by Nora Robets
An angry red glow edged the mist. Though Malory's heart plunged, she gritted her teeth and kept moving. Maybe it wasn't wise to challenge a sorcerer, but aside from the risk she realized another side effect.
She could see another door now where the red and blue lights merged.
The attic, she thought. It had to be. Not illusionary corridors and turns, but the true substance of the house.
She focused on it as she walked forward. When the mists shifted, thickened, swirled, she ignored them and kept the image of the door in her head.
At last, her breath shallow, she plunged a hand through the fog and clamped her fingers around the old glass knob.
Warmth, a welcome flood of it, poured over her as she pulled the door open. She started up, into the dark, with the blue mist creeping behind her.
* * *
Outside, Flynn navigated through the mean-tempered storm, edging forward in the driver's seat to peer through the curtain of rain that his wipers could barely displace.
In the backseat, Moe whimpered like a baby.
"Come on, you coward, it's just a little rain." Lightning pitchforked through the black sky, followed by a boom of thunder like a cannon blast. "And some lightning." Flynn cursed and muscled the wheel in position when the car bucked and shuddered. "And some wind," he added. With gusts approaching gale force.
It hadn't seemed like more than a quick thunderstorm when he'd left the office. But it worsened with every inch of road. As Moe's whimpers turned to pitiful howls, Flynn began to worry that Malory or Dana or Zoe, maybe all three of them, had gotten caught in the storm.
They should have been at the house by now, he reminded himself. But he would have sworn that the rage of the storm was worse, considerably worse, on this end of town. Fog had rolled down from the hills, blanketed them in gray as thick and dense as wool. His visibility decreased, forcing him to slow down. Even at a crawl, the car fishtailed madly on a turn.
"We'll just pull over," he said to Moe. "Pull over and wait it out."
Anxiety skated up his spine, but instead of easing when he nudged the car to the curb, it clamped on to the back of his neck like claws. The sound of the rain pounding like fists on the roof of the car seemed to hammer into his brain.
"Something's wrong."
He pulled out into the street again, his hands vising on the wheel as the wind buffeted the car. Sweat, born of effort and worry, snaked down his back. For the next three blocks he felt like a man fighting a war.
There was a trickle of relief when he spotted the cars in the driveway. They were okay, he told himself. They were inside. No problem. He was an idiot.
“Told you there was nothing to worry about," he said to Moe. "Now you've got two choices. You can pull yourself together and come inside with me, or you can stay here, quaking and quivering. Up to you, pal."
Relief drained away when he parked at the curb and looked at the house.
If the storm had a heart, it was there. Black clouds boiled over the house, pumped the full force of their fury. Even as he watched, lightning lanced down, speared like a fiery arrow into the front lawn. The grass went black in a jagged patch.
"Malory."
He didn't know if he spoke it, shouted it, or his mind simply screamed it, but he shoved open the car door and leaped into the surreal violence of the storm.
The wind slapped him back, a back-handed blow so intense that he tasted blood in his mouth. Lightning blasted like a mortar directly in front of him, and the air stank with burning. Blind from the driving rain, he bent over and lurched toward the house.
He stumbled on the steps and was calling her name, over and over like a chant, when he saw the hard blue light leaking around the front door.
The knob burned with cold and refused to turn under his hand. Baring his teeth, Flynn reared back, then rammed the door with his shoulder. Once, twice, and on the third assault, he broke it in.
He leaped inside, into that blue mist.
"Malory!" He shoved his dripping hair out of his face. "Dana!"
He whirled when something brushed his leg, and lifted his fists, only to lower them on an oath when it turned out to be wet dog. "Goddamn it, Moe, I don't have time to—"
He broke off when Moe growled deep in his throat, let out a vicious bark, and charged up the stairs.
Flynn sprinted after him. And stepped into his office.
"If I'm going to do a decent job covering the foliage festival, then I need the front page of the Weekender section and a sidebar on the related events." Rhoda folded her arms, her posture combative. "Tim's interview with Clown Guy should go on page two."
There was a vague ringing in his ears, and a cup of coffee in his hand. Flynn stared at Rhoda's irritated face. He could smell the coffee, and the White Shoulders fragrance that Rhoda habitually wore. Behind him, his scanner squawked and Moe snored like a steam engine.
"This is bullshit."
"You've got no business using that kind of language with me," Rhoda snapped.
"No, this is bullshit. I'm not here. Neither are you."
"It's about time I got treated with a little respect around here. You're only running this paper because your mother wanted to keep you from making a fool of yourself in New York. Big-city reporter, my butt. You're a smalltime, small-town guy. Always have been, always will be."
"Kiss my ass," Flynn invited and threw the coffee, cup and all, in her face.
She let out one short scream, and he was back in the mist.
Shaken, he rounded once again toward the sound of Moe's barking.
Through that rolling mist, he saw Dana on her knees with her arms flung around Moe's neck.
"Oh, God, thank God. Flynn!" She sprang up, wrapped herself around him as she had the dog. "I can't find them. I can't find them. I was here, then I wasn't, now I am." Hysteria pitched and rocked in her voice. "We were together, right over there, then we weren't."
"Stop. Stop." He yanked her back, shook her. "Breathe."
"Sorry. I'm sorry." She shuddered, then scrubbed her hands over her face. "I was at work, but I wasn't. I couldn't have been. It was like being in a daze, going through the motions and not being able to pinpoint what was wrong. Then I heard Moe barking. I heard him barking, and I remembered. We were here. Then I was back, standing here in this—whatever the hell this is— and I couldn't find them."
She fought for calm. "The key. Malory said the key's here. I think she must be right."
"Go. Get outside. Wait for me in the car."
She breathed deep, shuddered again. "I'm freaked, but I'm not leaving them here. Or you either. Jesus, Flynn, your mouth's bleeding."
He swiped the back of his hand over it. "It's nothing. Okay, we stick together." He took her hand, linked fingers.
They heard it at the same time, the hammering of fists on wood. With Moe once again in the lead, they rushed through the room.
Zoe stood at the attic door, beating on it. "Over here!" She called out. "She's up there, I know she's up there, but I can't get through."
"Get back," Flynn ordered.
"You're all right?" Dana gripped her arm. "Are you hurt?"
"No. I was home, Dana. Puttering around the kitchen with the radio on. Wondering what to fix for dinner. My God, how long? How long were we separated? How long has she been up there alone?"
Chapter Twenty
She was afraid. It helped to admit it, accept it. To know that she was more afraid than she'd ever been in her life, and to realize she was determined not to give in.
The warmth was already being eaten away as the light took on that harsh blue hue. Fingers of mist crawled along the exposed beams on the ceiling, down the unfinished walls, along the dusty floor.
Through it, she could see the pale white vapor of her own breath. Real, she reminded herself. That was real, a sign of life. Proof of her own humanity.
The attic was a long, wide room with two stingy windows at either end and the ceiling rising to a narrow pitch. But she recognized it
. In her dream there had been skylights and generous windows. Her paintings had been stacked against walls done in soft cream. The floor had been clean of dust, and speckled with a cheerful rainbow of paint drops and splatters.
The air had carried a summer warmth and the scent of turpentine.
It was dank now, and cold. Rather than canvases, cardboard boxes were stacked against the walls. Old chairs and lamps and the debris of other lives were stored there. But she could see— oh, so clearly see—how it could have been.
As she imagined it, it began to form.
Warm, washed with light, alive with color. There, on her worktable with her brushes and palette knives, was the little white vase filled with the pink snapdragons she'd picked from her own garden that morning.
She remembered going out after Flynn had left for work, remembered picking those sweet and tender flowers to keep her company while she worked.
Worked in her studio, she thought dreamily, where the blank canvas waited. And she knew, oh, yes, she knew how to fill it.
She walked to the canvas waiting on an easel, picked up her palette, and began to mix her paints.
Sun streamed through her windows. Several were open for the practical purpose of crossventilation, and for the simple pleasure of feeling the breeze. Music pumped passionately out of the stereo. What she intended to paint today required passion.
She could already see it in her mind, feel the power of it gathering in her like a storm.
She raised her brush, swirled it in color for the first stroke.
Her heart lifted. The magnitude of the joy was almost unbearable. She might burst from it if she didn't transfer it onto canvas.
The image was burned in her mind, like a scene etched on glass. With stroke after stroke, color blended on color, she began to bring it to life.
"You know this was always my deepest dream." She spoke conversationally as she worked. "For as long as I can remember I wanted to paint. To have the talent, the vision, the skill to be an important artist."
"Now you have it." She switched brushes, glancing at Kane before she faced the canvas again. "Yes, I do."
"You were wise, making the right choice in the end. A shopkeeper?" He laughed, dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "Where is the power in that? Where is the glory in selling what others have created when you can create yourself? You can be and have whatever you choose here."
"Yes, I understand. You've shown me the way." She slid him a coy look. "What else can I have?"
"You want the man?" Kane shrugged elegantly. "He's bound to you here, a slave to love."
"And if I'd chosen otherwise?"
"Men are capricious creatures. How could you ever be sure of him? Now, you paint your world as you do that canvas. As you wish."
"Fame? Fortune?"
His lip curled. "So it is with mortals always. Love, they say, is what matters more than even life. But it's wealth and it's glory that they really crave. Take it all, then."
"And you, what will you take?"
"I have already taken it."
She nodded, switched brushes. "You'll have to excuse me. I need to concentrate."
She painted in the warm bath of sunlight while the music soared.
Flynn hit the door with his shoulder, then gripped the knob and prepared to ram it again. The knob turned smoothly in his hand.
Zoe gave him a jittery smile. "I must've loosened it for you."
"Stay down here."
"Save your breath," Dana advised and pushed up behind him.
The light seemed to pulse now, thicker and somehow animate. Moe's growling became wet snarls.
Flynn saw Malory, standing at the far end of the attic. Relief was like a hammer blow to his heart.
"Malory! Thank God." He leaped forward, and hit the solid wall of mist.
"It's some sort of barrier." He spoke frantically now as he pushed and slammed against it. "She's trapped in there."
"I think we're trapped out here." Zoe pressed her hands against the mist. "She doesn't hear us."
"We have to make her hear us." Dana looked around for something to batter against the wall. "She must be somewhere else, in her head, the way we were. We have to make her hear us so she'll snap out of it."
Moe went wild, leaping up to tear and bite at the wall of mist. His barks echoed like gunshots, and still Malory stood like a statue, her back to them.
"There has to be another way." Zoe dropped to her knees, pressed her fingers along the mist. "It's freezing. You can see her trembling from the cold. We have to get her out ."
"Malory!" Helpless rage had Flynn pummeling the wall until his hands bled. "I'm not going to let this happen. You have to hear me. I love you. Damn it, Malory, I love you. You listen to me."
"Wait!" Dana gripped his shoulder. "She moved. I saw her move. Keep talking to her, Flynn. Just keep talking to her."
Struggling for calm, he pressed his forehead to the wall. "I love you, Malory. You've got to give us a chance to see where we can go with it. I need you with me, so either come out or let me in."
Malory pursed her lips at the image taking shape on canvas. "Did you hear something?" she asked absently.
"There's nothing." Kane smiled at the three mortals on the other side of the mist. "Nothing at all. What are you painting there?"
"Uh-uh-uh." She wagged a playful finger at him. "I'm temperamental. I don't like anyone looking at my work until it's done. My world," she reminded him and daubed on color. "My rules."
He gave a single, elegant shrug. "As you wish."
"Oh, don't pout. I'm nearly done." She worked quickly now, all but willing the image from her mind onto the canvas. It was, she thought, her masterpiece. Nothing she'd ever done would be so important.
"Art isn't just in the eye of the beholder," she said. "But in that, in the artist, in the subject, in the purpose, and in those who see."
Her pulse skipped and stumbled, but her hand remained steady and sure. For a timeless moment, she shut everything out of her mind but the colors, the textures, the shapes.
And when she stepped back, her eyes glittered with triumph.
"It's the finest thing I've ever done," she declared. "Perhaps the finest thing I will ever do. I wonder what you'll think of it."
She gestured in invitation.
"Light and shadow," she said as he stepped toward the easel. "In looking within, and without. From within me to without and onto the canvas. What my heart speaks. I call it The Singing Goddess" It was her face she'd painted. Her face and the first Daughter of Glass. She stood in a forest, full of sparkling gold light, softened with green shadows, with the river sliding over rock like tears.
Her sisters sat on the ground behind her, their hands clasped.
Venora, for she knew it was Venora, carried her harp, and with her face lifted toward the sky you could almost hear the song she sang.
"Did you think I would settle for cold illusion when I have a chance for the real thing? Did you think I'd trade my life, and her soul, for a dream? You underestimate mortals, Kane."
As he spun toward her, fury leaping off him like flames, she prayed she hadn't overestimated herself, or Rowena.
"The first key is mine." As she spoke she reached toward the painting, reached into it. A stunning blast of heat shot up her arm as she closed her fingers around the key she'd painted at the feet of the goddess.
The key that gleamed in a beam of light that cut the shadows like a gilded sword.
She felt its shape, its substance, then with a cry of victory, she drew it free. “This is my choice. And you can go to hell."
The mists roiled as he cursed her. As he lifted his hand to strike, both Flynn and Moe burst through the wall. With a barrage of sharp, staccato barks, Moe leaped.
Kane faded like a shadow in the dark, and was gone.
As Flynn plucked Malory off her feet, sunlight shimmered in the tiny windows, and rain dripped musically from the eaves outside. The room was only an attic, filled with dust and c
lutter.
The painting she'd created out of love, knowledge, and courage was gone. "I've got you." Flynn buried his face in her hair as Moe leaped on them. "You're all right. I've got you."
"I know. I know." She began to weep quietly as she looked down at the key still clutched in her fingers. "I painted it." She held it out to Dana and Zoe. "I have the key."
Because she insisted, Flynn drove her directly to Warrior's Peak, with Dana and Zoe following. He kept the heater on high, and had wrapped her in a blanket from his trunk that unfortunately smelted of Moe. And still she shivered.
"You need a hot bath or something. Tea. Soup." He dragged a hand that was still far from steady through his hair. "I don't know. Brandy."
"I'll take all of the above," she promised, "as soon as we get the key where it belongs. I won't be able to relax until it's out of my hand."
She clutched it in a fist held tight to her breast.
"I don't know how it can be in my hand."
"Neither do I. Maybe if you explain it to me, we'll both get it."
"He tried to confuse me, the way he separated us. To make me feel lost and alone and afraid. But he must have some limits. He couldn't keep all three of us, and you, in those illusions. Not all at once. We're connected, and we're stronger than he realized. At least that's what I think."
"I can go with that. To give him credit, he had Rhoda pretty much down pat."
"I made him mad, just mad enough, I guess. I knew the key was in the house." She pulled the blanket a little tighter, but couldn't find warmth. "I'm not telling this in good journalistic style."
"Don't worry about that. I'll edit it later. How did you know?"
"The attic's where I made the choice, when he showed me all the things I wanted so much. I realized that was the dream place once I went upstairs with Zoe and Dana. And the studio, the artist's studio, had been on the top floor. The attic. It had to be where I had that moment of decision—like in the paintings. At first I thought we would have to hunt through whatever was up there, and we'd find something that jibed with the clue. But it was more than that, and less."
