“You keep wearing makeup and I send you to Sagamore.”
“You can’t do that! What about my friends?”
“What friends? That Joubert girl? She no good.”
While Aggie wanted to hear Mr. Kim’s opinion of her, she felt Akako pull at her to indicate it was time for them to go. As they started down the stairs, she heard Renee shout, “Agnes is my best friend in the whole world!” This was an unscripted line, but Aggie knew it was really a goodbye to her, because if everything worked out, Aggie would not see her again. Or at least not this her—the real Aggie for this universe would still be here.
Such thoughts made Aggie’s head spin, or maybe it was from all this exertion. She still felt heavy—heavier than usual—but she was determined to finish this tonight if at all possible. The longer she stayed here, the more she risked she would become the Aggie who belonged here, the one who wore Goth makeup and clothes in a vain attempt to fit in. And there was no way to know what the long-term effects might be if Akako stayed here as herself.
Akako shut the front door behind them just as Renee’s bedroom door slammed shut. They had the short climb down the stairs and then the longer walk down the silent streets of Woodbridge Heights. Aggie didn’t have the energy to say anything. She and Akako both knew the risks involved with this plan; they didn’t need to rehash these.
The next problem came as they neared the front gate. Floyd the security guard would have gone home by now and someone else would have taken his place. From what Renee had said, the other guards weren’t so friendly. They would probably want Akako to show her ID, which was probably still on the floor of the archives back in their own world. Then the police would be called and the two of them would be brought up on trespassing charges.
“Hi guys,” Renee whispered from behind them. She had wiped off her makeup and changed into a yellow nightgown, but still wore her miniature combat boots.
“You have any trouble getting past your father?” Aggie asked.
“Please. I’ve been sneaking out of my bedroom since I was six.”
Aggie couldn’t help but smile at this. That Renee had come up with these first stages of the plan further indicated she really was an equal to the Emma Aggie knew back in her own world. Unlike Emma, Renee had a mischievous streak. From their conversation earlier, Aggie suspected this mischievous streak was mostly a mechanism to cope, and maybe a subconscious way to hurt her father. In time the girl would probably outgrow this—or she might get herself killed first. “Just be careful, dear.”
“I will.” Renee gave them a daredevil’s wink before she ran up to the gate. “Hey, you! Let me out of this zoo!”
A man’s voice said from inside the guard house, “I’m sorry, little girl, but no minors are allowed outside the gates at night without a parent’s permission.”
“Little girl? Who are you calling a little girl?”
“Young lady, if you don’t go home right now, I’ll have to call your parents.”
Right on cue, Renee began to sob. As she did, Akako and Aggie eased up against the wall, where a door led from the security guard’s booth to inside the community. “Parents? I only have one, you big jerk!”
“I’m sorry, little girl—”
“You just wait until I get home and tell him how mean you were to me. He’s going to have your ass!”
The door from the security booth opened; the guard hurried out with his hands up as if to surrender to Renee. He didn’t see Akako and Aggie in the shadows. Aggie stuck out the end of the cane to keep the door open. “Look, I’m sorry,” the guard said. “Why don’t you go home and we’ll forget it ever happened?”
Aggie stood in the doorway for a moment and looked back at Renee. The clever little girl nodded to her as a final farewell. Then she began to sniffle pathetically. “I don’t know if I can forget about this,” she said.
Aggie went through the doorway, into the booth, where Akako already had the other door open to let them out. They hurried along; Aggie again leaned against Akako for support. “Are you sure she’ll be all right?” Akako asked.
“I think she can take care of herself.”
“She’s a much better Renee Kim than I was.”
“You just needed more practice.”
They chuckled at this but soon lapsed into silence again as they headed for the park. Aggie wasn’t surprised to find the “coven” gathered there, Glenda in the center of the lighted pentagram to chant her nonsense. She stopped in mid-chant as Aggie and Akako came to stand at the edge of the circle.
“You’re just in time, Agnes. We were putting a curse on you.”
“I’m not afraid of your curses.”
“Yeah? So who’s that? Your babysitter?”
“This is my friend, Akako. She came to help me show you guys how to do real magic.”
“Our magic is real,” Glenda snapped.
“I mean like I used on you earlier.”
“That wasn’t magic. That was a parlor trick. You probably had some lights sewn into your clothes or something.”
Aggie let go of Akako’s arm and limped forward on her own. She used the cane to part the joined hands of two girls in order to let herself into the circle, where she planted herself in front of Glenda like in a Wild West movie. “You’ve been going about this the wrong way,” Aggie said. “Magic—real magic—isn’t about saying words and drawing shapes with candles. It’s not about the rituals.”
“Then what is it, Agnes? A bunch of special effects like you used?”
“No, it’s love.”
“Love? What bullshit.”
Aggie snuck a glance at the girls in the circle to read their faces in the candlelight. They had seen what she had done earlier against Glenda; now was the time to give them another glimpse of it. Aggie lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Glenda, who tried to wriggle free, but couldn’t. “Glenda, I love you,” Aggie said.
“You love me? Get your hands off me you fucking fag!”
“I don’t mean like that. I mean I love you as my mentor. After my mother died, you took me under your wing and you showed me everything I could be.”
“What are you talking about?”
Aggie leaned closer to Glenda and felt the tingle from earlier, only not as strong. Her hands began to glow as she put them on Glenda’s shoulders. Glenda again tried to escape, but Aggie’s hands had become too strong, to grip her like steel clamps. The glow from Aggie’s hands spread to Glenda’s shoulders, to migrate across the rest of her body.
Some of the other girls gasped while others screamed as they watched their leader glow with white light just as Aggie had at school earlier. Then the glow began to subside; it faded away to reveal not the angry young girl who had stood in the circle just a minute ago, but an elegant old woman in a flowing white robe. She held up her wrinkled hands and then put a hand to her long white hair. “What did you do to me?”
“This is who you are,” Aggie said. “Who you really are. It’s who you can become if you stop fooling around and put yourself on the true path.”
Aggie left Glenda there to stammer incoherently, while she addressed the rest of her coven. “This is what all of you can be, if you stop giving in to hate and vengeance, and give in to love instead.” She held her hands straight up into the air and felt her knees about to buckle, but she forced herself to stay upright. The white glow from her hands formed a circle in the air, first over her head and then it grew exponentially until it covered the entire coven. Aggie closed her eyes; she heard girlish screams turn to the coughs of elderly women.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw the coven, just as it was back on her world. Like Glenda, the girls had all become old women in pure white robes. They stared at each other and their own hands in disbelief. “You see now,” Aggie whispered. Then she finally let herself sag to the ground.
She lay at the center of the former pentagram, its candles snuffed out now. Akako started towards her, but Aggie waved her back; she didn’t want to risk
that some of the residual magic might affect her. She didn’t have the strength to scream as she saw Sophie charge towards her. “Agnes! What are you—?”
The moment Sophie stepped inside the circle, she underwent the same transformation as the others. The Sophie who knelt at Aggie’s side had silver hair, far more wrinkles, and no more glasses, but her eyes remained the same. “Agnes? What’s going on here? What did you do?”
“I showed them their true selves.”
Like the others, Sophie held up a wrinkled hand to study it. “But why me? I’m not one of them. I never went for any of that stuff.”
Aggie reached up to take her sister’s hand and squeeze it. “You’re my sister, Sophie. Not just my sister by blood, but my sister in magic.”
“Agnes—”
“I never should have let you go to America. I knew it was dangerous. Can you ever forgive me?”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She looked into Sophie’s eyes. “You are one of them. You and Sylvia and Mother—at least if you want to be.”
“You think I want to come out here at night to recite bad poetry?”
“Sophie—”
“I don’t know, Agnes. It’s a lot to take in.”
“Fair enough,” Aggie said. She nodded as the last sparks of white light faded from the night air. Sophie reverted back to her teenage form, as did the others in the circle. “Just promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I will.”
Akako broke through the circle to join Sophie at Aggie’s side. “Are you all right, Agnes?”
“I’m a little tired,” Aggie said, which was an understatement; she felt as if someone had poured a foot of cement over her entire body. “I’ll be fine.”
Sophie turned her head to study Akako. “Who’s this?”
“My friend, Akako.”
“Isn’t she a little old to be your friend?”
“I guess so.”
Sophie’s eyes narrowed and then she shook her head. “Whenever you guys are done playing, you’d better get your butt home. Mom is worried sick.” She tousled Aggie’s hair and then added, “So hurry up, you little brat.”
“I will.”
Sophie nodded to her and Akako and then walked away to gradually fade away into the night. Aggie wanted to call after her, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Her Sophie was dead, nothing could change that now. But maybe this Sophie would start to realize what she could really do.
Aggie felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Glenda over her. Except now Glenda smiled at her, her face a mask of calm. “I think it’s time for you two to go home,” Glenda said. She extended her other hand, which Aggie took. “Thank you, Agnes.”
“It’s the least I could do for my sisters.”
Glenda nodded to her and then brought the others together in a huddle to discuss what they had to do. A few minutes later they spread out in a circle around Aggie and Akako; they joined hands as before. Only now they didn’t light candles or chant. They didn’t say anything at all; they merely stood there with their eyes closed and swayed a little bit.
Still, Aggie could feel their thoughts; the love exuded from them to wash over her like a wave. She took Akako’s hand in both of hers; she didn’t want to get separated again, wherever they ended up. A circle of purple light opened above them to pull at them as it had in the archives. This time Aggie didn’t try to fight it. As it sucked her in, she caught one final glimpse of Sophie at the edge of the park, waving goodbye to her.
Part 3
Chapter 25
Jim’s original plan to carry Emma through the sewers lasted all of five minutes. He managed to get her down the ladder safely, but it wasn’t long before she began to cough and wheeze. Her face, which was still bright red, began to trend towards purple again. He set her down on the bank of the sewer and used the whistle the nurse had given him to squirt medicine into Emma’s throat. Her situation improved slightly, but not much.
He carried her back up to the surface. The problem then became how he could carry her and not draw too much attention to himself. He didn’t know if the nurse or Coach had called the police, but he had to assume they had. If not them, then those policemen he’d knocked out would call for backup when they regained consciousness. It wouldn’t be hard for the police to spot Jim with a young blond girl over his shoulder.
If he knew anything about cars, he might have been able to steal one. If he had any money, he could have called for a taxi or taken a bus. If he had less of a conscience he could have threatened someone to give him a ride. Since none of these applied, he decided to carry her over his shoulder and try to avoid the busiest streets.
As it turned out, he didn’t need to worry. At the moment plenty of people ran through the streets with women—men and children as well—over their shoulders. Police and fire vehicles lined the streets while civilian traffic piled up even more than usual.
Everywhere Jim went, he saw people scurry around with looks of fear. The reason for this became clear as he neared Executive Plaza, the center of the city’s financial district. Black smoke rose in the air, to remind him of where he’d found Emma. Police dressed in riot gear blocked the streets off while fire crews worked to put out the flames that rose from a glass building across the street from Robinson Tower, the city’s tallest structure.
As Jim stared at this scene, he felt a beefy hand clamp down on his shoulder. “Hey, buddy,” a man’s voice said. Jim turned around and thought maybe Coach had found him, or those policemen from the college. Instead it was another policeman in riot gear like the others nearby. “There’s a clinic over on 4th being used for triage.” The man pointed to the southwest.
“Thank you,” he said. He hurried into the crowd and shuffled along with other people whose dress clothes looked as dirty and ragged as his own. The policeman must have thought he was one of these victims of whatever had happened to the building and that Emma had been hurt.
He moved along with the crowd until he reached Albertson Boulevard, at which point he veered off to the left, towards the historical district. Though he had never been there, he knew from Pepe that Emma lived there with her friend. She would be safe there, or at least so he hoped.
And maybe familiar surroundings would bring her back to normal. He didn’t know exactly what had happened to make her this way, but he knew the woman with the dark red hair was responsible. He’d already seen that she had magic powers, powers she must have used against Emma. Why she would turn Emma into this slight blond girl he didn’t know; at the moment it didn’t matter. All that mattered was to get her to someplace safe, where she could breathe easily.
He stopped at an empty park bench to squirt more medicine into her lungs. He put a hand on her cheek, which still looked rosy, though her breathing was more relaxed now, with only a slight whistle. “You be fine,” he whispered to her. “We fix you.”
He entered the historical district to find the streets deserted. There were no cars along the streets or anyone else on the sidewalks. He saw the television still turned on inside a house, but couldn’t see anyone else inside. In another window he saw pots boiling over on a stove and black smoke from an oven, as if whoever lived in the house had simply abandoned the place.
He pressed Emma tighter to his body and looked about him warily for any sign of a trap. When he heard a squeak behind him, he spun around and growled, prepared to find another policeman. Instead it was one of his scouts from Pepe’s tribe.
“What going on?” he asked in ratspeak. The rat explained Pepe had found Emma’s fat friend and another female in a very large house some distance away. Some bad men had broken in, but Pepe and his contingent arrived in time to save Emma’s friend. “Tell him I take the queen to her nest,” he said.
As for why the streets were abandoned, the rat didn’t have any idea. From what the scout said, humans were in a panic all over the city for some reason. “Something bad happen,” Jim
said mostly to himself. “Something very bad.”
The scout hurried off to relay Jim’s message to Pepe. For a moment Jim stood on the sidewalk; he wondered if he should go with the scout, to take Emma to her friend. A glance at her and he decided she was in too delicate of a condition to tramp across the city again. Better to take his chances and take her home, to her bed.
The door was locked, which didn’t come as a surprise, since obviously Emma and her friend weren’t at home. Jim decided that since no one was around he’d dispense with subtlety and set Emma down on the front steps to pick up a rock the size of a baseball. This he threw through the glass part of the front door. It was easy enough then to reach his hand inside to unlock the door.
While Pepe had told Jim of the house, he’d never given Jim the exact layout. He found the stairs and carried her up to the second floor. The first room he encountered was the bathroom, followed by a room of towels. The next room was a bedroom with a bed that seemed as wide as a sewer pipe. Was this Emma’s room? He carried her over to the nightstand and saw a picture of a man with red hair who could have been Emma’s brother next to a very fat woman in front of a brick building. He recognized her from when she had switched bodies with Emma.
He continued his search and found another bedroom with nothing in it at all. Finally he came to the opposite end of the hallway and opened the door. Right away he knew he’d found Emma’s room by the sheer number of books stacked up. The bed wasn’t as big as in her friend’s room, but it was more than big enough for Emma in her present state. He pulled aside the blankets to set her down on the mattress and eased her head onto the pillow.
After he pulled the blankets up to her chin, he didn’t know what he should do. He stood over her indecisively and wondered if he should go downstairs to find her something to eat and drink or stay here in case her asthma worsened again. As he considered this, her eyes opened.
They weren’t the eyes he remembered, the irises so pale blue they were nearly colorless. These eyes widened as she looked around the room. She sat up and put a hand on her chest. The whistling started again as she struggled to breathe. He leaned down to put a hand on her arm, but this only prompted her to gasp. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice softer than before.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 56
