When the sound of the fire and the throbbing of the protective spells on my chest finally died away, I opened my eyes again. The room was full of bones. The water sloshed back and forth, and soot and ash made a greasy film on top.
Some of those bones were small. Very small.
Annalise was still lying on top of the desk, and as I expected, she wasn’t even singed. I kept looking at her, so small and frail-seeming, but so filled with power, because I didn’t want to look at what I’d done.
A shadow moved on the wall. I turned back and saw another person at the door. There were two more behind him and who knows how many I couldn’t see.
My dirty work wasn’t finished. I moved my foot through the murky water until I found my length of pipe, then I pulled it out of a pile of bones. They came at me.
“They” were a skinny boy of about fourteen, a middle-aged woman with the hunched back of a vulture, and an old man with too much belly and too little biceps. They were all holding hatchets. I could see by their expressions that they weren’t going to back down. I didn’t need them to. I had my pipe.
It took less than half a minute for me to put all three on the ground. I left them alive because I could, but they wouldn’t be bothering anyone for a while.
They screamed curses at me. I was the one who wanted to kill their beloved sapphire dog, and they were sure I deserved to die. I didn’t bother to disagree. I felt my ghost knife nearby and called it to me. For once, it didn’t feel good to have it back. I dragged the last three pets outside.
I carried Annalise to her van and laid her in the back. Then I found a tow truck near the edge of the parking lot with a full ashtray and a pile of fast-food wrappers on the floor. I cracked the ignition and backed it into the corner of the church, smashing through the wood frame and breaking partway inside.
Then I cut my way into the building with the ghost knife and made a slit in the truck’s gas tank. I used a book of matches to set a grease-stained brown paper bag alight and let the flames spread. The pews were already engulfed when I ran back to the van.
Someone was going to investigate the deaths in Washaway. Someday. The fire was clumsy, but it would at least explain away the charred bones I’d left behind, as long as no one thought too hard about it.
I had Annalise and I had the van. Leaving town didn’t make sense, but I could certainly hide inside Steve’s house until another peer arrived. How long could that be? I’d failed to kill the sapphire dog more than once, and now it was with Zahn, a sorcerer strong enough to take out my boss. Sure, I’d surprised him once with a sucker punch, but he’d be ready for me next time. It wasn’t as if I had a big bag of tricks.
I had every reason to run. I didn’t even know where Zahn had gone, and I certainly wasn’t going to drive around looking for his Mercedes with more pets on the loose.
But then I realized there was only one way to transport the sapphire dog.
I turned the key in the ignition and pulled into the road.
My calf started to ache. I looked down and saw blood on my pants. I’d been stabbed. I was also wet, jacketless, and a fucking child-killer. I began to shiver and had to pull to the shoulder of the road until the feeling passed.
I turned the heat on and held my fingers in front of the vent. Then I found a first-aid kit behind the seat and taped a wad of gauze over the stab wound. It wasn’t a large cut, certainly not large enough to kill over. I rubbed my hands together to warm them. I’d think about those people tomorrow. Not today. Today I would think about the ones who still needed killing.
I drove past the Breakleys’ home and up the long hill toward the Wilbur estate. The gate was wide open. I drove up the long empty driveway and parked just out of sight of the house.
“Don’t go anywhere, boss.”
I climbed from the van and closed the door as quietly as I could. There was no sound other than the wind through the trees. I jogged uphill toward the house, keeping low.
Beside the house, at the edge of the asphalt parking lot, I found Esteban’s plumbing truck. I went around to the other side and found a half dozen corpses. They were pets, and they had been beaten to death. The nearest one was the pastor—he had a dent in the side of his head about the size of Zahn’s fist.
I couldn’t beat Zahn in a fair fight, and I didn’t see any reason to try. I ran to the corner of the building, squeezed between it and two well-trimmed bushes. The unlit woven Christmas lights snagged at my shirt. I peeked into the nearest window. The room had stacks of fabric and a little sewing machine set where it would catch the sun. No people, though.
I heard broken glass from the backyard. I hoped it was Zahn.
I was only going to get one chance. Jumping out of the bushes wasn’t good enough. I needed to hit him before he knew he was being hit.
I cut the lock on the front door, then rushed into the entrance hall. The house was dark, quiet, and smelled like spoiled pork. I rushed to the nearest door on the left and pushed it open. The stink of rotting flesh washed over me. Stephanie Wilbur lay on the floor, still in her green-and-gold outfit, and it was clear she’d been there awhile. Someone had shot her in the chest and closed the door on her.
I hurried to the windows. There were three of them, each twice as tall as me and arched at the top, but made of individual squares of glass no larger than my hand. They gave me a good view of the open back of the truck. I crouched low and pressed my face against the glass, looking toward the backyard. I couldn’t see far.
I heard them before I saw them. I stepped away from the window and curled my arm against my chest, ghost knife ready. They were talking very loudly, very excitedly. Or one of them was. Zahn spoke German in a low, somewhat bemused voice, while the other voice was loud but halting, as though the speaker was struggling with the language.
Then they came into view. Zahn was carrying the Plexiglas cage from the cottage, and Ursula was carrying a car battery. The sapphire dog lounged on the bottom of the pen, brightly lit by the floodlights at the corners. It was facing away from me. Ursula babbled enthusiastically.
They did not look up at the house and did not suspect I was watching. When they came about even with me, I threw the ghost knife.
There was only one target that made sense. Ursula wasn’t important, and Zahn was too powerful for me to take on. Any fight between us would just set the predator free again and get me killed.
So I aimed straight for the back of the sapphire dog’s neck. This time, the creature was facing away from me and trapped inside Zahn’s cage. This time it couldn’t get away. The ghost knife sliced through the window pane with only a slight tik, and then it was through the Plexi and the predator.
I immediately called it back. It zipped through the sapphire dog’s neck a second time. The creature’s head tipped forward and rolled free in the bottom of the cage.
The ghost knife landed in my hand at the same moment that Zahn reacted. He said: “Ah!” and gaped at the predator.
Both of them looked up at me. Ursula glanced at the predator, threw the car battery onto the wet lawn, and turned back at me, her face wild with hate. Then she took off toward the front of the building.
Zahn dropped the now-dark Plexiglas cage. “Scheiss doch!” he said, his voice seeming to come from everywhere at once. He raised his arm toward me and opened his palm.
Six shining, buzzing objects came at me, wavering like guided missiles and leaving glowing silver contrails behind them.
Time to go.
I ran for the door, hopping over Stephanie’s corpse. The missiles punched through the window glass, and I saw they weren’t missiles at all—they were some sort of worm as long and as thick as my thumb, and the little round opening at the front was ringed with tiny, jagged teeth.
Damn. Annalise was wrong. Zahn had brought predators with him.
I rushed into the main hall just as Ursula burst through the front door. She raised a rock the size of a woman’s shoe above her head and charged at me, screaming. Guess she’d run out of guns.
I ran at her because I refused to run away. Two of the worms punched through the wall on the right, then two more came a moment behind. Three turned toward me, but the farthest one began to arc toward Ursula.
Damn. As they came close to me, I juked to the left. The worms zipped by, and just being near them made my skin feel sticky and hot. Ursula kept running straight at me—either she didn’t notice the predator flying at her, or she didn’t care.
I threw my ghost knife. It zipped across the room with astonishing speed and sliced through the worm as it came within inches of her flank. The worm disappeared and reappeared at the spot where it had punched through the wall. It went after her again, and since she was coming at me, it was flying at both of us.
I reached for my ghost knife again but didn’t watch for it to come into my hand. I had predators on both sides of me and Ursula, too. Not good. And where were the other two worms?
There were stairs at the far side of the room, but I wasn’t going to get to them without a fight. Ursula swung the rock in a vicious downward hammer swing, but she’d telegraphed it from ten feet away. I slipped it, grabbed hold of the collar of her ski jacket, and tugged her off course. She stumbled into the sewing room door, smashing through it and sprawling on the floor.
Right beside Stephanie’s body. And there, sticking out of Stephanie’s corpse, were the tail ends of two shiny worms, wriggling like they were burrowing into an apple. Just as I’d hoped.
I charged into the room and hauled Stephanie’s body off the ground. It felt sluggish and heavy, and the room filled with a nasty wet odor. I forced myself to ignore all that and rushed toward the door, getting between Ursula and Zahn’s predators.
All four worms zipped straight into the dead body, attracted to whatever meat they could find. And while I knew the society didn’t want me to use them against a human enemy like Ursula, I didn’t think they’d mind if I used a corpse as a shield.
Then Stephanie’s head jerked up. She opened her rotted eyes and looked directly at me.
I screamed something unintelligible and shoved her, stumbling, into the main room. I heard Ursula getting to her feet behind me, and I ducked through the door. I didn’t want my enemies on both sides of me.
Stephanie wobbled, barely able to keep her balance, as the worms disappeared under her stained clothes. Ursula had found a pair of scissors somewhere and was cursing at me in her native language, whatever it was, as she stumbled through the door. I backed away from them both, wondering how I would get to the hall, then the kitchen, and finally the back door, because I expected Zahn to step through the open front door at any moment. And I knew I’d be a dead man if he found me here.
A blast of white fire tore through the wall near the front door. The flames looked like they were roaring through an invisible hose four feet thick, and the spell came from the same spot where Zahn had been standing when I hit the sapphire dog. Maybe he wasn’t coming through the front door after all.
The white fire began to sweep slowly across the room like a flashlight beam, incinerating doors, walls, and support posts. I heard, again, the sound of screaming that I’d heard when the pastor’s house had been destroyed, but because I was close to the spell, I could tell that it wasn’t just one scream but dozens, maybe hundreds of voices—as if the fire still held the deaths of all the lives it had taken.
I jumped back, hitting the edge of the stairs, then vaulted up onto them. Ursula threw herself to the floor as the beam of fire reached her, and Stephanie—or the creatures inside her—didn’t have the same control. It seemed to suddenly lose all strength and collapsed to the floor.
The fire churned through the opposite wall, then dipped down through the floor. I retreated upstairs, watching the bottom of the staircase burn to ashes.
Then the fire stopped. The scorched edges of the wooden floor and walls sputtered with pale flames for a moment but quickly went out. A loud crash from the left drew my attention, and I saw the wall buckle.
Ursula stared up at me from the floor. Her face was pale and her eyes wide with shock. Death had come awfully close to her. She turned and scrambled on her hands and knees toward the front door. Stephanie was nowhere in sight. Hopefully, she’d burned to cinders.
I glanced to my right and looked through the hole that blast of fire had bored through the house. There was Zahn, still standing just where I’d left him, Plexi cage on the ground at his side. The cage looked different—rounder—but I didn’t have the time to study it. Zahn smiled, drew his arm back, and made a throwing motion. A chunk of the wall disappeared at the edge of the fire-blasted hole, then another, larger piece of the wall between the sewing room and the room I was in popped out of existence.
Whatever it was, it was coming right at me.
I sprinted up the stairs and leaped to the left. The invisible thing he’d thrown passed behind me, erasing the steps and wiping away part of the upstairs floor. And it had grown larger, too. I looked through the hole it left at the open mountainside and wondered just how far it would go before the spell stopped turning something into nothing.
Just ahead was the servants’ stairs leading down to the back door. I ran to the top as another jet of white fire swept through the floor below, destroying the lower flight and wall beyond the way a lazy hand might clear fog off a misty window.
I turned and ran back the other way, leaping over the gap in the floor. The whole building shifted and jolted, and I fell to the threadbare carpet. Somewhere close, lumber cracked and splintered, making noises as loud as gunshots. I needed to get out of this house and out of Zahn’s sights as fast as I could, and the most direct way was through the big arching front windows.
The room with the white sheets over the furniture was just ahead. I lunged upward and threw my shoulder against the door. It didn’t open—it broke into pieces, already cracked from the collapsing jamb above it.
Once through, I fell to the floor, sliding on my knees along the sloping floorboards. The room was collapsing toward a huge hole in the center, and I could see the piles of basement clutter all the way down at the bottom.
The whole house shuddered. A wardrobe tilted away from the wall and slammed to the floor. I struggled to my feet as it slid at me, and I tried to jump up and run along the flat back of it but ended up clumsily stumbling across it instead.
I sprawled on the floor again as the entire house lurched. Plaster dust fell onto the back of my neck, and I managed to stand. I did not want to die in here. Not like this. Another blast of white fire sliced upward through the floor, cutting the wall with the tall front windows from the rest of the house.
Everything leaned toward the front, and I thought the whole building might fold up right then, pinching me into jelly. There was no way to get out by the front—the gaps were too iffy to jump, and I couldn’t trust the floor to hold me even if I made it across. I had to try the back of the house.
The floor dropped beneath me—just a foot—but it was enough to slam me to my knees again. I imagined myself falling backward onto all that clutter below: the overturned chairs, furniture corners, everything. At this height I’d be lucky to only break my back. Goose bumps ran down my back and arms, and I scrambled on my hands and knees toward the door.
Stephanie came toward me.
God, the smell was awful. I struggled to my feet, determined not to die on my knees. She was standing on a cloud of silver smoke a foot or two off the buckled floorboards. Where her eyes should have been, two worms wagged back and forth, their mouths gaping wide enough to show little teeth.
The wall behind her suddenly vanished, and I knew another spell was coming. I lunged at her just as she reached me, but I was faster. Her ankle squished like a bag of jelly when I grabbed it, but I squeezed tight and pulled, tipping her off balance. She fell back as the spell advanced, and I leapt up toward the broken doorway.
Zahn’s spell swept over her and erased her from the world. I grabbed the edge of the doorframe and pulled myself through, barely clearing the edge of the spell.
I scurried along the hall toward Regina’s room. She had a window in there, even if getting out that way would leave me on the wrong side of the house. The floor was so crooked that I had to run along the corner where it met the wall. The building groaned and shuddered, and something somewhere close snapped. The sound was as loud as a sledgehammer’s blow.
Regina’s door was already open, although her bed had slid against the crooked frame. I climbed over it, kicking at the covers as they tried to tangle my legs. I tread on Regina’s framed photos, smashing the glass.
The exterior wall leaned above me. When I lifted the window, it slid open like a blessing. I caught hold of the bottom of the sill and started to pull myself through just as everything began to come apart with a sound like a series of small explosions. My footing fell away and the wall rushed toward me. In a burst of desperate strength, I pulled myself through the open window, ignoring the sawdust billowing into my face and the shards of glass striking it.
The wall plummeted around me as I lurched through it. I tumbled down the outside of the house, feeling as though I had used the last of my strength and willpower. I fell into the grass, and somehow landed on the side of the house, practically right on the spot where Fat Guy had been crouching when I’d cut his shotgun apart.
I forced myself to sit up. I was exhausted, and when I looked up, I saw Zahn and Ursula standing where I’d left them. Both were staring at me; Ursula looked pale and shell-shocked; Zahn had a grim smile on his face.
I couldn’t make myself care anymore. I’d destroyed the sapphire dog, just as I’d said I would, and I didn’t have any more willpower left. Not after everything I’d done. I was finished, and they could see it on my face.
The Plexiglas cage behind Ursula and Zahn had somehow shrunk. I looked at it more closely and saw that it wasn’t only the cage that had changed shape. Everything—space itself—had bent toward the cut in the sapphire dog’s neck. The cage, the battery, and the ground they rested on bowed inward as though the world was being pulled into the predator’s body.
But Zahn didn’t see it because he was focused on me. He opened his coat and drew a playing card from an inside pocket with well-practiced ease. The warp suddenly expanded, and the edges trembled as though under tremendous strain. I could feel the distortion inside me, like an urge to scream.
Zahn turned toward it, surprised. Ursula gasped. The warp suddenly swelled and both of their bodies twisted as though they had stepped into a funhouse mirror.
Then the warp released in a single overwhelming blast.
I remember the light, but I don’t think there was any sound. I felt myself silently lifted up and thrown across the grass.
The light was bright and pure. It filled everything, and it seemed to be full of watching eyes.
I woke on the grass at the base of the hill a couple of dozen feet from where I’d been. Nothing seemed to be broken. I snapped my fingers and heard the sound, which was a tremendous relief.
I checked that I still had my ghost knife, then moved toward the house. Ursula and Zahn lay on the lawn. They weren’t whole, though. You couldn’t have made a whole body out of both of them combined. There was no blood anywhere, just a lack of parts.
Then I saw a flash of blue near the front of the house. I walked around the bodies, trying not to look at them. I felt hollowed out, and I wasn’t ready to fill that empty space with the sight of more dead people, even these.
On the front lawn, the two halves of the sapphire dog’s body were fading in and out, appearing here and there in a seemingly random way. It wasn’t until I realized that the ghost knife had cut through the predator’s eyes, blinding it, that I understood that the two parts were trying to find each other.
The hedge closest to the truck had been spared the collapse of the Wilbur house. I quietly took a set of the woven Christmas lights off the top. There was an electric outlet set in the back of the cube truck. I plugged the lights into it, and they lit up dimly.
I clicked my tongue. The ears on the creature’s head suddenly turned toward me, then the head vanished and appeared beside me. I draped the lights over it, then folded it twice for good measure. It stopped vanishing and reappearing. I had trapped it. It wasn’t the lights—it liked the light—it was the live wires that the predator couldn’t cross. The cages had been spiderwebbed with wires, and the pets had been careful to run cables along only three walls in the field house, leaving one open for an escape route.
I held my hand away from my body and snapped my fingers. When the predator shot its tongue toward the sound, I sliced it off with the ghost knife. The severed tongue fell into the mud and shriveled there. Its body staggered, then crumpled to the ground and lay still.
The head could only twitch its ears. I wondered if it could understand me. “Stay away from my world,” I whispered to it. The ears twitched back and forth as though it couldn’t find the source of my voice. “There are monsters here.”
The head shrunk and bowed in on itself. I backpedaled, but there was no second explosion. The head, tongue, and body each seemed to be sucked into a tiny spot, and then they were gone.
There was still another job to do. I walked to the side of the house. All that was left of Ursula was a pair of legs and the hips to hold them together. The rest of her body was simply gone. Even stranger was that there was no gore or exposed organs at the severed part of her torso. That part of her was covered with smooth, unmarked skin, as though she had grown that way naturally.
Zahn was missing his body from the ribs down. He was also missing one arm from just below the shoulder and the other from just below the elbow. When I bent to see if he also had skin over the severed part of his torso, he called me an asshole.
Yeah, I was startled. I knew sorcerers were tough, but this was a bit much.
“Feed me, and I will teach you,” he said. His voice sounded low and strained. “I will show you the world behind the world.”
“Pass. I’ve seen how you treat your people. No loyalty.”
“They were simpletons and they failed me. But you are something else, yes? Not even a true sorcerer, and look what you did.”
“That’s what I do,” I told him. My voice sounded flat, and it scared me a little. “I kill.”
“I do not believe you. I can see it. You have killed, but you are not a natural killer. You care too much for that. The Twenty Palace Society has lied to you, the way they lie to everyone.”
“Is this conversation going to take long? Because my socks are wet.”
“And you want power. For three hundred years I have been looking for someone clever enough to pass my secrets to. I think that could be you. I need meat. Care enough to save my life, and you save three hundred years of history. In return, I will show you real power the Hosenscheisser in the society cannot. Come on, boy. Care enough to save one more life.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed at him. “You don’t get it, do you? I killed kids today because of the deal you made with that predator. Kids! If you think I’m going to …”
Why was I talking to him?
I dragged the ghost knife through his torso. Black steam blasted out of him. The smooth skin over the bottom of his rib cage where the rest of his body should have been suddenly burst open. He lost blood and magic in a tremendous rush.
I hit him again and again, and it took me a few seconds to realize that he was laughing as well as screaming.
“A ghost knife!” he wheezed. “You are killing me with a ghost knife, and you cast it on a piece of paper!” He screamed, then laughed again, straining every muscle. “I’ll bet you do not even realize what you’ve done!”
I didn’t feel like being laughed at just then. I dragged my spell through his face and head, then stuffed Annalise’s last green ribbon into his mouth. That was it for him.
Once Zahn was dead, I suddenly thought it might be a good idea to call someone outside Washaway who could help. I took a deep breath and let relief flood through me. The town was no longer sealed. Help would be coming very soon.
I gave his three-hundred-year-old bones a kick for the hell of it.
In the truck I found the lightning rod Zahn had used to summon the floating storms, along with a carpetbag loaded with candles, jars, amulets, and other suspicious crap, all in a mixed-up jumble.
I set all that stuff at the top of the driveway. Then I dragged the bodies into an opening in the side of the house, dropping them into the basement. That was an ugly job, but I didn’t have much choice. I wondered whether Regina had gotten away, or was crushed under a beam in the wreckage or rotting in a ditch somewhere, feeding the crows. Maybe I’d never know.
I parked the truck next to the house and lit them both on fire.
It started to rain again as I made my way to the van. The wind was cold. Annalise was as still as before. I loaded the old man’s gear into the back of the van and drove away.