Game of Cages

by Harry Connolly

  By the floodlight above the door, I saw muddy footprints smeared on the stone walkway leading to the door. I knocked, then knocked again. No answer.

  The door was locked. I slid the ghost knife between the door and the jamb, then put it into my back pocket. The door creaked open.

  “Hello?” I called. The room was silent. I reached for a light switch, then stopped myself.

  A ceramic tile hung on the wall just above the switch. It was about the size of my palm, and it was painted white with an emerald-green squiggle on it.

  Out of habit, I glanced down at my hand. The squiggle didn’t look exactly like the marks on me, but it was similar enough to make me nervous. I took out my ghost knife again and sliced through the tile.

  It split in two, but even before it fell, the broken squiggle released a jet of black steam and iron-gray sparks. I jumped out of the doorway to avoid the spray.

  A magic sigil can throw off a lot of energy when it’s been destroyed.

  After it died down, I stepped back into the room. Whatever that spell had been created to do, it was just a mess on the floor now. I flicked on the light.

  The cottage was a single room with very little furniture. A narrow bed was set into the back corner with a small dresser beside it. Next to that was a narrow desk with a lamp still burning, and beside that was the tiny stove from Regina’s photo. The shelf above the stove was filled with can after can of Dinty Moore beef stew.

  I saw no TV, no stereo, no bookshelves, and no Charlie Brown Christmas tree strung with lights. There was one thing in here to occupy a person’s attention.

  A large Plexiglas cage was set into a recess in the floor. It was larger than the one in the truck, maybe five feet on each side. It, too, had powerful floodlights at four corners, all aimed inward. Tiny electric fans were set on opposite sides of the cage, one to blow in, I guessed, and one to blow out. The black electrical wires powering them were strung all around the Plexi and held in place with peeling yellowed tape. There was also a plastic hatch along one side with an additional light shining through it.

  Hanging from the ceiling was a smaller Plexiglas cube that could be fitted to the hatch. I guessed it was a holding tank so the main cage could be cleaned.

  But there was nothing in the cage that needed cleaning—no bowls, blankets, litter boxes, or squeak toys. There hadn’t been any of that packed in the truck, either.

  A rocking chair was set at the edge of the recessed section of floor. I imagined Regina sitting and staring into the cage.

  The door banged open behind me. I spun. A woman was silhouetted by the floodlight. She was almost six feet tall, broad in the shoulders and hips and dressed head to toe in white ski gear. Her plump face was pale and puffy. It was Ursula.

  I felt the edge of the ghost knife in my pocket. “Don’t move!” she shouted with an accent I couldn’t place. She extended her arm, and I realized she was holding a gun.

  It was a Colt .45, very old, very intimidating, and very aimed at my head. Someone who knew more about guns would have aimed it at my chest, where I had protective tattoos. I didn’t have any protection on my face.

  “Put that away,” I said, sounding much more calm than I felt. “I’ve come to offer you a job.”

  “Hands up!” she barked. “Take your hand out of your pocket slowly. It should be empty, or I will shoot. Yes?” Her accent was northern European—Swedish maybe. I left my ghost knife in my pocket and showed her my empty hands.

  “How did you get in here without …?” She glanced back at the wall and saw that the tile was gone. She didn’t think to look on the floor. “Who are you?”

  “You should hear me out, and quickly. I’m not kidding about that job.”

  “I think you are kidding. Even if you were not, I would never work for a man dressed as kitchen help. Besides, I already have a job. I will be traveling with Armand early tomorrow, and I do not have time to waste.”

  I smiled. “Armand isn’t going to Hong Kong with Yin.”

  She smirked at me. “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Everyone knows something you don’t. Why don’t you close that door? This jacket isn’t worth a damn.”

  I held open the servant’s jacket so she could see I was unarmed, then stripped it off and tossed it onto the top of the plastic cage. She stared at me in shock. Apparently, touching the cage was Just Not Done.

  She entered and pulled the door shut. The latch didn’t engage because I had cut it off. “This is my home,” she said.

  I felt a twinge of guilt at that. I had done a lot of rotten things and I’d broken my share of laws, but I didn’t like scaring women. Not that she looked scared.

  Too late now. “I’m sorry for barging in, Ursula,” I said, trying to keep any genuine regret out of my voice. I didn’t think she’d trust a sympathetic face. “I had to see this setup for myself. It’s not much, is it?”

  “What is it that you know that I do not?”

  “That Asian fellow offered you a job, correct? To keep caring for Armand?”

  She nodded. “Of course. I have cared for him for years. I am the expert.”

  “Well, he doesn’t have Armand anymore.”

  Her expression didn’t change. “What do you mean? Who has him, you?”

  “No one has him, as of an hour ago. He’s running loose on the mountainside.”

  Her expression still hadn’t changed. I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. It reminded me too much of Regina’s flinty stare. “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I’m here.” I sat in the rocking chair and didn’t let my smile fade. “I wanted to see whether he came back here. This is his home, isn’t it?”

  “It has been for twenty-two years.” Both of us stared into the empty cage.

  “Do you think he will come back here eventually? His home doesn’t look very comfortable.”

  “He does not need comfort. He is not like other kinds of dog. At first, we gave him chew toys and soft blankets, but he never bothered with them. He never ate, either. Never drank water. I’m not even sure he ever breathed …” Her voice trailed off. I wanted to keep her going.

  “Never ate?” I prompted. “What kind of dog is he?”

  “He is not a dog, of course. Not a real one. He is a spirit. We fed him with our love. That was all he needed.”

  We heard a pair of gunshots. They were far away, faintly echoing off the mountainsides. Maybe Biker wasn’t going home after all.

  “My God!” Ursula said. “Are they hunting him?”

  “No one is going to shoot him, not when he is worth so much,” I said. “It was probably—”

  She turned toward me and raised the Colt. I threw myself and the rocking chair to the side as the gun went off. I rolled onto the floor, wondering if she’d hit me.

  The ghost knife was already in my hand. I threw it.

  The gun went off again, splintering the wooden floor. A moment later, the ghost knife sliced through the Colt’s barrel and hammer. Then the spell passed through Ursula’s shoulder.

  Her ski jacket split open, but I knew the flesh beneath would be unmarked. The top of the pistol fell to the side, and the spring in the magazine flung the remaining rounds into the air. I reached for the ghost knife, and it returned to me, passing through Ursula’s stomach.

  She stared in amazement at the weapon in her hand. I relaxed a bit and checked myself for bullet wounds—I’d heard people could be shot but not feel it. I didn’t find any blood. She’d missed. A little shiver ran through me; I’d been lucky.

  I kicked the rocking chair away and felt it wobble. The gun or the fall had broken it. I rolled onto my knees.

  The floorboards shifted. On impulse, I raised my arm just as Ursula body-slammed into me. I heard an electric crackle, then felt a sharp, burning pain on my biceps.

  My whole body jolted as an electric current ran through me, making all my muscles fire at once. We hit the floor together, and the impact broke the connection. I twis
ted, reached up with my other arm, and caught her wrist.

  She’d burned me with a stun gun, and if I hadn’t raised my arm, she would have zapped me in the eyes.

  Her face was close. Her teeth bared, her eyes wide with a killing urge. Damn. The ghost knife had passed through her. Twice. Why hadn’t it worked?

  I tried to push her off me, but she was too big and too strong. She raised herself up and put her whole weight behind the stun gun, forcing it toward my face.

  I didn’t have the strength to hold her off with just my left hand, and my right was numb and weak from the shock. She grinned at me, and I could see triumph in that smile.

  I forced the stun gun to the side and heard it crack against the floor by my head. Ursula cried out and dropped it. I twisted against her, letting her body weight roll over me. She fell onto the broken rocking chair and hissed in pain.

  I tried to get out from under her, but she lunged toward me, mouth gaping. I leaned away as she snapped at me, her teeth clamping down on my collar inches from my throat.

  To hell with this. I put my knees against her hip and kicked. She fell back and I rolled away onto my feet.

  Ursula grabbed the stun gun and lunged at me, arm extended. She was a big woman, but she was slow. I caught her wrist and pulled her toward me, knocking her flat on her stomach. I pinned her elbow and quickly knelt on her shoulder. Now she was the one without leverage.

  “Damn,” I said. “You’re a pain in the ass.” I wrenched the stun gun out of her hand. One of the metal leads was broken. I doubted it still worked. “Hold still, or I’ll use this on you.”

  She didn’t. The thick ski jacket made it tough to control her. If she didn’t settle down, I was going to have to either let her go or hurt her. I laid the stun gun against the back of her neck and shouted at her to be still.

  She answered in her native language, whatever it was. I couldn’t understand, but I knew she wasn’t asking how I take my tea. I tossed the broken stun gun away.

  The ghost knife was nearby. I could feel it. I reached for it and it flew into my hand.

  Ursula grunted from the effort of trying to throw me off. In a few moments she would have her knees under her and I’d have another fight on my hands.

  I slid the ghost knife through the back of her head. She didn’t react at all. The spell was supposed to “cut ghosts, magic, and dead things”; it could destroy the glyphs that sustained spells, cut through inanimate objects, and damage people’s “ghosts.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but everyone else I had cut with it had stopped trying to kill me. Why didn’t it work on Ursula? Did she not have a “ghost,” whatever that was?

  Ursula nearly bucked me off. She was still cursing at me, and I had no way to control her except by throwing punches.

  I wasn’t going to do that. I had fought in the street for the Twenty Palace Society. I had broken into homes and burned them to the ground. I had shot men in cold blood. But I wasn’t ready to punch this woman.

  She kept thrashing. “Let me go,” she said, her voice vicious with rage. “I have to check on Armand.”

  “No one is going to hurt Armand, not if he’s worth so much.”

  She kept fighting me. I wasn’t getting through.

  I was going about this all wrong. I leaned close to her and spoke quietly. “This isn’t his home, is it? If it was, he’d have come back here as soon as he was free.” She stopped struggling, although her breathing was still harsh. “I came here to see if he’d return to the people who loved him. But he won’t, will he?”

  A low moan escaped her throat. I kept talking. “You love him, I know you do. But now that he has his freedom, he’s never coming back. He doesn’t want to be your prisoner anymore. All these years you’ve kept him trapped in this little room, giving him your love, and now you know what he’s always wanted.”

  She made a terrible, heartrending sound. It was the sound a mother might make over a dying child. I let her buck me off.

  We both scrambled to our feet. She looked at me, her eyes brimming with tears. Then she looked at the Plexiglas cage, turned, and ran out the door.

  I looked around one more time. The place made my skin crawl. I’d spent time in prison, but this disturbed me in ways I wasn’t ready to think about.

  I heard Ursula shouting outside. I hurried to the window. She was lumbering toward the house, screaming and pointing back to the cottage. Back to me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Damn. I raced out the door. The tree line wasn’t far, but I didn’t want to run into the woods. Not when Catherine’s car was in the other direction.

  The ATV had a key in it. I grabbed a bungee cord from behind the seat and strapped the handlebars down. Then I started it up and sent it on its way.

  As I came around the edge of the cottage, Ursula ran through the servant’s entrance of the house and slammed the door behind her.

  I sprinted down the hill toward the house. I had nearly reached the doorway, still stupidly planning to follow her inside, when the back light turned on. She had roused the house faster than I expected.

  The corner of the building was just a few yards to my right. I ran around it and ducked out of sight, staying in the muddy tracks Biker and his two killers had made.

  The only tool I had was my ghost knife, but I was pretty sure I could crack a steering column with it. Unfortunately, the cars in the garage were on the other side of the house. Horace had distracted me before I could disable them, but I couldn’t get to them right now. I could have gone around the front, but if the guard at the main entrance had been replaced, that wouldn’t turn out well.

  I peeked around the corner. Six Fellows streamed through the back door, each carrying a shotgun. They fanned out across the yard, one particularly fat one moving toward me. Dammit. The ATV had overturned on a tree root across the yard; hadn’t they noticed it?

  I leaned away from the corner of the house. The tree line was not close enough for me to risk it, especially considering how much noise I’d make in the undergrowth. I’d end up like Biker, a rotting corpse with a bullet in my back. But there was a basement window at my feet. I dropped to my knees in the freezing mud and cut through the latch. The window opened toward me, but the gap was too narrow for me to fit through. The man with the shotgun would come around the corner at any moment. I cut both hinges and slid through the opening, pulling the frame in after me.

  The basement was pitch-dark, except for the yard light shining through the narrow windows along the ceiling. I landed on something flat and solid. It didn’t tip over and crash onto the floor. I pressed the window frame in place—it was upside down and didn’t fit properly, but I tried to hold it absolutely still.

  The fat man in the parka walked in front of the window. His puffy face was already red from the cold, but something in the way he scanned back and forth made me wary. He was calmer than the others. More in control.

  Luckily, he was looking toward the trees opposite the house, not at his feet.

  My ghost knife was in my back pocket, but I wasn’t sure it would work on him any better than it had on Ursula. Was it running out of power, or did she have a protection spell? My ghost knife didn’t feel any weaker, and it had cut the window readily enough.

  Someone shouted, “There!” and the fat man trotted back toward the others. I blew out a long, relieved breath and fitted the window, carefully squeezing it into the jamb. A strong wind would knock it out again, but I planned to be long gone by then.

  I climbed down to the floor. The low dresser I’d been crouching on had a white cloth draped over it. Each window was about ten feet from the next one, and by their faint rectangles I could see the shape of the room. It was obviously the size of the house above, but the weird silhouettes and broken shadows showed me it was full of clutter.

  My eyes were not accustomed to the darkness, so I moved slowly, my hands guiding me around chair legs, discarded bicycles, and other junk I couldn’t identify by touch alone.

  At fir
st I intended to go to the front of the building to steal a car, but I heard shouting from the back of the house and moved toward it.

  The window closest to the back entrance was blocked by a tangle of what appeared to be broken garden equipment, but the next one over had two steamer trunks stacked beneath it, along with a pile of lacy dresses. I climbed onto them, probably ruining them with my muddy clothes, and peeked out the window.

  There were shoes just a few feet from me. One pair were green Chuck Taylors, soaked through by the mud. Beside those was a pair of hiking boots fresh from the sporting goods store. The third pair was the professor’s fur-trimmed leather boots. The man in the Chucks fidgeted back and forth but let himself be hemmed in by the other two. It was Kripke. It had to be.

  Beyond them, I saw the two Mustaches marching across the open meadow toward the ATV. A third man was with them. He had a lean, hollow look and was dressed completely in cold-weather bicycling gear. He was another Fellow, I was sure. No one else would dress so badly.

  I couldn’t hear them. I slowly, quietly unlatched the window and eased it open.

  “He had a gun,” Ursula said. “He threatened to shoot me if I didn’t tell him everything I knew about Armand.” Just as she finished the sentence, she came into view, walking across the grass with Stephanie beside her, followed by the tattooed man and a frail-looking blond man I hadn’t seen before. They walked toward the professor.

  “Have you ever seen this man before?” Frail asked. He had a German accent, and his voice was high. Ursula shook her head. “Think carefully. You may have seen him in town or while running errands. Could he be a local?”

  “No, he—” Ursula began, but Stephanie interrupted.

  “Where are the goddamn guards? I hired a security team to protect the grounds. Where are they?”

  “Ms. Wilbur,” Solorov said. “Shut up. We have questions to ask.”

  “Don’t you tell me to shut up! I paid them. Now I find that they all ran home to their mommies! I’m going to sue them for so much money—”