by Holly Lisle
"Lauren Dane."
"Sure looks like it."
Eric grimaced. A traitor, from a family of traitors. It figured. He didn't like thinking of her that way, but what the hell. People were what they were, and teenage crushes never changed basic truth.
"I'll take the next watch. You go on to whatever you had to do."
He had a plan, but because he didn't know which of the Sentinels was working with Lauren, he didn't want anyone around to find out what he was up to. He had a hard time thinking that Granger might be the traitor on the inside, or that he might have been the person responsible for bringing such potential devastation to Cat Creek, but he had to face facts. He wasn't the traitor, and June Bug wasn't the traitor. But any of the others might be.
"I'll be at home asleep," Granger told him. "Probably with the help of a couple of Seconal. I haven't had a real minute's rest since…"
His voice trailed off, and Eric nodded. "Me, either. Hope your sleep goes better than mine."
When Granger was gone, Eric opened the gate in the mirror and settled himself inside of it, a pad of paper, a straight edge, a protractor, a compass, and a pencil on his lap. He was determined to get the vectors right; he wouldn't accuse Lauren Dane without being as certain as possible that she was the one responsible for Molly's disappearance, and that meant making sure to within a fraction of a degree that her house was the source of the rogue disturbances—and that she was the one causing them. It might take some fast footwork on his part, but he had the plan, he had the tools, and, thanks to Pete, he had the time.
Sitting bathed in the energy of the gate, he began to revive. He let himself absorb some of the power that flowed between the worlds; usually the Sentinels tried to take nothing and leave nothing behind, but he would be useless if he couldn't stay awake.
By the time he felt the gate open, he was alert, well rested, and ready for anything. He quickly plotted out the vector, and his heart sank. The gate was Lauren's. If he hurried, he could get over to her house, and if she had gone through, he could make sure he was waiting for her when she came back out. He'd considered tracking her through to Oria, but mem ories of the storm that had come attached to her spell made him think that when he confronted her, he didn't want to have to deal with any magic she might throw at him.
He took off down the back stairs, gave a cursory wave to Nancine, told her not to worry about watch—that he was on it—and took off for Lauren's house.
He left the cruiser running and knocked on the front door first—after all, the gate might have opened because Lauren was returning, not leaving. But she didn't answer, even though her car was parked beneath the portico. He got back in the cruiser, drove it around back of the house, and parked it out of sight of the street, behind the dilapidated old workshop.
Then he broke into her house through the back. He felt bad about it, but he had to catch her stepping out of the mirror. He had to. He had to know for himself that she was the one using the gate, that there was no mistake—because he wasn't going to be either kind or understanding to the traitor who had threatened the survival of his world, and he didn't want to accuse the wrong person.
Once inside, he locked the back door again, found a comfortable chair that gave him a good view of the mirror in the hallway without making his presence immediately obvious to anyone stepping out of the mirror, and settled down for what might turn out to be a long wait.
Natta Cottage, Ballahara
With Jake on her hip and her parents' notebook tucked under her arm, Lauren went through the gate to find Embar. She had to talk to someone about Brian, and Embar was the only living creature she knew that she dared confront.
But something was wrong at her parents' old cottage in Oria. She should have stepped through the mirror into the inside of the house, but instead she stepped through the other side of the mirror into a snowdrift behind the house, facing the boarded-shut back door. From where she stepped out, she could see that the once-pristine snow had been trampled all around the outside of the house, and frozen spatters of pink dotted the snowdrifts beneath some of the boarded-over windows, reminding her uncomfortably of blood.
Her grip tightened around Jake. She held still, listening for any sound of intruders, but the only sounds in the clearing were the whistling of the wind over the top of the chimney and the irregular creaking of the front door. The intruders must have left it open.
She debated going straight back through the gate, but in Oria, she commanded considerable magic. If anyone were hanging around her house, she would be able to take care of them with a word. She did put some thought into what that word would be if anyone came bounding out of the shadows at her; she readied a spell that would freeze any intruders as solid as the icicles that hung from the gables and hold them frozen long enough for her to dispose of them appropriately.
With the word that would summon her prepared spell at the ready, she marched through the beaten-down snow around the house to the front door, and, with her heart thumping erratically, cautiously stepped inside. Destruction greeted her. Someone had smashed the old furniture—the rocking chair, the table, the other chairs. Someone had shredded the old quilts that had been folded in the bedroom and flung the shreds and the stuffing all around in a frenzy. Someone had smashed every one of the heavy brown stoneware plates to the floor, had shattered the stoneware mugs, had taken a hammer and destroyed the little hand pump that had brought water into the kitchen. The stream of water had eventually frozen, but not before it had created a glassy pool over much of the floor.
The destruction had been very thorough. It had also been very…showy. She frowned. Whoever had broken into the old house had gone methodically from cabinet to cabinet, from drawer to drawer, and had pulled out and destroyed each item in turn. Nothing had been spared, nothing had been overlooked. But nothing was missing, either. Whoever had done this had wanted to leave the largest possible mess—he hadn't been looking for something specific or even for anything worth stealing.
The destruction had been the point. In which case, why not just set the place on fire and be done with it?
She walked deeper into the house, skirting the icy spots on the floor, braced for any movement, for any attack. The bedroom door was closed. She didn't like that. It seemed out of character—closed doors left an appearance of neatness, hiding what was certainly more devastation, when an open door would have permitted her to see the scope of the wreckage all at once.
Carefully, with the word that would summon her spell on her tongue, she opened the door.
And quickly shielded Jake's eyes from the sight that greeted them.
Embar was in the room—or what was left of him. He'd been stabbed in a dozen places, mutilated, and nailed to the far wall. Written on the wall in blood were the words, "Think you're ready to play in our league?" Embar was dead, frozen, the frost whiting out his open eyes.
She could not help him. Dead was dead, as Brian had told her only hours before—the one unfixable thing in the universe, even for those with the powers of gods. She could not save him, but she could endanger her son by staying around. And that she would not do.
Later, she promised Embar, backing out of the room. Later, she would find a way to return, to take him down from the wall and give him decent burial and say a few words that expressed her grief and her loss—the loss of her only link to her true childhood, and the loss of a friend she had only just rediscovered.
Later.
First she had to save her son, and herself.
Cat Creek
Lauren came through the mirror clutching her little boy and a thick black notebook, her eyes wild and her hair in disarray, and from his secluded chair in the corner of the sitting room Eric could feel her fear. She dropped the notebook, which skidded across the smooth wooden floor toward him, and she turned on the mirror she had just stepped out of as if it were her enemy and shoved a hand against it hard, and slammed the gate tight behind her. As if, he thought, something was after her.
He waited, making no sound, but he rested his hand on the butt of his handgun and soundlessly clicked the safety off. The possibilities of what might come bursting through the mirror in pursuit ticked through his mind. Her coconspirator; one of Oria's many troublesome creatures; or something genuinely evil. Like renegades from among the ranks of the Old Gods. Sideslippers. Or perhaps the thing behind the spell-gone-wrong that was causing the spreading flu epidemic on Earth.
He watched her shift her little boy to the other hip and jog right past him and hit the steps at a run; she was saying, "We're going to pack, sweetie, and we're going to get out of here right now. Right now. We can rent a hotel room for a little while—just a little while, and then maybe we'll be able to rent someplace else to live. We'll manage." He heard her choking up as she headed up the stairs, and he realized that she was crying. "There are other places in the world. I promise. Better places than this."
Eric heard her running through the upstairs, heard doors opened hard and shoved against walls, heard her dragging open drawers and flinging their contents on the floor.
With one eye on the mirror, he edged over to the notebook lying on the floor. He flipped it open and skimmed it, paused over carefully rendered diagrams and neatly penned instructions, and as he realized what he held in his hands, his heart beat faster and his mouth went dry. The Sentinels had suspected the Hotchkisses of unauthorized experimentation with magic, but that charge, unlike the others, had never been proven. Now, though, he had proof. What he held in his hand was a complete record of their transgressions. Years worth of experiments, of gambles taken when every roll of the dice might mean the end of Earth, or just their part of it.
He didn't have enough—yet—to charge Lauren with the abduction of Molly McColl, but he certainly had enough to take her in for questioning. Quietly, though. No fuss, nothing called in over the scanner. He didn't want to alert her partner inside the Sentinels.
He considered her state of anxiety, and thought he had a good plan for moving her with the least amount of fuss.
He was standing just inside the door, facing the foot of the staircase, when she appeared at the top landing. She'd changed into lighter clothing and she held the boy on one hip and a duffel bag with the name Dane stenciled on its side in the other hand. He recognized the bag as military issue. The dead husband's. She started down the stairs, watching her feet as she came down them dragging the heavy bag; she still had not seen him. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, but she was no longer crying.
He said, "Lauren, we need to talk."
Her head snapped up and she stared at him and he could see her starting to scream—but then she didn't. Her eyes went hard and cold and dangerous, and she said, "If you're the one behind that mess"—and she nodded toward the mirror—"just get out of my way. You've won. We're leaving. But if you try to touch my son, so help me God, I'll dig your eyes out with my thumbs and rip your head off with my bare hands."
She sounded serious. More, she looked almost convincing. He wouldn't test her, he thought, unless he absolutely had to. Women could be vicious fighters.
Instead, he said, "I know what you are."
And she snarled, "That goes both ways, honey. I know what you are, too. And your parents, and some of the other freaks in this evil, awful town. I should never have come back. Never."
She reached the bottom of the stairs, and he found himself looking her straight in the eye. She was taller than he'd realized; her height always took him a little bit by surprise, because she had always struck him as being rather delicate, a state he didn't equate with height.
"Well, you probably shouldn't have, but you did. And now I need you to come down to the station with me for a while; we have to talk."
"And I'll get into your car with my son and that will be the last anyone ever sees of either of us." She saw that he was holding her book. "Give me that. It doesn't belong to you."
"For the time being, it does. And nothing is going to happen to you if you come with me. I swear it. I don't know what you're running from, though I can imagine some of the possibilities. I do know that I won't hurt you or your son, and I won't let anyone else hurt the two of you." She was a traitor, he thought. A traitor to her species, to her world, to her universe—just as her parents had been traitors. But when he looked at her, he didn't see a traitor. He saw a seventeen-year-old girl with dreams of faraway places, with a hunger to see the world; and he saw a spring afternoon when he got up the nerve, just once, to steal a kiss, and to find that kiss returned.
"Am I under arrest?"
"Not yet. But if you don't come with me voluntarily, you will be. Voluntary is better."
And she studied him with those haunted, fear-filled eyes, and she looked at her son, who clung to her shoulder. "Let's go."
* * *
Pete jumped and dropped his book, and his boots clattered off the desktop to the floor. "Didn't hear you come in," he said, and had the grace to looked embarrassed.
"Came in through the back." Eric hung the cruiser's keys on the pegboard next to his coffee cup, and said, "We're going to be in the back talking for a bit. You have everything unless there's an emergency."
Pete arched an eyebrow, nodded toward the woman and her son, but said nothing.
"Molly McColl case."
Now Pete's eyebrows nearly slid off his face. "Her?"
"Don't know. That's why I'm questioning her."
"Good Lord." Pete shook his head. "Let you know if anything comes up, then…" Eric could see that the deputy was just dying to ask him why he was questioning a young mama with her baby on her hip. Eric couldn't tell him. Not in any way that wouldn't make him sound insane, anyway. He just gave Pete a "shut up" look and pointed Lauren down the hall to the break room, which sometimes had to double for an interrogation room. He could have talked to her in one of the two cells, he supposed, but he wanted her to feel comfortable. If she thought he trusted her, she would be more willing to tell him what he needed to know—and he needed to know a lot, and fast.
When Lauren was seated in the break room with a cup of coffee for her and a cup of juice for Jake, Eric excused himself for a moment and went back to the front desk.
"We're not here," he told Pete. "If anyone—and I mean anyone—asks where I am or what I'm doing, I'm following up leads to the Molly McColl case up in Rockingham. You've never seen her, she's never been here, and you don't know anything. Got it?"
He nodded. "Who is she?"
"Lauren Dane. Right now she's the chief suspect in the abduction."
"Her? You've got to be joking."
"Not a word."
"That little darlin' would never hurt a fly."
Eric considered the fury he'd seen in her when she threatened to gouge his eyes out, and gave Pete a knowing smile. "You just keep thinking that. People need their illusions."
"How are you doing?" he asked Lauren when he walked back into the break room.
"I'd be better if I knew what was going on."
"Well, why don't we start by you just telling me what you were doing in Oria that had you coming back so scared you were going to run away from home."
"I think I should have a lawyer."
Eric shook his head slowly. "Not for this, Lauren. Lawyers are for the little things—but the secrets of the Sentinels and the gates stay between us. Always. When you start walking across universes, the laws of North Carolina stop applying to you. And you're here on something that didn't start in this world. So. What scared you over there?"
"You have to let me go if you don't arrest me."
Eric frowned at her. "I can hold you for twenty-four hours on suspicion, and during that time I don't have to let you let anyone know you're here. Because I don't trust your cronies, that's what I'll have to do if you don't start giving me some answers to my questions. I'm being friendly, Lauren. I'm being friendly in spite of the trouble you've caused, and that's mostly because I remember who you used to be. I don't know who the hell you are now."
&nb
sp; She didn't react the way he expected her to. He didn't see any flash of guilt cross her face, she didn't stammer, she didn't look angry. For a moment she just looked lost. "My cohorts?" She shook her head. "Look here, Eric MacAvery—you're the one with cohorts. Your blessed Sentinels are the people who murdered my parents, who killed my friend in Oria, and who are coming after me and Jake now. So don't you give me any of your nonsense about cohorts. Jake and I are all we have in the world."
It was Eric's turn to feel baffled. "Your parents weren't murdered. They were killed in a car accident."
"Their brake lines were cut, and their steering was tampered with."
"That's ridiculous. Their deaths were investigated."
"By Sentinels."
"By…" He was going to say "by the Sheriff's Department"—but the previous sheriff had been a Sentinel, too. In Cat Creek, the Sentinels made sure they kept their own in power. They couldn't afford to have anyone in authority looking into their activities. That meant they had to be the authorities. From time to time the system led to abuses.