Play Dead (35 page)
Reaching through the broken pane, he stretched his arm out, then pulled it back.
“I can’t quite reach the lock,” he said. “Your arms are longer; you give it a try.”
I reached through and felt around until I found the dead bolt lock. I could just reach it and snapped it open. Of course, the doorknob itself was still locked, but Victor took out a thin length of plastic from his pack and slipped the lock in a matter of seconds. I was impressed; it looks easy, but it isn’t. I tried once to get the hang of it because I thought it might be a handy skill to have, but gave up after half an hour with no success.
It took only a moment to get safely inside with the door closed behind us. Only one person had passed by during this entire time, and she had only glanced incuriously at us as she passed.
It was an extraordinarily normal-looking house inside—not shabby, not fancy, not clean, not dirty. Except for the streaks of oily black residue that marred the front room carpet. I had been expecting to see something like the energy pool, an area of shifting lines and colors, only larger. But nothing. There was something here, though; I could feel it like a pressure on my mind and on my skin as well, a psychic heat wave. I imagine it was what Lou felt, how he sensed it, but a thousand times milder. Like in the same way that I can smell the sea, but when he smells the sea it’s a hundred different scents—fish, salt, kelp, birds, sand, wet rock, and even faint traces of oil leaked from ships. I was surprised he wasn’t overwhelmed more often.
I’d had some notion that we could maybe close off the rift, but that was hardly an option if we couldn’t locate it. And there were more immediate things to worry about. Victor held his sword at the ready and moved away from me. Lou moved away from him at the same time, to the far end of the room. He’s not a fan of long, sharp blades, even if they’re on his side.
“You should keep your distance as well,” Victor said, looking at me. “I don’t want to accidentally slice off your arm when I’m moving fast. And I sure as hell don’t want to be anywhere near you while you’re swinging away.”
This was not the best way to build up confidence in a novice swordsman right before a fight, but now was not the time to point that out. I moved over to the other side of the room next to Lou and nudged him.
“Where are they?” I said.
He paid no attention, since he was already busy, nose twitching, every sense alert. I didn’t see anything. Maybe the Shadow Men were all hiding in closets, like bogeymen.
“I can smoke them out,” said Victor.
He snapped his fingers and colored lights appeared in the air in front of us. Waving his fingers gently, he made the lights slowly coalesce into interconnected shapes and forms like a Kandinsky painting, then morph into not-quite-abstract images, almost recognizable: a mountain sunrise, a forest, a castle. It was what many practitioners do when they’re young and just discovering their talent, a form of play as well as a way to learn about focusing magical energies. It was a rare look at Victor’s artistic side, all the odder because of the circumstances.
Either the Shadow Men really were sensitive to the workings of talent or it was coincidence, but it succeeded with a vengeance. They didn’t spring out of closets or creep out from under the floorboards, though. They oozed out of the walls, like a dark miasma. One second we were alone in an empty room; the next we were surrounded by nightmare creatures.
Victor went into motion instantly, slashing down and then down again in a figure-eight motion before I even thought to raise my sword. Lou snarled and headed for cover behind a couch. I don’t think he was afraid of the creatures as much as he was of me with a sword in my hand. One loomed up right in front of me, reaching out, and I swung the sword without thinking. My stroke was awkward and the Shadow Man dodged away, but I still caught it partway down its arm. The blade sliced through the doughy consistency with ease, but this time the wound didn’t close up like the first time I’d fought one. Victor’s trick with the blades had worked. A section of the Shadow Man’s arm fell away, cleanly as a plywood strip falling from a band saw.
It stumbled back, but another took its place. I swung again, but it jumped back and I hit a lamp on a tabletop instead, almost losing my grip on the sword. The lamp crashed to the floor, shockingly loud in the silence. The Shadow Men hadn’t made a sound during the entire time. The only sounds had been the swishing of blades through the air, and the sound of my own breathing, harsh and shallow. I couldn’t hear Victor at all; maybe he really does have ice water in his veins. Or maybe he’s so conscious of his image that he’d never allow himself to appear tired or nervous, even if he were totally alone.
The silence was broken by a snarl and a scuffle behind me. I whirled around and saw that another of them had eased up behind me, but at the last moment Lou had left his hidey-hole and fastened teeth into it. I swung reflexively and caught it right at neck level, more from luck than anything else. Its head detached neatly and toppled off in a very satisfying fashion.
Lou backed away and disappeared behind the couch again. I glanced over toward Victor, who was standing amidst a virtual pile of black formless bodies scattered on the floor around him. He moved toward me with a series of quick sliding steps, his feet barely clearing the floor. He jerked his head, motioning for me to get out of the way, which I was happy to do. Instead of waiting for the two figures in front of me to close, he bounded toward them, sword flashing, and down they went.
I’d seen him fight before and had compared him to a ninja, somewhat mockingly. It was hard to mock him now. Maybe like a movie ninja was the best I could come up with. Then it was over. It was something of an anticlimax—one moment we were fighting for our lives; the next we were standing alone in an empty room. Lou poked his head from behind the couch and tentatively sidled out. He sniffed at the dark bodies for a moment before losing interest.
“Great job there, Lou,” I said. “But try and join in a little earlier next time, okay?”
Victor was still standing with sword at the ready, not quite trusting that it was over. Finally he relaxed a bit, but kept the sword in his hand.
“Quite a mess,” he said.
“What do we do now? We can’t just leave it like this. When the people finally come back it’ll bring some ... unwanted attention, won’t it?” He gave me a flinty smile.
“Very astute. Any suggestions?”
“We could burn the house down,” I offered, not too helpfully. Victor’s smile vanished.
“It might just come to that. But I’m hoping it won’t be a problem.”
“Nobody will notice?”
“Not exactly. But these things don’t belong here, and they’re not flesh-and-blood creatures, like some of the things that have come through. Remember the Gaki?”
Oh yes. I remembered it well.
“So we wait? How long—”
I didn’t need to finish the sentence, because as I spoke I could see a change taking place to the figures lying on the floor. Already the bodies were losing integrity, looking more now like masses of black crepe paper than people. The black shapes grew softer, edges running like tar on a hot day. As the process accelerated they became pools of inky liquid barely holding together. Two of the bodies lying closest merged and became one, like two touching but separate drops of water when surface tension finally breaks down. Black oily steam began rising from the pools, and little bubbles formed on the surface like tea water starting to boil.
Before long the entire floor surface was covered with a bubbling, viscous sludge. Lou hopped up on the couch to avoid it, and Victor and I quickly did the same. I watched the progression with fascination until there was nothing left.
But not quite nothing. The sooty steam had blackened the walls and ceiling, and the floor was covered with an oily residue. Lou refused to step in it and I had to carry him outside.
“That couple’s going to have a hard time figuring out what happened in there,” I said as we climbed back into the van. “A broken window and a house full of black, greasy gunk?”
“It doesn’t matter. They may even decide it’s ectoplasm or some other ghostly residue. But nobody will care.”
“What about the rift? Since it’s still open we’re eventually going to have the same problem, and if that couple comes back, it’s going to be ugly.”
“That’s why I’m going to lay an aversion spell over the house.”
“That’s not going to stop them. Neighbors, sure. Jehovah’s Witnesses, maybe. But people don’t avoid their own homes. It’ll make them uncomfortable, but it won’t stop them from going in.” Victor shook his head in disagreement.
“Of course it will. They’re already spooked. They left because they thought their house was haunted, remember? They’ll be nervous as cats about coming back anyway, and when the aversion spell kicks in they’ll turn around and decide to give it a few more days. And if we don’t have this mess cleared up by then, this house will be the least of our problems.”
He was probably right, and anyway I didn’t have a better idea. I waited in the van while he set up the spell. I couldn’t really help; our methods of working with talent are very different, and if we tried to work together on the same spell, we’d get in each other’s way and the spell would end up weaker than if either of us did it alone.
“Let’s go,” he said when he was done.
I drove back to the mansion with mixed emotions. We’d succeeded, but it was a small victory in a minor skirmish. The important stuff was still ahead of us.
TWENTY-ONE
VICTOR’S WAS BEGINNING TO SEEM LIKE A CLUB-house, and we the Hardy Boys, solving crimes and making things right. Those Hardy Boys seemed to have better luck with it than we did, though.
“So we took care of the Shadow Men,” I said from a deep chair in his office. “Great. But if we can’t find out where Jackie’s going to try her final experiment, we’re still screwed.”
Eli had returned and sat staring off into space, head tilted back, eyes closed. He was obviously thinking hard. Or maybe he was daydreaming, since there wasn’t much to think about. It was a simple equation—we needed to find Jackie in order to stop her, but we couldn’t find her. If we couldn’t find her, we couldn’t stop her. A circular mental path.
Sherwood came in a few minutes later, shaking her head before Victor could even ask her a question.
“Nothing,” she said. “The woman who thought she knew where Jackie was didn’t even know
who
she was.”
who
she was.”
Eli finally stirred himself, got up from his chair, and started pacing.
“We’ve been concentrating on finding Jackie,” he said. “That’s the most logical avenue, naturally. But we’ve run into a dead end, so we need to find a different approach.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s the question I’ve been asking myself. We need to find a way to prevent her from succeeding, even if we can’t locate her.”
“I don’t see how,” I said. Sherwood made a hopeless gesture with her hand
“Well, I certainly don’t have the answer,” she said. Eli cleared his throat, tentatively.
“There is one person that might be able to help—if he’s willing.” Victor looked up suspiciously.
“Who? No, don’t tell me.”
“Yes, you know who I’m talking about. Now, I understand how you feel about Geoffrey, but he does know more about the magical world and how it operates than anyone else around.”
“For what that’s worth,” I said. I was with Victor on this one. “We’d never get a straight answer out of him, even if he wanted to help us.”
Geoffrey was a “transcendent,” a practitioner who had gone far enough down the path of knowledge and enlightenment that he’d abandoned all use of talent, much like those Indian holy men who reach satori, renounce their studies, and live the simple life of a man with a begging bowl. The difference was that I could never quite decide if Geoffrey was an enlightened being or a total loon. Maybe both.
Victor saw him as a fraud, Eli thought he was the genuine article, and I switched back and forth between the two. I have to admit he had been some help in the past, almost despite himself. He did possess knowledge, to be sure.
“Have you talked to him?” Sherwood asked.
“I called, but his phone is no longer in service.”
That could mean he’d done away with yet another modern distraction, or just as easily that he’d forgotten to pay his phone bill.
“Maybe we ought to pay him a visit in person,” Sherwood said. Victor uttered a sound of disgust.
“A complete waste of time.”
“As opposed to what?” Eli said. “Sitting here and wondering what to do? Maybe if the four of us show up together, that will impress him enough to loosen his tongue.”
“Or his screws,” Victor said.
“Hey, at least it’ll get us out of the house,” I said. “Half Moon Bay is nice this time of year.”
“Yes, it’s quite lovely there,” Victor said, sarcastically. Then he surprised me. “But I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” Considering how he felt about Geoffrey, that showed he was as desperate as the rest of us.
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