by Eric Nylund
Audrey held her breath.
All this waiting drove her mad. Once she thought her patience limitless-before the twins had come.
She ran a hand over the desk and settled into her chair.
But was not waiting an action, as well? No. Waiting was waiting. All the philosophizing in the world did not change that.
Her desktop was a slab of partially marbleized limestone, streaked with color and crystal, and tiny snail and trilobite fossils. She traced their curls. So old. And like her, frozen.
She had to start, a tiny step forward, her journey toward action. . by seeing what she could.
From a drawer, she with took out a corkboard, a box of plastic pushpins, and a ball of yarn. She picked pins at random and-without looking-stabbed them into the board. Her other hand wound the yarn about the pins.
She stared at the leaded crystal skylights; refracted rainbows streamed through the air and onto the blank walls. Audrey didn’t think. . she drifted. . let her subconscious surface.
Her hands continued to move, sticking the pins, wrapping the yarn.
Some pinpoints turned in the box, and stabbed her. She let them taste her blood. This was part of the ritual as well.
At last, she exhaled and stopped.
Her pins had been arranged on the cork, and tracing a web of connections among them was the yarn, dotted with her blood.
In the center were two pins-one red, one blue-together (although they leaned away from one another). This represented Eliot and Fiona.
Surrounding them were random constellations of the other pushpins. The yarn twined about them, this way and that. Audrey discerned three linked groups: The League, the Infernals, and scattered hither and yon, the so-called neutrals of Paxington.
Two pins were near the twins: one green (this had to be Dallas) and one silver, leaning at a rakish angle (which was Henry).
One frayed line, however, connected Henry to a Paxington neutral. Curious.
She’d suspected, even expected him to be engineering some trickery with Aaron and Gilbert. But to align with the neutrals? That was trouble of an entirely other magnitude.
For now, she would keep this a secret. . until it could be wisely spent.
Her hand drifted to the pin box. Only two were left: one black and one white. The white was bone white, death white-that was her. The black had to be Louis.
Where did he fit?
And more interesting, why hadn’t she placed either of them among the others?
She focused all her attention back on the board, and only now saw there were dozens of pins along the very edges-as if repelled from the center. . far away from the main players and events.
She touched them. Felt nothing.
They were not League members, nor were they Infernals, and all the Paxington neutrals were accounted for.
That left whom. . the mortal magical families? She scoffed. All too feeble to be involved in any significant way.
This mystery drifted through her mind like mist, filling it with silence and dread. After all these years, who else was out there?
She jumped. Blinked.
There was no reason to start. . but her gaze riveted upon the black 1970s-era phone on her desk. It had not rung, but it felt like it had. The ghost of its trilling hung in the air.
She waited for it to actually ring.
It seemed like it wanted to sound, as if there was someone trying to contact her, and yet so far off, it had not the strength to quite make the connection.
Audrey tentatively picked up the receiver and listened.
There was a hiss and a crackle, and a voice broke though the white noise.
It was Louis. He was singing off-key: “Six little children to market went: Orpheus and Faustus, the Empress of Kansas, the Spirit of Christmas, Bacchus, and the Governor of Texas-”
“Louis?”
He stopped singing.
“Audrey!” he cried. “Beloved, it is your Louis!” His enthusiasm deflated. “How long have you been listening? No, never mind. There is little time. I’m using Eliot’s phone and a child’s trick with a Klein sphere to make this connection.”[60]
Audrey’s first impulse was to hang up on Louis, the greatest of all liars. But he was also the Louis she loved.
She held those thoughts balanced in her mind. Tip one way and she would hang up and forever sever their connection on more than one level.
Or listen, and tip the other way: embrace this madness she felt for him still.
Cutting the tie would be easiest. She had done that before with Eliot and Fiona, leaving her maternal duty but severing the irrational love.
But what was easiest often was not best. . and not without regrets.
“Please,” Louis whispered. There was desperation in his voice.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“This is not about us-well it is in a way, and I know I have made an ultimate mess of things between us, all my fault. . again, not the point. What I’m trying to say is it’s about the children.”
Audrey glanced at the red and blue pins in its center of the corkboard. So many other pins surrounded her children, so many who would use them or remove them.
“I must be quick,” Louis whispered. “I am down to one pixel on this phone’s battery, and it’s winking red.”
There was a burst of static. Audrey pulled the receiver away until the noise died.
“Louis?”
“Yes. . still here.” His voice was barely audible. “My relations make their move today. You must save Eliot and Fiona before they make decisions that cannot be undone. Before they are lured-”
A whoosh of screams and crying and the laughter of the mad flooded the connection.
There was a click. Then nothing.
“Louis?” Audrey whispered.
Her heart pounded and she rose. She believed him.
She had to go to battle, fight, protect her children from the others, and somewhere in those feelings was the foolish urge to protect Louis as well.
Audrey looked back to the corkboard and yarn and pins.
She then understood why her subconscious had left those last two pins. She had to make up her mind-deliberately, and accepting all the consequences-where they belonged.
And so she did.
She set both black and white pins together. . nestled next to the red and blue pins of Eliot and Fiona.
She slammed the receiver to the cradle and then picked it up and dialed the direct line to Lucille Westin’s private and personal office. She’d have Fiona and Eliot pulled from class and kept with Miss Westin until she could get there.
If there was still time.
66 ONE THING ALMOST EVERYONE HAD FORGOTTEN
Cecilia watched Audrey storm out of the house, not even bothering to close the front door.
She followed and eased it shut, spotting Audrey’s Jaguar XKSS through the door’s stained glass windows as the roadster roared out of the driveway. The car smeared into a midnight blue streak of chrome and taillights.
Audrey was gone. Finally.
Cecilia locked the door and meandered upstairs to the dining room. The long-abandoned game of Towers she and Eliot had been playing had been moved to the end table. The circular mat and cubes were covered in dust. Smudges dotted some cubes where Eliot had touched them recently, perhaps thinking of his next move.
On the surface, this was just a game. . but deeper, it was a magical metaphor for all their lives. . and deeper still, it represented a game of dire consequences played by those with millennia more experience than she or Eliot possessed.
With that in mind, Cecilia had no qualms about cheating.
Her eyes filmed over milky white, and she fumbled over the playing field, feeling the threads of fate that wove about the pieces, pulling and tugging, and with tiny clockwork flicks advanced them forward to their next moves.
To the future.
Audrey would have Cecilia’s head if she knew. But the great Cutter of All Things was not h
ere to stop Cecilia this time.
Still, she took great care not to let a single quantum vibration escape her fingertips. There were others than Audrey who would not approve of her prying into their affairs, others who were far crueler.
In her mind, she saw the Towers field-lines and circles radiating from the center like a spiderweb. Many of the stone cubes were easy to identify: Audrey, Eliot, Fiona, that boy called Robert, and a smattering of Infernals, humans, and Immortals.
Fiona’s piece was near the center, but tiny cracks crisscrossed the white marble. Eliot’s cube was by hers. They both stood before a stack of five black, a tower whose might was unassailable.
Eliot’s cube had one face smeared with soot (or possibly blackberry jelly), a black spot upon the white. Audrey would’ve denied it, but Cecilia knew this was an omen most ill.
Poor Eliot. It was too late for him.
But it was not too late to adjust her plans. She had always been good at turning lemons into lemonade-why, look at her now! How far had she come in this so-called body and her half-cheated immortality?
She blinked and her eyes cleared.
Yes. . Cecilia knew what to do. She always knew. If others had not the conviction to protect her lambs, then she would.
She rolled up the Towers mat-pieces and all-so they scattered into chaos, and put it all in the cupboard. She then ambled back to the children’s bedrooms.
Fiona’s door was locked, but a simple word of unbinding did the trick, and she entered.
The room was as neat as a pin. Cecilia was so proud of Fiona. All that schoolwork and responsibility, and she still had time to make up her bed. There were precise stacks of papers on her desk, neat piles of books, flash cards, and a sketch of the Immortal family tree.
Fiona was a good, hardworking girl, and it pained Cecilia to do this. She took careful note of the location of every object-and then ransacked the room, turning over pillows, pulling out books, tossing clothes from the hamper, pulling out drawers and shaking their contents onto the floor.
When she got the lowest bookshelf, she tossed aside Rare Incurable Parasites, Volume 3, and found a hidden shoe box.
She cradled it with trembling arms and sat on the rumpled bed.
Inside, carefully placed was a scandalous bikini. Cecilia held it before her. She could not imagine her Fiona ever wearing such a tarty thing. She set it aside.
Next was a stack of old-fashioned Polaroids showing Fiona and that boy, Robert, splashing in the water, palm trees in the background. Those were from last summer, when Henry had flown them out to his island before school (chaperoned by Aaron, so she knew Robert had made no ungentle-manly advances upon poor, innocent Fiona).
There was one last item in the shoe box: a rolled-up sock.
Inside was something heavy and hard.
Cecilia took the sock out, unrolled it on the bed, and then gingerly coaxed out the object within.
She gasped as a sapphire the size of an egg tumbled upon Fiona’s gray wool bedspread-gleaming with blue brilliance and crisp facets.
The stone’s name was Charipirar. It was the mark of power of that Hell-creature Beelzebub, Lord of All the Flies, once Chairman of the Infernals, and the beast whom Fiona had killed-by pulling this, his own talisman, through his neck.
She’d kept the trinket as a souvenir.
And everyone had forgotten about it. Almost.
She found herself gazing into the depths of the stone, and quickly averted her eyes before it pulled her too deep. Using two pencils, Cecilia pushed and prodded the stone back into the sock and rolled it up.
This could change everything, even save Eliot. . and perhaps damn millions of souls.
What did that matter? As long as Cecilia saved the ones she loved.
67 THE BIGGEST LIE OF HIS LIFE
Eliot stared at his teammates.
They stared back at him like he was crazy. Even Amanda-always on Eliot’s side-looked shocked.
“Rescue Jezebel?” Jeremy asked with a smirk. “The Jezebel who is an Infernal duchess? The one who could pummel you if she had half a mind to do? You want to rescue her?”
Eliot took a step toward Jeremy. His classmate didn’t know how far Eliot had come in the last few months. How Jezebel had smashed a rock against his head that should’ve crushed it and he’d barely felt it. How he’d leveled a few city blocks with his music in Costa Esmeralda.
And how. . right now, he was more than willing to prove himself to the ever-irritating Jeremy Covington.
Sarah jumped up and stood between them.
Eliot’s temper cooled a bit as he remembered how she’d been nice to him recently.
Jeremy, however, continued his mocking glare.
Sarah said, “It’s a noble thing you’re proposing, Eliot, but Jezebel has withdrawn from Paxington. There’s nothing to be done.”
“Jezebel withdrew because she had to,” Eliot said. “Because she’s trapped behind enemy lines. We get her out, and that all changes. Miss Westin said she was ‘inclined to grant the request’-she hasn’t actually done it yet. There’s still time.”
Fiona shook her head and wouldn’t even look at him.
“She needs our help.” But Eliot’s plea was weak and pathetic-everything he was trying not to sound like.
How could he be so powerful and heroic one moment, and the next be such an ineffectual dork?
They were all silent. Eliot’s gaze dropped to the black-and-white checkerboard floor of Miss Westin’s waiting room.
“Just to be clear,” Amanda finally whispered, “you are talking about going to Hell? The real burn-forever-in-eternal-torment Hades?”
“I’ve been there,” Eliot told her, unfazed. He looked up. “It’s not that bad. . well, parts of it aren’t that bad.”
Fiona scoffed. “We were at the Gates of Perdition. Once. We never went inside.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Eliot said. “I took the Night Train into Hell. It runs from the Market Street BART station into the Blasted Lands, and then to the Poppy Lands where Jezebel lives. It’s no big deal.”
Fiona’s eyes widened. “You did what?”
A few months ago, he would have told her everything he’d done. Now he was able to keep secrets.
He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
Eliot explained it all to them: the Night Train, the conductor, and how there were even private trains in Hell to take them back.
“What about the war?” Amanda asked, twirling strands of hair about her pinkie. “That sounds dangerous.”
“There are a few shadows loose,” Eliot said. “But Fiona and I have fought them before. Heck, the six of us together? Nothing could stop us. It’d be easier than a gym match, I bet.”
Jeremy laughed, sat, and reclined on one of the waiting room’s chaises longues. “Oh, to be sure-minus the medics on standby and the ten-minute time limit, and being in the middle of one of the most treacherous-to-mortals places in the outer realms.”
His cousin Sarah shot Jeremy a withering look, which he ignored.
Eliot continued, “But we’re not going to fight their war. We get in, get to Jezebel’s twelve castles, and get her out.”
Sarah bit her lower lip. She looked. . Eliot wasn’t sure what the look on her face meant. It was the look she’d given him after he played at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Part impressed at his bravura, but something misty in her gaze that might have been disbelief at his stupidity. It was so hard for him to tell with girls.
“No way,” Fiona said, folding her arms over her chest. “If you go, you’re on your own.”
“Then I’ll go by myself,” he said, “if I have to.”
There was no challenge in that statement. It was simply a fact.
Fiona narrowed her eyes to gray slits and looked at him like she thought he was the biggest moron in the universe.
And maybe he was, because there was one small fact he hadn’t told anyone: Jezebel didn’t exactly want to be rescued. She was lo
yal to her Queen and the Poppy Lands. Her strength and life were literally tied to those lands.
So Eliot would stay there this time and fight with her-win this stupid war. How hard could it be? A few more Droogan-dors? What was that after he’d blown up a jet? And if he could get Robert or Fiona to come with him, it’d be that much easier.
Eliot decided not to mention this detail just yet. He figured it was already implied by him saying they had to “rescue” Jezebel.
No. He couldn’t fool himself. That was a lie.
It was only a lie by virtue of leaving out selected truths. . but that was worse. It was more calculating.
He knew what he felt, though. He’d gamble everything, his life and the lives of the others, lie, cheat, and steal to save Jezebel-or lose it all.
“I’ll go with you,” Amanda meekly offered. She stared at the checkerboard floor, unable to look up.
Eliot blinked, surprised. She was the last person he’d expect to go willingly to Hell.
“I’m part of the team, too, aren’t I?” Amanda said. “I like Jezebel, though I don’t think she likes me. That’s kind of beside the point. I just want to help.” She swallowed and continued, “Guess if our positions were reversed, I just wish someone would come and rescue me like that. That’s what friends do for one another, right?”
Amanda pulled back her long brown hair and tied it into a knot. She finally looked up. Her dark eyes smoldered with determination.
“Hey, if Amanda’s going,” Robert said, “I’m in, too.” He cracked his knuckles and then shrugged. “How hard could it be? Plenty of guys have gone to Hell and come back-Dante, Ulysses, Orpheus, Bill, Ted. Besides, you know I’m a sucker for that damsel-in-distress stuff.”
“Thanks,” Eliot told them. . although a rotten feeling started to gnaw at his stomach.
No. He wouldn’t chicken out now. He was going. And he’d take any help he could get.
And he’d accept all the consequences.
Sarah worked her mouth. Nothing came as she struggled with her words.
“It’s okay,” Eliot told her. You don’t have to-”
“We be coming,” Jeremy said, getting up from the chaise longue. “Was there ever any doubt? A bonny adventure in the outer realms? Perhaps even a wee bit o’ treasure in it for us, eh?” He winked.