Labyrinth

THIRTY-TWO

My phone buzzed as I walked into the Westin lobby. I didn’t stop to look at the number, I just opened it up and answered. “Quinton?” “H-Harper?” The voice was shaking so hard the word barely came out, but I still recognized the speaker.

“Will?”

“Run . . .” he started, but his voice trailed away as someone else snatched the phone. “ ’Ello there . . . ‘little girl.’ It appears your friend ’as dropped by to play. . . .”

I swore. “Haven’t you had enough fun torturing that man, Wygan? You won’t get anything from him and his mind’s already too broken to be much good.”

“Oh, but there is still blood in ’im and, as you say, the fun of it. And of course there is your father. . . .”

“Why hold on to him? He’s dead. How much satisfaction can you get from tormenting a ghost?”

“Not enough, that’s true. They really are somewhat unsatisfac’try. But you do ’ave quite a few other friends. I’m not overfond of witches, so I might take a particular delight in the anguish of that cozy little family. They are quite nearby. . . .”

Broadcast tower. That’s where they were. The idea came into my head illuminated by another: I still had a back door. Wherever Wygan was, the ghost of my father was nearby, which meant that the door opened to within a few feet of the Pharaohn. It was behind a barrier in the Grey, but I thought my current affinity for the grid might allow me to tear through that barrier. I just had to get close enough to use it unseen and I could step out almost on top of him. Then I would have Carlos to help me destroy the Pharaohn for good.

“That’s enough,” I said. “I’m coming.”

“Ah, good. I knew you’d want to play your part.”

“What I want is to rip your head off.” And I did, but it had a distant, intellectual kind of appeal at that moment. I didn’t feel the burn of hate I would have expected, just a clear, steel-strong certainty that he needed to be removed from existence. Now.

“I suspect you shall be disappointed.”

“I don’t think so.” I hung up on him. It was a small, cold satisfaction, but at least it was mine. I wasn’t completely lost to humanity yet.

I called Quinton again, cutting in the moment he answered. “I’m all right. I slipped Goodall but I have to go stop Wygan—”

“No, you don’t! He can’t force you. If you don’t cooperate, he can’t get what he wants.”

“I don’t intend to cooperate, but I can’t let him hurt people. He has Will, he is threatening the Danzigers, and you know what he will do once he has his way. He has to be stopped for good. What’s happening to me is almost finished. If it goes on to the end, I believe I will . . . I’ll just disappear into the grid. It is pulling on me, singing me into it, and my ability to remain separate is failing. My father suggested there’s a way to stop that, but putting an end to the Pharaohn is the only chance I may have. And the only thing that matters. You said someone’s not coming out of this alive. I would rather choose who and how this ends than hope for the best.”

“Harper, don’t—”

“He’s somewhere around broadcast tower two—maybe the park or the buildings nearby—and so is Goodall. You’ll know when you spot it. But don’t come too soon: The cops wouldn’t like what they’d see.”

I wasn’t being entirely truthful: I wasn’t going there to save Will or anyone else, not myself, not even my father. That would be nice, but I no longer had the luxury of pity, or even the fleeting sense of it, and that wasn’t what was moving me toward the towers on Queen Anne Hill. This had been my intention since London: to destroy that which had manipulated and ruined my life. Now the need was greater than me and mine. Gwen had been right to call me ruthless. In the dispassionate influence of the grid, compassion—perhaps humanity—had died in me. Only the job remained: Paladin of the Dead, Hands of the Guardian.