by Derek Landy
“You talked to reporters?”
“Uh-huh. Down the street, not ten minutes ago. Asking me my opinion on it. I said it was shocking, that something like this could happen in such a quiet town like Giant’s Pass, where everyone knows everyone else. They liked that, I think. They’ll probably use it in their report. They said they’ll send a camera crew to talk to me. I might be on the news. They said it was something to do with anti-Irish racism or something.”
Danny closes the bag over, and freezes. “Anti-Irish?”
“First I’ve heard about something like that, but they seemed pretty sure.”
“Why would it be anti-Irish?”
“The family that was killed were the Fitzgeralds or the Fitzgibbons or something. They seemed really sure that the family was targeted because of their nationality. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but I guess I’m not in full possession of the facts.”
“What were they like, the reporters?”
“Don’t know which paper they’re from,” says Etta, “but one was tall, about my age, and the other was shorter, with a beard and long hair. Fat.”
In that instant, Danny knows what has happened. Gant and Jeremiah aren’t Feds or US Marshals or paparazzi, they are killers. They went to Giant’s Pass, asked around for anyone Irish. They found the Fitzgeralds or the Fitzgibbons or whoever they were, paid them a visit, expecting to find Stephanie. When they realised their mistake, they had to silence the witnesses, or maybe they were so annoyed at getting it wrong that they killed the whole family out of spite. Either way a family is dead, and suddenly the pressure is on to find their actual target before the police find them.
Danny hurries to the backroom, grabs his coat and pulls it on as he rejoins Etta in the store. “Did they ask if there were any Irish people in Meek Ridge?”
“Yes,” she says, sounding a little surprised that Danny has guessed correctly. “I said half of the families here could probably be traced back to Ireland, but there are no Irish Irish, apart from that Edgley girl.”
“You told them where she lives?”
“Yes. Told them how vulnerable she was, living up there all on her own.”
Danny’s car keys are in his hand and he’s running out the door before Etta can ask what’s wrong. He slips in the snow, but manages to reach his car without falling. The engine starts first try.
He drives to Stephanie’s place. The gate is open. He parks, carries on on foot. He feels stupid, moving like a soldier under fire, flitting from tree to tree like he’s being watched, but at the same time he feels this is an entirely fitting response to the situation.
The Cadillac is parked in the driveway beside Stephanie’s pickup truck. With the angle, with the cold glare of the sun and all that packed snow on the rear window, it is impossible to see if there’s anyone in it. Danny stays crouched down for another minute. No movement, no sound. The house is quiet, too.
He creeps forward, leaving deep footprints. If he suddenly has to run, there’ll be nowhere he can go where they couldn’t easily find him. He ignores the voice in his head telling him this is a bad idea. Of course it’s a bad idea. He doesn’t need a little voice to tell him that.
One more step and he’s close enough to peer through the rear window. It’s dark in the Cadillac, much darker than it has any right to be. He can’t see anyone in the gloom, but he can’t be sure, so he creeps up along the side, careful not to touch the car itself. It isn’t that he’s afraid an alarm might sound, alerting Gant and Jeremiah to his presence. It’s just that he doesn’t want to touch the car. He has the absurd notion that touching it will make him sick.
The back seat is empty. Lots of space in there. The front is empty, too. Tidy. Neat. No coffee cups or scrunched-up gas receipts. It is showroom clean. That Mr Gant sure knows how to take care of his automobile.
For the first time, Danny becomes aware of the footprints in the snow leading from the Cadillac to the house. Gant’s footprints are narrow and long and, judging by the depth, he’s a deceptively light man. Danny follows them up round the hood, where they’re joined by Jeremiah’s heavy footprints clumping alongside, drag marks between each one. Both sets of footprints lead up to the porch, and on the porch there’s freshly-shod snow all the way up to the front door.
He should kick the car. That’s what he should do. Kick the car, set off the alarm, get Gant and Jeremiah running out here, away from Stephanie. By the time they got outside, Danny would already be backing away. They might be able to track him easily, but they wouldn’t be able to catch him. One is fat and one is old. He’d get away. He’d probably get away. Unless Jeremiah has a gun, and he’s a good shot.
Kicking the car is Plan B, Danny decides.
He moves up to the side of the house. Peers through the kitchen window. He sees Gant pouring some orange juice into a glass. He drinks. It’s a tall glass and he drinks the whole thing. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down unpleasantly.
Jeremiah comes into the kitchen, says something to Gant that Danny can’t hear. They haven’t found Stephanie, though, and that’s all that matters. Gant folds his arms, taps a long finger against his chin, and before Danny can duck down, Gant’s head swivels and they lock eyes.
Coldness sweeps through Danny’s veins and freezes his heart.
Then Jeremiah goes one way and Gant goes the other and Danny falls away from the window, starts scrambling. He’s been afraid before in his life, but not like this. Never like this. This is real fear, and real fear jolts so much energy through his system that for a moment he forgets to stand, and he just crawls on his hands and knees through the snow. He’s breathing fast. Too fast. Hyperventilating. It occurs to him that running would be better than crawling and he rises like a sprinter from the blocks but awkwardly, his legs shaky. The jolt of energy passes and now he’s tired, he’s sluggish, doesn’t know what the hell is happening because all he wants to do is sit down and curl up, but of course he can’t, he has to get back to his car, he has to get away.
Jeremiah Wallow walks round the corner of the house.
“It’s Danny!” Jeremiah says. He holds a tyre iron in his hand. “Look, Mr Gant, it’s Danny!”
Danny backs away, turns and stumbles, sees Gant walking round the far corner. Danny slips on ice and falls, gets up, throws himself into a run. He ploughs deep furrows into the snow covering the garden. Already his legs are tired, but he can’t rest. He has to make it to the trees. He’s faster than they are. They can’t catch him. He glances back at Jeremiah, sees him plodding in slow pursuit, then glances over at Gant and Gant runs across the snow, barely making a dent, running like an athlete fifty years his junior, and he slams into Danny and Danny goes spinning through the air, goes rolling through the snow towards Jeremiah.
The tyre iron crashes into his shoulder and Danny cries out, twisting on to his back, and Jeremiah swings again and it hits Danny’s leg and this time Danny screams.
“Jeremiah, Jeremiah,” says Gant, like he was scolding him. Jeremiah straightens up, his face a little red from the exertion. Gant stands over Danny and smiles kindly. “Hello, Danny. I’m quite impressed with you, I am forced to admit. You had us fooled. Did he not have us fooled, Jeremiah?”
Jeremiah nods. “Had me fooled.”
“Hear that, Danny my boy? You had Jeremiah fooled, and Jeremiah is no fool, are you, Jeremiah?”
“No flies on me,” says Jeremiah.
Gant laughs. “Yes! Exactly! No flies on you, Jeremiah! And yet, you had us fooled, Danny my boy. That first day, we followed you right past this place, did we not? You must have seen us and, being the good guy that you are, the straight shooter, you didn’t want to lead us straight to the home of our quarry, so instead you led us to the house of some old-timer we wouldn’t be bothered with. That was some quick thinking, Danny. That was thinking on your feet. Aren’t you impressed, Jeremiah?”
“I’m impressed,” says Jeremiah.
“But only grudgingly,” Gant says with a chuckle. When the c
huckle dies, Gant says, “Yet actions have consequences. They have repercussions. It is a sad fact of life. Jeremiah, I want you to take Danny into the house and tie him up. Then I want you to take the car to the old-timer’s place, and I want you to beat him to death with the iron bar in your hands.”
“No,” says Danny, still hissing in pain. “He didn’t have anything to do with it!”
“Sometimes the repercussions of our actions are not felt by us directly. Sometimes they’re inflicted upon the innocent and the ignorant. Bystanders, if you will.”
Danny tries to fight, tries to struggle, but Jeremiah Wallow is surprisingly strong for someone so flabby. He handcuffs Danny, and drags him into the house. When Danny tries to shove him back, he kicks Danny’s injured leg and Danny screams and falls back on to Stephanie’s sofa. Jeremiah gets two pieces of rope. One piece he ties round Danny’s neck, wraps the other end round a door handle behind him. That one keeps him upright. The other piece he ties round Danny’s ankles, then loops it round the chain of the handcuffs. That one keeps him sitting. Then he goes away to beat Eddie Sullivan to death, and leaves Danny in here with Gant.
Gant stands by the bookcase, fingernail scraping lightly from book to book, spine to spine. He slides an old paperback from the shelf, a book by an Irish horror writer Danny had once liked. Same last name as Stephanie. A small part of him wonders if they’re related. There couldn’t be too many Edgleys in Ireland. There couldn’t be too many Edgleys anywhere.
“How much do you know?” Gant asks, flicking through the pages.
Danny’s shoulder is most likely broken. That’s how it feels anyway. Every time he moves, he has to bite back a shriek. The rope around his neck is tight, but not tight enough to choke him, and it’s rough against his skin. The handcuffs are decorated with ornate symbols that Danny doesn’t understand, and even if he could get his feet free, he doubts his injured leg would carry his weight for more than a few steps. All this he thinks about while Gant waits for an answer, and then one more thought comes into his head. If he somehow manages to rid himself of the ropes and the cuffs, if he somehow manages to stand and put up a fight, he has Gant himself to deal with, and the old guy is tougher than he looks.
“I don’t know where she is,” Danny says.
Gant puts the book back on the shelf and turns to him. “Her boots are just inside the door,” he says. “I dare say she would not have left this house in simple shoes – not if she were merely going for a walk. Tell me, Danny, what kind of dog does she have? I saw a bowl, and some dog food. Is it a big one? It is, isn’t it?”
“Big enough to rip your throat out,” Danny says.
Gant laughs. “Quite! Yes, indeed! Big enough to rip my throat out! Provided I don’t kill it first. She didn’t take the dog for a walk. She didn’t even lock the house. Granted, she lives apart from the populace, undoubtedly assumes that those gates of hers would keep out any undesirables … but with the amount of security in place, it leads me to believe that she always locks up after herself, no matter what. Better to be safe than sorry, that’s her motto. But if she did leave quickly, then where are the tracks? Where are the footprints in the snow? Did you call her, Danny my boy? Did you warn her?”
“I don’t have her number.”
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“She has my number. I don’t have hers.”
“Ohh … and what does that tell you? That she doesn’t like you, or merely that she doesn’t trust you?”
“It tells me that she values her privacy.”
Gant smiles. “Indeed it does. But when I asked the question how much do you know? I was not asking whether or not you knew where Stephanie Edgley had got to. I was simply asking how much do you know?”
“About what?”
“About the world, and the world beneath it. The world alongside it. The people in the shadows, in the darkness. Magic, Danny. I’m talking about magic.”
Danny waits for him to break out into another one of his chuckles, but Gant stays distressingly straight-faced. Oh, hell. Danny isn’t just at the mercy of a killer – he’s at the mercy of a madman.
Gant raises an eyebrow. “Judging by your silence, you don’t have the first clue as to what I may be talking about. Very well. Try not to let it concern you overly. Forget I ever said anything. Pretend we’re just two people in a house, making conversation and passing the time.”
“What are you going to do with me?” asks Danny.
“Probably kill you.”
The admission hits Danny harder than any iron bar. His throat tightens. His stomach lurches. “Why?”
“Because you’ve been an obstruction,” says Gant. “You’ve been an annoyance. And you’ve seen my face, Danny my boy. You can identify me, describe me to the authorities and make my life very awkward.”
“I don’t even know your full name.”
“Cadaverous,” the old man says. “Cadaverous Gant. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” says Danny.
“We both know you’re lying. You shouldn’t lie, Danny. Lying is bad.”
“So why … why am I here? Why aren’t I dead yet?”
“You may yet prove useful. I have heard many things about the person you know as Stephanie Edgley – many contradictory things. Some say she is noble; others say she is evil incarnate. If she is noble, I can use you to lure her into the open. If she’s evil incarnate … well, a drastic rethink would be in order. I am, of course, hoping that she’ll be noble. Noble people are easier to predict, easier to provoke, and easier to kill.”
“What has she ever done to you?”
“To me?” asks Gant. “Nothing.”
“Then why do you want to kill her?”
“Because of what she is, and what I am.”
“And what are you?”
Cadaverous Gant just smiles.
30
FORGIVEN
alkyrie Cain looked at herself in the mirror. She slowly tapped a finger against the glass, touching her own reflection.
Her again. It was her again. No more looking through Darquesse’s eyes. No more fighting to hang on inside her mind. The person she saw in that mirror was the person she was. It was an odd feeling, but a welcome one.
Reverie Synecdoche walked in. “You’re dressed,” she said.
Valkyrie picked up her jacket, slipped it on. “I am. I need to go home. I haven’t been home for … a while. You can let me go, can’t you?”
Synecdoche hesitated. “Well … yes. If the Sensitives cleared you—”
“They did,” said Valkyrie. “They poked around my head all afternoon, making sure there was no trace of Darquesse left inside. Or that I wasn’t pulling a double bluff. They concluded that I’m me again.”
Synecdoche smiled. “Good. Your tests have come back, and you’ll be happy to learn that you are in unnaturally perfect health with no obvious side effects.”
“Darquesse liked to keep me running in tip-top condition,” Valkyrie said. “It’s all downhill from here, I suppose.”
Synecdoche smiled again, but it was a professional smile, the smile that quietly conveyed how busy she was and, really, if you had nothing further to ask, she should be getting back to patients who needed her help.
“I’ll see myself out,” said Valkyrie.
Synecdoche nodded, spun on the heel of her sensible shoe, and then she was gone.
Valkyrie left the Medical Wing. The doctor had been right – she was feeling great. Strong and energetic and well rested. Her body was a temple. Her mind, however, was a ramshackle old cabin in the middle of a forest. It leaked. There were draughts. The doors wouldn’t shut properly, there were noises from the attic and something had died under the porch.
Her mind needed help.
She found the others in the library in the North Tower. There were four libraries in the Sanctuary, but this was the smallest and the least used. Vex sat with his feet on the table opposite Saracen. Gracious and Do
negan searched the shelves and, judging by their dismay, they were searching in vain for copies of books they had written. Stephanie and Fletcher sat together in the corner, talking quietly. No sign of Skulduggery or Dai Maybury.
Saracen was the first to see her. Everyone else looked round.
“Hi,” she said.
“Come on in,” said Vex. “Pull up a chair.”
Valkyrie took a few steps, but didn’t sit. “I want to thank you,” she said. “You saved me from … myself, and you stopped me from doing things that I’d never, ever be able to come back from. You risked your lives and I’m just so … grateful.”
“We look after our own,” said Vex.
“Once a Dead Man, always a Dead Man,” said Saracen.
Stephanie stood. “You should apologise to Dai,” she said. Fletcher got to his feet, reached for her, but she pulled away. “No. She has to apologise. Dai has no brothers left thanks to her.”
“Go easy,” Fletcher said softly.
“It’s OK,” Valkyrie said. “She’s right. Of course I have to apologise to Dai. I have to apologise to everyone. Including all of you. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to explain it, but … I don’t know. There was a movie I saw once. Dad made me watch it. It was a Western, and I don’t like Westerns.”
“What was it called?” Gracious asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Who starred in it?” asked Donegan.
“That guy, you know. He’s tall and he looks at people like he’s going to shoot them all the time. He was the cop in that other movie, called that guy a punk and made him think about how many times he’d fired his gun because he’d lost track.”
“Clint Eastwood,” said Gracious.
“Yeah,” said Valkyrie. “Anyway, there’s a scene in it, in this Western he was in, and this other cowboy, dressed all in black, was told to go for a gun.”
“Lee Van Cleef,” said Gracious. “At the end of For a Few Dollars More.”
“Whatever,” Valkyrie said. “So he’s told to go for his gun and there’s this big long pause, because the guy who told him to go for it, the sheriff, is armed and he’s ready to fire.”