“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she snarled. Far off in the house she heard the trill of the phone ringing, and then the voice of Squire as he answered.
Doyle smiled. “The wheels turn slowly at times, but they do turn.” The mage made a spinning motion with his hand even as Squire entered the room holding a piece of notepaper in one hand and a bottle of Samuel Adams in the other.
“Hey, boss, you just got a call from a Julia Ferrick,” he read from the paper. “Said she needs to talk to you right away about her son.” Squire looked up from the message. “The broad’s on a tear. If you ask me I don’t think she’s wound too tight.”
Doyle’s eyes snapped open, a crackle of magick dancing on his lashes. “The Ferrick boy,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else in the room. “How interesting.”
A nasty chill spread through her body and Eve looked to see that Graves had drifted closer.
“You were expecting that call,” the ghost said. It was not a question. “Will this woman and her boy play some part in the scheme of things?”
Doyle gazed toward the shuttered windows. “We all play a part in the greater scheme of things, Leonard. Each and every one.”
The doorbell rang, echoing through the townhouse, and they all looked at one another and then to Doyle.
“Somebody call for pizza?” Squire asked, taking a swig from his bottle of beer. “God, I could use a pizza. Or two.”
“I’m sorry, my friend. I don’t think that’s the pizza man,” Doyle replied.
“Let me guess,” Eve said. “At the door now? Another player.”
Doyle stood, checking the crease in his pant’s legs. “Precisely. And the part you will play at this moment, Eve, is to answer the door. Our latest player will be in need of some refreshment before the two of you go to see Mrs. Ferrick and her son.” He pulled down his rolled shirt sleeves, buttoning the cuffs.
“Where do you think I’m going, exactly?” Eve asked. “Nightfall’s still a ways off.”
There was nothing humorous about the wan smile that appeared on Doyle’s face just then. “Check the windows, my dear. The darkness comes early today.”
Frowning, Eve glanced at the tall windows at the front of the room. They had heavy drapes that Doyle often pulled to shield the room from sunlight for her protection. She had presumed those drapes were responsible for the gloom in the room but now Eve saw that they were tied back properly and that while the world outside those windows was not pitch black, it was a dusky gray. She went to the window and glanced up at the sky. A cloud of blue-black mist, like the smoke from a chemical fire, hung above the city of Boston, churning and widening. There were streaks of red in that cloud as well, and even as she glanced at them, they seemed to spread.
“That damned New England weather,” Eve muttered darkly. “Guess I’m going out after all.”
Again the doorbell buzzed and then there came the distant echo of a fist pounding upon the front door.
“I’ll throw together some sandwiches,” Squire said, “maybe make some of those Ore Ida fries.” He slipped into a patch of shadow thrown by a massive oak bookcase. No matter how many times Eve saw the goblin do that, it never ceased to amaze her.
“And my part, Arthur?” asked Graves. “You have some assignment for me as well?”
Doyle wore an expression of regret. “I do. You must go deeper into the land of the dead, Leonard. Whatever is frightening the wandering spirits, we need to know what it is. It may be our best clue as to what threat we face.”
Eve wasn’t sure, but she could’ve sworn she saw the ghost swallow hard. It would be difficult for him. From what she understood of the spirit realms, the deeper one traveled, the harder it was to return to the realms of the living. Leonard Graves still had some serious business to finish here and didn’t want to put that in jeopardy.
Then Doyle left the room and Eve followed after him. They went together into the foyer. Doyle started up the stairs and Eve paused a moment to watch him.
“What about you?” she asked on her way to the door. The bell rang again and she scowled. “Going to finish up that nap?”
The magician paused on the stairs. There were so many rooms up there. One of them belonged to Eve, though she rarely stayed here. Doyle glanced at her, and the sadness in his eyes was so dreadful she was forced to look away.
“Sometimes fate requires us to do the most painful things,” he said, then continued upward, walking as though he bore some terrible, invisible burden.
Then it dawned on her what he was doing—where he was going—and for the briefest of moments, Eve actually felt sorry for the old man.
Their visitor gave up on the bell and began pounding on the door. Eve scowled as she marched toward it, picking at the bloodstains on her sweater, wondering if there was anything worth wearing in the closet in her room. “Keep your fucking shirt on.”
Throwing back the bolt and twisting the lock, she pulled the door open. Clay stood just outside in the gloom. Eve raised an eyebrow.
“Well, well. Look what the apocalypse dragged in.”
At the end of the hall on the second floor was a locked door that no one had passed through in many years. Doyle found it sadly amusing that after all he had been through in his extended years, he could still remember the exact moment when he had locked it, sealing away a part of his life that he hadn’t been sure he could live without.
It was the hardest thing he had ever done, almost as difficult as what he was about to attempt now.
Doyle unbuttoned the top button of his white shirt, reaching for the chain that he always wore around his neck. At the end of the chain hung an old fashioned skeleton key, familiar to all houses of this age. There was a tremble to his hand as he brought the key to the lock. A spark of supernatural release was followed by just the slightest whiff of a scent foreign to this house, the smell of some primeval forest after a drenching rain. He savored the heady smell, taken aback by the powerful emotions it evoked. He turned the key, gripped the glass, diamond-cut knob and turned it.
The door opened with a creak, the light from the hallway eagerly spilling onto an ascending, wooden staircase, illuminating another door at the top of stairs. The door was of solid iron, made for him in 1932 by a smith by the name of Hendrickson who hailed from Eerie, Pennsylvania. Doyle had helped the metal worker make contact with his long dead mother in lieu of payment for his metal work.
He never imagined that he would look upon that door again. It had been put there as a precaution, to keep things where they belonged. Now, Doyle began to climb, gripping the wooden banister as he ascended. It seemed to take an eternity. On the final step he stopped. There were no keyholes, no sliding bolts or crystal knobs to turn, just cold and unyielding iron. He placed the flat of his hand upon the metal, sensing contact with the magicks he had placed within it so long ago. His palm began to tingle as dormant spell came sluggishly awake.
“Open,” he whispered.
The door shimmered, a tremor passing through it. A tiny hole appeared and began to grow, the metal now malleable, as if returning to its molten state. The opening expanded, the substance of the door peeling back upon itself as it created an entryway large enough for him to pass through.
A warm, humid breeze flowed out from the expanding portal, and Doyle could hear the gentle patter of a falling rain upon the vast forest beyond the confines of the hallway and door.
It was just as wild and frighteningly beautiful as he remembered it, the lush vegetation every conceivable shade of green that could possibly be imagined. The place was older than recorded time, stirring musings about origins of the mythical Garden of Eden, but he had not returned here for intellectual stimulation. Only reasons most dire would have forced him into this place again.
The sorcerer stepped through the doorway. He let the place wash over him, turning his face up to the thick canopy of trees that blotted out the sky. The rain dropped from the leaves upon his upturned face. He opened his mouth, tasting t
he purity of the world he had entered.
The moss writhed beneath his feet, and he glanced down to see that blades of grass bent to touch the soft leather of his shoes. What a wondrous place, he thought, so very sorry that he had ever left it.
The patch of ground before him began to roil, turning over upon itself, and in the blink of an eye, two pale-skinned creatures erupted from the earth and crouched before him. Adorned in armor made from the bark of trees and flat polished stone, the warriors thrust their spears toward him.
Doyle let his hands fall at his sides, tendrils of mystical energy leaking from his fingertips, showing the pair that he was far from defenseless.
“I have come on a matter of grave importance,” he spoke in the lilting tongue of the Fey. “The fate of my world is at stake, and yours as well. Yes, both our worlds . . . and all of the others besides.”
Chapter Five
Clay piloted a silver Cadillac through the streets of Boston, holding the steering wheel as though it was fragile and might shatter in his hands. There were very few other cars out on the street, but still he drove slowly, his speed dictated not by traffic but by his fascination with the terrible phenomena that were unfolding in the city. The Cadillac feeling like some protective bubble out of which he and Eve could observe the horrors around them.
The sky was tinted the dark crimson of drying blood and swarms of mosquitoes traveled like terrible storm clouds. Clay had been forced to detour away from the entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike because manhole covers had blown out of the pavement surrounding it and raw sewage flooded the street. Eve had suggested Route Nine to drive out to Newton and he’d headed that way onto to pause at a place where the road was overrun by rats. But he’d paused only a moment before rolling the Caddy right over them, hearing them pop beneath its tires.
It wasn’t going to get any better. The rats weren’t going to clear off of their own free will. Whatever this storm was, it wasn’t going to pass without someone doing something about it.
“Pretty unsettling, isn’t it?” he said, breaking a long silence in the car.
“I’ve seen worse,” Eve replied.
Clay shot her a hard look. “You’re not the only one, Eve. But I’m not talking about this.” He waved a hand to indicate the bizarre goings on in the city around him. They passed a Humvee that was pulled over to the side of the road. The driver had his face pressed against his window, staring up at the sky. “I’m talking about what it means.”
She arched an eyebrow and Clay felt his throat go dry. By God she was beautiful. He was the last person to be taken in by surface appearance; he knew better than anyone that it rarely reflected what was within. Yet there was something so exotic, so ancient about her that she took his breath away. She had taken the time to change out of the blood-soaked clothes in which she had met him at the door and now wore black trousers and a chiffon, embroidered top that was looked both expensive and—with its spaghetti straps baring her arms, throat and shoulders—more revealing than what Eve normally wore. There was a silk jacket in the back seat that had clearly come from the closet of one designer or another. Clothing was Eve’s other weakness, second only to blood.
“What does it mean, then?” Eve prodded him.
“That’s what’s so unsettling,” he explained. “This sort of thing is happening all over the northeast, but it’s concentrated here. I’ve lived as long as you have—”
“And how many can say that?” she whispered.
He ignored her and went on. “—and normally there’s some kind of prophecy, isn’t there? You’ll get the clairvoyants with their visions and maybe some ancient writings, omens and portents—”
Eve turned sideways in her seat. “What do you call all this shit, then? Last I heard showers of blood and rains of toads were considered pretty ominous. And as for portents, there aren’t many that can beat red clouds blotting out the sun.”
Clay took a long breath and shook his head, but he kept his eyes on the road. “No argument, but normally there’s some warning, enough so that people like Doyle, the kind of people who watch for these things, know they’re coming much earlier.”
A streak of black darted across the road in front of them and he had to jerk the wheel to the left to swerve around it. As the Cadillac shifted lanes he caught a glimpse of that black streak, but it was not a streak any longer. It was a dog, maybe a German Shepherd but he could not be at all certain. Whatever sort of dog it was, it was not the beast’s fur that was black. It was the crows.
The dog had stopped now in the middle of Route Nine and they had a clear view. Clay slowed down even further and stared. The dog’s body was covered by crows, their wings madly beating the air as their beaks plunged again and again at the dog, pecking it and tearing its flesh so that some of the black-feathered birds were splashed with its blood.
“You’re right,” Eve said softly. “It’s unsettling.”
Clay found no satisfaction in this admission. His foot felt suddenly heavy on the accelerator and the Cadillac sped up. He had had enough, now, of the signs and portents, had seen far too many people huddled inside their homes and looking out the windows in panic and wonder. Phone lines were out. Cellular communication was no better. Television and radio and cable signals were warped static.
From what Eve had told him, Doyle clearly had some idea what was going on. And if Clay knew Doyle, there would already be some kind of plan in motion. He wanted to know what it was and what his place in it would be. The time for watching it through the windows was over.
“Eve?”
“Yeah?”
Clay glanced at her. “Why are you always snapping at me? I’m not exactly Mr. Sensitive, but I’d like to know what I did to piss you off.”
“Nothing,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.”
They drove in silence for several minutes. Clay consulted the paper in his hand upon which directions to the Ferrick house were written in Squire’s cramped scrawl. He left Route Nine and took them deeper into Newton, up narrow, tree-lined streets and past wealthy neighborhoods. In time he turned into a more conventional suburban street and peered at house numbers as they passed colonials and ranch homes. Many of the houses were dark and looked empty, their occupants having remained at the office or stuck somewhere else. But there were lights on in some houses and the sound of the Cadillac’s engine brought faces to the windows.
Clay hated to ignore them, but he had no choice. If they tried to soothe the fears of every person who was afraid, they would lose focus on the larger picture, and the peril would only grow more dire.
At number seventy-two, a sand-colored split level with dark blue shutters, he turned into the driveway. The garage door was open and a Volvo wagon was inside. That was good. Mrs. Ferrick had called Doyle, but the phones had gone out shortly thereafter and there was no way to be sure she would stay put when the chaos had worsened.
“This should be interesting,” Clay murmured, mostly to himself, as he put the car in park and killed the engine. He opened the door but paused when he felt Eve’s hand on his arm.
“Hang on.”
Clay turned to her and was surprised to see pain in her gaze. Eve was usually all hard edges and slick smiles.
“It’s really nothing you did,” she said. “It’s me.”
One leg already out the door, he held it open and studied her more closely. “How, exactly? How is it you, I mean? We’ve worked together before, Eve. I’ve got you and Doyle to thank for setting me straight when my life was a mess. But it’s obvious I get under your skin. Why is that?”
Eve nodded slowly, then pushed her hair out of her face and met his gaze. She could be fierce, but at the moment there was vulnerability he had never seen in her before.
“Think about it. Think about what you are.”
“What I am?”
She gave him a look that made him feel incredibly stupid, and then pointed upward. “You’re His clay. You’re connected to Him in a way that nothing else on
Earth is. After the suffering he’s put me through, you have to ask why being around you hurts me?”
His heart went cold. Clay stared at her but Eve looked away, opened her door and stepped out, the soles of her boots clicking on the pavement. She shut the door and started toward the house. After a moment Clay followed her, pocketing his keys. He wore the same face, the same form, he had worn in New Orleans, a persona had adopted many years before to make himself feel more human. But he had never been human. Sometimes, when he was particularly fortunate, he forgot that.
Eve rang the doorbell. With the buzz of mosquito swarms and the blood-red sky the utter normality of that sound seemed grotesquely incongruous, and yet for some reason it set him at ease.
They stood side by side on the doorstep.
“You’re not the only one He has made suffer,” Clay said, his voice low, unwilling to look at her now. “Perverse as it might be, I’d rather be suffering because I was the subject of His vengeance, as you’ve been, than because He couldn’t spare a moment’s thought to my fate.”
There were noises inside the house, voices and the staccato noise of rushing footsteps on wooden floors. Clay’s attention was drawn to the curtains in the bay window upstairs and he saw the face of a woman appear amidst the bone-white, lace-trimmed fabric. She was perhaps forty and might have been attractive without the fear that was engraved upon her features. Mrs. Ferrick, he assumed. She stared at her two visitors for a moment and then gestured to him to be patient, that she’d be right down, almost as if they were ordinary callers at her door and that the city was not being besieged by hellish occurrences fit for the Biblical book of Revelations.
Once more Eve gripped his arm, but this time her touch was gentle.
“You remind me,” she said. “But maybe that’s not so terrible. Hard as it is, you also remind me that I’m not alone.”
Clay smiled and then there were footsteps on the stairs inside and the sound of the chain being slid off the lock, and the door was pulled open from within. In the woman’s hands was a white business card that had once been crisp and new but had now been bent and had its edges made ragged by Mrs. Ferrick’s anxiety. According to Squire, Doyle had given her the card years earlier. She had lent him little credence then, but Clay figured recent events had made her more open-minded.
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