Downpour

TWENTY-TWO

The problem with murder is that it makes a mess and attracts a crowd. I couldn’t get close to Strother’s lingering ghost and I could see it fading as I watched; sucked away into Lake Crescent the way the ghost of Anna Petrovna had been. The kid from La Push heading for the same silent end as the town’s famous castaway. At least this time there was a body, but I didn’t think I’d get another chance to look at that, either.

I wondered why he’d come to the hotel looking for me instead of staying on the mountain. And why was he looking for me at all? Had he been the intended victim or had I?

The cops and more sheriff’s department people arrived in record time. The rooms on each side of mine were already empty since there wasn’t much demand for hotel space in February, so the cops put me in one while they investigated the scene. As soon as the door was closed, I sank down into the Grey, pressing as close to the wall as I could to see if I could attract the attention of Strother’s ghost. Even with the wall between us, the blunt, churning trauma of death reached for me, and I had to kneel on the mist-covered floor or risk falling from the nausea and pain.

I could see him as a dissipating scatter of red and blue beyond the cloud shape of the barrier between us. I put out my hand, hoping no corporeal person on the other side could see the apparition of a hand poking out of the wall.

“Strother,” I whispered, willing him to notice, to have enough presence left to do anything.

The broken energy shapes stirred and drew together, making a sketch of the man that was fast unraveling. The ghost floated toward me slowly, as if weighted. I stretched myself harder against the wall, panting against the pain and pushing my hand toward him until I could feel the agonizing slash and stab of his remaining energy against my fingertips. I scrabbled in the mist, half-blind from the tears that welled over my lower eyelids, until I could hook my fingers into the waning coil of his life.

Held to shape by my touch, he firmed up a little and I had to swallow hard to keep from crying out or throwing up. He wasn’t going to last; I could feel the energy slipping like sand from my grasp.

“What happened to you?” I gasped.

“Don’t know,” he said on a sigh.

“And you don’t know who?”

“The list . . . recent . . . residents . . .” Then he fell apart, and the burning strands of energy tore out of my grip, leaving my palm feeling burned and raw.

I tumbled back onto the floor of the new room, gasping as even the sensation of recent, violent death yanked away and vanished. I dragged myself up onto the bed and hunched into a miserable huddle. My body didn’t hurt as badly as it had a moment ago, but my mind was a startled mess.

Strother might have known who killed him or he might not have, but he’d tried to give me information he thought was more important. The list was the key to the murder of Steven Leung and it didn’t matter whether I or Strother had been the intended victim; the killer’s name had to be on that list.

I straightened myself out, trying to breathe deeply and slowly, pulling myself back together before I staggered to the door and opened it, looking for the nearest cop. I must have looked appalling if the guy’s reaction was any indication; he stared and then jumped away from the wall where he’d been leaning to rush to me.

“Are you all right?”

I was shaking a little and my voice came out unsteadily. “I—I think I know why Strother was here. He was making a list . . . of the year-round residents at the lakes. The ones who moved in about the time Steven Leung went missing. Does he have it? I mean, with him?”

The cop glanced back toward the open door of the other room, and then back at me. “Why are you interested in this list?”

“We were going to discuss it. Strother and I. See if any of the residents knew anything about that time.”

The cop gave me a narrow-eyed once-over, then pulled me with him to the edge of the other doorframe. “Hey, Faith, you guys find a list of any kind?”

A husky man with mussed hair turned away from his observation of the corpse to stand in the doorway and block the view. “So far, nothing like that. Why?”

“Strother told me he was making a list of the year-round residents—the people who might have been around when Steven Leung went missing,” I explained again. “I’m working for the family on this and Strother was going to discuss the list with me. I think that’s why he came here. He should have it with him. If he doesn’t . . .”

“You think his killer took it?” Faith asked, rubbing the side of his head and revealing a glimpse of a long scar under his messy locks.

I nodded, feeling my knees wobble from adrenaline burnout. I wondered for a moment where he’d gotten the scar. He didn’t strike me as a scrapper or a bad boy. He had a calm blue energy currently streaked with red that made me think he was the sort of solid, quiet guy everyone liked, until they were on the wrong end of his resolve.

“Why would they take the list?”

“Because his or her name’s on it?” I suggested.

“Just one of many. Why would he or we make a connection?”

“I don’t know. Strother must have had notes.... Maybe he knew something else that fit one of the names. This is a local problem, so I’d assume local knowledge is the key.”

Faith nodded thoughtfully. “Could be. We’ll look into it. You know, you can go now, if you like.”

“I can? I thought you wanted to hold me. . . .” I knew I sounded like an idiot, but I’d assumed they suspected me—it was my hotel room, after all.

“Nah, you’re clear. Doc says the time of death was about when you were up on the mountain with Tripp. I suppose if you were some clever criminal from one of those cop shows, you might have figured out how to make a phone call from the Log Cabin Resort while you were lying in wait for Alan, but this ain’t a cop show and you couldn’t have been sitting in Tripp’s car at the same time you were knocking Alan’s head in. You’re free to go.”

I blinked at him.

“Really. No bull,” he added. “I’ve got your numbers. I’ll call you to answer some questions, but not tonight.”

“Oh. Well, then . . . could I have my suitcase?”

He thought about it, then had one of the guys in the room bring it to the door. He let me take a change of clothes out of the bag, watching the whole time and making a note of what I took. It was a little annoying, but it gave me a chance to crouch down by the door and look up into the room so I could see the desk. I was glad I’d put the laptop into the back of my truck that morning, since I wouldn’t have to wait for it to be released from evidence, but it wasn’t the only thing that had been on the desk: The license plate from Steven Leung’s Subaru that I’d found in the spell circle beside his house had been there, too. Now it was gone. I didn’t think Housekeeping had tidied it up, so unless the cops found it in Strother’s coat, I would bet the murderer had it now.

I didn’t mention the missing license plate. I didn’t want to explain how I’d gotten it in the first place, and I thought it might be just what the sheriff’s office would need when the time came to play pin the tail on the killer.

Do I need to say mine wasn’t a restful sleep that night? Even after finding another hotel, I’d slept badly because I’d known I couldn’t sleep anywhere near the activity—paranormal and otherwise—of a violent crime scene. I wondered what connection Strother had made, if any, that had brought the killer down on him and why he or she hadn’t resorted to magic this time. Lack of preparation? Too far from the lake? Whatever it was, it looked to me as if the killer had panicked and acted on impulse, not with the care used in Leung’s case. Strother or I had done something to frighten someone.

I also couldn’t help wondering if Willow was involved in Strother’s death. She’d known his first name and seemed surprised or frightened to hear he was outside the greenhouse. Could she have sent Jin, not to help me, but to make sure I stayed out of the way while she went after Strother? What would she have wanted to kill Strother over now rather than days or years ago? Of course, there was also her sister, Jewel, and her overly protective husband to consider, as well as everyone else whose name might turn up on Strother’s list.

Was the list the key? Maybe the killer had just taken it on general principle. Maybe it was the license plate he or she had been after and Strother’s appearance at the scene had just been a coincidence. Maybe Strother had caught the killer stealing the plate . . . but no . . . the ghost would have said so. Strother’s lingering spirit hadn’t known what had happened and he’d been hit from behind, so I’d have to believe Strother hadn’t seen death coming. That, at least, was something to be grateful for.

I’d liked Strother and I felt angry at whoever had smashed in his skull. It looked as if the killer had the power to hide a car after the fact but couldn’t kill victims from a distance. He or she had to—or liked to—kill up close. Or maybe both the murders had been impulsive, without time to plan ahead and cast a spell. Could someone actually cast a spell that would kill someone else at a distance? Would the killer have cleaned up after the death of Strother if there’d been more time? I didn’t know, but the questions tumbled around in my head all night and left me sandy-eyed and tired in the morning.

I had to waste a portion of my morning buying some clothes, since I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get my suitcase back soon, and shop for something to placate a greedy demon, too. Luckily, be it off-season or not, Port Angeles is a tourist town and I was able to find a couple of high-end shops near the ferry dock and the fancier hotels that had a few trinkets I thought might please him. I did wonder if a demon really needed a Swiss watch, but perhaps it would dazzle him into flatout telling me who’d killed Strother. Much as I thought it necessary to solve the bigger problem of the lake eventually, at the moment, I was still angry enough to put that aside if I had the chance to grab the person who’d set Steven Leung’s car on fire and smashed in Alan Strother’s head.

Eventually I drove to the tollbooth outside the Sol Duc Hot Springs resort with a watch that cost more than my first car tucked into the pocket of my new coat—the old one, still pretty damp, was hanging up in the back of the Rover, making the whole interior smell of wet sheep. So much had happened the previous day, it seemed like more time should have elapsed since I was last at the tollbooth looking for Ridenour, but it was only a little more than twenty-four hours. It was less than that since I’d seen Strother alive for the last time on the top of Pyramid Mountain.

I wasn’t in a spectacular mood when I arrived and Jin, dressed in a suit of dark gold silk with a brown stripe, only tempted my temper to flare by saying, “You’re late.”

I pulled my red scarf tight around my neck and swung toward him, pushing the loose strands and pools of magic outward with a vicious thought that flashed up white and bowled the demon onto his back. “Don’t screw with me,” I warned him. “I told you to meet me here. I didn’t say when.”

Jin picked himself up out of the icy bracken and brushed himself off with finicky little flips of his hands. He glanced at me warily in the normal, but I could see the demon face glowering with indignation. I caught my ire and clamped it back down before I could get myself into real trouble. The flash-bang trick was about the only one I had in my arsenal at the moment and I didn’t want him to catch on.

I sighed as if disgusted. “I’m sorry,” I said with clear insincerity. “I had a bad night.”

He didn’t look mollified, but I noticed he didn’t say anything about Strother. Did he not know? I wondered as the sound in the Grey escalated to a warped chorus of untuned organ pipes and wailing musical saws. The lines that reached from the lake to the springs coruscated as if someone had turned up the wattage on an array of neon tubes. The ley weaver seemed to have noticed I’d borrowed some of his power. I wondered how long I had before he—or it—showed up.

“Do you know about Alan Strother?” I asked.

“The sheriff’s man? I know a few things.”

“Do you know where he is right now, or where he was last night?”

Jin looked truly puzzled. “No. Why do you care?”

“Because I suspect your . . . friend, Willow, will care that he’s in the morgue—or what passes for one around here—until his body can be shipped to Seattle for investigation.”

Jin frowned. “He . . . is dead?”

“Yes. He was murdered last night in my hotel room.”

He blinked at me, leaned in, and sniffed me. Then he settled back onto his heels. “You didn’t kill him.”

“No—and here’s the juicy bit you won’t be hearing from anyone else—he was bludgeoned to death while I was going to retrieve my truck here last night. Since you seemed genuinely surprised to hear it, I assume you didn’t kill him.”

He shook his head and looked mournful on both faces. “No, I did not. I wouldn’t. Willow was . . . fond of him. She would be angry if I had killed him.”

It didn’t take Willow off the hook since many a fond heart has been moved to murder the object of its affection, but it did put a different light on her interest in him at the greenhouse. Though that, in turn, left me wondering why Strother had shot at her . . . if he had actually been shooting at her. His aim had been improbably high and wide....

The noise in the grid began to rise and play across my bones in uncomfortable disharmonies as the light and energy flickered.

“We’ve attracted the ley weaver’s attention. But we’re safe up here. He won’t come out to the road where he might be seen,” Jin said. He gave me a cringing glance, as if he was afraid I’d lose my temper with him again. “Did you . . . bring me . . . something?”

He was like a kid who wanted his birthday present but felt embarrassed to ask. Maybe that was the truth of it: He was a child in demon terms, not old enough to have much power and a little naive about how the rest of the world worked outside his playground. It would certainly explain his odd behavior a bit.

“Oh,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “I did bring you a present.”

I held out the box and Jin took it with care. I was surprised he hadn’t snatched it, but if he was truly wary of me now, I guessed that wouldn’t do. He looked at the box, turning it over a few times and reading the labels. He opened the white outer box and pulled out the black leather-covered inner box. He looked at the brand name stamped in gold on the top. Then he glanced at me. “Is it really?”

I just nodded.

He grinned and ripped the box open, hooking out the watch inside with one curved claw and holding it up to his face. He cooed at it, and I wish I were exaggerating, but there’s no other word for the sound he made as he looked at the slim automatic watch and stroked the eighteen-karat-gold case with his fingertip. For a moment I’d been tempted by a flashier Rolex with diamonds and a case so heavy you could crack crabs with it. But I’d remembered the elegant lines of the defunct black suit and thought a lower bling factor and a more rarefied name would be better. Score one for me.

Strange noises, like a tarantula walking on a piano’s strings, played across the grid and moved closer to us while Jin strapped on his new watch. Then he snapped out his well-adorned hand and snatched me forward, onto the trail down to the resort. “We have to meet him before he can sneak up on us.”

“You can’t call that sneaking,” I gasped, running behind his remarkable speed down the road. “He sounds like a whole convoy on the move.”

“You can hear that?”

“Better than you.”

Jin giggled and dragged me onward for a few dozen yards before he stopped with a jerk and shoved me forward. “You have to go without me. He won’t like you if he thinks we’re together. Just go down the road and when the fire starts, keep going. Follow the lights.”

I stumbled forward on my own and caught my breath, coughing on the memory of smoke. I let the mist-world rush in on me—not that it was giving me much choice. Ahead of me a silvery plane cut across the Grey: a single, shimmering temporacline from which the noise and heat rose. Surely Ridenour hadn’t come down here before? And to what was Jin sending me?

I stepped into the temporacline and the world opened out into a vista of trees through which the light of a massive fire flickered. I walked forward into the slab of memory, down the road on which women in long, straight dresses and men in white trousers and striped jackets, all looking as though they predated the First World War, passed by me. The people—memories of people—ran from the flickering light, calling out in fear as they went toward the highway. I walked on toward the firelight until the trees opened up to expose a compound of wooden buildings engulfed in flame, facing a long, steaming body of water. The buildings had been elegant before they caught fire and, as I watched the loop of time replay itself, some of the smaller ones collapsed, sending sparks into the shivering air. The roaring of the flames was accompanied by the eerie, warped sound of an organ playing something funereal and grim while a handful of people tried to extinguish the flames with buckets of water. They were no match for the fire, and the inferno blazed while the organ played on.

There was a whiff of sulfur in the air that wasn’t just a memory; nor was the smell of evergreens and soil that hadn’t frozen over but churned with some unnatural life just below the surface. Stripes of colored light shot through the scene—power lines drawn from the grid—veering into the trees to my left. Bright orbs and streamers of color danced along the lines, heading deeper into the trees. I followed them away from the memory of the burning resort and into the rain forest.

Ahead, through the mist both real and not, I could see something rising and shining through the gloom. Echoing the mournful organ, a strange atonal song came from the brightness ahead, and I felt a frisson of cold fear run along my spine. Something was moving in the bracken nearby, something low to the ground and many-legged.

I stepped through a screen of low-hanging branches, feeling a curious buzzing in my blood as I crossed out of the temporacline and into a huge bubble of Grey separated from the rest. The cacophony I’d heard off and on near the hot springs shifted suddenly into tune and swelled, the harmonies of grid and ghost voices roaring in a chorus of sound that slammed me to my knees.

Where my hands and legs hit the ground, the mist and colored light rippled, adding a chime of silver bells to the uncanny choir and a wash of blue and gold lights to the weird construction ahead. Something scurried up to me and I raised my head. Then I recoiled from the thing that had paused beside me, making the song of the place waver and slide into a minor key as I stared in horror at what appeared to be a disembodied hand the size of a rottweiler with a sphere for a head where the stump of the wrist ended. The palm and back were a dark green color, fleshy, thick, and callused like the hand of a manual laborer, but the head was a round glob with only a pair of jabbed-in pits for eyes, as if they’d been made with the tip of a massive pencil; yet they moved together as if the thing were looking me over. The fingers were skeletally thin, knobby, and blackened, with short, pointed nails and rough skin covered in tiny hooks where the pads of fingertips should have been. It scuttled around me like a lopsided spider. The smell of sulfur and brackish water clung to the hand-spider-thing as it inspected me.

It turned toward the gleaming tower of woven energy strands growing in the center of the Grey bubble, and the singing dropped away to a musical whisper. “Ah, it’s you,” a voice said, riding on the back of the music and shaping the chorus into its own words. “Come to the center.”

The hand-spider lifted a freakishly jointed thumb toward me as if it meant to help me up, but I rolled away from it, gulping against the desire to scream or vomit. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears and cut out the singing voices that reminded me too much of the voice of the grid, even though I knew it wasn’t the same. But I fought my fear and disgust and scrambled to my feet.

Reflexively, I reached to brush mud and leaves from my knees, but the ground around me, while it seemed normal—if unusually green and warm for this place and season—had left no trace on my clothes except a thin sheen of energy, like a cobweb clinging to the fabric of my jeans and coat. The hand-spider stood still until I moved, when it scuttled around me, herding me toward the tower of light. The energetic shine on my clothes fluttered with my movement and dragged tattered edges through the thin mist of the Grey, swirling tiny vertices and contrails of color. Puffs of silver and gold dust and pale green vapor rose from the ground with every step I took.

My heart raced as I walked forward, casting my gaze around, looking for anything, any clue, any indication of what was happening or how to get out of it. A tree swayed near me, and I turned sharply to stare at it. The tree shifted its roots away from my plodding boots and gouged the soil as it moved aside, leaving a shimmering trickle of green light along its path. The boughs shook over my head, dropping laughter and a glitter of raindrops.

The hand-spider herded me along, bumping against my legs and scratching at my calves with one of its pointed black nails. I kept walking.

The area inside the bubble was misty, but not rainy, so it wasn’t quite the real world, but it wasn’t very far from it. The landscape was definitely the same as that around Lake Crescent and I could, if I strained my ears, still hear the crying of the burning organ in Sol Duc’s past-tense conflagration. The thread of sound had been woven into the music of whatever the ley weaver was making. The area was deep with magic, not only the thick bright lines pulled from the grid, but pools and eddies of other energy that welled up from the ground. Trees really did walk here and I had no doubt that if I looked for them, I’d see plenty of Indian ghosts lurking in the mists. I wondered if there were dragons—lightning fish—somewhere under my feet, weeping boiling tears.

The hand-spider stopped at the edge of a circle of pale blue light that seemed to define the edge of the ley weaver’s construction zone. Then it bodychecked me, shoving me sideways along the line. I guessed I was supposed to go the rest of the way alone. I turned, but caught myself up short with a surprised gasp. Someone had stepped out of the circle a few feet ahead of me.

Someone human shaped, but not human . . . Like the hand-spider’s head, it seemed roughly made with no fine details, just the raw shapes of a body formed from the dense cloud-stuff of the Grey. This one had more of a face, with a pinched little nose, a thin-cut mouth, and gleaming eye pits under a suggestion of hair. But it seemed androgynous and unfinished. And whereas it had two feet, it had only one hand, the other simply missing, as if it hadn’t been stuck on at all. I wondered if the hand-spider had sprung from the missing extremity, until I turned my head a bit farther and saw two more of the things scurrying up and down the scintillating, shifting construction in the center.

The human-shaped thing made a curve of its mouth that should have been a smile and wasn’t. Then it opened its mouth and words came out on the whisper and song of the energy flowing nearby. “You have been playing on my instrument.”

I clutched at the first conversational possibility offered. “Instrument?” I asked.

The ley weaver waved its only hand at the tower of light, and then at the lines that ran through the earth to feed it. “My art.”

I looked toward the otherworldly construction. “What is it?”

The ley weaver nodded. “It is beautiful,” it replied in the voice of the choir.

“It is,” I agreed. The construction, woven of pure colors of energy that gleamed with magic, and singing in the voices of ghosts and nature and raw power tamed and trained into a living shape, was dazzling—breathtaking. I turned my gaze aside with effort, feeling my will and attention drawn toward it, into it, as more raw material. “But what does it do?”

“It does nothing. It is Beauty. Art does not need a function.”

So close to it, I could feel the insensible hunger of the thing, drawing what it needed from every source, drinking in energy and power as the hand-spiders spun and wove, shaped and built still more and more of the singing, changing form. My body seemed to vibrate with the thrumming of its harmonies; I felt cold and loosened, as if I might fall to pieces and be swept up as so much gleam and fairy dust—raw material for the ley weaver’s art. Then I saw a wisp slip by, a face elongated in a silent scream of terror as a ghost was drawn into the gyre. “But it does do something,” I said, thinking aloud, holding myself together by mind and word. “It devours magic. It drinks the remnants of memory.”

The ley weaver shrugged its shapeless shoulders and its chorus replied, “It requires. It takes. The lake gives. It is bountiful.”

“But it’s not unlimited. Others take from the lake, too.”

“They are unimportant. Beauty is not harmed by what the puppeteer takes. He has even given me these hands to build with.”

The hand-spiders stopped their work for a moment and turned as if looking toward us before returning to their tasks. The movement came from all around the shining shape of Beauty and I realized there were, perhaps, a dozen of the scuttling monsters at work. And each was different in color and size: some slim, some small, some large, some ghastly white or corpse gray, others mold green and rot brown. They were hands of the dead, crawling, reanimated, and enlarged to the size of dogs and men. That was what I’d seen creeping away from the dog-demons by the side of the road—one of the ley weaver’s hands.

No wonder Jin hadn’t come with me; the guai weren’t his friends, but they were his party. I wanted to run, scream, puke . . . and my horror soured Beauty’s music, throwing sweat onto my skin and pulling me back into myself.

The ley weaver made a furrow in its forehead and turned down its mouth. “You are hurting my song.”

“I’m sorry,” I gulped, holding back my urges and emotions and calming myself with long breaths until the sound soared back into a more pleasing mode. “If the puppeteer has given you hands, what did the others give you?”

“Nothing. They wish me gone.”

“Do you fight?”

“No longer. There was one who fought, who tried to stop the flow, but he did not understand. He was broken. His energy joined the flow.”

I thought I understood, but I wanted confirmation. “That one was the . . . parent of two others?”

“Of three.”

Leung had three children, though one was dead, so he must have been the one who fought and was broken—killed—by someone so he wouldn’t dam up the flow of magic. But if the ley weaver thought there was no battle, it was mistaken—or didn’t recognize it.

“How was he broken? Who broke him?” I asked.

The ley weaver shrugged again and the music sighed blue and purple glissandi of light.

“Do you know how he could have stopped the flow?”

“He did not know to replace the anchor. He could not do it.”

“Do you know?”

The sound of Beauty laughed as the ley weaver opened its mouth. Then it said, “I will not tell you. Those who know, will not try. Those who try, do not know.”

I couldn’t tell if I was getting somewhere or just going in circles, and I only felt colder and more torn apart with each moment I stood so close to the pull of the ley weaver’s construction.

“Do you ever . . . travel from this place?” Could it even leave the hot springs? The ley weaver would never pass for human, so I doubted it could have walked around to the back of the hotel and bashed in Strother’s brains. But could it have been involved in the murders another way? “Or send your hands?”

“No. I am content here.” Not quite true, since I’d seen the harassed hand far from here, but it had the ring of truth in the moment. Perhaps “the moment” was all that existed or mattered for such a being.

“How long have you been here?” I asked, hoping I could figure out who’d come first, who had the biggest stake in keeping the lake as it was.

“A short time.”

What was a short time to this creature? A decade, a century? I’d have to try a different tack. “Who was already here when you came?”

“The old nexus has always been here, and the rogue just before the anchor was removed. The east was taken away and the puppeteer came soon when the flow grew wild. The child was last.”

Rogue and child . . . Which one was Willow? The east who was taken away might have been Jonah Leung. . . . But why “east”? I wasn’t gaining much clarity and I felt more wretched by the moment. I had to get what I could and leave before I lost my focus and was torn into fodder for Beauty.

“If the anchor were returned to its place, what would happen?”

“Beauty would dwindle.”

“What about the rest? Of them? Of you?”

The music whispered, “There must be one. There can be four. But starveling and squabbling. Perhaps the mountain will crush them again. . . .” Once more, the ley weaver frowned. “Beauty must not wither. . . .”

I started backing up, knowing I wasn’t going to get any more that was useful out of this . . . thing. And the longer I stayed, the smaller my chance to leave. I eased one booted foot away from the blue line at Beauty’s verge, then the next, putting a yard or two between myself and the ley weaver before I would turn and bolt.... The ley weaver put out its one attached hand and reached for me. I could hear the other hands skittering toward us. . . .

“Beauty sings when you are here. You must stay.”

Even the trees began creeping toward the center, tearing greenweeping trenches in the earth as they tried to trap me. I ducked a swinging branch and rolled away, gaining ground, but not fast enough.

One of the hands scrabbled toward me and grabbed! It wrenched me to the ground and tried to move me, but it had no traction so long as it held on. Once I was on the ground, however, I had all four paws to dig in and crawl with, dragging the surprisingly light weight of the hand with me. I rolled onto my back to dislodge it and get a look at the oncoming things. I didn’t like what I saw: The trees were slow moving, but the spiderlike hands were quick. They moved fast, but they stuck to the ground or scurried along lines of energy; none of them leapt the way a real spider would.

Because they weren’t spiders. I wrenched the one that held me around so I could look at it, peering hard through the Grey and looking past the inflated size and freakish shape. The thing squeezed and pushed the breath from my lungs, but it really was nothing but a hand: a rotting hand bound together with magic and illusion. I worked one of my own hands between the squeezing horror and my chest, then pushed my fingers into it.

The feeling was repulsive, but I’d done it before and I could stand to do it again. I didn’t have the pheasant feather that had been so useful the first time, but this time I wasn’t dismantling entire corpses, just a single disembodied hand. Once I had my fingers past the shell of flesh, the feel of the burning web of energy at its unnaturally animated core was familiar. I didn’t have to look to know which of the white-hot lines of magic to rip loose; I closed my hand on the one that hurt the most and yanked it free.

The hand-spider dissolved, leaving nothing but skeleton fingers clothed in tatters of rotten flesh that crumbled away as I watched. The voices of Beauty’s chorus shrieked and the harmonies shattered into noise.

The ley weaver and his minions stopped as I stood up, holding out the gruesome trophy. I felt sick and it was hard to talk, but it was the only thing I could think of. “He lied to you,” I yelled to make myself heard over the howling of the choir. “The puppeteer didn’t give you helpers; he gave you spies and weak sisters. He wants the power you’ve been using to make Beauty. The demons try to destroy your hands so they can stop you and the puppeteer, too. They’re all like that. They just want the power and they’ll do what they must to take it.” I didn’t know if it was true, but it seemed likely, given the way Jewel wanted to destroy them all—even her sister—to reclaim the lake for herself. I doubted any of the rest were different.

But now I got it: Jewel was the old nexus that the ley weaver had alluded to. The lake wasn’t meant for four quarters; it was supposed to be anchored—nailed down—by a single nexus. Willow, the child, hadn’t been around long enough to understand the original structure of the lake’s magic; she knew only the way it had been pushed and pulled and manipulated after the anchor—whatever it was—had been removed. Maybe there were four anchors, but there was only one center and Jewel wanted it back. If I was to fix the problem of the lake, I had to get rid of the sorcerers and magicians who were using it. And it would be easier if I could get them to turn on one another—at least until I could figure out something better.

The hands stopped where they were, quivering as if I had struck the truth, and maybe I had. Why would Costigan, who kept everyone away from his property with a patrol of zombies, help another magic user? I didn’t know the man, but if his colleagues were anything to judge by, he wouldn’t unless there was some advantage to be gained for himself.

I threw the skeletal hand to the ground and it crumbled away, raising new dissonance in the sound of the construction behind the ley weaver. Then I bent and grabbed onto the nearest energy thread that led to one of the other hands. It wasn’t a big power line or I’d never have been able to move it, but I hauled as hard as I could, bracing myself against the agony until it burst out of me in a shriek while I heaved and flicked the line. The spiderlike hand gripping the energy line was flung into the air and fell, diminishing as it did, losing its giant size and terrible shape.

Beauty screamed.

I staggered and barely kept my feet under me, nearly blind from the tears of pain flooding my eyes, pummeled and deafened by the construction’s disembodied blast of fury. “None of them are your friends,” I gasped. I turned away, risking my back, and hoping hard, and stepped through the unnatural bubble to the edge of the temporacline that led to the inferno of Sol Duc. I stepped across the barrier, into rain for a moment, then into the smoky, firelit memory of the burning resort. I kept going, pushing myself though I wanted to fall down and be sick, until I came to the rise at the top of the road’s memory where I stepped back out into February.

That was where I finally fell down.