The huge piebald figure reached down and brushed at Fred’s—at Daniel’s short brown hair, stroked his high forehead, still bleeding.
The Moth.
He held still—just for the moment.
It told him: Sum-runner. Fetch it.
The others had managed to form a triangle in the yard—no escape. “Do what the Moth says,” instructed the closest, a lithe old man with an experienced face and one distorted foot, standing by the concrete steps cutting up through the overgrown yard.
“Of course,” Daniel said, and tried to walk around the dimensionless figure, to obey, to comply—the only choice he had, really. The rain pounded, streamed, drops curling in the air—hitting from all directions—no straight lines down, so many fundamental rules changing—
Never figure it out.
The Moth blocked him with a massive finger. In warning, it reached back, its hand diminishing to a point, and brushed the house. The house bleached, turned white, its outlines crumbling to calcined powder. Little more than a polite admonition. If Daniel did what they asked, they might let him go, they might not kill or transform him. A pang of disappointment—who could possibly be more important? Who could jaunt as far, calculate, and understand the shape of the end of the world? He was the best. Maybe they knew. They could make him one of their own. A slave. That was likely what they were planning.
How gratifying. No thanks.
Two more translucent echoes vibrated past—one of Granger, the other of Fred. The Moth itself seemed to spread, sending ghosts of its unlikely self backward. It was using far too much energy—it would push more rapidly up against the Terminus than anything else near the house.
The house reacquired some of its color, but still seemed about to collapse. Even at his highest fever of perception, Daniel had never actually been able to see the multiverse in all its near-infinite variety—until now. You always learn more when something breaks—when it begins to die.
He had only one chance—to push past what they called the Moth, to retrieve his stone, and hang onto it with all his strength. Daniel lowered his head and squeezed under the Moth’s distorted legs, through its diminished substance. The piebald giant flickered and whined. Daniel could feel it fading. All illusion now—edges undone, strength gone—losing connection with the source of its power, the Mistress of all the corrupted world-lines that surrounded them.
The three figures in black became agitated, then dismayed, yet the storm was growing weaker and the air was warming. A retreat was under way—the Moth was getting out while the getting was good. The human servants of their Livid Mistress were being discarded, left behind.
Apparently, this was not what they had expected.
Daniel stood on the porch, dripping pools around his feet. He slammed against the front door. Wood-rot did half the job, and a crowd of him suddenly flew into the living room, surrounded by puffing dust from a hundred variations of shattered door—motes of dead and dying futures that had once been only seconds away.
Amazed, he realized he could still move.
Dimensions are never exactly perpendicular—never precisely straight—less so now than ever. He turned sideways, screamed as disappointed futurity raised blisters on his face and hands.
A crowd of Freds arrived at the fireplace, reached out for the one loose brick—it became hot with the radiated heat of so many hands—and the boxes they all knew were hidden behind that brick.
The echoes vanished in a wink.
He had seen it before. World-lines swaying and attempting to reconnect, invisible to all others—forcing time to a crawl, reducing the light outside to a mist of shadows.
They had struck Terminus—and then rebounded.
Everything had been reset, pushing them back a few hours—a few days at most—everything in the city, the world, this segment of the multiverse, bouncing off the cauterized five-dimensional scab that now capped the end of all cords.
On the occasion of the next impact—in a few hours, a few days, no more, he was sure—the bounce would be shorter, and shorter still after that, until finally they would simply freeze in place, pressed flat: no time, no space.
No hope.
Daniel pushed through the thick air to the doorway. Kicked aside dust and debris, stood on the sagging porch. The others—the strong, emaciated men in their soaked black suits—were trying to flee.
All but one.
Now he remembered a name. Whitlow.
The memory returned like a sliver of ice shoved into his brain. A memory of compromise, betrayal—the betrayal of an entire world.
The bad shepherd.
Daniel’s lungs emptied in self-loathing.
Whitlow stood on the porch, smiling and unafraid. He had not changed—always the same slender, confident, dignified old man across all of Daniel’s world-lines.
Always the clubbed foot.
Whitlow’s gaze seemed to briefly caress what Daniel held in his hands. The man with the club foot smiled, showing even, ivory-colored teeth. “What’s your name now, young traveler?” he taunted. “Why so eager? Where can any of us flee, but into Her arms?”
Whitlow casually brushed past Daniel, into the house.
And Daniel turned to join him.
CHAPTER 50
* * *
West Seattle
The van’s rear doors flung wide. Jack rolled onto the asphalt and tumbled for a dozen yards before slamming into a concrete curb. His exposed hand dipped into a gutter. Water rushed black and silver over his clutching fingers. Dazed, he tore through the abraded sack, spread holes for his other arm, then his torso, kicked his legs through, rose on hands and knees, peeled off the rags…
Stood, head spinning.
For a moment, he wondered if he was losing his sight, or even if he’d died—everything around the accident had skewed, ripped, and was slowly reassembling, like a tossed puzzle reversed in time.
He looked up and saw the lightning bolts turn upon themselves and spiral up into a spinning funnel, spitting and hissing like snakes. Rising in the middle of the funnel, he saw a writhing, lumpish form, nearly all middle, with tiny, wriggling arms and legs—falling free, diminishing, flailing, only to be grabbed again by the lightning and lifted higher…all the while crying out, a girlish shriek audible even above the roar.
Power lines torn loose from their poles tried to follow, curling and snapping and then straining straight as drawn wire. They broke loose and shot up, then went limp—and fell back like lost pieces of string.
The funnel closed. A deluge like the upending of a huge bucket flattened Jack where he lay, pressing his head onto the asphalt until he feared he would drown.
All stopped.
Everything became unnaturally still. Any motion was difficult—painful.
He blinked muddy rain from his eyes.
The downpour, the lightning, all of the weirdness—over. For a moment—deep quiet. Nothing but a soft hiss of rising steam and a light, ominous crackle like crushed cellophane.
The van had wrecked in a residential neighborhood. Old houses, square and neat, ascended a low hill below a water tower. The houses had blackened—not burned, but converted to a dark, glassy substance, like obsidian. The water tower sprayed liquid from all its seams. Knee-high shining black spikes filled the roadway. As Jack stood by the curb, more spikes shot up, shoving aside his feet, kicking the van around and piercing two of its tires.
The air sparkled with an absence of color, absence of sense. It smelled burned, as did Jack—burnt by a cold, timeless fire.
Inside the van, Glaucous was gasping for air between harsh, guttural yells. The yells became an awful, continuous screech.
Then—nothing.
Everything that Jack looked at hurt his eyes, his brain. The muscles in his neck twisted, fighting over which direction they would or would not turn. He flung up his arm.
Against his better judgment, he looked again.
The not-colors had been filled in like gaps in a coloring book,
but the burnt smell remained. The water tower gurgled and spewed its last few thousand gallons. The spikes melted into the asphalt.
Rainwater cascaded from overflowing gutters.
The houses had returned to a kind of normality.
Shaking out a bruised shoulder and favoring a wrenched ankle, he lurched toward the van. He knelt by the shattered windshield. Wet and unable to fly, the last of Penelope’s wasps crawled along the crazed edge of glass, twitching and buzzing. Each cast flickering duplicates that peeled away, then returned to merge again.
He looked at his hands—the same stuttering shadows. Something huge had just happened. Time was vibrating like a plucked string.
Jack peered into the van. The driver’s seat was empty.
Both seats were empty.
Nobody left to save.
CHAPTER 51
* * *
Ellen drove Miriam’s old Toyota. Agazutta rode shotgun. Farrah sat in the back with Ginny, who watched a necklace of amber beads swinging from the car’s rearview mirror. They turned up one wet street and down another, searching for someone—someone young and male, Ginny gathered from spare snippets of their talk.
Even now, water slopped along the gutters and spilled from over-passes and off-ramps, slowing their progress.
Things had once again crossed the line from puzzling to inexpressibly weird. She was surrounded by spooky, middle-aged women. They were all so curious, but however much they seemed to care, however much they seemed to have a plan, they were just as reluctant as Bidewell to answer big questions. Too many wait and see moments. She felt tied to their destinies in a way that made her suffer like a caged animal.
The storm had been hunting. That’s what the women had argued about before taking the West Seattle Bridge. Storms didn’t do that, of course.
Agazutta looked over her shoulder. “What do you feel?” she asked Ginny.
Ginny shook her head. There was nothing ahead but a frightening solidity—a flat, looming blankness. “You tell me. I’m just riding along.”
Ellen said, “The storm might not be the only unusual event today. You might be able to help us save someone else, someone as important as you. So please, Virginia—tell us what you feel.”
“We’re like a log that’s fallen out of the fireplace,” Ginny said, then dropped as low in the seat as she could, miserable and scared.
Farrah rubbed her nose. “It does smell burned.”
“Are you really witches?” Ginny blurted.
Agazutta snorted. “That’s a joke, dear. If we had any real powers, do you think we’d have allowed this to happen?”
Ellen said, “If anyone has magical powers, it’s probably you, or Bidewell. Not that we’ve seen much evidence of it lately.”
“Those books,” Farrah said.
“Fabricated,” Agazutta said.
“They’re old,” Farrah countered.
Ellen made a sound between a tosh and a splutter. “We have to trust him. We don’t have a choice. And we have to trust Ginny.”
“She’s sullen,” Farrah said.
“So were you, in the beginning,” Agazutta said.
“Hell, I’m still sullen,” Farrah said.
“Are you a lesbian?” Ginny blurted.
A brief but chilly silence followed. “There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding,” Farrah said. “Someone explain to the girl.”
“Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter,” Ellen Crowe said. “Except for me—”
“Except for her,” Agazutta emphasized with some resentment.
“…this group is sworn to celibacy,” Ellen finished.
“Which explains why we drink so much and read steamy novels,” Farrah said.
“Why aren’t you celibate?” Ginny asked Ellen, craning her head forward.
“It has nothing to do with magic, but a lot to do with fishing,” Agazutta said. “You’re not the bait, my dear. Ellen is the bait.”
“No one believes me when I say it’s all—” Ellen began, but Agazutta interrupted.
“Is that him?” she asked.
Ellen peered through the windshield at a skinny young man walking with slumped shoulders and drenched hair over uneven sidewalk. The Toyota slowed. Despite herself, Ginny sat up. The young man was unaware of their presence—or working hard to ignore them.
“Such a bedraggled puppy,” Agazutta said.
From behind he looked like the one Ginny had seen riding a bike through the Busker Jam. As soon as she could see his face, she cried out, “Stop!”
Ellen braked the car with a short squeal. This caught his attention and he looked sharp left, then broke into a run.
“You scared him,” Agazutta said.
“Well, excuse me—”
“He’s getting away!” Farrah cried. “We’ll lose him. He’ll jump!”
They all seemed to know what that meant. Agazutta was glancing up and around as if expecting a 747 to fall from the sky, or a tree to march out in front of them.
“He can’t,” Ginny said.
“Can’t what?” Ellen asked.
“He can’t escape,” Ginny said, recognizing something in the young man’s posture, in his sad response to their presence. “He’s run out of places to go.”
The car caught up and Ginny rolled down her window. “Wait!” she called.
The young man glanced left again. A raised block of sidewalk caught his toe. With a startled yawp, he fell on his hands and knees. Ginny banged on the door with her fists. “Let me out! Let me help him!”
Ellen stopped the car.
“Child safety lock,” Farrah reminded her, and she hmmed and pushed the release button. The door swung wide and Ginny spilled out. She straightened, held her head high, and approached the young man slowly, as if he were a wounded leopard. He rose to a squat and glared at her. Something about his outline wavered for just a moment—he fogged and shivered.
“Please don’t,” she said. “Please stay.”
His outline firmed, and he faced her with fingers and arms flexed. “Why?”
“We’ve met before,” Ginny said.
Jack glared at her.
“The storm was chasing you, wasn’t it?” Ginny asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said.
“We can’t escape,” she said. “There’s a warm place and friends—I think they’re friends—not far. Come with us.”
“Your car is full,” Jack observed. “Unless you want me to ride in the trunk.”
Farrah opened her door and thumped her hand on the roof. “Squeeze in. You’re skinny.”
“Get out of the wet, Jack,” Ellen said. She waved with a reassuring smile.
Jack stood and peered through the windshield. He pushed aside his wet hair. “Now you’re scaring the hell out of me.”
“I met most of them today,” Ginny said.
“Who are you supposed to be?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know,” Ginny said. “Not anymore.”
CHAPTER 52
* * *
The Green Warehouse
Jack stood behind the warehouse gate, staring at the gray ghost of First Avenue South and shivering in the ashen chill that oozed through the chain-link fence. Ellen had parked the car and the women had gone up the ramp into the warehouse, leaving him to stand by the fence. He told them he needed a moment to adjust.
Ginny had returned to watch from the door.
In just a few hours, in what passed for personal time, the city outside the green warehouse had turned into a flickering forest of shadows. Clouds roiled too quickly, colliding and shooting up to vanish in the gray sky.
On the way back from West Seattle—theirs was the only car on the road—they had witnessed people walking, echoing back, starting over, half aware. Some seemed to catch on to their awful dilemma, enough to be frightened.
More frightening still, most couldn’t tell the difference.
Somehow, the stones in their boxes, and now the warehouse, smoothed things and protected the
m all—once they had ricocheted off Terminus. That was what Ellen had called it in the car—Terminus. The end, yet not exactly; more like a ball slowly bouncing and rolling to a stop.
The sadness Jack felt was almost beyond bearing. Out there, so many confused, lost people, trying to reclaim their lives in a stuttering time that kept drawing them back, that would ultimately—when the ball stopped bouncing—press them down…Ignorant and immobile, like so many flies stuck in tar.
It had happened so suddenly—but not without warning.
Ginny finally could wait no longer. She walked down the ramp and stood beside Jack, arms wrapped around her shoulders. She was younger than him, maybe eighteen, but the look in her eyes told him she was no mere girl. They hadn’t spoken two words since the end of their fitful, gray journey back to the warehouse.
“How did the storm find you?” she asked.
Jack shrugged, embarrassed. “I called a phone number,” he said. “A man and a woman bagged me. After that—I’m still trying to figure it out.”
“It was the Gape,” Ginny said.
“Gate?”
“Gape. It’s what happens when you meet the Queen in White.”
“Who the hell is that? Another old woman?”
“I don’t know. Just one of her names. Let’s go back in. It’s warmer, and you should talk with Bidewell.”
The air in the green warehouse was sweet with the smell of dry wood and old paper. Jack looked around the high walls, unpainted slats lathed over studs, thick beams carved from the hearts of grand old cedars. High windows and skylights cast a gray, filtered light. Stacks of crates and cardboard boxes rose everywhere. Ginny followed him like a little sister as he explored. He didn’t like that at first.
He stepped up to the broad metal door and tapped it with his knuckles. On the other side, the book group women were talking with an older man. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. He glanced at Ginny. Her eyes glistened with a quick shyness, like a yearling deciding whether to bolt. “What’s on the other side?” he asked.