by R. L. Naquin
Darius stood across the room, silent and frowning.
“Did you guys just get here?” I asked.
Darius nodded. “We drove as fast as we could. I’m sorry we weren’t here sooner.” He flicked his gaze toward Riley.
“Gris was there,” I said. “We survived.”
“Where to next?” Kam asked, plopping into a chair by the door. She wore a tailored skirt and jacket in navy blue, pointed-toe shoes in the same shade, and a crisp white blouse.
“I don’t know yet.” I frowned. “Why are you wearing that?”
“I’m dressed as a business woman today.” She sat up straight and gave me a pursed-lip, serious face.
I glanced over at Darius. “She must have a ton of luggage to schlep around.”
He made a disgusted face. “Not as much as you’d think.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Where are you getting your clothes, Kam?”
She shrugged and glanced away. “I make them.”
“From what?”
“Magic.”
I groaned. “Kam! I thought you were saving up your magic to open the portal and go home. You said it takes a year to recharge, as long as you don’t use any of it. Why are you squandering it on outfits?”
She dropped her hands and picked at a fingernail. “It’s only a little magic.”
Darius and I shared a look, and he shrugged. Apparently, he’d already had this conversation with her several times. I let it go. How Kam handled her life was not my business. That was the entire point of getting her away from the bastard who’d kept her captive for over a hundred years. If she wanted to spend every last bit of her magic on fabulous hair and a manicure, that was her right. It did make me wonder a bit why she wasn’t as eager to go home as I’d thought she was.
I uncurled from my seat and stretched my back. “I need to make some calls and find some food.” I bent and kissed Riley on the forehead in a spot without any damage. “You guys stay with him, okay?” I hugged them each in turn and stared at their faces, as if to make a permanent imprint of them on my heart. “Thanks for coming. I’m really glad you’re here.”
Hoping I hadn’t tipped my hand, I tried to appear casual and unhurried as I left the room.
I needed privacy. With the exception of Gris, other people had become a liability. If I had any shot at all of getting my mother away from the psychopath, I had to go alone to do it.
I slid into my car, grateful that no one had followed me. The passenger-side window in the back was missing, but Gris had, apparently, cleaned up the broken glass while I was in the hospital.
“Gris?”
He climbed over the headrest from the back seat. “I’m here.”
“We’ll have to do this last part on our own.” My voice shook, and I took a deep breath to slow my heart rate.
He placed a tiny hand against mine. “I know.”
I reached into my purse and retrieved Katy’s file I’d taken from the prison. “She said she was going home.”
Gris climbed to my shoulder and watched as I flipped through the pages. “There,” he said, pointing.
“Breezy Point Amusement Park? Who the hell grows up in an amusement park?”
“It says her family owned it.”
“Awesome,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We can bond over the Tilt-A-Whirl and share a cotton candy.”
I tapped the information in her file into my phone and did a search. It took a few minutes to find it, since it didn’t really exist any longer, at least not any more than the dinosaur park existed. I groaned.
“What?”
“Forget the cotton candy. We’ll be trekking through an abandoned amusement park. Prepare for creepiness.”
“At least it’s not at night. How long will it take?” He hopped off my shoulder and climbed up to the dashboard.
I mapped it and sighed. “Forty-five minutes. Finally. A short drive.”
After a quick stop to fill up the tank and grab food through a drive-through, we were on our way to the coast.
Gris stayed on the dashboard and kept me company, which held terror at bay. If I lived, Riley, Darius and Kam would all want to kill me. Art, too, probably, though it wouldn’t be the first time for that.
This wasn’t my only experience riding into battle on my own without telling anyone. The first time, I hadn’t known what I was doing, and Riley had appeared at the last minute to save me from the nasty incubus. This was different. Except for Gris, who was, essentially, an extra piece of me more than he was an additional person, I couldn’t afford for anyone to stand with me. Either I saved us all on my own, or I would die trying, but everyone else would still be safe. And Art had been right. I was the only one with any shot at taking this bitch out.
About a half hour into the ride, my phone rang. Expecting it to be a furious reaper, djinn or mothman, I was surprised to see it was Sara. I didn’t want to worry her, but if I didn’t live through the night, I needed her to know how much I loved her. And how sorry I was to have been neglecting her.
I touched the screen to answer.
“Hey, Zoey. I hope you’re not in the middle of a car chase or an interrogation. Have you got a minute?”
I glanced at the clock on my dash. “I have about ten minutes. How’s you?”
“I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about. Maurice said you’re having a rough time.”
I smiled into the phone. All the problems she was having, and she was worried about me. “I’m doing okay, Sara.” I said it like I meant it—and found that I really did. “I think I’ll get to see my mom before the end of the day.”
“That’s fantastic! So you’ll be coming home soon?”
I thought about it. One way or another, I would be. Standing upright or tucked into a coffin, but I’d be home soon. “I believe so. I think we’re almost finished here. Now tell me what’s going on with you.”
“Well, I’ve lost five pounds.” She laughed.
“I hear you’ve been doing serious treadmill time at night.”
She snorted. “Maurice talks too much. My skin is super dry right now from all the midnight sleep-showers I’ve been taking.”
We talked for a while longer, until I saw the faded sign that towered over the entrance to the beach.
“I need to go, Sara. Tell Andrew to get you some of the moisturizer he makes. And Art’s going to call soon with the name of a therapist you can talk to about Hidden stuff.”
She grew quiet for a moment. Sara knew me. We’d known each other a long time, and worked together every day for years. “Whatever you’re doing today, stay safe, Zoey. I need you to come home alive.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’ll do my best. You and Maurice hug each other for me. I love you both so much.”
After I hung up, I drew a shaky breath, shut off the car and stuffed the phone in my jeans. Gris and I hopped out, and I locked the car behind us.
The sign looming over the entrance had an ominous quality about it. Most of the letters had been rubbed off by blowing sand, but the old-fashioned carnival-like feel and few remaining letters told me I was in the right place.
I plucked Gris from where he stood on the hood and placed him on my shoulder. “You ready?”
He nodded. “I’ve got your back.”
I didn’t doubt that he did.
The entrance led us to a sand-coated boardwalk lined with boarded-up buildings in faded colors. At intervals, sections of the boardwalk stretched toward the water. I walked down the first one and found an old carousel. Part of the roof had collapsed. Some enterprising soul had already taken away all the horses. The place where the calliope had been was a gaping hole. Nothing remained but broken bulbs, splintered wood and sand. A lot of sand.
I sympathized with the carousel. Each gust
of wind blew sand into my hair, my eyes, my mouth.
The carousel—and all the other dilapidated rides—weren’t likely to be what I was looking for. I turned my back on the ocean and eyed the buildings lining the boardwalk. She was in there, I was sure of it. They were in there. That’s where Katy had my mother.
“What do you think, Gris?”
He shifted on my shoulder. “Most of the buildings were probably shops or games. I would guess her family lived upstairs, above something quieter, like a bakery or a palm reader or something.”
“Makes sense. They wouldn’t want to live over the milk-bottle ring-toss game.”
“Right.”
“I guess we’ll have to just check all the buildings until we find one that might be appropriate.”
I made my way back to the main drag and examined each building more carefully as we passed them. Some were easy to dismiss. Their fronts folded down and were nailed shut. These, we knew, had been games.
Other buildings were trickier. Their signs were often too difficult to read, and the windows had been boarded over. Several had open doors, and for these, I had to be careful looking inside. Katy wasn’t a physical threat, but anyone she controlled might be. She’d already proved that with the children. It wasn’t only Katy I was worried about, though.
I was a woman alone at an abandoned amusement park in the middle of nowhere. Chances were good that people sometimes used these empty buildings for shelter. Anybody could be in there, from homeless runaways to crack dealers. I didn’t even have Sara’s Taser with me.
As if thinking about it could make it happen, I peeked inside a building that was once a gift shop, and a figure rushed me out of the darkness, knocking me to the ground. The wind went out of me in a whoosh, and Gris went flying from my shoulder.
A teenaged boy, filthy and wide-eyed, climbed off of me and ran down the boardwalk. I sat up, feeling the back of my head where it had banged into the wooden boards. The sand had cushioned it, mostly. I wasn’t bleeding. Go, me.
I climbed to my feet and looked around. I couldn’t find Gris, and my heart beat faster. “Gris?” I spun around, scanning the area.
“Here,” he said. His voice was muffled and coming from the edge of the boardwalk. One small hand waved from the sand. The rest of him was wedged under a board.
I wiggled him loose and checked him over for breaks. He seemed to be whole and functioning. “You okay?”
He brushed sand from his head. “Yeah. You?”
I nodded and put him back on my shoulder. “We need a better plan.”
“No need,” said a deep voice behind me. “We’re going to have fun today. That’s the plan.”
I turned to face the speaker and found a large man with curly blond hair and thick lips grinning down at me. Large didn’t really describe him. Huge? No. A freaking buffalo. Yes. That.
For all his size, he was fast. I tried to take a step back, and he snatched my wrist in a blur. Before I had time to protest, he jerked my arm and dragged me down the boardwalk.
I tried to dig my heels in, but I was no more difficult for him to handle than a kitten grabbing the carpet with her claws. My legs were shorter than his, so I had to trot to keep up with him.
“Let go of me!” I said punching him in the arm. “I’m not here to have fun.”
He stopped so suddenly I bumped my nose against his upper arm. He blinked at me, confused. “Why would you come here if you didn’t want to have fun with Bill? You said we would ride the Ferris wheel together and eat ice cream.” His lower lip quivered.
I looked at Gris for help, then realized I must’ve lost him again when Buffalo Bill had yanked my arm. “The Ferris wheel is broken, Bill.”
He glanced down the walkway to another section of boardwalk jutting out toward the sea. The Ferris wheel clearly lay on its side in a pile of rubble. Bill, apparently, saw no such thing.
“People are riding it right now. It’s not broken. Come on, Zoey. Don’t be afraid. I’ll be with you.”
Hearing my name on his lips chilled me. I wasn’t wearing a nametag that said “Hi, my name is Zoey!” The only way this woolly mammoth could know my name was if Katy had sent him to keep me busy.
Which meant she really was somewhere nearby.
I sighed. The only way to get to her would be to let this play out until either she made him let me go or I could slip away.
“Alright, Bill. I’ll ride it once. Then we’ll go get ice cream.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Bill was a few graham crackers short of a s’more.
Katy worked with emotions. She could force people to do things based on a manipulation of their feelings. Make them want to hold hands and beat the hell out of Riley. Make them want to take in a little girl out of nowhere and drive cross-country with her. Make them want to kill themselves.
She couldn’t put pictures in people’s minds. That was something Bill did to himself all on his own. He genuinely saw the amusement park shiny and new and filled with people. As we walked, he waved and nodded at folks only he could see. From time to time, he had us weave left or right, as if making his way through a tangled crowd.
He took us to a tiny building and shoved a dollar through the boarded-over window. After a minute, he took non-existent tickets from the non-existent attendant, and pulled me along toward the flattened Ferris wheel.
Some of the wooden poles that indicated the ride queue remained, and he went to the end of it to wait.
I tried to glance around for Gris without seeming suspicious. Wherever he was, I didn’t spot him. I did have an idea, though. Maybe Bill’s delusions were suggestible. Perhaps I could speed up this game.
“Whooo,” I said, wiping my brow. “It’s so hot today.”
Bill nodded and examined the sky. He plucked at his shirt and fanned himself. “It’s a scorcher!” Within a minute, sweat dampened his shirt.
It was probably about seventy-two degrees out. With the wind blowing off the water, the temperature was even lower.
I tried again. “Wow. An hour-and-a-half wait? I can’t believe how busy it is today.”
Bill’s smile wavered, then crawled back up his doughy face. “It’s worth it, though, Zoey. We’ll wait as long as it takes.” He folded his arms over his chest and settled in to wait.
I craned my neck to gaze up at the empty sky. “Looks like the ride’s stuck.”
He followed my gaze and watched for a moment, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Nope. They were just stopped for loading. See? There it goes again.”
The guy was seriously delusional. I felt my keys digging into my hip from my pocket and realized my phone wasn’t with them anymore. I’d lost it somewhere along the way during the struggle.
Well, shit. No backup. No golem. No phone. And you left your purse in the car. Way to isolate yourself for the kill, Zoey.
If this were a choose-your-own-adventure, I’d have flipped back through the pages to redo some of my choices.
After a few minutes, Bill stepped forward three steps, dragging me along with him. “See? The line’s moving fine. It’ll be our turn soon.”
The only sound around us was the crash of the waves and cries of seagulls. From time to time, as we stepped forward in the queue, my foot scraped against the sand-covered boards. Other than that, the amusement park was a dead thing, silent and rotting around us.
I never should have suggested to Bill that it was hot outside. His body odor cranked up a few notches. He smelled like pickled crazy soaked in a vinegar-and-madness marinade and sprinkled with freshly grated out-of-his-freaking-mind. I fanned my face and turned my body as far away as I could with my arm stuck in his vice grip.
A child’s laughter drifted from the main boardwalk.
“Bitch,” I said under my breath. I couldn’t see anyone,
and didn’t expect to.
If I throat-punched a kid who was really over a hundred years old, was that child abuse? Abuse of the elderly? Common sense?
Every few minutes, we moved forward in the invisible line. And at equally regular intervals, Katy’s obnoxious giggles blew in on the wind. After awhile, I stopped trying to catch her at it. I wouldn’t be able to see her unless she wanted to be seen. Better to ignore her. If nothing else, maybe she’d be irritated by the lack of attention.
The laughter grew louder and more frequent, the less interest I gave it. But I refused to turn around. I would not give in.
Bill tugged my arm, and we stepped forward another few steps.
“Yo, Bill!” A new voice, closer, louder and male, came from behind us.
A second male voice joined the first. “Hey! Did you save us a spot?”
Bill turned, taking me with him. Three men of varying size strode toward us, grins plastered across their faces. They all wore wetsuits, as if they’d come from surfing.
“I thought you guys weren’t coming,” Bill said. He pulled me closer to him, and his grip tightened. “You should get in line before they close.”
The brunet of the group frowned. “You said you’d save us a spot.”
“That’s cheating,” Bill said. He indicated the people only he could see standing behind us. “These folks had to wait a long time.”
Bill’s muscles were stiff, as if he were ready to spring on these guys. I had no idea what was going on, but I had a feeling I was the prize in this fight. I watched the eyes of a blue-eyed blond who hadn’t spoken yet. He was staring at the Ferris wheel on the ground, taking in the broken seats and splintered beams. In fact, none of the three men looked up at the sky. They pretended to share Bill’s delusion, but they saw what I saw—a dilapidated, abandoned boardwalk.
The brunet—who seemed to be the leader—sighed. “Fine. We’ll get in the back of the line.”
They stepped in between two rotted poles and posed in relaxed positions, as if ready to wait for a long period of time. Bill’s muscles relaxed, and he turned us away to face the ride.