“Of course we’re friends,” came the woman’s voice.
It had returned to its usual tone, the rasping deadness gone. Although it did sound pretty mystified.
The claws had gone away as well. Cassie’s hands were back to normal. They were not attacking her in any way, merely clasping her around the shoulders gently.
Lauren’s eyes came back open, her sight clouding at first. But when it cleared, she could see Cassie’s face above her. Back to the way it ought to be. No violet in her gaze. No fangs.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked her nervously. “What are you doing on the ground? What’s wrong?”
Lauren put a hand up to her shoulder. She could feel no damage, and there was no blood.
But when she managed to sit upright, she could see that her feet were bare. Her gun was no longer in its holster. And there were skid marks on the ice, where she’d been flung from up above.
So some of this, apparently, had really taken place. Which made not the tiniest bit of sense.
What on earth was happening this time?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I got out of my car and went inside my house, heading directly to my bedroom, with the sole intention of throwing myself full out on the mattress and getting some more badly needed shuteye.
But when a brief purple flash came from the direction I was going, I slowed to a halt. And drew my revolver, returning to alertness fast. Every muscle in my frame had seized up tightly. What had I run into?
This was my home. Anger began replacing my initial fright. This wasn’t something I was going to stand around for. But I used to be a cop, and am trained in such matters. So I took things warily and slowly.
Peered at the half-opened doorway. Could see nothing beyond it, not so much as a moving shadow. And there were no noises emerging. So, stretching my gun arm out in front of me, I started to edge along as silently as I could manage.
I reached the frame, took a better look inside, and from a different angle. Then I glanced in through the jamb as well.
Nothing returned my gaze. There were no purple objects in there of any description, that I could make out.
I used the fingers of my other hand to ease the woodwork open slowly. That still got a zero point reaction, and the only sound that I could hear was my own heart.
So I stepped in smartly, turning sharply left, then right. Nothing came at me, or drew into my field of vision. I relaxed, and lowered my aim a little.
Maybe the flash had come from out beyond the window? I went to it, but there was nothing taking place out on the street.
My lungs deflated and I let my gun hand drop.
It was possible I’d simply been imagining it. I’d seen so many purple flashes the last few hours that they had to be imprinted in my skull. I tried to smile and put my gun away. But then I noticed exactly how cold the place had gotten.
I needed to switch the heating on before I fell asleep. And so I turned back to the hallway, thinking about doing that.
And my gaze swept across Alicia’s dresser. None of it had been touched since the day she’d disappeared. Everything was left precisely in its place, waiting for the happy time when she returned. Her make-up boxes, her lipsticks and perfumes. The beautifully enameled heart-shaped box in which she kept some of her jewelry.
And I was reflecting – in a heavy-hearted way – how badly I missed her. When I noticed something odd.
There was a small mirror on the dresser top, the kind that swivels to an angle when you push it. And I ought to have been looking at my own reflection.
But its surface was reflecting nothing.
And had started to shine, with a faint purple glow.
I stepped closer to it, but with no result. The glass still did not reflect an image of my face. The purple hue on it was deepening. And then that wash of color parted. And I felt a spasm running through my frame.
I was gazing at a scene that had nothing to do with this room, or this house, or even this part of the world. It looked like a cavern I was staring into. Raine’s Landing has none of those.
Its walls were rough gray stone. And by the shadows that were gathered, it appeared to be deep underground. There was some kind of illumination coming from a source that I could not make out. But the light was pretty dim and warmthless.
Standing at the center of this gloomy space was my whole missing family. Alicia, my slim blond wife, with three year-old Tammy tucked in the crook of one arm. Pete was standing by her side, holding himself very straight. Five years old, and already a little man.
It began to occur to me that they had grown no older since the last time that I’d seen them. And the best part of three years had elapsed. I couldn’t figure that, and so I let it pass.
They didn’t notice I was watching them, at first. But then Alicia’s pale head came up, and her eyes widened. She was staring at me through the glass.
“Ross?”
How could I see them, after all this time? It made no sense. There was a part of me that simply didn’t care, though.
I lurched at the mirror, yelling, “Yeah, it’s me! Where are you?”
She stared around in desperation, her face partially veiled by the shadows and the gloom.
“I don’t know. We wound up here when Goad used his magic on us. And we’ve been searching for ages, but we can’t find a way out.”
“You’ve been there this whole time?”
My brain was pounding in my skull. And my heart was almost breaking. Because both my kids had noticed me as well. Pete was jumping up and down, delight spreading across his face. And Tammy was smiling sweetly, and had reached out an arm in my direction.
“Is there water? Is there food?” I shouted.
Because, from what I could see, that was not likely. The place that they were in looked wholly barren.
“I don’t get this,” I asked. “How have you survived?”
But did it really matter? They were still around. That was the only thing that counted, surely?
“I don’t know,” Alicia replied, with a slight stutter. “I can’t remember the last time we ate. The usual rules don’t seem to apply. We’re simply … stuck here. And we can’t get out.”
She blinked some tears out of her eyes, then begged me, “Ross, please help us. Get us home.”
But I was only looking at their images in silvered glass. And when I pushed a hand their way, the only thing it did was hit the surface of the mirror and then stop. I couldn’t reach them. Helplessness rushed through me like a massive surge of poison.
This was exactly like the last time. Like the afternoon when Jason Goad had spirited my family away. I’d been forced to watch that too. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
God, what use was I? My eyes began to burn.
“You’ve got to help us, Ross,” Alicia yelled, “because this place is getting smaller.”
What the hell did that mean? I reached out and grabbed the mirror’s frame.
“It’s been doing that for quite a while,” she added. “It’s already down to less than half its size. And if it keeps on shrinking, then I don’t think we’ll survive. We just won’t be here any more.”
And the only thing that had kept me going, these past few years, was the notion that they might come back someday.
Maybe if I broke the glass? I began slamming at it, but it wouldn’t give. It didn’t even crack. Pete had stopped moving around, his features going heavy with dismay. And Tammy was peering at me sadly.
“Do something, Ross!” Alicia was yelling out. “Please, save us!”
“I’m trying!” I shouted back.
I was pounding at the mirror like a lunatic, with no effect. And I think that I began to scream. A bellowing was emerging from the deepest regions of my soul.
I couldn’t see straight any longer, and was hollering and thrashing.
Hands grabbed me around the upper arms, next instant, pulling me away.
“Take a deep breath and then calm back d
own,” a quiet voice told me, right next to my ear. “You have to understand there’s nothing there.”
And it was Willets.
I’m ashamed to say I tried to fight him off at first. Caught him a glancing blow on the side of his head with my elbow. But he soaked it up with little protest, refusing to release his grip. And hung onto me until I’d simmered down.
My thoughts began to untangle. My vision cleared. And I began to see the truth of this.
It wasn’t the case that my rain of blows had had no effect on the mirror. The thing was broken to bits – there were shards of silvered glass lying all over the dresser and surrounding carpet. And my fists were bleeding.
Of my family, there was no sign. But part of my mind still wanted to cling onto the illusion that I’d seen them.
Willets understood that, and he gave me a light shake.
“They were never there,” he hissed in an insistent tone. “You need to get your head around that.”
The world’s realities came flooding back. My heart slowed down. I doubled over slightly. And the doc was forced to let me go.
“So I was imagining that?” I gasped
“Not exactly.”
He looked terribly grave, when I straightened up to face him.
“Reality is slipping away faster than I thought. And in a different way to last time. A whole load of people are now seeing their worst fears take on the semblance of reality. I had to rescue Levin from his study, and he almost had a nervous breakdown.”
All that I could do was stare at the man blankly, struggling to get a proper grip on what I was being told.
“I still can’t figure this,” I muttered. “Was it real or not?”
Willets shrugged. “A bit of both, perhaps. It seems to depend on the individual.”
Which didn’t really do a great deal to enlighten me.
“The barriers between what’s real or not are almost gone,” the doctor told me.
Sounds from outside began drifting to me. Muffled yells and screams. I stepped back to the window, a new sense of urgency filling me.
Could these be what I thought they were … the cries of people trapped in their own personal nightmares?
When I looked back at the doc, his grave expression hadn’t changed.
“Okay. So what exactly do we do?” I asked.
“Go from house to house, and try the same thing that I did with you. Snap people back into the here and now.” The man blinked tiredly. “While the Amethyst is still in play, nothing else is going to work.”
“So there’s no way anyone can fix this?”
I had been so convinced that I was talking to my family. And I was starting to get pretty mad, now the initial shock was gone.
“The only chance we’ve got,” Willets replied, “is if Raine manages to come up with something.”
And that made me feel even worse than I had done before.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Are you sure that this is wise, sir?”
Raine was back inside his manor. He had a wearily frustrated air, since he had spent a good long while off in the purple universe to absolutely no effect. He’d done his very best to reason with its inhabitants. He had begged, teased, pleaded, cajoled, bargained, made several dry stabs at humor, and even a few veiled threats. And it had gotten him no reaction whatever. Like trying to get a sensible response out of a block of wood.
The walls had remained static and the tunnels empty. Not a single skinny figure had emerged. It was as if they’d plugged their ears. And he preferred to think of the whole business in those terms, since one thing that he absolutely loathed was being ignored.
It was time to approach this in a different way. And he’d been turning his options over for a while. He couldn’t remember the last occasion he had held any subject in his mind for more than a few minutes. The world was such a fascinating and a multi-layered place that his attention was constantly being diverted.
But he had to face facts – the town that bore his name was going under. And acknowledging that had made him resolute. His inner thoughts and feelings had become extremely focused.
How to put an end to this?
Hampton wasn’t really helping with his incessant yammering. In point of fact, the man was doing it right now.
“I have to tell you, sir, that I have never approved of this whole business. Separating your soul from your corporeal body? What if something went wrong, and you couldn’t get them back together?”
“Then I suppose there would be two of me.”
Hampton went bug-eyed and swallowed.
“Uh, not exactly, sir. I don’t think you’re grasping what I’m trying to point out.”
Raine kept going from room to room, his servant bustling around his heels. And Hampton carried on complaining, but his master wasn’t listening any more. He went into his father’s study, and his golden gaze darted about.
It alighted on a dark rectangle lying on the huge mahogany desk. An old notebook. He snatched it up, flipped through it quickly. It was full of scribbled spells.
He already had an armful of them, written not merely in books. There were strips of parchment. Sheets of vellum. There were spells engraved in brass and copper. One was even woven into a tapestry – he believed that was the handiwork of his grandmother. Every bit of magic knowledge that his family had accumulated down the generations. He had been prowling round the house, collecting every scrap of it that he could find.
Because it had occurred to him that if he couldn’t solve this problem by way of the Oon, then the only course available to him was Violet Tiswell. Which meant somehow reaching back through time.
Time was a dimension wasn’t it, the same way space was? He believed some German boffin had proved that to be the case some decades back. And he already knew that he could fling himself great distances through the ether. And so why not time as well?
When he’d tried it, though – when he’d attempted Temporal Projection – it hadn’t worked. Nothing had happened. He’d stood there with his eyes shut, making funny grunting noises, going nowhere.
The Amethyst couldn’t be blocking him. He was planning to go nowhere near it.
And it couldn’t be that Temporal Projection was impossible. Nothing was impossible, if you used the right magic. It was simply that he couldn’t visualize precisely how to do it.
“I’m begging you, sir, reconsider,” said his servant, breaking up his concentration once again.
Raine frowned. Hampton had his best interests at heart, he knew. The man was deeply loyal. But he was being an absolute nuisance right now, butting in continually while he was trying to apply himself.
“If you want to help, then be a chum,” he murmured. “Go fetch me my books on counter-magic measures.”
“But those are on the far side of the house,” Hampton pointed out.
“Exactly.”
Woodard snapped his fingertips.
Hampton had the time for one truncated yelp, then vanished. Raine ought to have felt guilty, but he smiled instead. Ah, peace at last.
It would be several minutes before Hampton – who was pretty large and generally moved rather slowly – found his way back through the manor’s twisting corridors. Time enough, surely, to discover the solution to this dreadful business. Woodard started rummaging through the secret knowledge that he had collected.
Here was a spell to make kitchen herbs grow faster. Interesting, but of utterly no use.
Here was one to conjure up a basilisk. And there were others, when he studied them, that involved making changes to the weather, making a loved one very happy, improving one’s night vision, turning milk into bourbon – that must have been Uncle Vance – and getting rid of a house’s cobwebs. He studied each one briefly before flinging it aside.
And the longer that he worked at it, the larger the pile of discarded jottings grew. There was over a century of arcane knowledge here. But nothing that addressed the subject that he was concerned with.
“Oh, confound it!”
Woodard straightened, dumping the remainder round his shoes. He was never going to find what he was looking for this way. And why make this kind of effort in the first place, when you could simply use a spell instead? A spell to find another spell. The idea amused and intrigued him.
He stretched out both his arms in front of him, tiny gleaming sparks leaping between his fingertips. And then began intoning.
“Words and words and yet more words. And reading them is for the birds. Stir yourselves and make some sense. This much I command you.”
The papers on the floor rustled, like a swift breeze had passed over them. Their edges lifted, quivering gently. And then …
The written words actually started rising from the pages and the copper plates. The individual letters broke apart and floated up into the air. Hundreds, and then thousands of them. A rising, swirling cloud of them, made up of vowels and consonants.
They lifted to head height, then started churning. Woodard found himself confronted with a dark tornado made up of the alphabet.
Why, this was considerably more bewildering than it had been before. How could he find what he wanted this way?
He spread his arms out to the sides, and tried another type of enchantment, to bring things into place.
“Put a stop to this confusion. Bring this to a swift conclusion. Tell me what I wish to know. I must be on my way.”
Every single floating letter suddenly caught fire. And the effect on each of them was different. Many of them – the majority, in fact – fizzled and crumbled away into nothingness. But those that were left behind began to glow a brilliant golden color, the exact same as his shining eyes.
They started moving purposefully through the air, rearranging themselves. Into lines. Then sentences. And then whole paragraphs. Woodard clapped his hands delightedly.
And in another few seconds, it was done. The lettering stopped moving altogether.
Raine paused briefly, then began to read out what had formed. Once that he had reached the end, he closed his eyes and projected his spirit.
Deadly Violet - 04 Page 17