Spirits in the Wires (33 page)

Aaran nodded. “I guess it will be. But none of that's where you come in.”

“Where
do
I come in?” Suzi asked.

She didn't mean to, but she couldn't help being flirty as she spoke.

“I just think we're good for each other,” Aaran said. “That maybe we really can be each other's guardian angels. I don't mean or expect some lifetime commitment. I'd just like to think that as soon as this is done, you're not going to just walk out of my life and I'll never see you again. I'd like to get to know you better.”

“I'm not going to make any promises.”

“No promises,” Aaran agreed. “But tell me you won't close the door either.”

Suzi smiled. “No door closings, either.”

They were so busy talking that they didn't notice that they'd reached Williamson Street until they were right upon it. A northbound bus pulled into a stop directly ahead of them. Suzi looked around, but there were no blue-gold auras in sight. Maybe they'd toned them back down again. Or maybe all the searchers were still milling around in Jackson's apartment building.

“Will this take us up to Holly's store?” she asked.

Aaran checked the bus number and nodded.

“I think we should just leave things where they stand,” Suzi said. “With you and me, I mean. Right now it's time to go face the music.”

But she took his hand while they waited in line to board the bus.

I've been writing about the unexplained
for over half my life now. Of spirits and mysteries, hauntings and haunted places. Of ghosts and fairies and goblins. Of hidden races of curious beings that live both in the wilds and right under our noses in the city—some whimsical, some dangerous, all strange.

But I don't have much actual hands-on experience.

Sure, Tallulah, one of my first serious girlfriends, turned out to be the literal spirit of this city. And Saskia was born in a Web site—maybe the same one into which she's disappeared again. But these are only words. Anyone can
say
they're whomever or whatever. I never actually saw Tallu-lah do anything more inexplicable than make me feel like I was floating on air whenever we were together—and you know, that's what love does. And until Saskia vanished right before my eyes, she never exhibited any mysteries that couldn't also be explained away with a more mundane rationale.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't hobnob with the otherworldly the way my readers think I do. The first time Wendy used that little magical red stone of hers, opening a threshold into the otherworld, where a doorway leading into the professor's kitchen was supposed to be, I was so overcome with the sheer impossibility of it that I literally went numb. For a long moment, I couldn't move, couldn't even think. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton batting.

Wendy offered me her hand and said something I couldn't hear. But I understood. She was asking me to join her as she stepped through the arch of the kitchen door into this stunning vista of red rock canyons. It took me awhile before I was finally able to reply. But the bigshot writer, as Geordie likes to call me, so rarely at a loss for words, could only shake his head.

No one could understand why I declined to cross over, except maybe for Jilly. But it's like I told Geordie last night, what interests me about these kinds of phenomena centers around how they interact with the World As It Is, and how those of us living here react to these intrusions. I don't like the idea of a mundane world, devoid of wonder or mystery. But I know I wouldn't be any happier in a world where it's all wonder and mystery.

Up to that moment, I'd always been equal parts skeptic and believer. That might also explain the success of my books. My readers see that in me: The skeptics think I agree with them, but isn't it interesting to consider anyway? And the believers just assume I'm in their camp, only more experienced than most of them.

I guess now I am.

I hear the sound of the hellhounds again. Closer.

And once again I'd just as soon decline the invitation to step into the unknown territories of the otherworld. But I've got Saskia to think about now.

“Let it go,” Bojo says.

Robert shakes his head and keeps playing his guitar. That music of his could make angels swap their celestial harps for a blues harp, just to try to capture even an echo of what he's calling up. It's earthy and slinky. It's a gospel choir wrapping their voices around a twelve-bar blues. It promises and it delivers. It reaches right inside to your most private place and says, I know you. I know your pain, but I know your joy, too.

I don't doubt that he can call up any damn thing he wants with it—not just some doorway into an errant Web site, hidden away in a digital version of Never-never Land.

Trouble is, we've just discovered that we're not the only ones listening.

The hellhounds bay, closer still.

“I'm telling you,” Bojo says. “You've got to let it go.”

Robert doesn't even look at him. “Hell, no,” he says. “We're almost there. I can pretty much taste that Wordwood spirit.”

“You don't stop playing,” Bojo tells him, “the only tasting that'll go on here is the hellhounds taking a bite out of you.”

I glance at Raul and he's looking more nervous than I am and that's not easy, considering how I'm feeling. Over by the stairs, Dick is hiding his face in his hands. Geordie and Holly are staring wide-eyed at the shimmering wall behind me. Snippet's trying to be invisible and fierce, all at the same time, and not doing a good job of either.

“We've got time,” Robert says. “You just open that door when I tell you.”

“Oh, yeah, time,” an unfamiliar voice says from behind me. “Funny how it works. Sometimes it moves like molasses and you've got all you might ever need to do any damn thing at all.”

I turn slowly, realizing now that Geordie and Holly weren't just looking at the shimmer of the wall. Three men are standing there—having stepped right out of the wall, I guess, because they certainly didn't come down the stairs.

Up until this moment, the biggest, darkest-skinned black man I've ever seen is Lucius Portsmouth, this friend of the professor's that Jilly says is the raven uncle of the crow girls, her personal favorite of the animal people that figure in local folklore and stories.

These men are as big, but where Lucius reminds me of a serene, black Buddha, our uninvited guests are grim-faced, with a mean look in their eyes, and they're built like weightlifters or linebackers, seeming as wide across the shoulders as they are tall. Their skin isn't just black, it's pure ebony—that absence of light you find in the heart of a shadow. Like Robert, they're wearing suits, only theirs are solid black broadcloth, with white shirts, narrow black ties, and fancy, tooled leather boots.

One of them shifts his foot and I hear what sounds like the low, deep-throated growl of a hunting hound. Snippet whimpers and burrows his head against Holly's leg.

“And sometimes,” says that same unfamiliar voice I first heard, but now I can see it's coming from the man standing in the center of the three, “time goes by so fast you never can catch up with anything.”

Robert holds his guitar by the neck and stands up to face the men.

“This has got nothing to do with anybody but you and me,” he says. “Don't you go bothering these folks.”

“They're with you, aren't they?”

There's absolute menace in that voice, despite its mild tone. Another of the men shifts his feet and again I hear a low, throaty growl. That's when I realize that
these are
the hellhounds. I don't know if they're shapechangers, animal people like Jilly loves to talk about, or something else again. The only thing I'm sure of is that they're dangerous and we're in big trouble.

But Robert doesn't concede one iota of defeat. He stands there stiff-backed, radiating strength, guitar dangling from his left hand. He slips his other under the front panel of his suit coat.

“I'm only telling you this one more time,” he says. “Maybe we have ourselves a difference of opinion, but don't go dragging anybody else into this business.”

“Or you'll what? Pull out that old Colt of yours and try to shoot me? After all these years, do you really think something like that can stop us?”

“That your final word?” Robert asks, his voice as mild, but as full of threat as the hellhound's.

“What do you think?”

“I just need to hear you say it, plain and clear.”

The hellhounds' spokesman looks left and right, grinning at his companions, before he turns back to reply.

“Then I'm saying it,” he tells Robert. “All your lives are forfeit.”

Robert just smiles. “I was hoping that'd be the case.”

That earns him as puzzled a look from the hellhounds as I know we've got on our faces, but Robert keeps smiling. The hand that we all thought was reaching under his jacket for a weapon comes out empty. He hefts his guitar in front of him and when he pulls a chord from that old Gibson of his, I swear the brick walls shiver around us. The concrete trembles at our feet. The hellhounds make like it's no big deal, but I can tell they're running down a list of what Robert's got planned. They know he's up to something, but they can't figure out what, any more than I can.

But Robert just pulls another chord from his guitar—a minor chord, rumbling with dark promise—and turns his back on them to look at us.

“I should explain something to you,” he says. “What we've got here are some of
les baka mal,
hellhound spirits who like to lay proprietary claim to
les carrefours
—or at least they will at whatever crossroads they think Legba isn't watching. These particular ones have stolen the names of the three Rada drums for themselves. Guy in the middle calls himself Maman. The other two are Bula and Seconde.”

I can't believe he's taking this time-out to fill us in. I give the hellhounds a nervous look over Robert's shoulder, but they still seem confused. The two on either side of the one Robert called Maman are trying to get his attention. He ignores them, his gaze fixed on the back of Robert's head. Behind his eyes, you can tell his mind is still in overtime, trying to work out what Robert's up to.

Well, the hellhounds and me both.

“They know about this engagement I've made with Legba,” Robert's saying like none of this is any big deal. “I'm not going into the whys and wherefores. All you've got to know about that part of our pact is that I can't defend myself against
les baka mal.
It's why I work so hard to keep out of their way. They're not more powerful than me. My problem is that I can't break my word to Legba and raise a hand against them. If I do, dying's the least of my worries. Legba won't just have my soul, he'll have it in pieces.”

Now he finally turns back to the hellhounds.

“But what you forgot, Maman,” he says to the lead hellhound, “is that Legba never said anything about me not being allowed to defend somebody else from your kind.”

The understanding comes to them at the same time as I get it. Whatever this deal between Robert and Legba is, it left Robert helpless against the hellhounds—
unless
they happen to threaten someone else.

I can see their indecision. Attack, or break and make a run for it? I wonder that they even hesitate. There's three of them. We might outnumber them, but except for Bojo, not one of us looks like much of a fighter. Doesn't mean we won't try—at least I know Geordie and I will. Our brother Paddy taught us a long time ago: You may get the crap beat out of you, but it's better to go down fighting than not stand up at all. Funny thing is, once or twice, I've even come out still standing on my own two feet.

But it doesn't come down to that.

“We're not alone,” Maman says. “You know how many hounds are out there on the wild roads?”

Robert nods. “But you're alone right now.”

“We can have a pack on your ass so fast—”

Robert breaks in. “But you've got to be alive long enough to call them down on me.”

I don't see the man on the left of Maman draw the knife. One moment his hand's empty, the next there's a length of pointed steel flashing through the air at Robert. Robert manages to pull another chord and lift the body of the guitar at the same time. The knife bites into the wood, setting up a discordant echo to an already dissonant music. Something dark starts to take shape in the space between the
les baka mal
and Robert. The hellhounds hesitate a moment longer, then they turn and make their escape through the hole in the basement wall behind them.

“I can't let them go,” Robert tell us. “I do and they'll be back ten times as strong and there'll be no finessing our way out of that encounter.”

Bojo takes a step forward. “But you can't just go on your—”

“That place we're looking for is close,” Robert says, interrupting. “You should be able to find it.”

He pulls the knife from his guitar and drops it on the floor, then starts for the hole where the hellhounds disappeared.

“Robert!” Bojo calls after him.

The bluesman stops at the edge of the hole and looks back.

“You don't understand,” he says. “That was my one ace-in-the-hole— that they'd come on me when I was with someone else and they'd threaten whoever I was with. Unless I stop those three, I can't use it again.”

“But—”

Robert shakes his head. “They weren't lying. They've been hunting me a long, long time and now I've gone and put them on the run. That's something they'll never forget or forgive. Give them half a chance and they really will have an army down on us. And let me tell you, they'll be wanting you as much as me, seeing as you were here to witness it all.”

And then he's gone.

Silence fills the basement.

You ever have that moment when you just
know
what's going to happen? I
know
everyone's going to start talking at once. We're going to be divided on whether we follow Robert or proceed with our initial undertaking. I can feel it coming and I'm trying to decide how to forestall it when we hear a hammering on the front door of the store upstairs.

Our reaction time is still molasses slow. Finally Geordie says, “I'll go see who it is.”