Play Dead

by John Levitt

  “I like you,” she’d said, practically dragging me off to bed. Yeah, right. I’m irresistible. I’m no genius but I’m not that stupid, either, not even when I’m drunk. I’d been spelled, no doubt about it.

  What was worse, in a way, was that I couldn’t even recall exactly what had happened once we’d landed in the bed. I remembered kissing. I remembered the feel of her body next to mine. But that was about it. If I’m going to make a stupid mistake like that, at least I want to remember the good part. If there had been a good part.

  I remembered Jackie’s earlier trick with Lou and the piece of paper slipped under his harness. People, even practitioners, tend to stay in their comfort zones, to stick with what’s worked before. I went carefully through all my pockets until I found a wadded-up scrap of paper with symbols scratched on it, and above, a large smiley face. She must have slipped it to me while we were listening to the music.

  A smiley face. This had to be the most embarrassing spell directed against me, ever. But why had she done it? And although I do have my points, I doubt that Jackie had been seized with an uncontrollable lust for my body. When I tore up the note I felt no release of power. It had been a temporary spell and its work was done. Now it was just inert scribbling on paper. I examined my clothes again, more carefully, but found nothing.

  So whatever she had planned, it must have involved getting me naked. I inspected every inch of my body that I could see, but again, nothing. A fleeting memory of fingers gently trailing across my back surfaced. I craned my head around as far as I could, but of course you can’t examine your own back. And there were no helpful mirrors in the room, either—this wasn’t the Marriott. But I had little doubt there was something inscribed on my back—and something that wouldn’t wash off easily, if at all.

  I smoothed out the top quilt on the bed and centered my talent on it, setting a basic attraction spell over it. It wasn’t as strong as I would have liked since I had nothing outside to draw on. I picked up the jug of water that had been set out and balanced it carefully on top of the quilt. The idea was that the jug wasn’t compatible—a full water jug does not belong on a bed. Again, rather weak, but better than nothing. I wove that difference into the quilt as well.

  I lay back onto the quilt and triggered the spell. In theory, whatever didn’t belong on my body would be drawn off of it and into the fabric. For a moment nothing happened, and I was starting to wonder if I wasn’t just being paranoid when I felt it. A tearing sensation, just above my lower back, like a length of tape being pulled off or an old scab finally detaching from skin. So much for paranoia.

  I sat up and studied the place on the quilt where I’d been lying. Three marks discolored the material, all dark red. Blood, or blood-based, I’d guess. Two of them were unfamiliar, though they reminded me of the glimpse I’d had of Malcolm’s tattoos. The third one I recognized from the brief study of such things Eli had insisted on when I was younger. It was a binding rune, used for stasis or control. A simple triggering word and I’d either be frozen in place or compelled to obey on command, depending on how the other two marks interacted with it.

  So. Jackie had installed an insurance plan. But now it was an insurance plan for me—when she tried to implement the spell, she’d be in for an unpleasant surprise.

  It had taken a while to straighten all this out. By the time I went downstairs Malcolm was already sitting at a table in the front room eating breakfast, looking alert and rested. Lou was sitting next to him as if he’d found a new best friend. One with breakfast.

  “Fresh baked bread,” he said as I came in. “Have some.” He held out a slice and my stomach lurched warningly.

  “Maybe later,” I said.

  Malcolm handed the slice to Lou, who gobbled it up and pretended I wasn’t there. Jackie came in from outside looking fit and happy. She looked me over critically, giving no indication anything had happened between us.

  “My, but you look chipper this morning,” she said.

  “Please. Put me out of my misery.”

  She seemed to be considering it. I sniffed the air. At least this place had coffee. Carver the barkeep, now a provider of breakfast, appeared with a large mug of it, which I took gratefully.

  “Ready to do some exploring?” Malcolm asked. The coffee was working its soothing magic, which was all that kept me from snarling at him.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Nowhere in particular. I just want to get a feel for the place.”

  “You’re in no hurry to get back.”

  “Nope. Why? Are you?”

  I wasn’t, especially since I still had no clue as to what he and Jackie were up to. One thing was for sure: they hadn’t come here for a sightseeing tour, nor were they much concerned about my take on things. So far I’d played along, but now it was time for some hardball.

  “Not really,” I said. “Of course, I’ve got Lou. I don’t have to worry about getting back. Unlike the two of you.” Malcolm gave me a wary look.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, this has been fun and all, but now I want to know why we’re here. You’re searching for something. You’ve been asking around. What is it, and why are you looking for it?”

  Malcolm put on a baffled expression. He was good at it; if I hadn’t known better, I might have bought it.

  “I have no idea—”

  “Yeah, you do. First of all, I don’t understand exactly what this place is, but I don’t think you created it—not by yourself. It’s way too complex. I think you accessed it; you knew it was here. I don’t care how amazing that book of Richter’s is; there’s no way you simply read it and came up with this.

  “Second, you’ve been hitting up everyone in the place, asking for information. So you’re looking for something. Or someone.

  “And third, if you don’t tell me what this is really about, right now, I’ll leave you here. I’ll take Lou, go home, and you two can find your own way back.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” Jackie said. “I know you better than that.”

  “No? You didn’t have any problem leaving me in that singularity you devised, and that was a lot less pleasant than this one.” I left out the trick she had pulled on me last night. “And if you did your due diligence, which I’d guess you did, then you know a little something about me. You know I’ve run up against dark practitioners before, and some of them are now dead. So don’t try me.”

  I was being melodramatic, but neither of them knew me well enough to be sure of that. The stuff about dead black practitioners was true, but I’d only killed one of them. And that one had been doing his level best to kill me at the time. And the others weren’t my fault at all, not really. I wouldn’t actually leave Jackie and Malcolm stranded here, but they couldn’t be sure of that. But Malcolm just shook his head sadly, determined to play it out.

  “Mason, honest to God, you’ve got it all—”

  I whistled at Lou. “Let’s go,” I said, and headed toward the door.

  “Malcolm, tell him,” Jackie said. “It’s okay.”

  Malcolm looked at her with annoyance. Underneath that bland exterior was a tough individual and a good judge of character; I think he would have let me walk out and taken his chances that I was bluffing. But unfortunately Jackie had now let the cat out of the bag. Malcolm could no longer pretend to be wide-eyed and innocent.

  “Come back,” he said. “Sit down. This will take a while.”

  I was more than happy to return since I hadn’t any backup plan once I’d walked out. Plus, I hadn’t had a chance to finish my coffee yet. I sat back down and waited.

  “Okay,” Malcolm finally said. “First of all, you’re right about one thing. I didn’t create this place; it’s been here all along. Creating it from scratch would be impossible, even with the book. But I didn’t just access it, either. I added to it—we all did, in a sense; that’s what donating some blood was all about.”

  Score one for me.

  “Almost like a wiki,” sa
id Jackie. “It’s already in place, but anyone can make changes to it, and sometimes those changes can be extensive.”

  “So who set it up in the first place? Richter?”

  Malcolm shrugged. “Who can say? It’s complex enough so that it may have been created and then added to over the centuries, way before his time. But he put his own stamp on it, for sure; if you knew more about him, you would see that instantly. Richter was in love with an idealized concept of the ‘old days,’ of pre-industrial Europe. Although from our standpoint, his era was almost pre-industrial itself.

  “So this jolly inn, the quirky innkeeper, the peasants, the casual acceptance of magic—these are all an idealized version of his own take on history. He was a great lover of tales, and a friend of Jacob Grimm, although Grimm was an old man before they crossed paths. Still, those stories of magic, ogres, and dark woods didn’t all come from folklore—some of them came from Richter himself, things he’d seen or experienced, disguised as tales he’d heard in childhood.”

  That was what I’d been trying to put a finger on, why this world seemed not quite real, despite its detail and complexity. It wasn’t Disney; it was the Brothers Grimm. That gave me a new appreciation for the place, and a warning as well. Those stories were seldom entirely benign.

  “So does this place have its own reality?” I asked. “Does it continue merrily along when nobody’s visiting, or does it only wink into existence when someone is in it?”

  I realized that was the kind of question Eli would have asked. Not that I wasn’t interested, but in practical terms it made no difference. And the answer was always the same, anyway. It is and it isn’t. It depends on your definition of reality, and so on.

  “Never mind,” I said. “So why are we here, then? What are you looking for?”

  Jackie leaned in toward me. “The book we’ve been using? Richter’s book?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s only volume one.”

  “That implies a volume two.”

  “Yes. The second book is more advanced—there’s enough information in it to change the world. At least the practitioner world. Richter was a brilliant man, but an odd duck and a paranoid. He was terrified the book would fall into the wrong hands and all his hard-earned knowledge would be appropriated by others.”

  “And by other hands he meant any hands but his own,” Malcolm added. “But he couldn’t bear to destroy the book, and besides, he needed it himself from time to time. So he found this place, or created it, and hid the book here.”

  “And now you want it.”

  “Of course. It’s absolutely vital.”

  “Now we come to the crux of the matter,” I said. I put down my coffee and leaned forward. “Vital for what?” Malcolm got a faraway look for a moment, then refocused.

  “Well, in general, the knowledge in it is priceless,” he said. Jackie interrupted, eyes bright and shining.

  “With this book we can create a singularity that will make this one seem like a poorly constructed theme park. In effect, not a singularity at all. We can create a perfect world and move there—along with the brightest and best, the elite, the creative—not just practitioners, but everyone, everyone worthwhile. We can leave behind the pollution and crime and hatred that are destroying our own world, along with those who are responsible. Let them stew in the filth they’ve made. We’ll be gone. We can make a fresh start.”

  “Sounds almost like the Rapture,” I said. “But why didn’t you just tell me about this? Why all the mystery?”

  Jackie threw up her hands. “You’re working for my mom, remember? What if you told her about it? What if, God forbid, you were to hand it over to her? That would be a disaster for everyone.”

  “She’d create her own singularity?”

  Jackie snorted. “Hardly. She likes the world just the way it is. But if the legends are accurate, there’s a lot of knowledge contained in that book—enough to make her the most powerful practitioner in the world. Has she approached you yet with her song and dance about changing practitioner society—using logic and persuasion?”

  “She did mention something about that.”

  “I’ll bet. Well, that’s not her style. She’s got other agendas, and if she ever got the book, you’d find out soon enough what she’s really about. You wouldn’t be pleased, believe me.”

  “Wouldn’t the first book have been enough for her? To do what she wants?”

  “Not her. She has bigger plans. Besides, she doesn’t have it anymore. That’s why I wiped her computer files and destroyed the original book. Why do you think she’s been so anxious to find me?”

  “But you gave it back,” I said.

  “Yes, but with some key pages missing. She won’t realize that for a while.”

  She waved her hand at the room we sat in. “And the book is useful, incredible, in fact. But compared to the second book—well, it’s the difference between a collection of folk songs and a Mozart symphony.”

  “I see. So you want to get your hands on the second volume and now you think you know where it is?”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said. “It’s hidden away, but now I know its location. And we need to find it.”

  That was fine by me, not that I was going to let them keep it. But getting hold of the book was a good idea—if the second book was that dangerous, it wouldn’t be smart to leave it lying around. The next person who came along to pick it up might not be as responsible as me. And there would be a next person. There always is.

  “One thing puzzles me,” I said. “You found out where this book is pretty easily. So it’s common knowledge, or at least not a mystery to anyone. This little world has practitioners in it. So why hasn’t someone scooped it up already?” Malcolm gave a faint smile.

  “I was wondering if you’d catch that. Well, it seems that the location isn’t the main issue. It’s the other obstacle.”

  “Which is?”

  “There are guardians.”

  TWELVE

  ON OUR WAY TO THE HIDING PLACE, WE PASSED fields of what Malcolm said were wheat and barley, with insects buzzing a pleasant chorus that made me want to stretch out and take a nap. Plenty of insects, but no biting flies and no mosquitoes. Richter’s world might not be totally consistent, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  Jackie chatted easily with me, acting as if the night before had never happened. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to remember any of it, not even the parts that I did. Malcolm pointed out various things of interest, playing tour guide.

  “Remember I told you Richter was friends with Jacob Grimm?” he said.

  “What of it?”

  “No one seems to know what’s guarding the book. But given the fairy-tale aspect of this place, it might well be ogres or trolls or something else from folklore.”

  “Even a witch,” Jackie said. “I don’t mean a Wiccan; I mean a broomstick type.”

  “That, we could handle. A witch is just a type of practitioner when you get right down to it. Has anyone ever seen anything?”

  “No,” said Malcolm, “but that’s not surprising. There are plenty of stories about those who have gone to collect the book, but no stories of those who returned. I don’t think there have been any. I think whatever is guarding the book will turn out to be powerful and unusual. Richter was no simpleton.”

  After an hour without seeing anyone, we passed a big barn close to the road. A guy on the roof was hammering nails, but the sound was out of sync with the motion of his arm, as if he were a mile away. We were getting close to the singularity edge. As we crested a small rise, I looked into the distance and saw mountains, and they had the telltale blurring that indicates the limit of a singularity. Out on the edges, singularities start to unravel, losing internal integrity. Which also meant we were near where we needed to be, since we couldn’t go much farther.

  By this time the fields to the east had been supplanted by rolling woods, which grew thicker the longer we walked. About a quarter mile past the barn a
path angled off into the woods. The day was bright and sunny, but the woods were dark and tangled, with trees that had grown into fantastical shapes, taller than trees should be. Fairy-tale woods. Out here on the fringes, reality was thinner.

  Lou looked at the path leading off into the woods and immediately sat down. Not a good idea to go in there, he was telling me, as if I needed to be told.

  “It’s exactly the way it was described to me,” said Malcolm. “This path leads into the heart of the woods, and then there’s something in the middle. That’s where the book is.”

  “Something?” I asked.

  “Since no one who went into those woods ever came back out, no one could tell me exactly what’s in there. A house, maybe. A cave. A hollow tree. Something.”

  I looked down the path leading into the dark forest. More fairy-tale lore. But what had seemed like a reasonable idea back at the inn didn’t seem so attractive now. Jackie wasn’t put off, however. She stood impatiently, shifting her weight back and forth from one leg to the other.

  “Well?” she said. I shrugged.

  “Why not? We’ve come this far. Come on, Lou.”

  I took a few steps along the path and looked back. Lou hadn’t budged from his spot.

  “Really?” I said. “That bad?” He got up and walked ever so slowly to where I stood. He wasn’t refusing; he was just making a point.

  He took the lead, though. He clearly felt safer up front, no doubt figuring that the rest of us were liable to blunder into trouble that he could easily avoid. The trees crowded in closely, their bases covered with wet moss and their branches drooping over the path. No squirrels ran along these branches and no birds sang. A Grimm forest, to be sure. I’d half expected a long trek with uncanny creatures around every bend, but apart from the creepy atmosphere, nothing. And it couldn’t have been more than an hour before a small clearing appeared, and in the middle, a house.

  And not just any house. It was small, neatly constructed of stone and wood, looking very much like the illustrations I’d seen as a kid in the “Hansel and Gretel” story, except it wasn’t made of candy and cake. A small window overlooked the area in front of the house. A plot of smooth, fine sand spread out from the front door, looking as if it had been carefully raked over and over until it was perfectly even. No footprints of any kind. Maybe Jackie had been right; maybe a grotesque witch would be appearing at any moment from around the corner, hovering on her broom.