Bleeding Violet (32 page)

“Doesn’t it seem to suggest,” I told him, “that the hidden doors lead from one place to the other based on some sort of logic? If a person could figure out the logic involved … Why are you looking at me like that?”

He shrugged, trying to pretend his face hadn’t just been awash in emotion. “Just thinking I oughta tell Elder about you. You should be one of us.”

“No, thanks. Too much stress makes Hanna go crazy.” I straightened my dress, rebuttoned my coat. “Look, Wyatt, I know you probably won’t ever trust me again—”

“Let’s not get sidetracked by all that now,” he said quickly. “First things first, like you said.”

A couple of streets over, Wyatt stopped at a tall hidden door—one so skinny it could only be traversed sideways. “After you,” he said.

I squeezed through into darkness and squeezed out onto a quiet, well-lit street far away from Wyatt’s house. The narrow houses and iron gates of Carmona had been replaced by gloomy Victorians with large, unmanicured lawns and ancient trees with thick roots that bullied the sidewalks out of shape.

“Where are we?” I asked Wyatt when he joined me.

He looked up and down the long, damp street. “Nightshade.”

“Where the Mortmaine live,” I whispered, remembering what Poppa had said.

“They’re mostly gone this time of night, out patrolling.” He pointed to the dead end of Nightshade, where the white house I had seen through the cutout doorway sat. “That’s Runyon’s house.”

Weird squiggles bordered the house on every side that I could see, squiggles in midair that glowed eerie and green in the dark, as though the northern lights had strayed south and gotten trapped over the sidewalk.

“The Mayor wanted everyone to be able to see that the house was off-limits,” Wyatt explained, “even at night.”

We’d stopped close enough to the glyphs for me to see the dead birds littering the gutter.

“They fly into the wards,” said Wyatt. “Feel.” He guided my hand to the green air over the sidewalk, which was as solid as stone.

“How do we get past it?”

“Through the ground.”

Wyatt removed a pale orange card from the deck in his pocket. He held the card between his palms and immediately liquefied from the feet up until he splashed into a puddle on the cul-de-sac. The green glyph-light twinkled over his liquid form as he streamed into a crack in the sidewalk.

I waited nervously in the street, eyeing the few houses with green trucks parked in the driveways, hoping none of the homebound Mortmaine decided to look out the window or take a late-night stroll.

One of the sidewalk’s concrete squares rattled and turned orange, like Wyatt’s card. The single section—more importantly, the
glyph
carved into the section—began to crack, then break into pieces. The green light wavering all around the house snuffed out, allowing darkness to press closer on the street.

A puddle arose from the broken section of concrete, like water from an underground spring; it lengthened and solidi
fied until Wyatt was whole again, tall and straight in his green coat, beckoning me forward. “Come on.”

I stepped onto the property, and Wyatt handed me two black cards, like the ones he’d used at Melissa’s.

“One’s for Rosalee,” he explained, leading me across the lawn.

When we got to the porch, I unbuttoned the top half of my coat and lifted my chest at him. “Don’t you want to put it on?”

He looked like he wanted to say no, but he did it anyway, put the card down my low bodice and pressed it below my breast. I stole a kiss while he did it.

“There’s no time for all that,” he said, pulling away.

“I know,” I said, squeezing him. “It’s just, in case something happens, I want you to know—”

“I know,” he said impatiently, but when he saw the look on my face, he kissed me back and said it again, gently. “I know.” He stuck his card to his own chest. “Now let’s go get your ma.”

“And your Key.” I touched Little Swan for luck, as Wyatt turned the knob of Runyon’s home.

Doorways perforated the air inside Runyon’s house, dozens of them. In the walls, in midair, even diagonally. Wyatt and I had to inch around the one in the floor of the entryway, which provided a dizzying view of upside-down trees—dark peach trees.

All of the doorway views showed different areas of Portero—Runyon seemed to be having the same trouble as before.

Wyatt and I edged around the doors and entered a dusty living room full of great-grandmother-type furniture that only corseted women would enjoy sitting on.

Runyon stood in the center of the room, his blue eyes spit
ting fire as he slashed that same broken-down glyph into the air. He’d stopped opening random doors and was concentrating on the one before him. Every time he made the glyph shape in the air, the scene within the door changed, as if he were flipping through TV channels and nothing satisfied.

When my feet creaked against the floor, Runyon whirled, his dissatisfaction erupting into full-blown rage.
“What did you do to my Key?”
he shrieked.

“Don’t take it out on me just because the Mayor cursed you. I kept my end of the deal.”

But Runyon didn’t want to hear it.

“What did you
do
to it?”

As Runyon advanced, wearing my mother’s body like an ill-fitting suit, Wyatt stepped in front of me protectively. “You mean other than steal it from me?”

“Steal it from
you
?” Wyatt’s effrontery stopped Runyon in his tracks. “
I
made this Key. I’m the one—” He considered us. “How did you get in here?” He looked at me. “Especially you. I thought for sure the Mayor would have killed you for helping me.”

“She tried to,” I said. “She put me in a suicide door. But I escaped.”

“Preposterous.” He was shocked, almost outraged. “No one can escape a suicide door.”

“Maybe
you
can’t. But I can do a lot of things you can’t. I’m the one who released you in the first place. I got the Key when you couldn’t. I got past the wards into your ‘forbidden fortress.’ What
can’t
I do?”

Runyon smirked. “Get your mother back.”

“Oh, but I can,” I said, resisting the urge to poke him in the eyes again. “I’ll make you a deal. If you give her back, I’ll let you borrow Wyatt. He can use—”

Wyatt slapped me hard on the forehead. “I
knew
it! I knew I couldn’t trust you—not when it comes to Rosalee.”

I would have slapped him back, but I couldn’t. I’d felt an immediate chill all over my body when he’d slapped me … and now I couldn’t move. Not one inch. I couldn’t even yell at him—it was like the dark park all over again.

“A freeze card,” Runyon marveled, confirming what I’d already assumed Wyatt had slapped to my forehead. “Have the Mortmaine finally incorporated glyph cards into their fighting repertory?”

“Nope.” Wyatt shuffled through his deck. “This is my thing.”

“Your thing? Again, you have a false sense of ownership, boy. Those were my invention.”

“I know,” said Wyatt as he slapped a red card to Runyon’s cheek. “Thanks.”

The red card. The card he’d used on the lure and the flying leech. The card that made things explode.

“No, that’s Rosalee’s body! She’s still in there!”

That’s what I
wanted
to scream, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even move.

As the red color seeped over Rosalee’s body, Runyon knocked the cards from Wyatt’s hand, the deck scattering colorfully across the floor. Wyatt dropped down to gather his cards, but not before Runyon darted forward and snatched up a green one, which he slapped over the red card.

Just in time. Rosalee’s body, completely red now, had begun to roil and swell, hovering on the edge of explosion, but the green card settled her skin. It didn’t get rid of the redness, but at least it kept her body in one piece.

“Red and green,” said Runyon, admiring Rosalee’s skin. “Such a festive combination.”

Wyatt had ceased collecting his cards to stare in disbelief at Runyon.

“Never thought to combine them? Well, now you can thank me for that, too.” Runyon flicked Rosalee’s arms at Wyatt and a muddy red spray spattered against Wyatt and the blue wingback chair he’d been crouching near as he gathered his cards. The chair immediately exploded, filling the air with downy fuzz and bits of blue chintz.

The blast sent Wyatt rolling helplessly across the floor, but otherwise, he was unhurt. Or at least unexploded. He staggered to his feet, glaring at Runyon, and grimly removed his coat.

“And what card are
you
wearing?” Runyon asked. Some of the red color from Rosalee’s skin had disappeared. “I see the anti-possession card peeking out of your shirt. But what else?” His eyes traveled shrewdly over Wyatt’s body. “A shield card, perhaps? After taking that much damage, it’s probably turned to dust. Let’s see.”

Runyon shot more of the explosive spray at Wyatt, who this time took a direct hit in the chest. He flew backward and fetched up hard against a curio cabinet, hard enough to break the glass doors. Yet unlike the chair, he didn’t explode.

Runyon smiled at Wyatt, begrudgingly impressed. “I don’t recall ever making a shield card that could take that much damage. Clever boy.”

Wyatt’s only answer was to spit up blood and then hurl a jagged bit of statuary from the curio cabinet at my mother’s head.

This had gotten out of hand in a hurry. I had to do something before the two of them figured out a way to kill each other.

Poppa! Poppa, come quick!

Poppa appeared before me, Rosalee’s pillow tucked under his arm. “Problems?”

Another explosion answered that question better than I ever could.
You’ve got to unfreeze me before they kill each other!

Wyatt, now bleeding profusely from his nose, scrambled to one of the cards on the floor—a gold one—and hurriedly adhered it to his arm as dust sifted from beneath his shirt.

“Is that your last shield card?” Runyon exclaimed. Half of the red color had disappeared. “I have more than enough left to turn that one to dust too. Perhaps—”

Wyatt kicked him to the floor, but Runyon didn’t stay down. He sprang to his feet, and they started boxing, Wyatt staying in close range, which made it impossible for Runyon to hurl the explosive spray at him.

“What’s that boy doing to Rosalee?” Poppa cried, outraged.

Trying to kill her! You’ve got to remove the card on my head so I can stop them
.

“Well, why didn’t you say so!” Poppa ripped the card off my skin, and it turned to dust in his hand. “Hurry!”

And suddenly I
could
hurry. I ran forward and fell right on my face, crippled by an intense wave of pins and needles.

Wyatt and Runyon, meantime, were still in hand-to-hand combat, Wyatt jabbing repeatedly at Rosalee’s face whenever Runyon let his guard down, not to punch him, but to rip off the cards. But Runyon was too good a fighter to let him get close enough.

Runyon managed to get a knee into Wyatt’s belly and send him to the floor gasping for air. He stood over Wyatt and raised Rosalee’s arms.

“No more shield cards, initiate. And no more stalling.” Runyon flicked Rosalee’s arms downward, and huge drops of the muddy red matter sailed from Rosalee’s fingertips like water balloons, but Wyatt dodged them and heaved forward into Runyon just as the explosive spray tore a crater-size hole in the floor and sent us all flying across the room.

When I rolled to a stop, ears ringing, I spied the two of them wrestling near the window seat. I scrambled forward
on my knees, near enough to see that the two cards had left a coating of dust on Rosalee’s now properly colored brown cheek.

Wyatt rolled on top of Runyon and sat on him, push daggers in hand. “Looks like Christmas is over, asshole.”

“Wyatt, don’t!”

He looked back at me, and as a reward, Runyon flipped him overhead and sent him crashing to the floor.

“No!” I made it to my feet, tingling horribly from the aftereffects of the freeze card. I got between them. “Stop it. I mean it!”

They stared at me, twin expressions of bafflement on their faces, but it was Runyon who spoke, pushing Rosalee’s hair out of his eyes. “How did you overcome the effects of the freeze card so soon?”

“It usually lasts thirty minutes,” Wyatt added, his zeal to kill Runyon forgotten in the face of scientific curiosity.

“Because I wanted to,” I told them. “And I know how to get what I want. And what I want right now is for the two of you to listen to me. This isn’t just about me—I can get all three of us what we want. You get your Key, you get Bonnie, and I get Rosalee.”

“How?” said Runyon, humoring me.

“Give Wyatt the Key.”

“What?”

“Shut up and listen! He can help you.”

“An initiate?” He gave Wyatt a disdainful once-over. “What would I want with one of the Mayor’s young flunkies?”

“Doesn’t he look familiar?” I prompted. “I don’t know . . . sort of like the woman you raped and impregnated just so you’d have an extra set of bones to practice on?”

The disdain turned thoughtful as Runyon walked a circuit around Wyatt. I thought at any moment he might check Wyatt’s teeth the way a horse trainer would. “I don’t believe it,” he murmured. “Anna’s brood.”

“Brood!” Wyatt exclaimed. “I didn’t hatch from a chicken,
asshole
!”

But Runyon wasn’t fazed by Wyatt’s outburst. “I thought the Mortmaine killed it when they took my Key.”

“Not
it
!” Wyatt rushed at Runyon and choked him. “
Her
. Your
daughter
!

Runyon backhanded him away. “
Bonnie’s
my daughter,” he snapped. “The only one who matters.”

I had to get between them again. “Well, the only one who
can get you to your precious Bonnie is standing right here.” I put my hand on Wyatt’s shoulder, but he shrugged me off.

“Still trying to trade me, right?” He started reaching for his cards, so I grabbed his hand.

“No! You misunderstood me. I only meant that Runyon could use you—use your connection to the Key!—to get to Calloway.”

“Yeah?” he said, as relief welled in his eyes like tears.