A little old lady came walking by with two Scottie dogs in little tartan coats. She sat down on the bench by Odette and silently took her hand. Nothing was said between them, but they held hands until Odette ran out of tears. The lady gave her a clean handkerchief, and Odette mumbled something thankful.
Then she went back to the hotel and hugged a startled Grootvader Ernst for real.
Lionel John Dover stood on the footpath under the dim light of a lamppost and looked up at the house. Maybe this is it, he thought. It was different from the two places he’d visited before. Those had been little town houses, new and sterile. This was an old house in an expensive neighborhood. The trees along both sides of the street were huge, and they reached across to each other to make a tunnel of leaves. Beyond a low stone wall and a garden, the house stood large and beautiful. If he squinted, he could just make out the number 1841 carved in stone above the door. Light glowed behind the curtains on the ground floor.
Please, finally, answers.
At the thought, his hand tightened around his talisman, his proof. It was such a small, ridiculous thing to pin all one’s hopes on, but over the past weeks, a woman’s designer handbag had given direction to his life. It was the only clue as to what had happened at Ascot. There had been a woman, and she had known about him. She had.
He wasn’t certain that she’d died. There hadn’t been time to finish it at the racecourse, and then there’d been no outcry, no coverage, even though he’d done it in public, in broad daylight. Of course, there had never been any coverage for any of the other times he’d done it. But she had existed.
He had the photos to prove it.
The woman’s wallet made as little sense as she had. For one thing, it was stuffed full of different forms of identification and credit cards with many different names. There were driver’s licenses and identity cards for Colonel Amanda Connifer, Dr. Nicola Boyd, Mlle. Jeanne Citeaux, Ms. Myfanwy Thomas, Dr. Iris Hoade, Mrs. Susan Katzenelenboygen. Each of them had a different address, but the same woman was in all of the photos.
For hours, he’d looked at these photos. In most of them, she stared straight ahead with the usual glassy expression one found on government-issued identification. But in one of them, she gazed out at him with the same wry spark he’d seen in her eyes at the racecourse.
She knew, he thought. I have to find out what she knew. I’ll get her to tell me what I am. And then—then I’ll be free. He hadn’t unleashed the crystals on a living person since Ascot. If she knew, others might know, and they might come for him. It had taken all his self-discipline, but he’d restrained himself. He’d left no clues for them to follow, whoever they were. No bank transactions, no phone calls, no drained corpses impaled on crystals. The weeks of living rough had taken their toll on his appearance, he knew. Surviving on handouts, staying in the shabbiest of hostels and shelters. Always moving. But always, burning in his mind, the knowledge that she was out there. And, after her, freedom.
He moved across the road. Dressed all in black, he merged well with the shadows. The old-fashioned lamps of the neighborhood lent a charm to the area, but they didn’t cast much light. He passed between the open gates and stepped off the pebbled drive onto the grass to keep from making noise. Crouching low, he moved between the bushes of the garden and scuttled to the side of the house.
A quick look through a window showed him nothing useful. Light came down the hallway, but that didn’t mean anything. At the first two places, there had been lights on timers. One of them had a television that turned on by itself, which had nearly given him a heart attack. When it suddenly began blaring pop music at him, he only just barely stopped himself from exploding it with crystals.
He continued around the side of the house to the back, where a broad deck jutted out into the garden. There was a door that led, as far as he could tell, into the kitchen, and some French doors with curtains drawn, and a laundry-room door that, unbelievably, was unlocked. He eased it open, centimeter by centimeter, wary of squeaks, but it was silent.
The laundry was unremarkable, but there were things about it that gave him hope. A half-empty box of washing powder. A pair of still-damp socks draped over the rim of a basket. Most encouraging, there was a litter tray on the floor in the corner of the room. He went down on one knee and sniffed. The litter had been used, and recently. This is real, he told himself, and he felt a thrill.
The first two places, the addresses belonging to Amanda Connifer and Iris Hoade, had been . . . disappointing. He’d broken in, kicking the doors open or smashing windows instead of using his crystals to shred the locks out of the doors. There had been an alarm at one, and he’d exploded it with a glance. Each place initially gave the impression that the owner had just stepped out. Art on the walls, books on the shelves, bottles in the fridges. Even a toothbrush in a glass by the sink. It was all very convincing. In one, the toilet paper in the lavatory had actually been ripped unevenly. He’d torn the first place apart, desperate for some clue about the woman. Every drawer had been tipped out, every book flipped through. He’d found nothing at all. No documents, no personal letters, not even any photos. Finally, he’d realized that it was a sham, a false home. Even the clothes in the drawers had never been worn. The second place had been the same. But now, now . . . He clenched his fists, and little crystals blossomed on the wall without his realizing it. Perhaps the house of Myfanwy Thomas is the real one.
He stepped into the kitchen and froze. Somewhere in the house, nearby, a person was moving. Light seeped out from under a door, and a shadow passed by. He could barely breathe as the footsteps stopped and there was the sound of the person sitting down on a couch. A sigh; the rustle of a book being opened. It’s her! he thought. It has to be. It took all his self-control to walk slowly and silently to the door.
His heart was pounding in his chest. It would be so easy to reach out his hand and push out his mind . . . he could practically see the crystals erupting out of the walls and floor and ceilings. They would stab out unerringly, transfix her, and she would bleed down into the minerals and into him, everything that she was. But he couldn’t do it. He hadn’t come for her death—at least, not right away.
I know she can stop me moving, he thought. But she can’t stop me from doing it. She’ll give me the answers. I’ll make her. And then! He put the handbag down on the counter and stepped through the door.
It wasn’t her.
He wanted to howl at how much it wasn’t her. This woman was tall, and black, and beautiful. She was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved top, bright silver jewelry at her neck and wrists, and she seemed completely unperturbed by his sudden appearance in her house.
“Oh, hi,” she said, putting down her book.
American, he noted dully. The disappointment had left him dazed.
“You’re looking for Myfanwy, right?”
“I—yes,” he said. He’d been thrown by the way she said it, to rhyme with Tiffany.
“She’s actually not here at the moment,” said the woman.
“Oh no,” he said automatically. “I’m so sorry, please excuse me, I—I should have checked ahead.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. You know what, have a seat. You want a cup of tea?” Out of habit and sheer befuddlement, he nodded. “Great, I’ll get it. How do you like it?”
“Just with a little bit of milk, please,” he said. He gingerly sat down on a chair. The room was pleasant, if a little odd. A deep red carpet and dim lighting made it feel cozy, but the shelves were empty of books, and there were hooks on the walls but no artwork.
“You want sugar?” she called from the kitchen.
“Thank you, no.” The whole thing had that familiar dreamlike feel in which everything was so ridiculous that he began to question what was real. He wished that he hadn’t left the handbag on the counter in the kitchen—it would have been reassuring to have it in his hand.
Myfanwy Thomas is real, he told himself. And the woman implied tha
t she is still alive. This must be her housemate. She must think I’m here for a date or a casual hello. It seemed tenuous, especially given his shabby appearance, but it was all he could think of. So what do I do now? He brooded over it while from the kitchen came the sounds of tea being made. All right, so I’ll have the tea and make polite conversation, and then I’ll torture this woman into telling me everything she knows about Myfanwy Thomas. And then I’ll kill her. He leaned back, pleased to have a plan.
“Here’s your tea,” said the American woman. She sat back down on the couch and looked at him expectantly. He took an experimental sip.
“It’s very good,” he assured her.
“Thank God,” she said. “Nothing scarier than making tea for a Brit.” She took a long drink from her own mug and shrugged. “For me, it’s like wine. I don’t know if it’s good, I just know if I like it or not.”
“I suppose if you don’t like it, it’s not good,” he said.
“Yeah, you would think, but I’ve had expensive wine that still tasted like ass to me,” she said. She smiled, rolled her eyes, and took another drink. To be polite, he did the same. There was a pause, which was agony to him, but she seemed quite comfortable.
“And you’re from America?” he asked finally. “Yeah. I’m based in Texas but I’m originally from Michigan,” she said.
“Marvelous. You know, I’m dreadfully sorry, but I didn’t catch your name,” he said.
“Oh, jeez,” she said. “Of course. I’m Shantay. Shantay Petoskey.” She did not ask who he was, which only added to the unreal nature of the whole thing.
“So, Myfanwy isn’t here?” he asked casually, taking special care to pronounce it as she had.
“No, she’s up in Scotland,” said the woman. “I’m heading up there tomorrow. I was going to stay in a hotel, but then she mentioned you might be stopping by the house, and I said I’d mind the place for tonight, just on the off chance.”
I might be stopping by? he thought. She knows! She must know!
“Well, that’s grand,” he said. His eyes narrowed; he took a long sip of tea and willed stakes of crystal to grow out of the couch cushions and impale her through her thighs. He felt the thrumming in his brain and skin as the energy built, and then he braced himself for the moment of sudden violence.
Which didn’t come.
“Yes, it’s nice to be able to do a friend a favor,” she said cheerfully. He was bewildered. He had felt the crystals erupt, but he hadn’t seen any go through her, and she was still drinking her tea. He clenched and tried to call forth another spike, this one through her back. His nerves hummed, and he knew it was happening, that the crystals were stabbing out, but instead of screaming as she was pierced, she was checking her mobile phone with pursed lips. “Anyway,” she said, putting down the phone, and he jumped, still bewildered that she was not transfixed, “let’s get down to business.” She put down her cup and shook her hair about her face, and suddenly, impossibly, she was metal. A statue in silver, sculpted by Praxiteles.
“Don’t worry,” she said, and her voice had the musical timber of a flute. “This is really happening.”
“But, but—” He was hyperventilating. It was impossible. Again.
“They’ve been waiting for you to show up here,” said the silver woman. “Apparently, you broke into a couple of other places, but by the time they got there, you were gone. Myfanwy said you would never stop and that it was inevitable you would come here.
“I was actually metal under my clothes the whole time,” she said. “Just in case you tried anything funny. Which you did.” She shifted over on the sofa, and he saw broken-off stumps of crystal jutting out of the back and seat cushions and a good deal of little shards and powder. “Your weapons ripped the shit out of my clothes, but they can’t go through my skin. We tested ahead of time.”
“I—what?”
“Yeah, they had a chunk of your crystal handy—you left it inside my best friend’s torso, remember?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “When I offered to stay here, they wanted to make sure you wouldn’t be able to kill me. So they tried that chunk against my skin. Turns out they couldn’t push it through at all. I didn’t even feel it. Lucky I was visiting, eh? Otherwise, they’d just have blown this place up when you entered, and Myfanwy’s quite fond of it.”
“You—you’re . . .”
“You actually do have my sympathies,” she said, standing up. “I mean, no offense, but you’re my worst nightmare. Not to fight, but to be. I can’t imagine suddenly developing these sorts of powers and not having anyone to guide me. No structure, no understanding but what you make for yourself. We would have tried to help you.” There was pity in her voice, but then it hardened. “However, you’re being dominated by your abilities. You either can’t or won’t control yourself, and we can’t have that. And besides, you tried to kill my friend.”
“Who are you?” he finally managed to gasp out.
“We’re the government,” she said. She turned, gripped the sofa, hauled it up into the air, then spun back and flung it at him. He threw up his hands to shield himself and braced for a horrible, bone-crushing impact that never came. After several heart-shredding moments, he opened his eyes and saw a wall of crystals bisecting the room, the sofa suspended in the middle of them. They must have erupted from the walls, floors, and ceiling and caught the couch in mid-tumble. Through the smoky surface of the mineral, he could see a vague shape moving toward him.
Got to get away! he thought frantically. He turned toward the kitchen and caught a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. There was a sound like breaking mirrors as several of the crystals shattered and fell. Despite himself, he turned back and saw, through a jagged gap in the wall, the statue-woman drawing herself up after the blow she’d struck against the barrier. In her hands she held an ugly-looking black sledgehammer. She gazed at him through narrowed cabochon eyes, then brought the hammer back over her shoulder and began to swing it again.
He didn’t wait to watch her batter more of the wall. Instead, he scrabbled through the door to the kitchen, animal in his terror. Instinctively, he called up the crystals, which surged along the floor in front of him and then punched up and shattered the back door out of its frame. He leapt forward, and the crystals dissipated into powder that burst in a cloud around him. I didn’t know I could do that, he thought vaguely, but there was no time to consider the implications. He was out in the back garden with no idea where to go. Behind him, the house had lit up, and the side pathway that he had taken before was filled with light. Before him, the garden stretched into darkness, the trees and shrubs offering a million possibilities to hide and escape.
He scrambled forward off the patio, his feet slipping on the wet grass as he fled. Over the hammering of his heartbeat, he could hear footsteps. The woman called something to him but he ignored it. There was a whirling sound behind him, and something clipped one of his legs. His knee crumpled, and he tumbled sideways, landing in a fishpond.
Blowing and gasping, he sat up and saw the silver figure approaching him. The sledgehammer that she’d thrown at him was lying on the grass to his side.
“God, I love this country,” said the woman, and he looked up at her. She was beautiful and horrible and impossible. “Every time I come here, I get to kick some ass. At home, it’s all paperwork and meetings.”
“I—I . . .” He couldn’t seem to make words.
“You know, Myfanwy actually spoke up for you,” she said. “And that was after you stabbed her. She thought you should be imprisoned, maybe rehabilitated, but the Court outvoted her, and I think they’re right. So here we are.” She lifted her hand and he saw that she was holding some sort of black-and-yellow weapon. A stun gun. “Now, I’m not entirely certain what will happen when I use this on someone sitting in a pond, but we’ll play it by ear, shall we?” She pointed it at him and he found himself screaming and slashing up his arm to shield himself. A fan of crystal spun up out of the ground and knocked her ar
m aside. The Taser flew into the shrubbery.
“Aw, crap!” she exclaimed. “I really should have seen that coming. It’s my own fault for talk—” She was cut off as a crystal column erupted from the grass and sent her flying. There was a distant crash as she landed in the hedge. Groaning, he levered himself out of the water. His knee grated under him and he was shivering, but he was also exhilarated.
I can’t kill this woman, he thought. And I can’t outrun her either. But maybe, maybe I can stop her.
The silver woman stumbled out of the bushes. She was still perfect, there were no scratches on her metal, but her shirt had a few tears, and her silver hair was tangled. With a scraping sound that set his teeth on edge, she combed her fingers through it and picked out a twig. She did not look best pleased.
“Let’s do it the hard way, then,” she said. “That’s always much more fun anyway.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he fanned his fingers out over the ground and concentrated. Go!
From under his palms, four rivers of crystal snaked through the grass toward her and then burst up into glittering eight-sided pillars two feet across. They weren’t there to cut but to smash at her, to fling her out, away. She sidestepped two of them, spun around the third, and then continued her spin to slam her forearm into the fourth column and break it. She caught it as it fell and flung it directly at him.
You can do this, he thought. He stepped forward, toward the hurtling shaft, and put out his hands. As the missile touched his fingertips, it exploded silently into a cloud of powder. Yes! Coughing, he stepped back and heard thudding. Through the cloud, he caught a flash as she shot toward him.
Now!
Jagged spikes slid out of the grass in her way. Barely breaking stride, she ducked and dodged around them.
More!
Talons of glass curled out of the ground and down from the tree branches above them. They clutched at her, scraped her skin and caught her shirt, but she tore free.
Stop her!
A faceted wall of mineral rose up before her, and she lowered her shoulder and plowed through it with a hideous cracking sound. Fragments scattered across the lawn.