Labyrinth

TWENTY

It took a while to get the backyard into the physical and magical condition that satisfied all of us. Mara was most concerned about reinforcing the magical wards and clearing off the remains of the blood-magic charms and alarms the vampires had left behind. We all figured it wouldn’t surprise anyone by now if they were removed. The men wanted to clean up the yard, burying the scorched and trampled remains of whatever nasty creature Goodall had set on them, while Brian wanted to get the dog to safer ground. I really did start to think Rick was never going to get his pet back at this rate.

Mara and I also cleared off a bit of ground for a containment circle, marking the area with various signs and symbols as she directed, so if anything did come through the door, it wouldn’t get far.

In the end, it all proved pointless. I shuffled the wire puzzle until it clicked into a formation that chimed and hummed when brought near the ball, but when the two were put together, the key sinking into an invisible slot and twisting with an ease that surprised me, there was only a breath of hot, plant-scented air and a sound like something heavy settling into the earth at a distance. A small object dropped out the first time, but nothing else happened. Mara and I tried several configurations and spells, weaving various bits of magic together and trying to cajole the puzzle to work, but the effect only got slightly more fragrant with the odor of flowers and a rustle of invisible leaves that almost covered the persistent muttering in the back of my head.

We gave up and returned to sit on the back porch.Mara took the key from me and looked it over with the eye as I bent to pick up the thing that had fallen from the puzzle: it was a garnet earring that looked familiar to me. Mara finished her inspection of the ball and then pointed at the bauble in my hand. “May I look at that?”

I handed it over. She inspected it with the eye before shaking her head. “Neither of these is the second part,” she said. She handed the earring to me and I pocketed it.

The men had gone out into the yard where we’d cleared the circle and, at Brian’s insistence, were playing a complicated game involving a soccer ball, the dog, and two goalposts erected hastily between the side yard fences. I watched them for a moment, trying to figure out what they were doing. “It’s not the second part of what?”

“The key is not the second part of the mechanism,” she explained. “Nor is the earring, incidentally, but that’s a bit off the point since it seems to be here almost by accident. This key isn’t actually animus. It’s neutral. There’s another part somewhere. But beyond that, this puzzle ball seems to be keyed to a location.”

“Meaning . . . ?”

“Y’have to use it in the right place. So, y’need to get all the parts, mate them together, and then use them in the correct location, or nothing happens. Or nothing much.”

I blew a silent whistle. “Well, we wouldn’t want this to be easy, would we?”

“Certainly not. Consider the potential: If the complete mechanism does open a way into the Grey that is invisible to the Guardian Beast, unregulated, and accessible to folk who’ve had no prior contact with magic at all, it could be disastrous. Imagine the cataclysm one ignorant action could set in motion. Whoever made this was remarkably careful, though why they didn’t destroy it when they were done, I can’t guess. It hardly seems the sort of thing y’leave lyin’ about.”

“They didn’t. They put the pieces away carefully, somewhere most people would never look for them: in plain sight.”

Mara frowned at me. “I don’t follow. . . .”

A memory jogged loose in my head and I pointed at the puzzle ball, which was resting on the table. “That was one of a pair that came from an old house that was torn down or damaged—I forget. Anyhow. Will got it from a friend of his who dealt in architectural antiques. He said the other one was stuck. But what if it wasn’t? What if the pieces are nested and to get the second one open, you have to open the other one first?” That jibed in a way with something my father had said about doors inside doors. Or was it mazes inside mazes . . . ? Whatever the case, I thought I was onto something. “Maybe whoever made it wasn’t sure he’d ever need to use it again, but he doesn’t want to risk just throwing it away—maybe he knows there’s going to be a need for it someday. So he puts the parts away and he gives the key to someone he thinks no one will ever associate with him: a kid in Montana, or a dentist in Los Angeles. Someone who has no apparent link to him.”

Mara nodded thoughtfully and went on with the idea. “Except that the magical world is really very small, so . . . it’s not entirely surprisin’ that the key ends up with a Greywalker.”

“The key and the first part of the machine—whatever it is.”

“Seems obvious you’ll have to get the rest of the pieces and take them back to wherever they came from. That should be where the mechanism comes together and where y’can activate it once you have all the parts.”

“That’s not going to be so easy: I got the ball from Will Novak and the last time I saw him, he . . . wasn’t doing very well.”

She asked and I had to tell her what had happened in London and how I had last seen William Novak bloody and broken, raddled by the horrors of imprisonment and torture at the hands of vampires and their pet sorcerer. By the time I was done with the tale, Ben, Quinton, and Brian had given up their game and come up onto the back porch. Grendel flopped at the foot of the steps, tired out and with tongue lolling. Ben took Brian inside to wash up and avoid the more graphic parts of my description.

“So they’re still in England?” Mara asked.

“I think not. The only thing Will was clear about was that he wanted to come home. The doctors didn’t want to release him but even if his mind was going, his desire to get away from London might have been enough to motivate someone to let him go. So he and his brother could be stuck in England or back in Seattle. It’s been almost a week since I saw them and I just don’t know.”

“You could call Michael and find out,” Quinton suggested.

“Yes, but it’s Will who knows where the puzzle balls came from,” I replied.

“No, Will knows who had them last. That guy would know where they came from. Michael might know which of Will’s friends that is.”

I conceded that. I wasn’t sure my relationship with Michael Novak was any better than my relationship with Will was after what had happened, but I could try. The only number I had for him was a London mobile, but I thought it unlikely he’d already have replaced the phone if they’d left England. It was hard to remember that I’d seen him less than a week ago because it felt like more.

I called, half expecting no answer, but Michael picked up and spoke from somewhere so loud it was hard to hear him. Clanging metal and shattering glass punctuated an erratic symphony of mechanical roars and human shouts.

“Michael,” I started.

“Hang on!” I could hear him moving around; then the noise faded down a bit. “Whatever you want, Harper, make it fast—have to get back inside before he notices I’m gone.”

“Who?”

“Will. He’s totally lost it since we got home. Come on, come on! We’ve got about a minute.”

I would have asked what was going on or where in Seattle he was, but I could tell he didn’t have time for that. “What is the name and business address of Will’s friend here who breaks down antique houses?”

“Breaks—? Oh. Charlie Rice. Rice House Antiques—it’s under the viaduct on Alaskan Way. Not the aquarium end of the row, but the ferry dock end. Big warehouse space. Look for a red London phone box on the loading dock.”

Something hard crashed against something made of wood and the background noise rose again. “Gotta go!” Michael shouted and cut the connection. I blinked at the ground in a fog of sudden disquiet while a bitter sensation curdled my stomach. Something was askew with Michael and Will. . . .

As I worried that thought, Quinton dug a small device out of his pocket and detached the clinging ferret, which he handed to me. Chaos wriggled into my shirt and went back to sleep, while Quinton flipped the little box open and turned it on: some kind of tiny palmtop computer.

“OK, what did you get?” he asked, poised to type on the miniature keyboard. I told him, and he had the address and map location in seconds. “Should we just go, or should we call first?”

“We?” I asked. It didn’t sound like a dangerous trip, but I was feeling off-kilter and wasn’t sure I should drag anyone else deeper into this mess if I could avoid it.

“You, me: intrepid investigator and faithful sidekick—who still has the keys to the truck.”

“Ah. Well, in person is usually better.”

“Then we’d better pack our stuff into the Rover, just in case there’s a hot lead to follow up.”

I pointed at the ferret in my shirt. “What about the furry knee sock?”

Quinton and I both looked toward Mara. She shrugged. “Another day or two with the weasel won’t hurt us. Brian’s too taken with the dog to bother her much and she hasn’t been any trouble. Except for the smell and stealin’ shoes.”

“Wait until she notices the key chains and cell phones,” Quinton said.

It took us longer than expected to get things into the Rover and clear off since we had to scout for any remaining friends of Goodall’s and any new spells that might have been laid. We got down to the waterfront near Rice House Antiques about forty minutes later.

The building was an aging brick warehouse a block from the seawall and just at the edge of the tourist zone. I’d been there back when I was more active in hunting up interesting old things for my place, but the average size of the inventory items—from carved entryways and massive chandeliers to whole fieldstone fireplaces—was too large for me and I’d taken the place out of my mental directory. The loading area under the viaduct faced the old, disused municipal dock that lay just south of the ferry terminal across the double row of city parking under the elevated roadbed. Rumor had it the old stacked highway was going to be replaced with a tunnel someday, but so far, the crumbling concrete structure was still in place and still dropping bits of cement and road dirt at irregular intervals. The location had a lonely feel, despite traffic near enough to see; even the glow of the grid seemed a bit tired here.

Rice House Antiques was painted once-cheery yellow and green that made it look like a faded and forgotten carnival building. An old red British phone box stood on the loading ramp, adding another splash of aging color to the frontage. Quinton and I left the Rover in a parking space beside the loading ramp and walked up. Being nearly noon on a Saturday, the business was open—literally. One of the two huge freight doors was rolled all the way up to expose some of the treasures inside. But of customers, there wasn’t a sign.

Once inside the door, we could hear someone talking and moving around near the back of the shop, but the words were indistinct, muffled by racks full of carved doors and leaded windows between the massive pieces of architectural whimsy. Failing to see anyone else, I headed for the sound. Quinton trailed a bit, staring at the odd collection.

I came around a corner to a room that was built of antique half-glass doors—they looked a lot like the door to my own office—and could see someone moving around inside beyond the frosted glass, between hazy shapes that stood here and there inside. “All right, all right . . . it’s got to be here. . . .” It was a masculine voice, but not one I recognized. Elderly and quavering.

I rapped lightly on one of the doors that seemed most likely to be functional and not just nailed in place. The man inside scuffled around and pulled the door open.

He was stocky, shorter than average, with round, heavy shoulders and legs slightly bowed. His thin gray hair was brushed down more in hope that it would cover his scalp than with any real expectation. He jumped a bit at seeing me and blinked hard, making a chewing motion and a snort. He stayed in the doorway with one hand on the door and the other on the frame as if he thought I was going to rush inside if he didn’t. The energy around him was a nervous shade of orange shot with green.

“What? Hello. What can I do for you?” he asked, his voice was low and scratchy, like a conspirator’s.

I matched his volume—there was no need to be louder standing so close. “Are you Charlie Rice?”

“I—yeah. Yeah, I’m Charlie.”

“I wanted to talk to you about a pair of puzzle balls you had about sixteen or eighteen months ago. They came from a house. . . .”

Rice scowled. “Don’t have ’em.”

“Yes, I know. I have one of them. I wondered where they came from and what happened to the other one.” My eye was caught by something else moving inside the office. Something tall and thin. A cold feeling bolted through my gut, stopping my breath. I felt a warm thing looming behind me as well, but I kept my eyes forward.

He blanched. “You have one? Oh, God—”

The shadow inside leaned toward Rice’s head and I started to reach for him, to pull him away, but the door jerked open, yanked out of Charlie’s hand, making him stumble a bit.

Will Novak stood just behind Rice’s shoulder, the door creaking as it swung wide, nearly off its hinges. “Harper!” He clapped Charlie on the shoulder with one crabbed hand covered in livid scars and scuffed bloody across the knuckles. “See: I told you she’d come.”

I was shocked to see him.

Will looked horrific. For a moment I couldn’t believe he was there, much less upright in such a state. He hadn’t regained any weight—possibly he’d lost even more in the week since I’d seen him last. His skin was slack over unpadded bones and it had a raw, dry look, as if it had been scrubbed too much. He hadn’t replaced his glasses and his eyes glinted out of shadowed pits beneath his brow without seeming to blink. Energy rioted around him in clashing colors and sparks with no cohesion or harmony except for a single black line that ran steady and unmoving through the mess, more like a lack than a presence. A spike of fear—for him or of him, I wasn’t sure—struck through me as I looked at him.

A shrieking disharmony of voices battered inside my skull, and I had to concentrate on calm, on normalcy. “Will, what are you doing here?”

“Wanted to see you.”

“You don’t need to see me right now. You need to rest and get better.” But I feared he was never going to get better, that his broken, sickening discord was permanent, and that twisted in my gut. “How did you even know I was coming?”

His aura flickered with antifreeze-green lightning. “Michael told me.”

The mad chorus in my head chimed, “Liar, liar . . .” as Will drew his hands together, rubbing the bruised knuckles of one hand in the cupped hollow of the other. A prescient flash struck me like a physical blow. “You hit him.”

He blinked as if wounded. “He wouldn’t have told me otherwise. And I needed to see you. I owe you . . . everything. Everything.”

The worshipful sound in his voice sickened me. “No, you don’t. All I did was get you in too deep in the first place.”

He shook his head. “No. No. You saved my life.”

I felt myself growing remote and cold against my will. “Michael saved your life. He found you, he carried you out, he took you away. Not me.” My spine seemed to vibrate and ring with the shouting of the Grey voices, and I almost choked on the sound.

Charlie Rice tried to slip away while Will’s attention was on me, but Quinton sidled over and caught him. “Where did the ball come from?”

“Leavenworth,” Rice whispered back, shooting nervous glances at me and Will while trying to move farther away. “Old house in the orchards, but it’s gone. Nothing left but the foundation. . . .”

“Did this house have a maze or a labyrinth, a pattern on the floors—anything like that?”

Charlie shook his head in a spastic way without letting Will and me out of his sight. “Don’t know. I just—” He seemed to catch himself and change his mind before he said, “I just cleared the wreckage.”

Will stepped toward me, reaching with his bent, mutilated hands, his stride crooked and off-balance. “I need you, Harper.” He glanced toward Quinton and Rice, his aura flashing orange, followed by green and red. “The new guy doesn’t need you. Not like I do.” I felt repelled in a way I couldn’t explain, as if Will had become poisonous. Sensations of pity and horror fought with the frigid resistance that welled up in me as if I were splitting in two. This icy disgust wasn’t like me. . . .

Quinton’s shoulders stiffened and he turned a little more in our direction. “No. I don’t need her. I don’t need her to be anything or do anything. I only want her to be what she is.”

“See?” Will implored, laying his wrecked hands on my shoulders. “I need you. I’ll go with you.”

His touch was hot and cold, sharp as electricity; it roused the chorus and made me want to scream with them and shove him away. I gulped in air and swallowed the voices. “No, you won’t. Not there. It won’t be safe—there are monsters in labyrinths, don’t you remember? You’re only safe here, with Michael. Not with me.”

Rice turned to escape again, but Quinton sprang after him and snatched him to a halt nearby, asking, “Where did the other ball go? Who has it?”

“I . . . might have the receipt. . . .”

“OK, then. Let’s look at your records.”

Rice leapt at the chance to get away from Will and me and dragged Quinton back into the office, snapping the door closed after them and leaving us outside in the strange assembly of broken houses. Will tried to grip my shoulders and draw me closer, but his hands felt like giant crab claws and they had no strength to hold me. I slid free, guilty at my relief.

“Will, please. You don’t understand how unsafe you are with me. I didn’t save you from anything; I put you in danger.”

He shook his head and his eyes were bright with an unreasonable adulation. It made me feel sick and I wanted to cry over it, but that was the last thing I would do. “It’s not true,” he whispered. “I love you. You love me; you came after me.”

My voice came out cold. “I came after some work. I found you entirely incidentally. It was luck—mostly bad luck.”

He made a small smug smile and shook his head again. “You can’t get rid of me by lying. I know what you really feel.”

I sighed. “Oh, no.” I tried to turn away and come back later, figuring Quinton would get the information I needed for now. But whatever else I did, I had to get away from the mania shining in Will’s eyes. It tore me into pieces to see it—to see him like this—but still the sensation of being coated in emotional ice deepened.

Will hooked one of his hands under my arm at the shoulder and tugged me back. “We need to be together, Harper. I won’t let you go. I’ll come with you. Trust me.”

There was no way I could. The little voices trilled and chattered: “Touch him, touch him, make him go.”

For a raw, heartless moment I did not resist them. I turned back, letting my body roll into the compass of his arms, not like a lover but like an enemy ducking under his guard, and putting out my hands so the tips of my fingers brushed across his chest. It felt like I’d touched a corpse. I let my hands slide up to frame his face, feeling the rippling colors of his chaotic aura like currents of hot and cold water and sudden spikes of electric shock. I tangled my fingers in the energy strands and wondered if I could do something. . . .

I leaned on all the persuasion I had and tried to think his aura to a calm shade of blue. I doubted it would work, but anything was worth trying. “You don’t need to come along now. You need to sleep. And I’ll be back soon. Just sleep.” No luck: Nothing was happening and, if anything, Will only seemed annoyed by my attempts to calm him down or persuade him to give up.

“Don’t coddle me, Harper.” His tone was sharp with sudden anger.

I stiffened and would have replied, but the opening of the office door cut me off. Quinton popped out, stuffing something into his pocket and closing the door behind him, leaving Rice alone inside. Will glared at him as Quinton eased next to me and put his left hand around my waist, pulling me back from my former boyfriend. I felt something nudge against my side as I dropped my arms and stepped back next to Quinton, but I couldn’t look down. “You ready to go?” he whispered.

I nodded and we started to turn away.

Will stepped forward, trying to reestablish his hold on me. Quinton gave him a narrow look over his shoulder. I risked a glance down and saw that Quinton was pressing the hard handle of a stun stick into my hidden side, offering it to me underhand, as he turned halfway back to say, “Let it go.”

“You don’t understand—” Will started.

“I do. But Harper can’t save you; you need to start saving yourself. And you need to let her go and do what she has to do.”

Will glared at him and brushed past to pull me to his chest again. I snatched the device into my fist as Will yanked me away from Quinton.

“Oh, man. Don’t do that,” Quinton said.

“Will, don’t,” I echoed, stumbling forward, turning the hard shape of the stun stick around in my hand. “Just let go of me. Go home to Michael—”

Heavy footsteps thudded on the wooden floor, drawing closer to the rear of the shop.

“Michael can’t help me—he doesn’t know how!”

“Neither do I!”

“Yes, you do! Yes, you do! You’re the only one. I need you! I’m going—”

He cut himself off as two cops came around the end of the stack of doors and windows. These weren’t slicked-down, tourist-friendly bike cops; they were old-fashioned beat-pounders in full gear. They glanced at Quinton and then at Will, then back to Quinton, their shoulders tensing as they took in Will’s grip on my shoulder and Quinton’s protective arm at my waist, masking the object I now held.

“Mr. Rice?” one of them inquired, but they both kept their eyes on Will. I knew they couldn’t see the madhouse colors around his head, but they still had cop instincts for trouble. Neither reached for their guns, but their hands touched their belts. One of them hung back while the other stepped toward us. “Is one of you Mr. Rice?”

The office door creaked open on its damaged hinges and the owner stuck his head out. “I’m Rice.”

“What’s the problem, Mr. Rice?”

Rice’s voice quavered, but he answered strongly enough. “Mr. Novak is frightening my customers. He should be at home—he’s been in an accident and he’s . . . not himself. I—please. Would you help Mr. Novak get home safely?”

Will whipped back to stare at Rice. “Charlie! No! Don’t do this to me!”

“William, you’re not well.”

Will made an irrational growling sound and released me so he could grab for Rice. The violence of his gesture spun me toward the nearer policeman and I ducked to avoid hitting the man. The cop sidestepped me and lunged forward to catch Will by the shoulders.

In a second, the two cops, Will, and Charlie Rice were a scuffling mass in the office doorway. Will shouted and thrashed, doing more damage to his reputation than anything else, though he did manage to break Rice’s nose with one flailing elbow. The splattering blood sent Will into fits, and he threw himself back from Rice and the cops, exhausted and terrified beyond all reason. Making shrill screeching sounds, he lurched backward into the half-glass doors and tumbled through one of the upper panes with a crash.

The cops and Charlie Rice ran into the office to retrieve him and Quinton put his hand back under my free elbow, urging me forward. “C’mon, let’s get out of here before this gets crazier.”

I was still at war inside: A part of me said I should stay and try to help Will, but I turned with Quinton and we zigzagged our way out of the antiques warehouse and back to the Rover. I hoped that Will was all right—or as all right as he was likely to be—and that Rice’s nose wasn’t too badly wrecked, but I didn’t go back to find out. We bailed into the truck and abandoned the situation to the cops.