But what did it have to be like for her, everything she’d ever known being turned completely upside down? When I walked across to her, she stared at me like I was some kind of creature from an old movie. One from outer space, perhaps. I reached out, but she only flinched away. And I should have been expecting that. So I took it in my stride and shoved my hands into my pockets, where she didn’t have to worry about them anymore.
And told her, “Sorry you had to find out this way.”
She shivered. Took a swig from her glass and almost choked. Her eyes went damper.
““This way’?” Her voice was much lower and hoarser than it had been. “As opposed to what other way? Crazy is crazy, any way you look at it.”
And wasn’t that a fact?
“It must be pretty hard, taking it all in at once like this.”
“Hard?” she echoed.
Her hand gave a sudden twitch, slopping a bit more of the liquor. The barman left it alone this time. He had a thin red moustache and olive eyes, and was peering at her anxiously.
“Yeah,” she went on. “I’d say a corpse walking toward you with its chest cut open is a pretty awkward situation. What next, fire-breathing dragons? Got any vampires wandering around?”
Well, we’d never had any actual vampires. Saul had joined me, standing quietly by my side.
The woman wiped a hand across her pale, wet features, trying to rearrange her thoughts.
“You know what really gets to me? Saul told me this has been going on for—what?—more than three hundred years? Are all you people nuts? Why don’t you just get out?”
“He didn’t tell you about Regan’s Curse?”
Her jaw dropped.
“There’s a curse as well? Well, naturally there is! How could there possibly not be?”
So I explained it to her. Lauren looked less drained and far more nervous by the time that I was done.
“That means…I’m trapped here?”
“No way,” I assured her. “It’s only people who were born here. You can get out any time you like.”
Which I half wished she would, despite the fact I’d come to like her. We were wasting time here, when we should have been out looking for Hanlon. I asked Saul what he was planning to do in that regard.
“I’ve spoken to Judge Levin,” he assured me. “He’s alerting all the major adepts. Maybe they can figure out some way of finding him.”
Perhaps the Little Girl could help as well. It was an avenue I’d used before.
“Other than that,” Saul was telling me, “the only thing that we can really do is wait for him to show up again.”
Which was a dismal prospect, since it might involve more people getting hurt. But I couldn’t see any other way to take it. My focus went back to Lauren.
And I was freshly surprised, because she seemed to have quieted down a bit. She’d been listening to every word we’d said. A crease had formed across the bridge of her nose, and her gaze was more perceptive than it had been.
She seemed to be coming around to the realities of her new situation. I reminded myself how tough and determined she had struck me from the very first. This still had to be genuinely hard for her. But she seemed to be made of sterner stuff than most folk.
“If you want out,” I offered, “I can drive you back to my place and collect your things.”
But a flinty look had come over her bright blue gaze. And when she gave her head a shake, there was nothing spasmodic about it.
“No,” she murmured quietly.
The word fit uncomfortably between her lips, but she pushed it out anyway. She seemed to have arrived at a decision.
“Nothing’s really changed,” she told me. “I came here after Hanlon. And he’s still the same psychotic asshole, whatever he looks like now. Still out there, hurting people. If you’re going to stop him, count me in.”
“You’re quite sure about that?” I asked.
She looked away for a few seconds, then stared at me and nodded.
“Okay then,” I smiled. “Welcome on board. In which case, we go to Plan B.”
“Which is?”
I could see that she was wobbling slightly on her stool.
“We get several pints of coffee down you, pronto.” I turned to the barman. “Hot and strong, and keep it coming.”
Watching her down the first mug, I saw a flush returning to her cheeks. She was going to see this through, no matter what. She’d been so scared and confused a few minutes back, but had the strength of will to fight against it. I was reminded of a quote—Eleanor Roosevelt—about standing up and facing down our worst and deepest fears.
Hobart’s cell phone began ringing in his pocket, and he snatched it out.
“What’s that? Where?” It sounded like a dispatcher on the other end. “Jesus Christ, we’re on our way.”
CHAPTER 17
Treated like a criminal! By an outsider, no less! In front of her own friends! In her own town! In front of Ross!
Cassie had been bristling like a porcupine all morning, ever since she’d got back from Maynard Street. She was in such a foul mood, in fact, that Cleveland—her big tabby cat—had been avoiding her completely, scampering away whenever she got close. And the state of her place didn’t cheer her up any. She didn’t usually even notice it, but had now become self-conscious. It was clean enough. But not exactly tidy, to understate the case. She had a tendency to leave things wherever was easiest. The furniture was all cheap looking, and the whole apartment had needed redecorating a long time back. She knew that. Except normally, it was of scant interest to her.
Not today. She felt vulnerable and on edge today, and everything seemed wrong. The only things that—even remotely—calmed her down were the framed photographs of her three children, which filled every spare corner of her living room.
Kevin. Angel. Little Cassie. God, she missed them so much. Captured on film, and frozen in the moment, their smiles were bright and unafraid. Their faces glowed with happiness. They’d no idea, back then, what fate had in store for them. No one did, when she thought about it. Fate just hit you from behind, when you weren’t even looking.
Her apartment made up one half of the wide, single-story building that she occupied. Out front was the diner that she had run for the past eight years. It was still the way it had been, but abandoned, with its front door padlocked. Had been that way ever since her kids had disappeared.
“You be careful with that thing.”
She could still recall, with perfectly clarity, the day the bum that she’d been living with—not the children’s father—had brought home a talisman with a black stone at the center of it. He’d stolen it, more likely than not. And there he’d sat, slumped on the couch, fiddling with it while the kids played around him.
“Don’t let the little ones touch it,” she’d admonished him.
Then she’d had to go out front again. The diner was busy that late in the morning. Two weeks before Christmas, and there were customers waiting. The place felt really warm on a day like this, the windows steamed up, and she’d been joking with her regulars about how they’d become that way.
“All the heavy breathing I do every time I see you, handsome.”
Except a bare few minutes later, in the middle of pouring someone coffee, a prickling instinct had overtaken her. She’d rushed back in. Tom Larson and her three kids had vanished into the ether. Magic had taken them away from her.
The emptiness of the place hung around her, the quietness so profound that, when she stopped still, she could almost hear it like a subcutaneous murmur. Like the rushing of some invisible tide. There were days she felt as if she were drowning in a vast ocean of silence. There were even days she wished it would all stop, for good.
What was she, without her family? She had been in that position once before, back when she was seventeen and her parents both died in a road accident. She’d run wild for a few years, falling in with a bad crowd, a motorcycle gang. And had done a lot of crazy things bac
k then. Helped rob stores and burgle houses. Had got in a load of fights. But she had done all that to fit in with the rest and stop herself from feeling lost and helpless. Once she’d started her own business, and her kids had come along…?
These days, she still had a sense of purpose. And real friends, which those guys in the gang had never been. There was a town to save. And there was always Ross to count on. They were more than merely friends—there was a real connection between them. Not amorous, but a definite spark. Except, the way he’d looked at this new woman…
The phone next to the couch started ringing. She was so confused, Cassie just stared at it for a few seconds. Then she pulled herself together, leant across and snatched up the receiver.
“Cassie!”
The voice was extremely strained and high-pitched, but she recognized it all the same. It was Ginny Graves, one of her small coterie of girlfriends. Their kids had gone to the same school, and they’d been close for several years. Ginny lived on the edge of East Meadow, where it gave way to the rather more respectable neighborhood of Pilgrim’s Plot. Normally, she was soft-spoken. But now, she was yelling like she had the devil on her tail.
Cassie stiffened, coming around quickly.
“Gin? What’s going on?”
“It’s Karl!” Ginny shrieked down the line at her.
That was her mild-mannered and rather boring spouse.
“I don’t know what happened, but he’s gone berserk! He came at us with a kitchen knife!”
“Us” meant Gin and her two daughters. Cass froze with shock, her grip around the phone tightening.
“Where are you now?”
“We’re locked in the bathroom! I’m on my cell! Karl went crazy for a while, trying to hack his way in! But he’s gone away! I think he’s gone for something bigger than the knife! And there’s something really weird with his eyes!”
Which meant what, exactly?
The woman let out several sobs. And then she choked those down and gasped.
“I can hear him again! He’s coming back!”
Cassie’s heart was thumping, and her instincts were pulling her toward the door. But she’d been in violent places loads of times before. She knew the first thing that she had do was to inject some common sense into the situation.
“Ginny, listen to me carefully. Hang up right now, and then call the police. Promise me you’ll do that?”
She heard a loud thud in the background. And it did sound like an ax on wood. Gin let out a broken gurgle. Both her daughters started wailing, and the sound of that near broke Cassie’s heart.
“Please, Cassie! Please get over here!”
“I’m on my way! But call the cops!”
And she’d make sure she called them too.
The blocks went by, no more than streaks. She skidded up outside the Graves house. Cass leapt off her Harley without bothering to kick the stanchion into place. The bike crashed down behind her as she began to run across the front yard. But to hell with that. Her boots kicked up large flecks of mud. There were poppies of all colors in neat rows around her.
The front door was shut. There wasn’t time to check around the back. She’d normally never even think of using guns with any kids around. But they were upstairs, weren’t they? Gin had said so. This was a two-story house, with only one bathroom. She had been here many times.
Without even slowing down, she yanked both of her Glocks from their holsters and fired two rounds into the lock.
Reaching the porch, she drove the sole of her boot, hard, into the door. It burst open easily. She got a brief impression of pastel-painted walls, vases full of dried flowers. Several of them overturned. But there was no sign of any blood, thank God.
Then she heard the thudding from above. A heavy blade cutting into wood again. And after that she was pounding up.
She drew to an uneasy halt, once she’d reached the upstairs landing. Karl Graves—in his usual blue plaid shirt and faded jeans—was standing with his back to her at the far end of the hallway. The man was hard at work. He had already carved a ragged hole the size of a pumpkin in the bathroom door, and was swinging back the ax again.
Cass immediately slipped the pistol in her left hand back into its holster. She felt rather shaky, by this juncture. This was not the kind of situation that she usually had to deal with.
Whatever was wrong with him, this was still Ginny’s husband. So this wasn’t a matter she could settle with a fatal shot.
“Karl?”
He stopped what he was doing, and then turned around. Cassie twitched when she saw what had happened to his eyes. There was no color left in them. They were pale gray from lid to lid, iris and pupil no longer visible. But the man apparently hadn’t gone blind. So this was something supernatural.
He looked perfectly normal otherwise, his usual short and rather tubby self. The same dumpy features and untidy brown moustache. Except the muscles in his face were very slack, the way that people looked when they were sleeping. Like he was no longer in control of them.
In which case, this was not his fault. She held out her free hand with the palm spread wide, indicating it was best that he stayed where he was.
“Why don’t you just stop this, huh? You’re frightening your kids.”
Their shrieks could still be heard from behind the ruined woodwork. And a second later, Ginny yelled out, “Cassie?”
But Cass ignored that, concentrating on the man in front of her.
He seemed to be doing the same. Studying her evenly. Trying to size her up. He didn’t look like he even remembered who she was, which also indicated there was someone else in there. His shoulders were heaving from his earlier exertions.
Finally, the slackness left his mouth. He smiled, and then he spoke to her.
“Oh my, you look like really special fun.”
And it was Karl’s voice, sure. But not quite the same. The lazy drawl was mostly gone. There was sharper enunciation. Who was this really? Cassie felt her neck prickling when she wondered that. But she knew it was important, now, to stand her ground.
One of the lightbulbs up here had been smashed. The hall was darker than it should have been. Karl took a step in her direction.
“I don’t want to hurt you!” she yelled.
His smile grew broader.
“You can always try.”
And then he threw caution to the wind and lurched at her, coming down the hallway as fast as his legs could carry him. Cassie tried to think straight. She could see no other choice. She didn’t want to kill the man. But wounding him was another matter.
So she tilted the Glock at an angle, and pumped a round into Karl’s shoulder. She tried to avoid the bone and simply leave him with a flesh wound. It would hurt like hell, but with luck it would stop him.
She saw the shirt rip. Saw the flesh beneath it tear. A bullet hole and a spatter of blood appeared on the wall behind him.
But he did not slow down.
“Can’t hurt a shadow!” he roared as he closed in on her.
What?
She was still holding the gun out, struggling to think what to do, when he swung the flat edge of the ax blade at it. Pain blazed through her hand. The Glock flew from her grasp. She stumbled back and hit a banister. Her knuckles were stinging like hell. But why wasn’t he feeling any pain, from the slug she had put into him?
She’d never seen Karl move so quickly. He was all over her before she could recover, slamming into her. She almost went over the railing but tensed her legs, stopping that in time. They swung around, and her back hit another wall. Gripping the handle with both hands, the man shoved the ax against her throat and pushed hard, trying to throttle her.
Cassie’s reaction was pretty well instinctive. She brought her knee up into his groin.
Although—exactly like the bullet wound—Karl did not react in the slightest.
“Oh, fun-fun-fun,” the man was muttering between clenched jaws.
Who was this? Someone crazy, and strong too.
She put both palms against his chest and tried to shove him off. Could scarcely budge him. The contours of his body shifted slightly, but his feet would not go back. His pressure on the haft grew even more intense. It was cutting off her windpipe, and she felt her head begin to pound.
Then a few words spoken long ago came rushing back to her.
“That’s it, Cassie. Use my own strength against me.”
That had been her father, Gus. In his off hours, he’d taught her how to defend herself. How to shoot, and a few judo tricks he knew.
So she let Karl continue bearing down on her. And then swung her own weight completely to the left.
And it worked. He abruptly went crashing past her, banging his forehead on the wall. Although it didn’t seem to hurt him any more than had the other stuff.
Cassie snatched at the ax and caught hold of it below the metal blade. Karl’s face swung at her again.
“Let go, you stupid woman!”
But that was the last thing she was about to do. She tried to wrench the thing out of his grasp. Fresh beads of perspiration sprang up on her brow, and she felt her face go red with the effort. She could not budge the ax in her direction, not even a little bit. And the strangest thing was, for his part, Karl barely seemed to be making any effort.
She kicked at him again, his shins this time. The only thing that happened was…his misty gaze seemed to laugh at her.
“Oh, but you play nasty, don’t you, little girl?”
His gray eyes appeared to gleam.
“You really want this thing? Well, have it!”
He suddenly let the ax go, with Cassie still pulling at it as hard as she could. And that got the drop on her, taking her completely by surprise. Its metal head shot at her, catching her a glancing blow on the right temple. She let go of the thing, brilliant lights flashing in her head.
She tried to right herself. But the blow had been much harder than she’d thought. Her vision swirled, and she began to lose her footing.
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