Fire Raiser

by Melanie Rawn

  A chink of darkness etched his bright web of white-gold silence. It widened, lengthened, and became a doorway. Beyond was a landing, carpeted in eggshell-colored wool, hung with burgundy silk, adorned with a needlepoint-cushioned footstool and another small cupboard with polished brass handles on which rested a tall crystal vase full of flowers.

  HOLLY HEARD NICKY’S QUICK INTAKE of breath, saw Lulah smile, and reasoned that something had happened. Jamey was staring with splendid intensity at the same area of wall the two Witches were staring at. Holly didn’t bother. Neither, she noted with a sideways glance, did Evan.

  “Not bad,” Lulah allowed, a deep note of gratification in her voice giving the lie to her words. She reclaimed the talisman and stuffed it into a pocket of her jeans. “Everybody in before some jackass wanders up these stairs. Come on, you too, Jamey.”

  Holly made a mental note to ask more closely about that wooden charm, handed to her for Blooding without a word of explanation. She caught her aunt’s eye with a meaningful frown; Lulah smiled and looked innocent.

  “Come on where?” Jamey was asking.

  “Through here,” said Nick—and walked through the wall.

  “Goddamsonuvabitch!”

  Holly patted his arm. “You remember the scene in that Indiana Jones movie where he takes the ‘leap of faith’ and steps out onto the rock path he’s convinced isn’t really there?”

  “So which one of you works for Industrial Light and Magic?”

  She couldn’t help noticing that when she’d said leap of faith, Cam frowned. Yes, dearest—faith in you, just like Evan has faith in me. We all have to believe in each other, or nothing works.

  She shut her eyes and walked through the wall.

  It was crowded on the landing. Holly pressed her back against Evan, his arms around her waist, as six people crammed into a space comfortable for perhaps three. She stifled an ill-timed giggle as Jamey pressed up against Cam’s side and Cam tried to edge away—and Jamey only moved closer.

  The stairwell was of dizzying depth; Holly felt a twinge of vertigo as she peered downward. There were landings every so often, but no turnings—which made the stairs incredibly steep. She was reminded of the time she and Susannah had ventured down into the pyramid of Menkaure in Egypt, thigh muscles groaning at the awkward incline. At least in this stairwell there was room to stand upright, and it was lit by reflection from the outdoor floodlights through three narrow windows, one above the other, delicately curtained in white.

  Lulah tapped her shoulder. “Holly, unglue yourself from that man and come with me.”

  She sidled away from her husband, knocking over the footstool. “Do we have a way Jamey can warn us if anything happens that we need warning about?”

  Evan hauled out his Glock. “Makes a nice, loud noise.”

  Cam’s blue eyes went wider than ever and he glanced at Jamey. “You know how to use that?”

  Jamey unchambered the clip, checked it, snapped it back home, and flipped off the safety. He cocked a brow at Cam.

  “Oh . . . kay. . . .”

  “See ya,” Lulah said, and started down the stairs.

  One landing, and another, each with its little footstool and cabinet and cut-crystal vase of flowers. White roses, lavender roses, and snapdragons; posies of blue violets clumped at the base of tall, stately papyrus that reminded her of Egypt again. Holly waited for her allergies to kick in; when they didn’t, not even a tickle, she frowned.

  “Lulah, I’m not sneezing. I can’t even smell the flowers. Are they real?”

  A touch to a single petal of a lavender rose made Lulah catch her breath. “That’s not just magic, it’s some kind of focal point. The bowl’s real, and the water—so are the flowers, for that matter. But they’re in stasis.” She ventured another delicate touch and snatched her fingers back. “That’s Master Class work. Whatever’s spelling the flowers fresh is connected to whatever’s spelling this staircase. But how was it done?”

  “And the flowers have all been different,” Holly mused. “Roses, violets, gladioli—” She caught herself with a hand on the wall, startlement making her clumsy, as usual. “Lulah, all these bouquets are seriously magical flowers. White rose for secrecy, snapdragon for deception—”

  Lulah stared at the vase of lavender roses. “And those, for enchantment. They’ve been in every vase thus far. What have we gotten ourselves into here?”

  Holly had heard that note of worried perplexity in her aunt’s voice perhaps five times in her life. Before she could ask something stupid and useless, Lulah started down the stairs again.

  After two more landings—decorated with various combinations of flowers, but always featuring white and lavender roses—Holly asked, “Are we level with the first floor yet?”

  “Oh, we’re below the real cellar. I know you can’t feel it, but we are.”

  “I should have counted the number of steps.”

  “What for? You know that thing people say sometimes when they’re casting a Circle? A place that isn’t a place and a time that isn’t a time? Well, a distance isn’t a distance, either. In fact, I’d be surprised if there were the same number of steps going up as there were coming down. This much magic packed into this restricted a space—people probably tramping up and down all the time—”

  “So why isn’t there anybody here?”

  “You want to thank our luck or chase it away by insulting it with questions?”

  “You sound like Jesse in his ‘never look a gift dragon in the mouth’ mood.” Holly hiked up Cam’s pants. “Did he make that wooden thingy?”

  “The silver that binds it, yes. But the talisman is Leander Cox’s work. He’s been experimenting with combinations, and thought you and Bella would be a good place to start. Rowan is good for dowsing for metals as well as for water. I was guessing Cam would sense the former. Didn’t know there’d be both.”

  “So gratifying to know my daughter and I are inspirational.” She thought about Bella and Kirby, tucked up in their beds—no, their beloved Uncle Alec was at Woodhush, they’d be clamoring for stories and games, or sitting in his lap as the thunderstorm rolled from valley to mountains. It felt odd, not being able to hear it anymore. Outside was lightning and rain, but within this stairwell all was hushed. Perhaps the white roses ensured that, as well.

  Holly wondered what the hell she was doing here, gallivanting around a magical staircase, looking for who knew what, when she ought to be at home. It wasn’t as if she was all that much use. Besides, she wasn’t a free agent anymore, with responsibilities to no one but herself. She had a husband and children. And never mind that investigating this place had been her husband’s idea; that was his job. It was hers to . . .

  . . . to write books. Only she had no idea what she wanted to write next, and no book had shoved its way to the front of her mind, demanding to be written. She’d done some short stories, a few articles, but that was all. It was her job and she hadn’t been doing it for more than two years and sooner or later it was going to make her crazy.

  Back in the day, had she snagged up like this, she probably would have taken a trip somewhere. Florence, London, Athens—even a quick driving tour of New England or a week in D.C. spent wallowing in the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress—but there was no place she wanted to be except home with her family. She didn’t miss taking off whenever she felt like it—and the next time she did, it would be with Evan and the children, to show them the places she loved. It was always more fun when there was somebody along to share it with, like the long, lovely summer she and Susannah Wingfield had spent in Europe years ago—God, how she missed Susannah.

  She touched the diamonds on her wrist, swallowing the sudden upsurge of grief. It never got easier; sometimes she thought she might be getting used to it, but—

  She bumped up against Lulah and nearly sent them both sprawling. She was framing an apology when she saw what had startled her aunt into an abrupt halt.

  They had reached the bottom of the
stairs. To their left was a door. A hospital door. Complete with a push-pad on the adjoining wall and a rectangular window and a single word in orange script.

  “Surgery?” Lulah wondered.

  “As in ‘plastic’?” That would fit with a spa hotel.

  “Why put it at the bottom of a magical staircase?” Lulah snorted.

  Grimacing agreement, Holly slapped the metal pad. The door swung inward with a whoosh. A half-circle desk centered the room, with all the usual nurse’s station trimmings: chart rack, computer, monitoring screens. But no telephones, and nothing resembling an intercom. The only sign of occupancy was a pink-and-blue coffee mug (CRYOCACHE—FOR CONSTANT CARE) stuffed with Bic pens, the caps chewed like doggie treats. Halls branched to right and left, and another windowed door stood open directly behind the desk.

  Lulah led the way through the second door. Down each wall were two more doors, with signs projecting above them. RECORDS and PRIVATE were on the left; on the right, PHARMACY and a surprise.

  “Cryopreservation?” Holly frankly gaped.

  “Later,” Lulah decided, long-legging it down to RECORDS.

  Holly followed. “Why isn’t anyone here? And why are the doors mechanical and not magical?”

  “Do I look like the Oracle at Delphi? There’s no magic in here that I can sense at all. It stopped at the entry.” Switching the overhead lights on, she paused before a desk. “We’re at least fifty feet underground—and it’s fifty feet of solid rock, so forget about me trying to get through it. You fiddle with that machine, I’ll check the paper.”

  Seating herself obediently at the desk, she clicked the computer on and started exploring. Lulah was opening filing cabinets, and by the increasing vehemence of her cussing was having no luck at all.

  Holly accessed folder after folder, wondering why nothing was password-protected until she realized that anybody who could get down here would be in on the whole thing and thus trustworthy. She found inventories of bedsheets, blankets, pillows. There were charts detailing orders and deliveries of drugs to the pharmacy (but no lists of drugs delivered). Someone was writing a novel in his or her spare time—a medical thriller by the look of it, in French.

  “Nothing,” she said over her shoulder. “Let’s try the door that says PRIVATE.”

  For the first time, they encountered a lock. A mechanical one; nothing magic about it, according to Lulah. But she used magic to open it.

  “More of Leander’s work?” Holly asked as Lulah rolled a smooth wooden marble between her palms. This, too, was a half-and-half construction, sealed by Jesse McNichol’s metalcraft in silver.

  “Oak,” she affirmed. “And some of its own mistletoe. Struck down by lightning, which is why Leander was able to use it. Hush, now.”

  Holly waited, incapable of sensing the power Lulah called on, even though she knew the power inherent in oak and mistletoe. Sometimes she thought it was astonishing there were any oaks left, for the Druids’ sacred groves had been chopped down and burned all over Europe from the time of Julius Caesar onward. No Witch killed an oak tree; nature had killed this one, enabling Leander to use its wood, which was the more profoundly powerful for the lightning that had felled it. Mistletoe, aside from the frivolous tradition of kissing, had much more critical associations; the one Lulah was after right now was obviously its ability to open locks.

  A few minutes later Holly was seated at another desk, this time with a laptop coming to life before her. Lulah stood behind her, watching.

  “If this one is password-protected, we’re screwed,” Holly warned. “Unless you’ve got a way of getting a computer to rat out its owner—”

  The computer was not password-protected. Dozens of file icons appeared. In German.

  Fourteen

  EVAN WATCHED HOLLY AND LULAH start down the stairs, speculating for just an instant on what life might be like if his wife were the type of woman to go home and stay there. Had he given such an order, she would have told him to go to hell at his earliest convenience. In fact, he had once contemplated giving that order—back when they were first dating, the night of a triple homicide. In the years since, he’d been occasionally tempted but had never followed through. Which made him, he supposed, just as pussy-whipped in his own way as Gib Ayala.

  “Onward and upward?” Nicky asked.

  “Onward and upward,” Evan agreed.

  The thing of it was, he mused as they climbed, you had to love a woman for what she was, not what you thought you could make her do or be. His mother had married his father planning to be the wife of a police captain. Lachlan had no way of knowing if ambition had been part of his father’s psychology; by the time he was old enough to question, observe, and understand, all that was left was the nagging and the sneering. Seeing potential, encouraging the work, supporting ambition—those were things you did when you loved someone. But trying to control and manipulate—it lacked respect, he decided. To use one of Holly’s favorite words, it wasn’t honorable.

  “Why decorate?”

  “Huh?” He glanced over his shoulder at Cam.

  “Why the chest of drawers and the flowers and the footstool with the needlepoint cushion?”

  A step ahead of them, Nicky said, “My dear boy, please don’t start being a cliché at this stage of your life. ‘Why decorate?’ Could you possibly have asked a gayer question?”

  “Nick!” Lachlan exclaimed. “I’m shocked. The really gay thing to do would be to criticize the color scheme.”

  “Oh, shut up, both of you,” Cam suggested.

  The poor guy was taking hits from all sides tonight, Lachlan reflected. And from Holly, regarding Jamey, it would only get worse—probably because she wasn’t gleefully exercising all her control-freakishness on her characters. It was Cam’s misfortune to have been caught when she had nothing else to occupy her. Lachlan didn’t know damn-all about Cam’s history with Jamey, but it seemed to him that Holly wasn’t so much trying to manipulate Cam as she was trying to shove him in the direction he wanted to go anyway. And there was the difference: she’d seen what was true about him and Jamey—anybody with eyes could see it—and she’d pester them until they resolved it themselves. They’d have to be the ones to do it; after all, it wasn’t as if she could lock them in a bedroom together and—

  “All right, all right,” Nicky said as they reached another small landing. “Why are there cabinets and footstools and bowls of flowers?” He pointed to the squat cut-glass vase stuffed with blue violets and white and lavender rosebuds.

  “Well, we’re supposed to be exploring. . . .” Cam crouched beside the cupboard. It was a pretty thing, Evan noted, carved with an owl on one door and a peacock on the other. Cam opened the doors and pulled out what looked like a portable DVD player. There was no cord for plugging it in—and no wall sockets to plug it into, Lachlan noted with a quick glance around. But there was a cable with another kind of plug.

  Nick was frowning again. “If this staircase is bespelled, and we know it is, why don’t they just have a magic window in the wall?”

  “Maybe they don’t have the chops,” Evan said.

  The older man gave a disdainful sniff. “Amateurs.”

  “Not necessarily.” Cam sat cross-legged on the floor and hit the button that activated the screen. “Dad used to say there was only so much magic you could fit into a certain space before you got overload. It’s like this negotiation that goes on between Witchcraft and the real world. Give-and-take. You can tweak things just so far, you can use only so much power, before it stresses real-world physics—”

  “Theorize later,” Lachlan told him. “What I’d like to know is what they want to look at. Do you see anyplace to hook that thing up?”

  They set about exploring the nearby walls with eyes and fingers. Nothing. Then Nicky got down on hands and knees and started inspecting the carpet and the border of wood on either side—and there it was, a little outlet one step down from the landing. The plug fit perfectly.

  Onto the screen s
prang a neat, spare menu of numbers: 102, 105, 208, 210, 314, 315. Cam called up 102.

  It produced, as Lachlan had immediately suspected, a view of a hotel room. In the elaborate bed—canopied and curtained in lace with heavy velvet swags—were a man and a woman, sound asleep. Five seconds of this, and the angle switched to show the bathroom, and after another pause a different view of the bed. Then it was back to the original picture before it cycled through again.

  “Three cameras.” Nicky reached over and pressed PAUSE, and the rotation obediently stopped on the second perspective of the bed. “Very well, I bow to modern technology. This must be set up to record, yes?”

  “I’m in 314,” Cam mentioned with studied casualness.

  Crouching beside him, Lachlan asked, “Did you do anything weird?”

  “I took a nap. I took a bath. I got dressed.”

  “And we changed shirts. I hope it gave somebody besides Holly a thrill. Is there anything in the memory?”

  It turned out there wasn’t. And there was no DVD in the drive.

  “I guess they don’t expect to record anybody tonight,” Evan decided.

  “Why did they put me in a monitored room? Do they know I’m gay, and were waiting for me to seduce one of the busboys so they could blackmail me?”

  “Possibly,” Nick said. “But I think you’ve hit on a very interesting idea. Six monitored rooms, with viewing and recording—it may not be just the spa that is, shall we say, full-service.”

  NEITHER HOLLY NOR LULAH knew German.

  “We’ll have to take this up to Nicky to figure out what’s in it,” Holly said. “Damn. I was looking forward to learning something about this place!”

  “And you with a husband whose favorite composer is Mozart!” Lulah pointed a long finger at one of the icons.

  Holly thought for a moment, then said in a resigned tone, “Shocking degeneration of a formerly competent brain. Die Zauberflöte, okay, I get it. Zauber is ‘magic’ in German. That’s likely to be an interesting file, though I doubt we’ll be able to read it. But what the hell does ‘der Puff’ mean?”