“Tura possessed you?” Glenda said, definitely off balance now.
“Tried to kill me.” Mab shook her head, back on safer ground now. Reality was demons who tried to kill you, not supernatural powers. “Dumb bitch said I was cheating on the guy with the glasses in the Dream Cream. Where she got the idea that he and I ever said boo to each other, I don't know. I don't even know his name. So go, Guardia - that's what I say. Just not with me.”
“We can't.” Glenda looked upset now. “We need all five to capture, and you're refusing. If you're not with us, the demons win.”
That was annoying, a flashback to her mother, threatening her with demons. “Why do you sound like the Department of Homeland Security?”
“Because we are, in a way.” Glenda leaned forward, intense. “The five demons here are special, the Untouchables, they can't be exorcised or cast out, so we guard them -”
“Wait a minute, five?”
“Kharos, Vanth, Selvans, Tura, and Fufluns.” Glenda smiled encouragingly. “They're imprisoned in wooden chalices that are locked in the five iron statues in the park with their keys kept in hard-to-get-to places. All we have to do is put them back in their chalices if they get out. You're our new Seer, so you'll see them, of course. Kharos is a red spirit, Vanth blue, Selvans orange, Tura blue-green, and Fufiuns -”
Mab put up her hand. “Okay, hold it. I'm having problems with this because I'm not used to believing in demons, although I do now, of course, and five, that's not good news, but why in the name of god would you put all of them in the same place?”
Glenda opened her mouth and then closed it again.
“Why didn't you each take one and bury it in an ocean far from the others? What idiot thought it was a good idea to bring them here, all together, and lock them in statues, for Christ's sake? And then put the keys to the statues on rides? Was this person insane?”
“Possibly,” Glenda said, taken aback. “It was before my time. They have to be together because the Guardia have to be together to watch them and capture them if they escape. And it has to be here, because this is a place where our powers are the strongest. And -”
“You never questioned it? You just accepted that you were as trapped in this park as they are?”
“We're not trapped. That's what Young Fred says. Neither one of you understand, this is a calling.”
“I'm not accepting the call,” Mab said. “I've restored the park, there's nothing left for me here, and I'm not the kind of person who hunts things. You want an amusement park demon repainted, I'm your girl, but hunting them down? Me? Look at me. Do I strike you as anybody you'd send to beat somebody up? Look, I want to be normal. Or at least in a position where I can fake it -”
“You have to accept.” Glenda began to look put out. “You have no choice -”
“I always have a choice.” Mab stood up. “I really appreciate Delpha leaving me all of this -” She looked around. “-especially the mint vintage Airstream, which makes my heart beat faster, and I truly regret that I didn't spend time with her, talk with her more, she was an amazing woman, but I can't take her legacy. I'm not a Seer. I'm normal.”
"But, Mab.
“No,” Mab said, “thank you, but no.”
She left the trailer trying to be calm but then she hit the midway and realized she was shaking. Nobody was going to make her weird again; sure as hell nobody was going to trap her here with demon talk. Yes, demons were real. But she was free -
She heard a caw, like a cheese grater on a fire escape, and looked up to see Frankie flying above her.
She stopped, looking up. “Okay, look, nothing personal, but -”
He swooped down and landed on the shoulder of her paint coat, digging his claws into the canvas enough to hold on but not enough to hurt, and she found herself looking into dark, bright, wise, dangerous eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment, and she could have sworn he was evaluating her.
“I don't think -” she began, and then he put his head against her cheek, his feathers softer than down, and she closed her eyes and stopped shaking and thought, Mine, and heard an echo, Mine.
She didn't want a bird, but this one was hers.
“All right, I'll accept you, but not the rest of it,” she told him, and walked back to the Fortune-Telling Machine with him on her shoulder, wondering what had happened to her life and what the hell ravens ate.
The man in black tried bringing the gun up, but was too late; Ethan landed on top of him and they crashed to the floor. Ethan levered his forearm underneath the mask's mouthpiece, while he jammed hard with his knee into the guy's midsection, shoving the bulky gun out of arm's reach. That gave him the time to draw his own gun and push the muzzle into the man in black's right ear.
Which was a mistake. The man in black rolled, knocking the gun away with a forearm swipe and hitting Ethan in the center of the chest with an open-hand strike. Ethan winced as the bullet stabbed inside him but went with the blow, rolled, and came to his feet, hands at the ready for combat. He blocked a snap kick toward his midsection, followed by a spinning backfist, giving ground until he was backed up against an old wooden statue. He feinted a punch to the head and then snapped a blow for the neck. It missed as the man in black stepped back and whipped out a short wand, pressed the base, and expanded the thing to a three-foot-long baton.
Ethan stopped. “Could we talk?”
The guy jabbed the baton toward his face, and he jerked back.
'That's not the appropriate way to wield a baton,“ Ethan said as he backed up. ”I'll show you how to use that if you -"
The man in black jabbed again for the face and Ethan ducked, rolled away, grabbed his pistol, and came to his feet, gun at the ready. “Drop the baton.”
The man in black hesitated, then dropped it to the ground with a clatter.
“Thank you. Take your goggles and mask off.”
The man in black took a step toward him. “You won't shoot me.” The voice was a whisper.
Ethan shrugged. “I'm in a bad mood. Too many people hitting me in the chest.”
“You won't.” The man in black took another step closer. "Thar's not who you are.”
“Sure it is.” Ethan pulled the trigger. The round hit center of mass into the body armor, and the man in black let out a surprised yell as he slammed back to the ground.
Ethan walked forward, put his knee right where the round was embedded, and ripped off the goggles.
And stared right into Weaver's electric green eyes.
“Oh, crap,” Erhan said.
When they got to the Fortune-Telling Machine, Frankie flew up to sit on the peaked roof, and Mab peered through the dusty glass to see if there was a demon loose in there. She was not joining the Guardia, she was not going to mortgage the rest of her life to a bunch of crazy people and demons, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to be careful. There was too much dirt to really see anything, so she gave up and went around to the back, trying to remember what Joe had told her about opening it. Something about pushing and lifting.
She put her hand on the latch and thought, Of course, it's like this, and pushed the latch in, lifting it at the same time, as if she could see how to do it.
The door swung open, squeaking, its hinges loose again.
'The dust was thick inside, coating everything in a gray blanket. The back of the Vanth statue was a single sheet of it, and Mab realized that was because she had some kind of scarf or shawl that fell from the top of her head. She reached up gingerly and found two clips welded to the top oF the statue. When she flipped those open, the scarf fell, the dust sheeting off as Mab caught it before it hit the ground and shook it out.
It was blue, sky blue, madonna blue, made of something so slippery, so finely woven, that the dust didn't stick at all. Mab shook it again, marveling at how beautiful it was and then folded it carefully and put it into her work bag.
“Okay, then.” She put her hands on the waist of the Vanrh statue and tugged on it to gauge the w
eight, and it rolled out of the box, almost knocking her down before she stopped it. She got a clean, soft cloth from her bag and began to wipe the dust from the hack, uncovering beautiful paintwork in the statue's blue drapery, untouched by sun or weather, making her way around to the front of the statue, where she gently brushed the dust from the delicately painted face. When she was done, she stood back to see what she had.
Vanth was serenely beautiful, thick auburn hair and big sky-blue eyes, looking almost maternal in her round benevolence, her arms out and her hands cupped. She looked like she was reaching for something, her hands grasping, and as Mab watched, the statue began to roll toward her.
“Whoa,” Mab said, and caught it, her hands on Vanth's arms. “Hang on there . . .”
Her voice died as she stared into those painted blue eyes. There was something behind there.
“Vanth?” she said. “You're in there, aren't you? This is where they keep you. In your... chalice... cup cell thing.” She waited, but nothing happened except a growing conviction on her part that she was right and that Vanth should go back inside her booth. Soon.
“Wait here,” she said to the statue. “I have to clean that booth out. It's a mess.”
She waited a moment and then stepped back, and the statue didn't roll.
“Okay. Just give me half an hour to clean out that booth. Don't go anywhere.”
She picked up her cleaner and more tags and moved into the booth, doing a fast but thorough basic housecleaning in there, since none of the colors needed retouching, protected by the dust and out of the weather.
So if Vanth was inside the statue, could she get away? Fufluns had taken his statue and run when she'd put the key in, so apparently Vanth could, too. No, wait, Vanth couldn't get out; her statue hadn't been unlocked. Fufluns hadn't run until she'd put the panpipes in and wiggled them. So as long as she didn't put anything in anywhere... She finished cleaning the glass and wiped down the surface of the counter and the glass ball glued to the counter. Then she backed our of the box and turned to the Vanth statue. “There. It's beautiful for you.”
Vanth sat there, unmoving.
Well, good. That meant she was still locked up.
Mab pushed the statue back into the booth, feeling it roll into grooves in the floor that kept it stable. She got the blue shawl out of her bag, clipped it back onto Vanth's head, and settled it around her shoulders and over her arms. Then she closed and latched the door and went around to the front, marveling at the beauty of it all: the delicate figure, the detailed sides of the box that she'd be painting soon, the arched roof with the raven on the top...
'What do you think, Frankie?" she called up.
He moved from foot to foot, not happy but not flying away, either.
“That's what I think, too. Don't worry, but be careful.” She went closer to the box and looked inside. “It's you, isn't it? Vanth?”
The gears moved and a card shot into the tray.
Mab picked it up.
HELLO, MAB.
Wild Ride
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Mab swallowed hard. “Hello. You, uh, you look beautiful.”
Another card:
LET ME OUT.
Mab took a step back, looking at the cards in her hands. “No. No, absolutely not, never. You -” She looked closer at the cards. The looked ... fuzzy around the edges. The more she stared at them, the flimsier they got until she could see through them, they were dissolving, and then they were gone and she was looking at her empty hands. “They're not cards,” she said to Vanth. “They're an illusion. You made me think they were cards.” She took another step back. “I don't like it. Don't do that anymore.” She brushed her hands Off, as if the illusion had left dust, and then she said, “I'm going to do the undercoat on your box now. You sit tight.”
She opened the first bottle of paint she'd mixed and looked at the primed booth.
As if by magic, she saw where that color went, where it blended with the other two underpaint colors, how the entire underpainting had been done.
Seer, she thought. Delpha gave me the power to see things.
That was a good power. If she'd had it from the beginning of the park restoration, things would have gone a lot faster.
Of course, it was probably supposed to be used for other things. Like.
She put down the paint and stepped closer to the box, looking into Vanth's flat painted eyes, and then, with effort, beyond, to what at first was a faint blue cloud that became upon concentration a pulsing form inside the statue.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “You look like a really nice demon. But I'll never let you out.”
'Tie blue pulsed harder, sad and angry and alone.
“I'm really sorry,” Mall said, and went back to her paint, thinking hard. A couple of hours ago, she had offered to give Delpha's legacy to someone else. But now if she could keep the power and the Airstream –
Frankie cawed above her.
- and Frankie, without getting swept up in some demon vigilante group, that could be wonderful. A home of her own with a magic table that warded off evil, her own instincts supernaturally enhanced –
Frankie cawed above her.
- and a bird to live with and talk to, these were good things. “I just don't want to be a demon cop,” she told Frankie. “And it's not air to cherry-pick the good stuff and dump the bad on somebody else.” Frankie cawed again. It sounded like coward this time. “You're probably right,” she said, and began to paint the Fortune-Telling Machine.
Ethan had thought about having Weaver under him, but not like this. “Who the hell are you?” Ethan demanded.
“Weaver. We've met, remember?” She looked up at him and he felt himself drawn into those eyes. “Could you get your knee off my chest? Kind of hurts.”
Ethan removed his knee. “Kind of hurts to get shot by that thing you carry.”
Weaver grunted in pain as she sat up. “The D-gun. I invented it.”
“D-gun?”
“Demon gun.” She unbuckled the black bulletproof vest she'd been wearing and pulled it off, revealing a thin black turtleneck underneath.
It was chilly in the basement of the Keep.
“Oh, grow up,” Weaver snapped as she rubbed through her shirt between her breasts and he stared. “What are you, fourteen? And did you have to shoot me?”
“Did you have to shoot me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
That brought a long silence.
“You thought I was a demon, didn't you?” Ethan asked. “Do you just go around shooting people you think look demonic?”
“Well, so far it's working.” She looked around the room. “So this is what, where amusement parks go to die?”
“Storeroom,” Ethan said. “So how did you find out about the demons?”
“We're under the Keep, right?”
Ethan didn't like being questioned, and he especially didn't like having his questions ignored. “Who are you? Who do you work for? And how the hell did you know there were demons in Dreamland?”
Weaver considered him, her green eyes narrowed. “Okay, that's fair.” She lifted her tight turtleneck slightly, revealing a sliver of smooth skin and a platinum badge that Ethan didn't recognize.
Ethan blinked. “You're a cop?”
“Homeland Security. Department 51.”
Great. The government. “You search demons at airports?”
“Oh, funny.” Weaver picked up her vest and slid it back on, disappointing Ethan as she buckled up. "Department 51 is a secret department detailed to study, among other things, whether demons exist and if they do, to evaluate their possible threats and
Her voice trailed off.
“And uses,” Ethan said. “Somebody in the government is insane enough to think that demons could be used as weapons?”
“That would be my boss,” Weaver said. “Fortunately, she d
oesn't believe in demons, so that threat isn't great right now.”
“She doesn't believe in demons and she's your boss?”
Weaver pushed herself up off the floor, wincing a little. “She's the boss of a lot of little departments that deal in odd things. I think she screwed up and got the assignment as a punishment. She puts up with us on the off chance that we'll actually find something she can use to get back to the top.”
“And have you?”
“Isn't it my turn to ask a question?” she said, smiling at him.
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