CHAPTER TWELVE

I THREW MYSELF upstairs to the landing and at the motel door but the knob wouldn’t budge in my hands. I pounded in alarm.

Brian opened the door enough to peer out, and I slammed him back to get in.

“He’s coming!”

“Who is coming?” Morty lumbered to his feet, the mattress springing up, freed, as he did.

“That guy. Malender. The one who sucks the life out of fish and birds and for all I know, has the same planned for us.”

“What makes you think that?” Brian ran a hand through his hair in distraction.

“The starlings. A whole cloud of them rose up by the airport and began flying this way. And then they began to drop. Just fell out of the sky by the dozens and hundreds. That can’t be good, right? They were flying right at me, from miles away.”

“Indeed, that is not good.” Morty waited a beat, watching my face.

Brian rubbed the thick gold ring about his thumb. “You and I might be considered a little life for the taking.”

“Well, he’s not getting mine without a fight. This guy has to have weaknesses or he would have taken the world over by now, right? From what Remy told me, he’s been hiding out in Europe or Asia.”

“Where things have not been exactly cool and calm.”

“So he grows on pain and chaos. Nothing new for a villain.” I crossed my arms. “Will the threshold ward hold him?”

“It could. It goes both ways, however, in that he shouldn’t be able to attack us nor should we try to attack him.” The professorial voice went silent as Brian fell to pacing the room in thought.

“Why not?”

“That would violate the ward. If he forces it, we can retaliate with all that we’re capable of, but we can’t strike first.”

“Wonderful. America was built on sneak guerilla attacks, you know. It was the only advantage we had against the British.” I put a shoulder against the doorjamb and shoved my hands into my pocket. Steptoe’s ammo rolled against my fingertips. “Or I could outflank him.” I eyed the door between our adjoining rooms, locked as it was meant to be but fully unlockable if needed. I pointed at it. “Unlock that for me.”

Retreating back to my own room, I took a glance from the landing as the cries of tiny birds pierced the afternoon. My key card took a minute to activate the electronic lock and then I was in. The queen bed looked big and fluffy, the rest of the plastic wood furniture clean and utilitarian as I bypassed them all to unlock the suite door from my side and went through.

Brian and Morty both stood there waiting and watching. I pointed behind me. “That’s another threshold, right?”

“It should be.”

“Should? Don’t you guys have a way of testing these things out?”

“We are known to you as friends and allies. The threshold wouldn’t bother us at all if we tried it, not unless you refused us entry. Then it might or might not, because you’re not a magical entity.”

I stared at Brian. “But earlier you said . . .”

“That was our doorway. It’s a little different.”

I pointed at the adjoining doorway behind me. “Tell me that one is a little different, too.”

“It should be. Perhaps not from our side but yours.”

I nibbled on my bottom lip for a moment. “It had better be,” I told them finally. “You keep the door unlocked. I’ll be in my room, waiting. Let out a yell when he gets here.” As the walls were more on the paper-thin side than rock solid, I figured I’d hear him. Brian looked dubious.

I tilted my head back at him. “He is coming, isn’t he?”

“It would appear so. If he gives us a chance, we’ll sound the alarm.” Morty waved me back into my room, and we prepared to wait.

My room didn’t have a TV, or at least not a working one. It had a metal hanger that had been twisted arduously into a kind of antenna, but nothing helped the animated scramble focus. I turned it off, opting for silence over the tortured fizz of sound. A coffee pot sat on part of the bathroom counter, and it looked well stocked. I could have coffee, decaf, hot chocolate, and tea, but only one cup of tea unless I reused the bag. I also had a mountain of salt and pepper. For what, I couldn’t guess, but there the packets were, stored in with the others. No refrigerator in my room either. I stared at the salt. That might come in useful.

I took some of my many packets and made a line parallel to the metal runner at the door, wondering if books and movies told any truth at all about the evil-fighting powers of plain salt. Paper bits littered the worn-out carpeting. I picked up as much as I could and it still looked like I’d had a ticker tape parade in there.

I glanced out the door and up to the sky, seeing only a ragged thread of birds that had almost reached Old Alexandria. Could Malender be far behind?

I closed my door carefully, lest I worry Brian and Morty next door that I’d gone wandering. One escapee tiptoeing about on the floor was enough. I prepared uneasily to wait.

Patience is not my strong suit. Evelyn, like a cat, can sit and stare at things no one else can see for hours, without blinking her eyes once. Well, maybe once or twice. I can’t. I fidget. Twiddle my toes. Play with my pockets. Hum out of tune. See if I can teach myself Morse code by batting my eyelashes. And that’s in the first five minutes. If I can manage to sit still, I invariably fall asleep so my brain can at least dream and avoid the tedium.

I can wait and stalk on the hockey field, though, so I knew I had it in me. Somewhere.

I must have fallen asleep when suddenly I heard “Avaunt!” and realized Brian had loosed his perdition stick on something. Steptoe’s ammo came willingly into my hand the moment I dipped into my pocket. I had two left and decided they ought to deter the attacker, at least long enough for Morty and Brian to defend themselves.

Opening my room door stealthily, I leaned out and saw—

What I saw has no description. Maybe if the Invisible Man had gone and rolled in crude oil, so that he loomed large and dark, sticky and damp, outline blurred and drooling to the ground, that might be the image. Maybe not. Because when it turned to look at me directly—and yes, it caught me staring—I saw inside the cloud an image of the Perfect Man, a being so incredibly beautiful it made me want to weep and pull him free from the cloud of evil enveloping him. He wore leather and lace and looked like a cavalier from ancient days, with a carved and perfect face and brilliant jade green eyes, an oily darkness bubbling about him. Only, he was the cloud. I think.

Brian’s avaunt had torn away a good chunk of the cloaking on his right flank. Even as I watched, it oozed to fill in, and with every drop that rushed downhill from his shoulder to replace the emptiness on his side I thought of a tiny black bird, pesky but innocent, now distorted into shadow. My stomach clenched.

He made movements with his hands as if he could swim out of that dark cloud, his teeth bared in a ferocious grin, his body struggling with—what? I had no way of knowing.

He thrust his head back and yelled, “I must be free!” The cloud around him parted for the faintest of openings and then clapped shut again, and he turned to face me, his handsomeness creased in anger and frustration, brows knotted together, knifelike creases along the sharp planes of his face.

He billowed toward my direction, one hand with fingers curved in claws. I smiled, hauled out a handful of flash-bangs and threw them right at his feet. He howled in a voice both human and inhuman as they exploded. I heard the crackle of the perdition rod even as I spun away and slammed the door between us.

He came after me. I could hear and feel the thrust of weight on the landing as he came to the door and pounded on it, trying the latch, twisting the electronic panel off it and bending the handle. He would get the door open. I knew it and stood, heart pounding, by the inner door on my side, torn between watching Malender come in and bolting to Morty and Brian.

Inky darkness began to slide under the bottom of the door. My threshold didn’t hold it—hadn’t a chance. Malender was coming after me and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it but run. Sweat and fear trickled down my back and dotted my forehead. Even if I ran, I had no guarantee of safety. The other two might make it, they were magical, but I was just me, Tessa Andrews, as mortal as any starling. Like fingers probing the underside of the door panel, the shadow groped over the threshold. I fetched out my last flash-bang, balanced on the ball of my feet, ready to dart through the suite door when—

The salt stopped it.

The cloud halted abruptly, sizzling and evaporating as it touched my line of white crystals. I lunged for the coffee maker with its tray of condiments where a mound of salt packets still sat waiting, grabbed them, and tore through the door between our rooms. Whoever had brought them into the hotel had a real thing about hoarding salt packets, but that was to our advantage.

Both Morty and Brian swung on me as if to attack.

“Whoa!” I threw up a hand in air, clutching little white packets. “Salt. Salt stops him.” I ripped up a few and doctored the suite doorway before leaping to the main door and slathering its threshold with as much salt as I could manage. Torn paper dotted the carpet like snowflakes gone crazy. Brian joined me in assaulting the hoard of salt packets. The door had been wrestled open, as evidenced by the busted frame and the loose way it now hung, temporarily no longer under siege, but Malender would return to it. And, if the hissing and sizzling of his cloud was any indicator, he’d be madder than a boiled owl.

“Get away from there! He’s already breached it.”

“I can tell. But listen.” My hands shook, scattering salt everywhere but where it needed to be as I tore the envelopes open. “It stopped him at my door. It injured him. Just like Brian’s bolt got him.”

“My rod got him?”

“A big gash in his right flank. And my flash-bangs dazzled him and he went after me then.” I looked to Brian. “Can you manage another bolt? I think we’ve got him discouraged.”

Morty grunted. “And that’s about the best we can hope to do at the moment. He’s weakened by the transit and his enemy is not what he thought it would be, so if we can put him into retreat, we might have a few weeks while he recovers to prepare a better offensive.” He muscled the door shut as best he could.

My voice squeaked. “Weeks?”

“Sorry, lass, but that’s about the best we can do—Look out!”

The door catapulted open, knocking me on my keister. I scrambled backward, propelled by raging fear. Malender loomed in the doorway, the miasma about him boiling and crackling as it tried to flow over the doorway with its hastily laid dam of salt.

He stood out, distinct from that oily fog, and I thought of his shout for freedom but had no more time than that before the attack.

He shouted three words at Brian, none of which I could translate or grasp, leveling a finger at him. Morty roared back, shielding Brian’s body with his own as Malender shot a bolt barehanded, hitting the Iron Dwarf hard enough to rock him back on his heels. Brian stepped out from behind Morty with a shout of “Avaunt!” and the rod fired away.

Malender made a noise like a teakettle on high flame, his cloaking shivering and dancing about him as it melted away, leaving him exposed in the flesh. His handsome visage twisted grotesquely as he faced us. He said a single word and disappeared.

I stayed on the floor. Brian went to one knee, and Morty stood like a pile of bricks for a moment before shaking himself. I realized he must have turned to actual stone a moment before Malender hit him with his best shot. If he’d been hurt, there seemed to be little actual damage.

“Earth magic?”

Morty nodded to me and stretched each and every limb carefully, like a cat. A big, blocky, thuggish-looking cat.

Brian bent over his cane. His hands stroked it briefly and when he spoke, it was in mourning. “It’s done for.”

“What?” I scooted near and reached for it. “The words are still here.”

“Yes, but it’s . . . it’s emptied. It won’t recharge again.”

I took it from him as he let it go reluctantly. It did feel incredibly light in my hold, as though it were made of air and not solid wood. “You don’t know that,” I protested.

His face twisted in a sad smile. “I know it, and even you should be able to feel it.”

“It’s different. But maybe it just needs a rest. A magical new battery or something.” Sort of like Brian himself, who swayed even as he argued with me.

Morty reached down and pulled me to my feet. “It’s the way of things, Tessa. Nothing is permanent, not even stone, although it lasts far longer than most mortal things. The professor gathered a good many relics in his day that had been totally spent of their essence.”

“But he kept them.”

“Indeed, he did. Retired them to a loving home, he often said.”

“As if they were people. But it’s not mortal, it’s magical. Right?” I looked from expression to expression as Brian got unsteadily to his feet, holding onto what was left of the metal door in its frame. “Right?”

They both went silent and I looked down at the object in my hands. Its etching stared back at me.

I refused to give up. Not after outgunning Malender. Not after tearing up a bazillion salt packets with paper cuts and salt stings in my wounded fingers. “We’re going to Cleopatra’s Needle. We have to. If this cane exists, it still has work to do.”

Brian put a hand over mine. “You have a point. It exists, though barely. It has a mission to finish.”

“Then so do we, in the morning.” Morty went out on the landing. “In the meantime, it looks as if I need to pay for a new room and a new door.”

“Umm,” I said. “Make that two new doors. Annnnd salt. A lot more salt. A barrel of it!”