The Crimson Brand (36 page)

If there was a point, Penny wasn’t seeing it.

Zoe, however, regarded Katie and Ellen with a growing interest.  Her entire demeanor seemed to change.  She didn’t look happy at the news but somehow was satisfied with it. 

“I’m sorry,” Penny said at last, returning the others’ triumphant looks with a puzzled one of her own.  “I don’t ….”

And then she did get it.  The others could see the light of understanding in her eyes.

Snakes are reptiles, and reptiles are cold-blooded. 

Their monster had a possible weakness, if they could only learn how to exploit it in time.

Katie pointed her wand at the water rushing by and closed her eyes, but nothing happened. 

“
Procellium
,” Zoe said, and when the others regarded her with confusion she explained.  “When we were trying to find you that … thing ….”

“Sidewinder,” Ellen said, then blushed and mimicked zipping her lips.

“ … Attacked us,” Zoe continued, giving Ellen a pointed, sour look. “It made a storm.  Almost blew us off my bike.”

Ellen nodded but kept her mouth shut.

“It pointed its wand into the sky and shouted
procellium
.”  Zoe shrugged.  “Maybe we can make it snow on him.”

“Worth a shot,” Penny said, then pointed her wand skyward and said, “
procellium
!”

The sensation that followed was one of the strangest Penny had ever experienced.

Her body and mind separated in an instant of horrible vertigo, and she fell upward, upward into the sky, toward the sun, and her scream of panic became the wind.

“Penny!”

Someone shouted her name, and she strained to see through the distance to the ground below.

Did someone down there know her?

Something touched her arm, but she was alone and incorporeal in the sky.  She
was
the sky.

“Penny!  Wake up!”

Now the voice was next to her, the arm tugging on her ….

And she opened her eyes, looking into three startled faces above her.

“What happened?”  She tried to sit up but felt weak and woozy. 

Ellen and Zoe helped her to her feet.

“You went all rigid,” Katie said.  “And your eyes rolled up into your head.  Then you passed out.”

“Did … anything else happen?”  The memories that had deserted her flooded back.  She remembered what she’d tried to do and was desperate to know if anything had happened.

“The wind blew a bit,” Katie said.

“What was it like?”  Ellen guided her to a seat by the fire, and Zoe pressed her wand back into her hand.

Penny explained the sensation as best she could, the feeling of separation from the earth and her body, the feeling that she had become the sky, forgetting herself and everything else.

“Hmmm,” Ellen seemed to consider this for a moment before venturing a guess.  “Maybe the trick is not forgetting who you are while you’re … up there.”

They each tried it in turn, Ellen first, who experienced nothing more than an odd queasy feeling; then Zoe, who didn’t fall down like Penny, but did no more than rustle the higher boughs of the hollow’s trees.  Katie tried last, and with more success than Penny had hoped for: a strong but short-lived breeze and a slight darkening of the sky as the thinnest smudge of cloud coalesced above them, but nothing like she had described from the night of their rescue.

After a few minutes to rest, Katie described her experience.

“There’s a balance between the earth and sky,” she explained.  “Like a teeter-totter.  You have to find it.  It kind of saps you, though.”

She yawned hugely, as if to illustrate her point.

“If I keep practicing, maybe I’ll get better.”

“Maybe,” Penny said.  “But how much practice do you think it’ll take?”

After a short debate Katie conceded Penny’s point, and they agreed to try to find something they could learn a little quicker.  After another half-hour of wasted effort, Zoe was able to create a thin scrim of ice that broke up too quickly on the surface of the creek.

“How did you do it?”  Ellen demanded.

“I don’t know,” Zoe snapped.

“Maybe it’s time to ask the book,” Penny suggested, eager to avoid any more bickering. 

“Already did,” Katie said, and indeed the book was open in her lap.  “If there is a freezing spell it isn’t in here.”

She shut the book and shoved it inside the chest. 

“Maybe instead of making the air colder, we need to remove the heat.”  Ellen seemed to be grasping at straws.

“What?”  Penny said.

“There’s this little thing called Thermodynamics,” Katie said, ignoring Penny and speaking directly to Ellen.  “I’m pretty sure the Zeroth Law might have something to say about that.”

“Who?”  Zoe looked as lost as Penny felt.

Ellen tilted her head down slightly and narrowed her eyes at Katie.  “I have an air conditioner in my house … been using it all summer, and the Physics Police haven’t shown up to arrest me yet.”

Penny shook her head and sidled up to Zoe.

“Let the science nerds work it out,” Penny whispered in Zoe’s ear.

Zoe shrugged and endeavored to look interested, though her eyes began to glaze over at once.

Katie folded her arms across her chest and rolled her eyes.

“An air conditioner doesn’t make cold air,” Ellen explained, as if she were a teacher lecturing a science class.  “It removes the heat from warm air.  The coil absorbs the heat from the air that the fan blows through it, so if we can just figure out how to absorb ….”

Ellen lost steam then, shrinking back a little at the expression on Katie’s face.

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Katie asked.

“I don’t know,” Ellen said, throwing her hands into the air in frustration.  “I’m the noob here, you figure it out!”

It sounded like nonsense to Penny, but she was willing to give anything a shot.  She imagined her wand siphoning heat from the air around her, and to her surprise, it actually worked.  After her first attempt, the handle of her wand warmed up until it was uncomfortably hot, but the temperature inside the hollow became almost wintry.  They all huddled a little closer to the fire.

“Time to call it a night?”  Zoe followed her suggestion with a long, languid yawn, which the others mimicked.

They agreed and went back through the door, Katie and Ellen first, then Penny and Zoe.

*   *   *

Penny knew as soon as she stepped out of her wardrobe and into her room that there was no more time to prepare for the fight.  An unsteady orange light that shone through her window told her that the end game had already started.

The wheat field that Susan jokingly referred to as “Price’s back forty,” the piece of land that Susan had years ago grudgingly allowed Ernest Price to lease from her, was blazing, and the fire was racing up the hill toward the house.  Zoe saw it too; she leaned heavily against Penny as she peered through the window.

“Susan,” Penny whispered but was unable to finish her thought aloud.  She seemed to have no breath.  It felt like someone had punched her in the stomach.

Zoe tugged on her arm.  “We have to tell her!”

Penny felt her paralysis break with Zoe’s panic and they rushed down to Susan’s room.

She pounded on the door, then threw it open and rushed it.

Susan sat up with a startled grunt, and when she found Penny and Zoe staring at her, confusion became irritation.  “What in the world are you two ….”

“Fire,” Penny blurted, and Susan stopped in midrant. 

“The field out back,” Zoe said.

Understanding dawned in Susan’s eyes.  Anger followed it.

“Let’s go,” she said, rushing to them in a T-shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts.  “Get to the car and I’ll meet you there.”

She shoved them out ahead of her and hurried them down the hall.

“Wait, what are you doing?”  Penny nearly fell down the first flight of stairs, and had to grasp the railing to keep her feet and the pace Susan forced on them.

“Calling the fire department,” Susan said, slapping them on the back to hurry them along the landing between floors.  “Then I’m calling Michael.  If Morgan Duke is up here, we’re going to get him!”

Penny almost felt bad for Morgan Duke. 

Almost.

Penny saw Zoe stuffing her wand into a pocket of her pants, tugging the hem of her shirt over it, and hurriedly followed suit.  In her rush she’d forgotten she was still carrying it.  She felt in her other pocket for her mirror and pulled it out, holding it discreetly in her closed hand.  The second she was out of Susan’s sight she would call the others.

They reached the foyer, and Susan squeezed between them to open the door.

“Straight to the car and wait.  I’ll be right out.”

“You ain’t going anywhere,” Morgan Duke said from the other side of the threshold.  He grinned down at them, and as Penny reached down for her concealed wand, he raised a gun and pointed it at them.  “Nothing funny now.  We’re just going to have a nice sit-down chat, the four of us.  If you behave, no one’s going to get hurt.”

“You’re lying,” Susan said, moving in front of the girls and herding them behind her body with a backward sweep of her arms.

His grin widened, and he nodded.

“Probably I am,” he said, “that’s what I do best.  But you’re going to do as I say anyhow.”

Susan backed away from him as he stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind him. 

“Go back up to your room,” she whispered back to them.  “Don’t come down for anything.”

“Not at all,” Morgan said.  “It would be downright unsociable to leave these little ladies out of the conversation.”

Beside her, Penny felt Zoe shift, and saw her uncovering the handle of her wand.  Penny grasped her mirror even tighter and whispered so low that not even Zoe could hear her.  She only hoped it would work.

“
Kat
.”

“Into the sitting room,” Morgan directed them, emphasizing his directions with a wave of his gun, and when they were inside he motioned them to the couch.

“Why are you doing this, Mr. Duke?”  Penny spoke loudly, and her shaking voice betrayed her fear.  “We never did anything to you.”

Morgan simply regarded her for a moment.  When he did speak, all of the false good cheer had left his voice. 

“Oh, but you did.  You and Miss Taylor.”  He motioned toward Zoe with the barrel of his gun.  “Even your little friend here.  You did everything to me.”

He backed toward Susan’s recliner and settled his bulk into it with obvious relief.  Penny noticed now that Morgan Duke looked bad, thinner somehow, the normally healthy russet of his well-tanned bald head and face paler, almost jaundiced; and there were dark patches beneath his bloodshot eyes.  He caressed his left forearm and winced in pain, but retrained his pistol on the three of them before they could move.

“Miss Taylor has stood in the way of my business for a long time.  Longer than I’ve ever allowed anyone else to, and you …,” he aimed his gun directly at Penny, and for a moment her heart seemed to stop.  She was certain he would pull the trigger.  “You somehow found out what I was up to and went squealing to her.”

His voice, the quivering of his jowls, were oddly indignant, hurt, as if she’d somehow betrayed him.  He looked to her like a jumbo-sized baby on the verge of tears.

“But I’m trying to get past all of that,” he said, a measure of his false cheer returning.  “I’m finishing up my business here tonight.”

“You set the fire,” Susan said, and Penny prayed that Katie was hearing it all and would know what to do.  “What good is my land to you now?  What good will it be burned flat?”

“None,” Morgan conceded.  “But it ain’t about that now.  It’s about closing the deal on my terms.  It’s about not letting a couple little slips of girls like you meddle in it!”

He rubbed at his left arm again and muttered.

Beside Penny, Zoe had slipped her wand out, unnoticed by either Susan or Morgan.  She flicked her eyes toward Penny, then at Susan’s back.

Penny thought she knew what Zoe wanted and hoped with all of her might that her friend knew what she was doing.

“In another couple of minutes I’m going to leave.  You won’t.”  His discomfort seemed to be growing, but he pressed on.  “You like this crappy plot of land so much, you can die on it.”

He turned his attention to Penny.  “There’s so much more I’d like to say but time is short.”

His face cramped again in discomfort and his gun hand twitched.

“Now!”  Zoe used her considerable volume, startling them, but Penny was ready.  She grabbed Susan around her waist and threw her to the floor, landing painfully on top of her, and a second later there was an explosive crash that filled the living room like thunder.

“Zoe!”  Penny scrambled off of Susan, desperate to find her friend, hopefully still alive.

Zoe stood where she had, her wand in her hand, staring at Morgan Duke with shocked, round eyes.  A second later, Penny saw why.

Zoe had fired her spell at Morgan’s gun, and her aim had been exquisite.  Whether Morgan had fired or not, Penny couldn’t tell, but the bullets in his gun had exploded.  A mess of bent, jagged metal clattered to the floor.  Morgan stared at the hand that had held it, or what was left of the hand.  The fingers were bent and bloody, sticking out at sickening angles from the meat-slab hand.

A single sob escaped Morgan’s trembling lips, then he screamed and ran through the room, to the foyer, without another glance at the girls, cradling his ruined right hand in the crook of his left arm.

“Wow,” Penny whispered. 

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Zoe said, and a second later she was.  She shoved her wand back into her pocket and ran toward the kitchen.

Susan began to stir at Penny’s feet, then leapt up with her own shout of alarm.  She saw Penny and grasped her by shoulders.

“Where’s Zoe?  Where is she?”

“In the kitchen,” Penny said, trying to keep her voice calm.  She took Susan’s hands and forced them to release their painful grip on her shoulders.  “Mr. Duke’s gun exploded.  He ran away.  Zoe’s ….”

Zoe’s retching sounded loudly from the kitchen, and Penny didn’t have to explain anymore.