A dented skull stared at me from another, with its jaws partially agape.
A second door swung open in front of me. So I went through that, into what appeared to be a hidden corridor. There was no decoration here. It was far more narrow, and completely bare, the ceiling so low my hair almost brushed against it. But I kept on going.
I finally emerged into a small, entirely circular room. And, given the general shape of the house, that didn’t make any sense. There were no windows. And the curving wall was painted with a vast, surreal mural. Jaws gaped and eyes stared. It extended, as though spilling down, across the stone-tiled floor. And that made me feel even more unsettled. Like I was entering the mouth of madness.
The major adepts were waiting for me.
The first thing that I sensed, when I stepped in, was a pair of gazes battening on me, emerald green and predatory. The sisters themselves. You’d have taken them for twins, but they’d been born a year apart. They were almost identical, hatchet-faced, in their midforties, with their dark hair piled up on their prematurely aged heads. They were both in black flowing gowns. The only way of telling them apart was that Dido, the slightly older one, had suffered a mild stroke a while back, which made her left eyelid droop.
Levin was here, of course. Standing next to him was a huge, barrel-chested bald guy with a long off-white moustache. Gaspar Vernon was very rich, but always insisted on dressing like a simple workingman. He came from humble woodsman stock originally, and never let anyone forget it.
Kurt van Friesling was the opposite, and wearing a tuxedo even at this early hour. In his youth, he had run wild with Raine. But he’d gotten more mature since then. His very pale blue eyes were pinned on me as well.
Martha Howard-Brett looked like she wanted to smile at the sight of me. Only the seriousness of the occasion stopped her. Unlike some who were gathered here, we’d always got on very well. She wasn’t nearly the most expert of this crowd, but she made up for it with her warmth and her intelligence. An absolutely stunning woman, tall and shapely with long auburn hair.
Her gaze—a lustrous hazel—was sparkling in spite of what we’d been through. I’d once referred to her as the Good Witch of the North. And I’m glad to say it made her laugh.
Cobb Walters was in his waistcoat and bow tie, as usual. Most adepts seemed to be particular about the way they dressed. He stood only slightly taller than Levin and was scrawny, with slumped shoulders and a pronounced stoop. His black hair was thinning. His nose was so oversized that, combined with his sad expression, he looked like a basset hound. Which only really goes to show that you shouldn’t judge someone by appearances. His sorcery was very strong.
Mayor Aldernay was there as well. He had no magic, despite his lineage. But I supposed they’d felt obliged to include him. He’d known Lucas Tollburn very well, and remained our town’s titular leader. He was flush-faced, and had an embattled, angry look. But that was usual for him. I’d not noticed him among the fighting.
There was one thing missing. I couldn’t feel the normal animosity from the sisters or Vernon. The three of them nodded at me mildly. Maybe they were starting to accept me a little better.
Gaspar Vernon let out a slow breath. The fringe of his moustache was gently tinged with red. I knew that, in private, he was a connoisseur of most fine things. So maybe he’d been sampling some claret before all of this had started.
“You must be tired, Devries,” he rumbled in that big, gruff voice of his.
“That’s true of everyone,” I pointed out.
“It’s been quite a night,” Levin conceded wryly. “And a pretty damned confusing one. I’d ask you to bring us up to speed but…”
He glanced over to his right.
“Cobb can do it for us quicker.”
I glanced at the little man. Cobb Walters didn’t say a word. He simply raised his right palm. Stretched his fingers apart as wide as he could. There was no time to get out of the way. I felt a sudden tug inside my head, as if the balance of my inner world had shifted. And then the eyes of each adept became a good deal wider. There was something shining in them.
I wasn’t exactly pleased about that. I hated magic being used on me, and knew what Cobb had done. He had plucked my recent memories directly from my head, and then passed them on to all the rest.
Vernon gave a low hiss.
“I knew Lucas fifty years. He never mentioned anything like that.”
“Hardly surprising,” Kurt van Friesling pointed out. “If you owned such a thing, would you?”
“I always thought he was a far too clever S.O.B.,” Dido McGinley put in. “Now I know it.”
And then it was Levin’s turn.
“But why would Millicent do such a thing? Do you suppose she’s fallen under the influence of this madman, Hanlon?”
Gaspar Vernon grumbled at him. “You don’t know that girl the way I do.”
The judge’s eyes became pained-looking behind those rimless spectacles of his.
“She’s still one of us—still part of this community. Why would she want to tear it up? We should at least find out what her motives are.”
I was going to point out she’d turned her home into some kind of fortress. But then I remembered they already knew that. They’d taken it from my own memories. And glances passed between them.
“Sam’s right,” Martha Howard-Brett said. “If we can somehow make her see sense…”
And after that, no one said another word. It seemed to be agreed on, simultaneously and without further discussion. The adepts sometimes work like that.
They moved up close and linked hands. And Martha stretched her free one out in my direction, smiling gently.
“Come along, Ross. We need you too.”
Which made me pretty uneasy. But we were in a desperate situation here, and so I stepped across in spite of my misgivings.
As soon as her palm closed around my own, the room started to melt away around me.
The murals slid together, merged.
And then the house was gone completely.
CHAPTER 30
I’d only seen them in the darkness, up until this point. But in clear daylight, the barriers that had formed around Millwood House looked even more forbidding than they had before. They were the same color the sky takes on shortly before the sun begins to rise. As if dawn hadn’t come to this particular spot. And they had a gentle luster to them, a platinum shimmer. You could see vague shapes in them, dim reflections of the world outside the walls. The other houses, and the trees around them. Except that world was noticeably changed from yesterday.
It wasn’t only the scene below, the plumes of smoke still rising and the big crowds massed at certain points. This whole area of Sycamore Hill seemed different. Even quieter than it had been, so that every faint sound seemed to echo. Apart from us, there was no one else around.
This street had been full of people, last time I’d been here. Where had they gone? As I gazed around, the truth sank slowly in. Cars had been parked on the surrounding driveways, last night. But they were no longer present. There was no movement at any of the windows. In fact, some shutters were closed. The big, wide yards sat empty and abandoned.
No one born here could actually leave town. I already knew that. But the residents of this immediate district had moved out, for fear of what was going on. I wasn’t sure where they had disappeared to. But the folks around here had plenty of cash, so they’d obviously made arrangements.
I looked back at the barrier. It was perfectly smooth, with not the tiniest flaw along its length. The sun, beyond it, only served to make it look a little darker, a soft pewter hue. Off in the far distance, the forest that surrounds most of our town looked blurry and unreal, another vaporous figment, except green this time.
“Do you think that you can get inside?” I murmured to Levin.
He didn’t take his eyes from it when he replied.
“We tried last night,” he told me, “within half an hour of it appearing. It was
like trying to get through stainless steel by pressing your face against it.”
Gaspar Vernon and Martha both stepped out ahead of us, the latter puffing up his chest.
“Millicent!” he bellowed. “We know you’re in there! What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”
“We only want to talk, dear,” Martha added, in a more placating tone. “We’re not sure what’s upset you. But whatever it is, we’ve come to put it right.”
They stood there waiting. We all did. But there was no response. The breeze had grown a little stronger, making the shrubbery around us rustle. That was when I noticed there were not even any birds left. Not even any insects that I could make out. Every living creature appeared to have fled.
Vernon’s cheeks were growing more richly colored by the second, anger overtaking him. Which—to my mind—wasn’t what you’d call the best approach.
“Do you even understand,” he demanded, “what it means to be an adept? The duties and responsibilities that befall you, in that role? This community has quite enough problems, without its natural leaders turning on it. How can you justify what you’ve done?”
His annoyance sounded generalized, not merely about last night. I remembered the hard time Millicent had given the Vernon clan, and wondered how much of this was personal.
Levin seemed to think so too. It was his turn to give it a shot.
“I don’t believe you’re thinking very clearly, Milly,” he called out. “So I urge you. Take a moment, please, to reconsider what you’re doing.”
And that finally seemed to have an effect. Because a bulge started appearing in the surface of the barrier, directly in front of us. It took us by surprise. Everyone around me took a sharp step back.
The bulge lengthened, stretching down until it reached the ground. And then it began rearranging itself, taking on detail. The outlines of a face and body came in view. But they did not detach themselves, remaining half-embedded in the wall.
I could see immediately who it was. And so could everybody else.
Millicent Tollburn remained where she was, like a stone frieze of a woman, the same pale hue as her background. Her eyes flickered across us, shimmering the way the barrier did. Then they settled, at last, on Gaspar Vernon.
Her lips parted. You could see the edges of her teeth.
“Still making demands, Uncle? It didn’t work back then, and it won’t work now.”
Vernon looked shocked and slightly mollified. A little of the red drained from his cheeks. He sucked in a breath, ready to answer back. But Martha got in before he could mess things up.
“No one’s your enemy here, Milly. And there’s no point opening up old wounds. We’re trying to understand what you’ve done, and why.”
“Do you know how many people are dead, this morning?” Levin asked. He was trying to keep the anger out of his tone, and not wholly succeeding. “Ordinary people too, not adepts. If you have some kind of grievance with us, then why take it out on them?”
We were all making the same assumption. Since she never had dealings with ordinary folk, they ought to be beneath her notice.
It was pretty weird, watching that outline smile. I’ve seen a lot of bad things, but it shook me all the same. The cruelty and malice in her grin were unmistakable. She knew precisely what she’d done. It didn’t seem to bother her.
“You’re right, Judge. Astute as ever. My main grievance is with you—my grandfather’s loyal friends, who smiled at him and clapped his back and kept on telling me what a fine man he was.”
They looked mystified, and I could hardly blame them. What on earth was she yammering on about?
“And I’ll get to you eventually,” she went on. “But I want to make you suffer first. This town you claim to care so much about? I’m going to destroy it before your very eyes. How powerless you’ll feel, when I do that.”
She paused.
“Just as powerless as I felt, once.”
I had no idea what that meant. And neither, apparently, did any of the others. Cynthia McGinley stepped up fiercely, her green gaze blazing.
“It’s Hanlon talking, don’t you see? It’s him making you this way. You’re in cahoots with a lunatic, young lady. If you thought about it clearly, you would see that.”
The face turned to her. And the smile grew even broader, with a genuinely vicious edge.
“That oversized child? How little you know me.”
Her attention went back to Gaspar.
“I’m the strong one, Uncle. You understand that.”
He edged back a little further underneath her stare.
“And once I’ve started something, then I finish it. I promise you.”
And with those words, her shape began withdrawing, sinking back into the wall, her features shrinking, flattening out. But she still had time for one final threat.
“Once I’ve finished with the town, I’ll come for you. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.”
Which was too much for Vernon. He lurched forward, trying to grab hold of her.
Another bulge started appearing in the barrier, off to the side of Millicent’s vague shape. That set off alarm bells, and I ran across. I grabbed Vernon by his shoulders, hauling him back just in time. The outline of an arm came snaking out. Clasped in its fist was a knife. It swiped, missing the man’s stomach by barely an inch.
He let out a noise like a punctured ball. And then we were stumbling away to a safe distance.
I turned and stared back. Millicent’s face was still there, very indistinct. Her lips parted again. And before she disappeared completely, she let out a delighted laugh.
The barrier became flat and featureless, the sound that she’d made clinging to it for another second. The sun lifted slightly higher, and the wall began to gleam like beaten steel beneath its rays.
Vernon shook me off.
“My God!” he thundered. “What’s happened to her?”
We were silent until Levin pointed out, “What’s been done to her, more like. She didn’t get that way by accident. Could it possibly be we’re guilty of wrongdoing, in some way we don’t even understand?”
No one had an answer to that question. Every face was blank. We were as empty of ideas as this part of the hill was of life. But we knew one thing for certain.
Whatever her motives, we had better start preparing. The same was going to happen again. Or maybe even worse.
CHAPTER 31
She hadn’t deliberately conjured up the barriers. They seemed to have sprung, fully formed, from deep in her subconscious mind. But everything had changed completely inside Millwood House since they’d appeared. It wasn’t merely that the sunlight didn’t reach the windows any longer. The only thing that did was a pale dull sheen a little lighter than the walls. No, it was rather that the whole place had been bled of substance.
Nothing looked entirely solid any more. No surfaces stopped you when you pressed your weight against them and there was no longer any point in using the doorways. When you walked up to a wall, you sank through it painlessly. And it reformed once you had passed. If you wanted to sit down, you merely sat—the thin air supported you. This was the way ghosts had to exist. The normal rules were gone.
Millicent had found it unsettling at first, although her companion seemed to be enjoying everything about it. He kept on ranting about “getting all the powers he’d ever wanted.” Whereas she…she felt she’d gained a lot, but lost a lot as well. She prized the furniture and ornaments in this place—she’d chosen them personally. But now, was it even really there? Her wealth had given her life permanence and certainty, both of them qualities she badly needed. And by this time, it was all diminished. She had taken quite a while adjusting to it.
Her recent confrontation with the adepts had lightened her heart a little. She’d dreamt of facing them down ever since her early teens. And now, she could savor it for real. She thought about the looks on their faces, Uncle Gaspar’s in particular. She’d been in control completely. That
made her pulse quicken. There’d been nothing they could do to touch her.
Other matters were still bothering her, though.
The horses in her stables had not taken the new changes well. They’d whinnied frightenedly the whole night, beating their hooves against their stalls. So those had remained solid. She’d been able to hear the racket in her head, even from the other side of town. Been too busy to return to them, at first. And when she’d finally come home, she had felt too preoccupied to go and calm them down. She’d hovered above the rooftop of her house instead, watching the destruction unfold below her. That horde of monsters she’d let loose. She could see perfectly clearly through the barrier.
In the end, the shrieking from the stalls had died away. The animals were still alive, but utterly worn out.
And then there was another matter. She had always had this mansion to herself. And by this time—not counting Hanlon—there were twenty-three additional guests in here. Considering the sort of people they were, she was not inclined to play the gracious hostess.
When she’d moved through the suburbs last night, she had chosen those who were the easiest to turn. Folks whose dark side was already near the surface. There were plenty of them, when you really looked. People so sodden in alcohol they could barely remember who they’d once been. Ones who’d grown up with so little in the way of social skills they cowered from the world, reacting to it angrily when it came close. A few people who simply hated everyone and everything, but couldn’t even tell you why. Magic had distorted some of their minds—she could see that.
One by one, she’d talked to them, cajoled them, until she had freed their dark sides. And one by one, the authorities had stopped them. But they could not be destroyed completely that way. When she’d worked her spells upon them, they had become an elemental force.
Once subdued, they had come here. And by this hour, they were roaming right across her mansion. They didn’t even have the saving grace of being smoke-ghosts anymore.
As she watched, a wall buckled and then parted. And a grotesquely overweight woman came stumbling through. Millicent was appalled by her. She wore a dirty floral smock, which halted just above her knees. There was so much fat on her legs that great folds of it were trying to slide down them. Her face was as spotty as an adolescent’s. Her mouth, which was remarkably small, kept chewing around the same few words.
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