“Ready?”
“I’ve just been waiting on you to stop shoveling food,” Taylor said. “You eat like a horse.”
“You weren’t exactly picking at your meal,” I pointed out.
“Still finished faster than you.”
“Didn’t know it was a race,” I muttered as we made our way into Mel’s basement. One of them, anyhow. From there we went into the wine cellar and through a hidden door in the back. It was keyed to members of the family. My dad, too, I thought, since he’d had to have used one of the doors in his escape. The idea that he could come and go at will irritated me.
“Has he been in the house before? Since he left ten years ago? Has he been spying on us?” I wondered aloud.
“I doubt he cared enough for that,” Taylor said, not having to ask who he was.
“He sure as hell seems to care now.”
“About you, maybe. The rest of us can suck eggs.”
I could hear the brittleness beneath the scorn in her voice. “You’re better off.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. He’s fucked up. Never should have been allowed to have kids.”
Since I had nothing to add to that, I let the subject drop.
On the other side of the wine cellar, we went through a long straight tunnel. Lights flickered alive as we opened the door. The walls were rough, but it was dry. The mineral smell of being underground made me cringe. I’d managed to get through going down into the basement without hyperventilating. The wine cellar was still big enough that I didn’t break out in hives. But now the walls closed in. My skin went cold, and tremors ran through my muscles. I clamped my teeth tight together to keep them from chattering and wrapped my arms around my stomach. My shoulder scraped against stone, and I flinched away, only to stumble into the opposite wall. I clenched all of my muscles and then forced them to relax, breathing deeply.
“Stupid, stupid fear,” I muttered as I managed to start walking again.
“Haven’t gotten over that yet?” Taylor asked cheerfully, striding along ahead of me. “Have you tried counseling? I wonder where it comes from, anyhow,” she said.
“If, by counseling, you mean stupidly going into small places with great regularity, then yes, I’m counseling the hell out of myself. It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s a phobia. It just is.”
She gave a little shrug. “Sure.”
“What? You think something caused it?”
“Maybe.”
I frowned. “Like Dad?”
“Who knows?”
It sounded ridiculous, but my father had deliberately made me paranoid about trusting people. He’d gone so far that his little tinkerings in my head had sent me rocketing into a sort of fugue state when I tried to reveal that I’d discovered I could touch the trace realm. I’d gone so deep inside myself I might never have come out if not for my dreamer friend Cass fishing me back up. So it was entirely possible my claustrophobia was a special gift from him.
“God, I’m so tired of wondering where I leave off and Dad begins,” I said. “How am I supposed to know what’s real and what’s not anymore?”
Taylor didn’t answer. There was something about the quality of her silence that sent little prickles of worry through me. I grabbed her arm and turned her to face me. “What’s up?”
She licked her lower lip and her eyelids dropped to hood her expression. “Reality is overrated.”
My frown deepened. “What does that mean?”
She grimaced and pulled away. “It means that you aren’t the only one having trouble figuring out where reality stops and everything else begins.”
That’s when I realized what she was talking about. My stomach dropped. “Sparkle Dust? But Cass fixed what it did to you. You’re clear of it, aren’t you?”
“She did what she could.”
“You haven’t started using, have you?” The claustrophobia panic was nothing compared to the sudden terror of Taylor using Sparkle Dust, of thinking her fading into a wraith. Relief made my knees sag when she shook her head.
“I’m not using. I want to, but I’m not.” She made a little face. “I’m fine, really. I’ve had some weird dreams and nightmares, that’s all. Stuff that feels really real, you know? When you talked about trouble separating what’s real from what’s imagined, it hit me. But I’m good. Now, let’s go. Your boyfriend’s waiting.”
The mention of Price got me moving again. I wanted to ask more, but Taylor just waved away my questions.
We reached the end of the corridor. It simply stopped. While I made myself stand still and wait for her, Taylor crouched next to the left wall and ran her fingers upward until she found the spot she was looking for. It looked like an outcropping, but her hand passed through easily. Another bit of magic keyed to family blood. She tapped out a sequence with her fingers, then drew back. We waited a few seconds, and then the wall melted away. We stepped across into the small chamber beyond. I shuddered as the wall reformed solidly behind us.
“Only way out is through,” Taylor said, but sounded more sympathetic. “Can I help you?”
I shook my head, my teeth clamped together.
Before us sat a small car on rails that ribboned away into darkness. It was cigar shaped with single padded bucket seats. Both ends had levers, though the rear set controlled the speed and braking, depending on which direction the cart was running. All in all, it resembled a Disney ride. If Leo and Jamie built Disney rides.
Taylor climbed into the rear seat. I took the one in the front. There were five seats in total. I buckled the seat belt and gripped the arms tightly as I pushed myself back as hard as I could. The tunnel ahead was black. Taylor turned on the bright headlights. There were five. A string of small lights sprang to life along the top edge of the car, with more underneath the canopy to light the interior.
“Ready?” Taylor called. She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she released the brake. We shot forward like a bullet.
I gasped, my stomach twisting. We sped up a slight grade, and then the tracks plunged downward along a corkscrew pathway, taking us from the Uptown level all the way to the Downtown level in a matter of a few seconds. The rails and wheels were spelled, so there was no danger of jumping the tracks. Taylor would have done a precheck of the alert system that would have warned of any debris on the tracks or any other obstacles.
Just below the Midtown shelf, we flattened into a long wide curve without slowing down. I knew we were nearing my house when the car abruptly hooked and turned back, then dropped down a steep slide before rising up an even higher hill. Luckily, magic made sure we made it to the top, just as magic would guarantee an equally swift return back to Mel’s. Not that we were going back there.
My heart pounded as we came to a rest in a chamber nearly identical to that we’d just left. Taylor set the brake and shut down the lights. I unbuckled and hopped out, then leaned against the side of the car as the ground shifted and rolled beneath me. I breathed deeply, trying to calm my pounding heart. I’d sweated enough to soak my tee shirt beneath my hoodie. Thank goodness for deodorant. I never used the cigar car unless I had to, which was more often than not, since traveling the subway up to Mel’s would have been just as bad. Worse, really, since I was underground longer.
“Come on. We’re wasting time.”
Taylor hooked me under my right arm and pushed me to the wall. She opened the passage and closed it again. On the other side was a set of steep rock stairs leading straight up. I grabbed the rail and went ahead. The passage was tight. I kept my eyes on the steps and tried not to notice how low the ceiling was or how the walls leaned inward.
At the top, I fumbled with the lock and opened it. The wall pivoted with part of the floor. The other side was my basement. Taylor swung the door back around, securing
it behind us.
“Nice,” she said, glancing around. Mostly the place was dusty. I kept a collection of potential null-making material on the racks down the opposite wall. Other than that, it was bare. “Love the decorations.”
“It’s a basement,” I said.
“I’m sure the upstairs is much better.”
By her standards, it wasn’t. I didn’t say so. No point in stating the obvious.
The basement wasn’t much more than a ten-by-ten space, and given how little I liked being underground and in tight spaces, Taylor ought to have been surprised that I used it for anything at all. I hurried up the steps and escaped into my kitchen, heaving a huge sigh as I did.
My house, if you could call it that, had been custom built for me by Leo and Jamie and some good old-fashioned muscle.
A couple hundred years ago, a fellow by the name of Frank Karnickey had located an incredibly lucrative diamond mine in a narrow snaking canyon on the north side of the Downtown shelf. He’d built a compound to protect it. The area rapidly expanded into a warren of ramshackle buildings for his miners and their families, which came to be known as the Karnickey Burrows. With the towering trees on the heights and the steep walls of the canyon, it had been a gloomy place, but inside the buildings it was comfortable and cozy enough, especially since Karnickey provided the housing for free.
Then Karnickey had fallen in love. The woman had been remarkable in her own right. Lily Enwright James had been cut off by her family in the East and had come to Diamond City with a hundred dollars and a lot of chutzpah. She’d managed to open a general store and rapidly parlayed that into half a dozen stores. She bought a hotel, and then two, and fairly quickly she had her own little empire. She’d been beautiful, with glossy dark hair, a round face, and a lot of swagger. It’s no wonder Karnickey had fallen in love with her. He was famous for writing poetry to her and publicly begging her to marry him. But he had competition.
His main rival for Lily’s affections was Alan Madstrom. Like Karnickey, he’d found a rich diamond mine. Where Karnickey was all rough edges and bullheaded charm, Madstrom was snake-smooth elegance. He liked that Lily came from wealthy breeding, with polished manners and cultured style. She was his ticket into a level of society he couldn’t achieve by himself, and he liked showing her off. Except Lily refused to marry either man. She wasn’t going to give up her independence. Instead, she let Madstrom and Karnickey vie for her affections, promising she’d become the winner’s exclusive mistress.
It became quite a spectacle, with each man trying to outmaneuver the other. It was all the papers had talked about. Eventually, Karnickey started looking like the likely winner. That’s when Madstrom decided to play dirty. He waited until a January storm had snowed Diamond City in. Then he released a tinkered virus into the Burrows. Just about everybody died within a week. After the bodies were cleared out, the place was abandoned. Supposedly it was cursed. That made it a perfect location for my home.
Using all the scrap metal left in the Burrows, plus a whole lot more we’d hauled in, Leo and Jamie had built the house. It was a marvel. The outer walls were made of all sizes of stone mortared together with steel. It had an open plan, largely because I lived alone and didn’t like being closed in. A massive circular fireplace, enclosed by a grill and surrounded by a knee-high stone hearth, rose up through the middle of the house. The grill was five feet tall, and above that the chimney was made of more metal-bound stone.
On one side of it was a living area. The furniture consisted mostly of giant cushions, with a couple of mosaic-topped tables. The kitchen was on the other side. It was much bigger than I’d ever need. I barely had enough dishes and pots to fill a couple of the cupboards, and as far as food went, I had some jelly in the fridge along with some sodas and water, and some peanut butter, ramen, and microwave popcorn on a shelf. I ate most of my meals at the Diamond City Diner, owned by my best friend, Patti, and her business partner, Ben.
Off to the side, between the kitchen and living area and under the spiraling staircase, was a sliding wood door. The wide steps beyond led into a sunken bathroom with a toilet, a natural hot tub, and a massive shower. The pool was filled by an underground spring my brothers had managed to divert and then I’d heated with a spell I’d bought. A round roof with two skylights capped the space. I’d set candles into just about every rocky niche. Broad doors of mullioned glass slid apart onto a little courtyard, maybe ten or fifteen feet wide. Tumbled boulders made a wall around the little space. It was neck deep in snow at the moment, but in the summer, I put out birdfeed next to the little trickling waterfall and shallow pool. It was filled by the same spring that fed my hot tub. I’d leave the doors open and sit in my tub to watch the birds or at night I’d look at the stars.
Upstairs was my bedroom. Like downstairs, it was sparsely furnished, with a dresser, a nightstand, and a low-sitting platform bed piled with a bunch of brightly colored pillows and a down coverlet. Thick wool rugs covered the smooth stone floor. On the other side of the chimney was my work area. Tables and shelves lined the walls. They contained bins full of all sorts of things I could use to make nulls. Most of those appeared innocuous. They were easier to hide in plain sight. On the end were two enormous cabinets, each five feet wide and two feet deep. One contained finished nulls, and the other was packed with other magic spells I’d collected over the years. My kitchen pantry was empty, but I tried to keep my magic pantry well stocked.
Up against the chimney were three wood half barrels I’d picked up at a garden store. I’d attached wheels to the bottoms to make it easier to maneuver the heavy contents within. The first held a giant hunk of silver sheen obsidian. It weighed at least two hundred pounds. The second half barrel contained a green cement toad statue, about four feet tall. It had a silly grin on its face and oversized bug eyes. A solid glass ball about four feet in diameter perched on top of the last half barrel. It was lilac colored and not entirely round. I didn’t care. It suited my purpose well.
All three were nulls. I’d spent years adding to their power. Each pulsed with captured magic. They weren’t particularly useful. It wasn’t like I could haul them out of here very easily. On the other hand, activating them would wreak havoc with the magic in Diamond City. Once I’d learned the knack of creating a spell sink that would absorb nulled magic and recycle it to reinforce the nulling spell, I’d made sure each of these nulls would do the same. Where binders suppressed all magic in a vicinity, nulls absorbed the active magic like big sponges. When the binders lifted, the magic would return, though it often got shorted out. Binders tended to have that effect. Nulls simply killed the spells until they got recharged.
Activating my three big ones could possibly suck the magic out of the entire city. At least, in theory. They could also overload and burn out, in which case my house and the Karnickey Burrows would be leveled. Not that I planned to set them off. I’ve never had any intention of using them. They’re more vanity spells than anything else. I’d wanted to see just how powerful I could make them. Plus I could siphon power off if I needed it. If I’d had had time, I would have recharged my tattoo nulls, but I didn’t.
The house was comfortably warm, heated as it was by magic. I liked a good fire, but I also liked to come home to warmth, and most of the time I wasn’t around to stoke the fire. I ran up the stairs, leaving Taylor to trail behind. By the time she joined me, I was digging in my closet for an empty backpack. I had several, since I used them with frequency and I didn’t like having to unpack every time I wanted to shift jobs.
I went to my workroom and opened my null cupboard. I grabbed what I needed before moving to the other cupboard. These were spells that I’d purchased. Some unlocked doors, others created faraway sounds to distract guards, some deflected bullets, and so on. All the sorts of things that might be useful for a tracer on the job. I grabbed a few things that might prove useful and stuffed them in with the nulls. I ha
nded Taylor the heavy pack and returned to my closet. I pulled off my boots and peeled off my socks. I put on light wicking socks followed by a pair of thick wool ones. I donned a different, more comfortable pair of boots, and changed my sweaty shirt. Not that there was much point. We’d be traveling underground again. Next, I grabbed a jacket. It was thin and light, but would keep me warm down to fifty below zero. Finally, I grabbed gloves, a fleece balaclava, and pulled a couple of hand warmers off the shelf and stuck them in my pocket. They might come in handy.
Price didn’t have anything to wear. He’d been taken without a coat. I turned helplessly in a circle as I examined my closet. I didn’t have anything big enough for him to wear. Besides, we needed to travel light and move quickly. An extra coat might get in the way. Hopefully we’d find something on the premises.
“Are you ready?” Taylor called.
I stepped out into the bedroom. “I feel like I’m forgetting something.”
“You’ve got the nulls?”
I nodded.
“That’s what we came for. Let’s go. We’re burning daylight.”
We went back downstairs, but instead of going into the basement, we went out through my front door. It opened under a massive slab of basalt that leaned up against the wall of my house, adding to the ruined look. From the outside, my place looked like a pile of rocks. The original buildings had been several stories tall and linked with burrowing hallways and underground tunnels. Leo and Jamie had used the old ruins to disguise my place. I could have all the lights on inside, and nobody down on the road would see. The entire Burrows was shielded with turn-away spells and briar magic that guaranteed no one could just wander in—if its status as a cursed place didn’t keep them away.
Since our next destination was Taylor’s hangar, the number four exit was the quickest. I led the way. We wove through what appeared to be piles of rubble. They were strategically placed and shored up with steel. After about seventy feet, we came to a set of narrow steps leading downward. I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to go down, fingers gripping tight on my backpack. As I reached the bottom, lights flickered to life.
Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels) Page 13