Slam.
Marnie panted. The soles of her heels, braced against the floor, hurt horribly. She simply could not get through more than a couple more of these assaults. In fact, Marnie thought distinctly, if Leah abandoned the run-and-jump technique and merely pushed for a sustained two minutes, it would all be over.
She moved from the door and grabbed up a two-by-four.
One …
Two …
Three—
Slam!
Screaming, Leah hurtled through the door, right shoulder first, right hand holding the gun at her side. She was moving fast, expecting a resistance that wasn’t there, and ran past Marnie.
Marnie swung the two-by-four. It connected solidly with Leah’s shoulders. Leah staggered but didn’t fall. Didn’t drop the gun.
Her head, why didn’t you aim at her head? wailed the Sorceress. Try again, try again!
Marnie felt sick. The Sorceress was more violent than she was. How could she physically aim at someone’s head? This wasn’t Paliopolis; it was real and she couldn’t—
Leah had swiveled around, her eyes wild with rage, with fear, with—betrayal. She raised her gun arm.
Marnie became aware that she, too, was screaming. Heart in throat, she took a frantic step back and swung the two-by-four again. Low. The end of the two-by-four collided with the underside of Leah’s right hand, forcing it upward along with the gun it clutched. Marnie backed up and lashed out again.
The gun went flying sideways through the air across the room, smacking against the far wall and falling behind the lounge chair. Marnie gasped. Her eyes locked with Leah’s. Leah’s body blocked the way to the staircase. The gun was about equidistant from both of them.
Leah bolted for the gun.
Dropping the two-by-four, Marnie raced for the stairs. She ran the five-yard dash of her life. She had enough time to get away, to get out; she knew she did. Gaining the foot of the stairs, she reached out and grabbed the railing and used it to swing her body around and onto the staircase without losing momentum. Her feet pounded up the stairs. One, two, three, four, five—
With terrific force, she collided into someone who’d been racing down the stairs even more rapidly than she’d been racing upward. He—it was a he—yelled something, as, once again, the laws of physics spoke decisively in Marnie’s disfavor.
She landed painfully, tangled with the tall newcomer in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. They lay, stunned, for several seconds too long. Marnie knew it. She felt the vital moments tick away as she got her wind back.
She waited for sounds from above. Police sirens. Shouts. Someone who was with this stranger who’d collided with her. Tentative hellos. Anything.
Nothing came.
Leah said, in a voice that shook: “I’ve got the gun.”
Marnie examined the newcomer’s shocked face, so close to hers. Unless they were recruiting teenagers, he couldn’t possibly be a member of the police or the FBI. A neighbor who’d heard the ruckus? An accomplice of Leah’s?
No, said the Sorceress slowly. Not Leah’s accomplice. Not a neighbor.
“If either of you moves,” said Leah, “I’ll kill you.”
Marnie didn’t move. Neither did the young man. He was a little older than her, Marnie guessed. The shaved head definitely did not add to his looks. He was nobody’s idea of gorgeous. Except—except for his eyes.
“Sorcer—Marnie?” he said. “Marnie, it is you, right? I heard screaming. Sorry—are you all right?”
Sorcer.
You know who this is, said the Sorceress.
It was impossible. It was completely and utterly impossible. And yet, on another level, it seemed completely natural. Of course he would show up. He always did, lately.
Marnie felt her mouth shape itself into a bitter little smile. “Hello, Elf,” she said.
CHAPTER
18
“Sorceress,” said the Elf, formally, with a duck of the head that in any other situation might have been gallant. Here, now, sprawled and entangled at the bottom of a flight of basement stairs, it was merely preposterous. Marnie felt an incipient bubble of hysteria. Then, anxiously, the Elf said again: “Marnie? Are you okay?” And hearing the cadence of his voice, Marnie thought foolishly: Oh.
Oh, it’s you.
“I’m just fabulous,” she heard herself say.
She had landed mostly on top of the Elf. Beneath her palms, Marnie could feel his heartbeat, accelerated from running and from the fall. Their eyes met. Marnie’s heart performed an involuntary gymnastic contortion.
“Get up!” Leah Slaight’s voice slashed across Marnie’s thoughts. “Both of you.” As if she felt she needed to repeat it, Leah added shrilly: “I’ve got the gun.”
Marnie kept her eyes on the Elf’s face, which had gone very white. “I don’t suppose you’re with an undercover teenage SWAT team,” she said to him.
The Elf shook his head. His lips formed words that didn’t come out. They might have been, I’m sorry.
“Not criticizing, just checking,” Marnie babbled. “You never know. People aren’t always what they seem—”
“Now!” barked Leah, who had evidently seen many police movies.
The Elf’s shoulders raised in the tiniest of shrugs, and it was as if the small movement restored something of Marnie to herself. Awareness of a couple of new aches penetrated. Her right elbow, in particular. She blinked and looked away from the Elf. Carefully she levered herself off him and onto her knees. For the first time since the running collision, she raised her eyes and looked fully at Leah Slaight.
Leah was six feet away, fixed in a bent-leg stance with both hands on the gun. Her face looked as if it was molded from melted wax. Her eyes were pieces of flat black coal. The mouth of the gun, too, was a single large black eye. Leah was listening intently, and Marnie knew instinctively that she was trying to hear whether anyone else was coming. Someone who might have come with the Elf. Police, maybe.
The silence elongated. Only a few seconds, yet it seemed to last forever.
“You too,” said Leah to the Elf, more quietly than before. “Get up.”
The Elf lifted his torso from the floor and then paused, leaning on his elbows. Thankfully distracted from Leah, from the awful silence, Marnie frowned down at him. Had he just winced? His lips were tight.
“Are you okay?” she asked him. This time her voice came out sounding almost squeaky. She could feel the gun, its eye, staring at her. No. At them.
The Elf succeeded in rolling to his side. He reached down to touch his ankle and winced again, clearly in pain. A single sentence formed itself in Marnie’s consciousness, in illuminated letters.
We are both going to die.
With the sentence came an inchoate rush of emotions. She had been escaping. In fact, if the Elf hadn’t come barreling down the staircase she’d surely have made it away! And now he was hurt, and in danger too, and it was all her—no, it was his own stupid, stupid fault! If he hadn’t been so fast down the stairs, if—he was always messing her up, always! This was not Paliopolis—and, oh, now, now, she couldn’t stand it if he too—
“I need a little help getting up,” said the Elf. He had turned his head and was speaking directly to Leah; speaking calmly, matter-of-factly, and with an unobtrusive note of courtesy. “Can Marnie help me? Would that be okay? It’s my ankle.” As if he were conversing at a party, he added: “Typical. I’m kind of clumsy. My mother says it’s because my feet are too far away from my head.”
“Who are you?” said Leah. Her voice was not steady, but the mouth of the gun was. Very. “What are you doing here?”
Marnie stilled. Yes, she’d like to know the answer to that second question, too.
“I’m a friend of Marn’s,” said the Elf, again in that calm, conversational tone. “Some people came to my house a day or two ago, thinking she might’ve been planning to visit me. I knew she hadn’t, so I figured I’d drive up here and look around. See if I could find her.” In his
voice Marnie heard the lingering amazement that he had, in fact, found her.
And wait a minute. What had he just called her? Marn? Rhymes with barn? Eww.
“No,” Leah said impatiently. “Why—how—did you come here?” She gestured around the basement.
“Well, first I went to Halsett with my buddy Dave,” the Elf said, as if it were an entirely reasonable thing for him to have been doing, as if this were an answer.
Without Marnie’s assistance, the Elf slowly, deliberately, heaved himself onto one knee. He grimaced and, automatically, Marnie shifted closer and offered him a shoulder and arm. Favoring his left leg, he leaned on her as they struggled upright. He was heavier than he looked. And at least a foot taller than Marnie.
She felt small and delicate.
More or less vertical now, the Elf shifted his attention—and that calm, calm voice—back to Leah. He smiled suddenly, moronically, right at her. “So when this girl said Marn had been having lunch with you before she took off, I decided to come talk to you. You are Ms. Slaight, right?”
Leah was shaking her head. “No,” she said. “No!” Her knuckles whitened on the gun, and simultaneously Marnie felt her own hand tighten on the Elf’s arm.
“No?” said the Elf. “But isn’t this—” Suddenly he had fished a small piece of paper from his jeans pocket. “—R.R. 1, Number 107, Back Nippin Road?” He looked up inquiringly. “Home of Leah Slaight, chemistry teacher?”
In that moment Marnie stopped trying to second-guess him. She had no idea where he was going with this. But she was suddenly sure that he was going somewhere. She knew him; he would have a plan—
She went back to listening. She had missed something.
“So, the thing is,” the Elf was saying earnestly to Leah, “people know where I am. They knew I was coming out here to see you. And actually, my friend Dave just dropped me off here. He’ll be back shortly.”
For a moment, Marnie’s heart leapt with belief. She saw Leah’s gun waver. She saw doubt bloom on that waxen face.
The Elf wasn’t paying any attention to Marnie now. He had actually taken a small step—well, a limp—toward Leah. He was looking straight at her.
“So I have an idea,” said the Elf calmly. “I think Marnie and I should just leave here now. I figure we go back to the school, and pretend that Dave and I just dropped her off there. That she ran away, just like they think. And we forget that anything else ever happened. Just … forget about it.”
No way she’ll go for that, thought Marnie. But she discovered she was holding her breath.
“Ms. Slaight?” said the Elf. “What do you think?” His voice was soft now. “We just all shake hands and, well, go home. We get a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow, wake up to a new day.”
So soft, that voice. So clear. So reasonable.
Was Leah listening? Did she believe? Maybe. Maybe. She was frowning … and earlier, she’d wanted to believe that she and Marnie could be sisters, that she could trust Marnie. Maybe she’d want to believe a second time … maybe she was unbalanced enough … needy enough …
But then it happened.
“Dave will be back soon,” repeated the Elf, and it was probably something about how he said it. Perhaps it simply came out too quickly. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said anything at all, but merely let the silence sit. It hardly mattered. In one instant there had been hope. In the next it was gone.
The Elf was no fool. He heard the change in the air. Marnie actually felt his realization in his body, through her hand on his arm. She heard the tiny exhale of dismay.
“You’re lying,” said Leah Slaight to the Elf, and the words rushed out of her fiercely. “You’re as much of a liar as she is!”
The Elf moved. Marnie would never understand exactly what he thought he’d accomplish. She felt him shift, and then all at once he was a step closer to Leah, in front of Marnie.
And a shot rang out.
Marnie screamed. The Elf crumpled to the floor.
CHAPTER
19
Never would Marnie have believed that she would welcome being locked back into the basement cell. But her relief was enormous, if momentary. No matter what Leah might do later, the Elf was alive now. Leah’s shot had hit him in the right thigh; he was in no serious, no immediate, danger. And neither, incidentally, was Marnie. It was a miracle. She felt the blood pulsing in her veins as it never had before; she was alive, alive. And yet …
She shivered. As if pulled, she went back to the door and listened for a moment. Silence; the kind that spoke emphatically of the lack of human presence beyond. For the sake of thoroughness, Marnie grasped the doorknob firmly and turned it, pushing hard at the door. Oh yes, the padlock was back in place. And despite Leah’s assault on the door itself during Marnie’s abortive escape attempt, it felt no less sturdy than it had an hour ago.
She exhaled audibly. Behind her, she could hear the Elf’s breathing as he lay on the cot. She glanced back at him, saw his chest rise shakily and then fall. They had managed to do a kind of three-legged stagger across the floor to reach the cot, and Marnie had had to kick the half-empty seltzer bottle out of their path. It had rolled off, its mouth trailing more water across the floor. Somehow the sight of it had made Marnie even more queasy.
Marnie’s hand left the doorknob and rose to her cheek.
It was as if part of her mind were aerially posed over a maze, looking down on herself and the Elf, trapped inside. She could see all possible avenues of action. Every cul-de-sac, every dead end, every blind alley, every trap. But no way out.
Marnie turned her back on the locked door. She looked at the Elf. At the seltzer bottle. She found she had wrapped her arms around herself.
“Marn. You—okay?” The syllables came out of the Elf in little puffs. He was trying to sit up; his forehead was furrowed.
Marnie crossed the room in three strides. She knelt by the side of the cot. “I’m fine. Be quiet for now, Elf, all right? Concentrate on breathing.”
He eased back down, his keen eyes only half open. For the first time Marnie noticed his ridiculous camouflage clothes. And those combat boots! When you added in the bald head, he was the perfect picture of a thug. The kind of kid adults called the police about. Marnie remembered Jenna Lowry’s clean-cut hockey boy and repressed a bubble of hysterical laughter. It just went to show—actually, she wasn’t sure what it went to show. Something. Nothing.
First things first. “Are you in a lot of pain?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s not bad,” he said, and she recognized the lie in his voice. For the first time it occurred to her that the Elf had thus far behaved like some macho hero stereotype. He hadn’t even yelled when Leah shot him. Who did he think he was, some cyberspace adventurer with ten virtual lives? The Elf, for real?
“Listen,” he said. He was making an effort to talk in a normal rhythm rather than in gasps. “I’m an idiot. I want you to know I know that. I heard screaming. I should have gone back to the car, called the police on the cell phone—but I—somehow I just knew it had to be you. I didn’t think past helping you. I just ran toward the screaming.” His lips twisted. “Real smart. Like the girl who gets knocked off in the first five minutes of a horror movie.”
“It’ll be okay,” Marnie said automatically. “Just try to relax while I—”
“You think it’ll be okay?” He sounded incredulous.
“Yeah,” said Marnie. “Somebody besides you is sure to show up here, right? If you found your way to Leah, somebody else will too. Max—he’s my guardian. Or someone.”
“I met Max,” the Elf said. “I talked to him—he thought maybe you were with me. He asked me who else you hung out with in Paliopolis. No one, I said. That I knew of. But I said I didn’t know everything. Didn’t really know you.”
The Elf had opened his eyes fully now. They met Marnie’s without evasion, searching. “Although,” he added, “I feel like I do. Almost.”
Marnie looked back. She looked dir
ectly into his eyes, and for a moment she felt as if he could see what she saw, know what she knew, fear what she feared. And those eyes. The lashes were almost enough to compensate for the bald head—
The world tilted terrifyingly on its axis.
Suddenly, oddly, the Elf was smiling. “You know, I don’t believe we’ve actually been formally introduced—”
No, Marnie thought. The word came up in a desperate cry inside her. No! She wrenched her gaze away. “Elf,” she interrupted, “I don’t have time for that stuff, okay? I need to look at the gunshot area. And that ankle.” Her voice came out too loud, too flip, and she cringed inside, even as another part of her settled down, appeased but wary, watching, on guard.
There was a little pause. The Elf seemed puzzled. He said, “Okay.”
Marnie took a deep, relieved breath. “Okay,” she said, and lifted her chin. “Ankle first. It’s the left one, right?”
Thankfully, the Elf turned his face away, to look toward his ankle. “Yeah.” A little too quickly, he added, “I’m sure it’s just a sprain,” and Marnie felt her lips tighten. Please. Who was he trying to impress? Abruptly, and for some reason she didn’t care to examine, Marnie yanked hard on the Elf’s left combat boot.
As it turned out, Mr. Macho Cyberspace Hero had a satisfyingly loud yell, when you took him by surprise.
CHAPTER
20
It was most likely a sprain, Marnie thought, when—more gently—she got the boot off. The Elf’s ankle was swollen badly, but at least to Marnie’s tentative, embarrassed fingers and eyes there was no sign of an actual break. His breathing became a little harsher, but she had no idea what he was really feeling; after that first squawk he had reverted to his Cyberspace Hero imitation.
“Okay,” Marnie said a little too briskly. “Let’s move on to the bullet wound. Do you think you could roll onto your side, so I can see the back of your other leg?”
The Elf succeeded in rolling so that he faced away from Marnie. Marnie got her first complete look at the gunshot wound and her stomach cramped. Oh, God. A long gully of flesh seemed to have gouged right out of the Elf’s leg. The wound had bled freely—he had left a trail across the floor a few minutes ago—but now the blood appeared to be congealing. Marnie thought that was a good sign. She hoped it was. She was pretty sure the shot hadn’t hit an artery, or there’d be spurting blood … or he’d be dead.