“I told you before—you’re only here to point me the way,” he whispered. “You’ve done that, so why don’t you just leave the rest to me.”
The look she gave him in return allowed for no argument, but Blue tried anyway.
“Look,” he said. “Someone’s going to have to take charge of the House.”
“Esmeralda will do that.”
“Yeah, but...”
“We’re in this together,” Sara told him. “I don’t want to argue any more—that’s why I just went along with what you were saying earlier. Now are we going to do something or not?”
Blue sighed. “Like what? Ring the bell?”
Sara shrugged. “Why not? He knows we’re here.”
As she lifted her finger to push the bell, Pukwudji caught her hand and stopped her.
“Don’t,” he said.
Blue was in agreement. If the enemy knew they were here, why had they even come in the first place? They were supposed to be surprising the guy; considering the kind of power he had to work with, they didn’t have a hope in hell otherwise. But this... Ringing the bell and then shooting whoever answered didn’t seem like the best course of action.
“You didn’t tell me he’d know we were coming,” he said.
“I can feel him in here,” Sara said, tapping her temple again. “He doesn’t see us as a threat. He doesn’t know about the gun. He... That’s all the surprise I think we’re going to get.”
“He’s got to threaten us,” Blue said. “I don’t think I can just... shoot him in cold blood.”
“It’s not like we’ve got a whole lot of choice,” Sara said. “If you want to give me the rifle...”
Blue couldn’t see much of her features, they were cast in shadow because her back was to the streetlights, but he could hear the emptiness in her voice. She wasn’t any more prepared for this than he was. It was one thing to take somebody down in the middle of a running battle; something else entirely to just walk in off the street and shoot them.
“We’ve got to be sure he’s the one,” he added.
Sara nodded. “We’ll be sure.”
Once again she reached for the doorbell, and again Pukwudji stopped her.
“This is a bad place,” he repeated. “It’s not all quite part of this world, hey?”
“I can feel that,” Sara said.
“What is it?” Blue asked, peering more closely at the doorbell. “Is this thing booby-trapped?”
Pukwudji shook his head miserably. “It’s a door to the Otherworld—but not to any part of it that we know. He’s made his own echo of the Otherworld here; a shadow cast by the bitterness of his spirit. The rules it follows answer only to him. Do you understand?”
Blue nodded. At least he thought he understood. The house might look innocent but, just like Tamson House, there was more to it than met the eye. He figured what Pukwudji was saying was that their enemy had invested a part of himself in the building. It wasn’t the doorbell that was booby-trapped; the whole building was a trap.
He could feel something—a presence in the air, a coldness—that he realized was emanating from the building. It wasn’t overtly threatening, but it had the same taste to it that he’d sensed back at Tamson House; something was watching them, just waiting for them to make their move
He looked back at the street. Owls were perched on telephone poles, streetlights and the roofs of houses. One was on the hood of a parked car on their side of the street. They were here for the show, for—how did Pukwudji put it?—the “birth of great deeds.”
Right, he thought. Taking notes for some otherworldly PBS special. Well, let’s not disappoint them.
He worked the lever of his rifle, filling the firing chamber with a shell.
“Skip the bell,” he said. “Just try the door. If it’s unlocked, swing it open and stand back.”
Sara nodded. She took a breath and put her hand on the doorknob, but as soon as she touched it, she collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. She slumped against the door and slid to the floor of the porch, her muscles completely limp. It was as though her bones had all turned to jelly.
“What... ?”
Blue crouched down beside her. He laid his rifle down so that he could gather Sara up from where she had fallen. The door opened when he had her in his arms. Light spilled out, half-blinding him. He blinked in its glare, then found himself looking up into the tired features of a woman who appeared to be in her early sixties.
She was dressed all in black, like the old ladies down in Little Italy—long black dress, black sweater, black stockings and shoes, black kerchief around her head. But for all her grim wardrobe, he didn’t get any sense of menace from her—couldn’t sense anything at all except for that weariness that was undoubtedly responsible for the heavy lines in her features.
He glanced helplessly at Pukwudji, but the little man had vanished. Beyond the porch, he could sense the owls, their attention sharpened into such a tight focus upon him that it felt as though they were pecking at him with their beaks.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the woman said.
Blue turned back to look at her.
“He was almost finished,” the woman went on. “He would have taken the House, and been content with that, but now...”
Her voice trailed off. Blue waited for her to continue, but she just regarded him with her sad, tired gaze.
“Now what?” he asked finally.
The woman pointed to Sara lying limp in his arms.
“Now he has her as well,” she said. She regarded him for a long moment, then finally stood aside, adding, “You might as well come in now.”
None of this was playing the way it was supposed to, Blue thought.
“Come along,” the woman added a little peevishly. “I don’t have all night.”
Blue shook his head. This was nuts. They’d come here to kill somebody, and now this woman was asking him in like they’d just dropped by for tea.
He looked again for Pukwudji, but there was still no sign of the little man. Retreat was definitely in order, he thought. Instead, he rose with Sara in his arms and carried her inside.
“You can lay her down here,” the woman said, indicating a couch in the room just off the front hall.
The room was comfortably furnished. There were framed samplers and reproductions of landscapes on the wall. A TV set sat in one corner with the picture on, the sound off. There were a couple of easy chairs, the couch, a coffee table. Knickknacks stood in a genial array on the mantelpiece.
He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, then laid Sara on the couch. Her breathing seemed steady, but there was still no alleviation of her limpness. Her head lolled sideways until he supported it with a pillow. The woman watched him, stepping back into the hall when he rose from the couch.
“You don’t really need it,” she said when he glanced to the porch where the rifle was lying, “but if it’ll make you feel more at ease, by all means bring it in.”
Blue was no longer certain about anything that was going on, but he did know one thing: she might not think he needed the rifle, but he sure as hell was going to feel better with a weapon in his hand.
He retrieved the rifle from the porch. When he stepped back inside, the woman made a follow-me motion with one hand and started up the stairs. Blue hesitated for a long moment. He closed the front door, looked in on Sara, whose condition didn’t seem to have changed, then finally went up the stairs. The woman was waiting impatiently for him on the landing.
She led him to the front bedroom, motioning him to enter.
It was colder still in the room—the drop in temperature coming in waves from the still figure that lay on the bed. Blue thought it was a corpse at first. The man’s skin was pale, almost translucent. But his chest moved, his breath lightly frosting the air around his thin lips. Blue felt that he could see the man’s eyes moving under his closed lids. He was in his seventies at least—maybe older. His hair was thinning and gray, his frame slen
der almost to the point of emaciation.
He gave no indication that he was aware of either Blue or the woman’s presence in the room, but Blue could sense that watchfulness growing sharper.
“This is who you were looking for,” she said. “But you’re far too late. You can’t hurt him.”
She picked up a book from a side table and threw it at the figure. Just before it hit the man, there was a quick bright flare of light—like bare wires sparking against each other—and then the book was flung across the room. The man remained immobile, untouched by the book, unmoved by the incident. A smell that reminded Blue vaguely of anise drifted briefly in the air, then faded.
“Nothing can hurt him,” the woman said. “Not anymore.”
“What... what the hell’s going on here?” Blue finally asked.
The woman smiled at him. “You know.”
Yeah, Blue thought. He knew. The man lying there was siphoning off Tamson House’s vitality.
“What’s in it for you?” he asked the woman.
“Youth. Eternal youth. We’ll be young together—forever.”
Blue shook his head. He lifted the rifle until its muzzle was pointed at her.
“I’m betting you don’t have some fancy force field to protect you,” he said.
“You’re right, of course. I don’t.”
“So tell him to stop. Tell him to stop and let Sara go or so help me God, I’ll shoot.”
“You don’t have it in you.”
Blue’s gaze went hard. “Lady, you don’t know what I’m capable of when my friends are being hurt.”
The woman laughed. “It really doesn’t matter. Go ahead and shoot me—he’ll just bring me back to life again.”
Was that possible? Blue wondered. He could see that the woman sincerely believed it was. His own reservations withered when he thought about all the impossibilities he’d experienced in the past twenty-four hours.
“Go away,” the woman told him. “He’s not interested in you. Your friend has a certain... vitality that he can use, but he has no need for you.”
“Fuck you,” Blue said.
He moved the muzzle from her to the figure in the bed and fired from the hip. The bullet sparked just before reaching the man, ricocheting off to embed in a wall. The anise-like smell stung Blue’s nostrils. His ears rang from the loud report, but the woman appeared completely unfazed.
“I think it’s time for you to go,” she said.
Her voice seemed to come from a great distance. Blue worked another round into the firing chamber and swung the rifle back so that it covered her.
“Sit down,” he said.
She moved to a chair and sat. The weariness in her features was now touched with a mocking amusement. Blue looked around the room, spotted a handful of ties hanging from a tie rack on the closet door, and grabbed a couple.
“Tie your legs to the chair,” he told her, tossing the ties toward her.
“This isn’t going to prove anything.” She looked at the man on the bed. “As soon as he’s finished, he’ll—”
“Just do it.”
When she finished tying her legs to the chair, he took a few more ties over to where she sat and bound her arms behind her. After checking and tightening the bonds on her legs, he set the rifle aside and moved to the phone.
“I’ve told you. There isn’t anybody who can help—”
“Put a cork in it, lady.”
He dialed a number and waited impatiently for the con-
nection to be made. It took six rings before a sleepy voice
answered on the other end of the line.
“Tucker? Blue here.”
“Do you have any idea what—”
“I don’t give a shit what time it is. I need your help, John.”
“Why is it that the only time I ever hear from you it’s when you need a favor?”
“This is serious. It’s got to do with Sara.”
That was enough to get Tucker’s attention.
“Okay,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got a situation here that’s going to get real messy.”
“You’re at the House?”
“No,” Blue said. “We’re just across the street, on the south side of the building.” He gave the address.
“You want me there officially?” Tucker asked.
Tucker was a cop who usually tried to play by the rules. But he was also a friend.
“I don’t think that’d be such a good idea,” Blue said. “I just need you.”
“I’ll be right over,” Tucker told him.
7
Esmeralda had grossly miscalculated how long it would take Jamie to recover. He hadn’t exactly died so much as fragmented this time out, but his return to awareness followed a similar pattern. By the time Whiskey Jack had gathered all the lost parts of his soul into the vessel of the dead kingfisher, he was already dealing with his recovery.
It took him a little longer to get his bearings once Esmeralda returned him to the House. The spark of his being leapt immediately into Memoria’s electronic circuits; it was relating to the sheer size and scope that his spirit inhabited in its guardianship of the House that took the extra time. It was like putting on a familiar suit one hadn’t worn for a few years. You knew which sleeve went where, how the zipper and buttons functioned, but it just didn’t feel right at first. It seemed tighter across the shoulders, perhaps, and the trousers didn’t hang just right. Still, it only took wearing it for a short while until you adjusted to the fit.
As he did with the House.
But by the time he was back in control, Esmeralda and Ginny had already left the room and there was no one with whom he could communicate. He started to follow their progress, looking inward through the windows, listening to the hollow tread of their footsteps on the hardwood floors, the more muffled steps on carpets, but he soon withdrew back to his nerve center in Memoria.
There was a far more pressing concern at hand than speaking to his friends.
He’d sensed the drain on the House’s vitality as soon as he was lodged in the interlocking patternwork of its wood and glass and stone. He traced the origin of the siphoning back to the House’s homeworld, a process that gave him his first awareness that the building had followed him into the Otherworld.
In the matrices of Memoria’s memory banks he had long ago created a physical representation of himself and his study. It wasn’t a place anyone else could visit, for it existed solely in electronic impulses—an odd mingling of those that were native to the human mind with those that the computer required to function; it existed solely for him. The pretense of a physical body and surroundings helped him to focus more clearly on individual issues as well as allowing him a respite from the constant barrage of stimuli that the House fed him otherwise. As Tamson House was a haven to those who required a respite from the sometimes overwhelming concerns of the world beyond its walls, so this small block of electronic impulses in Memoria’s enormous memory banks was his.
It was to that place he retreated when the full enormity of the situation settled in him.
His first impulse on discovering the intruder had been to cut off the man’s access to the House’s magical essence. That had proved futile. The intruder was simply too strong, effortlessly blocking every one of Jamie’s attempts. What was worse, he was using the House’s own energy to do so. So Jamie withdrew to the privacy of his haven—even the intruder didn’t seem able to access it—but while he was safe from the man’s scrutiny, he was also at a loss as to how to proceed from here.
“God, but you’ve been a fool,” he told himself. “How can you stop him, when he controls more of the House than you do?”
“You have to go to him,” a disembodied voice said.
The shock of being addressed by someone in his most private of retreats was enough to make him momentarily lose control of the pretense of form he had given himself and the study. When he recovered enough to call them back into their semblanc
es of reality, he was no longer alone in the room.
Sitting in the other club chair was a familiar figure whose presence made the hairs rise on the nape of Jamie’s neck. The newcomer looked like a fairy-tale gremlin—a tiny wizened figure with a floppy hat and a baggy overcoat. His nose was hooked; his beard, and what could be seen of his hair poking from under the hat, was grizzled. His eyes were startlingly bright and seemed to bulge birdlike from their sockets.
“You can’t be here,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re—”
“Dead?” His uninvited guest laughed. “And you’re not?”
It was a question that Jamie had pondered over a great deal in the years since he’d taken over guardianship of the House, but it wasn’t relevant here. With the man’s laugh he realized who his guest was. It wasn’t Thomas Hengwr sitting here with him—the same man who’d been indirectly responsible for all the odd occurrences that had troubled Tamson House and eventually resulted in Jamie’s own death so many years ago. No, this was Whiskey Jack in one of his thousand and one guises, following up on the results of his earlier handiwork with Esmeralda.
Jamie had seen him pass through the House often enough in the years of his guardianship to recognize him no matter what shape he wore.
“What do you want?” he asked the trickster.
“The same as you—a return to how things once were. Unfortunately, that won’t be entirely possible, but we can only do our best.”
Jamie nodded slowly.
“It’s up to you to stop him,” Whiskey Jack said. “Let me tell you what I know of him, little enough though it is.”
“Why don’t you stop him?”
“Because it’s your responsibility,” Whiskey Jack replied. “And because I can’t get near him.”
“And I can?”
Whiskey Jack nodded.
“I’ve already tried to stop him, but he’s too strong.”
“That’s why you have to go to him. You’re part of the House once more now—all you have to do is follow the trail of energy he’s stealing away.”
“And then?”
Whiskey Jack didn’t bother replying.