When You Believe

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  When You Believe

  JESSICA INCLAN

  PROLOGUE

  She beckoned him forward, and he followed her command, feeling it like a slick silk rope around his neck, a comfortable, accustomed noose that he had worn for two years. Her call was warm, dark like brandy, sweet and addictive. He could never disobey her; he knew that in his blood and bones and mind,.

  As if in a dream, he was putting together his belongings, things he needed. He needed them all, didn’t he? He wouldn’t come back here, to this house he’d built on the hill overlooking the ocean. With her, he would change the world and make it better, cleaner, more whole, more purposeful.

  That’s right, she thought, her robe spinning around her as she put it on, her hair a dark drape behind her shoulders. Her eyes glinted like wet obsidian, her lips like blood.

  Hurry, he’s waiting for us, she thought.

  He nodded, the silk cord yanking him back to his task.

  Use magic to pack, she thought. Quain is waiting.

  The noose yanked tighter, but he flinched, hearing that name. Quain. The thought of the man scratched against his mind. Not Quain. No.

  Yes, she thought. Let’s not go through this again, shall we?

  The noose tightened, his breath harsh in his throat.

  What he wanted to do now was to stop packing, to pull the woman to him and kiss her into quiet. All he wanted was to be with her, here, in this house, without the name of the other man, without Quain, in either of their thoughts.

  He’s the only one who matters, you fool. I thought you understood that by now. I thought I didn’t have anything left to teach you.

  She pulled back with her hand, and he jerked and then began to fall forward. Before he hit the ground, she stopped him up short, and then wound the cord around him, pressing tightly, pushing his breath and life out of him as she worked up his body.

  As the feeling left his feet and legs and then torso, he woke up, saw the living room clearly. His house. His room. And her. She was doing this, all of it. He didn’t want any part of her plan or her life.

  Rufus! he called out, barely getting the loud cry out of his mind before she yanked hard, and he passed out, nothing in his body but the empty spin of dead thoughts.

  Chapter One

  The men had been after her for a good three blocks. At first, it seemed almost funny, the old catcalls and whistles—something Miranda Stead was used to. They must be boys, she’d thought, teenagers with nothing better to do on an Indian summer San Francisco night.

  But as she clacked down the sidewalk, tilting in the black, strappy high heels she’d decided to wear at the last minute, she realized these guys weren’t just ordinary catcallers. Men had been looking at her since she miraculously morphed from knobby knees and no breasts to decent looking at seventeen, and she knew how to turn, give whomever the finger, and walk on, her head held high. These guys, though, were persistent, matching and then slowly beginning to overtake her strides. She glanced back at them quickly; three large men coming closer, their shoulders rounded, hulking, and headed toward her.

  In the time it had taken her to walk from Geary Street to Post, Miranda had gotten scared.

  As she walked, her arms moving quickly at her sides, Miranda wondered where the hell everyone else was. When she’d left the bar and said good night to the group she’d been with, there’d been people strolling on the sidewalks, cars driving by, lights on in windows, music from clubs, flashing billboards, the clatter and clink of plates and glasses from nearby restaurants.

  Now Post Street was deserted, as if someone had vacuumed up all the noise and people, except, of course, for the three awful men behind her.

  “Hey, baby,” one of them said, half a block away. “What’s your hurry?”

  “Little sweet thing,” called another, “don’t you like us? We won’t bite unless you ask us to.”

  Clutching her purse, Miranda looked down each cross street she passed for the parking lot she’d raced into before the poetry reading. She’d been late, as usual. Roy Hempel, the owner of Mercurial Books, sighed with relief when she pushed open the door and almost ran to the podium. And after the poetry reading and book signing, Miranda had an apple martini with Roy, his wife, Clara, and Miranda’s editor, Dan Negriete, at Zaps. Now she was lost, even though she’d lived in the city her entire life. She wished she’d listened to Dan when he asked if he could drive her to her car, but she’d been annoyed by his question, as usual.

  “I’ll be fine,” she’d said, rolling her eyes as she turned away from him.

  But clearly she wasn’t fine. Not at all.

  “Hey, baby,” one of the men said, less than twenty feet behind her. “Can’t find your car?”

  “Lost, honey?” another one said. This man seemed closer, his voice just over her shoulder. She could almost smell him: car grease, sweat, days of tobacco.

  She moved faster, knowing now was not the time to give anyone the finger. At the next intersection, Sutter and Van Ness, she looked for the parking lot, but everything seemed changed, off, as if she’d appeared in a movie-set replica of San Francisco made by someone who had studied the city but had never really been there. The lot should be there, right there, on the right-hand side of the street. A little shack in front of it, and an older Chinese man reading a newspaper inside. Where was the shack? Where was the Chinese man? Instead, there was a gas station on the corner, one she’d seen before but on Mission Street, blocks and blocks away. But no one was working at the station or pumping gas or buying lotto tickets.

  What was going on? Where was her car? Where was the lot? Everything was gone. That’s all she knew, so she ran faster, her lungs aching.

  The men were right behind her now, and she raced across the street, swinging around the light post as she turned and ran up Fern Street. A bar she knew that had a poetry open mic every Friday night was just at the end of this block, or at least it used to be there, and it wasn’t near closing time. Miranda hoped she could pound through the doors, lean against the wall, the sound of poetry saving her, as it always had. She knew she could make it, even as she heard the thud of heavy shoes just behind her.

  “Don’t go so fast,” one of the men said, his voice full of exertion. “I want this to last a long time.”

  In a second, she knew they’d have her, pulling her into a basement stairwell, doing the dark things that usually happened during commercial breaks on television. She’d end up like a poor character in one of the many Law & Order shows, nothing left but clues.

  She wasn’t going to make it to the end of the block. Her shoes were slipping off her heels, and even all the adrenaline in her body couldn’t make up for her lack of speed. Just ahead, six feet or so, there was a door—or what looked like a door— with a slim sliver of reddish light coming from underneath it. Maybe it was a bar or a restaurant. An illegal card room. A brothel. A crack house. It didn’t matter now, though. Miranda ran as fast as she could, and as she passed the door, she stuck out her hand and slammed her body against the plaster and wood, falling through and then onto her side on a hallway floor. The men who were chasing her seemed to not even notice she had gone, their feet clomping by until the door slammed shut and everything went silent.

  Breathing heavily on the floor, Miranda knew there were people around her. She could hear their surprised cries at her entrance and see chairs as well as legs and shoes, though everything seemed shadowy in the dim light—either that, or everyone was wearing black. Maybe she’d somehow stumbled into Manhattan.

  But she was too exhausted and too embarrassed to look up right away. So for a second, she closed her eyes and listened to her body, feeling her fear and fatigue and pain, waiting to catch her breath. How was she going to e
xplain this? she wondered, knowing that she had to say something. But what? Here she was on the floor like a klutz, her ribs aching, and her story of disappeared pedestrians and cars, missing parking lots, and transported gas stations along with three crazed hooligans seemed—even to her—made up. She knew she should call the police, though; the men would probably go after someone else now that she wasn’t fair game. They were having too much fun to give up after only one failed attempt. She had to do something. Miranda owed the next woman that much.

  Swallowing hard, she pushed herself up from the gritty wooden floor, but yelped as she tried to put weight on her ankle. She clutched at the legs of a wooden chair, breathing into the sharp pain that radiated up her, leg.

  “How did you get here?” a voice asked.

  Miranda looked up and almost yelped again, but this time it wasn’t because of her ankle but from the face looking down at her. Pushing her hair back, she leaned against what seemed to be a bar. The man bending over her moved closer, letting his black hood fall back to his thin shoulders. His eyes were dark, his face covered in a gray beard, and she could smell some kind of alcohol on him. A swirl of almost purple smoke hovered over his head and then twirled into the thick haze that hung in the room.

  She relaxed and breathed in deeply. Thank God. It was a bar. And here was one of its drunken, pot-smoking patrons in costume. An early Halloween party or surprise birthday party in getup. That’s all. She’d been in worse situations. Being on the floor with a broken ankle was a new twist, but she could handle herself.

  “I just dropped in,” she said. “Can’t you tell?”

  Maybe expecting some laughs, she looked around, but the room was silent, all the costumed people staring at her. Or at least they seemed to be staring at her, their hoods pointed her way. Miranda could almost make out their faces—men and women, both—but if this was a party, no one was having a very good time, all of them watching her grimly.

  Between the people’s billowing robes, she saw one man sitting at a table lit by a single candle, staring at her, his hood pulled back from his face. He was dark, tanned, and sipped something from a silver stein. Noticing her gaze, he looked up and smiled, his eyes, even in the gloom of the room, gold. For a second, Miranda thought she recognized him, almost imagining she’d remember his voice if he stood up, pushed away from the table, and shouted for everyone to back away. Had she met him before somewhere? But where? She didn’t tend to meet robe wearers, even at the weirdest of poetry readings.

  Just as he seemed to hear her thoughts, nodding at her, the crowd pushed in, murmuring, and as he’d appeared, he vanished in the swirl of robes.

  “Who are you?” the man hovering over her asked, his voice low, deep, accusatory.

  “My name’s Miranda Stead.”

  “What are you?” the man asked, his voice louder, the suspicion even stronger.

  Miranda blinked. What should she say? A woman? A human? Someone normal? Someone with some fashion sense? “A poet?” she said finally.

  Someone laughed but was cut off; a flurry of whispers flew around the group and they pressed even closer.

  “I’ll ask you one more time,” the man said, his breath now on her face. “How did you get here?”

  “Look,” Miranda said, pushing her hair off her face angrily. “Back off, will you? I’ve got a broken ankle here. And to be honest with you, I wouldn’t have fallen in with you unless three degenerates hadn’t been chasing me up the street. It was either here or the morgue, and I picked here, okay? So do you mind?”

  She pushed up on the bar and grabbed onto a stool, slowly getting to standing position. “I’ll just hobble on out of here, okay? Probably the guys wanting to kill me are long gone. Thanks so much for all your help.”

  No one said a word, and she took another deep breath, glad that it was so dark in the room. If there’d been any light, they would have seen her pulse beating in her temples, her face full of heat, her knees shaking. Turning slightly, she limped through a couple of steps, holding out her hand for the door. It should be right here, she thought, pressing on what seemed to be a wall. Okay, here. Here!

  As she patted the wall, the terror she’d felt out on the street returned, but at least then, she’d been able to run. Now she was trapped, her ankle was broken, and she could feel the man with his deep distrust just at her shoulder.

  Whirling around suddenly, Miranda sucked in air and then spat out, “Okay, cute joke. Can I go, please? Just show me where you put the door, and I’ll just be on my merry way. No questions asked. I’ve never seen any of you or this place. What bar?” What group of scary, insane, weird people on hallucinogenics? she wanted to add. Loser cult? Strung-out Dungeons and Dragons lunatics?

  Barely breathing, she stared at the man’s angry face. As she would have done with an attacking dog or a child having a temper tantrum, she stood completely still and tried to show no fear.

  The group stopped moving and was silent. Now that Miranda was standing, she could see the unhooded man in the corner, sipping his drink in the candlelight. He was still watching her, and she noticed his long dark hair tied at his neck, pulled away from his handsome face. Why more of this bunch couldn’t be as friendly and good looking as he was, she couldn’t figure.

  “You want us to believe you just popped through the wall?” a woman’s voice asked.

  “Christ, no. I don’t want you to believe I popped through the wall,” Miranda said. “I pushed through the door, though. You know. A thing with hinges? A knob? Made of wood? It opened, I fell in.”

  There was some mumbling in the crowd, and then someone else said, “Oh, goodness, she’s just Moyenne. Just ordinary.”

  “Right, Philomel. Moyenne. In here? Like that?” another voice said. “Through the vortex? Doesn’t happen. Never happens.”

  “Don’t believe it!” the man said, his voice full of anger now as well. “I’ve told you we have to be vigilant. This is exactly what Quain Dalzeil and his followers tried last week. Think of what they were almost able to do. We’ve got to do something to send them a message.”

  “Why don’t we write it on her and send her back,” said another male voice, this one, low, quiet, and full of hiss. “I’m just the person to do it.”

  Behind her back, Miranda tried to find a doorknob or handle. Her ankle throbbed, and she felt sweat trickle along her brow and dip under her jaw. She should have taken what the three guys outside would have given her. Maybe she would have lived through it. These people wanted to carve her up, and she couldn’t find the doorknob, a handle, anything to get her out. Out.

  “I’ll take care of her,” the man said, full of purpose now, his suspicions and the crowd’s agreement giving him the answer he seemed to need. “Give me room.”

  “Stop it!” Miranda shouted, finding the voice that she’d learned how to use in the “Defense for Women” classes she’d taken years ago. “Leave me alone!”

  The group was silent again until someone laughed, giggled, hiccupped, and then was quiet.

  “Right,” a voice whispered to her left. “Leave you alone.”

  The man took her arm, and she yelled, “Stop it!” again with all the voice she could find.

  “She’s Moyenne,” the person named Philomel said again. “She’s scared. Just let her go, Brennus. Even if she is a spy, she’s not a very good one, thumping on the floor like that. Gave herself right away, for goodness’ sake.”

  Miranda looked for Philomel, but the man was yanking on her, the group crowding in. Someone had her elbow, another her wrist, and she was being tugged and pulled toward the center of the room.

  “Let her go,” a new voice said, a smooth, strong man’s voice.

  Miranda thought she was imagining it, but everything really seemed to stop. Hands still grasped her tightly, but no one was moving anymore, as if they were scared of the man who was speaking. Even the haze that hovered over the room seemed to have cleared, and she could see who had spoken. It was the long-haired man from the corner of
the room.

  “Get out of the way, Sariel,” said the dark man, still holding Miranda’s upper arm tightly. “You’ve told us all that you don’t want to be involved in anything related to Quain. It’s none of your affair.”

  “But this is not your affair either, Brennus,” Sariel said. “This woman is not who you imagine. She’s no spy.”

  Brennus, the dark man, squeezed her arm harder, but Miranda felt others let go of her elbow, collar, waist.

  “How would you know?” Brennus said, his voice angry. “You’ve chosen to ignore the signs. You don’t want to even think about what Quain is trying to do to our world. You certainly haven’t shown any interest in dealing with what you allowed to happen before. Things that were seemingly in your control.”

  Brennus leaned closer to Sariel, a conversation seeming to flow between them. Sariel frowned and crossed his arms.

  “For instance, how would you even see a sign if it” Brennus lifted up Miranda’s arm and pushed her forward— “fell into our meeting?”

  “This woman is not a messenger from Quain or even a poor Moyenne trapped by his magic.” Sariel stared at Brennus, almost smiling, his gold eyes full of irritation. Miranda knew that if he looked at her like that during a fight, she’d want to kick his butt. But then, as he was trying to save her, she decided to try to like him. That, actually, wouldn’t be too hard. He must be the bar stud, with his slow, smooth voice. Just look at the way he stood, straight and tall, his shoulders back. And then there was his black hair, a loose strand along his cheek, so sexy in his… his dark red robe? Who are these people? she thought, pulling at her arm, hoping this Brennus would take the hint and let her go.

  “You said yourself that Quain has bigger plans,” Sariel said. “How does it involve a fast-talking Moyenne tripping into a meeting? Don’t you think he’d try another tack this time?”

  “A spy,” Brennus said, turning sarcastic. “Think beyond your ability, Sariel.”

  Miranda pulled, moving her good foot slightly, knowing that what happened tonight would be one hell of a poem. Or maybe a short story. Both. Dan wanted her to break into fiction; he’d said so earlier after the reading.