by Holly Lisle
"Do you have proof?" he asked her instead.
"I did. Until this morning. I found my witness nailed to the wall in my parents' house in Oria."
Eric stared at her in disbelief. "Someone is nailed to the wall in your parents' house and we're sitting here chatting? Just when did you intend to mention this?"
"I didn't," she said. "If you already knew about it, I didn't need to. If you didn't know about it, there isn't anything you could do."
"Who's dead? Who was your witness?"
"Embar. A friend from my childhood."
"Embar what? I don't recognize the name."
"Just Embar. He was a goroth."
Eric rubbed his index finger up and down the bridge of his nose, trying to rub away the headache that was building. "Right…and what's a goroth."
"You're a Sentinel. You've been to Oria, right?"
"That's classified information. And we aren't talking about me, anyway."
"Don't play word games, Eric. Have you been to Oria?"
He looked at her levelly. Something had happened to her. She knew something important. He could afford to give her a little information of his own to gain some reciprocity. "Yes. Of course."
"Then you know the goroths, though maybe that isn't what you call them. Little guys with big ears, ugly as hell, wrinkled and kind of gray…"
He held up a hand to stop her. "You're talking about a member of one of the indigenous Orian species."
"I am."
"Sentinels keep their presence hidden from the indigenous population. At least they're supposed to. You start tampering with the people from there, you can buy exactly the sort of trouble…" He stared at her, comprehension dawning. "Exactly the sort of trouble we have now. You've had contact with them."
"Just one. And now he's dead. Nailed to the wall of my parents' old house there, with a warning to me written in his blood."
Eric paled. "What did it say?"
"'So you think you're ready to play in the big leagues'…something like that."
"Signed?"
"No."
"Written in what language?"
"English. Only one I speak."
Eric nodded, hiding his confusion and his sense that he'd hit a major snag in his theory somewhere with the professional persona of the cop asking questions. "And you have known this…goroth…for how long?"
"Since I was old enough to walk. Maybe longer than that. But I hadn't seen him since I…" She faltered, and he saw evasion in her eyes. "Since I was a kid. Until I came back here, that is, and discovered the mirror."
"And he was dead when you got there?"
"Had been for a while. His eyes were frosted over from the cold."
"Anything else?"
"The house had been trashed. Nothing taken that I could see, but everything in the house was destroyed in such a way that it made the biggest visible mess possible."
"Someone trying to scare you off."
"Obviously."
"Off from what, Lauren?"
She stared into his eyes and said, "I don't know."
Though he couldn't explain why, he believed her.
"So someone is threatening you. Maybe coming after you."
"It looks that way."
"Tell me who you're working with. Tell me who your insider is—chances are that's the person who wants to hurt you."
"My insider?" Lauren leaned back in her chair, tipped her head to one side, and frowned at him. "My insider. Inside what?"
"Please don't play games here, Lauren. Your life and your child's life could be in danger. You need to tell me what you know."
"I am. But you're going to have to explain a few things. I just moved back here after being gone for years. The entire time I was gone, I had no contact with anyone in the town at all. The only reason I came back here was because I found my parents' house listed for sale on the Internet at about the same time that I got Brian's death benefit. I felt like I had a home with Brian, but once he was gone…" She shrugged and looked away. "At the time, moving back here seemed like a good idea."
"So you're saying that moving back to a Sentinel town where your parents were branded as traitors never seemed to you like an…odd…decision?"
She sighed, looked at him again, and said, "I didn't know about that."
"But you know about it now."
"I do."
"What changed?"
She was quiet for a long time, searching his face for only she knew what, and from her expression, not finding whatever it was she was looking for. Voice heavy with frustration, she said, "I don't know you, Eric. I thought I knew the person you were when we were both in school, but that was a long time ago, and things change. My parents were murdered in this town, and the fact that their deaths were covered up makes it pretty clear the Sheriff's Department was involved. And that means the Sentinels. You weren't in office then, but you are in office now—so I can count on the fact that you represent Authority—capital 'A.' Which means you're pals with whoever killed my parents, even if you weren't in on it yourself."
She looked away from him.
"You're saying you don't trust me?"
"I'm saying I can't. There's a difference."
"You can."
She was watching her son, who had climbed down from her lap and was eyeing a doughnut box sitting next to the coffeemaker. "Don't touch, Jake."
Jake turned to face her, and his bottom lip popped out, and he said, "No." And then he reached for the box.
She was fast. She'd jumped from her chair and grabbed him away from doughnuts and coffee machine before Eric had done more than start to move from his seat.
The kid screamed—a furious, cat-caught-in-a-clothes-dryer banshee howl that stopped Eric dead.
Lauren was telling him, "I said don't touch," but it was like listening to someone talking to an air-raid siren. Eric had never heard so much noise from such a tiny source in his life.
Then she was back in her seat with the screaming, kicking two-year-old pinned firmly to her lap. Eric tried to think of what to say, but the noise shut down all thought as effectively as any Chinese water torture. All he could think was, Make it stop.
"He can have one of the damned doughnuts," he shouted.
"Not until he stops screaming and asks nicely, he can't," Lauren yelled back.
Like that was going to happen. Give him the goddamned doughnut, Eric thought, watching the tears pouring down the kid's face.
"Stop crying and ask nicely," Lauren was telling Jake in normal tones, just as if she'd been talking to a sane person. "Say, 'Please, biteys.'"
Miraculously, the kid turned off the tears. Shut down the air-raid siren. Eric felt like someone had removed his head from a vise. Snuffling heavily, and with his lower lip trembling, Jake said, "Please…biteys?"
"Now he may have a doughnut."
Eric pulled one out of the box—a plain one—and put it on a Styrofoam plate and grabbed a handful of paper napkins and handed the treat to Jake.
"Say thank you," Lauren said.
Jake eyed Eric with all the suspicion a jackal would have for a lion who was hovering too close to his dinner. He mulled over the whole deal, and only when Eric sat down, and he was sure the doughnut wasn't going to be taken away, did he say, "Fank you."
"You're welcome."
Jake picked up the doughnut and took a bite, and smiled through a mouth full of crumbs.
Pity it wasn't going to be so easy to make the mother happy. If he could just convince her that he was on her side, he could find out what she knew. He didn't have time to play around—whatever had started in Rockingham might already be killing people. Every life that hung in the balance weighed heavily on him; if he could save most of them, he still would fail to save them all, and every single person mattered to someone, somewhere.
"And now that I can hear myself think again," he said, grinning to show that he was a nice guy who could appreciate the humor of dealing with little kids, "let's talk."
She
said, "Give me back my notebook, let me get my son someplace safe, and I'll tell you what I can."
"I can't do that, Lauren. There's too much at stake. You know what's at stake, don't you? I'm sure your partner has told you."
She tucked Jake to one side and leaned forward. "Look. I…don't…have…a partner. I don't know what you think I'm involved in, but I'm not. I'm a widowed mom with a little kid who has ended up in a dangerous place, and I don't know what's going on, and I don't have any answers for you, but whoever you think I am, Sheriff, you have the wrong person."
"I wish I could believe you, Lauren. I really do. I always kind of liked you when we were kids…but I have all sorts of evidence that points to you. Right now, I can link you to a kidnapping, to violations of the Sentinels' Code, and to a pending disaster so huge I still haven't completely wrapped my mind around it."
"I'm not a Sentinel, so the Sentinels' Code, whatever that might be, doesn't apply to me."
"It applies to any human who travels through the gates, because any human can make the sort of devastating changes you have made."
Her face closed down; she crossed her arms over her chest, pulling Jake in tight, and glared at him.
"If you've already made up your mind, I guess you'd better charge me, or whatever the hell it is you intend to do."
She wasn't going to tell him anything.
"I'm going to keep you in here as long as I legally can and let you think about all the people who are going to die if you don't tell me what is going on and who is behind it. You think about it hard, Lauren, because no matter what you think you have going, one of those people might be him." He nodded toward Jake. "One of them might be you. I'm going to have to go out, but Pete will let me know if you decide to remember that your first loyalty is to the rest of the human beings you share the planet with, and not to whoever has turned you to this…twisted power game you're playing."
"Fuck you," Lauren said softly. Jake turned and looked at her with interest.
Eric called down the hall to Pete. "She and the boy are going to spend the night in Two. Make sure nobody knows they're here—she doesn't get a phone call, she doesn't have visitors, and if anyone comes asking for her, you've never seen her and don't know where she might be. Got it?"
"Holding her for questioning?"
"The full twenty-four hours if necessary."
"Will do," Pete called back, and Lauren heard the jangling of keys and heavy footsteps in the hall.
"Time to go," Eric said.
"You're going to put Jake and me in a cell."
"Have to. As long as you're under observation, I know you won't be able to tip off your cohort."
"I don't have a cohort!"
"I wish that were true." He pointed her out into the hallway, down toward the cells. "Give them anything they need," he told Pete. "But no mirrors. And if anyone comes asking about them, you don't know anything, and you call me immediately to let me know who was asking. I'll be in to spell you at midnight."
* * *
Lauren watched Pete watching her. He looked like a typical Southern good old boy who'd grown up on deep-fried chicken and chicken-fried steak; a little round on the corners and a little slow to move. But the occasional glance he sent her way was cool, assessing, and intelligent. He wasn't impressed by the fact that she was female and attractive, and wouldn't be taken in by coy little pleas for a private trip to a rest room or a teary act about how wrong the sheriff was about her. Eric was wrong, but the deputy would, she thought, go exactly by the book.
Jake was curled contentedly against her stomach on the narrow mattress, sound asleep. It had to be close to midnight—time for the deputy to trade places with the sheriff. And it was quiet. The deputy had been reading in his chair in the hall the whole time, occasionally glancing over her way.
Metamagical Themas. Douglas Hofstadter. Lauren had read that one once—it had been fascinating: all about fractals and repeating patterns that complicated themselves by adding a tiny change with each repetition, and about strange mathematics.
Not an easy book. So he wasn't Deputy Dawg, even if he looked like Deputy Dawg. Probably didn't have to keep his bullet in his shirt pocket. Young and smart and cautious.
She started to drift off to sleep. No way she was going to be out of his sight, even for a minute.
Too bad, that. An unsupervised trip to the bathroom with Jake and she could be through a mirror and into Oria before the toilet finished flushing.
CHAPTER 9
Copper House, Ballahara
THE MOST PLAINLY attired veyâr Molly had yet seen stood framed in the arched doorway to her apartment. He was no taller than any of the other veyâr, but he carried about him an unmistakable aura of power. His skin was a soft gold, his hair darker gold, and his eyes rich, impenetrable jet-black from edge to edge. He was inordinately beautiful, almost angelic-looking. An angel with muddy boots.
"Fair Molly," he said, "I beg your indulgence and forgiveness. I have been too long away from home, and have only now returned; I came at once to greet you personally and welcome you to my home and my domain."
Molly, who had been sitting on the bed playing the guitar, working out a piece of music with fingers which had grown nimbler and stronger in the past few days, put the instrument aside and stood up. "You're the owner of this place then?"
"Seolar, Great High Imallin of Copper House and the Sheren River Domain." He bowed. "Owner of this house is but the smallest part of who I am. You may call me Seolar. Pehaps, if we become friends, you will call me Seo. And you are Molly McColl. The Vodi."
"So I've been told. Mind telling me what the Vodi is?"
"We'll discuss it tonight at the feast I'm having prepared for you. No crowds, no noise, no confusion—just you and me and some very good food and a chance for you to ask questions and for me to answer them. We'll have a formal banquet in your honor in the next few days, of course, but thought you might like to have tonight just to…find things out."
He smiled. Molly did not return his smile. She watched him, measuring the distance between them, wondering how hard it would be to cross that space, take him down, hold him hostage for her own release. She could do it. But she didn't. Maybe because she wanted the answers. Maybe because she wanted to pick the arena for her fight, and didn't want it to be in her copper-walled cell. Maybe because she could no longer be sure that going back to the trailer in Cat Creek, and the pain of proximity to the sick and dying, and the loneliness, was the best choice she could make anymore.
"I could use a few answers."
Seolar's smile faded. He nodded after a moment, and edged back toward the door, keeping his eyes on her. He said, "Birra will bring your clothing. Meanwhile, I have a gift for you." He held out a hand. Something gold and gleaming and sparkling lay in it.
Molly stepped forward, and caught a glimpse of the guards who stood just the other side of the door, watching the Imallin. So he hadn't been entirely trusting. She took his offering, and felt the cool weight of solid gold against her palm. She looked at the gift. A necklace, a breathtaking piece of sleek metalwork, each piece of the chain so perfectly fitted and so smoothly interlocked that it seemed a seamless, liquid, living thing and not the creation of a jeweler. In the center, a cluster of inlaid, faceted sapphires rimmed a gold medallion—in the center of the medallion, a winged woman rose from a storm-tossed sea, her arms spread wide, her face calm and reassuring.
"Good God," she murmured. "This thing is worth more than my house back home."
Seolar laughed softly. "It is, in its own way, more valuable than my home. And it is yours. Please wear it, and let me see it on you."
But Molly wasn't going to be won over by jewelry. Hadn't worked for the guys in the Air Force, wasn't going to work now.
"Maybe later." She studied it, and thought it was the most gorgeous piece of jewelry she had ever seen. It had an understated simplicity that appealed to her—though how any piece of jewelry made of three pounds of gold could seem understated w
as beyond her.
"Will you wear it to dinner?"
"I'll consider it."
Seolar wore his disappointment overtly. Well, he could live with it. She'd check the piece first, make sure that it didn't contain a little compartment that would inject her with drugs at an appropriate time, or anything else some sick but talented jeweler might devise. It seemed to warm too quickly in her hand, and she thought she could feel it humming just the tiniest bit, which seemed like a bad sign. She didn't like being paranoid, but she figured she'd earned the right.
