voice from the other side, “but we’re closing.” I thought it might be Penny.
“Please,” I begged. “I just need to get out of the storm.”
“It’s dark,” said Dana. “We always close before dark.”
“But it’s only dark because of the storm!” I looked over my shoulder and had to squint, because the leaves and dust were blowing into my eyes. “Enid, please! Let me in!” I tried to think of something to bargain with, and came up empty. “I swear I’ll be in your debt forever, just please, please open the door.” The minute the words were out I knew I’d probably made a mistake, but then I heard the sound of locks turning.
“Here.” The door opened a crack and something was thrust into my hands: a cheap red rain slicker and a cloth bag containing something heavy that clinked. “Now get you gone, girl.”
I tried to jam my foot in the door before it closed completely, but I was a half moment too late, and then I heard the sound of locks being fastened. For a moment, I was so mad that I swung my arm back, intending to smash whatever was inside the cloth bag against the door. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it; whatever else the sisters were, they were powerful beings, and I didn’t want to squander their gifts.
I slipped the red rain slicker over my head, and then, glancing at the rapidly approaching funnel cloud, I made a split-second decision; Stagecoach Tavern or Moondoggie’s. Stagecoach was closer, but I didn’t have a good feeling about being trapped with a bunch of suicide ghosts.
With my red hood obscuring my vision and the cloth bag slung over my back, I ran toward the edge of town. My wolfish pack of former lapdogs ran alongside. I had nearly reached Moondoggie’s parking lot when I tripped over something lying on the sidewalk and fell on my face.
At first, I thought it was a tree. My second impression was that I’d stumbled over a corpse. But it was neither. I’d fallen onto the sheriff of Northside, except that he seemed as lifeless as the clay sloughing off his face and body in the driving rain.
THIRTY-THREE
Logically, I knew the sheriff had to be dead, but I tried hauling him toward safety anyway. Without much success. As anyone who has ever taken a pottery class can attest, there is nothing heavier than wet clay, and that was what the good sheriff looked like: a statue made of wet clay. But the minute I’d seen him, I’d touched the moonstone locked around my neck and known I had to try to rescue him. Even if he did look like he belonged in the Pottery Barn.
“Emmet!” Nothing. I tried slapping his face, yelling in his ear. Okay, so he couldn’t be roused. I called the dogs, and pulled at the sleeves of Emmet’s jacket to see if they would get the hint.
After a moment, Shep grabbed the corner of the sheriff’s sleeve and started tugging at it. Working together, we dragged him about a foot before collapsing.
This wasn’t going to work. I estimated we had about two minutes before the storm reached us. Pulling his hat back from his forehead, I saw that the last letter of his tattoo had been smudged. Or maybe it was the first letter; I’d read that Hebrew ran right to left. Since the rain couldn’t have reached the tattoo under Emmet’s hat, it seemed logical that the smudging had come at some earlier time—maybe even before the good sheriff had turned into a big heap of dirt.
I needed something sharp—the hypodermic needle. Using the largest size I had, I carved out the letter as best I could, following the faint lines and trying to remember how it had looked the last time I’d seen it.
“If that doesn’t work, I’m going to have to leave you,” I said, squinting up at the sky. The rain was falling so hard that I could barely see the shape of Moondoggie’s twenty feet in front of me.
“It worked,” said Emmet. He dragged a hand over his face, and loose clay came off, but what was underneath sure looked like human skin. “I owe you one.”
“Hey, I owed you. Now we’re even.” I helped the sheriff to his feet, and then we took off in a lumbering, staggering jog, the dogs racing at our heels, giving agitated yips and casting nervous glances behind them as the storm drew closer.
I was heading for the front of the restaurant, but Emmet tugged me toward the side of the building.
“Not the front door,” he yelled, “we need the storm cellar.”
I’d never really paid attention to the sloping white cellar doors before, and if it hadn’t been for Emmet, I never would have gotten them open. Even for him, it was a bit of a struggle.
“Go on,” he said, and the wind half blew me inside, the dogs’ claws scrabbling on the cement stairs as we went down into the dark. Emmet was in a moment later, his massive arms trembling as he pulled the doors closed behind him.
“Jesus Christ, that was close,” I said, pulling the slicker’s hood off my head. I just sat there for a moment with my back to the door as I drew in air with great, gasping pants. The floor underneath was dirt, and I could smell cool, moist stone. I didn’t know how big the room was, but I could feel a draft against my cheek. Heaven.
“You can’t stay here,” said an unfriendly voice, and then my eyes adjusted enough to the gloom for
me to make out faces instead of just rough shapes.
Now that I could see, the cellar had roughly the same dimensions as the dining room upstairs. There was an old couch down there, and a few wooden chairs from upstairs, along with a broken table, some ashtrays, and a fair number of empty wine bottles.
I recognized a few of the waitstaff seated around the cellar, including Kayla, who had a cut on the side of her face and dirt stains on her white shirt. A few of the other waiters looked equally rough, and I figured that, like me, they’d had one hell of a long day.
“I said you can’t stay,” repeated the owner of the unfriendly voice, whom I now recognized as Marlene Krauss. “And neither can the dogs.” Baby, Hudson, Bon Bon, and Shep had arranged themselves around me in a black, white, and brindle pattern of panting dogs. The rest of the cellar’s inhabitants were regarding the wolfish canids with varying degrees of alarm.
“Marlene,” I said, “you’re talking about Baby there.” I pointed to the smaller of the black dogs. “Don’t you recognize her?”
Marlene narrowed her eyes, as if trying to see the outline of her little Peke in Baby’s large adolescent form. “That’s not my Baby, not anymore. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a dangerous and diseased animal. And you’re a werewolf—maybe you’ve got it, too.”
There were excited murmurs and whispers as the others took this in. In Northside, nobody ever mentioned people’s supernatural status—it was as gauche as walking up to a movie star and announcing that you knew they were famous. You pretended they were normal, and they pretended they were normal. The unwritten rule of Northside.
“Please,” I said, “it’s not even a full moon.”
“That didn’t stop you from nearly biting my head off a few weeks ago!”
“Marlene,” said Emmet in his steady, John Wayne drawl, “I think you’re letting your emotions get the better of you.”
Marlene’s leathery face creased with displeasure. “Sheriff, you’re okay, of course. But there isn’t enough food and air down here for everybody.”
It was hard to tell, but I thought Emmet might be amused. “How about I only breathe once every other minute,” he said, “just to make up for Abra.”
“Very funny, but who knows how long this storm is going to last? And look at the town. By the time we get out of here, it’s probably going to be a jungle.” Marlene shook her shopping network turquoise bracelet watch farther down on her wrist and assumed the manner of a bank officer refusing a loan. “I’m afraid we need to husband our resources.”
“She’s right,” said one of the waitstaff.
“No, she’s not,” said Kayla, as the wind rattled the cellar doors. “She can’t go out in that.”
The doors rattled again, this time harder.
“She has to go now,” shrieked Marlene, pointing her dragon lady nail in my direction. “Before she turns on us!”
With a whimper, Baby scurried over to my side and cowered between my legs.
There were murmurs of agreement and others of dissent, and I instinctively stepped a little closer to the sheriff.
The doors banged this time, and someone gave a startled shriek. “Oh, my God, we’re all going to die!” It was one of the waiters: Kayla slapped him.
“Get a hold of yourself,” she said, and then put an arm around his shoulders as he started to cry.
“Wait a minute,” I said, “that’s not the storm—that’s somebody trying to get inside.” I could hear it now, the sound of someone’s fist pounding against the door.
“Don’t let them in,” bellowed Marlene, and Kayla told her to shut up and sit down. I was liking the waitress better all the time.
“All right, listen up, everyone,” I said. “I’m going to open these doors, because we are not just going to let someone die out there.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Marlene, of course.
“This isn’t just about survival,” I said. “This is about surviving with our humanity intact.” Granted, I was probably not the best person to lecture anybody about intact humanity, since mine had been showing some definite wear and tear of late. But for some reason, nobody called me on it. “Okay,” I said, trying to make eye contact with as many people as possible, “everybody grab hold of something and brace yourselves.” I turned to Emmet. “Sheriff, can you help me with the door?”
Emmet gave me a little tip of his hat, which I thought might have been ironic. Then he grabbed the door handles, and I grabbed on to him, and we pulled hard.
Just like in the cartoons, the door opened with no resistance whatsoever, sending us both flying backward.
And as I looked up into the clear, warm summer night outside, Magda stepped out of the shadows. She was dressed in black commando gear, with a knife strapped to her thigh, a gun at her waist, and a rifle slung over her shoulder.
“The storm is over,” she said in a low, authoritative voice. “But that was just a burst of fireworks intended to shock and awe us. Now the enemy is going to send in the ground troops.” She surveyed us, as if sizing up our willingness to fight. “Some of you may have heard about bear attacks. Some of you may have heard about a new kind of rabies. The truth is that our town is being invaded by creatures that don’t belong in this dimension.” Magda’s Romanian accent made this speech sound uncannily like one of my mother’s less successful movies. In the dramatic pause following this last remark, Marlene and Kayla began to chatter until Magda silenced them with one upraised hand. “There is no time for debate. The threat is real. And you may think you’re safe down here, but once you step out of this cellar, you’re just collateral damage.”
Of course, once Magda had said it, it seemed perfectly clear to me. The Manitou were trying to take over our reality, and the storm had just been their first salvo. I stood up. “Magda’s right,” I said, about to launch into a little spiel about banding together against a common enemy. Unfortunately, no one paid the least attention to me: instead, they all streamed up the ladder, peppering Magda with questions and suggestions. The sheriff tried to wait for me, but Magda beckoned him over and told him she needed his advice about the layout of the town.
I should have been glad that we were all teaming up. But as I climbed up out of the cellar, I couldn’t help thinking that my delusion that I was going to be a kick-ass heroine had just been cured. I was being relegated to bit player, and once again, Magda was taking the lead.
THIRTY-FOUR
“So what are you supposed to be,” Magda said as we trudged along Route eighty-two. “Little Red Riding Hood?”
“Very funny.” I’d taken the slicker off and shoved it into the cloth bag, which was slung over my back. I had to stay pretty close to Magda or one of her group, since they had all the flashlights, and without them, the sidewalks were so dark I could hardly see my feet.
I tripped and Grigore caught me by the elbow. “I thought you looked cute in it,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Please keep up and try to be careful,” said Magda, sounding exasperated. I wasn’t living up to her vision of werewolves as a kind of superior race. She had a lot of rather unpleasant theories about how humans had weakened the species by introducing antibiotics and messing with the survival of the fittest. Well, I might be a weaker specimen, but I was the one who had come up with the idea of where to find the manitous.
Magda had wanted to climb up Old Scolder Mountain, where most of the manitou sightings had originated. I’d said that the cavern that ran underneath the cornfields to the east of town was a more logical choice. According to Red, there was a nexus of power formed by the mountain, the cavern, and the woods just behind our cabin. If I were a big spirit bear, and I was leading an attack on a town, I know where I’d put my headquarters. So we voted: Magda, Vasile, and the sycophantic Hunter had raised their hands for the mountain, while Emmet, Kayla, and I had argued for the cavern. Grigore, to Magda’s annoyance, had broken the tie by siding with us.
“How far away are we now?” asked Grigore, who looke
d more like a graduate student than a warrior, despite the rifle at his waist.
“Not far. I think. I’m a little directionally challenged. And I was only there once, last summer.” The truth was, I wasn’t sure exactly how to find the cavern on my own; we were all following Emmet.
“By the way, I like the necklace.” He gave me a raffish smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “Moonstone, yes? A powerful tool. But doesn’t the silver pain you?”
“Not so much now.” I touched the pendant at my neck, realizing that the silver had stopped irritating my skin, but I didn’t know if that meant I had gotten used to it, or if it had just burned away my nerve endings.
“And how is your boyfriend?” asked Grigore. “The one who collapsed in the cafe.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I began, and then I heard heavy footsteps coming up beside us.
“Grigore,” said Vasile, the older brother, chidingly. I wouldn’t have needed to ask if this one was related to Magda; he looked like the masculine version of his sister, down to the streak of white in his black hair. There was a thin scar bisecting his left cheek that lifted the corner of his mouth, making him appear as though he were half sneering. “Flirtation is not appropriate. While we fight the common enemy, we are allies. Afterward, we will have to sort out our own differences.” He gave me a look that suggested that he would be the one doing the sorting.
Grigore protested, saying something in Romanian that probably translated as, You’re not the boss of me. Vasile responded in the same language, and with a curt nod, Grigore turned to Emmet.
“Will you come with me to scout ahead?”
Emmet looked at me. I guess he figured he was my only reliable ally. “That okay with you, Abra?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Go as silently as you can,” instructed Magda, as the two men headed off into the tree line that separated the road from the cornfield. Earlier today, the corn had been nothing but snow-covered stubble; now it stood nearly shoulder high. “And the rest of you, remember, when I give the signal, we must stop talking entirely.” I wasn’t sure how, but she’d wound up taking charge of our combined bands, even though the sheriff seemed a more logical choice.
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