Arena

  Choking down bile, Callie sank weakly to the ground.

  Evvi sat down beside her. They eyed the gleaming portal, and Evvi swallowed. “Well, now we know where these bones came from.”

  Laughter echoed around them, overlying the rustling Tohvani on the walls. Do you believe me now? It’s all a lie. Cephelus now stood, gray and naked, over Garth’s skeleton. His eyepits were deeper, darker, more mesmerizing than those of other Tohvani, and he was considerably bigger. But beyond that, Callie saw little difference between him and the creatures who served him.

  No one escapes from here, he said in her mind. No one.

  Callie snorted. No one can go through the Exit without being Changed. Of course he was flung out. My question is why you let him try. A last-ditch effort to trick us? Or merely a fit of pique because you’ve lost?

  Turning her back on the Tohvani leader, she stood and said, “Who wants to go first?”

  The others were still staring at Cephelus. Now they refocused on Callie. Whit grinned. “You do, I think.”

  NO! Cephelus shrieked.

  Her friends stood beside her and she sensed them focusing on the link as she was, using it as a shield against the sudden cacophony of protests in their brains. Callie faced the portal, then glanced back at Evvi. “You know . . . about Pierce. I never meant you to be hurt. I just didn’t realize—”

  “It’s all right.” Evvi smiled. “I’m over it. You go home and find him.”

  Around them the Tohvani skittered across the walls, screaming furious abuse. As Callie stepped toward the bridge, Cephelus flew to block her path, radiating all the violent menace he could muster. She hesitated but then, at the link’s urging, walked through him. His obscenities, no doubt shrieked at full volume, sounded small and tinny in her ears. She mounted the bridge. Black depths plummeted on either side, but she hardly noticed as the portal blazed to life. A visible version of the link within, it reached out and enfolded her.

  Enraged Tohvani flung themselves upon her as she moved forward. Their bodies shredded impotently against her flesh. The portal loomed ahead, its light spilling over the walls, filling up the darkness, enfolding her in glory. She could see figures within it now, silhouettes cloaked in familiarity—Aggillon waiting to welcome her. Eagerness quickened her steps, and she crossed over the threshold, out of the Arena and into a world of cheers and smiling faces and that wondrous soul-deep sense of approval.

  EPILOGUE

  The ringing telephone jarred Callie awake. She rolled onto her back and blinked at the room. Memories of cheering crowds, a crystalline amphitheater, and a massive golden throne hung in her mind. She had stood before that throne. . . . Elhanu had commended her . . . And then she’d been swimming in a light-filled river of pure joy. She hadn’t wanted to leave.

  Daylight flooded around the miniblinds, casting horizontal lines across the rumpled bedclothes. An overgrown spider plant hung in front of it. From another room, a cockatiel called.

  The phone rang again.

  I’m home! She sat up, snatching the receiver on the third ring.

  It was Lisa. “Callie, where were you last night?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you hung over? You were supposed to come to my birthday party.”

  “Birthday? What day is this?”

  “Sunday, the twenty-fifth. Are you all right?”

  She had been in the Arena almost thirteen months. Could the time have translated into exactly a year here or—?

  “Which birthday, Lisa?”

  “Which birthday? What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m a little foggy. How old are you?”

  “You’re trying to get me off track. What you did last night was low. At least you could’ve called.”

  “How old are you, Lisa?” Desperation sharpened Callie’s voice, stopping the tide of her sister’s anger.

  “You’re being very weird, Callie.”

  “I need to know. “

  “You’re scaring me. Maybe I should come over. You’re clearly disoriented.”

  “Lisa. Please. How old are you?”

  “I’m thirty-three. Did something happen last night?”

  Thirty-three? Callie thought, reeling. Thirty-three. The same age she was last year. Except there was no last year. Thirteen months in the Arena had consumed less than a day in this world. Was that possible?

  Unless it hadn’t happened.

  Maybe she had hit her head, and it was all a dream—like in The Wizard of Oz. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, vaguely aware of Lisa blathering in her ear. No, it can’t have been a dream. It was too real, too involved.

  “Lisa, I’m sorry I didn’t call,” she cut in, “but there wasn’t a phone.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I’ll be by later with your gift.”

  “But you—”

  Callie hung up and stood by the phone, shivering. It can’t have been a dream.

  Yet here in this familiar room with the peeling plaster, the books cluttering the end table, the faded sheets, the root-bound plant—suddenly the adventure seemed impossibly fantastic. Carried away by aliens and forced to find her way home?

  I have to find Meg.

  The phone rang again. She jerked her hand away from it. That was either Lisa, trying again, or her mother.

  It was a short bike ride to Meg’s. At first Callie thought her friend was not there, for the blinds were drawn and no one answered the bell. She was turning to leave when the thump of footfalls drew her back, and Meg opened the door, wearing her bathrobe. Her hair, grown out to her usual chin-length style, was tousled from sleep.

  “Cal, what are you doing here so early?”

  “It’s almost lunchtime, Meg,” Callie said, stepping inside.

  “But we didn’t go to bed till dawn.” She shut the door behind them.

  Callie sat on the couch. Light filtered through the cracks around the shade, illuminating the gloom. “What did we do last night?”

  Meg dropped onto the beanbag chair across from her, frowning. “You don’t remember?”

  “Do you?”

  “We went out after the experiment. The lab techs threw a party.” Meg brushed her long top hair out of her eyes. “Alex was there, and . . . some others.” She laughed uneasily. “The punch must’ve been spiked. And I know I ate too many chili nachos because I’ve had the weirdest dreams.”

  Nachos and spiked punch?

  She’s remembering snatches of the celebration before we came back to Earth, Callie thought. Which was what they said would happen. “It makes it easier for most to re-enter their old lives,” Elhanu had told her. And Meg’s hair would have grown out in the rejuvenation tank.

  Callie swallowed. “What about the experiment itself?”

  “You don’t even remember that? The pegs in the boards? The ink blots? The virtual-reality stuff?”

  “Virtual-reality stuff?”

  “Yeah, there was this little car. And a white road . . .”

  “What happened with Alex?”

  Meg blushed. “To be honest, I can’t remember. And somehow I don’t even care. I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself. At least we got the fifty dollars out of it.”

  “We did?”

  “They gave it to us at the end.” She picked up an envelope lying on the end table. “I know you got one, too. I saw you put it in your purse.”

  “Oh.” She’d have to check when she got home.

  Meg’s eyes had focused on something in Callie’s lap and now widened. “Is that an engagement ring?”

  Callie looked down at her hands. Her right hand was nervously turning the ring on the third finger of her left—a gold ring, inset with a glittering blood crystal. Her heart leapt. It had happened!

  Meg frowned. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “No. Uh . . .” Callie pulled the ring off her left hand and put it on her right. “I was trying to discourage this guy, so I told him I was engaged. Don’t you re
member?”

  Meg appeared unconvinced but accepted the story and moved on, wondering aloud what Jack would think if she called.

  Callie tuned her out. Meg’s memories—what few were left—were being distorted by the need to make them fit her old reality. Beyond that her mind had been washed. Just as Pierce’s would be. The thought made Callie reel again. She stood in the middle of Meg’s sentence. “I have to go.”

  Meg gaped at her, but Callie couldn’t explain. She just had to find him.

  When she got home, the phone was ringing again. After it stopped, she picked up the receiver, dialed information, and got the numbers for six Andrewses in Durango. She called them all. One was a secretary. One had died. One invited her via answering machine to leave a message. One’s phone was disconnected. The other two did not answer.

  She called local feed stores next, and hit pay dirt on the second try with a friendly and garrulous clerk. Of course she knew Andy Andrews, and wasn’t it awful about his son gone missing?

  “The sheriff’s just called off the search yesterday,” the woman said, “and why not? After eight days of looking and no sign, what else could he do? Poor boy’s been gone over two weeks now, and is probably hurt besides. He’s a tough kid, but the odds are against him in this. I hear Andy and Helen are taking it hard.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Callie said, her voice trembling. “Their son . . . would be Pierce?”

  “Of course.” The woman hesitated. “You don’t know them well, then?”

  “Not the parents, no.”

  Another silence. “Where’d you say you’re calling from?”

  “Tucson.”

  “Arizona?” Suspicion rang sharply in the woman’s voice now. Again she paused, apparently to marshal her thoughts. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, miss, but do you know something about this situation that the Andrewses ought to hear?”

  “I might. You wouldn’t happen to have their phone number, would you?”

  The clerk was reluctant to give it over, but she did. Unfortunately it was one Callie had already called, and again, no one answered. Probably out searching, she realized—but she was bitterly disappointed nonetheless. Of course, if she kept calling, someone was bound to answer eventually. But then what would she say? The feed store clerk’s suspicion had made it clear how untenable her position was, and since she couldn’t really tell anyone where Pierce had been, and since he himself wouldn’t even remember her . . . well, hopefully she’d think of something. At least she had a number now.

  But already the horrible suspicion that she wasn’t supposed to find him had begun to gnaw at her.

  Again the phone rang. It was her mother.

  Callie hung up half an hour later, surprised at how easily she’d taken control of the conversation. Mom hadn’t known what to make of her assertiveness, had hardly known what to say when Callie had refused to let her go on and on and deftly redirected the discussion. She had even managed to end the call in a relatively short time without being ugly.

  She sat there a moment, feeling unexpectedly pleased.

  Find yourself, the flyer had promised. Maybe she had. In more ways than one.

  She surveyed her small living room with its bricks-and-boards bookshelf, and the drawing table littered with paint box, water jars, and brushes. Her books, sketches, and supply bins lay scattered across the floor where she’d left them Friday night. Her current project—a watercolor of desert wild flowers—stood taped to its board in a corner for viewing. It wasn’t done. She had left it in that awkward stage where it looked awful and hopeless.

  Except that it didn’t anymore. In fact, she saw just what she needed to do.

  At nine that evening, she set the finished painting, matted and framed, on the couch and surveyed it critically. Late afternoon shadows streaked across an adobe wall. The stems were a little awkward, but the values worked. And it was evocative, conjuring memories of her early-morning walks down the alley out back—

  Her thought halted and excitement flushed her. Maybe there was a way to keep the fading memories alive, a way to hold on, if only in part.

  She pulled her sketchpad from the cabinet and began blocking in the planes of a man’s face. Miraculously, the image took shape before her, and her heart began to pound. Seeing his face made her exquisitely aware of how much he’d meant to her. She would go to Durango herself.

  On Monday she quit her job to make the trip, withdrawing her meager savings and going into debt with Lisa. But in Durango, she learned Pierce had been found the day she’d first called, walking out of the woods with no memory of what had befallen him. His parents had immediately taken him to be evaluated at a hospital in Denver and hadn’t been home since. She followed them there, but nothing worked out as she hoped. Neither hospitals nor doctors were willing to give out information to non-family members, and she didn’t want to lie for fear of alienating her quarry once she finally caught up with them. They were sure to be just as suspicious and put off as the people she’d questioned in Durango, and, having no reasonable explanation for her interest to offer them, she knew lying would only make things worse.

  In the end it didn’t matter. With both funds and options depleted, she was finally forced to face the fact that she wasn’t going to find him. Not without help, anyway. “Trust Elhanu,” he’d said. It seemed she had no other recourse.

  Back in Tucson, she decided that rather than find a new job she would take the plunge as a full-time artist. Her mother had a fit, but Callie ignored her doomsaying and set to work gathering a body of paintings and approaching galleries. Within a month she had representation for her traditional watercolors.

  Summer turned to fall. Her career took off. Three months after that fateful weekend, her work was selling briskly. In October, the fantasy paintings of her memories found a market. She won two national awards that winter, received a commission for a book cover the following spring, and had collectors in New York, Denver, and L.A. buying her work by the next summer. She bought a car and moved into a house on the eastside with horse property. She even bought a piano and began taking lessons. She knew she would never be a professional pianist—as Pierce might have been—but she practiced diligently, and it fed her soul.

  Everyone marveled at the way everything suddenly came together for her, but Callie knew it for Elhanu’s promised reward.

  Her desperate need for Pierce waned. It helped that she had never known him in this life. She had only the ring and the painting in her bedroom to remind her. It was an oil of him standing on that hillside above Rimlight. She supposed she ought to take it down—and forget— but somehow she never got around to it.

  Meg had also experienced the reward of prosperity. Shortly after the weekend in June she married Jack. He had made her deliriously happy. And before long, pregnant, as well.

  The next June Lisa threw another party—a black-tie affair at the Westin La Paloma. Jack was out of town, so Callie dragged Meg along for moral support. Parties didn’t intimidate her as they once had, but she still disliked them, and once again, Lisa had some guy for her to meet. His name was Alan, and Tom had met him on the plane.

  “You’ll like this one, Callie,” Lisa had assured her. “And remember, it’s black tie, so gussy up a little.”

  Reluctantly Callie obeyed. At least now she had something to gussy up in—a white chiffon dress she’d bought for the reception in New York. Hitting just above the knee, it had a Grecian style neckline and a figure-flattering drape. She put her hair up in a soft chignon, threw on a string of pearls, and even condescended to wear a pair of low heels. That was as gussy as she would go, however. If Lisa didn’t like it, too bad.

  “And we’re not staying long,” she told Meg as they drove across town. “We’ll just eat and run.”

  “Just like old times, huh?” Meg asked with a smile. Her baby was due in a little over a month, and she was showing substantially. “Have you ever considered that this might be to your benefit? You might meet a client or potent
ial client—”

  “Of course I thought of that. Why else do you think I’m going willingly?”

  “You might even like this Alan character.”

  “He’s a stockbroker, Meg.”

  It was dusk as they parked and entered the resort. Heading for the Canyon Four Ballroom, they passed a dimpled blond youth manning the sign-up table for a seminar on Life Management, and Callie did a double take. The crowd around the table made it hard to see him, and she finally decided she didn’t know him. But he was young enough, and handsome enough—he could have been Aggillon.

  She couldn’t see an ad for a seminar now without wondering—were they recruiting again? “Life Management” would certainly fit the bill. And the young preppies bent over the table wouldn’t be there if they weren’t searching for something. Maybe this time they’d find it.

  “What?” Meg asked, noting the direction of her gaze. “You interested in that seminar?”

  Callie laughed. “No. My life’s doing just fine, thanks.”

  The hall and balcony outside the ballroom had been roped off, and a young hostess stood at the opening to take their invitations. As they stepped into the company of the glitterati—Lisa’s parties always included state senators, city council members, bigwig business types, and local celebrities—a waiter passed with an empty hors d’oeuvre tray. The name on his badge brought Callie up short: Angelo. Before she could get a good look at him, though, he had disappeared into the crowd.

  Meg was eyeing her again. “What is it now?”

  Callie shook her head. “An attack of déjà vu. Come on. Let’s find Lisa, and get Alan out of the way.”

  She had to admit the meetings with Lisa’s prospects had not been so bad lately. Maybe it was because of her increased self-confidence, or maybe she had previously perceived negativity where there had been none. At least Alan was supposed to be interested in art.