The Book of Fours

  The pool in which he lay grew, and drowned the sun, the moon, the stars, everything.

  He writhed in his travail; every part of him burned and sizzled; no torture invented could have been worse. Yet it continued, ceaselessly, and ibn Rashad wished only to die.

  In that single moment, when he released his will, the pain stopped.

  * * *

  When Sallah ibn Rashad stepped from the pool, it was dawn. Completely clean, in his dry, clean robes, he was ibn Rashad the Physician in form only. He had been transformed. In some magickal way, he had become the eyes and ears of the One Who Gathered. He was its willing and obedient servant.

  Taran the landowner lay dead at his feet, the demon apparently with it; and the viperess, Ceceli, had wisely fled into the desert, taking with her all the camels of their caravan.

  Ibn Rashad smiled cruelly as he surveyed the dead bodies of their guards and servants, already baking in the sun. Vultures wheeled overhead. The smell rivaled that of his new master.

  “It doesn’t matter where you go, woman,” he promised Ceceli. “I will keep you alive until I find you. And then I will make you pay.”

  Chapter One

  Sunnydale

  Holly Johnson was very hungry. From her place behind the rocks piled against the water’s edge, she watched two fishermen as they unfolded lawn chairs a few feet away. They had just carried a whole bunch of stuff out onto the Sunnydale Municipal Pier and now they started getting more things out of boxes and paper sacks and coolers. One of the men was an old guy wearing a denim jacket and jeans, and the other wore a stuffed down jacket and a pair of baggy pants like Holly’s grandpa’s.

  The sea gulls wheeled and cawed; the water lapped the rocks. A sign to her right said, NO something-something BEVERAGES. PETS MUST BE ON LEASHES. Salt coated her face and her fingernails were broken and torn. There was a hole in her brown corduroy pants, her matching brown sweater was ripped, and her red T-shirt was stinky.

  The men had some food with them. Holly could smell it. She was so hungry she was shaky. She wanted very badly to take back running away, but she wasn’t sure what would happen if she turned herself in. She was eight years old and her next-door neighbor, Gigi Hazelin, had explained to her that her mom was never going to get another husband because of her. That was what had happened to Gigi’s mom, and everybody knew Gigi’s mom was a real mess.

  “They have us kids and then our fathers leave them, and then other men don’t want them, either,” Gigi had explained. “They only want ladies who don’t have kids.”

  That had made perfect sense to Holly, and since she loved her mother more than anything in the world, she had run away the morning after Mr. Cho, from her mom’s work, had come over for the third night in a row to have dinner.

  Just like always, Holly had gone to bed when her mom told her to. But then she remembered she had forgotten to tell her about her spelling test—her mom had helped her study for it, and Holly had gotten one hundred percent—and Holly went down the hall toward the living room to give her the good news.

  She stopped in the dooway, suddenly uncertain if she should go any further. From where she stood, she could see her mom and Mr. Cho, but they couldn’t see her. They were watching X-Files and sitting very close to each other on the couch. Holly got distracted; she loved that show, but she wasn’t allowed to watch it because it gave her nightmares.

  Then Mr. Cho picked up a glass of wine and took a sip, and asked her mom, “What about your little girl?”

  And Holly’s mom’s voice got all funny and she said, “You know she comes first, Ben.”

  He said, “Of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s why I love you so.”

  They were both quiet for a while, and Holly got scared. She was afraid to make a sound. She watched more of the X-Files but then Scully got lost in a forest, which was scary; so Holly turned her attention to the glass swans on their fireplace mantel. The swans were filled with colored water—they had a green one, a pink one, and a purple one—and her mom had arranged them on a glass lake with flowers around them. They were beautiful, just like Mom.

  Holly’s eyes filled with tears, and when the two adults started to stand up with their arms around each other, she ran back down the hall and climbed into her bed.

  Her mother called, “Holl-holl?” but she didn’t answer. She curled up with her face to the wall, pretending to be asleep.

  After a while, she was asleep.

  * * *

  In the morning, she had told Gigi all about it. Gigi sighed, shaking her head, and said, “It’s gonna happen. He’ll leave her because of you and she’ll start drinking.”

  “My mom’s not like that,” Holly insisted.

  Gigi looked at her; her eyes glistened and her mouth trembled, and she had bad breath. Gigi always had bad breath. She didn’t brush her teeth because her mom didn’t care if all her teeth fell out. She said, “Mine wasn’t like that, either, until it happened.”

  “He said he loves her because I’m first,” Holly informed her. But her heart was pounding and she felt a little sick.

  “That’s just TV talk.” Holly’s best friend waved her hand and they continued their walk to school. Gigi was skinny and her clothes were too big. The waist part of her dress hung around her hips and the rest of it was long enough to trip on. Holly’s mom said that Gigi should be in foster care, “with that mother. She’s a real mess.”

  “That’s the stuff they tell each other because they think they should say it,” Gigi continued. “But they don’t mean it.”

  “They don’t?” Holly felt even sicker. It had never occurred to her that her mother would ever lie to anyone. “Then why do they say it?”

  “Because Jesus is listening,” Gigi answered authoritatively. She was Catholic, and she went to Sunday school. “They don’t want to get in trouble with him. So they say all the stuff they think he wants to hear.”

  Holly bit her lower lip and twisted her hands together. She didn’t want her mom to get in trouble with Jesus. She didn’t want her to start drinking. She didn’t want her to start dressing Holly in funny clothes and sleeping all day.

  So now Holly watched the fishermen opening up bags from Happy Burger, her stomach rumbling. The man who looked like her grandfather picked up a plaid Thermos and unscrewed the top, then poured coffee into a small red plastic cup. The other man started sipping from a Happy Burger cup and they both laughed about something to do with battery acid.

  Holly didn’t know how long she had been gone from her house. She was tired and dirty and most of the time she was hungry. She slept all kinds of places at night, and she was a little surprised that the police hadn’t caught her and thrown her in jail by now. No one seemed to be looking for her.

  Mom’s glad I’m gone, she thought. That made her even more afraid to take back running away. Maybe her mom had already married Mr. Cho, and if Holly came back now, Mr. Cho would divorce her mother, just like Daddy had.

  The men settled back, fussing with their fishing poles, then casting them in the water. One of them picked up a radio and set it on his lap. He pressed a button and on came the sound. It was a news report.

  “. . . fire still raging out of control. At least seven more deaths have been reported, and numerous casualties have been taken from the firelines and are being transported to Sunnydale Medical Center for emergency treatment. City officials are considering calling on the Governor for aid. In other news, local band Dingoes Ate My Baby triumphed at the Battle of the Bands held at Crestwood College last night. The group’s lead singer, Devon MacLeish, said—”

  The man changed the station. Soon the air filled with a song Holly didn’t know. It was slow and dreamy. The words were something like, “But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny—”

  Then the man shouted, “I got a big one!”

  He grabbed the pole with both hands. The other man caught the radio as it began to tumble from his lap. He got excited, too, and started yelling at the other guy
to reel it in, then to let the line slacken, then to do this, then that.

  Holly crept forward, watching eagerly. Both the men wrestled with the pole, yelling and whooping. The pole itself was curving so hard Holly was sure it was going to break in two.

  Fog was gathering beneath the pier, slightly obscuring Holly’s vision. It came rolling on the tops of the waves, thick as the stuffing in their couch at home.

  Waves slapped the rocks, much harder than just a few seconds before. Spray leaped into the air and dappled her with droplets of sea water. The next wave rolled in much harder, bringing more fog, and the next splashed her with a bucketful of icy cold ocean.

  “Hey,” she protested; then swiveled her head toward the two fishermen to see if they had heard her.

  But they were busy themselves. The waves were crashing up against the pylons that held up the pier. It was as if the ocean was a bowl somebody was shaking back and forth. Fog was rising in big gobs all around them.

  Holly ran backwards to dodge the next high wave as it slammed the breakwater, but she wasn’t fast enough. It not only drenched her, but knocked her hard onto her caboose.

  The men were shouting in the mist. As they pulled back their hands and raised them over their heads, their fishing poles dove into the water. Water crashed down, really hard, throwing the man who looked like her grandfather onto his back.

  Holly crawled away as fast as she could, wave after wave knocking her to the sand, then trying with all its might to pull her back out to sea. Fog chased her; and it smelled horrible. It smelled like dead things. It was so awful that Holly had to stop to throw up.

  Then she got to her feet and crab-scrabbled away from the breakwater and toward the gravel parking lot.

  Other people came running, some out of a little coffee shop a ways down the jetty. The fog swirled around them and the waves roared like wild animals. A couple with a little teeny wiener dog waved and yelled at the men on the pier, and Holly scampered between a white car and a black minivan.

  The man of the couple pulled out a cell phone and started bellowing into it. The lady picked up the dog and hurried out of the ocean’s reach, toward the parking lot. Holly made herself smaller.

  The waves were huge now, arcing over the pier where the two men had flattened themselves against the wood, screaming and yelling.

  Then, as Holly stared, the pylons gave way, and the entire pier crashed into the stormy water. It didn’t go all at once, but cracked into bits like the Titanic. Big posts smacked into the hills and valleys and other pieces, like the decking, ripped apart and floated for a few seconds before they sank from view.

  The fog covered the scene; Holly saw no sign of the two fishermen.

  What she did see rooted her to the spot:

  As the waves rose and collided with each other; as the sky darkened from the immense towers of water and the fog; as people scurried away like ants, something came out of the water.

  It appeared in the center of a wave, dripping wet. It was man-shaped, and its feet did not touch the water. It kind of flew through the fog, kind of glided, and it was moving toward the breakwater.

  Moving toward her.

  The closer it got, the more fog it cleared out of its path, and the better she saw it: it was a mummy. It was just like something out of the X-Files, wrapped in bandages that were dripping wet.

  In its hands, it carried a box.

  Its feet made no sound as it approached the graveled lot; seawater and kelp rushed up beneath and around its bandages and caught Holly up to her knees as she crouched. There was a stream of warmth, and she realized she had wet herself. That was the least of her worries.

  It was coming closer.

  It was coming for her.

  It began to open the box. Holly saw its fingernails, long and black, and covered with fungus. They protruded from the wrappings. That was the only part of its body that she could actually see.

  It reached its hand into the box.

  It pulled out something shiny. Holly squinted.

  An axe.

  It raised the axe above its head.

  Holly ran. She ran faster than she had ever believed she could run. She did not look back.

  Beneath the roaring sound of the ocean, she thought she heard a plaintive yipping, like that of a little dog.

  Holly burst into tears and ran faster.

  The fog-laden waters chased her for miles, it seemed, and by the time she reached dry ground, she was so exhausted she couldn’t move, couldn’t even keep her eyes open.

  If that mummy gets me, I’m dead.

  But she was so tired, she couldn’t do a single thing about it.

  “Mom,” she whispered, as the fog crept over her and covered her. “Mommy, find me.”

  Chapter Two

  San Francisco

  In the ultra-chic Pacific Heights district of San Francisco, Kevin Harris’s mother put down the letter from her sister-in-law and sighed. Seated at her new “shabby chic” writing desk, she picked up the school photo of Alexander, her nephew in Sunnydale, and regarded it.

  “What’s that?” Kevin asked, leaning over her shoulder. “Oh. The dork.”

  “Your cousin is not a dork.” She slipped the photo back in the envelope decorated with children with oversized eyes, the latest misspelled, rambling letter from Sunnydale.

  “Okay, the loser,” Kevin said. He was eating s’mores for breakfast. If she said anything about it, he’d remind her that he was on the football team and coach wanted him to bulk up. She smiled faintly. Kevin was a typical teenager; slept all weekend and ate like a fiend, but still he didn’t put on any flab. She envied him.

  “He doesn’t want to, like, come visit or anything, does he?”

  “Be nice,” she admonished. But he’s right. Alexander is a dork and a loser.

  They’re not like us, she thought, only slightly ashamed for being smug as she looked around her beautiful, professionally decorated living room. The entire house had recently been completely redone, in greens and golds that flowed from one room to the next. The kitchen, too, fully equipped with a fantastic Sub-Zero refrigerator and a state-of-the-art gas range from Denmark. Her son was a straight-A student and her husband pulled down more in a month than Alexander’s parents both made in a year.

  We are doing so fantastic.

  Kevin gave her a kiss on the cheek and hustled off to practice. She smiled at the retreating figure of her son—He’s looking thin; growing like a weed—and put the letter in one of the cubby holes on the desktop. I’ll have to answer it.

  But that meant she would have to pretend she cared about Alexander’s family, which she patently did not. They were an embarrassment. She’d been at their house one Christmas—and one only—and it was an experience she hoped never to repeat.

  She pushed away from her writing desk and arranged her hair. She had a standing ten o’clock appointment with Miguel, and then a lunch with her husband in the city, and then a meeting with the local board of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. They wanted to approach her about participating in a fundraiser.

  Checking her watch, she raised her brows slightly. She’d have to get going if she wasn’t going to be late for Miguel. If she was late for him, then she’d be late for lunch, and then for the meeting—a full domino effect.

  She closed up her desk and made sure she had her keys. She was out the door and into the Mercedes before she realized she had left her cell phone beside her bed, on the charger.

  For a split-second she debated about going back inside to retrieve it, then decided she didn’t really need it. Miguel would let her use the phone if she needed to make any calls, and her husband always carried his cell in his briefcase.

  Besides, not being reachable for a few hours would be a delicious guilty pleasure.

  So she pulled out of the driveway and went on her merry way.

  That was how, when she showed up (on time!) for lunch down in the financial district, she had not heard any of what had happened to her son at foot
ball practice.

  “His upper arm snapped,” her husband told her outside the restaurant. He had been waiting for her, pacing in the parking lot in his dark gray suit, cell phone in hand. “Then he told the doctor he’s been having some pain in his joints.”

  “He never told me that,” she said quickly. “Never.”

  Kevin’s father looked stricken. “And with the weight loss, and the fatigue . . .”

  A horrible chill ran through her. “It’s not what you’re thinking. My son does not have cancer.”

  He said gently, “They took some X-rays.”

  She shook her head, slowly at first, then faster. “Not Kevin.”

  “They want to do a biopsy. As soon as possible.”

  “Not my son!” she screamed. She hit his chest. Then she burst into tears as he enfolded her in his arms and cradled her.

  “We’ll find answers,” he promised her. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”

  I have connections, she thought. Her mind went into high gear.

  She grabbed his phone.

  Sunnydale

  I must be dead, Willow thought wonderingly.

  Below her, the operating room was filled with whirring machines and pieces of white cloth. There were drapes of white everywhere, and an enormous, circular light gleaming down on a body. The body lay beneath a vast, tentlike expanse of pieces of white on an operating table, and the heads bent over it hid the face. But Willow knew that body was hers.

  I look like I’m in a shroud, she thought. Oh, yeah. Accident. We hit somebody. Did they die? Am I dead?

  Where are my parents? Where’s Oz?

  Don’t I get to say goodbye?

  “No, no, no,” said one of the figures bending over her body. Willow couldn’t make out any of the details; the figure was hidden from her view by blurs of green.

  Scrubs, she guessed.

  Someone said, “We should call it. We’re going to need this table. I hear we’re getting some more firemen.”

  Someone else grunted. “I hate burn victims.”