“Tom Renfield. I don’t know what this will mean. It might just mean—changing owners.”
“It’s got to be better than here,” she said. “Do it.”
Tom looked at Laura. She nodded.
—Peregrine? Is there a procedure?
The ghost hesitated, frowned.—You need to connect her to you so she can call you if she is in trouble.
Tom looked at his ring. The stone still glowed bright silver. He took Maggie’s left hand in his right and pressed his seal into her palm. “I release you from all earlier bonds. I shield you from the spinning of others by anyone but myself. By—by Powers past and present, by the good will of the House, by my unknown heritage, I free you to go your own way with only this tie: that you may call me when you need help, and I will come as quickly as I can to aid you.” As the words came out of his mouth, he felt heat on his tongue, in his throat. His voice sounded strange to him, formalized, stronger than usual.
He lifted his hand from hers. His hand throbbed with something not quite pain, and a tiny flower of heat blossomed in his chest. In the center of Maggie’s palm there was a still-smoking brand, but its lines were silver, not red. It showed the profile of a Roman soldier. Maggie flexed her fingers, then made a fist over the mark and looked up at Tom, her lips compressed. “All right. Thanks. I’m out of here.” She glanced toward the tunnel leading outside. Faintly sounds of music, talk, and laughter came in. The scent of dying leaves drifted in on the warm autumn air, the strange spice of change.
“I’ll drive you to town,” Tom said to Maggie. “Is that okay, Laura? It changes our immediate plans. But I want to get away. I haven’t even called Bert to tell him where his cab is.”
“You couldn’t; we don’t have phones. Anyway, Mr. Forester will have told Mr. Noone you took me out here, and he won’t be expecting you back. I’ll come with you. Or—” She frowned.
“What?”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk with Mom and Dad yet, and I’d like to. Maybe I’ll stay one more night. I can get a ride into Arcadia with somebody tomorrow, I expect.”
“I’ll miss you. Will you be safe?”
“Maybe you should brand me too?” she said. He couldn’t tell whether she was joking.
“Ring calls to ring,” said the gecko.
“Oh,” said Laura, looking at her scarab. “All right. I’ll be fine, Tom.”
Tom looked at Eddie.
Eddie pointed to a place on his upper arm between the tattoos of a skull and crossbones and a snake coiled around a dagger. “Can you do it here?”
“Sure.” Tom repeated the ceremony, felt the same peculiar symphony of heat in hand, heart, and throat. “You have anything to pack?”
“No.” Eddie looked down at his sleeveless T-shirt, jeans, and work boots. “This is everything I brought. Let’s get out of here while they’re all celebrating.”
Tom kissed Laura. She held him a long moment, then released him and sighed.
Maggie, Eddie, and Tom ran through the house toward the front, Maggie and Eddie keeping them on track. The side tunnels confused Tom. He glanced behind once, and was not surprised to see that Peregrine was drifting after them.
The taxi was the only car parked in front of the house, and the keys were still in it. The three of them climbed into the front seat. Before starting the car, Tom leaned back.—Peregrine? You coming?
—I may come if you let me into your body as you did before. If you give me permission, I may root in you instead of in this home ground. You are not a branch of my tree, but you have connected with it by blood-tie, so I may do that. I desire this, because then I can help to train you, and the child when it comes.
“We going?” Eddie asked.
“One minute. I’m talking to a ghost.”
“Jeeze,” said Eddie, shrugging. He went back to staring at the front door of the house as if willing it to stay closed.
Tom thought about Peregrine. He opened his hand and looked at the palm, searching for a clue from his past—the gold heart he had picked up as a child. Hannah had lived in that heart, and the heart had melted into his hand and into his soul. With her inside, he had stopped feeling alone. But he wasn’t alone now; he had Laura, and these two people he had just bound to him somehow.
Peregrine had been a friend to him. Peregrine understood what was going on with Laura’s family. That would be valuable, now and in the future.
—If you come inside, who gets to talk? Tom asked.
Peregrine laughed.—I would speak only from necessity, or if you gave me permission.
—Would you be able to get out and leave me alone for periods of time?
—I could bide in your possessions, if you have any dear to you.
—Yeah, but would you?
A pause. A chuckle.—Yes, I would.
—All right. I give you leave to root in me.
The ghost came through the car’s door and sat down, vanishing into Tom. He felt a faint shivery chill all through him, a brief ache in his bones, and then he felt normal again.
He sat forward and started the car. Maggie, beside him on the seat, let out a relieved sigh and leaned back as they bucketed down the weedy driveway. “They sure don’t care about road upkeep,” Tom grumbled.
“They almost never use the road,” said Eddie. “Hey, what’s going on in town, anyway? Pops ever say anything about me? Is he okay?”
“He was really upset when you disappeared,” Tom said. “He didn’t figure you for the type to run off without a word. But Fred told him—” Tom opened his mouth, then paused, amazed, listening again to what Fred had said, the vague memory he had searched for before: “Fred told him a Chapel Hollow sirene got her claws in you.” He hadn’t understood it at the time, but now it was starting to make sense. “Pops was sad. He’s been advertising for help ever since.” Tom had done some work for Pops when nothing else needed his attention.
“Anybody apply?”
“Nobody he was satisfied with. You remember Peter Wetherell, Trailer Court Hank’s son? He tried it for a while but Pops said he was always falling asleep, and—well, about six people tried it, but Pops found fault with all of them. Mostly he made do with temps or tried to go it alone. You gonna stay in Arcadia, Eddie?”
“Am I safe there?”
The car plunged over potholes, rocking up and down. Tom said, “I don’t know these Boltes very well. I only met them yesterday.”
“Places are about equal to them,” said Maggie. “They don’t go too far afield unless they’re on the warpath, but then nothing stops them.”
Eddie stared at her, surprised all over again. “I—I’ll go back to Pops, if he’ll have me. You staying in Arcadia, Tom?”
“That’s up to Laura. Her job’s more important than mine, and she works in cities, so probably not. I’m a janitor; I can work almost anywhere.”
“You’re a janitor?” Maggie asked. She made a rude noise.
“Driving a cab is my second vocation,” said Tom, striving for dignity.
“Where does all this—magic fit in?”
“I don’t know.” Tom hunched forward, gripping the steering wheel. “Until yesterday, I was almost normal. I didn’t need or use any of this. Then, when I came out to the Hollow, it was like going to the Twilight Zone, except…Michael grabbed the cab off the road and flew it to the house, and I felt that in some weird way I had come home. All these questions came up, and I had answers for them. They didn’t even bother me that much. I rose to it.”
“So you’re one of them?” Eddie asked.
“Guess so.”
A large black bird flew in front of the windshield, squawking. It beat against the glass.
“Oops,” said Tom. “Loose end.” He pulled the car over to a narrow verge and stopped. “Stay here, guys, okay?” He climbed out of the car and leaned against it, looking at the raven. “What do you want?”
“Turn me back!” It leapt for his face. He waved a hand, reinforcing the gesture with a thought to his net ar
ound the raven, and sent the bird spinning away. It recovered, leaping up and down in the dusty road. “Turn me back, you dumb limpana.”
“Ask nicely, or forget it.” Tom crossed his arms.
“Where are you going with those tanganar?”
“They’re mine now.”
“Give me that girl. She’s mine, and I want her back.”
“Who is that?” Maggie asked. He heard her close the car door, and glanced back. She stood beside the car.
“Uncle Carroll,” Tom told her.
Her eyes widened. Then her eyebrows lowered into a fierce frown, and her hands clenched into fists. “Make a cage around him, Tommy. Maybe I can teach him to sing.”
Tom stared at her. Tears of rage shone in her eyes, and she spoke through clenched teeth.
“She speaks!” said the raven, hopping closer. “Give me that girl.”
“How big are you now, beast? How big are you now?” The color had washed from her face, leaving her pale, her eyes an intense gray-blue. She stalked toward the raven, her hands opening and closing.
The raven cocked its head, staring at the girl. “Careful,” it said. “Remember the last time I was a bird?”
She gasped, her hands pressing against her chest over her heart.
“You agreed to come with me then. Come with me now, Maggie.”
Tom heard the golden thread in Carroll’s voice, the bait angling for a bite.
“Come home and talk to me,” Carroll said. “I never knew you could talk. Did this akenar cast a spell on you to give you a voice?”
Maggie glanced at Tom, her breathing ragged and deep. One of her hands floated toward him.
—Use Othersight, Peregrine murmured.
Tom blinked, and saw golden tendrils reaching from the black bird to the girl, twining around her head. Tom reached out and pinched the threads. They tarnished and fell apart instantly. Maggie straightened. Her eyes looked enormous and stormy. “Always had a voice, you stupid paragar, but I hid it! There’s a part of me you’ve never had.” She took a step toward the raven. “And now I’m big and you’re little, and—”
The bird fluttered and dipped and muttered.
—Spellcasting, Peregrine told Tom.
Tom rubbed his hands together, imagining that he spun smooth silver metal between his palms. Heat tingled under the skin of his hands. An almost weightless substance grew around his hands as he rubbed them. Open-handed, he threw what he was crafting toward Maggie, instructing it to form a shield around her. Sweat trickled down his back, under his arms, beaded on his forehead and upper lip. He watched as shimmering silver streamed from him to form a globe around her. An instant later something red spun from the raven and struck the shield, and Tom felt it as if the shield were an extended portion of his skin. The spell felt soft, fibrous, and sticky, but it slid off the shield and melted.
The raven screamed and leapt at Tom again. He closed his hands and opened them, imagining a globe enclosing the bird. Suddenly the raven was trapped in a bubble just big enough for it, stubbing its wings against the sides, peeking with its beak, squawking, its noise muted by its prison. Tom’s hands burned with a heat that did not consume them, but hurt anyway.
Maggie picked up the bubble and threw it toward a rock. “Hey!” Tom cried, and reached with something other than flesh to the bubble, which was still connected to him as the shield around Maggie was. He stopped the bubble in mid-air, though Carroll still spun inside. “No, Maggie.”
“You don’t know what he did to me. How he helped me, took care of me, promised to cherish…then…how he…raped me…” Tears streaked down her face. “He uses everyone. He’s the worst of the lot. Want him dead.”
“I’m not going to help you kill him.”
The bird quieted in its globe.
Maggie said, “Do it on my own, then.”
“Do you want to tie a knot around the worst thing that’s happened to you and drag it with you everywhere you go? Don’t do it, Maggie.”
“It’s not the worst—” she began, frustrated, then asked, “Is that an order—Master?”
“A suggestion,” he said. Her smoky eyes troubled him.
She glared at him, then at the bird, suspended in a bubble in the air. She climbed back into the car. Eddie patted her shoulder.
Tom closed the car door, picked the bubble out of the air and walked away into the woods with it. When he reached a clearing, he sat on a log and set the bubble on the ground and waited.
Subdued, the bird stood silent.
Tom twitched his fingers, inviting the bubble to release its captive and return to him. It dissolved. Coolness flowed into his fingers, soothing the heat. The raven hopped away, then returned.
“Why did you hurt Maggie?” Tom asked.
“Hurt her? I rescued her from a brute of a tanganar. I asked her if she wanted to come with me, and she said yes. Well, not said, because she never did talk—think of the power in that girl, to keep silent all this time—but she indicated assent. Her choice.” The raven cocked its head, studying him.
“Did you rape her?” Tom felt a strong sense of unreality stealing over him. He was asking a bird strange questions, and it was answering them. On the other hand, whether the bird was telling the truth…He remembered the blue flame Laura had conjured up in front of his lips. He hadn’t learned that yet. He would have to consult with Peregrine.
“Rape?” said the bird. It extended a wing, preened a feather. “What is that? We strove together to summon a descendant. I honored her with the promise of my generation. She defied me, but I still took care of her. She is my favorite. I have always liked her. She is healthy, has food and shelter, everything she needs. And now, a voice—she never told me she could speak. She—I want her back.”
“Forget it. She wants to leave, and I’ve told her I’ll protect her.”
The bird cocked its head, looked at him out of one eye. After a moment, it said, “It’s just as it was when I first met her. She clings to a new protector. See how easy? How tempting?” The bud bobbed its head at him.
Unnerved, Tom sat back. For a moment, he wondered about his motives, but then he remembered what Maggie had said about Carroll using people. He blinked, saw a haze of lavender between himself and the bird. He waved a hand at it, and it dissipated. His mind cleared. Carroll had no stake in giving him real information, and every reason to try and deceive him. Whatever Tom and Maggie worked out, he shouldn’t talk to Carroll about it. He changed topics.
“Why have you picked on me since the moment we met?” he asked Carroll.
“You’re an outsider, a peasant, not fit to associate with my niece. You are not bound to us in the ways that give us structure. We don’t know what you bring us. And Laura, she should have married one of us. She’s no prize, but she has breeding potential. You came in and upset everything.”
“Not enough women to go around?”
“Not enough women, not enough babies, too many sickly…Besides, we needed information about you.”
“I know. That first spell you cast on me—was that your best shot?”
“It was only a temporary, but it dissolved faster than it should have. I must have gotten the words wrong. Except I never do that.” It cocked its head at him. It flew up to a branch of a nearby tree, then back to the ground. “Will you release me from this spell now?” it said at last, settling in the dust at his feet.
“Tried everything else, have you?”
It stared at him out of one eye.
“Do you promise to leave me alone?”
“Ashkali. I couldn’t keep a promise like that.”
“Promise to leave Maggie and Eddie alone.”
“I have no interest in Gwen’s fetch.”
Tom sighed. “What does that mean?”
“Your boy. I’m not at all interested in your boy. I find Gwen’s taste for exotics ridiculous.”
“Okay. You won’t bother Eddie. Now, tell me you’ll leave Maggie alone.”
The raven flipped
its wings and flew up to a low branch in a nearby tree. After a moment it returned. “I can’t leave her alone, because she is not alone; she is with you. This has no meaning.”
“Goodbye, Carroll,” said Tom, standing up.
“No! No. No one at the Hollow can unspell this. What do you want? Say it again.”
“Say you won’t bother Maggie.”
“I won’t bother Maggie,” it said, then hissed something.
“Swear by the Powers and Presences,” Tom said.
“I do so vow,” it said, and bobbed its head.
—Peregrine?
—Yes, Tom.
—Is it safe to release him?
—No. It never will be, especially when he has modified this promise with a whisper; nevertheless, you must release him.
—I could turn him into something else if he bothers us again.
—Next time he will be armed against it. But I suspect you could overcome such armor.
Tom leaned forward, studying Carroll with Othersight. A shadow of his human form crouched above the bird; the bird was wrapped round with silver threads as intricate and beautiful as snowflakes under a magnifying glass.—Silver, Tom thought, and felt the web wake to him.—Silver, let the Carroll shape come back. Relax, so that he no longer feels you, but stay with him wherever he goes. Carroll. Carroll.
The shadow Carroll and the bird melted into one another within the embrace of silver, and then Carroll stood up, naked and human, and stared at Tom. His hazel eyes looked thoughtful. He pursed his lips, then held out his hand.
—Is that a trick? Tom asked Peregrine.
—I don’t know.
Tom shook hands with Carroll. Carroll’s hand was cool, his grip strong but not punishing. Tom said, “I assume you can get home from here.”
“Yes.” Carroll dived up into the air and flew away.
Tom sighed, shoved his hands into his pants pockets, and walked back to the car.
Chapter 9
The Thread that Binds the Bones Page 8