“You put my granddaughter down.”
Pops stood at the end of the hallway. In his hands was the first weapon he had laid hands on—the frying pan. The sight made Zanna shiver—it was her grandfather, but at the same time, it wasn’t. There was no twinkle in his eyes, no mischievous boyish grin tugging at his lips. His face was cold and merciless.
“Don’t!” Owin shouted again, not taking his eyes off the intruder. “I’ve got this!”
Zanna’s kidnapper finally turned toward Owin. She had not dropped her illusionary disguise the whole time, her mocking voice coming from the mouth of Zanna’s father. “With what? That laughing gas you’ve been trying to stuff into my lungs?” She let out a single, heartless laugh. “Here’s a tip for later: Keep it away from your target’s nose. Or else she’ll smell it coming a mile away.”
A subtle disturbance rippled through the air. In a split second, Owin’s face contorted, grimacing as he tried to fight off whatever Zanna’s attacker was manipulating in the air. His eyes fluttered, rolling madly in a sluggish, dizzy spin, face bright red with exertion.
“I said—” Pops growled, and then he stopped, cut off in mid-sentence. A sound like heartbreak tore out of Zanna, and she thrashed around in her bindings, twisting to see what the woman had done. Pops was frozen in mid-step, the frying pan raised in a swing that would never come down. His mouth hung open in mid-threat. Nothing besides his eyes moved, like a statue with a man trapped inside.
Owin was down to a knee but still holding the whip of his shield. The woman looked down at him, faintly impressed. “Well then,” she said, “let’s test your electromagnetism.”
Electrical current coursed through the black iron enveloping Zanna, and it made her stomach go scrambling, like she had brushed against a live electric fence. But whatever it did to her, it must have been ten times worse for Owin. He shrieked and collapsed, and the silver rope shattered like it was made out of glass. Then there was only silence.
The front hall was ruined. Shards of broken shield littered the floor and stuck in the drywall. The light Beatrice had broken hung from its wires. Nora lay halfway out of the coat closet, her breathing faint. Libby was still hanging upside down. One unpopped yellow balloon bobbed among the tangles of fallen streamers.
An arm of black iron stretched out from inside the woman’s sleeve and plucked the frying pan from her grandfather’s frozen hand. “Why hello,” the woman said, like it was an old friend. She gave it a twist and unlocked the outer barrier of air pressure.
Zanna closed her eyes. They were going to fly soon. She could feel it swelling inside of her. But instead, the strange woman remained in the front hall for just a moment. She looked back into the living room. “Cedwick!”
Zanna had completely forgotten about him. She looked over the wreckage of the foyer again, wondering if he had been thrown somewhere in the chaos, but he wasn’t there. All she saw was Nora in the closet, with Owin and Beatrice not that far away.
“Come out, Cedwick. I’m not going to hurt you!”
A spark of hope. He had gotten away. He must have hidden when the fighting had started, and Zanna squeezed her eyes shut, telling him to stay where he was, to stay hidden—
“My father knows,” she heard Cedwick say with a touch of arrogance.
The strange woman whipped around toward the couch where the sound had come from, and with a flick of her finger, she skittered the furniture out of the way. Cedwick sat with his back to the dusty wall. He wasn’t exactly smiling, but his eyes glittered. “Do what you want with me. I’ve already told him. He’s on his way here now. You won’t make it one mile before the Primers get you.”
“The Primers couldn’t get me before. I doubt they’ve improved.” Zanna’s kidnapper gestured around the room. “Look around you, Cedwick. Look at your brother.”
Cedwick didn’t look.
“He tried to fight me, and he lost.” The woman’s voice dropped as she kept talking, dropped and dropped until it was nothing more than a frigid whisper. “I would have done the same to you if you had tried. You’re the only smart one here. Remember that.”
Zanna closed her eyes—partially because she was sure they were going to fly now, but mostly because she couldn’t bear looking at Cedwick. He just sat there against the living room wall, not moving and holding nothing.
Her kidnapper stepped over the wrecked closet door to Pops, who stared back with cold vengeance. But she didn’t say anything. Instead, the woman just put her forehead to the cage of air pressure he was trapped in, letting a private moment pass in the ruined hall.
“I am sorry,” the woman said in a strange, soft voice. “You’ll understand. Maybe. Hopefully. Don’t hate me too much.”
Then she straightened, wiped at something in her eyes, and let the iron carry her and Zanna out the door and into the sky.
Chapter Twelve
Zanna tried not to pass out. It wasn’t the g-forces, because her kidnapper handled those with ease and made the ride as smooth as a baby in a cradle. It wasn’t the wind either, because the woman handled that, as well. No, it was the height.
They skipped up in a vertical climb, Zanna’s captor deftly parting the shockwave like it was a pair of curtains. No sonic boom announced their ascent. In a silent instant, Zanna’s house had disappeared into the jumble of suburbia. It would have been better with the noise. You could tell which way you were falling by the way the wind howled. Without it, there was only the calm heartbeat of Zanna’s kidnapper and her own frightened one.
“Breathe.”
Zanna smelled something sweet and nitrous-like. It loosened her jaw just a little, though she kept her eyes closed. Brisk, thin air nipped at her nose, but the iron that bound her to her kidnapper warmed slightly, as if she had wrapped her entire body around a freshly poured cup of coffee.
“You really should open your eyes,” her captor said. “It’s such a lovely view.”
Zanna shook her head stubbornly.
“All the Earth laid out beneath us,” her captor continued. “All its storms and sunny days. The cities and forests. The great blue ocean. It’s astounding. You’re not going to get another chance to see it like this.”
But Zanna still refused. “What are you going to do to me?”
The woman clucked her tongue. “Don’t spoil this moment, you dear, silly child. We can have a nice long sit-down back at the house. I’ll make some hot cider. That’s still your favorite, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“Are you going to open your eyes?”
Zanna shook her head. It felt good to do something in rebellion, even if the rest of her body was encased in immovable iron. The woman sighed, and the sweet smell of laughing gas returned, this time much stronger than before. Zanna inhaled deep and drifted into blackness.
When she awoke, the sound of the world was back. Snow crunched under her kidnapper’s shoes. They were in a forest, near a brook that ran and fell over smooth rocks. Everything smelled of cold pine trees.
They stood at the edge of a picturesque wild-grass meadow deep with snow. The night was black and crisp, the stars sharp as silver needles. Zanna twisted her head around, trying to find anything to get her bearings, but it was just wilderness and shadow.
“Now to see if that was worth it,” her kidnapper muttered. Now that they were alone, all the violence in her voice had faded away. She sounded less like a vicious intruder and more like a weary traveler who still had quite a long distance to go. Were it anyone else, Zanna might have felt sorry for the tired, exhausted woman, but the image of Pops in that cage of air pressure was still too fresh in her mind. They hopped over the rushing brook, and the world rippled.
When things realigned, the field was not empty. Standing where the snow and wild grass had been was an old Victorian mansion that looked like it had been ripped right out of a classic horror movie. Its siding
was a perfectly faded gray, its gables crumbled just enough to set Zanna’s imagination aflutter. As her kidnapper walked up the path that had appeared beneath her feet, the curtains in the front room pulled back to fill the windows with soft yellow light. The front door opened with an atmospheric creak as the house welcomed its owner back.
“Marvelous, isn’t she?” her kidnapper said, pausing at the foot of the porch steps to look proudly over the house. “Did quite a lot of work on her. Who’d have thought I’d turn into such a handyman?”
There was a certain charm to the house, Zanna had to admit. A dreamlike, fantasy quality that made her want to explore it, even as her skin prickled with danger. “This is your house?”
“Our house now,” her kidnapper said. “You’re going to be staying with me for a while.”
Candles flickered to life as they entered the front hall, filling the house with far more light than Zanna suspected they would have naturally given off. There was still a fair bit of work that needed to be done, namely the peeling wallpaper and the cobwebs in the corners, but some comforts had been included. The hallway rug looked clean, if a little shabby, and the wood banisters and candle fixtures shone with polish. It wasn’t as musty as Zanna would have expected, either. Cheery spices wafted from deeper in the house—pumpkin and cloves and cinnamon and chocolate. And a rich, papery scent that comforted Zanna deep in her bones. Books. Thousands and thousands of books.
The iron around Zanna loosened and gently set her down on the thick rug of the entrance hall. At her first taste of freedom, Zanna made a mad dash for the front door, but the house slammed it shut, and she just banged her shoulder into it. As if to drive its point home, the door locked with an absurdly loud click.
“In here,” the woman said, not even surprised at Zanna’s attempted escape. “You won’t make it to the back door,” she said as Zanna looked down the hallway into the depths of the mansion. “Come on now. Don’t be dreadful.”
Zanna scowled, considering taking a chance, but eventually, she heeded her captor’s words and grumpily followed her into the sitting room. Two couches sat in the corner, and a table was covered with ornate silverware. One couch looked like it had come with the house, its seat bumpy with loose springs and the velvet all worn down to moth silk. The other was new and modern, and even though it was a pleasant soft purple, it looked completely out of place in the wheezing mansion.
“It was the best I could do,” the woman said, her nose wrinkling at the sight of the new sofa. “Antique Victorian sofas aren’t exactly common these days. Eventually, though, I’ll find the right one.” She sat on the old sofa, leaving the new one for Zanna. A nearby door opened, and a large silver serving tray floated through. Balanced atop it were two steaming mugs of hot spiced cider. The tray offered one to Zanna, and she took it gingerly, wrapping her hands around it and breathing in the sweet scent. Then she remembered where she was, and the smell turned sickly and rotten.
“What?” the woman said when Zanna didn’t drink her cider. “I promised you cider, didn’t I?”
Zanna stared at her kidnapper through the clouds of steam, wondering if she could make the woman’s head explode if she concentrated hard enough. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Do you think it’s poisoned or something?” her captor asked, gliding effortlessly past Zanna’s threats. “Please. If I wanted to poison you, I wouldn’t offer you a drink. I’d just do it.”
Zanna lifted the mug to her lips, but at the last possible minute, she threw it right at her kidnapper’s face. Jumping to her feet, she scrambled over the purple couch toward the front window, planning to dive headlong through it, but she only made it halfway before the air around her pressurized. The woman pulled her back and sat her down on the sofa again. Between them, the cider had been paused mid-throw. Not a drop had made it to the woman.
“You’ll hurt the kitchen’s feelings, throwing away its hard work like that,” her kidnapper said, making the cider reverse its trajectory back into Zanna’s mug. “Try it. I think you’ll be surprised.”
The air pressure around Zanna relaxed, letting her move again and bringing back the aroma of cider. It was rich with nutmeg and allspice, just as Pops had always made for her. Pops, who had fought to protect her, even though he didn’t have a bit of Scientist ability in him.
She poured the woman’s cider on the floor.
For a second, her captor looked genuinely hurt. “I’m trying to be nice, Zanna.”
“You should have thought of that before you attacked my friends.” she said. Somewhere, she felt Libby cheering her on, making her bolder. “Before you attacked my grandfather.”
“And you should have listened to me and never gone to St. Pommeroy’s in the first place. You ungrateful child, I could have just thrown you into a bare iron room and sealed it forever, but did I? I built this house for you.” The woman met Zanna’s anger quickly, before she got control of herself once again and softened her tone. “I want you to be comfortable here. There’s a wonderful library full of puzzle books. The kitchen can make almost anything you want—I’ve already put in the functions for hot cider and French onion soup and a lasagna like Pops used to make. And it’s dead simple to add more. Just ask.”
Zanna shrank back as far as the sofa would let her. The woman grinned all wrong—too full of teeth, too much white in her eyes. It didn’t help that she was still wearing the illusion of Zanna’s father over her face. Zanna wished Beatrice were there to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder to steady her. But Beatrice was back in Virginia, in the rubble of Pops’s foyer, and Zanna had only herself.
“Who are you?” she asked, her mouth dry.
The woman tried to smile warmly. “Someone who cares for you, Zanna. Someone who knows better than you. There’s a dark time coming for the world. For the universe. If you’re here, with me, I can save you. I can prevent so many terrible things. If I’m lucky, I can stop it completely.” There was almost a note of pleading in her voice. “No one but us will ever know that things were so dangerously close to falling apart. No one will die, and no one will go mad, and things will be wonderful. Isn’t that what you want?”
“No.” Reserves of spite and anger flooded Zanna’s gut, keeping her going as her physical strength began to fade. “I want to go home. I want to be with my friends and my grandfather, and I want you to stuff your doomsday nonsense and leave me alone.”
For a moment her kidnapper seemed like she might cry. Then she drew her mouth back into a firm line and rubbed at her temples. “I can’t.” It was almost genuinely apologetic. “I did take great pains not to hurt your friends more than I had to. Do you know how fragile the human body is? How many chemicals and physics and functions have to be perfect just to keep your heart beating? Your friends are fine. Bruised, perhaps. A little warier about trying to tackle a genuine Scientist with just their bare hands. But alive and well. I can promise you that.”
“I don’t care what you promise,” Zanna said. “You’re a monster. How come you’re still hiding behind that illusion?”
The woman bristled and then touched her face, as if she had forgotten what it looked like. “Would this be better?” she asked. Her features reshaped like wet clay. The skin lost its sunburnt glow and became pale and rosy. The nose sharpened to an elegant tip. The masculine coarse black hair turned silky and slightly wavy, growing down past her shoulders, though it remained just as thick. The woman brushed her hand through it and yawned, smoothing out her new complexion with her fingertips.
“That’s not your real face, either,” Zanna snapped. There was something eerie and vampiric about the woman’s complexion. Something unsettling about how her eyes didn’t quite match the rest.
“And how do you know that?” the woman asked. “Because you think you saw my real face with your little Weierstrass key? Come here. Touch. There’s no illusion here. No metallurgy. I’m just flesh. Same as you.”
>
Zanna kept her hands fastened around the empty mug, not accepting the invitation. She might as well have been invited to touch a vat of crackling radioactive waste.
The woman leaned back and spread her arms over the back of the old Victorian sofa. “You know, you shouldn’t make things more difficult than necessary. I’ve tried to be as accommodating as possible, but you must also do your share. Don’t be so sullen.”
“I think I’ll be whatever I want,” Zanna said. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“Oh, you owe me more than you know,” the woman spat viciously. “More than you could ever know.” Then her anger disappeared again as she summoned the little flying serving tray. “I’m sorry. Are you hungry? I didn’t realize how late it was—travel never agrees with me. But we can have something quick. Sandwiches, perhaps? A nice meatball sub?”
“No.” All Zanna had eaten today was a cupcake, but she wouldn’t show her kidnapper that. The reserve of anger she had been propping herself up with was running dry, so she spoke quickly and directly. “I want you to show me to the room you’re going to lock me in.”
The woman frowned. “Fine.”
She led Zanna back into the main hallway. A set of stairs on the left led up to the second floor, but they continued past it toward the back of the house. A small, curved door stood at the end of the hallway, and beyond it was a tall, circular tower pitted with holes in the floor and stray nails jabbing out of the walls, as if something tall and graceful had been torn out, leaving only the splinters behind. It had been a staircase, Zanna realized as she looked up the empty tower and saw the remains of a landing thirty feet above her. A spiral staircase pulled right out of its tower like a sapling yanked out of the ground.
Iron ribboned out of the woman’s sleeves and wrapped around Zanna before she could fight it. But it didn’t bind her as tightly as before, when they were flying and the iron was the only thing keeping Zanna from escaping. Now that they were in her house, her kidnapper held Zanna like a gentle parent.
The Zanna Function Page 15
