Illusion Town

by Jayne Castle

  “How long does this take?” Skull Head hissed.

  “Shit,” the other one gasped. “What is that energy?”

  Runner snorted. “Thought those guys were supposed to be tough.”

  “They’re not from around here,” Hannah said. “They don’t know tough.”

  “Nope.”

  “Hurry, damn it,” Paxton ordered.

  “Yeah, sure, whatever,” Hannah said.

  Gently, she manipulated one last frequency, allowing it to flatline.

  In the next instant the energy gate winked out.

  The sudden stillness caught Wilcox and the bikers by surprise. It took them a few seconds to recover from the shock created by the sudden cessation of the nerve-rattling nightmare energy.

  Hannah used the moment to urge Runner into the chamber.

  Heavy currents of psi shuddered and shivered through the atmosphere. The attractions of the Midnight Carnival glittered and dazzled, promising thrills and chills and great secrets.

  “Wow,” Runner whispered. “What is this place?”

  “Long story,” she said softly. “Tell you later.”

  Skull Head and Braid Dude walked hesitantly into the chamber and stopped a short distance inside the gate. They both looked stunned.

  Wilcox moved slowly through the hot space, enthralled by the artifacts.

  “So this is the Midnight Carnival,” he said. “To think that all these years it’s been hidden down here, right below Illusion Town.”

  “Just to be clear on the technicalities,” Hannah said. “It’s my find. I filed a claim to this whole sector a couple of weeks ago.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Wilcox said. “You are going to sign the papers that will transfer the claim to me. I have them with me.”

  “Not a chance,” Hannah said.

  Paxton sighed. “I see we must negotiate. Here is my position: Sign the papers or I’ll start making the members of your Dark Zone family disappear, one by one, starting with young Runner.”

  An eerie music floated across the chamber. The carousel with the dangerous clockwork toys and miniatures began to revolve.

  “What’s going on?” Skull Head asked sharply.

  The carousel continued to rotate at a leisurely pace. The odd melody got more disturbing. One of the figures—the Old World queen—came into view. She got a fix on Skull Head. Energy shifted in the atmosphere.

  “Unnh.” Skull Head clutched at his chest. “Can’t breathe.”

  The slow rotation of the platform took the queen out of view, breaking the focus. But now the black glass windows of the fairy-tale carriage flashed with power.

  Braid Dude staggered. “Wha—?”

  Skull Head stumbled quickly back toward the gate. “That statue on the merry-go-round. It did something to me.”

  Braid Dude swung around to confront Wilcox. “What in green hell is this place?”

  It was Elias who answered.

  “Welcome to the Midnight Carnival.” He shut down the carousel, walked out of the control booth, and stepped off the platform. He gripped a flamer casually in one hand. Virgil was on his shoulder. “Have you seen and heard enough, Detective Jensen?”

  Jensen, accompanied by three uniformed officers, emerged from behind an arcade machine.

  “More than enough,” Jensen said. “Got it all recorded—sound as well as video. We’ve got a list of charges that run all the way from kidnapping and extortion to drugs and reckless driving.”

  Virgil chortled and bounded down to the ground. He scurried toward Hannah, Arizona Snow clutched in his paw.

  “I missed you, too,” Hannah said. She scooped him up and kissed his scruffy head somewhere between his ears.

  She plopped him down on Runner’s shoulder. Reaching down, she took a small utility knife out of the sheath inside one of her boots and went to work cutting through the ties that bound Runner’s wrists.

  Runner reached up to pet Virgil. “Good to see you, pal.”

  Virgil waved Arizona Snow, bounded down to the floor, and scurried toward the arcade machine that was filled with toys and stuffed animals. He paused to chortle encouragingly at Runner.

  Intrigued, Runner trailed after him.

  Hannah looked at Jensen.

  “Don’t forget breaking and entering,” she said, jerking a thumb toward Wilcox. “And attempted claim jumping.”

  Jensen smiled, startling her. It was, she realized, the first time she had seen him smile. He looked almost happy. Okay, maybe happy was too strong a word. More like quietly satisfied. Evidently, this was a good day for Detective Jensen.

  Wilcox stared at Elias. “It’s not possible,” he gasped. “How did you get in here ahead of us?”

  “Turns out there are at least three gates,” Elias said. “We used one that can be accessed inside the Shadow Zone. Hannah and I found it the night your bikers chased us through the tunnels. Hannah reopened it for us this afternoon before she went to meet you at the first gate.”

  Braid Dude and Skull Head recovered from their shock. They evidently made the executive decision not to waste any time trying to fight an obviously lost battle. They turned and ran for the open gate.

  Hannah released the psychic grip she had been using to hold the gate open. The nightmarish currents roared back in a torrent.

  The gate slammed shut just as the bikers reached it. They were so close the shock wave struck them with lightninglike ferocity. The men jerked and stiffened, their bodies twisting in painfully unnatural postures. Their faces were frozen masks of panic.

  In the next instant they fell unconscious to the floor and lay very still.

  For a second or two, everyone stared at the fallen men.

  Everyone except Paxton Wilcox.

  Moving with surprising speed, he locked an arm around Hannah’s throat and put the barrel of the flamer to the side of her face.

  “You bitch,” he hissed. “You’ve been nothing but trouble. Worse than your mother and that bastard magician. But now you’re my ticket out of here. Open that damned gate.”

  “You murdered them,” Hannah said. “It was you. My parents didn’t die in a drug deal gone bad. You shot them both.”

  “I told you, they tricked me. Your father was a very, very good magician, I’ll say that for him.”

  “They died to protect my inheritance.”

  Everyone else in the chamber went very still.

  “Let her go,” Elias said, his voice lethally quiet.

  “We both know that’s not going to happen,” Wilcox said. “Open that gate, Hannah, or I’ll rez this trigger. At the very least one half of your face will be ruined. You’ll probably lose your eye.”

  Virgil raced out from the direction of the arcade booth. He was all teeth and eyes. He was not growling. He was closing in for the attack.

  Wilcox tightened his grip on Hannah’s throat.

  “Make that creature stop or I’ll burn him,” Wilcox said.

  “Virgil,” she said quietly. “That’s far enough. I’ve got this.”

  Virgil seemed to understand. He halted a few feet away, crouched on his hind legs, ready to spring.

  “You know what really pisses me off, Wilcox?” Hannah said. “What pisses me off is that you murdered my parents and you kidnapped my brother today. No one gets away with harming a member of my family.”

  “You really don’t know when to shut up, do you?” Wilcox said. “Open that gate.”

  He had her tightly pinned against his chest. She had all the physical contact she needed. She rezzed her talent, found a focus, and generated enough energy to overwhelm him in nightmares.

  Between one breath and the next he was plunged into the ultimate private horror show. At first she had no idea what he saw—no one could view another person’s dreams, just as no one could actually read
another person’s mind.

  “No,” he whispered. He gazed, transfixed, at a vision only he could see. “No. You’re dead. You’re both dead.” His voice rose. “You’re nothing. Just a cheap Illusion Town whore and a third-rate magician. You’re both dead.”

  The flamer dropped from his hand. His arm fell away from Hannah’s throat. He staggered backward, transfixed by the visions his mind had conjured.

  And then his eyes locked with Hannah’s one last time.

  “You look just like her,” he rasped. “Just like your mother. Tell her to leave me alone. Tell the magician to leave me alone. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. You’re just a bastard. No family. No trouble.”

  “You got that wrong,” Elias said. He pulled Hannah into the circle of his arm. “She’s got a lot of family, including a husband.”

  “And a brother,” Runner added.

  Virgil chortled, fully fluffed once more, and once again vaulted up into Hannah’s arms.

  “And Virgil,” Hannah said. “And a couple of aunts. And parents who died trying to protect my inheritance. Got anyone you can trust, Wilcox?”

  He did not answer because he was rapidly losing consciousness. He fell to the floor without a word.

  “That’s what I thought,” Hannah said.

  Chapter 36

  The dream started the way it always did. The doppelgänger rose from the bed and looked down at the dreamer and the man sleeping beside her. The man had one arm around the dreamer in a way that suggested tenderness and intimacy. He stirred a little when he felt the energy shift in the atmosphere.

  The dust bunny at the foot of the bed opened his baby blues and fixed his attention on the dreamer.

  “What’s the matter now?” the dreamer asked in the silent language of dreams. “It’s been a long day.”

  “This is important,” the doppelgänger said.

  “Yeah, yeah. With you, everything is important.”

  The doppelgänger looked at the man. “We’re talking about your future.”

  “I’ve been trying to avoid that topic.”

  “That works with some things. But not with this. You love him.”

  “I know.”

  “What he feels for you is real.”

  “But is it love?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

  The dreamer got the impression that the doppelgänger was smiling, as though certain of the answer the man would give. But she could be hard to interpret.

  In any event it was too late to ask for clarification. The doppelgänger was already fading rapidly.

  Hannah came awake but there was no sense of disorientation this time. No panic. No feeling that time was running out.

  This time she understood her intuition’s message. She did not have all the answers but she had the one she needed. She loved Elias.

  She opened her eyes and turned onto her side to look at him. He was awake, watching her.

  A deep sense of certainty settled on her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  He smiled a slow, compelling smile. “Took you long enough to figure that out.”

  “You were so sure?”

  “No, but I come from a family of incurable gamblers, remember? We’ve got a long history of playing for high stakes. We’ve also got a long history of winning.”

  She touched the hard, determined line of his jaw. “You bet on us?”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I started falling in love with you back when our only connection was online. The minute I walked into your shop I was ready to ask you to marry me.”

  She smiled. “Which is exactly what you did that very first night. And I said yes.”

  “Because I convinced you an MC would buy you some protection.”

  “No, that was just a convenient excuse. I said yes because I fell in love with you online, too.”

  His eyes heated and his energy stirred the atmosphere.

  He threaded his fingers through her hair. “Is that right?”

  “I didn’t put a name to what I felt because I was afraid to believe my own doppelgänger—my intuition. But the truth is, I had begun to dream about you—serious dreams, dream-walking dreams—before we met face-to-face. I couldn’t see your face in my dreams, but when you walked into my shop, I knew who you were before you said a word.”

  “Will you marry me again, my love? A real, forever Covenant Marriage? Will you create a family with me?”

  “Yes, oh, yes, my love.”

  He drew her into his arms and she went to him on a tide of joy.

  Virgil chortled a cheery farewell. There was a small thump when he hopped down off the bed. He headed for the stairs with Arizona Snow. Hannah knew he was on his way outside to join his dust bunny pals and do whatever dust bunnies did when they gathered at night. He would be back for breakfast.

  Meanwhile, everything she wanted was right here in her lover’s arms.

  Chapter 37

  Ollie’s House of Pizza was crowded when Elias, accompanied by Virgil, arrived. But he had taken care to reserve a table that would accommodate the entire DZ Delivery Service team. Runner and his associates were waiting. Buddy looked surprised to see him but he nodded once, satisfied that Elias was a man of his word.

  “Told you he’d show,” Runner said.

  A number of pizzas were ordered, including an extra one for Virgil—and conversation turned to business. Elias explained that the Arcane Society had paid a fortune for rights to the Midnight Carnival and that Hannah planned to give each member of the DZ Delivery Service a share of the profits. That news had such an impact that Runner and the others actually stopped munching pizza for a few seconds.

  When they managed to recover from the shock, murmurs of amazement rippled around the table.

  “That is so high-rez,” Runner said. “With that kind of money, I could open a real office.”

  The other deliverymen looked equally thrilled.

  “And we could get serious delivery bikes,” Buddy said.

  Elias ate some pizza while the news settled around the table. When the group stopped talking about what they would do with the money, he continued.

  “You’ll be getting formal invitations to our wedding,” he said. “But I wanted to invite you all personally, just so you’d know that Hannah and I really want you there. Also, I’ve got a little surprise for you. No big deal compared to the money from the sale of the carnival but I thought maybe you guys would like these.”

  He took the envelope from the inside of his jacket and put it on the table.

  “Courtesy of Mr. Smith,” he said.

  When they saw what was inside the envelope, Runner and his crew got excited all over again.

  Chapter 38

  The formal, hour-long covenant marriage ceremony was solemn and heavily freighted with traditions and rituals that went back two hundred years to the founding of the colonies. The service was held in a chapel in the Dark Zone—the same chapel in which Clara and Bernice had been married.

  There was a standing-room-only crowd because this particular wedding had a couple of attractions going for it. The first and most obvious was that the bride and groom were, once again, briefly famous. After all, one of the heirs of the legendary Coppersmith clan was marrying the woman who had discovered Arcane’s long-lost museum.

  The second reason so many of the DZ residents were in attendance was because the bride and groom had let it be known that they would be making their home in the Dark Zone. They were both officially members of the close-knit community now. Family.

  Invitations had been coveted by every high-ranking member of the Arcane Society as well as various para-archaeologists and museum officials from the four city-states. The experts were given a carefully supervised tour of the carnival the day before the wedding. Several had declared it alm
ost priceless. The bride, however, had managed to find a price and Arcane had paid it without quibbling.

  Runner sat in the row reserved for family. His crew was seated directly behind him. All of the members of the DZ Delivery Service were spiffed up for the occasion. Their hair was slicked back, their jeans were new, their boots were polished, and the hardware on their leather jackets gleamed.

  Ollie closed the House of Pizza so that he and his staff could attend. Hannah’s friends and neighbors, the people who had known her all of her life, filled up the rest of the seats.

  The groom’s side of the chapel was also filled to capacity.

  Elias’s brother, Rafe, was best man. Rafe’s wife, Ella, was in the front row with the rest of the family on the Coppersmith side.

  There had been a special note on the invitations—Dust Bunnies Welcome. The result was that about a half dozen were in attendance. Among them was Elvis, the companion of the star reporter from the Curtain, Sierra McIntyre. His small white crystal-studded cape added some extra glitz to the occasion. Sierra was there as a guest—she was married to John Fontana, the boss of the Crystal City Guild—and also in her professional capacity. She was covering the wedding for her paper.

  Marlowe Jones, the director of the Frequency City office of Jones & Jones, and her husband, Adam Winters, the chief of the Frequency City Guild, brought Marlowe’s dust-bunny pal, Gibson.

  And of course, Lorelei, Ella Morgan Coppersmith’s dust bunny companion, was there perched on the back of the family pew and carrying her own wedding veil.

  There were a few others but Virgil looked particularly dashing in a black bow tie. He was on the back of the bride’s family pew, clutching his prized Arizona Snow doll.

  The musical cue sounded, reverberating throughout the chapel. The crowd got to its feet and turned to watch the bride come down the aisle.

  Hannah and her small retinue emerged from the dressing room and paused at the back of the chapel. The bridesmaids made last-minute adjustments to the train of the white gown.