by Dia Reeves
This time when he pushed me, I went flying back into the tree trunk, nearly cracking my spine against it.
“So that’s it,” he said sardonically. “You came back here to use me. Again.”
The self-disgust in his voice made me feel as low as the mud I stood in. I wanted to throw myself at his feet and beg forgiveness, I really did, but I didn’t have time for that. “Wyatt—”
“I thought you could take care of yourself,” he said, throwing my words at Evangeline in my face. “Remember? You don’t need to be rescued.”
“I don’t. I’m trying to rescue someone else, and for that I do need help.”
“Piss on what you need! How long you been planning to steal the Key, Hanna? Since the first day we met?”
“I wouldn’t even have involved you if you hadn’t interfered with me and Wet William!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for forcing you to steal from me and my family!”
I pushed away from the tree, rubbing my back, but my pain didn’t seem to bother him. “You said I never have to make hard choices, but I do, Wyatt. You think it was easy choosing between you and Rosalee?”
“Easy as hell, obviously!” On the verge of tearing into me, he paused, seemed to consider something. “Why would Rosalee need our Key?”
“Because Rosalee was possessed. Is possessed. Runyon’s been hiding inside her for twenty years, and the only way to help her was to get him the Key. He promised to leave her if I did.”
When he turned away, the upstairs light caught part of his face. He looked stunned. I guessed his Mortmaine mates hadn’t clued him in. Maybe because he was still on the two-day vacation Sera had arranged for him.
“You didn’t have to steal from me. Why didn’t you tell me if you were in trouble?”
“Tell you that Rosalee was possessed? You killed Petra, and she was your friend. Who is Rosalee to you that you would spare her?”
He didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t take the Key to hurt you. I took it to save my mother. You understand about duty, right? Well, I have a duty to her. That’s why I risked coming here, even though I knew you would hate me, maybe even tell on me. I had to try. Can you understand that?”
Still he said nothing.
“And it’s not like we can’t get the Key back along with Rosalee—they’re in the same place—but I can’t do it without you.”
Nothing.
I got down on my knees on the soggy, leaf-littered ground. Apparently, I was going to have to make time for this. “I’m sorry I stole your Key, Wyatt. I’m sorry I used you. I swear I’ll make it up to you, no matter how long it takes. Even if—”
He pulled me to my feet, stood us both in the upstairs light. I watched a few worrisome emotions cross his face, mostly anger and shame, but strangely, they were all self-directed.
“You’re wrong. I don’t understand about duty. If I did, I would’ve told Elder to go to hell, would’ve tried to do something to help Pet. Anything before I just …” He sighed. “Your sense of duty is way less out of whack than mine.”
He rubbed his hands over his face, to wipe away the emotion brewing below the surface. “I’m sorry about your ma,” he said, when he had control of himself. “About her being possessed. But you gotta face the fact that no matter what I try, she might not—”
But I didn’t want to hear that. “I can face facts later. First things first. I think I can convince Runyon to leave, but when I do, can you help her not to get sick and die? You said you’d try to think of a way.”
“I did think of a way. I had just finished working on something that might do the trick when you stole the Key and all hell broke loose.”
“So then that’s great!” I said, ignoring the bitterness in his voice.
“Maybe. I never tried this before. I ain’t tested it—”
“You can test it when we get her back.”
“Do you even have a plan?” he asked, exasperated.
“We go into Runyon’s house and get Rosalee back.”
“That’s not a plan! That’s suicide. If the Mayor finds out—”
“Fuck the Mayor.” I thought of the suicide door and shrugged. “Besides, who’s afraid of suicide?”
He looked shocked … but then a species of non-high-minded admiration crossed his face. “If the Mayor ever heard you talking like that—”
His phone rang and sent Wyatt leaping almost out of his skin. He pulled the phone out of his pocket, cursing. “What the hell, Shoko? I thought I had the day off.” He looked at the lit face of his watch. “Oh.”
It was after midnight. Apparently, his two-day vacation was over.
“I have to go where?” He looked at me a long time. “I can’t. I have to do something. No, for a friend.”
I slumped against the tree, shocked that for once he’d chosen me over the Mortmaine.
“My friends are important, and I’m sick of turning my back on ’em just to uphold somebody else’s moral objectives. You think I don’t have my own set of morals? I don’t care what she said. Stop telling me what she said. For the last time, fuck the Mayor and fuck what she said!” He snapped the phone shut and shoved it back in his pocket.
Then his legs gave out, and he huddled on the ground, shaking.
He looked at me, wide-eyed. “Did I really just say … what I said?”
I brushed the wet leaves off his shoulders. “Yes.”
He shook his head, amazed at his own daring. “I’m so dead.”
“You and me both. So why don’t we go out with a bang?”
I waited while he staggered into the house to get supplies. When he came out in the green coat, he was much calmer, and he had brought something for me.
“I found her on the street after Shoko and me brought down that rock creature,” he said, handing over Little Swan. “I almost threw it down the gutter, but …” He turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me another second, and stormed off.
I fastened Little Swan around my neck and caught up to him. “I’m glad you didn’t throw her away.”
“Whatever.” He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and refused to look at me.
We left his backyard and went down the street, passing slits and circles of darkness, the hidden doors all around us.
“That phone call just now … are the Mortmaine looking for me?”
“Are you kidding? Nobody’s ever escaped the suicide door. It ain’t even crossed their minds that you could be out here talking to me. They’re wondering why the suicide door won’t open. It’s never taken this long before. If the person doesn’t decide how to die in an hour, she runs out of air and suffocates.”
I remembered how difficult it had been to breathe.
“They called me because they want me there to see if I can figure out a way to open it. Knowing that you’re my girlfriend, they want me to open the door, and never mind if the sight of your corpse drives me apeshit, just as long as I get the job done!”
Despite his ranting and raving and hurt feelings, I couldn’t help feeling glad he’d referred to me as his girlfriend. Present tense.
“How did you get out?” he asked me.
I stopped and showed him my hip there on the street.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed, fingering the ugly glyph burned into my skin that was nothing like the elegant green tracery on his arm.
But he was more impressed than disgusted by the mark. Proud, even. I told him about the hidden door that led to my family’s burial plot.
“Doesn’t it seem to suggest,” I told him, “that the hidden doors lead from one place to the other based on some sort of logic? If a person could figure out the logic involved … Why are you looking at me like that?”
He shrugged, trying to pretend his face hadn’t just been awash in emotion. “Just thinking I oughta tell Elder about you. You should be one of us.”
“No, thanks. Too much stress makes Hanna go crazy.” I straightened my dress, rebuttoned my coat. “Look, Wyatt, I know you
probably won’t ever trust me again—”
“Let’s not get sidetracked by all that now,” he said quickly. “First things first, like you said.”
A couple of streets over, Wyatt stopped at a tall hidden door—one so skinny it could only be traversed sideways. “After you,” he said.
I squeezed through into darkness and squeezed out onto a quiet, well-lit street far away from Wyatt’s house. The narrow houses and iron gates of Carmona had been replaced by gloomy Victorians with large, unmanicured lawns and ancient trees with thick roots that bullied the sidewalks out of shape.
“Where are we?” I asked Wyatt when he joined me.
He looked up and down the long, damp street. “Nightshade.”
“Where the Mortmaine live,” I whispered, remembering what Poppa had said.
“They’re mostly gone this time of night, out patrolling.” He pointed to the dead end of Nightshade, where the white house I had seen through the cutout doorway sat. “That’s Runyon’s house.”
Weird squiggles bordered the house on every side that I could see, squiggles in midair that glowed eerie and green in the dark, as though the northern lights had strayed south and gotten trapped over the sidewalk.
“The Mayor wanted everyone to be able to see that the house was off-limits,” Wyatt explained, “even at night.”
We’d stopped close enough to the glyphs for me to see the dead birds littering the gutter.
“They fly into the wards,” said Wyatt. “Feel.” He guided my hand to the green air over the sidewalk, which was as solid as stone.
“How do we get past it?”
“Through the ground.”
Wyatt removed a pale orange card from the deck in his pocket. He held the card between his palms and immediately liquefied from the feet up until he splashed into a puddle on the cul-de-sac. The green glyph-light twinkled over his liquid form as he streamed into a crack in the sidewalk.
I waited nervously in the street, eyeing the few houses with green trucks parked in the driveways, hoping none of the homebound Mortmaine decided to look out the window or take a late-night stroll.
One of the sidewalk’s concrete squares rattled and turned orange, like Wyatt’s card. The single section—more importantly, the glyph carved into the section—began to crack, then break into pieces. The green light wavering all around the house snuffed out, allowing darkness to press closer on the street.
A puddle arose from the broken section of concrete, like water from an underground spring; it lengthened and solidified until Wyatt was whole again, tall and straight in his green coat, beckoning me forward. “Come on.”
I stepped onto the property, and Wyatt handed me two black cards, like the ones he’d used at Melissa’s.
“One’s for Rosalee,” he explained, leading me across the lawn.
When we got to the porch, I unbuttoned the top half of my coat and lifted my chest at him. “Don’t you want to put it on?”
He looked like he wanted to say no, but he did it anyway, put the card down my low bodice and pressed it below my breast. I stole a kiss while he did it.
“There’s no time for all that,” he said, pulling away.
“I know,” I said, squeezing him. “It’s just, in case something happens, I want you to know—”
“I know,” he said impatiently, but when he saw the look on my face, he kissed me back and said it again, gently. “I know.” He stuck his card to his own chest. “Now let’s go get your ma.”
“And your Key.” I touched Little Swan for luck, as Wyatt turned the knob of Runyon’s home.
Chapter Thirty-five
Doorways perforated the air inside Runyon’s house, dozens of them. In the walls, in midair, even diagonally. Wyatt and I had to inch around the one in the floor of the entryway, which provided a dizzying view of upside-down trees—dark peach trees.
All of the doorway views showed different areas of Portero—Runyon seemed to be having the same trouble as before.
Wyatt and I edged around the doors and entered a dusty living room full of great-grandmother-type furniture that only corseted women would enjoy sitting on.
Runyon stood in the center of the room, his blue eyes spitting fire as he slashed that same broken-down glyph into the air. He’d stopped opening random doors and was concentrating on the one before him. Every time he made the glyph shape in the air, the scene within the door changed, as if he were flipping through TV channels and nothing satisfied.
When my feet creaked against the floor, Runyon whirled, his dissatisfaction erupting into full-blown rage. “What did you do to my Key?” he shrieked.
“Don’t take it out on me just because the Mayor cursed you. I kept my end of the deal.”
But Runyon didn’t want to hear it.
“What did you do to it?”
As Runyon advanced, wearing my mother’s body like an ill-fitting suit, Wyatt stepped in front of me protectively. “You mean other than steal it from me?”
“Steal it from you?” Wyatt’s effrontery stopped Runyon in his tracks. “I made this Key. I’m the one—” He considered us. “How did you get in here?” He looked at me. “Especially you. I thought for sure the Mayor would have killed you for helping me.”
“She tried to,” I said. “She put me in a suicide door. But I escaped.”
“Preposterous.” He was shocked, almost outraged. “No one can escape a suicide door.”
“Maybe you can’t. But I can do a lot of things you can’t. I’m the one who released you in the first place. I got the Key when you couldn’t. I got past the wards into your ‘forbidden fortress.’ What can’t I do?”
Runyon smirked. “Get your mother back.”
“Oh, but I can,” I said, resisting the urge to poke him in the eyes again. “I’ll make you a deal. If you give her back, I’ll let you borrow Wyatt. He can use—”
Wyatt slapped me hard on the forehead. “I knew it! I knew I couldn’t trust you—not when it comes to Rosalee.”
I would have slapped him back, but I couldn’t. I’d felt an immediate chill all over my body when he’d slapped me … and now I couldn’t move. Not one inch. I couldn’t even yell at him—it was like the dark park all over again.
“A freeze card,” Runyon marveled, confirming what I’d already assumed Wyatt had slapped to my forehead. “Have the Mortmaine finally incorporated glyph cards into their fighting repertory?”
“Nope.” Wyatt shuffled through his deck. “This is my thing.”
“Your thing? Again, you have a false sense of ownership, boy. Those were my invention.”
“I know,” said Wyatt as he slapped a red card to Runyon’s cheek. “Thanks.”
The red card. The card he’d used on the lure and the flying leech. The card that made things explode.
“No, that’s Rosalee’s body! She’s still in there!”
That’s what I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even move.
As the red color seeped over Rosalee’s body, Runyon knocked the cards from Wyatt’s hand, the deck scattering colorfully across the floor. Wyatt dropped down to gather his cards, but not before Runyon darted forward and snatched up a green one, which he slapped over the red card.
Just in time. Rosalee’s body, completely red now, had begun to roil and swell, hovering on the edge of explosion, but the green card settled her skin. It didn’t get rid of the redness, but at least it kept her body in one piece.
“Red and green,” said Runyon, admiring Rosalee’s skin. “Such a festive combination.”
Wyatt had ceased collecting his cards to stare in disbelief at Runyon.
“Never thought to combine them? Well, now you can thank me for that, too.” Runyon flicked Rosalee’s arms at Wyatt and a muddy red spray spattered against Wyatt and the blue wingback chair he’d been crouching near as he gathered his cards. The chair immediately exploded, filling the air with downy fuzz and bits of blue chintz.
The blast sent Wyatt rolling helplessly across the floor, bu
t otherwise, he was unhurt. Or at least unexploded. He staggered to his feet, glaring at Runyon, and grimly removed his coat.
“And what card are you wearing?” Runyon asked. Some of the red color from Rosalee’s skin had disappeared. “I see the anti-possession card peeking out of your shirt. But what else?” His eyes traveled shrewdly over Wyatt’s body. “A shield card, perhaps? After taking that much damage, it’s probably turned to dust. Let’s see.”
Runyon shot more of the explosive spray at Wyatt, who this time took a direct hit in the chest. He flew backward and fetched up hard against a curio cabinet, hard enough to break the glass doors. Yet unlike the chair, he didn’t explode.
Runyon smiled at Wyatt, begrudgingly impressed. “I don’t recall ever making a shield card that could take that much damage. Clever boy.”
Wyatt’s only answer was to spit up blood and then hurl a jagged bit of statuary from the curio cabinet at my mother’s head.
This had gotten out of hand in a hurry. I had to do something before the two of them figured out a way to kill each other.
Poppa! Poppa, come quick!
Poppa appeared before me, Rosalee’s pillow tucked under his arm. “Problems?”
Another explosion answered that question better than I ever could. You’ve got to unfreeze me before they kill each other!
Wyatt, now bleeding profusely from his nose, scrambled to one of the cards on the floor—a gold one—and hurriedly adhered it to his arm as dust sifted from beneath his shirt.
“Is that your last shield card?” Runyon exclaimed. Half of the red color had disappeared. “I have more than enough left to turn that one to dust too. Perhaps—”
Wyatt kicked him to the floor, but Runyon didn’t stay down. He sprang to his feet, and they started boxing, Wyatt staying in close range, which made it impossible for Runyon to hurl the explosive spray at him.
“What’s that boy doing to Rosalee?” Poppa cried, outraged.
Trying to kill her! You’ve got to remove the card on my head so I can stop them.
“Well, why didn’t you say so!” Poppa ripped the card off my skin, and it turned to dust in his hand. “Hurry!”
