by Rainy Kaye
They looked…hungry.
I focused on my closer surroundings. Straight below was purple, and around me were plastic hills of green and purple. To my right sat a familiar gold throne with a mechanical joker king. He stared straight ahead with lifeless black eyes.
Around me, music blared.
I was on the main float. With an uncomfortable twist of my neck, I verified I was indeed strung up on one of the purple and green wrapped poles. The giant feathers from a mask prop arched over me on one side, providing some shade from the relentless sun.
I shifted a little to look at the shadow on the other side of the throne, trying not to draw too much attention to myself.
Randall was hanging unconscious from the pole on the opposite side of the float. Sasmita was nowhere to be seen.
I flicked my numb fingers, but no magic sparked.
Great. Jada probably needed to heat a leftover taco, while I was swinging like a living decoration for the parade. My shoulders felt moments from dislocating.
I tried to weigh my options but snickered to myself. I had none. I couldn’t break the ropes because none of them were touching my hands; hell, I could barely feel my arms at this point. Even if I did manage to free myself, I would then need to cut Randall loose and somehow escape with his unconscious body before I was caught again.
Caught by the demons that lined the streets, staring up at me.
What was this for? Just deranged amusement? I hadn’t challenged the mage. I didn’t even know where he was.
I had simply been trying to rescue my friend.
Had that put me at odds with the mage without me realizing it?
Well, why the hell wouldn’t it? Of course it did. Everything anymore had an implication I didn’t see until far too late.
Something just behind me moved. I turned my stiff neck to look, but the shadow was gone. Perhaps it had been a moving mechanical piece on the side of the float. This thing had all the bells and whistles.
In a flurry of activity, my ropes came loose from the pole. I fell straight down onto the float, my legs curling under me. I rocked forward and slammed my head into the ground.
Someone darted over me.
I popped upright as Joseph Stone fled across the float. He swung off the tip of one of the hats on the jester faces, launching himself past the throne, and landed next to Randall. With a deft move, he slashed an impressively large knife at Randall’s ropes. Randall’s limp body crashed to the ground. Joseph bent down, out of sight beyond the throne, and then emerged a moment later.
A masked demon came up over the edge of the float. Joseph spun around and stuck it straight in the heart. He yanked his knife free as he shoved the demon back with his foot. It staggered before falling over the side of the float.
Dizziness washed over me, and the crowd of demons below blurred in and out of focus.
Joseph swiveled around and charged back to me. I started to open my mouth, but he tugged me forward, so my head pressed into his legs. A moment later, the ropes on my arms loosened. I shook them off, and then twisted my legs around so I could reach the restraints on my ankles.
Joseph swiped at them with his knife, clamped the handle between his teeth, and yanked me to my feet.
Before I had even found my balance, he pulled the knife from his lips.
“You need to get the hell out of this city,” he said, gripping my shoulders. “I can’t find the mage, and things are just going to get worse. Get out. We’ll come back for your friend when he’s contained again.”
I tried to shake my head, but a new round of nausea rolled over me.
“I can’t…” I started.
The mechanical jester king stood up. It jerked around and shot an enormous blast of blue magic at us. I fell, but I didn’t hit ground. I just kept falling.
The pavement came up and slammed me in the back. I found myself staring up at the sky, my lungs no longer working.
My mind reeled.
The mechanical jester.
He wasn’t a float prop.
He was the mage.
The fear of that thought sparked me into action. I scrambled to my feet as the float rolled by.
Then I saw him: Joseph was lying on the street a few feet away.
He wasn’t moving.
I hurried over to him, my limbs and joints burning, but the pain was taken over by the tightening in my mind.
“No.” The word was soft, simple, and utterly devastated.
I crouched down next to Joseph. My hand hovered inches from his chest. I couldn’t touch him. He wasn’t the kind of man I could just…touch without asking. No more than I would rush at the Pope.
His head was turned to the side, and blood covered his face.
I leaned forward and, without making contact with him, listened.
He wasn’t breathing.
Could he be dead, just like that? Was it possible that this man trained and sent to capture the dark witches and mages would be offed so easily?
It wasn’t easy, though. This mage was one of the most powerful men to ever live. He had sucked up energy from the earth itself in the beginning of the Middle Ages, enough that he caused globally recorded destruction. He had siphoned more since he had been released from his painting.
All of that had been contained in that one blast. He had just been biding his time, waiting for Joseph to let his guard down.
Randall and I had been bait.
My chest squeezed so hard, I thought my lungs might collapse. Joseph had been a true hero, the kind that was written down in stories and retold and exaggerated. He would be larger than life one day, and I felt, somewhere inside, that he had earned it.
I didn’t know him, not really, but I had now faced two of the seven dark witches and mages, and I couldn’t imagine what sort of soul willingly went up against them. Someone better than me. Braver, for sure. He had known they could best him. He had known that a single wrong move would be his end.
He’d come anyway. He had done more than that—he had tried to save Randall and me. He had saved Randall and me.
I tore my gaze from him and took in the street. The onlookers—they were human once. The dark mage’s magic had corrupted them, but that wasn’t who they were behind the masks. Or who they had been, at any rate.
This whole city had been the pride of its state, and in some ways, its nation. Now it was mostly rubble.
It wasn’t just here, either. The same had happened to my hometown. The same was still going down in five more places around the world.
Now, Joseph was dead. There was no one to stop the madness. No one to put these terrifying creatures back in their cages.
No one to save us. Their magic would keep spreading until it seeped past the city limits. What happened then?
Down the street, running toward me, was Sasmita. She came up to me, panting.
“Randall,” she said between gasps, pointing in the direction she had come. “He was lying in the path of the parade. I tugged him out of the way, but I need your help getting him somewhere away from…”
She gestured around her, seemingly as lost for words as I felt.
I nodded, but my attention drifted back to Joseph’s body.
Sasmita seemed to notice him then, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.
“The mage killed him,” I said, voice hollow.
For a long moment, she didn’t respond. Then she slowly turned to face me, panic dancing in her eyes. “What do we do now?”
23
The realization that Sasmita was as lost as I was proved to be unsettling. She knew how the espial maps worked. She knew how to put up shields and how to mentor a less-talented witch such as myself. She knew how to take down Winston.
But the dark mage was beyond even her capabilities.
“I have to go,” I said, voice soft.
The mage remained on his elaborate float. I couldn’t quite look at him, as if it would draw his attention—and ire.
“I came here to
find Fiona,” I said, “and I’m assuming the moving dot was the mage all along. We need to get to the other one then.”
Sasmita ran her tongue on the inside of her bottom lip, staring straight ahead at the float. “I can’t go with you. I’m sorry, but I have to strike while I know where he is.”
“Are you insane?” I turned to face her. “He just killed Joseph fuckin’ Stone, the man who was apparently trained to defeat the mage. You’re signing your fate if you try to take him on. Besides, do you even know where the portrait is?”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head tightly. “I don’t need the painting. I’m not putting him back…I mean, that was never my intention.”
An uncomfortable silence wedged between us, wrapping its arms over our shoulders. Would the mage just continue to run rampant on the streets of New Orleans? What happened if he spread farther?
Not to mention the other five dark witches and mages. From what Joseph had said, they would be freed by now too and if they were doing half as much destruction as the mage here and the witch in Green River had, the world had no idea what it was in for.
We had barely defeated Winston, and he was a wall.
I rested my hand on Sasmita’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” I said, without looking at her. “I have to save Fiona.”
She nodded, shoulders squared, back straight, poised as if ready to take the mage. And she was, for some reason. I still didn’t understand what she was doing, but there was no point asking now. Her answer wouldn’t change my decision.
“You can take my car,” she said, nodding away from the parade. “I’m not going to be able to outrun, or out drive him. I’ll have to go underground once I’m done. I hope you find your friend. Sincerely.”
She pushed a little smile at me.
I squeezed her arm and released her. “Good luck with…whatever it is you’re doing.”
Tears slid across her eyes, but she blinked them back.
My heart sank to my stomach. She was not delusional, not under any misunderstanding of how powerful the mage was; she had to take him on, anyway.
I couldn’t imagine what had put her at personal odds with him.
Down the street, something moved. I stood up on tiptoes to get a better view through the crowd of demons—no longer interested in us now that they had succeeded in stopping Joseph Stone—as Randall came charging toward us.
He slowed as he reached us, breathing hard, and slightly hunched over. “What’s—”
“Joseph is dead,” I said, stepping around Sasmita to link my arm with his. “The mage got him.”
Randall looked between us. “So, does he like, regenerate or something?”
“Uh…” I grimaced, teeth clenched. “I don’t think so.”
“We should probably—”
“Find Fiona,” I cut in. I didn’t want to hear if he thought we should try to take on the mage ourselves. He would be right, of course, but I wasn’t ready for right, moral, or heroic. I just wanted to find Fiona and get the hell out of here.
It wasn’t going to go that easily. I had wound up helping put away the dark witch in Green River; something told me I was ending up in the same place here too, but I would give a good try at evading that lofty responsibility. Maybe I could come up with someone else more practical, more fitting.
Randall sucked air between his teeth and twitched.
I narrowed my eyes to inspect him. “Are you injured?”
“Mm, I might have cracked a rib…or something,” he said, his breath hitching. “Unless one of you ladies happen to be holding out on magical healing powers, we should get going.”
I glanced at Sasmita. “You sure about the car?”
“Positive.” She pointed farther into the distance. “It’s back that way. I followed the demon things on foot when they took you two to the parade.”
I leaned forward and gave her a quick hug before prodding Randall onward down the street. The party demons shuffled out of our way as we headed in the direction Sasmita had indicated, and I kept my attention to the rubble, trying to orientate myself enough to find the car. My soles slid on debris as I hurried forward.
“This way, I think,” Randall said, nudging my shoulder with his. “Let’s hope the keys are still there.”
“And that map,” I said.
The car stood in the middle of the street, all four doors open. Nearly a dozen demons mulled about in groups of two and threes, but they kicked at the ground and pushed at rubble, not at all interested in our presence.
Hesitantly, I moved forward, but they barely acknowledged our presence. I darted to the car, Randall behind me, and we split to close the back doors before diving into the front. As I slid behind the steering wheel, I grabbed the keys, still in the ignition, and turned. The car started on the first try.
In the passenger seat, Randall twisted to paw around in the back. I shifted the car into drive and eased down on the gas, trying to discern where to go. Caved in buildings scattered everywhere, forming a maze.
I must be the rat, then.
Randall slid around to face forward in his seat, clutching the map. He breathed in deeply through his nose a few times, and his eyes narrowed.
“Hurts pretty bad, I guess?” I asked, glancing between him and the road as I inched us forward.
“It’s, uh, not pleasant,” he said, but smoothed the map on his lap so I was able to see it as well when I looked over. “I’ll guide. Keep going forward as far as you can or turn left.”
“Gotcha.”
Together, we made our way through an intermittently slow path toward our dot. Every few minutes, I feared we were straying the wrong direction, but Randall assured we were making progress.
Our surroundings gave way to open green and familiar tall thin trees draped with moss.
It wasn’t until the building came into view that I realized the dot centered over the house where the underground tunnel had led us.
24
I killed the engine and looked at Randall. “What do you think it means?”
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.
“The house,” I said, gesturing at the windshield. “The wielders were there, as evident by the obliterated front porch. I even found that necklace…”
Lifting one hip, I felt around in my pants pocket until I found the necklace I had stolen from the property earlier and held it up. Magic tingled across my fingers, and I grit my teeth as I remembered how the ghost woman at the Dark Bazaar had informed me that the necklace wasn’t the least bit enchanted.
I called shenanigans, but it wasn’t even on my radar as a problem that needed to be dealt with right now.
Sighing, I removed the keys from the ignition. “I suppose we should check out this house more thoroughly.”
“It’s what we do,” Randall said with no inflection at all and pushed open his door. He winced a little as he stood.
I slid out and, stuffing the necklace back into my pocket, followed by the keys, rounded the front of the car to join him. We stood together, staring at the rubble of broken columns and entablature piled in a heap in front of the door.
“Let’s go through the back,” he said, and headed toward the side of the house.
I followed after him, scoping the area as I went, looking for any signs of company. We did not need to run into wielders again. Randall was injured, maybe more than he was letting on, and while I couldn’t account for any broken bones, I had devolved to barely lifting my feet or straightening my shoulders as I walked. Much longer, I might drag my knuckles.
The back of the house proved to be clear of any excitement, and the nearest entrance door stood open, as well as one farther down. I wasn’t that concerned—the last time we had been here, we hadn’t exactly locked up nicely—but I did pause in the doorway to look both directions before proceeding.
We entered into a dining room, with a white antique French provincial table and matching chairs with padding. Above it hung a crowned empire chan
delier.
“Where do you think we should start the search?” I whispered, flicking magic embers to the ground to verify I was loaded up.
“In this room,” Randall said with a wry smile. “And then the next. And the next.”
“Thanks,” I said but I let out a breathy laugh.
I sidled closer to him as we made our way from the dining room into the sitting room we had passed through earlier. As we shuffled through, careful not to disturb anything, I caught sight of more framed pictures of the steamboat. These were labeled with plaques that displayed dates from 1875 to 1910.
“Someone really liked that boat,” I muttered, taking in the continuation of the series hung on one wall in the hallway.
Randall headed for the stairs, but he looked moments from needing to sit down. I joined him next to the cherub and stared straight up to the second floor.
“They did attack us last time from up there,” I said, as if that played into any important decision making, which it didn’t. “Think you can make it up the stairs?”
He nodded. “As long as I don’t have to swing you out a window, we should be good.”
“Yeah, let’s find a new stupid idea, instead.” I reached out to brace him as he took the first step, and then the next, but he leaned into the banister and worked his way up.
I followed after him. At the top of the stairs, he slumped against the wall.
“It’s really not the rib so much,” he said. “Everything has sort of hit me at once. Literally and figuratively. How you holding up?”
“Adrenaline,” I said. “Once that is gone, I’m screwed.”
He chuckled, shaking his head, and pressed onward. I matched his pace as we made our way across the landing and turned into a hallway. The white and gold from downstairs faded into pale pink and dusty mint, as if the interior designer could not choose a theme and stick with it, but let one idea bleed into another.
As we passed by doors, I tried the knobs. Some were locked, and I made a mental note to investigate them more thoroughly if we didn’t find her elsewhere, but other doors eased open and I scoped out the interior. Besides some interesting—and a few suspect—design choices, there was nothing of importance in any accessible part of the house.