Angela let her lips relax into an approximation of a smile as she heard her usual response: The fewer machines inside Divine's Emporium, the better. Even something as simple as an answering machine. If she really wanted something set up to take messages when she didn't feel like answering the phone, she would ask one of her Fae friends to set a spell. Then power outages and dead batteries and worn tapes would never bother her. Even better, she could screen calls and even have separate messages to deal with different callers, such as telling salesmen and pollsters and political fundraisers not to call back.
The amusement that came with that thought died when she heard Stanzer's voice, even before his words made any sense.
"Do you want me to come by, wait with you?" he asked, after he passed on what Ethan had told him and the estimate for when he would show up at Divine's Emporium.
"He's coming as a friend. And Maurice should be back by then." Angela flinched, catching herself thinking of Maurice as having wings and magic. Those days were gone.
"Not just me," he said. "The entire Hunt. And if there's trouble, the Hounds will show up for you, Angela."
"Have you ever considered that the Hounds might be blocked from being involved with certain kinds of magical...situations?"
"Yeah." He sighed, sounding just as weary as she felt. "But we won't know what their limits are until we try, right?"
"True." Angela finally sat down. She had been pleased that Serena was staying the summer with Dawn and Cinden in Dawn's apartment in Stanzer's building. The girl was her ward, and was supposed to be living with her, but that wouldn't officially start until the school year began, just for the sake of the child welfare authorities. She didn't want the newest arrivals in the gathering Hunt to be involved in this, even though she knew they had gifts and experience that effectively negated their chronological age and the label of "children." Legally, most of them were minors. Spiritually and in all other ways, they were seasoned warriors.
"I know what you're thinking," Stanzer said when the silence stretched out between them.
"Really?" She decided to be amused.
"You're the town's guardian and you won't let anybody face the fire for you. Not even the people who owe you, who love you."
"Oh, now that's a low blow. How dare you use the love card?" A few bubbles of laughter escaped her.
"Angela..."
"Oh, very well. Come out in the chill and mist and risk a silly cold. I'll just dose all of you with something loathsome and you'll feel like idiots, staying up late for no good reason."
"What are you talking about?" His voice had a catch in it.
Angela stood and picked up the phone, walking to the window as far as the long extension cord would allow her. The mist from the park had crept up the slope and surrounded her house in moonlit white as far as she could see. Droplets had even begun to condense on her window.
"The mist," she said. "It's cold outside, and there's a mist crawling up from the park. You can see the air currents swirling it around."
"Angela, it's a scorching night. You'd swear it was August. Everybody is camped out here in my office because I've got air conditioning. And the air isn't moving, otherwise they'd be up on the roof to take advantage of the breezes. Angela--"
"It's already started." She silently cursed herself for a fool, letting her worries for Maurice distract her from what should have been patently obvious. The Von Helados believed that she had been damaged or at least weakened by the attack of the talisman, and had begun their next attack. Even without the talisman. If she was lucky, they were wasting time looking for Ethan and didn't realize he was already on his way to Neighborlee.
"We're on our way."
"No, John, don't--" Angela stood a moment, listening to the dial tone. Maybe tomorrow, if there was a tomorrow, she would be upset or amused or both at the fact that Stanzer had hung up on her.
She suspected that even with the help of the Hounds, the Hunt wouldn't be able to get into Divine's Emporium. If the mist was what she feared, they wouldn't even be able to find her home.
The question now, she supposed, was exactly what the telephone connection said about the magical reach and strength and skill of her enemies. Did mechanical, electrical, modern things have the ability to overpower that magic? Or was their power not quite as encompassing as they needed it to be, to cut her off from friends and allies and help? Or had they allowed the telephone to taunt her? To fool her into thinking she wasn't cut off from the rest of the world?
"Can any of you leave?" she whispered to the winkies, and closed her eyes, concentrating on an image of them flying away, finding Maurice, warning him. They swirled around her in a thickening cloud, coating her in a shimmering layer of ever-shifting colors. Just when she felt a flicker of exasperation and a glimmer of fear that she had lost the ability to communicate with them, several layers of that cloud swirled away and through the wall, to the outside.
Angela wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the wall they had gone through, willing them to stay away and not return. Returning would mean they hadn't been able to get out, pierce the barrier she knew enveloped Divine's Emporium. Her heart thundered in her ears and her lungs burned, and she gasped, exhaling abruptly and then inhaling, and laughed at herself. She had actually been holding her breath as she waited.
The seconds turned to minutes. Downstairs the ornate, gold-trimmed clock that sat in the front window chimed eleven. She waited, sending her awareness down to the foundations of the shop, through the walls, testing the protective net, feeling for the first sneaky, slithering attack, whether it was a grain of sand or a whisper in the darkness trying to penetrate her soul.
The flute clock, as Maurice had called it, slipped out of its dimensional slit and tweetled the quarter hour.
Enough of waiting. Angela got up and went downstairs.
The phone behind the counter rang just as she reached the main room. She glanced out the windows that showed the street in front of Divine's Emporium. Or should have showed the street. There was nothing but swirling white mist.
"Angela, are you okay?" Stanzer asked. Static rose up in a wave and she waited before answering.
"I'm fine, but I'm guessing you either can't get through the mist, or you can't find the shop at all."
"These guys play hardball. Listen, we're going to try to call the Hounds. Maybe they can penetrate that mist. Bring you out."
"No. If, as you say, they've put me under their guardianship, don't you think they would have appeared by now if I was in any danger?"
Silence for a few seconds. Angela had such a clear image of him scowling at his cell phone, biting his lip, she almost had to laugh. Almost. The darkness of her own shop suddenly felt wrong, and she reached for the light switch before she frightened herself.
"I really hate it when you do that," Stanzer muttered.
"Do what?"
"Refuse to be the damsel in distress."
"John." Laughter bubbled out of her, pushing the shadows back into the walls where they had seeped through, easing the chill out of her bones, and making her aware that she had indeed grown chilled. "I haven't been a damsel in distress in... Well, in such a long time I've quite forgotten how to be one." Angela caught her breath as her dream of the garden of moonlight and shadows filled her mind, to the point that it threatened to overwhelm the warmth and comfort of the shop room around her.
"Well, learn how. I'm going to contact Lanie and her gang, see what they can figure out to do. I figure between all the illegal aliens in this town, we can gang up on the magic that's picking on you."
"As long as you all stay out of that mist. And do me a favor? Talk to others in town, those who are still awake at this hour. Find out what they see. I'd wager that those who aren't magic-sensitive see nothing wrong at all. Only those with any chance of impacting the outcome of tonight's battle are affected by this mist."
"That's kind of powerful magic," he said quietly.
"Old, experienced magic that has le
arned to focus, identify the threats, and not waste energy defending on every front when opposition only comes from one place."
After Stanzer hung up, Angela turned on every light in the shop, then the stairway landing lights, then the lights in the storage rooms. She spent some time in the painting room, arranging the most dangerous paintings so they faced each other. If the protective spells and barriers failed, the nasty things waiting to break free would simply leap into another world inhabited by creatures just as nasty as they were.
At least, that was the theory. Angela hoped that the attack was on her, personally, and not the shop itself, in an attempt to shatter the controls set on some dimensional doorway, allowing nightmares loose into unsuspecting worlds. Most especially not her world, her town that she had guarded and loved for decades.
On the way down the stairs again, she paused on the second floor landing and stared long at the image of the stone walls and silver gates slowly rippling in and out of focus through the wallpaper. Was it trying to come into being tonight? Or was it finally fading away? What would happen if she touched the latch of the silver gate of her own free will, pushing it open, and stepped into the garden of moonlight and mist and shadows beyond it?
No. Now was not the time to go through those gates. She had a battle to fight, and she wouldn't leave her friends to fight it for her.
Angela hurried down the stairs. The winkies swirled around her, suddenly agitated. She paused, frustrated by the sudden volume of her heart's thuds, drowning out all other sounds. She took deep breaths, willing herself to calm, and heard the distinct sound of a car door opening in front of the shop.
What amplified the sound? Her own nervousness, or the mist?
She was at the front door almost before she knew what she wanted to do. The winkies' lights dimmed, all of them turning to a pale green, before shifting to a nearly navy blue. They didn't flee her, and Angela took that as an encouraging sign. The car door outside slammed shut, and she opened the door of Divine's Emporium to look out. Just to look out. She knew better than to go past the threshold.
Ethan stood on the curb, staring up at the house as the mist billowed out to surround his car, enclosing him in the whiteness.
Chapter Twelve
"It wants him here, doesn't it?" Angela whispered. The winkies shimmered into pink for a moment, and then their lights dimmed more.
"They're coming," Ethan called. "This isn't normal, is it?" He spread his arms, taking in the mist that enclosed them in a dim, silver-gray-white world. At his movements, winkies flared to life, red and purple, clinging to his clothes and streaking his hair. He scowled and flicked a bright green point of light off the tip of his nose.
Angela laughed. She couldn't help it.
At the sound of her voice, all the winkies coating her and Ethan shimmered with more light, their colors shifting to pinks and greens and bright blues.
"You can see them now, can't you?" she called.
"Yeah, and it's driving me nuts!" But he grinned at her, uncertainly, like someone who didn't have much practice in smiling. "Look, those lunatics who hired me broke into my bank, looking for that cursed coin that hurt your friend. Even if they don't find it, I've got the feeling they're on their way here to finish the job."
"A job that never got started," she reminded him.
"Yeah, true, but won't you be safer getting out of town? Lead them on a wild goose chase?" He gestured back at his car. "Let me protect you. I know I'm not the dragon-slaying knight that chick in the wheelchair thought she saw, but... Heck, maybe I can figure out how."
Angela caught her breath, when a trick of the shifting darkness and pale light and the changing glow of the winkies suddenly wrapped him in dark silver armor. Ethan's blue eyes were the scowling eyes of her silent stone knight from the garden of her dreams.
"Let's get out of here, Angela. I swear, whatever it takes, I'll do it to protect you."
"No. I can't leave." She swallowed hard at the sudden thrill of panic that wrapped around her throat. "And you have to get inside. Now. Before the mist gets any thicker." She gestured at the winkies coating him. Their light had faded again as the mist crept closer around him. If their light went out...
"Ethan, come inside now. You're only safe--we're only safe--inside the walls here."
She saw the struggle of his mind and soul in his face, the stiffness of his posture. He wanted to believe. He didn't want to believe.
A thick tendril of mist looked like a hand, rising up to wrap around his face, around his throat. Angela saw the moment Ethan's gaze shifted and he saw what she saw. He ducked and dodged and tugged aside his jacket, revealing the shoulder holster and the handgun that gleamed like a sword in moonlight. But mortal weapons were useless here. What tragedy would have to befall him before he learned that painful lesson?
"Okay," he called, not yet drawing the weapon and pivoting with every other step to look around himself as he approached the wrought iron gate. "I'm coming in."
The gate refused to swing open when he pushed on it.
If the enemies wanted him here, letting him through the mist to reach her house, why wouldn't they let him get to the house?
Unless their whole purpose was just what Ethan had proposed? For her to leave with him? To get her to leave Divine's Emporium and all the magical safety woven into its physical being.
Angela gripped the doorframe, imagining the mist thrusting a tentacle at her to yank her outside. She watched as Ethan leaned into the gate and pushed, hard, so she could see the bulging of the muscles in his arms through his coat, saw the strain in his face. He growled a curse, put both hands on the stone post the gate was anchored to, and swung himself up and over in one smooth motion.
Gale force winds plunged down from the sky as his feet touched the flagstone path to her door. Ethan stumbled back, nearly impaling his buttocks on the pointed tops of the iron posts of the fence. Wind blinded him, creating ripples in his skin, pressing his eyelids closed, tossing debris into his eyes and mouth. The winkies were torn away, their lights going out completely.
"Stop it!" Angela shouted, and stepped forward, reaching out to him.
Her winkies shrieked as she put one foot over her threshold. She froze, feeling a force yanking on her leg, a sensation as if something hot and prickly and stinging grabbed hold of her ankle.
"No!" Ethan gasped. Through the assault of the wind on his face, she could see his sudden terror. "Don't come out. That's what they want. You'll die."
Angela sagged back, bracing herself on the doorframe, shivering as she remembered almost too late the dream where the knight had pulled her off the porch of Divine's Emporium and she had shriveled in his arms.
A funnel of blackness spun down from the ceiling of darkening mist, the narrow tip aiming for Ethan.
She shouted his name and pointed.
He flung himself forward to dodge it. The winds resisted him, keeping him nearly upright, but he did gain a few feet. The funnel twisted, following him as he went to his hands and knees, digging into the gaps between the flagstones with his fingers, pulling himself forward.
Angela watched, willing all her strength to him.
That prickling, stinging sensation returned, and she gasped, throwing herself backwards as she realized she had edged forward, putting the toes of one foot, her hand, her nose and forehead over the threshold. She saw very clearly what the enemy wanted--to lure her out of the safety of Divine's Emporium, into the mist and darkness and wind. It would keep Ethan away from her, tormenting him, until the tension was too much for her and she forgot herself and raced out to help him.
When this was over, she promised herself she would find a way to punish her enemies so they never rose up against her ever again. This was wrong. It was cruel and evil. She rarely used the power at her disposal for her own satisfaction, but she would feel no guilt in using it now.
She dug her fingers into the doorframe, holding herself fast, and watched Ethan struggle.
He had made
it halfway up the flagstone path now, his clothes stained with sweat and the debris ground into them. In the flickering light, she saw darkness on his hands and feared he had torn his fingers open in the struggle to pull himself along the stones. The enemy would pay for that, too.
Angela sagged, breathless for a moment as images raced through her mind. Memories, she realized, with a pang that took her breath away.
Ethan standing in a stream, bare-chested, laughing, bronzed by the sun. His trousers rolled up to his knees. His hair long, tangled and curly. Holding out those long-fingered hands to her, beckoning. She gave her hand into his and stepped into the stream, holding her long skirts high. He teased her, waggling his eyebrows at the sight of her legs bared to the knees. When she stepped back, pretending pique, he roared laughter, lunged, and caught her up, to throw her over his shoulder and stride across the stream. She kicked and wriggled and laughed and he swatted her behind before setting her down with a thump.
And captured her mouth in a kiss that went on forever.
"No!" Ethan shouted, tearing Angela out of the memories. "Go back!"
Gasping, she flung herself backwards, falling down hard in the doorway of the shop. She had stepped forward as if to cross that stream from her memory. To go to him. And nearly left the shop entirely. Her legs stung up to the knees and her fingers felt nearly numb and the skin of her face felt as if it had been scoured by the debris and force of the wind. For good measure, Angela scrambled backwards, putting two more feet of space between her feet and the threshold.
She ached, fighting tears of fury and a longing that felt as familiar as her own breath. Yet strange, having no part of the life she had made for herself in Divine's Emporium. Had she once felt that pain as if she had been torn into two pieces, as if everything inside her had been emptied out and scoured clean? Had it been so long that she had forgotten?
Or was this another trick of the enemy, trying to make her think that Ethan was her lost love, her knight from the midnight garden? Did they try to awaken loneliness she had never known before, to trick her into going out into that storm?
Divine Knight Page 17
