The Otherworld

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Don't we, Amanda?"

  "Yes," Amanda-Anne whispered.

  "I can't hear you."

  "Yes," Amanda-Anne said.

  "Dirty little girls like to make their Daddy happy, don't they?"

  Amanda-Anne's throat tightened, and she nodded.

  "Good," said the Father. "Then come here. I know what you like, don't I, you dirty little girl? Tell me you like it."

  Amanda-Anne walked forward, moving like a creature drugged.

  "Say, `I like it, Daddy.' "

  The child was silent.

  The Father grabbed her and shook her. "Say, `I like it, Daddy.' "

  "I like it . . . D-D-Daddy," Amanda-Anne croaked.

  "I know you do, you little whore." He picked the limp child up and carried her into the storage room.

  Oh, gods, Amanda, I'm sorry—I can't stay here—I can't watch this! Cethlenn shrieked, and vanished.

  * * *

  Lianne sat at her little kitchen table and dried her eyes. She had done what she could for Amanda for the time being. It was Friday night—she couldn't do anything else about the child until the next morning at the earliest—so she needed to get herself under control.

  I've been under an awful lot of stress lately, she thought. It isn't like me to cry like this. There have just been too many unexplained things happening in the last few days.

  She leaned back in her chair. I've taken care of this now, though. Things will get back to normal. I know they will.

  Her eye strayed to the kitchen sink—to a rainbow sparkle and a flash of white metal.

  And the feeling of otherworldness returned. She got up and walked over to the sink, and picked up the crystal carafe that Mac had produced—seemingly out of thin air—for their delightful breakfast in bed. She hefted it in both hands, studying the flawless faceting of the crystal and the incredible quality. One eye closed, she gnawed on her lip as she appraised it, and a whole number followed by a surprising quantity of zeros ticked off in her brain. She fingered the silver serving tray, and then picked it up and studied it. It was real silver, and solid, too, not plate—and Lianne pondered the odds of finding such exquisitely crafted silver with nary a maker's mark on it. She picked up a cherry pit and studied it as if it were something likely to burn her fingers. She tilted her head, and her eyebrows furrowed, and then, with a thoughtful expression on her face, she turned out the kitchen light, went into the living room and plopped down on her couch and stared off into nothingness.

  "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left—no matter how improbable—is the truth," she said softly to no one.

  * * *

  Amanda-Anne lay in the bathtub, staring up at the ceiling. Steam swirled around her, and a thick layer of sweet-scented bubbles pressed against her skin like fat kittens. Amanda was oblivious to the warmth and the sweetness and the light. Her mouth still tasted of oily cotton, her wrists and ankles still stung and chafed, and she hurt.

  And in her mind's eye, nothing existed but the storage room, with its little cot and its dim light, and its supply of ropes and rags, and its awful locking door.

  She rubbed absently at her wrists—and her fingers brushed across her real mother's bead, still strung on the lovely gold chain.

  And the image of the elf pouring himself out of the bead in a stream of green mist came to her. She sat up in the tub and stared at the bead. Let Abbey pretend that the elf wasn't real. Let Alice complain that he was evil. And let that goody-two-shoes Stranger think that the elf would help them. They didn't know about Anne, but Anne knew about them. And she knew better than to believe their silliness. Amanda-Anne knew that Alice was stupid, that Abbey was wrong, and that Stranger meant well but was looking for help in the wrong direction; the sweet-faced elf was too soft and too gentle to do what was needed. But he had shown her the trick of his magic without meaning to. Without even knowing that he had done so. Her eyes narrowed as she considered the possibilities of the scene that played itself out in her mind, and softly, the child began to laugh.

  Don't want . . . the elf, she thought. Just . . . the smoke. And the wind.

  She stared at the bead, forcing unfamiliar patterns into the rhythm of her will, and slowly her green eyes glowed.

  For a moment, nothing changed.

  Then a flicker of light came to life in the heart of the bead—not the pure green light of earlier in the day, but a throbbing, pulsing, angry red light. Without words, Amanda-Anne spoke to the red light and carefully explained to it exactly what she wanted. Then she waited.

  The bead grew brighter, and the bathroom was suffused with the ugly, bloody red glow. Then heavy smoke poured out of the bead and hung over the bathtub. It swirled around the child, threatening, menacing.

  Amanda-Anne's eyes grew lighter, her pupils constricted to pencil-points of darkness in the centers of the white-green, and as if it had suddenly seen something to fear, the red cloud recoiled. With a kind of reluctance, it crawled in a thin line up the wall and out of the bathroom through a slight gap in the window high overhead.

  Amanda-Anne held her breath as the last traces vanished from the bathroom. She listened, every muscle tense and straining to catch the slightest sound in the still night air.

  Then, from the direction of her barn, there came a very satisfying crash, followed by thunderous clattering and the scream of a full-sized hurricane compressed into a tiny box. The noise and the destruction raged for as long as Amanda-Anne could maintain her concentration.

  When she reached the point of exhaustion, she released the storm she had summoned, sending it back to wherever it had come from. Then, a diamond-hard smile on her tiny face, Amanda-Anne settled back into the bath-water and relinquished her place to Amanda-Abbey, who actually liked stupid, childish bubble-baths.

  * * *

  Mac left the track late and with too much on his mind. There was Felouen, with her strange and completely unexpected intimation of unrequited love, and the Oracular Pool, with its images of terror and disaster. There was the sensation of intangible evil at the border of the Unformed World, and the turbulence of the shield. There were his problems with the Seleighe High Court, and with that low and vile woman who had tried to poison him. There was beautiful, ephemeral Lianne, whom he suspected was falling in love with him. And last, but certainly not least, there was the child, Amanda, who had followed him into Underhill without flinching, and who had then promptly returned to her own world on her own power and of her own accord—in spite of the fact that there was no way she should have been able to do that. Maclyn was tense, and unsettled, and somewhat scattered.

  And so, for the first time, he failed to notice a sleek brown Ford Thunderbird that maintained its position four cars behind him all the way from the street beside the racetrack parking lot to Lianne's apartment.

  Lianne answered the door with an unnervingly perceptive expression in her eyes. "Hi," she said, gave him a brusque kiss, and immediately asked, "Where's the movie?"

  "The movie?"

  "The movie. C'mon, Mac—just this morning you said, and I quote, `I'll pick up the movie tonight. I think I'll get The Man With One Red Shoe, since we didn't watch it last night.' After breakfast, and before we headed out the door. Remember?"

  "Of course I remember," said Maclyn, who remembered no such thing.

  "So where's the movie? You forgot it, didn't you?"

  "I just forgot to bring it in with me. It's in the car. I didn't forget to rent it."

  Like hell, I didn't forget, he thought while he trudged back to Rhellen. What in Oberon's name was I thinking this morning?—I burned breakfast, I fixed something else, we rolled around on the bed awhile, we took a shower, we ran out the door—I still don't remember anything about a movie. At least, he mused, I promised one I've already seen. Be a bitch to pull it out of thin air if I hadn't.

  He opened Rhellen's door, concentrating hard, and a VCR cassette in a clear plastic cover appeared on the seat. He picked it up and returned to the apartment.
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  Lianne's expression as he handed her the tape was decidedly weird. He started to ask her what was wrong, then thought better of it.

  She walked over to the VCR without a word, and pushed the eject button. A movie popped out. She opened the plastic case of the tape he'd provided for her, and turned her back to him.

  She stood silently for a long moment, while Mac grew more and more tense. "Jesus, that's a neat trick," she said finally, and turned around. "Who are you—really?"

  Maclyn hedged. "Why do you ask?"

  She smiled. "You were very close with this. Your label is almost perfect, except you're missing the copyright date, and there's only a gray box where the small print would be—if I hadn't had an original here to compare, I bet I never would have noticed the difference."

  He nodded, maintaining a calm exterior while his brain raced wildly. In her hands she held two copies of The Man With One Red Shoe. One of them had been obtained from a video rental store. The other—well, it hadn't. He felt the tempo of his pulse increase. "Maybe the copy I picked up was pirated."

  "Oh, I'm sure of it," she said with a wry smile. "Out of thin-fucking-air. We never said anything about movies this morning, Mac. I only said that to see what you would do—because there is something very odd about things that have happened in my life since you showed up. It strikes me as uncanny, for example, that neither of us said a word about you picking up this movie, and yet, when I asked you about it, you happened to have it in your car. Wherever this came from, Mac Lynn, it wasn't a rental place."

  He stalled for time, trying to think, but unable to make his mind work. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen—it wasn't supposed to happen at all, actually. "I see. So I was correct in thinking I hadn't said anything about movies in our rush this morning? How interesting. You see, I have an imperfect memory for minutiae. It usually isn't a problem."

  Her arms were crossed in front of her chest. "Perhaps more of a problem than you realize. There is, of course, the silver tray—real silver, of incredible quality, with no maker's mark. I don't buy it. There are the out-of-season cherries. And of course we can't forget your willingness to believe that papers were indeed flying around my classroom of their own accord." She took a step toward him. "You are very interesting, Mac Lynn. You are charming, you are handsome, and you are great in bed. But you are not what you seem to be. Now I want an answer on this, and I want it right now. Who—or what—are you?"

  * * *

  Finally, she was getting somewhere.

  From her position behind the shrubs outside of the apartment window, Belinda stared through the slatted mini-blinds at Mac Lynn and his girlfriend. She recognized the girl—had seen her before, in connection with Mac Lynn. She frowned, determined to remember where she had seen that face, and suddenly she recalled the girl striding across a parking lot—

  Bingo! She's one of the teachers at Loyd E. Auman. I followed him there that one time—and that explains why he was over there in the first place. That's where his piece of ass works.

  Belinda's face lit up with a beatific smile. His girlfriend could give him to her. Just grab her and stash her someplace, then tell him his girlfriend was dead unless he did exactly what she said, and have him follow instructions that would deliver him voluntarily to Mel's doorstep.

  Voila, she thought, a nice paycheck for me and a well-earned vacation that doesn't involve chasing spookies—preferably someplace far away, with mountains and ocean and deferential waiters.

  Cozumel, she decided, or maybe Greece.

  They appeared to be arguing. That was good from Belinda's point of view. He might stomp out, leaving her alone tonight. In which case, I'll just knock on the door and grab her when she answers it, thinking he's come back to apologize. If he stays the night, of course, I'll just pick up Little Miss Teacher sometime tomorrow—or after school Monday.

  That seemed like a good, sound, workable plan, and much less complicated than trying to drug him again. It also meant she didn't need to sit in the damp shrubbery catching a cold. Belinda stood up and headed back to her new rental car. Stake-outs were much more pleasant when accompanied by Perrier, Bach, and croissants.

  She moved into the area of darker shadow that lay between the teacher's apartment and the parking lot, and noticed two disturbing things as she did. The first was that Mac's car wasn't in the parking lot anymore.

  The second was that what had seemed, out of the corner of her eye, to be laundry hanging out between the apartments, wasn't. It was a big, light-colored horse.

  And no sooner had she identified the horse for what it was than it had her jacket between its teeth, and she was flailing through the air to land on the beast's back. She reached for her gun, the creature bucked, she grabbed the beast's mane to keep from hitting the ground—

  And things got a little hazy from there.

  Belinda decided pretty promptly that she must have fallen off the horse anyway and knocked herself silly and wandered around a bit. It was the only explanation that made any sense. Otherwise, she would have had to admit that the horse had turned into a car that drove itself, and that it had driven her onto the street in front of the old abandoned Fox Drive-In, and dumped her by the side of the road before cruising off into the night. It would have implied that the car had chosen to abandon her where hookers plied their trade and G.I.'s and out-of-town businessmen and restless locals went looking for action.

  It would have implied that the fight Belinda got into with the pimp and the big buxom blonde and the transvestite and the two horny guys in the red Camaro was the fault of a goddamned '57 Chevy.

  And no matter how spooky things got, Belinda wasn't ready to admit that.

  * * *

  Mac faced Lianne, and swallowed hard. Humans weren't anywhere near as gullible as they'd once been—at least some of them weren't, he decided. The room felt uncomfortably warm.

  "I'm a racecar driver," he said with an ingenuous smile.

  Lianne nodded, her expression grave. "A racecar driver is the least of what you are, Mac Lynn. I've always made it a point to date within my species before this, but I think I've not even managed to live up to that one simple rule this time. Have I?"

  Maclyn stood, studying her, thinking fast.

  Lianne saw the evasion coming and headed it off. "Mac, I'm to the point where I won't believe anything but the truth. And please give me credit for being able to tell the truth from a lie—remember, I deal with ten-year-olds on a daily basis." She smiled wryly. "Besides, I doubt that the truth is going to be anywhere near as ludicrous as what I've suspected."

  "Wanna bet?" Mac muttered.

  Lianne heard him. "No," she said. "But lay out your cards anyway and let me take a look."

  "Okay." He took a deep breath and studied her. "You've heard of Faerie, of course."

  "One of my best friends is one."

  "Not that kind of fairy."

  "I was being facetious. I've heard of Faerie. Up to this point I've found its purported existence likely to be the product of hallucination and overdoses of wheat-smut, but I'm a logical soul. Presented with sufficient proof, I'll believe just about anything. I suppose you're going to tell me you're the elf-king of Fairyland or something."

  Mac's right eyebrow arched up. "I'm an elf. Not `or something.' And I'm fairly high up in the line of succession, but I'm not the king, or even the prince."

  Lianne sighed and said to whatever higher powers inhabited the ceiling, "I'm taking this rather well, aren't I?" She studied Mac for a long, silent moment, then said, "Granted I've already seen enough to convince me that you aren't normal—but would it be too much to ask for some proof that you are what you say you are? Seeing that we've been sleeping together and all?"

  Maclyn gave her a very Gallic shrug—and his human seeming faded away. He presented himself to her in his full elvish glory, from the gold circlet on his head to the sweeping white folds of his ermine cloak, to the rich white-on-white textures of his silk-embroidered tunic and velvet leg
gings. He showed her himself, pointed ears, pale green slit-pupilled eyes, and inhuman smile.

  "My lady," he said, inclining his head with courtly grace. "Is this sufficient proof?"

  Lianne sat down sharply on the coffee table. Her eyes went round and she whistled softly. "I'll be damned," she whispered. "An elf. A damned sexy one."

  She cocked her head to one side and studied him closely. "A question, then."

  "I'll answer it if I can."

  "What are you doing hanging around me?"

  And isn't that just the question? Maclyn thought. I wish to hell I knew the answer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Andrew Kendrick heard the first sounds from the barn just as he was locking up the house for the night. He ran to the window and stared out at the hellish red glow in the dark that held the stable area. It was clearly coming from the pony barn. At first his mind couldn't recognize the disaster for what it was—but then he shook himself out of his paralysis and reacted.

  "Fire!" he shouted to Merryl. "There's a fire down in the pony barn! Call the fire department, now!"

  He pulled on boots and sprinted out the back door. If anything, it looked and sounded worse now that he was outside. He could barely hear the terrified whinnies of the pony above the roar that came from within the shed.

  He goaded himself into a run, heading down to the barn, wondering if he would be able to get into the secret storeroom and thinking of the money that was going up in smoke in there. Thinking of all the—special things—that were going to be destroyed, and that were going to be even more difficult to procure the second time than they had been when he'd first obtained them.

  Merryl passed him on the path, flew to the right and to her own barn, full of pedigreed mares and foals, her prize stud, her champion filly—the objects of her real passion and her love. Andrew heard her throwing open her barn doors, chasing the horses out into the pasture and away from the impending disaster. He clenched his fingers into tight fists, outraged at her care for the animals and her indifference toward him.

  He watched her working frantically, momentarily distracted from his goal. She has a lot of nerve, ignoring me. Amanda's mother learned what happens to people who ignore me. I've been too easy on Merryl. He fumed with smoldering rage as he raced towards the pony barn, wondering if he could save anything without Merryl seeing it. He wasn't really thinking about the barn, nor about the fire—not, at least, until was he nearly at the structure.