Bud and Summer each grabbed one of my sleeves and steered me down the alley toward the sidewalk. I let them. While I could see—barely—I couldn’t see well enough to drive. And my tears were still flowing, my nose was running, and I was still trying to blink the pain away. If the cops found me here, they’d snatch me right off the street.
I heard Bud reassure a passing pedestrian that I’d just had my heart broken. I didn’t know where we were going. “Someone tried to kill Arne. We have to look for him.”
“Oh, we’ll look for him, all right,” Bud said.
Something was wrong. Bud and Summer were part of Arne’s crew, just like Lenard, and just like I used to be, and right now they were being too casual.
A bad feeling came over me. I turned toward Summer. She’d let her hair grow out so that it almost reached her shoulders. Her face was broad and tanned, her pale blue eyes sullen in the heat. Her sleeveless jogging shirt was damp with sweat and hung untucked over a pair of shorts with an elastic waistband. Had she been one of the shooters? She could certainly conceal a gun at her back, but a gas mask, too? I didn’t believe it.
Bud was the same. He had a loose T-shirt over belted shorts, and while he’d cut off his mullet, he still wore that stupid bolo tie. He could have hidden a gun at the small of his back—or maybe under his growing beer belly—but not a gas mask.
Arne had taught them better than to dump something like that right at the scene of the crime, so I figured they weren’t the shooters. Of course, they could have been lookouts or backup. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Tear gas is toxic,” Summer said. “There’s a Ralphs up the street. We’ll pick up some stuff that will help there.”
“At a supermarket?” I asked. “How do you know—” A fit of coughing cut off the rest of my question, and a rolling drop of sweat suddenly blinded my right eye.
“Are you seriously asking me how I know what to do about tear gas?” I’d forgotten that Summer’s hippie parents—her hated, hated parents—had marched in dozens of street protests over the years, and Summer herself had probably been dosed with the stuff several times.
“Then we’ll get out of here,” Bud added. “Robbie is going to want to talk to you.”
Robbie was Arne’s second-in-command, and we had always gotten along well—better, in fact, than I’d gotten along with anyone. I wanted to talk to him, too.
But first I needed to get away from Bud and Summer. Arne had said Wally King’s name, and that meant bad things were happening. He was the reason I was mixed up with the Twenty Palace Society. The spell book he’d stolen, the predators he’d summoned, and the deaths he’d caused almost two years before had ruined my life.
I needed to call the society, and I needed to do it in private. Those bastards take their secrecy seriously. And I needed my boss. I needed Annalise. I didn’t want to face Wally King without her again.
“We’re parked just up here in the lot,” Bud said as we turned a corner. I blinked my eyes clear again and saw a field of colored metal gleaming in the sun. They led me to a white pickup and let me sit on the gate.
Summer stepped away from me. “Bud, go inside and get what he needs.”
“You sure?” he asked, as though nervous about leaving her with me.
“Go.” She sounded irritated. He went.
I squinted in her direction. I wanted privacy to make my call, but she didn’t seem ready to give it to me. “I’m glad you and Bud are still together,” I said.
“We’re married now,” she answered, her voice flat.
“That’s great.” There was nowhere for the conversation to go after that, so it just sat there. Now that we had stopped moving, my eyes began to sting even more. I raised my hands to rub them but thought better of it. “I need to make a call,” I said. “In private.”
She didn’t move. “To who?”
“Nobody you know.” Since she wasn’t moving away, I hopped off the gate and walked along the side of the truck to the wall. Then I started toward the sidewalk.
She trailed behind me.
“Wait by the truck, Summer,” I said. “I’m not kidding. This is a private call.”
“You’re calling the cops, aren’t you?”
Out of reflex, I cursed at her. If that’s who she thought I was now, she couldn’t be trusted. It was the same as saying We are enemies.
My reaction must have mollified her a little. She sulkily stepped back, but not because she was afraid of me. I’d never known her to be afraid of anyone.
A young mother came toward me, navigating her baby stroller through the narrow space between the whitewashed wall and parked cars. I stepped around her, then looked toward the truck.
Summer wasn’t there. I glanced around the lot and inside the truck. Nothing. I dropped to the ground and peered under the cars. Nothing, again. She’d vanished.
I walked to the sidewalk, darting through a line of cars pulling in from the street. The store was too far for her to have gone inside, but where was she? I didn’t like that she seemed to have blinked out of existence within ten feet of me. Just like Caramella. Had she transported herself far away? Where?
Even now, as evening was coming on, the traffic noise was ever present. I stepped into a bus shelter for some relative quiet and took out my phone. It had speed-dial buttons, but none had the number I needed. That was only in my memory.
I was feeling jumpy as I dialed. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what. The phone picked up after four rings.
“Hello? This is Mariana.” She had an accent I couldn’t place, but I was never good with accents.
“This is Ray Lilly. I need my boss.”
“Mr. Lilly, this isn’t how you are supposed to make this request. What is the situation?”
I knew I was breaking the rules, but my instincts were ringing like fire alarms, and I couldn’t ignore them. “I can’t go into it on the phone.”
“Mr. Lilly,” she said in a tone that was almost scolding, “you aren’t calling from an unsecure location, I hope.”
“Considering what I’ve been seeing here, I don’t think a secure location is possible.”
“I understand.” She had dropped the scolding tone. “The phone GPS has given me your location. Return to that location at this time each day for the next four days.” I glanced at my watch. It was just after seven-thirty. “You will be met.”
She hung up and so did I. There was a trash receptacle right next to me, but I was supposed to ditch the phone where no one would notice. And while I couldn’t see anyone nearby …
I swept my right arm away from me and struck something invisible a foot from my elbow. It was sticky, just like Caramella’s slap. I heard a hiss and the scuffle of shoes on concrete.
I grabbed the invisible shape, shoving it toward the bench and knocking it off balance. It suddenly darkened, becoming an outline with a misty blackness inside, just like the Empty Spaces.
Damn. That’s exactly what it was. I was looking into the Empty Spaces.
I would have freaked out if I’d had the time, but the vision vanished suddenly, and I was holding Summer by the shoulders. She was staring at me with wild, dangerous eyes. “Let go of me, Ray,” she said, and grabbed my wrist with her bare hand. My skin began to itch and burn under her grip.
I pulled her to her feet and spun her around. She tried to resist—and she was strong—but she wasn’t as strong as me. I yanked a pistol out of the back of her waistband, then patted the pockets of her gym shorts. They were empty.
The urge to run was unbearable, but I knew it would be useless. They still had Bud’s truck. “Keep away, Summer.” My breath was coming in gasps. I barely recognized my own voice. “Don’t make a bigger mistake than you already have.”
I backed toward the lot, holding the gun on her. My mind was racing. There were no other pedestrians nearby, but someone in a passing car might see me and call the cops. For a moment I tried to imagine what I would say if a patrol car suddenly pulled
up to the curb, but I couldn’t focus on it.
Summer stood in the bus shelter with her arms at her sides, watching me. I bolted back into the lot.
Bud was standing beside his pickup, scanning the lot for us. He had a little shopping bag in his hand. I ran toward him. Once he spotted me, he patted the truck bed.
“Back here, Ray. You’re giving off fumes. We’ll get you showered and changed as soon as we can, but first”—he held up the shopping bag—“we’ll mix these and—”
I came up next to him, and he saw the gun in my hand. “Give me the keys, Bud.”
His good-ole-boy grin twisted with disappointment. “I thought you were out of the car-stealing business.”
“Keep back. Don’t touch me. Give me the keys. I’ll drop your truck within a few blocks of the Bigfoot Room, but I’m not going anywhere with you. And don’t touch me. Get it? Don’t touch me! I’m not going anywhere with you!”
“Don’t get all wigged out, Ray. All right? Don’t. Here’s the stuff you need for your skin.” He tossed the grocery bag onto the passenger seat. “Just mix it one to one. And don’t scratch my truck.” He set his keys on the hood.
While he backed away, I picked them up. I wondered where Summer was—I should have made her come with me. I should have made her stay visible. I imagined her behind me, knife in hand. I imagined the point digging into the back of my neck or into my kidneys, and my skin prickled all over. My breath rushed in and out of me, and even though everything was different I felt that same urge to scream that I’d felt that last night in Washaway, just before the killing started. My finger tightened on the trigger.
No. No, I wasn’t going to shoot Bud. I was in control of myself. I was in control.
I climbed into the truck. Bud stood with his hands at his sides. If he’d been one of the shooters inside the Bigfoot Room, and I was ready to believe he was, he had a gun on him that I’d forgotten to take. I was screwing up, and that was going to get me killed. Either that, or I was going to have to kill him. I wasn’t ready for that. I started the engine and lurched out of the spot.
In a mild voice, Bud said: “My apartment keys are on that ring, you know.”
“Within a few blocks,” I told him, fighting the urge to flee flee flee. “You fucked up, Bud.”
“Robbie will still want to talk to you.”
“And I want to talk to him,” I said, and raced out of the lot. Summer stood by the entrance, watching me impassively. She was still there when I drove down the street.
I forced myself to take long, slow breaths. I looked down at my wrist. My skin had turned red and gotten inflamed where Summer’s little hand had touched me.
An idea occurred to me, and I lifted my arm toward the rearview mirror when I stopped at the next stoplight. My shirt was a henley, three buttons at the neck, no collar, and sleeves that reached just past my elbow. Both Summer and Bud had grabbed my arm where the sleeve covered it, but I couldn’t see any effect on my clothes. They weren’t sticky, discolored, or slowly dissolving.
The light turned green and I drove on. Could Bud turn invisible? I hadn’t seen him do it, and I hadn’t touched his skin, but something about the way he’d acted—as though he’d expected my reaction, just not so soon—made me think he could.
And Caramella. I thought she’d transported herself out of my room after that last, aborted slap, but maybe she’d hung around for a while, watching me sleep.
The idea gave me the shivers, and I almost blew through the next red light. Instead, I forced myself to calm down. Potato Face and his men hadn’t triggered this kind of response when they’d swarmed around me, but why should they? They were men. All they could do was kill me.
When the light changed, I parked the truck. I was only a block and a half away from the Bigfoot Room, and that was close enough. I didn’t like the idea of driving Bud’s truck when another drop of sweat could blind me.
I wiped my fingerprints off Summer’s gun. There was no reason to—the twisted-path spell on my chest altered the physical evidence I left behind, like fingerprints and DNA, making it impossible to pin me to a crime scene. It still felt good. Then I stuffed the weapon under the seat.
I opened the glove compartment. Sure enough, there was Summer’s purse. I flipped through it. There was no makeup—the only thing she had in common with her mother was her refusal to wear it. There was an address book and a billfold with a little cash inside. I was tempted to take the money to teach her a lesson about fooling around with magic, but I didn’t. Class hadn’t started yet.
I did take her address book. I flipped to the H and read the entry for Caramella Harris. She lived in Silver Lake.
There was only one more thing to do. I still had the cellphone the society had given me. If I turned it on and stuffed it into the back of the seat, the society would be able to locate them the same way they’d located me.
I didn’t do it. The risk that Bud or Robbie or someone else in the crew would find it and press REDIAL may have been slim, but I still wasn’t going to take the chance. Secrecy came first. I pocketed it, tossed the keys under the front seat, and picked up the grocery bag. Then I climbed out, leaving the driver’s window rolled down.
I walked back to the church and my car. There were police cars with flashing lights parked in front of the bar, and plenty of yellow tape on the sidewalk. I stopped at the corner to gawk a little; it would have looked suspicious if I hadn’t. A patrol cop looked at me, then looked away, uninterested.
I went to my car and drove away before a cop came close enough to smell the tear gas.
Summer and Caramella could turn invisible. Probably Bud could, too. I tried to figure who else should be on that list, but I didn’t know enough yet. I was sure Arne knew about it, even if he couldn’t vanish himself. I suddenly understood why there was sawdust on the floor of the Bigfoot Room.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst part was the way Summer had looked when she’d dropped her invisibility—she’d looked like a doorway into the Empty Spaces. Nearly two years earlier, when I’d first come face-to-face with predators, magic, the Twenty Palace Society, and all the rest, I’d cast a spell that let me look into the Empty Spaces.
That had only been a peek, though. I’d learned enough to scare the hell out of myself, but not much more. And it wasn’t like the society was going to explain things to me; they didn’t exactly offer night classes.
What little I understood about the Empty Spaces was this: it surrounds the world we live on and is, at the same time, beside it. It’s a void of mist and darkness, and creatures live there.
The society calls them predators, but they aren’t like the animals you find here on the earth. Coming from this other, alternate space, they have their own physics and their own biology. Some are living wheels of fire, some swarms of lights, some massive serpents in which every scale is the face of one of its meals, some schools of moving, singing boulders. When they come to our world, they are “only partly real,” as my boss once explained. They’re creatures of magic, and can be used to do all sorts of strange and dangerous things … if the summoner can control them.
So they’re out there in that vast expanse, right beside us but unable to find us. And they’re hungry. One of them, allowed to run loose on our planet, would feed and feed and feed, possibly calling more of its kind, until there was nothing left but barren rock.
The entire reason the Twenty Palace Society existed, as far as I could tell, was to search out and destroy the summoning magic that called predators to our world, along with anyone who used that magic. They also kill predators when they find them.
But a human taking on a predator is like a field mouse trying to kill a barn owl. That’s why the society uses magic of its own. They don’t call predators—summoning magic is a killing offense, even for them—but as far as I could tell, everything else was fair game. The spells tattooed on my body and the ghost knife in my pocket were prime examples of that.
A car behind me honked, a
nd I realized I’d been sitting at a stop sign for nearly a minute, lost in thought. I pulled through the intersection, blinking my eyes clear.
And although it had been nearly two years, I’d instantly recognized the Empty Spaces when Summer had dropped her invisibility. If she’d gotten this ability through non-summoning magic like mine, that would be bad enough. The society would want to check her out and hunt down the spell book she’d used. And … damn, I hated to think it, but they would probably kill her just to be safe.
When people learned magic was real they often became obsessed with the power it gave them, and they did dangerous things to get it, like summon predators they couldn’t control. I’d seen it more than once, and it was why I was so alarmed when Arne had said Wally King’s name. Wally hadn’t just summoned predators; he’d killed people to steal spells from them.
But were Caramella and Summer his accomplices or his victims?
In the end, that might not even matter. That vision of the Empty Spaces suggested that Summer got her power from a predator. Maybe it was inside her body like a parasite, maybe nearby, but it was connected to her somehow. I’d seen both. Maybe she didn’t know how dangerous it was, or even that it was there.
That predator, if that’s what it was, had to be destroyed. The big question was: could I destroy it, whatever it was, without killing my friends?
I kept driving west and pulled into the second park I saw. The grass was dead brown, but what did that matter to me? I carried the Ralphs grocery bag to a bench beneath a tree. There were two bottles inside: a liter bottle of water and a little blue bottle of liquid Maalox. The first thing I did was pour water over my wrist, washing away whatever acids Summer had left there. It didn’t stop hurting, but it stopped getting worse.
Then I guzzled some of the water. The heat was oppressive, and the sweat on my face made my eyes sting.
Once the water bottle had as much fluid as the Maalox did, I poured the antacid in and shook it up. It worked surprisingly well, and soon I’d rinsed off my face and hands completely.
Circle of Enemies: A Twenty Palaces Novel Page 5