The first person I spotted in the apartment wasn’t Vivi, but rather a bull-necked redhead whose Rigby Buccaneers T-shirt barely stretched to cover his sculpted chest and biceps. He had armed himself with a serrated kitchen knife, which he held at an awkward angle as he emerged from the hallway into the main room. I gathered from his unease that he would rather have tackled us than gone for the stabbing approach, but at that moment, I was in the mood for neither and simply threw him against the wall. “Hi,” I said, releasing Stuart as I remotely forced our would-be assailant’s fingers to curl away from his weapon. He thrashed, kicking dents into the plaster, but I’d pinned him securely, and he stared back at me as his knife fell, panicking but trying not to show it. “I’m Coileán,” I continued, nudging the knife out of the way with my toe. “You must be Hal.”
“How,” he began in a squeak, then cleared his throat and tried again. “How do you know who—”
“Go Bucs,” I muttered, then noticed Vivi peeking out of her bedroom. “Gate’s open, and it’s going to draw them here. You need to move,” I called to her. Her mouth tightened, and I caught a glimpse of the tangled emotions raging in her mind before I turned back to Hal. “Let me explain what’s going on, Coach,” I told him. “And I’ll make this as straightforward as possible. Magic is real. You’re getting a taste of it right now, in fact. I happen to be rather skilled with it, which you may also have gathered from your current predicament. Ms. Stowe has assisted me in several matters with her paranormal research, and since there are an unknown number of, for lack of a better term, hell-beasts on the rampage in Rigby at the moment, I’m taking her to safety. You’re welcome to come along. Interested?”
He hung there, digesting what I’d said, then nodded.
“Great.” I lowered him to the carpet and cut my eyes to Vivi, who continued to goggle from her hiding place. “Come on out, kid, we don’t have much time.”
She slipped through the door and skulked past me to join her boyfriend, who pulled her to his side and wrapped one of his thick arms around her protectively. “This won’t hurt,” I said for his benefit, opening another gate to my office, then peeked through and spotted Mrs. Cooper on the couch with a laden tea tray set before her. She was back in her element, a teacup in one hand and a saucer in the other, and she looked my way at the sudden noise.
“There you are!” she called, lifting her teacup in greeting. “This is lovely! Where’s Stuart?” she asked, craning her neck for a better view of my side of the gate.
“With me. I’ll send him soon,” I said, then stepped aside and swept my arm in invitation. “Ms. Stowe. And, uh…”
“Perryman,” said Hal, keeping his grip on Vivi as they headed for the gate. “Henry Perryman.” He paused on the threshold, gave me one last uneasy look, then let his girlfriend lead him over the border.
Before they could have second thoughts, I closed the portal and regarded the others. “All right, that’s everyone but Toula, and she’s a big girl. Find the rift?”
“Ahead of you,” said Slim as he pulled a little box free from one of his bags. Lifting the lid, he revealed a notched green disc that wobbled for a few seconds until it settled with its notch pointing north. “Dark magic detector,” he explained. “Points toward the area of highest concentration, which has to mean the gate. When we find it, can you close it?”
I thought, with a sick feeling, of my misadventures in the Pine Barrens. “Working assumption is yes,” I replied, then turned to Stuart, who’d had a moment for the cogs to spin into place. “All right, Merlin, decision time. Would you rather be safe or be of use?”
Stuart stared mournfully back at me, looking rather like I’d just told him the truth about Santa Claus. “You can’t be a fairy,” he mumbled. “My research…all of my study…my work…”
Slim started muttering curses, but I kept my attention on the ersatz wizard, who had rapidly descended into the throes of an existential crisis. “Hate to break this to you,” I said, “but tiny girls with wings, dancing on flowers? Not even close. I’m not a skeptic,” I told him, closing the distance between us, “I’m the genuine article. And there are monsters on the loose, and Olive’s missing again, and I don’t have time to argue with you today. You can either go to safety with Eunice or see what magic can actually do. Your choice.”
He swallowed hard, but he held my gaze. “I’m a wizard,” he whispered. “I took vows. And I do not run.”
“So be it.” I grabbed a long, highly carved wooden rod from Slim’s stash and examined its markings. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Dud Defender,” said Slim with a curt nod. “And she’s fully loaded and on a hair trigger, so watch where the hell you’re pointing that, thanks.”
“Huh?” Stuart mumbled, staring as the rod’s runes began to glow orange under my hand.
“My favorite boomstick,” Slim explained, gingerly taking it from me and passing it to Stuart. “Designed for the magically inept. It’s point-and-think thaumaturgy—ensorcelled and preloaded with fireballs.”
He watched the rod light up, testing his grip, then aimed it at Vivi’s living-room window and the trash compactor beyond. “So how does this—” was as far as he made it before the window, the compactor, and the Toyota behind the compactor exploded in a blast of glass, metal, and garbage.
When the debris finished pattering off my shield, I rose from my defensive crouch and turned to find Stuart frozen where he stood, his eyes bugging from his skull as he surveyed the smoking damage. Slim grunted, shook the glass shards from his hair, and thumped Stuart’s rigid back. “Boomstick,” he muttered. “Hair trigger. Pay attention.”
I stepped to the wall and waved the window whole, began piecing the compactor back together, then saw the first of the beasts come striding into the complex parking lot and hoped the owner of the totaled car had decent coverage. “Party time,” I said, heading for the door with Slim on my heels. “Stay low. I’ll shield you when I can, but try to stay out of the blast radius while you get a heading on that thing.”
“I’ve got a heading,” he replied, following me down the concrete staircase, “but I don’t have a distance. Want me to hotwire a ride?”
“Could you? I’d really rather not try to enchant steel on top of everything else today.”
“Give me about five minutes’ coverage and see.” He glanced over his shoulder at Stuart, who was following at a safe distance, holding the rod between finger and thumb. “You break my stick, man, and I’m going to be pissed,” he warned.
“I’m not accustomed to this type of magic,” Stuart protested.
“You’re not accustomed to magic, period.” Slim pressed himself against the breezeway wall, then slammed Stuart against the brick beside him with one meaty arm. “Aim for the heads.”
“What h—oh, my God,” he whispered as the beast came into view. “What is that…”
“And don’t hit Colin,” Slim added, then puffed toward the parking lot and an old Cadillac sedan.
I studied the newcomer: perhaps a hair smaller than the ones I’d already dispatched that morning, but still massive and skittering toward us. I began to ask Stuart in jest if he’d like the first crack at it, but before I could form the words, he was running toward the creature with Slim’s glowing rod extended, screaming like a madman. The beast bellowed its hunting call just as the first fireballs tore through its waving neck and thorax. Its cry choked in its torn throat and faltered, and after another few shots, six more cars joined the Toyota as insurance claims.
When the thing ceased twitching, I sloshed through the spreading puddle of ichor and carefully pried the rod from Stuart’s hand as he shouted incoherent challenges at the corpse. “Maybe I should hold on to this for a while,” I said, glancing at the darkened runes to see how much of a charge the rod still held. “Safekeeping, you know,” I added, raising my voice over the blaring car alarms. “Uh…good first effort, a little sloppy in the execution, but all things considered…Stu. Stu, hey, it’s dead, you c
an stop yelling now.”
It took a hard shake to snap him out of it, and he looked around with wild eyes as a few of Vivi’s neighbors began to emerge from their apartments. “Where’s my wand?” he cried, suddenly realizing his hand was empty. “I had…where did…”
I held it up and took a step back. “You’re trigger-happy right now. Calm down, kid, deep breaths.” I surveyed the growing crowd and groaned to myself. At that moment, I couldn’t have cared less if anyone saw me go to work—I just didn’t want to deal with the mess of casualties. Throwing caution aside, I dissolved the beast into dust, then killed the car alarms with a snap. My loafers were stained, I vaguely realized, but decided that all things considered, the condition of my footwear was the least of my concerns. Turning to face the huddled crowd, I shoved the rod into my belt and held up my hands for quiet. “There’s been a freak meteorological event,” I said when I had their attention. “Lightning strike, microburst, whatever.” The clear sky proved me a liar, but the mortals were too spooked to notice. “And it appears this large tree fell on your cars,” I continued, willing an ancient oak into existence to fit the multi-car depression the fallen beast had left behind. “You should probably call your adjustors this afternoon when the weather clears.”
An elderly man in a gray cardigan finally looked to the heavens and frowned. “I didn’t see any storm,” he muttered, scowling at the sun. “And whatever it was, it’s passed now—”
He was cut short by an all-too-familiar screech, and we turned as one to see another monster galloping toward us. This one, however, seemed distracted. It waved its arms around its bucking head as it ran as if trying to shake something off, and as I squinted, a black form came into focus, something dark and vaguely humanoid that was clinging to the creature’s neck. As the crowd began to scream and rushed for shelter, the beast shrieked again, then flung the irritant from its body. The dark form tucked and rolled, landed in a stumbling run, then whipped around and shot twin jets of white flame from its hands, turning its former mount into a yowling bonfire. After a few long seconds, it died and fell, taking out a garage and the maintenance golf cart on its way down.
The rider brushed off its palms and strolled toward me, and I recognized Toula beneath heavy black streaks of gore. “Hey!” she yelled, wagging her finger at me. “Way to leave me with the cleanup! Were you planning to help today, or were you going to sit this one out?” As she closed, she noticed the clump of residents cowering in the breezeway and offered a little wave. “Hi, folks. Sorry about the mess. Uh…maybe don’t go to Rigby right now, okay? You know, in fact, you should probably go back into your apartments and draw the blinds until this is over.”
Most didn’t need to be told twice. The observant senior blinked at Toula a few times, considered the monster two buildings over, then nodded and retreated without another word. By the time his door slammed, Slim had coaxed the hotwired car to life, and I gave Toula a pointed once-over. “We’re about to liberate someone’s car, and you’re going to wreck the interior if you get in like that.”
“Shove it, Gramps,” she muttered, but willed herself clean as she brushed past me and into the front seat.
Slim had already laid claim to the wheel, and as I dragged Stuart into the back, Slim passed his box to Toula and pointed to the notch. “Keep us on the right track,” he ordered, then drove off at a respectable forty, staying well clear of the police cars that sped by us, heading toward Rigby and the discomfiting cloud of smoke rising over the trees.
Perhaps because the universe has a sense of humor, the gate into the Gray Lands was hovering over a vacant lot behind a Walmart on the far side of Skipton. By the time Slim parked, the last of the pack seemed to have come through, as a glance through the gate revealed nothing but a wasteland of brown grass beneath a sky of slate. While Toula and Slim checked our surroundings for signs of monsters—not a difficult task, I imagine, as it wasn’t as if they could hide—I stood at the edge of the gate, reading and re-reading the words burned into the short grass on the other side. I saw Stuart approach from the corner of my eye, but I ignored him until he knelt and reached through the gate to run his finger over the blackened swirls. “What’s that?” he asked, brushing the dirt off his sweatpants as he stood.
“A message.”
“Yeah?” He peered at the writing again. “I don’t recognize the runes—”
“It’s not a runic system, it’s Fae. And it’s for me.” I stepped back from the gate, and the stench of the outflow—to my senses, a smell much like formaldehyde overlaid with strong notes of gardenia—began to diffuse with distance. “Time to seal this off,” I said, then waved Stuart away while I opened a gate to my office facing the gate to the wilderness.
My guests on the other side—Mrs. Cooper, Vivi, her perplexed beau, and now Meggy—were still congregating around the tea tray. “Any sign of her?” Meggy called through the opening, rising from the couch for a better look. “Have you found her yet?”
“I think so,” I called back, and as Stuart waved to reassure his great-aunt that he was still very much alive and whole, I began to weave a plug for the first gate. My technical skill had improved in the years since my failed attempt in New Jersey, but more importantly, with the outflow from Faerie pressing back against the outflow of dark magic, I had far more raw power than I’d had the first time around, and the enchantment I worked was solid. It wouldn’t hold forever—not against a continual battering of dark magic—but I assumed it would hold long enough for the natural barrier between the realms to regrow itself, a sort of magical bandage over the wound. Ten minutes later, as the first screeches began to echo across the superstore’s parking lot, I finished sealing the breach, then turned my attention to the waiting spectators. “Just a bit of cleanup to finish,” I explained. “We’ll be with you shortly.”
I returned to the street, where Slim and Toula stood at the ready and Stuart anxiously flexed his fingers. “Here, Stu,” I said, passing him the rod as what turned out to be the last three beasts standing came running down the highway, accompanied by a chorus of squealing tires and smashing cars. “Knock yourself out. Slim, get out of here, you’ve done enough.”
He retreated to the gate without protest, and Toula pushed up her sleeves. “When we’re finished here,” she said, “we should probably go back to Rigby and repair the damage.”
“And how do you see that going over?” I retorted. “‘Oh, hello,’” I minced in a falsetto, “‘don’t mind me, I’m just your friendly neighborhood wizard!’”
“I could do it,” said Stuart, flinching as the nearest of the things kicked a stalled SUV out of its way. “I’ve held myself out as a wizard—what if you did it and I took the credit?”
Toula looked incredulously at Stuart. “You’re a wizard?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he muttered.
“In a manner that counts, no,” I replied. “Toula, this is the Stuart I told you about. And Stu, given that anyone in Rigby with more than two brain cells knows you can’t actually do magic, no, I really don’t think we need to make an effort to disprove that. Let it lie.”
Toula waited until the hunting calls had subsided, then said, “Ten to one someone blames it all on swamp gas. Ready, boys?” she asked, and her hands sparked to life.
I made the three final corpses disappear—we were right there, after all, and they were blocking traffic—and closed the gate once Toula and Stuart were through, the former tired and once again ichor-streaked, the latter vibrating with adrenaline like he’d grabbed a live wire. Meggy ran to me and seized my arms before I could so much as pour a drink. “Olive. Where is Olive?”
“Gray Lands,” I said, sliding from her grip, and headed for the bar. “As assumed. She left me a note.” I selected a bottle of whisky older than any of my company, then poured liberally and took it in one long shot. “Burned it in the grass at the gate,” I continued, coughing with the alcohol. “Considerate of her, I suppose.”
Meggy’s face harden
ed. “How do you know—”
“It was her?” I finished. “I can’t be sure, but ‘Find me, Ironhand’ seems like a giveaway.” I considered the open bottle, then the ring of eyes watching me for direction, and shrugged. “So, who else needs a drink?”
CHAPTER 19
* * *
Doris, High Keeper of the Parish Payroll, was less than impressed to see me again when I strode into Sacred Heart’s office that afternoon. “Father Paul,” I said, even as her pink lips moved into a tight line. “Is he in?”
“I’m sorry,” she replied, offering a fair impression of a smile, “but Father’s with the bishop right now. They’re not to be disturbed—”
I brushed past her toward the hallway of offices, and she rose and shouted after me, “Hey! I said he’s with the bishop! You can’t go back there!”
“Watch me,” I muttered, pounding on Paul’s office door even as I heard Doris scrambling for the telephone. “Paul!” I called through the thick wood. “Problem!”
A moment later, the door cracked open, and Paul peeked out into the hall. “What’s up?” he asked. “I’m guessing this can’t wait.”
“Long story short, you’re at risk, and I’d like to evacuate you for the time being.”
His brow rose and wrinkled. “Evacuate? From Virginia?”
“From this realm.”
“Who is it, Paul?” asked a deep voice from inside the office, and the priest opened the door to reveal his middle-aged superior, who half-rose from his armchair for a better look. “Oh…hello, son,” said the bishop, noticing me, “is everything all right? Do you need some help? Social services is on the other side of the building—”
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