The Book of Peril

by Melissa McShane

  I parked and pulled out my phone. No bars. Great. I got out of the car and took a few steps, looking for a spot where I could get reception. The street was quiet, with only a few cars passing by. It smelled like old metal and rubber and a little bit of oil underneath the exhaust of the passing cars. There were no other people on the street, and the quiet was sort of peaceful, if depressing. Old abandoned buildings always made me feel sad, wondering what they might have been like when people used them.

  My phone rang, startling me. “Where are you?” Viv said. “Even you don’t take this long to get to Gresham.”

  “I was going to ask you that question. I’m at the place you told me to go and no one’s here.”

  “You might be one or two streets off. Hang on.”

  I stopped near a warehouse that had once been painted brown and green. “Are you getting a map? You should use your phone for that.”

  “I’m getting a candy bar. I’m starving.” I heard the glove box open and some rustling. Then everything went so quiet I thought I’d lost the connection. “Viv?” I said.

  “Helena,” Viv said, her voice tight and frightened. “Helena, there’s an origami in my glove box.”

  “What? Viv, don’t touch it.”

  “Too late. I accidentally moved it. Nothing happened, but everything’s swimming. I feel like I’m going to faint.”

  “Viv. Viv, stay with me.”

  Viv screamed. “Helena, everything’s changed. The lot, the houses where I was parked—I’m not there anymore. I’m in the IKEA parking lot. What’s happening?”

  My heart raced. “Calm down. You’re safe, right?”

  “Yes, but—why would someone play a trick like that on me?”

  A chill went through me. “Unless it was a trick on me.” I had to get out of there fast. I shoved my phone into my pocket without hanging up and turned to run back to the car. Viv’s voice squawked at me unintelligibly.

  A dark figure rushed at me from between two warehouses, clapping one hand over my mouth and grabbing me around the neck with the other. I groped at his arm, trying to pull it away, trying to breathe, but he was too strong for me. Dizzy, my strength fading, I saw the shadow of a gaping doorway just before I lost consciousness.

  came to with my face pressed against cold, smooth concrete that smelled of oil. Someone had taped my mouth shut and bound my wrists and ankles with more tape. I pulled at it; it gave around my wrists, but not much, and I decided not to waste my strength. Breathing through my nose, I opened my eyes and saw a field of unbroken gray stretching out in front of me. I awkwardly wiggled around until I could get my knees under me and sit up.

  Dim light filtered through the grime of windows too high and small to be exits. I lay near a wooden wall, streaked vertically with old water stains. In the dimness, I could see the barest outline of a door that looked like it might be on rollers. The warehouse was too dark to see all the way to the opposite wall, but to one side lay a stack of rusty rebar and a couple of skinny I-beams. My head was killing me, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I swallowed hard against that impulse. Vomiting while gagged might kill me.

  I lay back down and brought my legs around to kick the wall. If I could get someone to find me, I could escape. Then I remembered how quiet the neighborhood was, how few people there were, and realized the only person likely to hear me was my captor. It might be a good idea to pretend I was still unconscious for a while.

  I sat up again and waited for the dizziness to pass, then inched across the floor, caterpillar-like, toward the far wall. There might be something in this place that would let me cut myself free, and I needed to find it before the light faded entirely. I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few minutes if the sun hadn’t set yet.

  I found more piles of rebar and some concrete blocks, the kind with holes in the middle. Those had rough edges, and I might be able to rub the duct tape against them, but it would take a while to get it to tear. I kept searching. A pile of rags or dust cloths lay clumped toward the back of the warehouse. I hoped it wasn’t filled with mice or something. I crawled toward it and realized it wasn’t a pile of rags; it was a man. I fell in my haste to reach him, twisting to land hard on my shoulder instead of my face, and hunched and crawled the last few feet. I used my other shoulder to roll him onto his back and had a huge shock.

  Malcolm.

  What on earth could have brought him here? No, never mind that, who could possibly have gotten the drop on him? He was bound and gagged as I was, but blood covered his left temple and that whole side of his face, and his breath whistled in and out of his nostrils like he had trouble getting enough air. I swore silently and turned my back on him, groping with my fingertips for the edge of the tape covering his mouth. His skin was rough with faint beard growth, like sandpaper over silk, and I had trouble finding a corner of the tape.

  Finally, my nails pried a little bit of the tape loose, and I pulled as best I could, my fingers slipping on the slick surface, until I could pull it off his face. He groaned but otherwise didn’t move. At least he was alive.

  I wriggled back to the concrete blocks and found a sharp edge, then sawed at the bonds around my wrists. The roughness abraded the soft skin on the inside of my wrists, and I had no idea if it was working, but the light was fading faster, and there was nothing else I could do. I kept my gaze on Malcolm, praying for him to wake. With a head injury like that… I couldn’t let myself finish that sentence.

  Something tore, the tiniest sound, and I flexed my wrists against the tape. It gave maybe a little more than it had the first time. I rubbed faster and felt more of a tear, yanked and pulled and finally managed to rip the tape down the middle. Struggling, I freed myself from the rest of it, tore the tape off my legs and my mouth, and staggered back to Malcolm. Our captor had bound him with several loops of tape, and I couldn’t make even the slightest tear with my nails. I swore again and looked around vainly for something else. I couldn’t use the concrete block like an emery board.

  Malcolm groaned again. Then he moved, discovered his hands were bound, and struggled against the tape for a moment. “Don’t,” I said. “You’ll hurt yourself more.”

  He went still. “Helena?” He sounded utterly horrified. “What are you doing here?”

  “Somebody tricked me,” I said, feeling furious at how they’d used Viv. “Got me out here and then attacked me when there was no one around to see.”

  Malcolm strained against his bonds once more. “They just threw you in here?”

  “No, they tied me up too. There’s a concrete block over here—let me bring it.”

  “Wait. Just—” He paused, sucking in a deep breath. “Give me a minute. My vision is fogged.”

  I helped him sit up, then supported him as he shifted to get his balance. “Idiots,” he said, breathing heavily. “Locked me up in a room full of weapons.” His head turned, assessing the room, and I had no doubt, even in the dimness, he saw more than I did.

  “How did you end up here?” I said.

  “Later. Hold up a piece of that rebar to my hands.” I lifted one end of the long, wobbly piece of steel—oh, steel, of course Malcolm would see it as a weapon. As I watched, the end of it quivered, then ran like liquid, turning silver and thickening as it did so. It reformed into a knife blade, serrated like a shark’s teeth. “Use it like a saw, but don’t cut me.”

  He sounded like his own irritable self, annoyed at the whole thing, and despite our circumstances, I laughed and cut him free. He turned around, peeling the rest of the tape off his hands, then rubbed his wrists and took the knife from me to free his legs. “We were stupid. No, I was stupid. We knew we were close to finding our villain, so I had the team split up. I was ambushed—it couldn’t have been more than an hour ago. But my team knows I’m missing and will be looking for me. I think we should escape and make their job easier.

  “How?”

  “Give me a minute.” He ran, stumbling a few steps, to the door and examined it, fee
ling along its edges. I looked up at the windows. Night had almost fallen, but some of the windows glowed with the yellow light of streetlamps. We wouldn’t be stuck in here in complete darkness, which relieved my mind. I didn’t like the idea of being trapped in darkness, even with Malcolm by my side so I wouldn’t be completely alone.

  Malcolm turned toward me. “I can—”

  A window shattered, sending shards of glass tinkling to the ground. I bit back a startled shriek. Something black that gleamed in the lamplight pulled itself through the gap and skittered along the ceiling, its round head turning every way like an owl’s. An invader, scenting us. I screamed. “Where did it come from?”

  Malcolm swore and put me behind him. “This is how he intended to make our deaths look accidental. There are dozens of them. Helena, get to the door.”

  “There’s only one.”

  “Of course there’s only one door.”

  “Not the door, the invader. The rest are illusions. There’s only—” Another one crawled over the window sill. “Okay, now there’s two.”

  “Which ones?” Malcolm strode to a pile of rebar and folded one of the long poles in half as easily as if it were made of plastic rather than steel. It rippled, the two halves flowing together into a single silvery mass. He tucked it under one arm and repeated the process with a second length of steel.

  “One on the ceiling, one hanging over the window sill. Malcolm, we need to get out of here.”

  “You need to get out of here. I can’t let these things escape.”

  A third invader came skittering through the window opening. “If you open the door, they’ll chase me and escape into the streets.”

  Malcolm swiped at empty air. “Which ones are real?”

  “I don’t know what you see.” I ran to his side, trying to stay out of his way.

  Malcolm handed me one of his blades. It wasn’t a sword; it was a long, skinny thing that looked like a knife strapped to a pole. “Strike the real ones!”

  I shrieked as one of them made a dash for me, and swung at it. I missed. Malcolm didn’t. He impaled the thing, then flung it far away into the darkness. “Keep swinging,” he shouted.

  More of them came at us. The room filled with the stink of rotten eggs, the smell of unharnessed invaders. I tried to see in all directions at once, terrified of letting one past my guard. I couldn’t begin to imagine how Malcolm felt, faced with a seeming horde of invaders, dependent on my sight to keep us both alive. I swung at something with too many legs and not enough heads and my blade cut it in half. I shouted with excitement and swatted at another that Malcolm killed. “How many?” he shouted.

  “Three,” I cried. There weren’t any more coming through the window, no real ones, anyway. Malcolm swung, pivoted, thrust and swung again in his deadly dance. Blood flowed down his face again, but he ignored it. He looked like a warrior out of Greek myth, his eyes alight with fury, his shirt torn across the shoulder where an invader’s claw had raked him.

  Something touched me on the leg, something that burned, and my vision tunneled. Malcolm shouted my name, and in a daze, I turned and swung at something that looked like a cat crossed with a spider that had its jaws locked onto my calf. It shrieked as my blade and Malcolm’s intersected on it, cutting it into four parts. Malcolm held me up, and I smiled at him. “There’s one more,” I said dreamily, watching it spin down from the ceiling toward us.

  Without turning his attention from me, Malcolm thrust upward with his blade and spitted the thing through its bulging abdomen. My vision began to clear. “That was strange,” I said, still smiling.

  “Very strange, as it seems to have made you euphoric,” Malcolm said. “But we have no time. There was a human agency behind that attack, and it’s possible our captor may return to see what his creatures have done. Lie here and pretend to be dead.”

  “Okay,” I said, though I felt so happy I had trouble not leaping up and beginning a floating, swaying dance. Maybe Malcolm would dance with me. That would make me even happier.

  Malcolm took several running steps away from me. Everything went silent. I covered my mouth to keep from giggling. This situation was so ludicrous, all of it. Surely it was obvious I wasn’t dead. I was breathing, wasn’t I? I turned my face away from the door, just in case.

  Eventually, the door rolled open, the wheels squeaking. Footsteps, slow and cautious, came toward me. Then there was the sound of a scuffle, and louder metallic squealing. Malcolm said, “Can you stand yet, Helena?”

  “I can fly,” I said. I pushed myself to my feet and was surprised to discover I could not, in fact, fly. I was terribly disappointed.

  A man lay on the concrete floor, wiggling against his bonds, which looked like several lengths of rebar wound about his body. “Wow,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  He glared at me, still struggling, but said nothing. “Leave him for now,” Malcolm said. He held a handful of silver mesh and leather straps I recognized as harnesses to turn invaders into familiars. “We should contact the team. Where is your bodyguard?”

  “I don’t know. He was behind me all the way here.” I smiled and followed the path of a moth as it fluttered up to bang against a street light. How had the bad guy controlled those invaders in the first place? Magic was so wonderful and strange.

  Malcolm scowled. “This is precisely what he was supposed to guard you against.”

  “Being kidnapped by someone who controls illusions and invaders? Not even you could have anticipated that.”

  Malcolm scowled harder, but said nothing.

  Rusted metal stairs running along the outside of the warehouse led to a small office, where we found both our phones, as well as a lot of miscellaneous gear belonging to Malcolm. Malcolm immediately texted his team, then he fitted his goggles to his forehead and began putting away his gear into his various pockets. My still-euphoric self thought I should find out where he shops, those pockets would be so useful. Within seconds, Malcolm’s phone began vibrating like crazy. Malcolm checked the incoming texts, then trotted back down the steps with me following behind.

  I checked my own phone. Viv had sent about twenty increasingly distressed texts and seven phone calls. I texted back SAFE AND FINE WILL CALL IN A FEW MINUTES.

  On the street, Malcolm made a call. “Where the hell are you?” he shouted. “Miss Davies nearly died—” Whoever was on the other end of the line cut him off with a long, impassioned string of words. Malcolm’s expression calmed somewhat. Finally, he said, “Understood. My office, tomorrow at 9 a.m. I will take that into consideration.”

  “Was that Gemini?” I said when he’d hung up.

  “Mr. Benson was led astray by another origami,” Malcolm said. “It seems our villain thought of everything except your ability to see through illusions.” He turned and went back into the warehouse.

  The man had stopped struggling. Malcolm prodded him with his toe, then went to one knee beside him. “Damn it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “He’s dead.” Malcolm rolled him onto his back. The man’s face was mottled in the light from the streetlamps, and his tongue, swollen and grotesque, protruded from his mouth as if he were taunting us like a child.

  “How could he do that? Poison?”

  “He was likely a bone magus. They can manipulate the human body in many ways to cause death. Don’t let that make you fear Tinsley. He would never hurt an innocent.”

  “I know.” I stared at the man’s face some more. “I don’t recognize him.”

  “Nor do I.” Malcolm stood and beckoned to me. “We’ll shut him in here and let Lucia’s people handle him. They will be able to identify him and learn more than that.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We do nothing. You go home. I’ll continue searching for the primary illusion.”

  “I’m going to help.”

  Malcolm shook his head and took a step toward me. “You are not going to help. You’ll be safer—”

  I matched him step f
or step. “We eliminated—okay, he eliminated himself, but the person who was a threat to me is gone, and it’s Abernathy’s that’s in danger. If he hid the primary illusion under another illusion, I’ll be better able to see it than you will.”

  Malcolm settled his swimmer’s goggles over his eyes. “That’s what these are for.”

  “Please, Malcolm. I can’t bear sitting by and doing nothing. Let me help.”

  Malcolm’s lips compressed tight. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  “I won’t. I’ll do what you say, and I won’t get in the way. Promise.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Let’s start by searching the man’s office.”

  he windows of the office had been blacked out with navy blue sheets fastened to the frames with duct tape, but it was well-lit and had been set up for living in. A sleeping bag lay against the far wall, next to a cooler filled with Cokes floating in half-melted ice. I wished I dared help myself to one; my mouth felt furry after being gagged. But I guessed Lucia would be pissed if I stole what could even marginally be called evidence.

  A student’s desk, the kind where the chair is part of the desk frame, sat near a gooseneck lamp. A cardboard box on the floor next to it was full of origami paper, greens and blues and reds, all without patterns. A second cardboard box had little folded figures half-filling it. “I guess this is where he made them,” I said.

  Malcolm shook his head. “He was no paper magus. Either he was trying to teach himself the art, which would be stupid, or he had a compatriot. I hope it was the former. I don’t want to have to track down someone else.”

  There was another cardboard box next to the cooler, this one also containing origami. I gasped. “More of the exploded snowflakes.”

  Malcolm adjusted his goggles. “These are inert. They also represent a large outlay of cash.”

  “How do you know his partner didn’t make them? If he had a partner.”

  “Those origamis—” Malcolm pointed at the other box of folded paper—“are clearly the work of another hand, one I’m familiar with. We tracked down the seller of the exploded snowflakes. Or, rather, we tracked down his body. He was murdered five days ago, presumably to keep our man’s secret.”