Wishing I had someplace to wash up, I dug the mirror out of my pocket with blood-sticky fingers and opened it.
“Devil in a black dress,” I said.
My brother was quick to answer his mirror; it looked like he was in Mother Karen’s sunroom, which I took as a good sign that Cooper and the Warlock had been able to calm Blue down. Randall’s bright hey-how-ya-doin’ smile dropped right off his face when he saw the gore all over me.
“Whoa, sis, are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine … this is all Miko.”
“Hoo-ah!” He fist-pumped and jumped in the air. “You kicked her ass! I knew you would!”
I winced. “Uh, not exactly … look, I’ve got a problem.” I turned the mirror so he could see Pal. “She hit my familiar, and I think he’s in a coma. My white magic is almost completely nerfed right now, and I have no way to get us back to the town. Got any ideas?”
“Whoa. Damn, he doesn’t look so good,” Randall said. “I’d totally come back and help, but that might take awhile. Your dudes are still talking with that Riviera lady about Blue. The sitch is a lot better now, by the way. I think they just have to convince her to let the kid go with those old folks and not take him to juvie, but … look, just call Dad. I bet he can do something for your spider thing through the mirror.”
“What? He can do magic through mirrors?”
“Well, yeah, his for sure,” my brother replied. “I mean, if you could make mirrors, why would you bother making one you couldn’t use to cast your own spells?”
Logic. I was soaking in it. “Okay. Thanks, I’ll give him a try.”
“Later, sis!”
I closed the mirror and took a moment to work up some courage. Or work down my pride. My father had been against me trying to battle Miko for the townsfolk’s souls in the first place, and I wasn’t sure how much “I told you so” I could take without getting snippy and starting another argument with him.
Miko’s drying blood was itchy and tight on my skin. Dammit, why couldn’t she have picked a place with a shower, or even just a working garden hose? I pulled the mirror open again.
“I wish to speak to Magus Ian Shimmer.”
The mirror darkened, then cleared to reveal an empty ladder-backed wooden chair that made me think of the professor’s seat from some old British university. Behind it was an arcane mage’s workshop inside an old-fashioned domed observatory. The big optical telescope was pointed up at the starry night sky through the aperture in the ceiling. I could also see several antique brass solar system models, alchemical tubes, and distillation flasks for potions on a long table, and wall-high chalkboards with a mixture of spell glyphs and complicated mathematical equations written on them in neat, precise handwriting.
“Jessie, is that you?” My father’s pleasant baritone came from somewhere beyond the mirror’s view.
“Yes, it’s me. I … I’m sorry, but I need your help.” Again, I added silently to myself.
I heard the sound of his flip-flops slapping across the wooden floor, and then he came into view. He was wearing his usual antifashion ensemble: bright orange Thai fisherman’s pants, a T-shirt from some Bavarian brewery, and the long madras patchwork jacket that I figured was his equivalent of a laboratory coat.
“Oh my, are you all right?” he asked.
His accent always startled me a little. It was faintly European, maybe German; I couldn’t quite place it. But somehow I always expected him to sound like an American.
“I’m fine,” I quickly replied. “The blood and stuff is all from Miko.”
He frowned at a spot on my dragonskin jacket and leaned closer to his mirror. I looked down: I had a thumbnail-size piece of her skull stuck to my top button frog. I flicked it off into the brush.
“Did you kill her?” His expression was unreadable.
“No.” I laughed bitterly. “Not because I didn’t try. But she’s … perfect. She’s having a great ol’ time wherever she is.”
“She has gone?”
I nodded. “I’m guessing she opened a portal to wherever and is a long way from here by now.”
“But the isolation barrier is still there?”
I paused. Yep, I could still feel it buzzing just a few dozen yards away, making me wish I were someplace else. As if the blood stink and the heat and general sense of failure weren’t enough. “Yes, it’s still up. That part’s no different.”
His frown deepened. “That is not good. The Virtus Regnum must believe that something in there may still destroy you.”
I didn’t have to think too hard about that one: Sara was not going to be happy with me once she found out I hadn’t brought Bob home. “Yeah, there’s someone here who could be a problem. I can deal with her, I think.”
I hope, I thought to myself.
“But look,” I continued, “that’s not why I called. Miko hit my familiar on the head, and he’s been out for a couple of hours. I can’t work much healing magic right now, and I can’t wake him up.”
“Let me see,” he said.
I turned the mirror back toward Pal.
“Looks like a closed skull injury,” I heard my father say. “It is serious, but I can fix it. Raise the mirror just a little, and hold it steady, please … perfect. Hold, now.”
I heard him begin to recite a spell in a language that was definitely not German; I couldn’t place the rolling Rs and plosives that I heard. A moment later, the metal grew strangely hot in my hands, and a bright light burst from the mirror, sending a small green shock wave of magic over Pal’s skull and body.
Pal’s eyes snapped open and he lurched to his feet, growling, staring around him in confusion and alarm.
I dropped the mirror and held up my hands, trying to calm him. “It’s okay. We’re in the desert. Miko’s gone. We’re fine.”
“Miko?” he asked, his telepathy fuzzy and uncertain. “She’s gone?”
“Yes, she’s gone. We’re safe from her. How do you feel?”
“I feel … rather like someone bashed me in the head with a bloody great piece of wood,” he replied, sounding much stronger. The huge knot on his forehead was gone, and the scratches on his legs had healed considerably.
I picked up the mirror and faced my father. “He seems a lot better, thanks. Um … I don’t suppose you can do anything about my fever?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No better than has already been done by the potion your brother gave you. Your infection is far more difficult to heal than a fractured skull; there is a spell to cure you, but it can’t be done long distance. Once you’re here, we can get you healthy again.”
“Okay.” I thanked him again and closed the mirror. That was something to look forward to, at least.
“May I have some water?” Pal asked.
“Sure thing.” I jogged back across the dry creek bed and found the bush where I’d stashed my water-laden backpack and cowboy hat. I put my hat back on and brought the pack over to Pal. He drank down two bottles of tepid Aquafina in quick succession.
“Better?” I asked.
“Much, thank you,” he replied.
“Think you can get us back to the hotel?” I wasn’t particularly anxious to see Sara again, but I figured the conversation might be less likely to end with one of us dying if I went to her rather than waiting for her to hunt me down. Also, the odds would probably be a whole lot better if Callie and Poppy were nearby.
And, if things went well, I’d be able to get a nice hot shower in my room at the Saguaro. Sometimes it’s the little things that keep you going after a lousy day.
“What, you mean leave this fly-ridden gulag behind?” Pal asked, his voice rich with sarcasm. “Absolutely!”
chapter
eighteen
Facing Sara
There were at least fifty people milling outside the Saguaro Hotel. When Pal dropped low, I saw Charlie and Rudy and his daughter, Sofia, waving at me from the middle of the throng, so I waved back.
“Hey, guys!”
I called to them.
“Is Miko gone?” Charlie called back.
“Yep, she sure is!” I replied.
Much cheering and clapping and fist pumping went up in the crowd. Then I saw a young boy in a Batman T-shirt waving at me, too. He was holding the hand of a tall, broad-shouldered, big-breasted woman just a few years older than me. She looked like she ought to be a blocker in a Roller Derby someplace. Still, the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The boy started pointing at me, hopping up and down with excitement, and I realized he was the kid I’d brought back. Like the other souls, he looked just a little bit different here in the real world, taller and thinner. He’d stayed the same in Miko’s hell, but his body had kept on growing.
“It’s her, it’s her, see?” he told his mother.
Pal landed in the street a few yards away from the crowd—he stumbled a little on touchdown but I didn’t think much of it—and I slid off him onto the blacktop and shrugged out of my backpack. I’d just set it and my shotgun down when the Amazonian woman came running over. Despite my stinky, blood-crusted clothes she grabbed me in a fierce hug that woofed the air right out of my lungs.
“You brung my Zachary back, thank you thank you thank you!” She gave me another wind-crushing squeeze.
“You’re welcome,” I squeaked, giving her a pat on the back that felt more like a tap-out.
“Mommy, you’re squishing her,” the boy observed.
“Oh. Sorry.” She let me go, wiping tears from her eyes. “I just got so excited … I don’t know how to thank you for this, y’know?”
“It’s okay,” I replied.
And then I saw the crowd parting to let Sara and about ten of her devil kitties through. My heart sank.
“Pick up Zachary and get out of here, fast as you can without scaring anyone,” I whispered to the woman. “Sara’s coming, and there’s gonna be trouble.”
The woman’s eyes went round. She nodded, tight-lipped, boosted Zachary to her hip, and hurried away. I felt a mix of regret and relief as I watched her leave. The boy had already been through so much; he didn’t need to witness any more violence.
“Jessie Shimmer!” Sara was striding toward me, her face anxious and pale. “Where is my husband?”
I crossed my hands in front of me so I could pull my glove off quickly if I had to. I’d gotten a lot of energy from the Goad in Miko’s hell, and I was pretty sure I could blast Sara into a fine gray mist if I had to. But I really, really didn’t want to. I’d more than had my fill of fighting and gore and mayhem for the day. I wished we could all just go someplace and drink some beer and mourn the departed, but my heart told me that wasn’t going to happen.
“I … couldn’t get him,” I told Sara. “I’m sorry.”
Her face contorted in sudden rage.
“That’s a lie!” she shrieked. “The kitties say you could have gotten him, but you didn’t! How could you just leave him there?”
The cats milling around her feet were starting to hiss and fluff up, tiny Jacob’s ladder sparks arcing between the hairs in their fur. The same sparks were starting to arc between Sara’s trembling fingers. I could feel the electricity building in the air, like a cloud ready to unleash a bolt of lightning or an overloaded power station transformer ready to blow and take out half a city block.
One look down into the cats’ yellow and green eyes and I knew that they were actually enjoying all this, relishing the thought of all the psychic energy they’d be able to absorb once Sara went batshit on me. On everyone. The madness in her eyes worried me, not for what I thought she could do to me but for what she might do to Pal and Charlie and Rudy and the other bystanders.
What could I do? Time seemed to simultaneously speed up and slow down as I wracked my brain for a plan that didn’t involve murdering Sara in front of everybody. Or getting murdered myself.
The cats were the key to Sara’s madness. And I knew that some devils were bound to a kind of honesty. They’d merrily violate the spirit of truth, dancing people away from it with insinuations and omissions. But they could tell no outright lies. If they were asked a straightforward question they had to answer it honestly.
But were the cats that kind of devil? They surely knew that the truth of Sara and Bob was depressing and painful … it hurt to know that love failed, to know that I failed. Saying out loud why Bob wasn’t back felt like trying to spit up a broken wishbone I’d swallowed. And it would be a thousand times worse to have to hear it. But as much as it made me feel sick, if I told her the truth, maybe they couldn’t keep winding her up on the grounds that I was a liar.
Maybe. Or maybe the truth would just launch Sara into a new orbit of insanity. Well, I might be damned if I was honest, but I knew she’d try to fry me if I wasn’t.
“I didn’t just leave him there,” I shouted back, looking her straight in the eye. “I asked him to come back with me, begged him to come back, and he wouldn’t. He chose to stay there. He wouldn’t come back.”
“You’re a filthy, lying bitch!”
“Ask your cats if I’m telling the truth! Ask ’em!”
A shadow of doubt crossed her face, and she looked down. Her expression froze for two heartbeats. Then the cats scattered away from her as she fell to her hands and knees, bawling and screaming as if her world had come to an end. Her plastic cowboy hat slipped off her head and rattled on the blacktop. She was sobbing so hard, turning so red I wondered if she was going to give herself a stroke.
I shifted my feet uncomfortably, not knowing what to do. The crowd was just staring at us, everyone silent and keeping their distance. Charlie’s face had gone white with fear. It seemed like I ought to say something to try to comfort Sara.
“Miko’s gone for good, and Bob’s—” I began.
“G-get out of here,” she said, hiccupping, staring up at me with teary, baleful eyes.
The air pressure abruptly dropped, and my ears popped painfully. A sudden swirling wind raised a dozen small dust devils in the streets as the sky abruptly darkened. The people in the crowd started murmuring, stepping back, looking alarmed, but Sara didn’t seem to notice.
“I’ll c-count to ten,” she stammered through her tears. “After that … if I see you ever again, I’ll kill you!”
At first I thought the ominous change to the air and sky was Sara’s doing, but then I saw a series of slate-gray spirals like budding miniature tornados forming in the clouds, spaced as evenly as the bumps on the bottom of an egg carton. My stomach clenched: the Regnum had removed the isolation barrier around the city, and they were opening portals to send in their dragon-mounted troops.
This clearly was our cue to get the heck out of Dodge. I looked up at the fancy front doors of the Saguaro and remembered the beach.
Follow me! I thought to Pal as I grabbed my pack and shotgun and began to sprint through the crowd for what I hoped would be safety. My straw cowboy hat blew off and I didn’t try to grab it.
As Sara choked out a shuddering “One” we were already on the marble steps. We slammed through the front doors by “Three,” rushing past Poppy and Callie, who called after us with concern; the confusion in their expressions told me they didn’t know what was going on outside.
“Miko’s gone! Sara’s pissed! Regnum’s coming! Gotta go!” I hollered back at them.
I had the lobby portal open by “Eight.” By “Nine” I had helped Pal through and we were standing on the isolated stretch of beautiful Pacific beach. By my count of “Ten,” I’d closed the portal invisibly behind us. Both of us were panting for breath on the sand. But there wasn’t a single Regnum agent or Virtus in sight.
I dropped my pack and shotgun and let myself collapse onto the warm sand. It felt softer and more comfortable than any mattress I could remember. Rest. Sweet, blessed rest. I was melting like spilled ice cream. The air was an ideal seventy degrees, and the sun was gentle love. It would have been a perfect moment if Cooper had been there with me, but I’d take what I had and be glad for it.
> “Thank God that’s over,” I murmured. “Wake me if the crabs start eating me, would you?”
And just as I started drifting off to sleep, the wind shifted and I felt a slight chill, as if a cloud had obscured the sun.
“Oh no,” Pal exclaimed. “Jessie, we’ve got to get out of here!”
part
two
Green Dragon
chapter
nineteen
Castaways
“It’s a Virtus! We’ve got to run!” Pal reared up on his back legs, gesturing frantically at the sky with his forepaws.
I scrambled to my feet, following his point, my heart in my throat as I expected to see the sky opening, a cold black eye surrounded by lightning—
—but the sky was blue and calm. There was no giant guardian spirit coming to smite us. A small, spent rain cloud was cruising past the sun. That was all.
“Pal, there isn’t—”
“We’ll be slaughtered!” His telepathic voice was loud and shrill. He began to sprint toward the cover of the palm trees, but his legs gave out after just a few yards and he went tumbling.
“Whoa! Calm down!” I ran over to him and put my hands on his back, trying to keep him from thrashing and hurting himself. He’d never been this hysterical before; hell, I’d never seen him anything but self-assured and ready to take on all comers. What was going on with him? “Pal, there’s nothing dangerous here. Look.”
I grabbed the sides of his shaggy head and pointed his snout at the sky. “It’s just a cloud. See?”
He stilled, trembling, blinking his four eyes at the sky in confusion. “Oh.” His voice was small, embarrassed. “I was sure I saw a portal opening up there. I’m … I’m feeling rather strange at the moment.”
I knelt beside him, examining his forelimbs. Some of the lacerations that my father’s spell had seemed to heal had reopened, looking more like ulcers now than scratches. “Do these hurt?”
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