22

BEHIND THESE WALLS

Greyson left Hellbringer running, and they all climbed up the ladder to Salem’s place by the glare of the headlights. “Dude,” Rane panted when she heaved herself over the top, obviously in pain, “this ladder thing is so over. Your next place needs an elevator. Seriously.”

“You okay?” Dru said, knowing she wasn’t. The woman had not only lost a hard fight, she had also nearly had the soul sucked out of her body. “Here. Lean on me.”

Dru didn’t actually expect Rane to lean on her, considering how fiercely independent the woman usually was. Besides, at six feet tall, Rane was practically twice Dru’s size. So it came as a bit of a shock when all of that lean sweaty muscle sagged against her at once, nearly pile-driving her into the tar-covered roof. Luckily, Greyson stepped in and put Rane’s other arm around his shoulders. Dru, legs wobbling, gasped at the effort of trying not to be flattened like a human panini.

Salem held open his door for them using his good arm, and together they hobbled inside. The dark, cavernous space was lit here and there by tiny pools of light that hid more clutter and antiques than they revealed. Curiously, the place didn’t look that much different than it had the night before, when they’d fled from the first wraith. Despite its size, it still felt claustrophobic to Dru.

“Okay, I don’t know how fast the wraiths will catch up, but we can’t stay long,” Dru announced, wishing she still had Tristram’s wraith-detecting device. “Let’s grab anything we need and get out of here.”

Salem tugged a ratty-looking cardboard box full of cell phones halfway off a shelf, and dug through it until he found one that turned on. Holding it in his good hand, he typed out a text with his thumb.

Greyson eyed the box curiously. “Got enough phones in there?”

Salem’s gaze slid over to Rane. “With her around? Not necessarily.” By way of explanation, he raised his voice. “Buttercup? Where’s your phone?”

Rane gasped in pain as she eased down into an antique chair, making its wooden legs creak. “Dunno. Don’t care. Lost it in the fight.”

“Ah,” Salem said in mock surprise. He stepped up behind her and held another phone over her shoulder. She took it without comment. Then he turned and slipped away into the shadows.

“Stay here and keep an eye on her?” Dru asked Greyson, dropping her purse and the unwieldy apocalypse scroll next to Rane for safekeeping. When Greyson nodded, Dru launched herself after Salem, determined not to lose him in this maze. He knew his way through the semidarkness easily, but she had to follow the jutting silhouette of his top hat.

“Salem!” She had to hurry to catch up with him, since he hobbled along with surprising swiftness. “Let me see your arm. This is serious.”

“Serious, is it? You’re a sharp one, aren’t you?” He didn’t even glance her way. “Lucky for me, I can always depend on you to point out the blatantly obvious.” He grabbed a lantern off of a dusty side table. A few limping strides later, he held it up to a shelf crammed with jars and bottles of hand-labeled powders and potions. He pointedly stood in Dru’s way so that she couldn’t get a good look at the shelf.

“What spell did you cast that did that to you?” Dru asked. “That’s the best place to start. Then we can figure out what went wrong.”

“I didn’t cast it wrong.” He slammed the lantern down on a nearby table and started digging through the shelf. “It was a calculated risk. And it did the job, didn’t it? I saved all of you.” He shoved the jars and bottles aside, one by one, with increasing ferocity. They clanked together until Dru was afraid they would break before he found whatever he was looking for.

Dru resisted the urge to lecture Salem about the dangers of dark magic, and the backlash those forbidden spells could create. In the end, if he only lost his arm, he would get off lucky. Some of those spells were rumored to cost you your life. Even your soul.

Instead, she focused on trying to help, even if she was forced to speak to his back. “If you can just tell me the name of the spell, or at least the sorcerer who composed it—”

“I don’t know the names. And neither do you.” He gave her a dangerous glare over his shoulder. “You’re too wholesome and bubbly for what I do.”

She adjusted her glasses and folded her arms. “I want to help you,” she said simply. “The sooner you get better, the sooner Rane will stop worrying about you.” That was a bit of a stretch, because Rane hardly ever worried about anything, even matters of life and death. But in the grander scheme of things, it was true enough.

Bringing Rane into this finally forced Salem to relent. With a put-upon sigh, he finally turned around. “Fine. If it would get you to stop pestering me. Have a look.” He leaned down and laid his icky-looking arm across the table in front of her.

The light of the lantern fell across the glistening, overcooked-looking skin. It resembled nothing so much as a hot dog that had been blistered over a campfire, then dropped into the cold ashes to shrivel and congeal. The sight of it threatened to bring up Dru’s lunch, and she had to turn her head away.

Salem seemed to derive some sort of perverse satisfaction from that. “Look at my arm,” he ordered.

“Fine.” She swallowed and adjusted her glasses. Steeling herself, she peered closely at his arm. “But would it kill you to say the magic word?”

His voice rose. “If I knew what magic words to say, you wouldn’t be here, in my sanctuary, pestering me with your—”

“Salem.” She looked over the top of her glasses at him. “The magic word is please.”

His lips twitched as if he wanted to speak, but nothing came out. Eventually, he just turned away, leaving his grisly arm sitting motionless on the tabletop. But his body language softened, as if Dru had somehow established a kind of equilibrium that allowed him to relax.

As long as she remained analytical and thought of the arm as merely another magical problem to be solved, she could bear to look at it. She just couldn’t think about who it was attached to.

As far as she could tell just from looking, his arm wasn’t actually burned, not in the traditional sense. But his problem had the potential to become much bigger. The dark magic had transformed him somehow, so that his arm had become something other than human. Left unchecked, the effect could eventually spread throughout the rest of his body, until he truly became a monster. She didn’t know how long he had. But he certainly needed magical intervention as soon as possible.

The question was, what exactly would set things right? The wrong approach could send him into a downward spiral.

She felt useless without her crystals, and there was no telling when or where Opal would come through with the rocks she needed. “It would be helpful if I had some green agate.”

“Sorry, fresh out,” Salem snapped.

“Me too.” She thought about the crystals she had stashed in her purse, but none of them would really help with a problem this exotic. “Do you have any crystals around? I know I’ve sold you plenty.”

He started to make a sarcastic retort, then changed his mind. The muscles in his face worked, as if being helpful required an enormous effort. “Red zincite.” He brushed past her and pulled open an antique chest of drawers, digging one-handed through the drawer until he came up with a spiky red crystal that looked like a pile of transparent plastic cocktail toothpicks.

She vaguely recalled selling him that crystal at the beginning of the summer, but it wouldn’t do any good here. “Not unless you’ve been hypnotized, or you’re having trouble doing math in your head.” As his expression turned angry, she added, “I always have to use that calculator app on my phone. Did you know it can calculate dates, too?”

He frowned. After a slight hesitation, he said, “What about a yellow carnotite crystal?”

Dru remembered that one vividly. Salem had asked for it specifically, and she’d had to special order it from a tall, smelly prospector who worked deep in the mountains and insisted she sign a four-page liability waiver. That was because carnotite was a dusty, lemon-yellow crystal that also happened to be somewhat radioactive. To hear Opal tell it, it was a colossal threat to public safety. She had refused to come anywhere near it. Dru had been forced to store it in a lead-lined bucket in the closet until Salem had finally shown up to pay for it.

Dru shook her head. “No, as far as I know, carnotite can be used for scrying spells, but supposedly you can’t see anything within living memory. Maybe if you were an Egyptian mummy, it would be helpful. But today? Not so much.”

Salem drummed the fingers of his good hand, scowling at Dru as if this situation were somehow all her fault.

“You have to have some other kind of crystal around here, Salem.” Dru looked around at the cluttered darkness. “Looks like you’ve got everything else.”

With a start, Salem snapped his fingers and silently led Dru around a corner to a workbench of sorts. On the wall above was tacked a topographical map of a mountain range, along with a row of newspaper clippings from the 1920s. The headlines screamed about tourists going missing at a hot springs resort. Below, several creepy-looking experiments were well underway on the workbench.

In one, a thin line of viscous, honey-like liquid slowly dripped into a large petri dish, flowing over an ancient clay tablet covered in esoteric magical symbols. But no crystals.

Next to that, a cubical glass case gave her a queasy look at a swarm of black half-inch-long grubs clustered around a lumpy object that Dru fervently hoped wasn’t an animal skull. Truly disgusting, and also not a crystal.

Salem led her to the far end of the bench, where a glass terrarium was covered on three sides with black paper. Inside, a tiny forest of pale, spiny plants grew under a black light that made their double rows of spikes look like gleaming teeth. In the center of the bramble sat a brick-sized crystal composed of clusters of sharp angles. It glowed an electric blue color. Dru recognized it immediately by the way it fluoresced under the ultraviolet light.

“Fluorite! Oh, good. That could really help you, depending on what color it is.” She pointed at the plants that surrounded the crystal. “I’m not even going to ask what you’re doing with those.”

“Good.”

She gave him a sour look. “What the heck are they, anyway? Venus flytraps, or something like that?”

“Sure. In the way that an alligator is something like a gecko.” “I see. And what do you feed them? Raw meat?” she joked. His lips pressed together. “Not raw.”

It took her a moment to realize he was serious. “These aren’t natural plants, are they? You’ve used magic to create some sort of mutant shrubbery. Geez Louise. Is that really a good use of your time?”

“Careful, that rock is a little on the heavy side,” he said flatly. “You’ll need to use both hands to lift it out.”

Having second thoughts, Dru took the lantern and held it close to the terrarium, shining the light in through the glass. The visible light overpowered the ultraviolet, revealing that the fluorite was actually a rich grass-green color, transparent like a pile of Jell-O cubes. The corners where the angles of the crystal met included other minerals, some rust-brown, some white and chalky. But other than that, the crystal itself looked largely pure.

“Green fluorite is perfect for soaking up negative energies and cleansing away contamination. Which you obviously have plenty of.”

Salem clearly wasn’t interested in hearing the details. He lifted up the lid of the terrarium, releasing a sharp deep-woods mustiness, and waited expectantly.

When it came right down to it, reaching both hands into a dark ter-rarium full of weird carnivorous plants wasn’t exactly Dru’s favorite plan. But her supply of other options was severely limited at the moment.

With no small amount of trepidation, she gingerly reached into the terrarium. She kept her hands close together, anxious to avoid any of the spiky plants. When she finally reached the big crystal, it was cold to the touch, despite its electric blue glow. Ever so carefully, she lifted it straight up, only barely brushing against the spiky plants. Their little jaws snapped shut, but none of them caught her fingers. She lifted out the fluorite crystal without incident and breathed a sigh of relief.

Away from the black light, the crystal reverted to its normal transparent green. “You know, Charles Darwin called the Venus flytrap one of the most wonderful plants in the world. Guess he never had to worry about counting his fingers afterward.” She glanced at Salem’s disgusting hand. “Speaking of which, come on.”

He bristled at following her, but she still led him back to the chairs where Rane and Greyson waited. At their approach, Rane abruptly broke off talking to Greyson and looked up.

“Dude, your arm still looks like baby back ribs.”

“And with that, yet another menu item is permanently closed to me.” Salem gingerly lowered himself into the chair next to Rane and stretched out his injured arm on the armrest. He looked at Dru expectantly.

“Okeydokey. Let’s see what we can do.” Dru sat cross-legged on the floor next to him, with the translucent green crystal between them. She held one palm open an inch above Salem’s arm, careful not to touch his skin and pick up any of his contamination. She draped her other hand over the top of the green fluorite crystal, letting her fingers form a cage.

Greyson caught her eye. The expression on his face silently asked whether she wanted his help. She subtly shook her head no. As much as Greyson’s inner power could boost her crystal abilities, she wouldn’t risk transferring any of Salem’s contamination to Greyson. Both men had already had far too much contact with the dark side. Connecting them would be like offering herself as a human lightning rod for dark magic.

No, she would help Salem, but she wouldn’t endanger Greyson to do it.

Calming her breathing, she focused on synchronizing her energy with the crystal in front of her. It took longer than usual, since the events of the night had left her rattled. But when she finally got in sync, she blotted out the rest of the world and tapped into the flow of the crystal.

Its purifying power tingled against the tips of each of her fingers. Brisk, clear, refreshing vitality raced up her arm, as if she had plunged it deep into a clear mountain stream. It surrounded her, drawing a startled gasp from her lips. Like a sudden gust of wind, it flowed down her other arm and radiated from her palm. She spread out her fingers, feeling the invisible flow of energy tickle her skin as it streamed out of her.

Though her eyes were closed, she could sense Salem stiffen in the chair. His breathing hitched, and she heard the faintest pained groan escape from the back of his throat. At first, that alarmed her, because nothing about this was meant to hurt.

Then she realized that Salem was completely unaccustomed to healing energies. He spent practically every waking hour immersed in magical research, some of it leading him to the darkest corners of sorcery. All of the negativity that he constantly swam in was the opposite of healthy, and it doubtless left invisible scars in his psyche.

Even Dru had been startled at first by the bracing chill of the fluorite’s purifying energies. She couldn’t even imagine what Salem was experiencing. He probably felt like he had plunged through the surface of a frozen lake.

As steadily as she could, Dru moved her palm slowly up and down the length of Salem’s afflicted forearm, trusting in the pressure of the purifying energy to keep her from actually making contact with his skin. After a minute, the process became easier, and she could feel Salem finally start to relax under her care. Another minute after that, she knew she had done all she could do.

Slowly, she released the crystal and opened her eyes. Salem’s skin still looked somewhat scorched and reptilian, but the intensity had faded, now more like an angry sunburn. It wasn’t a total cure, but the results were far better than she expected.

Even more gratifying than that was the shocked look on Salem’s face, as if he’d suddenly had his world turned completely upside down. That was good for him, too, she figured.

Rane peered at Salem’s arm with a mixture of disgust and fascination. “Got anything stronger?”

Dru shook her head. “It’ll have to heal naturally from here. Just wait and give it a chance to rest.”

“That’s all you’ve got for me?” Salem demanded. “Just wait?”

“Well. Maybe put some aloe on it.” Dru stood up too fast, and her vision blanked into golden sparkles, momentarily blinding her. As she swayed, Greyson gently took her shoulders and guided her into one of Salem’s antique chairs.

Although she loved his closeness and attention, she still resisted. “No. I’ll be all right. We have to get back on the road. We can’t risk staying here any longer.”

“You’re right,” he said in her ear. “But if you don’t rest for a minute first, I’m going to have to carry you out of here.”

“Wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” Gratefully, she sank back into the dusty old chair, feeling exhausted. She pulled her glasses off and pinched the bridge of her nose, as if that would somehow relieve the crushing pressure that bore down on her. “We have to find a hiding place for the scroll. Someplace the wraiths can’t reach it.”

With her foot, Rane dragged a chair screeching across the floor so that she could prop up her giant running shoes on its arm. She crossed her legs and sighed. “No problemo. These spooks go poof in the daylight, right? So all we have to do is keep outrunning them until dawn. Problem solved.”

“Until tomorrow night. And the next night after that.” Dru shook her head. “They’ll be back. Again and again. Night after night. They’ll never give up. They’ll chase after us forever, until they get the scroll. And when they do, they’ll finally get the one thing they’ve always been after. Doomsday.”