There were a couple of comfortable-looking casual chairs and one of those lift-top coffee tables that converted a sort of TV tray for eating. Two oak Empire-style chairs for when extra seating was needed, I assumed, stood against a wall.
Dee was a chameleon on the street, equally believable in jeans and work boots, a perfectly tailored suit, or anything in between. His home, though, definitely said he was a single man who liked his peace and his creature comforts.
He brought me a glass of water. I took a sip and held the glass.
“You’re practically vibrating,” I said, thinking maybe he was more like me than I’d thought and was uncomfortable with people in his house. “What’s on your mind?”
“I need to mix up a potion,” he said. “And we need to talk.”
“Okay,” I said.
Curiosity pricked at me, but if he’d wanted to tell me more, he would have. I’d promised not to poke around in his head. So far, I’d been good about keeping that promise, but life might be easier—for me at least—if I broke it.
He waved vaguely in the direction of the carpeted stairs. “I keep the magic stuff up there. My tools and whatnot.”
I started to stand, but Dee shook his head.
“That room is private,” he said. “No one’s ever been in it but me.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said and sat back down. The desire for privacy was something I could appreciate and respect. I pulled my phone from my purse and punched up the book I’d been reading.
He stood a moment, then motioned with his head toward the stairs. “The hell with it. Come on.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “I’m fine here. Really.”
He shrugged. “Why not? We’re in this together.”
I tucked my phone back in my purse and followed him up to the second floor. I felt honored by the invitation.
At the landing at the top of the stairs, I looked around. The house was vaguely L-shaped. There was one door in the middle of the bottom of the L and two doors along the long side. All the doors were closed. I followed behind as he strode toward the first door in the long side of the L, muttering as he approached. The door swung open and he went into the room.
I stood in the doorway and took in his wizard’s lair. The walls were painted a bright white. A long farmhouse-style wooden table sat beneath a large window with a view over his backyard. The one chair in the room was pushed up to the table.
Rows of bottles holding various wet and dry ingredients, several silver, copper, and glass bowls, and boxes of differing sizes holding who-knew-what waited on shelves and tabletops. An extensive library of leather-bound books, some with arcane writing on the spines, filled a bookshelf that took up most of one wall. Everything was as neat and orderly as the landscaping outside.
“Shit,” Dee muttered. “Chair.”
I squeezed up against the jambs as he rushed by, out into the long hall, and disappeared into the room on the short end of the L. He returned with a tan canvas director’s chair that he set in front of the wall opposite his workbench.
“Thanks,” I said and sat.
He stood looking at me a moment as if wondering if inviting me in had really been a good idea, then turned and walked over to his workbench.
I cleared my throat. “Is it okay for me to talk? Can I ask questions, or do you want things quiet while you work?”
He’d settled into the chair at the table and twisted to look at me over his shoulder. “Talk is okay. Questions are okay. But not too much of either.”
I could appreciate a desire for not too many words. I did have an immediate thought though.
“The question we’re looking to answer is if the klim came into our world on its own or someone or something brought it.”
“Right,” he said.
“How will you find out?”
Dee drew in a breath and let it out. “I can’t. I don’t know any magic that will answer the question. Maurice was right. It’s something you have to discover psychically.”
I shifted my gaze around the room, as if an explanation might hang in the air. No answers floated by. I looked back at him.
“Then why are we here? I thought it was up to you and your magic to find the answer.”
He nodded. “It is, at first. Then it’s up to you. I can make a potion and cast a spell to temporarily enhance your abilities. Sort of like what I did for you at the rink, enhancing your hearing, but it’s a lot easier to up one of the five senses than the sixth. That takes extra, specific magic.”
A thrill of nerves ran through me.
“You can say no,” Dee said. “If you don’t want to do it, we’ll either find another way or go without that question being answered.”
“You’ve already pushed your magic into me a couple of times,” I said. “You mean giving me even more? A bigger dose?”
He shook his head. “That magic is in you now, more or less permanently. I’m suggesting an elixir to give you a temporary boost.”
“More or less permanently?”
He cleared his throat. “Some of that magic will find a happy home within you and stay. Some will fade. You’ll always be more powerful than you were before, but in time, you’ll be less powerful than you are now.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering exactly how all of this worked.
A thought struck me. “When you give me some of your magic, does that mean you have less?”
“Temporarily,” he said. “It comes back though. The tank tops itself up pretty quickly.”
“Okay,” I said again. “Good.”
I took another swallow of water and held the glass between both hands. “Tell me about this elixir.”
Diego hiked up a shoulder. “Like I said, it will enhance your sixth sense. Hopefully, it will help you find out if the klim brought itself over or had help.”
I nodded. “If the klim brought itself, all we have to do is stop it.”
I couldn’t believe I’d said ‘all we have to do’ as if bringing down the klim or at least sending it back to the place it had come from was some easy task.
“But if someone brought it,” I said, “that person could probably bring more things from the Brume. These deaths could go on and on. Deaths that could be only the beginning.”
Dee inclined his head, agreeing with me.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Come over here and I’ll walk you through what I’m mixing.”
I stood next to him while he poured out a bit of this and some of that, naming each ingredient, pulverized a bit of amethyst and some azurite and added that in, then mixed it with filtered water. I wasn’t quite sure about drinking rocks but decided to trust that Dee wouldn’t poison me.
He strained the mixture through cheesecloth into a silver glass, then handed me the finished product.
I held the glass for a moment, uncertainty rushing through me again.
“What, exactly, will happen once I drink this?”
“Your third eye will open wider than you thought it could. You’ll be able to home in on the klim wherever it is—in the Brume, in our world, or some other—and read it. Hopefully, you’ll find out how it got here and what it’s after.”
“If the potion opens my third eye, will I physically go to the Brume or will what I see be a psychic vision?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to go into the Brume alone. It will be a vision, but it will seem real.” He dropped his voice so low I barely heard him add, “If this works.”
“It’ll work. I have faith in your magic.”
Dee blushed. That was a first.
I still hesitated, nervous over how the potion would affect me, especially since he’d pushed all that magic into me the other night. But if I believed my own words, everything would be fine, and we’d discover a truth we needed to know.
I lifted the glass to my lips and drank the whole thing down.
Nothing happened.
“You might want to sit down,” he said.
I walk
ed back to the chair he’d brought for me and sat.
“I don’t feel any …”
My ears popped, the same way they had at the ice rink. Dancing sparks of every color filled the room. Every inch of my skin tingled. The taste of coffee with milk, of all things, filled my mouth. My chest seemed to expand, and I inhaled great breaths of air filled with the smell of old leather, the individual fragrances of every plant, stone, earth, feather, and wood in the room—and Dee’s scent.
God. Dee’s scent. Like the air after a rain, dark cocoa, and cloves. Each scent distinct, following one on the other. I felt drunk on it.
But I couldn’t linger breathing it in. My third eye warmed and the world opened to me. I felt tied to every leaf, every bird and beast, every human. To the hills and valleys, to the sea, sky, and stars.
Then worlds opened. Ours, and the fairies’, and others I couldn’t name. And the Brume. My head pounded, and bile rose in my throat.
The Brume. Dark and busy with shadow-things flitting here and there. Things without form, only black emotions. Things with forms, twisted and distorted. Things shaped like humans but without faces.
A land filled with anger. Hunger. Misery. Rage. Danger.
I walked in that dark land, my heart pounding, searching for the klim’s trail.
Hands reached for me from the darkness. Claws of unseen beasts racked at my skin. A wall sprung up to my left, black brick and impossibly high. In front of me stretched a long featureless desert, yellow sand glinting strangely in the darkness. To my right ran a wide river of bubbling red liquid. Trapped between them, all I could do was keep moving forward.
Something creaked to my left. The wall. Creaking, creaking. Cracking. Black stones fell, crashing into the yellow sand, falling from the apex like an avalanche. I ducked down, my arms over my head, and ran. A brick the size of a large man’s fist hit my shoulder. Pain shot down my arm. I kept running.
Thunder rolled in the distance. The dry ground turned marshy and sucked at my feet. Fear twisted my stomach.
Anger. Anger. Rage rushed through me. I could have burned the land with a thought.
“Fuck you, fear,” I yelled, anger fueling me. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
The stones stopped falling.
Low growls filled the air. My eyes darted left, right, forward, up, down behind—searching for the source of the growls.
A beast, striped yellow and black, like a tiger, but huge, with red eyes and long gleaming fangs sped toward me out of the darkness. Its speed terrified me. I maybe had a minute. Maybe less, and it would be on me.
The stones began falling again. The tiger spread leathery yellow and black wings that had been folded tight against its body, huge wings, camouflage-striped the same as its fur. It took to the air.
Tricks or treats. Bricks or beast? Which would get me first?
Dee was with me then. I couldn’t see him, but I felt him, heard him. Dee muttering his spells. Dee shaking some sort of gourd, its dried seeds rattling louder than the crash of falling stones, louder than the tiger-dragon’s roar.
But he wasn’t here. It was only me the tiger-dragon would devour.
Dee still chanting, his words echoing inside my mind. Power surging through me. Protection coating my skin.
I picked up a broken, baseball-sized piece of brick. I’m tallish and I’m strong. I understand about mechanics, about not facing the target, but standing sideways, about not opening up my hips. I cocked my right arm all the way back and heaved it toward the tiger-dragon. The thing screamed as the stone smashed into its left eye. I grabbed another chunk and threw it, hitting the beast in the soft underside of its throat. The thing screeched and wheeled away, flying off across the endless desert.
I ran again. Ran until the wall beside me had completely crumbled, revealing the membrane behind it. The membrane was thick and gelatinous when I pushed at it. Like pushing my fingers into a bowl of dirty lemon Jell-O.
On the other side of the membrane, things moved. Human shaped things. Dog-shaped. Bird-shaped. Cow-shaped. Our world.
I trotted over the marshy soil with my head in the air now, searching for the klim’s signature. And found it.
The trace was faint, but unmistakable. I stopped and let my third eye lock on to the klim, find its trail and follow it.
The trail led along the membrane separating our world from the world of the shadows. Here and there I came on places where I could see the Klim had thrown itself against the divider. The further along I went, the more frequent and powerful the thrusts had been.
And then, a ragged hole—the door the klim had used to come into our world.
The next moment I was back in Dee’s house. He had a firm hold on my left hand. Tension had tightened his face. Eyes closed, he muttered spells that sounded like the desperate prayers of the damned.
I blinked, orienting myself back to this world.
The spell casting stopped. Dee opened his eyes.
“Oona?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Back.”
Back and myself again, except for the anger pulsing through me.
“You said it wouldn’t be real,” I snapped. “Maybe it wasn’t, but it seemed very real. I was terrified. Don’t ever ask me to do anything like that again.”
“I won’t,” he said, letting my hand loose. “I promise.”
Moments passed. Neither of us spoke. Dee kept his gaze on my face, searching for something. The answers, of course. The worry in his eyes didn’t change.
Slowly, slowly, my anger drained away. We had to know the answers I’d gone looking for. I’d agreed to take the potion. Nothing was his fault.
“Sorry for being a brat,” I said.
He smiled thinly but said nothing.
I shook myself out of the last of my rage. It wasn’t really my anger at all. It belonged to the Brume and should have stayed there.
But the thing I had learned there, and the fear it had shot through me—that stayed. I forced my voice to be calm.
“I found trace of the klim. I followed the trace to a hole in the membrane between its world and ours. It came over on its own. The Brume is filled with emotion, all of it dark, but it didn’t satisfy the klim to feed on that. It was starving. It’s here to ease its hunger.”
Dee nodded, but still didn’t speak. At least his face relaxed some.
I fell silent, too. I wanted to tell him the other thing I’d learned, the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about. But what was the point? He’d only worry. Only steal away the last of my independence in the guise of protection.
I could use his protection. Needed it. What sort of fool was I to count independence and solitude as more important than safety?
“There’s something else,” I said. “The klim wants me dead.”
15
Dee’s face clouded. “Maurice said the klim was feasting on your indecision. Why would it want you dead?”
I tried to speak, but my thoughts still weren’t ordered. I tried again.
“Do you remember I told you about my great-grandfather, Pax, who was a selkie? And Cassie who destroyed a sea goblin?”
Dee nodded.
“In the Brume, I could read the klim’s thoughts. It’s old. Old enough to have known both of my great-grandparents. The gremhahn, the sea goblin, wasn’t the only base-shifter they’d gone after. The klim used to be an ocean creature. Cassie and Pax forced it into the Brume. Somehow it figured out who I am. It wants its revenge on Cassie and Pax for driving it out of the ocean to the dry land of the Brume. Killing me is that revenge.”
Dee looked deep into my face. “That won’t happen, Oona. I won’t let any harm come to you.”
I desperately wanted to believe his words. “I felt you helping me there in the Brume. The strength. The protection.”
“Just protection,” he said. “The strength was already in you. You pulled that out of yourself, not me.” He gave me a level gaze with a hint of a smile. “I told you before you were to
tally badass, probably the most badass woman I’ve ever known. I may have to marry you.”
He meant it to lighten the mood, but I couldn’t shake the fear and dread the klim had set in me. It wanted to kill me. And not quickly, either.
He sobered. “It takes a lot of guts to venture into the Brume and keep going the way you did, even in a vision.”
My throat tightened, and tears flooded my eyes. I choked back a sob.
Dee poured another glass of plain water and held it out.
“Drink this. It’ll help get the elixir out of you. And the tension. Get you grounded back in our world.”
I took the glass but didn’t drink. There was something I needed a lot more than water. I needed Dee’s strength, the feel of his skin, and the warmth of his arms. The comfort of human contact.
“Would you mind hugging me for a while?” I said.
Dee smiled in that closed mouth way he had and said, “I wouldn’t mind. Let’s go downstairs.”
He took my hand and led me back to the living room. We settled on the couch. I felt a little silly now for the request, but Dee put his arms around me and held me close like we’d sat this way a thousand times. I wondered again if he felt the afterglow the same way I did, if him pushing his magic into me was equally intimate for both of us. I leaned against his chest, sinking into him, hearing his heartbeat. Needing the comfort. The safety.
The enhanced senses I’d had in the Brume had faded, but I still caught Dee’s scent—clean air after rain, dark cocoa, cloves. I’d been this physically close to him before I’d drunk his potion. He’d smelled good then, but not like this. Now his scent was both a lullaby and a siren song. I liked it. A lot. Maybe too much.
Afterglow.
My eyelids grew too heavy to hold open. I let them close, breathed in his scent, and slept.
* * *
I woke with a start, my heart pounding, and bolted up into a sit. The room was dark, unfamiliar. Dee lay on his side on top of the covers I was under, facing me. His eyes were closed, his breath soft and rhythmic. I stared into the darkness, my mind full of the awful realization that had woken me.
Ice Cold Death Page 11