With a boom like shattering river ice, the wall behind the fireplace split. A blue vein of frozen vitagua glimmered in the crack. Liquid magic gouted into the real through the widening hole in the hearth.
“No,” Astrid said. She stretched out a hand and froze the vitagua in the fireplace, sealing the entry point with magical ice. “Cold, cold, everything just freezes up.” She was careful to think only of freezing the vitagua before her—not the stuff within.
“Oh, no. No. Now we’re really screwed,” Jacks said.
“Was anyone splashed?”
“Not me,” said Mrs. Skye.
“Jacks?”
Shaking his head, he pointed at Mark, who was soaked from head to toe. His skin was damp and translucent.
“Gonna be God,” he mumbled, “Siren can run for president, Siren could rule the world.”
“Shut up, Mark,” Sahara said. “You’ll be okay.”
“Lie still,” Astrid said. She needed to break his skin. Pooling vitagua into his arm, she groped for a loose nail that lay on the shredded carpet.
“Here,” said Sahara in the same instant, holding out a paring knife.
Seeing the blade, Mark panicked. “Get ’way,” he bellowed, snatching up and swinging the rifle. The blow caught Astrid on the side of the head and Mark broke free, sprinting past Sahara to the kitchen. He dived into the enclosed back porch and they heard a series of clicks.
The rifle—he’d used it to seal himself in.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Skye was staring at the knife.
“It’s not how it looks,” Astrid said. “We need to break his skin to draw out the contamination. We weren’t going to hurt him.”
The old lady sighed. “I’ll talk to him.”
“We have other problems,” Jacks said, pointing down.
Mouth coppery, Astrid stared into the laundry room. Vitagua lapped at the walls, three or four feet deep. Things floated amid the flood—corks, bits of paper, food containers.
“I saw this….”
Sahara made a sound that fell somewhere between a laugh and a moan. “All your stuff, Jacks.”
“It’s just stuff,” he said.
“It was chantable,” she said, and he frowned. “And we could have used your watch. Why’d you take it off?”
“Special occasion.” He squeezed Astrid’s hand. “Maybe it’ll survive.”
Astrid glanced away, remembering the feel of it snapping underfoot.
“Perfect tigers,” Sahara sighed. “Astrid, how fast can you push this into the unreal?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t want to go.”
“There’s another way to get rid of it, isn’t there?” Sahara said.
“What?” said Jacks.
Astrid leaned on him. “She wants me to chant things.”
“Everything in the house, if that’s what it takes,” Sahara said. Her odd eyes were shining.
“We can’t create pools of chantments,” Jacks said.
“What does it matter now? We know who was hunting us, and he’s dead.”
“Mark was supposed to release us soon,” Astrid said.
“Screw Mark,” Sahara said bitterly. “He signed on to play gunman, he can play gunman until we’re done.”
“Sahara…”
“Come on, we can’t give him a bunch of chantments and turn him loose. Too many people know already.”
“Whose fault is that?” Jacks said.
She ignored him, letting her voice drop to a whisper. “As for Pat, I have an idea—put the earring on her.”
The frozen vein of vitagua in the wall glimmered as Astrid fought for calm. “Sahara. We’re the crazed gunmen. You and me. I’m the killer, Pat and Mark the hostages.”
“But—”
“You can’t blame Mrs. Skye for looking out for him.”
Sahara glowered. “She’s making everything harder.”
“I’ll make the chantments,” Astrid said. “We have to hold off the police until that’s done. Then we have to get everyone—and I mean everyone—out of here.”
“Making chantments will not fix this,” Jacks said.
Sahara laughed shrilly. “Tell him what you told me—how you’re the boss and all.”
She ignored the outburst. “Come up with an alternative, Jacks.”
“There isn’t one.” He kicked a loose brick into the basement.
“Okay,” Sahara said, suddenly pleased. “Same job, different time line. Hold down the fort, lovebirds. I’ll go upstairs and collect some chantables.”
“Lovebirds,” Jacks said, as she trotted upstairs. “I didn’t think you’d tell her.”
“Of course I did.” Astrid kissed him. “Jacks, your paintings.”
“I have everything a guy could ever want,” he said quietly, and she folded herself against his chest.
“Your dad…”
“Started it,” he said, not without difficulty. Then they were kissing at the edge of the hole in the floor, and he was wiping tears off her cheeks as she fought back sobs.
“Come on,” he said. “Hang together or hang separately, you know? We have to keep an eye on the mad mermaid.”
“She’ll be okay,” Astrid said.
“She’s off the deep end.”
“If we fight, she leaves,” Astrid said. “I can’t do this alone—”
“What am I, invisible?” he said, and then his face grew grave. “Astrid, last night, when you were asleep—”
A floor above them, the phone rang.
She went into the kitchen, leaning her ear against the locked door. “Mark?”
No answer. The phone continued to ring.
“Mark, they’re probably freaked out by the tremor,” she said. “You’ve got to talk to them.”
“Not coming out.”
She reached for the kaleidoscope, looking in. Mark was on the floor, mumbling to himself. His skin was glistening and red spots were forming on the backs of his hands.
“Mark, you want to be part of the gang or not?”
No answer.
“You said you’d help us buy time with the police. We’ve got a big spill here—”
“Don’t I know it.” His tongue looked flat and his lips were stretching back to his ears, making his words mushy.
“I wouldn’t have hurt you,” she told him. “I was trying to drain out the contamination. Why don’t you prick your finger on some glass or something and just slide the tip under the door?”
“Slip me another magical object, and I’ll answer the phone next time they call,” he said.
“Mark—”
“Am I in the gang or not?”
She reached out randomly, picking up a saucepan lid and chanting it. “It’ll stop bullets,” she said, sliding it under the door. “But Mark, about the contamination—”
“Piss off or I’ll tell ’em everything.”
With a sigh, she turned the kaleidoscope’s gaze outside. Sunset was in full glorious swing. West through the back wall of the house, she could see gold and cream-tinged clouds, streaks like lash-marks striping the blue.
The block was cut off by now, sealed tight by the police line and patrolled by grim young men in khaki. The townspeople watching at the perimeter looked fatigued and anxious. Men were unloading black trucks at the edge of the police staging area.
“Why all this attention for a small-town gun standoff?” she murmured, tracking her neighbors’ upturned faces, their pointing fingers.
What she saw hit like a punch to the gut. Vitagua had sprayed up through the chimney. Syrup-thick, it had drizzled over the edge of the bricks, contaminating the moss on the roof. Humps of green fuzz as big as rats were growing out of control. A dandelion that had somehow rooted itself in the eaves was blooming at high speed, producing first buds, then fist-sized yellow blooms, then clouds of white seed parachutes. Those seeds were taking root everywhere, compounding the problem as they too burst out, gold flowers turning white in seconds, hurling more seeds.
> Within the crowd, Astrid could see people sneezing; the air must be full of pollen.
Around the blue-slicked chimney, a cloud of insects had gathered, probably attracted by the vitagua’s floral scent. Some were caught in it, writhing in the fluid, growing in size and then falling to buzz drunkenly in the humps of moss.
The contamination was out.
The vitagua within her was a-throb, beating against her pulse, demanding that she split the world open and let the flood come.
Do it, the grumbles whispered. Tune in to that vein of vitagua pushing into the real, lay your hand on it and think of warmth. The town will be under a magical lake so fast…
The thought was enticing, hard to shake off.
At least she knew enough to tug the spirit water on the roof back to the brim of the chimney, then pull it down to the hearth.
“Jacks, do you know where Pat is?” Sahara sounded frustrated. “I can’t keep track of everyone myself.”
On the other side of the porch door, the phone rang.
This time Mark picked up. “I didn’t kill Sahara Knax in Boston,” he said, voice thin. “You know that now. I want assurances from the Boston police that I’m cleared. Then I’ll let everyone go.”
There was a pause. “Nobody leaves until I talk to the same detective I talked to before,” he said. He hung up with a moist sigh. “You out there, Astrid?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That should hold them a while.”
She scanned the crowd again, picking out the soldier in charge, a spare graying man who was slamming down a telephone receiver. Under his direction, a team of workers was erecting a wall of stereo speakers near the front yard.
A scattering of pops: gunfire.
Upstairs, Mrs. Skye shrieked. “What is that?”
Astrid climbed to the second floor. “Police are shooting at a contaminated sparrow.”
“The vitagua’s out?” Jacks said.
“I pulled back as much as I could,” she said.
Mrs. Skye looked at Astrid reproachfully. “Things getting crazy out of hand, huh?”
Astrid nodded. The contamination was out; their secret was all over TV. “We should give ourselves up.”
“Smart girl,” said Mrs. Skye.
“No chance,” Sahara said.
“Nobody’s getting sweet-talked into ignoring this now.”
“Be quiet a minute, Pat. I need to think….”
“Sahara, we can’t bluff our way out of this anymore.”
“Then we run,” Sahara said. “Make some chantments we can use to escape and just take off.”
“Leave…abandon the house?” The grumbles cried out, as if betrayed. The idea seemed impossible, like leaving an arm behind. “Leave Indigo Springs?”
“There’s a whole planet out there. Expand your horizons, Astrid—of course we leave! It’s the only way.”
“Abandon ship,” Jacks agreed. He pulled her against him, drawing a long shuddering breath. “She’s right.”
“We all leave,” she said, trying it out. Sahara leaves, but we go with her. Maybe this was what the vitagua had been saying all along. “Make some chantments and run.”
“As many as we can carry,” Sahara said. “Things to help us hide. They’ll be after us.”
“There’s an understatement,” Mrs. Skye said.
“Pat, you’re like a broken record. Could you—?”
“Sahara!” Jacks and Astrid barked simultaneously.
“Sorry,” Sahara said insincerely. She pressed a brooch into Astrid’s hands. “Chant this, come on.”
“It doesn’t work,” Astrid said. She looked outside again, watching the bustle near the big speakers.
“Don’t give up,” Jacks said.
“It’s true,” Astrid said, feeling the weight of her words even as she absently chanted the pin. It would summon fog, she decided—maybe it would buy time if the house was harder for the police to see. She pinned it on Sahara’s chest. “Sahara leaves, I—oh, no.”
“What?”
“Ma,” she said. “And Olive.”
Soldiers were escorting Ev Lethewood and Jacks’s mother onto a sheltered platform near the speakers. They set Ev up with a microphone. She leaned in, lips moving. No sound…then a technician flipped a switch.
“Now?” Ev asked. Her voice boomed through the walls.
Far away, the small figure—Artie Roche, bad cop to Will Forest’s good, Astrid thought—nodded.
“Mark Clumber, this is Evelyn Lethewood. You’ve got my daughter Astrid in there.”
Astrid sank to the floor, feet splayed in the remains of their last meal.
“Mark, I’ve been delivering mail to your sister Elaine for ten years. She’s a good woman, and she wants you out of there safe and sound. That’s what I want for Astrid. You get what you want from these men and I get my daughter back. Don’t hurt her. Don’t…”
Astrid sobbed as her mother paused.
“They’re putting her back on script,” Sahara said. “They’ll figure Mark needs to hear your name a lot. See you as a person. This means they’re still buying that it’s Mark who’s in charge here. This is good.”
“Good,” she echoed bleakly. “How do you know this?”
“The vitagua you want so desperately to suck out of me, Astrid,” Sahara said. “My sensitivity?”
“Oh, you’re a bundle of sensitivity, sweetie.”
“Pat—ah, never mind. Plus, Astrid, I watch a lot of crime movies.” Her eyes sparkled, as if it were funny.
“Astrid is twenty-seven,” Ev boomed, and as she went on, it was as Sahara predicted: Astrid loves this, Astrid did that when she was young. Astrid is a good person.
Astrid wouldn’t hurt a fly.
“You have to start chanting things,” Sahara said.
“Leave me alone.” She covered her face, listening to her mother’s dusty-dry desperate voice begging for her life. Then it was Olive’s turn to speak, Jacks’s turn to hear. He leaned in the corner, watching his mother through the kaleidoscope, not saying a word.
“Suddenly I’m glad I have nobody,” Sahara remarked.
Mrs. Skye snorted.
“Pat, shut up.”
“You don’t have nobody,” Astrid managed. She extended a hand, but Sahara pulled away, out of reach.
“They won’t let us sit here forever,” Jacks said.
“No giving up,” Sahara ordered. “Please, Astrid, start chanting. I can get us out of this if you just pitch in.”
Was this it? There was an argument, and Sahara leaves. Or maybe we all go. Is that what happens now, Astrid thought, are we there?
She stood, sensing Jack’s support, silent and strong. “Yes,” she said aloud, answering herself. It was time.
Except it wasn’t. The sound of ice cracking downstairs interrupted her before she could speak.
• Chapter Thirty-One •
It was Patterflam. He had thrust one flame-licked arm from the unreal straight into the house, breaking through the base of the fireplace mantel. Smoke and blue steam boiled off him. The living room floor was burning.
“Shit, oh shit,” Sahara said. “What do we do?”
Jacks’s face was stony. “Kill him.”
Astrid swallowed. “I can’t. Not again…”
“I’ll do it.”
“How?”
“The pocketknife that decays things,” he said.
“It’s here.” Astrid unfolded the blade with shaking hands. “Use a cantation.”
“Do you remember the words?” Sahara asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Astrid, the knife?”
Before she could pass it over, the fire lunged out, licking her wrist. She reared back, and Jacks caught her.
Both smoke alarms went off at once, keening shrilly. Flames were spreading everywhere, streaking along the walls, dancing on the sealed windows. The living room brightened even as the air became smoky and rancid.
Astrid thought fleetingly of the police outs
ide, wondered what they were seeing. The house aglow with firelight, smoke gouting from the chimney…
“Kid!” That was Mrs. Skye. She was pounding on the sealed front door—Mark had used the chanted rifle to barricade it. “Do something!”
Do something. Astrid yanked a geyser of vitagua up from the flooded basement, drawing it over the flames, smothering them. The smoke got denser, and fire continued to pour off Patterflam’s arm. Where it touched the vitagua the flames intensified, filling the air with a stench of scorched flowers.
Screams from the unreal howled within Astrid’s mind. Right—it wasn’t water. Vitagua was flammable.
“He’s destroying the magic,” Sahara shrieked.
No. Astrid snatched a plastic drinking cup off the floor, chanting it swiftly and tossing it to Sahara. “Point this at anything that’s burning.”
“Everything’s burning,” she coughed, struggling to utter a cantation. The air was getting thicker—wet, smoky, and filled with the smell of burnt things.
Another flame leapt to the back of Astrid’s wrist, burning a blistering line across her skin. Astrid and Sahara shrieked as one; Sahara pointed the cup. Water came out of it in a firehose torrent, soaking them both.
“Just like old times,” Astrid said, and then wondered what she meant.
“Focus,” Jacks murmured in her ear, bracing her before she could slip. “Astrid, you want to suffocate?”
“No.”
“We need to filter the air.”
“Okay.” She reached up with a tendril of vitagua, pouring it into a nearby cookbook. When it was chanted she put both hands on it, reciting a cantation. At least there was plenty of heat to power things.
The book began to flap open and shut, sucking the smoke into its pages. Clean air whooshed through the living room with every snap of its covers.
“We’re running out of time,” Jacks said as the air cleared. Sahara sprayed the room and then—as the fires went out—trained the spray directly on Patterflam’s arm. He was working his way farther into the real.
“Keep the fire down while I think,” Astrid said, panting.
“Tell him that,” Sahara said. Patterflam’s reddened fist began to dig at the fireplace, breaking it down. A blazing shoulder appeared as the gap between real and unreal widened.
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