Spiritwalk (41 page)

Sara shook her head. “That’s not what’s going on here.”

“I think it is,” Blue said. “I think it’s going to cost us something to get things back to the way they were before. Even Pukwudji said that.”

“But—”

“We’ve all got to die sometime, Sara. If I’ve got to go, I’d rather have my death mean something than just be another statistic on the obit page.”

When he stood up, Sara scrambled to her feet.

“I can’t let you do it,” she said.

“I don’t see that we have a choice.”

“But—”

“Think of all the good the House does. Think of all those people we left in the Otherworld. You don’t think they’re worth dying for?”

“Not all of them.”

“Everybody’s worth helping, Sara.”

“You know what I mean.”

Blue found a tired smile. “Yeah, we’d all rather see a stranger get it than someone we know.”

“Well, I’m going with you,” Sara said.

“You’re going as far as it takes to point me in the right direction,” Blue corrected her. “Then you and Pukwudji are out of here. We’ve only got one gun; only one of us can pull the trigger at one time.”

“I don’t want to do this, Blue.”

“Shit, and you think I do?” He lifted a hand to her hair and ruffled the curls. “Things’ll work out.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Well, you know what Jools says about fair.”

Sara shook her head.

“It’s just the first third of fairy tale and you won’t find either in the real world.”

“This
is
the real world and we
are
in the middle of a fairy tale.”

“So sue me. Or her.”

“You’re not the king of any wood,” Sara told him. “You’re just a king of fools.”

“So what does that make you?”

“Who said you were
my
king?”

It was tough making jokes, Blue thought, feeling the way they did, but it was that or cry. If Sara started to cry he didn’t know if he could go through with this.

He found himself wanting to say things to her: how much he cared for her, how much he’d missed her, how much she was a part of his becoming the person he was now, but he knew that would just make it harder. Then he thought about Emma, waiting for him back in the Otherworld, and all the friends he was leaving behind. Judy. Esmeralda. Ginny.

Ohn. Jools. They were good people. They were worth the sacrifice, but man, he was going to miss them.

“This is why the owls are here,” Pukwudji said suddenly.

“Say what?” Blue asked.

Pukwudji stood up from where he’d been crouched on the floor, his hand creeping back up until it was nestled in Sara’s once more.

“They gather at the birth of great deeds,” he explained.

“Well, hell,” Blue said. “Let’s not keep them waiting.” He turned to Sara. “Which way do we go?”

“He’s somewhere near the south side of the House,” she said. She looked miserable; her voice was strained. “I think he’s in one of the houses on Clemow.”

Blue led the way to the closest of the doors on the east side of the House that led out onto O’Connor Street. When they were out on the street, he kept the rifle close to his body so that it couldn’t be easily seen. Sara walked on his right as they headed down the block to Clemow, Pukwudji’s hand still in hers.

There was a sound on the air—a kind of whispering that made them pause and lift their heads to look around. Blue and Sara exchanged troubled looks, then started off again. Above them, the owls followed, flying from house eave to telephone pole. Still silent; still watching.

“This is the place,” Sara said.

Blue changed his hold on his rifle. He wiped his right palm on his jeans, then took the grip in that hand again, finger snaking into the trigger guard. He looked up at the building. They were halfway down Clemow, between Bank Street and O’Connor. The house was an older, two-story brick building with hip-and-valley roofs, set snug in between its neighbors, the houses all standing in a neat row on this residential street. There were a few lights on inside, but heavy curtains killed any hope of a view. It was the only building on the street with any lights.

It looked about as threatening as day-old bologna, he thought. Maybe less. You could get food poisoning from bologna.

“This guy’s in there?” he asked.

Sara nodded. She took a step up the walk, pausing when Pukwudji didn’t move with her.

“We have to do it,” she told the little
honochen’o’keh
.

“I know,” Pukwudji said. “But it only requires one of us. This is a bad place, Sara.”

Only one of us, Blue thought. Well, he was the guy with the big gun, wasn’t he?

Before he could start down the walk, Sara let go of Pukwudji’s hand and went ahead of him. He hurried to catch up, but she was already on the porch by the time he reached her.

“I told you before—you’re only here to point me the way,” he whispered. “You’ve done that, so why don’t you just leave the rest to me.”

The look she gave him in return allowed for no argument, but Blue tried anyway.

“Look,” he said. “Someone’s going to have to take charge of the House.”

“Esmeralda will do that.”

“Yeah, but...”

“We’re in this together,” Sara told him. “I don’t want to argue any more—that’s why I just went along with what you were saying earlier. Now are we going to do something or not?”

Blue sighed. “Like what? Ring the bell?”

Sara shrugged. “Why not? He knows we’re here.”

As she lifted her finger to push the bell, Pukwudji caught her hand and stopped her.

“Don’t,” he said.

Blue was in agreement. If the enemy knew they were here, why had they even come in the first place? They were supposed to be surprising the guy; considering the kind of power he had to work with, they didn’t have a hope in hell otherwise. But this... Ringing the bell and then shooting whoever answered didn’t seem like the best course of action.

“You didn’t tell me he’d know we were coming,” he said.

“I can feel him in here,” Sara said, tapping her temple again. “He doesn’t see us as a threat. He doesn’t know about the gun. He... That’s all the surprise I think we’re going to get.”

“He’s got to threaten us,” Blue said. “I don’t think I can just... shoot him in cold blood.”

“It’s not like we’ve got a whole lot of choice,” Sara said. “If you want to give me the rifle...”

Blue couldn’t see much of her features, they were cast in shadow because her back was to the streetlights, but he could hear the emptiness in her voice. She wasn’t any more prepared for this than he was. It was one thing to take somebody down in the middle of a running battle; something else entirely to just walk in off the street and shoot them.

“We’ve got to be sure he’s the one,” he added.

Sara nodded. “We’ll be sure.”

Once again she reached for the doorbell, and again Pukwudji stopped her.

“This is a bad place,” he repeated. “It’s not all quite part of this world, hey?”

“I can feel that,” Sara said.

“What is it?” Blue asked, peering more closely at the doorbell. “Is this thing booby-trapped?”

Pukwudji shook his head miserably. “It’s a door to the Otherworld—but not to any part of it that we know. He’s made his own echo of the Otherworld here; a shadow cast by the bitterness of his spirit. The rules it follows answer only to him. Do you understand?”

Blue nodded. At least he thought he understood. The house might look innocent but, just like Tamson House, there was more to it than met the eye. He figured what Pukwudji was saying was that their enemy had invested a part of himself in the building. It wasn’t the doorbell that was booby-trapped; the whole building was a trap.

He could feel something—a presence in the air, a coldness—that he realized was emanating from the building. It wasn’t overtly threatening, but it had the same taste to it that he’d sensed back at Tamson House; something was watching them, just waiting for them to make their move

He looked back at the street. Owls were perched on telephone poles, streetlights and the roofs of houses. One was on the hood of a parked car on their side of the street. They were here for the show, for—how did Pukwudji put it?—the “birth of great deeds.”

Right, he thought. Taking notes for some otherworldly PBS special. Well, let’s not disappoint them.

He worked the lever of his rifle, filling the firing chamber with a shell.

“Skip the bell,” he said. “Just try the door. If it’s unlocked, swing it open and stand back.”

Sara nodded. She took a breath and put her hand on the doorknob, but as soon as she touched it, she collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. She slumped against the door and slid to the floor of the porch, her muscles completely limp. It was as though her bones had all turned to jelly.

“What... ?”

Blue crouched down beside her. He laid his rifle down so that he could gather Sara up from where she had fallen. The door opened when he had her in his arms. Light spilled out, half-blinding him. He blinked in its glare, then found himself looking up into the tired features of a woman who appeared to be in her early sixties.

She was dressed all in black, like the old ladies down in Little Italy—long black dress, black sweater, black stockings and shoes, black kerchief around her head. But for all her grim wardrobe, he didn’t get any sense of menace from her—couldn’t sense anything at all except for that weariness that was undoubtedly responsible for the heavy lines in her features.

He glanced helplessly at Pukwudji, but the little man had vanished. Beyond the porch, he could sense the owls, their attention sharpened into such a tight focus upon him that it felt as though they were pecking at him with their beaks.

“You shouldn’t have come,” the woman said.

Blue turned back to look at her.

“He was almost finished,” the woman went on. “He would have taken the House, and been content with that, but now...”

Her voice trailed off. Blue waited for her to continue, but she just regarded him with her sad, tired gaze.

“Now what?” he asked finally.

The woman pointed to Sara lying limp in his arms.

“Now he has her as well,” she said. She regarded him for a long moment, then finally stood aside, adding, “You might as well come in now.”

None of this was playing the way it was supposed to, Blue thought.

“Come along,” the woman added a little peevishly. “I don’t have all night.”

Blue shook his head. This was nuts. They’d come here to kill somebody, and now this woman was asking him in like they’d just dropped by for tea.

He looked again for Pukwudji, but there was still no sign of the little man. Retreat was definitely in order, he thought. Instead, he rose with Sara in his arms and carried her inside.

“You can lay her down here,” the woman said, indicating a couch in the room just off the front hall.

The room was comfortably furnished. There were framed samplers and reproductions of landscapes on the wall. A TV set sat in one corner with the picture on, the sound off. There were a couple of easy chairs, the couch, a coffee table. Knickknacks stood in a genial array on the mantelpiece.

He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, then laid Sara on the couch. Her breathing seemed steady, but there was still no alleviation of her limpness. Her head lolled sideways until he supported it with a pillow. The woman watched him, stepping back into the hall when he rose from the couch.

“You don’t really need it,” she said when he glanced to the porch where the rifle was lying, “but if it’ll make you feel more at ease, by all means bring it in.”

Blue was no longer certain about anything that was going on, but he did know one thing: she might not think he needed the rifle, but he sure as hell was going to feel better with a weapon in his hand.

He retrieved the rifle from the porch. When he stepped back inside, the woman made a follow-me motion with one hand and started up the stairs. Blue hesitated for a long moment. He closed the front door, looked in on Sara, whose condition didn’t seem to have changed, then finally went up the stairs. The woman was waiting impatiently for him on the landing.

She led him to the front bedroom, motioning him to enter.

It was colder still in the room—the drop in temperature coming in waves from the still figure that lay on the bed. Blue thought it was a corpse at first. The man’s skin was pale, almost translucent. But his chest moved, his breath lightly frosting the air around his thin lips. Blue felt that he could see the man’s eyes moving under his closed lids. He was in his seventies at least—maybe older. His hair was thinning and gray, his frame slender almost to the point of emaciation.

He gave no indication that he was aware of either Blue or the woman’s presence in the room, but Blue could sense that watchfulness growing sharper.

“This is who you were looking for,” she said. “But you’re far too late. You can’t hurt him.”

She picked up a book from a side table and threw it at the figure. Just before it hit the man, there was a quick bright flare of light—like bare wires sparking against each other—and then the book was flung across the room. The man remained immobile, untouched by the book, unmoved by the incident. A smell that reminded Blue vaguely of anise drifted briefly in the air, then faded.

“Nothing can hurt him,” the woman said. “Not anymore.”

“What... what the hell’s going on here?” Blue finally asked.

The woman smiled at him. “You know.”

Yeah, Blue thought. He knew. The man lying there was siphoning off Tamson House’s vitality.

“What’s in it for you?” he asked the woman.

“Youth. Eternal youth. We’ll be young together—forever.”

Blue shook his head. He lifted the rifle until its muzzle was pointed at her.

“I’m betting you don’t have some fancy force field to protect you,” he said.

“You’re right, of course. I don’t.”

“So tell him to stop. Tell him to stop and let Sara go or so help me God, I’ll shoot.”

“You don’t have it in you.”

Blue’s gaze went hard. “Lady, you don’t know what I’m capable of when my friends are being hurt.”

The woman laughed. “It really doesn’t matter. Go ahead and shoot me—he’ll just bring me back to life again.”