I snaked slowly up and down the aisles without noticing much of anything. Right until I came face-to-face with a locked glass cabinet. It contained an assortment of things, but my attention riveted on a jar on the top shelf. It contained shards of purple glass. I knew without a doubt that those were the shards from the glass heart that had belonged to my mother and hung over our kitchen sink when I was a kid.
I couldn’t tear my gaze away. I was hypnotized. I wanted to touch them. It didn’t make any sense, but even so, I pulled on the cabinet doors. They were locked. I examined the two locks. Not that hard to pick. Of course, I didn’t have my pick set on me. I foraged for something that would work. I found several necklaces strung on wire and pulled those apart and made what I needed.
It took me a good half hour to make my tools and then get the locks open. I pulled open the doors and took down the thick-walled jar. The flip-top lid was made of glass fastened down by a bale. Now that I had it, I hesitated to open it. I decided I’d go back to my sitting room. Or maybe not, since Price and Touray’s fight had destroyed it. Maybe the dining room, then. Suddenly, the vault felt claustrophobic.
I closed the cabinet, pocketing my makeshift pick set, and headed for the door. I wondered how long it had been since the others left. Had they reached the entry shaft yet? Were they down inside?
In the room outside, I found a phone on the desk, and a clock that said 3:55. They’d been gone nearly an hour. I considered a moment, then set the jar down and took a steadying breath. I couldn’t stand not having some contact with them. I could fix that. All I had to do was pick up each of their traces. Which meant reaching into the trace dimension. Which meant risking getting grabbed again.
It was worth it. Besides, I was ready this time.
I dropped into trace vision. I had no trouble picking out Price’s trace. It was burgundy with streaks of blue. Touray’s was a brilliant yellow edged with black. Leo’s emerald ribbon was as familiar as my own silver-green. Madison’s trace was dark gold, the color of squash blossoms. I reached into the trace dimension and gathered Leo’s and Touray’s trace, pausing to wrap them around my wrist. Cold washed up my arm, making my elbow and shoulder ache. I grabbed Madison’s trace next and reached for Price’s.
Something brushed against my hand. I jerked away. My heart sped. I scrabbled for Price’s trace, snatching it triumphantly and intending to yank it out of the trace dimension.
Nothing happened.
I jerked back again, and then again, but I was stuck fast, my hand locked in solid nothing. I sent null power down into my fingers. The invisible grip loosened. Before I could draw back, a blue-white hand circled my forearm. Cold washed through me. My heart clenched with the pain. I didn’t have time to think. A tug pulled me off my feet and right into the trace dimension.
Ice invaded my body. My heart stuttered. I could no longer see Touray’s house. I was surrounded by velvet purple-black. Wisps of opalescent energy swirled and drifted through a jungle of a billion vibrantly colored ribbons of trace. But none of that captured my attention. I followed the hand holding my arm up to its owner’s face.
Shock quaked through me, and my heart stopped beating.
The face was opalescent and transparent, the eyes reflecting the ribbons all around. All the same, I couldn’t doubt who it was.
Mom.
I mouthed the word as sudden sobs broke apart in my chest. Old grief poured out, and she pulled me into her embrace. It was cold, but I could feel the energy that was uniquely her wrapping around my soul. She ran her hands over my back and head and murmured to me.
“Hush, hush, sweetling. Oh, Riley, don’t cry. You’re breaking my heart.”
That only made me cry more. I buried my head in her shoulder. I could almost smell her perfume. She pet my head and then pushed me away from her.
“Oh my baby! You have grown to be so beautiful! But there’s no time. I have things to tell you and you cannot stay in this dimension long.”
I didn’t get a chance to answer. Another spirit crowded between us, bulling my mother out of the way. I recognized her immediately. Lauren Morton. Percy had killed her after all. Despite my anger for what she’d done, I was sorry. She hadn’t deserved to die. She’d been trying to save her nephew.
Her form wavered and melted inward, then firmed. Her mouth was moving. At first I couldn’t understand the twisted syllables, then the sounds solidified into sense. “Percy escaping. Killing everybody. Trap. He knows. Plane.” She flickered again and repeated the last word. “Plane.”
Then she lost cohesion, turning into one of the opal blobs of energy. Terror gripped me. I grabbed at her, but she was no more than icy smoke in my fingers.
“What did she mean? Can you talk to her?”
My mother pressed the flat of her hand against Lauren’s pulsing spirit. Then shook her head. “I get images. I don’t understand them, except she’s wants you to know so you can do something. She’s panicked about something.”
“I have to go. I have to warn the others,” I said. “How do I go back out of here?”
My mother hesitated. “I have things to tell you. About what happened to me. About your father. They can’t wait long.”
My father again. “I’ll come back as soon as I fix this.”
She shook her head. “No. Wait until you warm up. You might need healing. The trace realm is not meant for the living. It leaves its marks on you. But don’t wait too long. Danger is coming.” She brushed her fingers over my brow and along my cheek. “I love you. little girl.”
With that, she grew businesslike. “To come back to me is easy enough. To enter this dimension, simply to open yourself to the trace realm and let yourself fall into it. I’ll be waiting for you. Now you have to go before you become ill. Follow your own trace back to where you entered. Push magic down into your hand, reach through to the living world and grip your trace to pull yourself out.”
I followed her instructions, my fingers almost too numb to feel my trace. I glanced at my mother. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
She smiled. She didn’t look any older than when she died. Almost the same age I was now. We looked a lot alike, though her hair had been auburn and mine was coppery red. I held still a moment longer, not wanting to let go. What if she disappeared before I came back?
“Go,” she ordered gently. “You’re dying now. You need to warm up. Be careful.”
She stepped back until she disappeared in the tangles of trace. I hauled myself back into the vault’s outer room. I sprawled on the carpet. I ached. I couldn’t feel much of anything. And yet there was no time to waste. I made myself stand up. My hands were blue gray and my fingernails and tips of my fingers were totally blue. If someone was filming a murder movie, I could have been cast as a body in a morgue.
I grabbed the phone on the desk and punched zero. It took two rings for someone to pick up.
“Hello. May I help you?” asked a pleasant and professional voice.
“This is Riley Hollis. I need Cass—” I stumbled. I couldn’t remember her last name. Maybe I didn’t even know it. “I need Cass down in the vault room five minutes ago.” I didn’t recognize my voice. I sounded like an eighty-year-old man who’d smoked a pack a day since puberty.
“Certainly, Miss Hollis.”
“It’s an emergency. Your boss could die. Hurry up,” I added without any force at all, then dropped the phone and wilted into the chair.
It felt like hours before anyone came, but it was less than two minutes, according to the clock on the desk. I waited because I couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t feel anything, like I’d been shot up all over with Novocain.
The first person into the room was a tall brunette, her hair pulled up in an elegant bun on the back of her head. She took one look at me and called back over her shoulder. “Get the healer!”
>
I recognized her voice from the phone. Two women followed her, both wearing black canvas pants and gray polo shirts. An embroidered logo of a black circle with a crescent inside was stitched on the left sleeve. Both women wore police-style gun belts, fully kitted out with extra magazines, handcuffs, extending batons, and no doubt a bunch of magical accoutrements.
“Explain,” the first one demanded, not wasting any words.
She also wore a gun under her suit jacket, I realized. I wondered if Touray’s maids went armed, too, just in case goblins or something crawled out of the toilets.
“Warn them,” I said, concentrating on forming the words. My tongue didn’t want to bend. “Trap.”
“What kind of trap?” asked one of the gray-shirted women. Her dark blond hair was woven into a French braid down the back of her head.
“I don’t know. They need to get out.”
The brunette from the phone grabbed her cell and dialed. She swore when no one answered, then hung up and typed out a text and sent it. If the team was down in the shaft, they couldn’t get a signal. The text would do no good.
“Need Cass,” I said.
Just then, she arrived, led by a muscular gray-shirted man. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“We have to warn the team to pull out. I’ve got their trace.”
She hesitated. “I don’t know if you can handle it. You look like shit, and me going in again so soon after your brain meltdown could really fuck with you.”
“Don’t care. Do it.” She hesitated a second and then took a hold of my hand. I tried to relax as she invaded.
Easy, now.
Hurry, I urged.
What happened?
I’ll tell you later. Just tell them to get out and fast.
She burrowed deeper into my head. I was almost glad to feel the pain, since I couldn’t feel anything else. Finally, she broke through. I felt her magic chasing down my arm to the trace I still held on to.
Did you reach them? I asked after about ten seconds.
Hold on. Silence. Then, okay, I got them. Touray wants to know what the problem is.
Just tell him to stop wasting time and get out.
Hands settled on the crown of my head. Magical worms squirmed beneath my scalp, indicating Maya had arrived. I shuddered in disgust. On the other hand, feeling anything was better than not feeling anything at all, and she was healing me.
“What have you done to yourself, querida?” Maya murmured, her hands sliding down to cup the sides of my head, then lower to my shoulders.
Delicious warmth spread through me, bringing with it spiny prickles. I was grateful to feel something.
Cass was still in my head. Touray says he needs to know how sure you are.
Very sure. A dead cop told me when I went into the trace dimension, I said baldly.
Cass’s astonishment rippled through me. When you did what, now?
Just tell them it’s not safe and to come back. Tell Gregg that family is telling him to come the hell home. Percy’s already on the run.
Realization crashed into me as I fully registered Lauren’s last word to me. Plane. But no, I was being paranoid, wasn’t I? Percy didn’t know that my sister, Taylor, was a pilot. Even if he did, he’d use someone he knew and trusted to fly out of Diamond City. He probably had his own pilot and plane all ready.
Except he was the type to get revenge. He’d burned my arms because I’d sassed him. He used Madison’s family as a weapon against her. Used her as a weapon against them. Going after family is what he did.
I think he’s going to fly out—
He’d known enough to send Lauren to lure me down to his compound. He’d known just what she needed to say and do. Why wouldn’t he know about Taylor? He probably knew everything there was to know about me. It wasn’t crazy to think he’d do something vicious to get back at me. After all, because I’d escaped, the cat was out of the bag on how to make SD. Plus I’d taken Madison, his leverage against her father and sister. He had to be pissed. He was the type to want to make a statement. Lauren’s spirit had been so determined to tell me about the plane. She’d said it twice, like it was the most important thing I needed to know.
Any doubts I had vanished. I had to get to Taylor.
I’m going to Taylor’s hangar. Tell them to meet me there. Tell them to hurry. Pull out. I need to go.
Purpose drove away any remnants of cold or weakness left behind by my sojourn in the spirit realm. I braced myself for Cass’s withdrawal. As she pulled back, a sunburst of pain exploded in my head and black spots spun across my eyes. I blinked, waiting for the pain to recede. When my vision cleared, I started to stand.
Maya’s hands gripped me harder. “Not yet, chica,” she said.
“I have to go. Percy’s going after my sister.” Saying it out loud made it feel even more right.
“Yes, but you have injured yourself again and you must be as ready as you can to fight. You cannot help her if you are prey. You must be strong. You must be the hunter.”
She tsked as a surge of hot energy dumped into me. I started to sweat.
“Get her something to eat,” Maya said in a distant voice.
The brunette from the phone picked up the receiver and hit a couple of numbers. She put in a food order to be delivered within the next five minutes. “High protein, high calorie,” she said, then put the phone down.
“What can we do?” she asked without preamble.
I really liked her all of a sudden. “I don’t know. Percy’s paranoid. Even if he plans to get away without anybody catching up with him, he’ll be ready for an ambush. He likes to use Sparkle Dust against his enemies, and his people have these spirit cloaks that give them concentrated talents. Paralyzing victims within the vicinity is one. I don’t know what else.”
“If I’m right, and I’m pretty sure I am, he’s going to kidnap my sister to fly him out of Diamond City. She’s a pilot and she’s got her own small fleet of planes.”
“Where?” She was rapidly typing into her phone.
“Hollis Air and Freight,” I said. “It’s up—”
“I’ve got it.” Elegant dark brows arched. “Burdock Terrace? Nice.”
My sister’s hangar was up on the Midtown shelf, where a lot of money lived, and an air service was an abomination. She was suffered to exist there partly because it was convenient to have her there and partly because she used magic and illusions to reduce the noise and visual pollutions from her air traffic, and she only flew helicopters out of there. The main airport was up on the rim, a few miles northeast of the caldera. She kept another hangar there for her jets, and chauffeured clients between via helicopter.
“They’ll be up on top of the rim at the main airport. If not now, that’s where they’ll have to go to board one of the jets.”
“I’ll put people on both,” brunette woman said, tapping away. She glanced at her two companions. “Jo, you take the Burdock Terrace team. Tash, you get up on the rim. Go by air.”
The two gray-shirted women were halfway out the door before she finished giving her orders. Now the brunette looked at me.
“Which team will you accompany? What will be useful for you to take with you?”
I was going to travel through the spirit realm. I knew how. I should be able to track my trace to the hangar. I’d been there enough. If I couldn’t, I’d return here and go with the team. I wasn’t sure what would travel through the spirit realm with me, but better prepared than sorry. Ignoring the first question, I answered the second. “A gun. Nulls. A heal-all or two, just in case.”
She nodded. “What about binding spells? Maybe some hexes that could serve as distractions?”
I shook my head. “He’ll be using nulls or his own binding spells. They’ll kill anything I want to use.”
I didn’t have time to make anything really useful. “I’ll take a flak jacket if you’ve got it. Been shot once in my life, I’d rather not do it again.”
She smiled in that way that said she’d been there, done that, totally agreed. Her fingers danced on her phone as she sent another text. “Anything else?”
She called this over her shoulder as she vanished inside the vault. She returned a minute or so later carrying two null necklaces and a double-pointed quartz crystal, which had to be the heal-all. She set those down before me. Just then, a breathless man wearing white kitchen clothing arrived with a tray. He set it on the desk and left.
On the tray were cold cuts and cheeses, crackers, several small cartons of whole milk, an assortment of dried fruits, and several small cups of nuts. I’d nearly finished gulping it down when the flak jacket arrived, along with a gun belt.
I took it from my brunette helper. “Thanks. What’s your name?”
She looked taken aback, then flushed. “My apologies. I should have introduced myself.”
“Instead of wasting time with introductions, you competently responded with speed, which I by far prefer. Thanks for that, too, by the way.”
Her flush deepened. “Thank you. I’m Elinor Bartholomew. Call me Elle.”
“Which team are you going with?” Cass asked. “Maybe I should go with you. If you could touch someone or pick up trace once you get there, I could take some people out of the game.”
“No,” I said. “This isn’t your fight. Besides, I’m not going with a team.”
“You’re not what?”
“There’s a faster way.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re going to try to travel through the spirit realm, aren’t you?”
Cass was not stupid.
“I think I can do it. It’s the fastest way.”
Edge of Dreams Page 24
