Being the imaginary detective Everett Burke wasn’t so different from being Ev Lethewood. They were both mailmen, both parents—the hyperobservant mailman from Ev’s favorite novels had a son, Peter, who was Astrid’s age.
Astrid. My child’s name is Astrid. I can hang on.
That was what he kept telling himself, right up to the moment when Burke took it into his head to have a chat with Teo.
He stepped off the bone bridge and found Teo waiting, his long hair unbound, a predatory smile on his face. Contaminated warriors were arrayed behind him. Hostility poured off them like skunk musk.
Jacks, an angel of fire, burned at the edge of the Pit, melting the underground river that poured into the Chimney.
“Your people are hidden in the ice towers,” he said. “I can show you where.”
“Looking for a thank-you, Harry?”
“I’m past expecting anything from you.” It was petty and he knew it, but Teo’s lip curled.
“Where’s Beauty?” he asked. “She losing interest now you’re devolving into an old goat?”
“Patience has things to do.”
“Like avoiding her crazy-cursed she-male of a sweetheart.”
“You’re trying to pick a fight,” he said, trying to breathe through the sting of Teo’s words.
“I should know better. You Lethewood girls wouldn’t show an honest emotion if—”
“It’s Burke, young man.”
“Your daughter’s gonna fry, you know. Your woman’s drifting away, your sanity—well, that’s moth-eaten already, and as for this delusion that magic has made you one of the boys—”
“That’s enough.”
“Gonna shut me up?”
“No,” Ev said, but his arm—the heavy one—disagreed, straight out from the shoulder, bam, and he’d done it, he’d punched Teo in the nose. There was a crunch, as of plaster breaking, and a fall of red sand, a dry nosebleed that mixed with the bone-colored soil at their feet.
The warriors hooted in triumph. Teo grinned, baring his teeth, and fell into a crouch. Ev’s gut clenched around a dawning awareness of having been foolish.
The light coming off Jacks flickered then, and diminished. The vitagua river froze with a series of loud, icy snaps.
Teo took Ev’s hand with surprising gentleness, turning it upward to reveal a split knuckle. He smeared Ev’s blood on his fingers, taking a deep whiff.
There was a crackle in the air, like electricity.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“That’s me, shoving my head into the crack between worlds,” Teo said.
“Stop!” One of Astrid’s ringers rose from the pooling vitagua.
Teo rounded on her. “What gives, bitch? Daddy finds my missing people, you shut down the outflow?”
“We’ve got a problem in town.”
“What sort of problem?”
“Pop—were you fighting?
“Oh, kid,” Teo said, flicking red sand away from his face. “You so aren’t the boss of him.”
Ev laughed, surprising himself.
“What’s this big problem you’re having?”
“Fyremen hit our pipeline. I lost two of the tunneling crew.”
“Boo hoo. Dig another hole.”
“And have that burned out too?” she said. “Teoquan, we need time to work out a new vitagua-dispersal scheme that’ll have a minimal impact on the real.”
“Minimal impact,” he mocked. “This could be all over in minutes if you wanted.”
“I’m not the one who trapped you here.”
“You aren’t getting us out, either.” Teo rubbed the smear of Ev’s blood on the bricks at their feet. A jolt beneath them; Ev grabbed his hand, wincing at a sudden flare of pain.
Astrid’s mouse face pinkened. Vitagua gushed upward, backwards, out of the real and back into the Pit. Jacks dimmed to an ember glow. A roar, a huff of steam, and the air filled with blue mist. Astrid waved a hand, congealing the last of the melted vitagua into a pool of slush at Jacks’s feet. As a chill ran through the chamber, Teo’s feet were caught in ice.
She pushed back, Ev realized. Reversed the well’s flow …
“You’re right, Teo. It could be over in a minute—one way or the other.”
One of Teo’s warriors took a run at her, and Astrid caught him in a wave, freezing him solid.
“Oh, sweetie pie, you want to play with me?”
“To hell with you, Teo,” she said. “You complain, you moan, nothing’s good enough. Do it faster, do it better…”
“For that, you’ll toss us all back in the freezer?”
“To save lives—”
“You’d leave Mommy and Auntie Patience in here to freeze?”
“He’s got a point,” Ev said. “You can’t keep turning the flow up and down like the volume on a stereo.”
Petey and Teo both startled, as if they had forgotten he was there.
“This isn’t some whim, Pop. Ilya’s dead. The river’s gone.”
“Then blow the well, like he says.”
“The curse—”
“Break it,” Ev said.
“Pop—”
“Break the Frog Prince curse, Pete—Astrid.”
“Attaboy,” Teo said. “Listen to Dad, Petey.”
“As for you, Teo,” Ev said. “Grab a little perspective. You want to ignore the logistics of moving half a million Roused in the real? You need to listen when Patience says it’s not that easy.”
Teoquan’s lips pulled back, again revealing the points of his teeth. “Okay, not now. But when we run out of letrico—outta food—you start the open-air release, curse or no.”
It was obvious she didn’t want to agree, but after a long moment Astrid nodded. “Okay.”
“One other thing,” Teoquan said. “I see another of these mousey Popsicle abominations of yours, I rip its head off.”
“I understand,” she said, putting out a hand. Teoquan ignored it, leading his entourage of warriors away.
Ev took a long breath as she watched him go. Bulletins were coming in on the dead tunneling crew, on a power blackout in New York, on a big Fyreman recruiting push—practically a draft—under way in California. In Memphis, pet owners were reporting that their dogs were refusing to leave their homes; cats wouldn’t come in.
Tuning in calmed him, washing out some of the confusion that came with being Everett Burke.
The ringer turned. “Brawling, Pop? Are you crazy?”
“Let’s get to Pucker Hill before he changes his mind.”
“What did you think you were going to accomplish?”
The urge to tell her to butt out warred with the weight of parental responsibility. Did he really have to be a good role model anymore? He was fifty, and Astrid was … still his child.
“You’re right, of course, I shouldn’t have hit him. But we just snatched three or four days you didn’t have,” Ev said. “He might’ve busted through now and taken all the vitagua with him.”
“Open-air contamination, worldwide, with the curse…”
“Break it,” Ev repeated. “My horns hurt.”
“Right. Like it’s simple. Like any of this is simple.” She rubbed her eyes, looking so much like her poor father that confusion whirled in Ev.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “Do your job, kid. The future will take care of itself.”
“You believe that?” Little-girl eyes, like she was six.
No, Ev thought. We only have your word that it’ll all be okay, and if you aren’t sure … “You promised, right?”
To his surprise, she burst into tears. He held her chilly body awkwardly. Albert had been so good at this.…
“The letrico will run out within days,” she said. “I was hoping for decades.”
“Decades of getting carped at by the likes of Teo?”
She sniffed. “Well—”
“Maybe it’s like having a baby,” Ev said. “You don’t get to pick the time.” Memories of being in labor clash
ed with his Everett Burke persona, leaving him queasy. His core, the person he really was, was eroding.
She let out a shaky breath. “I’ve burned this mouse out.”
“Talk to you later, baby.” He kissed her on the forehead, and the ringer froze in place, a mannequin Astrid, too much like the Albert statue for comfort. Ev turned his back on it, shaking out his knuckles as he headed back to the earth lodge.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
IN SLEEP, ASTRID LOOKED like a completely different person. The frown of concentration unkinked itself from her brow. With her ball cap off, the corkscrew whorls of her hair spread across the pillow, copper wire against snow white linen. Fairy-tale stuff: her cheeks pinkened, her lips pursed. Freckles sprayed random constellations on her skin.
As Will watched her sleep, he flashed on a night years ago, him and Caro with their backs turned to each other. There had been a fight brewing, yet another fight … He couldn’t remember what. Ellie had been in trouble at school, maybe? Neither of them had the energy or the desire to push it to actual yelling. They had turned in, silent, furious, and—in Will’s case—desolate.
Was this his future, he had wondered, endless nights of suffocating silence?
He woke later with the sheet twisted around him, a stretch of cotton across his windpipe. For the barest of instants, he had been convinced his wife was strangling him.
Paranoia, nothing more, but right then he’d known their marriage was ending.
He would tell the kids the truth, and organize some kind of memorial service for Caro. As he made the decision, another of his internal knots untied itself. Astrid drew in a noisy breath that was almost a snore.
Oddly at peace, he slid out of bed. Stepping into the scalding embrace of the spring-fed hot pool, he washed, then wove himself some clean clothes. Feeling as neatly pressed as Arthur in a full-dress uniform, he stepped out of the living quarters onto one of the garden paths … and came face-to-face with one of Astrid’s ringers.
“Hi.”
He started. Behind the screen, Astrid was asleep. Yet here they were, nose to nose.
“What’s up?” He spoke before the ringer could kiss him.
“Mark’s run off to expose the Fyremen.”
“When you say run off—” The questions forming in his mind triggered a flow of information from the news center: Mark had drunk one of the potions they found at the fire hall, something that hid him from the gaze of their seers. He’d disappeared through Bramblegate with the magic shovel. Apparently there’d been an argument while Will was gone. Mark had wanted to use the shovel to go after the Fyremen’s rosarite and, hopefully, find the source of the curse.
“Did he take letrico?”
“Not enough,” Astrid said. “He’ll do a heat draw.”
“He’ll hit the far North or the South Pole then,” Will suggested. “Or maybe one of those Canadian forests with the invasive beetle problem.”
“You know how big those forests are?” Astrid said. “He could be anywhere.”
“We can track him when the storm starts.”
“If he hasn’t frozen to death by then.” Her flat agreement gave him a chill.
“Why would Mark, of all people, hare off like that?”
“He thought I was procrastinating,” she said. “And…”
“What?”
“By running off, he … I didn’t have to send anyone off to die.”
“You think he’s being noble?”
“Why not?”
Will scratched his head. “When Mark first learned about magic, he got the greeds.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was.”
They stepped into the Bigtop, into a gathering of hundreds of volunteers. Igme was passing out chantments.
“If Mark succeeds in exposing the Fyremen,” the ringer said, “I’ll send people out to try breaking the curse. And—”
And not all of them would come back, Will thought.
“They’ll have a better chance if you go too, Will. You could chant things as they’re needed.”
“Of course I’ll go.”
Her smile was forced. “I think the Happy After is quite close now.”
“Maybe you should focus on being happy now.”
“Is that possible?” The anxiety she usually hid was on the surface.
“We’d better hope so.” He said it lightly.
“What about you?”
“If you try for happy, Astrid, I’ll try too.”
“Deal,” she said, sticking out her hand, oddly formal. Will put his arms around her, hugging carefully. Her skin was cold.
“Wait for me, dammit.” Janet was pushing through the crowd, which parted sluggishly, as if reluctant to let her go.
Will nudged the ringer. “Time for a speech … boss.”
“Not again.” She was watching Janet.
“Part of the job.” He pushed through the throng, drawing the ringer with him to the patched-up combat trolley, Overlord. The murmur quieted as she stepped aboard.
“I suck at this.”
“We know.” The heckler was a stunningly beautiful woman from Indonesia; she’d been mangled in a childhood car accident. Whole and healed now, she was looking at Astrid with a passion that bordered on worship.
“You sure you want to go on another mission?” Will whispered to Janet.
“I ain’t dead yet, Forest.”
“I never wanted this to be a battle. But we’ve been at war, in a way, for a while—” Astrid stopped, biting her lip.
Great, Will thought—she’s choking. He looked at the crowd of expectant faces, seeing excitement, hope, and terror.
“Mark’s risking everything so we can break the curse,” she said, and people nodded. “With that done, we’ll release the magic, free the Roused, and start putting the world right.”
That got a cheer.
“Seers are getting a location!” Jupiter’s voice rang from a tree-mounted saxophone: “The Fyremen are on Crete.”
“Mount up, people!” Clancy bellowed, ringing the bell on the trolley.
Astrid’s ringer shifted, whispering in Will’s ear: “If any of the Fyremen die, can you send them to the unreal?”
He looked at her, shocked.
“Teo’s an inch from gutting Ma. Giving him a few bodies…”
“To desecrate?”
“It’s awful, I know, but if it helps buy more time…”
Instead of answering, he gave her a quick kiss. Then, to Clancy, he shouted: “Get us to Crete before they regroup.”
Overlord trundled forward, and suddenly they were blinking away daylight, rolling to a stop beside a shattered length of Fyreman chain. Beyond it was a stark white house with a blue door, built on the edge of a cliff wall. It was a remote, hard-to-reach spot; the trolley was teetering.
Igme put a tin whistle to his lips, blowing, burning letrico. Music poured out: orchestra and chorus, then one high soprano note. The cottage windows shivered and rained down in shards. Hopefully, any flasks containing Fyreman potions would shatter too.
Bramblegate grew on an outcropping of rock as volunteers took positions on the cliff.
Men were emerging from the house, their bodies aflame—they’d had time to throw back at least a few potions, then. Linking arms, they marched, creating a wall of fire and coming straight for the Springers. Machine guns clattered; one volunteer fell. Igme brandished a domino mask, and the rest of the bullets flew upward.
Janet ran to the injured woman’s side.
Clancy waved the diamond bracelet they had taken from Ellie. The machine gun fire thinned as Fyremen fell asleep, vanishing into dreams. The walkers, bodies aflame, kept coming.
Behind the volunteers, the cliff was crumbling away.
“Chant,” Astrid’s ringer said in Will’s ear. She stepped out, near the edge of Igme’s shield, drawing their fire.
Will slid off his ring, selecting a carved wooden swan. He chanted it, thinkin
g of dance floors, grace, ballrooms.
“Here.” He handed it off, and the swan took flight, swirling and dancing behind them, its volunteer drawing up letrico. The cliff was falling out from under them, but polished mahogany floorboards were growing underfoot, providing support wherever its feathered skirts happened to sweep.
With room to move now, the volunteers spread out. Janet had healed the girl who’d been shot. Astrid’s ringer had the machine gunners—those who hadn’t been knocked out—distracted.
Will grabbed up a rubber mallet, chanting it and then handing it off. A volunteer smacked the mountain with it, knocking away the house and a good portion of the hillside, exposing a tunnel and a dozen men armed with swords, some gaping comically, others fainting into sleep and vanishing.
The rest charged.
Will slipped his ring on and moved to the fore of the melee. The air was cooling; fog rolled down the mountain, drawing wind downward. Soon they’d be blown off the cliffside, mahogany platform or no.
The tunnel crumbled further, revealing a low-ceilinged cave, a chamber of twenty-five or more men, gathered around a stone altar, surprised Cretan faces …
There was a minotaur on the altar. Withered, weak, with mad eyes and burns on its arms and legs …
Heat wafted over Will’s face; he heard shots, a scream. The dance floor was burning.
Janet scooped up a dropped plunger, swinging it overhead. Silence fell—the men, whose lips were still moving, clawed at their throats. She stepped forward, her white mitten extended toward the creature on the altar.
Half human, half animal—part of the Befouling spell, Will thought, and then—No, this is it. Igme uses a coiled toy snake to sweep aside the ring of old men, but one clings to the altar.…
A scimitar-wielding Fyreman ran at Will. He ignored him, leaving his magic ring to rebuff the assault. Janet had reached the minotaur, was pouring letrico into him, feeding vitality into his body through the white mitten.
“Watch out!”
Too late. Behind her, an old man rose up, fighting the wind. He shot Janet in the back with an ordinary-looking pistol.
The minotaur rolled to its feet, snapping the shooter’s neck. Janet dropped the healing chantment, grabbing for the altar, sagging.
Beneath the volunteers, the dance floor cracked and swayed.
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