Labyrinth g-5

by Kat Richardson

  I rapped lightly on one of the doors that seemed most likely to be functional and not just nailed in place. The man inside scuffled around and pulled the door open.

  He was stocky, shorter than average, with round, heavy shoulders and legs slightly bowed. His thin gray hair was brushed down more in hope that it would cover his scalp than with any real expectation. He jumped a bit at seeing me and blinked hard, making a chewing motion and a snort. He stayed in the doorway with one hand on the door and the other on the frame as if he thought I was going to rush inside if he didn’t. The energy around him was a nervous shade of orange shot with green.

  “What? Hello. What can I do for you?” he asked, his voice was low and scratchy, like a conspirator’s.

  I matched his volume—there was no need to be louder standing so close. “Are you Charlie Rice?”

  “I—yeah. Yeah, I’m Charlie.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about a pair of puzzle balls you had about sixteen or eighteen months ago. They came from a house. . . .”

  Rice scowled. “Don’t have ’em.”

  “Yes, I know. I have one of them. I wondered where they came from and what happened to the other one.” My eye was caught by something else moving inside the office. Something tall and thin. A cold feeling bolted through my gut, stopping my breath. I felt a warm thing looming behind me as well, but I kept my eyes forward.

  He blanched. “You have one? Oh, God—”

  The shadow inside leaned toward Rice’s head and I started to reach for him, to pull him away, but the door jerked open, yanked out of Charlie’s hand, making him stumble a bit.

  Will Novak stood just behind Rice’s shoulder, the door creaking as it swung wide, nearly off its hinges. “Harper!” He clapped Charlie on the shoulder with one crabbed hand covered in livid scars and scuffed bloody across the knuckles. “See: I told you she’d come.”

  I was shocked to see him.

  Will looked horrific. For a moment I couldn’t believe he was there, much less upright in such a state. He hadn’t regained any weight—possibly he’d lost even more in the week since I’d seen him last. His skin was slack over unpadded bones and it had a raw, dry look, as if it had been scrubbed too much. He hadn’t replaced his glasses and his eyes glinted out of shadowed pits beneath his brow without seeming to blink. Energy rioted around him in clashing colors and sparks with no cohesion or harmony except for a single black line that ran steady and unmoving through the mess, more like a lack than a presence. A spike of fear—for him or of him, I wasn’t sure—struck through me as I looked at him.

  A shrieking disharmony of voices battered inside my skull, and I had to concentrate on calm, on normalcy. “Will, what are you doing here?”

  “Wanted to see you.”

  “You don’t need to see me right now. You need to rest and get better.” But I feared he was never going to get better, that his broken, sickening discord was permanent, and that twisted in my gut. “How did you even know I was coming?”

  His aura flickered with antifreeze-green lightning. “Michael told me.”

  The mad chorus in my head chimed, “Liar, liar . . .” as Will drew his hands together, rubbing the bruised knuckles of one hand in the cupped hollow of the other. A prescient flash struck me like a physical blow. “You hit him.”

  He blinked as if wounded. “He wouldn’t have told me otherwise. And I needed to see you. I owe you . . . everything. Everything.”

  The worshipful sound in his voice sickened me. “No, you don’t. All I did was get you in too deep in the first place.”

  He shook his head. “No. No. You saved my life.”

  I felt myself growing remote and cold against my will. “Michael saved your life. He found you, he carried you out, he took you away. Not me.” My spine seemed to vibrate and ring with the shouting of the Grey voices, and I almost choked on the sound.

  Charlie Rice tried to slip away while Will’s attention was on me, but Quinton sidled over and caught him. “Where did the ball come from?”

  “Leavenworth,” Rice whispered back, shooting nervous glances at me and Will while trying to move farther away. “Old house in the orchards, but it’s gone. Nothing left but the foundation. . . .”

  “Did this house have a maze or a labyrinth, a pattern on the floors—anything like that?”

  Charlie shook his head in a spastic way without letting Will and me out of his sight. “Don’t know. I just—” He seemed to catch himself and change his mind before he said, “I just cleared the wreckage.”

  Will stepped toward me, reaching with his bent, mutilated hands, his stride crooked and off-balance. “I need you, Harper.” He glanced toward Quinton and Rice, his aura flashing orange, followed by green and red. “The new guy doesn’t need you. Not like I do.” I felt repelled in a way I couldn’t explain, as if Will had become poisonous. Sensations of pity and horror fought with the frigid resistance that welled up in me as if I were splitting in two. This icy disgust wasn’t like me. . . .

  Quinton’s shoulders stiffened and he turned a little more in our direction. “No. I don’t need her. I don’t need her to be anything or do anything. I only want her to be what she is.”

  “See?” Will implored, laying his wrecked hands on my shoulders. “I need you. I’ll go with you.”

  His touch was hot and cold, sharp as electricity; it roused the chorus and made me want to scream with them and shove him away. I gulped in air and swallowed the voices. “No, you won’t. Not there. It won’t be safe—there are monsters in labyrinths, don’t you remember? You’re only safe here, with Michael. Not with me.”

  Rice turned to escape again, but Quinton sprang after him and snatched him to a halt nearby, asking, “Where did the other ball go? Who has it?”

  “I . . . might have the receipt. . . .”

  “OK, then. Let’s look at your records.”

  Rice leapt at the chance to get away from Will and me and dragged Quinton back into the office, snapping the door closed after them and leaving us outside in the strange assembly of broken houses. Will tried to grip my shoulders and draw me closer, but his hands felt like giant crab claws and they had no strength to hold me. I slid free, guilty at my relief.

  “Will, please. You don’t understand how unsafe you are with me. I didn’t save you from anything; I put you in danger.”

  He shook his head and his eyes were bright with an unreasonable adulation. It made me feel sick and I wanted to cry over it, but that was the last thing I would do. “It’s not true,” he whispered. “I love you. You love me; you came after me.”

  My voice came out cold. “I came after some work. I found you entirely incidentally. It was luck—mostly bad luck.”

  He made a small smug smile and shook his head again. “You can’t get rid of me by lying. I know what you really feel.”

  I sighed. “Oh, no.” I tried to turn away and come back later, figuring Quinton would get the information I needed for now. But whatever else I did, I had to get away from the mania shining in Will’s eyes. It tore me into pieces to see it—to see him like this—but still the sensation of being coated in emotional ice deepened.

  Will hooked one of his hands under my arm at the shoulder and tugged me back. “We need to be together, Harper. I won’t let you go. I’ll come with you. Trust me.”

  There was no way I could. The little voices trilled and chattered: “Touch him, touch him, make him go.”

  For a raw, heartless moment I did not resist them. I turned back, letting my body roll into the compass of his arms, not like a lover but like an enemy ducking under his guard, and putting out my hands so the tips of my fingers brushed across his chest. It felt like I’d touched a corpse. I let my hands slide up to frame his face, feeling the rippling colors of his chaotic aura like currents of hot and cold water and sudden spikes of electric shock. I tangled my fingers in the energy strands and wondered if I could do something. . . .

  I leaned on all the persuasion I had and tried to think his aura to a c
alm shade of blue. I doubted it would work, but anything was worth trying. “You don’t need to come along now. You need to sleep. And I’ll be back soon. Just sleep.” No luck: Nothing was happening and, if anything, Will only seemed annoyed by my attempts to calm him down or persuade him to give up.

  “Don’t coddle me, Harper.” His tone was sharp with sudden anger.

  I stiffened and would have replied, but the opening of the office door cut me off. Quinton popped out, stuffing something into his pocket and closing the door behind him, leaving Rice alone inside. Will glared at him as Quinton eased next to me and put his left hand around my waist, pulling me back from my former boyfriend. I felt something nudge against my side as I dropped my arms and stepped back next to Quinton, but I couldn’t look down. “You ready to go?” he whispered.

  I nodded and we started to turn away.

  Will stepped forward, trying to reestablish his hold on me. Quinton gave him a narrow look over his shoulder. I risked a glance down and saw that Quinton was pressing the hard handle of a stun stick into my hidden side, offering it to me underhand, as he turned halfway back to say, “Let it go.”

  “You don’t understand—” Will started.

  “I do. But Harper can’t save you; you need to start saving yourself. And you need to let her go and do what she has to do.”

  Will glared at him and brushed past to pull me to his chest again. I snatched the device into my fist as Will yanked me away from Quinton.

  “Oh, man. Don’t do that,” Quinton said.

  “Will, don’t,” I echoed, stumbling forward, turning the hard shape of the stun stick around in my hand. “Just let go of me. Go home to Michael—”

  Heavy footsteps thudded on the wooden floor, drawing closer to the rear of the shop.

  “Michael can’t help me—he doesn’t know how!”

  “Neither do I!”

  “Yes, you do! Yes, you do! You’re the only one. I need you! I’m going—”

  He cut himself off as two cops came around the end of the stack of doors and windows. These weren’t slicked-down, tourist-friendly bike cops; they were old-fashioned beat-pounders in full gear. They glanced at Quinton and then at Will, then back to Quinton, their shoulders tensing as they took in Will’s grip on my shoulder and Quinton’s protective arm at my waist, masking the object I now held.

  “Mr. Rice?” one of them inquired, but they both kept their eyes on Will. I knew they couldn’t see the madhouse colors around his head, but they still had cop instincts for trouble. Neither reached for their guns, but their hands touched their belts. One of them hung back while the other stepped toward us. “Is one of you Mr. Rice?”

  The office door creaked open on its damaged hinges and the owner stuck his head out. “I’m Rice.”

  “What’s the problem, Mr. Rice?”

  Rice’s voice quavered, but he answered strongly enough. “Mr. Novak is frightening my customers. He should be at home—he’s been in an accident and he’s . . . not himself. I—please. Would you help Mr. Novak get home safely?”

  Will whipped back to stare at Rice. “Charlie! No! Don’t do this to me!”

  “William, you’re not well.”

  Will made an irrational growling sound and released me so he could grab for Rice. The violence of his gesture spun me toward the nearer policeman and I ducked to avoid hitting the man. The cop sidestepped me and lunged forward to catch Will by the shoulders.

  In a second, the two cops, Will, and Charlie Rice were a scuffling mass in the office doorway. Will shouted and thrashed, doing more damage to his reputation than anything else, though he did manage to break Rice’s nose with one flailing elbow. The splattering blood sent Will into fits, and he threw himself back from Rice and the cops, exhausted and terrified beyond all reason. Making shrill screeching sounds, he lurched backward into the half-glass doors and tumbled through one of the upper panes with a crash.

  The cops and Charlie Rice ran into the office to retrieve him and Quinton put his hand back under my free elbow, urging me forward. “C’mon, let’s get out of here before this gets crazier.”

  I was still at war inside: A part of me said I should stay and try to help Will, but I turned with Quinton and we zigzagged our way out of the antiques warehouse and back to the Rover. I hoped that Will was all right—or as all right as he was likely to be—and that Rice’s nose wasn’t too badly wrecked, but I didn’t go back to find out. We bailed into the truck and abandoned the situation to the cops.

  TWENTY-ONE

  We reached the West Seattle Bridge near the container yards before I broke down. I felt as if some fortress of ice had surrounded me and now shattered, letting the horror and despair I should have felt before rush out. I had to pull over and stop the truck as my vision flooded with wavering crimson. Quinton drew me into his lap and pressed a paper napkin to my cheek to catch my running red tears. “It’s OK, babe. It’ll be all right.”

  “ ‘Babe’?” I sniffled, pulled out of my confusion, upset, and pity by the oddity of the word.

  He shrugged. “I’m terrible with synonyms. I’m a science geek, not an English teacher, you know.”

  I blotted up the bloody mess and blew my nose. “ ‘Babe’ is what you call women with more boobs than brains,” I said. “And I may be acting stupid, but given how little bust I’ve got, it doesn’t say much for what’s north of my chin.”

  Quinton made a bemused face. “I am not going to try to unravel that. But regardless of whether it’s your boobs or your brain you’re insulting, you’re wrong: They’re both magnificent.”

  I poked him in the shoulder. “What are you on? I feel like I’ve got a sieve full of Jell-O in my head. Oh, gods, poor Will. . . . I shouldn’t have left him like that.” And why had I? Why had I gone so cold . . . ?

  “It was Rice’s call—he thought the cops might be the best solution. He’s known Novak for years and he’s just as worried about him as you are. He’ll be all right.”

  “No, he won’t.” I squirmed around so I could see Quinton better. “Maybe you didn’t notice—”

  “That he’s lost it completely? Yes, I did. But it wouldn’t be diplomatic of me to say it.”

  “You just did.”

  “Yeah. . . .” He bit his lower lip and looked away. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s the truth, so . . . you shouldn’t be. And I feel there’s nothing I can do. I wanted to—I tried . . . but it didn’t work. I felt like it was too much to care for. . . .”

  “You can’t fix everything. You try too hard to fix too much of the world as it is. And don’t start saying that what happened to Novak is your fault: It isn’t. No one could expect him to keep his head on straight after being kidnapped and tortured by things he thought only existed in horror films and pulpy novels. This is one thing you’re going to have to let go. You can’t help Novak. You can help a lot of other people by completing the task you already set for yourself. You have to stop wasting your energy on what you can’t change.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. I wanted to be angry or, better still, to be as cold and remote as I’d felt at Charlie Rice’s warehouse—it would hurt less than the horror and sorrow that now pressed on my chest—but that, too, wasn’t working. Quinton dropped his forehead onto my shoulder for a moment and took a deep breath before he looked up again.

  “Harper. I’m not saying it’s wrong to want to help, but you can’t do it all, and some of it is simply not doable. Someone said, ‘Pick battles small enough to win, big enough to matter.’ You need to pick the one you can win.”

  “How do I know which one that is?”

  “You know. You just don’t like thinking you’re abandoning someone. Especially someone you went back for once already. But that’s not the job you’re on now. It’s up to Novak and his brother to take what you gave them and do their best. Like it’s up to you to do your best with what you have in front of you right now.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and spread it on my thigh. “I have the address in
Leavenworth.”

  My heart stuttered. “For the maze?”

  “No. For the other puzzle ball. Kind of a funny coincidence that it went right back where it came from, yeah?”

  I felt a tug of curiosity and a touch of premonition. My brows drew down as I thought about it. “Probably not a coincidence at all. . . .”

  Quinton hugged me suddenly and with unexpected power. “Glad to have you back, sweetheart.”

  I slumped into him. “Have I been missing?”

  “A little. Off and on.”

  I shook my head. “I’m hearing things and I can’t seem to . . . feel what I ought to, as well as all the rest. I feel pressed for time and anxious to get this over with before things get worse. As if I even knew what sort of worse they might get. And yet part of me is growing remote, as if none of this matters.”

  “It does matter. You’re just overwhelmed.”

  I took that in with a nod, though I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  “You’re hearing things?” he asked, looking concerned.

  “Yeah. Singing and voices. From the Grey. Not ghosts, something more . . . endemic. Sometimes it says things I need to listen to, sometimes it seems to move me, but most of the time, it’s just noise. Intrusive, implacable noise. Like the audience at a rock concert without the music.”

  “Do they have lighters?”

  “What?”

  “Lighters. You know: The sappy ballad dedicated to some dead band member starts up and everyone flicks their Bic and holds it on high.”

  I fixed an incredulous stare on him. “You have a romantic streak as wide as a hair.”

  “I am very romantic—I brought you flowers for your birthday.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “The ferret ate them.”

  I glared at him.

  “All right, she didn’t eat them. She pushed them on the floor and broke the vase and I had to throw them out, but I did bring them. You just weren’t home to appreciate them. See: That’s romantic, even if it’s kind of messed up. But that rock concert thing is sentiment, of which I have almost none.”