He didn’t wait for their reply, since it was openly plain what the answer was.
“Neither could I,” he admitted. “I doubt that, if we combined our abilities, we could manage it between the three of us.”
The other two were looking just as puzzled as I felt. We understood what he was saying, sure. But couldn’t see the point that he was trying to get at. And the doc appeared to understand that
“She’s achieved something that ought to be impossible,” he explained to us carefully. “She’s broken the rules that usually define the boundaries of magic. And in doing so …”
And he gulped in a breath.
“She’s actually gone and damaged reality. Bent it out of shape and warped it. Don’t you see?” He spread his hands. “The bonds that hold our existence together have been breached. And other stuff is seeping through that shouldn’t even be here.”
My skull started thumping, at that point. I could hear the words coming out of his mouth, and got a vague sense of their meaning. But with the emphasis on ‘vague.’ Where precisely was this mumbo-jumbo leading?
“Other stuff?” I asked him. “But in that case, where’s it coming from?”
He swung around to face me, his red-flecked pupils gleaming like a pair of burning coals.
“There are a hundred thousand different universes, aside from this one that we call our own. And it could be any one of them. So take your pick.”
Willets turned to Raine again. His natural animosity toward the Master of the Manor seemed to have been put aside, which was perhaps an indication of the desperate fix that we were in. I was still trying to figure this whole business out. Different universes? How could that affect us?
“We need to tell the rest,” the doc was saying.
And he meant the other major adepts on Sycamore Hill, direct descendants – for the most part – of the original Salem witches.
Woody smiled delightedly, and that is never good.
“You can tell them yourself, right now” he chortled.
And, before anyone could stop him, he had snapped his fingers again, half a dozen times in quick succession.
The rest of the town’s rich and powerful practitioners of the magic arts popped into view in front of us, the exact same way Gaspar Vernon had done. And none of them with any prior warning.
Oh for chrissake, Woody!
Martha Howard-Brett had obviously been working on a painting, and had a sable-tipped brush in her right hand. She was in a half-seated position, and had to stand up fast to stop herself from falling over.
Kurt van Friesling – the playboy of the group and never the earliest of risers – was halfway through shaving and still wearing a silk robe. He span around alarmedly and his face reddened.
It was pretty much the same with the rest. And their reactions ranged the full spectrum, from astonishment to outrage. The McGinley sisters were so aghast, you’d have thought that Raine had taken a whiz in their family’s mausoleum. Walter Cobb stared at the guy, turned crimson and made a curious huffing noise. And Judge Levin started ranting about his natural born rights being interfered with.
Put a bunch of annoyed rich folks inside a single room, however large, and what you wind up with is a self-righteous cacophony. A block of marble would’ve needed earmuffs.
They all knew how they’d been brought here. What they didn’t know was why. And none of them was bothering to ask. So it was left up to the doctor to get their attention.
“Will you all shut up?” he bellowed, far louder than any of them.
He never usually raised his voice that way, and the whole bunch of them fell silent and then goggled at him worriedly.
And then – in a much lower tone – he started to outline to them what he’d explained to us.
“Reality’s breaking down?” Judge Levin blurted, once he’d finished.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“But in what way, and at what pace?”
Willets looked slightly put out by the question.
“I think it’s in the nature of a breakdown in reality that how it happens cannot be predicted. In fact, I think that’s the point.”
Samuel Levin – a small but very dapper man with silver-tinged black hair – adjusted his rimless spectacles, absorbing that.
“You’re telling us that absolutely anything might happen?”
Willets nodded.
“Most of the rules are cancelled, from this point on,” he informed the room. “There’s just no way of telling how this might progress.”
“So we could keep on getting incidents like those that we’ve already seen?” Martha Howard-Brett ventured, raking her slim fingers through the ends of her long, auburn hair. “Or it might stop altogether? Or …?”
She didn’t want to say the last part. But I’d managed to get my head around the full implications of what was happening, by this point. And so I finished for her, having to push the words out, since they were trying to clog up in my throat.
“Or this whole town might vanish in a puff of purple smoke at any second.” Everyone looked round at me, and I added, “Have I got that right?”
Lehman Willets nodded again, gravely.
A weight began to settle on my shoulders. God, we’d had some really bad incidents in this town before. Things that gave you waking nightmares when you thought about them. But they’d always been specific. You could point to them, say what they were, however awful that might be.
Whereas – this time – we didn’t have the first clue what we were going to find ourselves up against. And I liked that about as much as putting my hand in a waste disposal unit, unsure if the power’s switched on.
“Okay, then,” I asked. “How do we stop this?”
Willets turned back to the frozen little scene inside the cone of light, then glanced at Raine.
“Can you show us what Violet got up to after she stole the jewel?”
The entire room’s attention focused on the scene. Woody spoke a few more words, and Violet Tiswell started moving. She ran away from Vernon’s grandpa. Sprinted across to the edge of the square and down one of the main roads leading out. And finally wound up in a small, abandoned alleyway.
There, she stopped. Looked furtively around, making sure no one had followed her. Then she held the Amethyst out in her palm, inspecting it.
And a notion appeared to take hold of her. She closed both hands around the jewel. Shut her eyes.
And went entirely still.
A minute passed, and then another, and she did not move. Willets stepped in closer, his head lowering slightly.
“The Little Girl told me as much,” he grunted. “She’s stuck. Both of them are. She won’t stop affecting this town until she lets go of the stone.”
Which was my chance to jump in again.
“How are we going to affect the behavior of a child who was alive more than a century ago?”
Everyone glanced back at me. Including Willets, who could see my point.
“You’re absolutely right – we can’t. Which leaves us only with the Little Girl herself.”
“You think that we can break the link from her end?”
“Well, we at least ought to try.”
But how was that going to happen? As I understood it, no one could use magic to affect her.
“You and Cass will have to figure something out,” the doctor told me.
Then he took in my expression, and his face became apologetic.
“I hate to burden you this way, but you’re the only adults in this town who never use the supernatural arts. And that – I’m afraid – makes you the best candidates for the job.”
What he’d said had logic, surely. But I didn’t see how we could help. The only time I’d ever touched the Little Girl, it had been like grabbing hold of a live cable. So what were we supposed to do exactly, whisper helpful words into her ear?
I could see that we had to try something, though. And so I took my leave of the massed adepts, went back t
o my car. Called Cassie, and told her where to meet me.
Then got going.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Halfway down the hill – the grand, gated mansions of Plymouth Drive rushing past me – my cell phone went off again. There was no other traffic about, so I didn’t bother slowing when I answered it. I’d been expecting Cass. But this was Nick McLeish.
“Hey, Ross?”
He owns a small construction company in the Garnerstown district, and is nothing that you’d call special, not a major sorcerer or anything like that. But he’s a solid guy who’d put his shoulder to the wheel several times on this town’s behalf. He was a natural leader – ordinary people trusted him. And he’d become something of a mouthpiece for them lately.
“What’re these rumors I keep hearing?” he asked. “People disappearing, stuff like that?”
I didn’t like lying to the guy. And he was within his rights to ask. But how was I supposed to tell him everyone might disappear, without the slightest sign of what was coming? So I tried to be as non-committal as I could.
“Only rumors so far, Nick. But I promise you, they’re being checked out.”
He immediately sounded even more suspicious.
“By the cops, or you? And if it’s you, that means that it’s something rough. You sure you’re not holding anything back on me?”
I dropped the phone from my ear as I went around a hairpin bend. Then lifted it again and asked him, “Why would I do that?”
“I hope you remember the last time something bad was coming down, and people weren’t brought up to speed in time,” Nick scolded. “They were caught off guard, and a good number of them died because of that.”
I knew what he was saying. He was absolutely right. But the only advice that I could currently give the man was something along the lines of ‘expect the unexpected.’ Which was no real kind of help at all.
So I ended up telling him, “As soon as I find something out, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I swear, Ross, if you’re keeping people in the dark –“
And then he stopped talking and let out a frightened yelp. And my pulse started racing, wondering what had caused that.
“Nick?”
“Oh, sweet Jesus!”
He was still there, but his voice was shaking.
“A tree just vanished, opposite my house! There was a flash of purple light and then it … disappeared from sight! Ross, what the hell is going on?”
“I’ll let you know when I do,” I repeated, and hung up.
Cassie was already there, when I got to Bethany. Her bike was parked beside the curb, and she was standing next to it with both hands on her hips. Her expression was grim, her dark eyes burning coldly. And my guess was, it wasn’t the notion of reality collapsing which was doing that.
There aren’t too many things that genuinely scare Cassandra Elspeth Mallory. But for some reason, the Little Girl is one of them. She’s only met her one time, and has never gone back in that nursery since. So she was about as pleased to be here as a teetotaler at Oktoberfest.
The stiffness of her long limbs as she moved in my direction confirmed that.
“There’s no one else to do this?” she asked, her voice echoing along the street.
“Looks that way,” I told her.
And she snorted.
“Typical. A whole town full of supernatural wonderment, and once again it’s down to us.”
I smiled at her brightly, trying to cheer her up. Which sometimes works, but didn’t on this occasion. Her eyebrows got all creased up, then she went back to her bike and pulled her Mossberg 590 pump-action shotgun from the side of it. I wasn’t sure that we were going to need anything quite like that. But if it made her feel happier, fine.
“What are we going to do?” she asked me.
“Pretty much what we always do. Play it by ear. See which way the wind is blowing. There has to be some kind of solution.”
I glanced over at the house. It was as normal looking as you could hope for. But in a place like the Landing, that doesn’t count for an awful lot. I went to the front door and tried it again. And it still wouldn’t budge.
So I resorted to Plan B. I wouldn’t dare do this under normal circumstances, but the Little Girl was trapped and helpless, wasn’t she? And so I went back several paces and then charged in, ramming at the woodwork with my shoulder.
The only thing it did was shudder. There was no sign of the latch working loose, not even when I tried several more times.
Maybe Cassie’s firepower might have some uses after all. She’d already figured that out, and was leveling her weapon. So I stepped off to the side.
“If you’d do the honors, ma’am?”
She fired, and it wasn’t buckshot. We’ve come across some pretty formidable opponents in the past, and so she loads her gun with ‘saboted’ slugs, solid chunks of lead that can punch through almost anything.
And they did this time. A ragged hole appeared in the woodwork where the lock had been. I went up to the door again and pushed it.
There was nothing holding it shut any longer, but it still didn’t budge. Which meant either there were latches on the inside we were missing. Or – more likely – the power of the Amethyst was stopping us from entering.
Cassie tried a flying kick, with no better result.
I remembered what I’d done before, and headed around to the back.
As we reached the rear yard, a couple of gray blurs streaked across the edges of our vision. Willets and Martha both materialized, stepping out of the thin air in front of us. They couldn’t use their magic in the manor’s grounds, so they must have hurried to the front gate before spiriting themselves down here.
I peered at them bemusedly, wondering why they’d bothered showing up.
“I thought that there was nothing you could do to help?”
“There isn’t,” Martha nodded. “But we reckoned you could use a little moral support.”
She hated the idea of leaving us to face this on our own, in other words. I could see it in her eyes, and by the wary smile on her attractive face. She’s the nicest and most human of the adepts by a long chalk, with no airs and graces to her.
But I discerned a watchful look in Willets’s gaze that told me something else was going on. He wanted to observe what happened when we managed to get in there. Me and Cass were being used to get the measure of this new phenomenon. And I wasn’t sure I cared for that. So when I spoke again, it was through slightly gritted teeth.
“I take it you can’t conjure us inside?”
“With this Amethyst in play?” Willets pursed his lips tightly a moment. “We could try, but it might turn out to be a very bad move indeed.”
So it looked like we were going to have to climb. I stared up at the nursery window, which was still leaking a purple glow around the outer edges of its drapes.
And then I glanced across, and noticed something that I’d not before. Almost wholly buried in the snow, there was a shed in one of the far corners of the yard. Me and Cassie scooped enough of the white stuff away to find the door. And when we looked inside, there was an extendable ladder.
I carried it across, setting it against the windowsill, then began heading up. The air that I was climbing through was slightly dimmer than it had been. The sun had disappeared behind another mass of clouds and, before much longer, evening would be on its way.
Snow lay over everything below me, the tracks of birds across it, although there was nothing currently in sight. There was a thick layer of ice on the sill above me, and the ladder wobbled slightly the last rung before I reached the top. And then I set a hand against the glass and tried to peer inside.
There were still no gaps between the drapes, even this close up. No slightest way of seeing in. Which meant that I was going into trouble blind, and – as I’ve pointed out – that comes near the bottom of my list of favorite activities.
I hunted around for some easy way through, my palms skittering on
the ice. I could see the latches on the inside frame from here, but they were firmly shut. Taking out my Smith & Wesson, I used its butt like a hammerhead in an attempt to break the glass.
Slammed as hard as I could, a dozen times, but to no effect.
It was time to bring out the shotgun again. Perhaps it would work better on a window.
“Aim high!” I shouted to Cassie, going back down several rungs. “You don’t want to go hitting the Girl!”
“Are you telling me how to shoot?” came the annoyed response.
“Just do it!”
Another slug came cracking out.
And the pane above me shattered.
“You watch yourself in there!” Cass called up as the final shards of glass tumbled away.
And there was real concern in her voice. All her flipness and sarcasm had evaporated. This was not the kind of problem you could solve with force, and that made her uneasy.
I knocked away some broken edges with my Smith & Wesson’s butt. Then pocketed it, eased a leg across the slippery sill, and swung myself over and was in amongst the drapes.
I was blinded by them for a brief instant. But what came next was worse. Purple light enveloped me, so bright that I could barely see. And I hadn’t been expecting anything quite this intense.
I took a few seconds getting back my balance, then squinted ahead. It was only a dim silhouette, but there was a familiar shape rotating in the air in front of me.
“Hey,” I said, taking a faltering step across the carpet. “Sorry about barging in on you like this, but ...”
The shape kept on revolving at the same rate as before, for all the world like some big clockwork toy that couldn’t be switched off.
“It’s Mister Ross. Are you aware of what’s been going on? We need to find some way to stop this.”
Don’t touch her again. That was the main thought going through my head. If I could only get her to listen to me. Make her understand she might be part of the solution.
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