The Night Shifters (16 page)

“I don’t need you
to help me do wonderful things,” I told them. “I can do them
myself. I don’t want to be a ballerina. I want to – I want to –
jump real high!”

I jumped right off
the landing and out into the parking lot – running with a
supernatural stride, eating up the ground at an incredible velocity
– and every few steps I would take another jump. Each jump took me
higher and higher, until I sailed right over the rooftops. I left
Camilla and Nostradamus far behind, and once I was sure I had lost
them I danced down the street, pirouetting and spinning, suddenly
light on my feet now that I didn’t need to be.

At last, I could do
what I really wanted to do! I had never felt so free in my life. I
leaped over rooftops, landing on the sidewalk as light as a
feather. Finally, the City of Night was beginning to work on my
behalf.

“See?” I said, to
no one in particular.

“Yes, I see,” said
a silky, masculine voice, and The Car King’s limo slid up to the
curb beside me.

* * * * *

I tried to perform
one of my spectacular jumps – but I must have been out of juice, I
only went up about a foot. So I turned and scrambled up a nearby
gate; then onto a wall. I crouched there and watched the Car King
climb out of his sun roof.

“Very impressive,”
he said, as if he meant it. “You can jump high and dance around
like a demented child. What a fine Night Shifter you’ll make.”

That stung. “Oh
yeah? Well you can just get lost, wise guy. I know you have to be
touching that car of yours at every moment, so you can’t get
me!”

“Is that so?” he
asked politely.

“Yes that’s
so!”

He leaped
from his car and landed lightly on the wall, right next to me. I
was so startled I fell over backward. My descent only lasted a few
seconds, but that was plenty long enough – and when I landed flat
on my back, my ears filled with an impossibly loud
CLOUT!!
just like the sound effect from a
cartoon. The impact crushed the wind from my body, and stars danced
before my eyes.

He landed beside me
as gracefully as a cat. His eyes were merciless as he regarded my
helpless self, but he didn’t touch me.

“Aren’t you glad
you didn’t wager any money?” he said.

I cautiously pulled
myself into a sitting position. It hurt, but the pain diminished
with every breath I managed to drag in.

“
As you can
see, I
can
leave my car. I can, in fact, go
anywhere I damn well please, and I can find
you
whenever I choose to do so.”

“That’s not
entirely true,” said another voice, a British one, and I turned in
joy to see Sir John striding across the lawn toward us. He was in
the process of lighting his pipe.

I scrambled to my
feet and threw my arms around him. “It’s you! I’ve missed you so
much!”

“There, there.” He
patted my back and returned my hug. “You’ve done well, my dear.
I’ve been worried about you, I’ll admit, but you’ve done well.”

It was so
warm in his arms, and his jacket smelled so good. He released me
and stood back a little to look at me. When I got a better look at
him, I noticed how much younger he looked, not elderly anymore. He
looked more like he did in
Julius Caesar
(1953) or
Around The World In Eighty Days
(1956), no more than forty. His eyes were full of
concern. “Do you understand things a little better now?”

“Maybe a
little.”

“
Good.
Learning doesn’t come easily here. We
all
still have much to learn.” He glanced past me to give the Car
King an ironic look.

The Car King
smiled, but I thought I saw a glint in his eyes. “This is a lovely
reunion. But let’s get on with it, shall we?”

“On with what?” I
asked.

“There’s been a
development,” said Sir John.

“A
development?”

“
A hole, in
fact,” said the Car King. “It began to develop about the
time
you
first appeared. We thought you
might know something about it.”

“
You think
I’m causing it?” I asked Sir John, because I wanted to hear it
from
him
.

“Maybe. I think
you’d better come with us and take a look at it.”

“We can take my
limo,” suggested the Car King.

“Very funny.” Sir
John tapped his pipe against his arm. “We’ll take the train.”

He took my hand and
led me across the lawn and around the house, to the front gate. As
we passed the house, Sir John looked up toward one of the windows
and called, “Thank you! I owe you a favor!” A coffee-colored hand
waved at him, then disappeared into the darkness.

Sir John had racked
up a debt, in order to intervene on my behalf. “We’ll go through
the front gate,” he told me. “I think you’ll like this. It’s really
quite lovely.”

The Car King
offered his arm, too. “We’ll walk together.” With Sir John so
close, I felt more confident than usual, so I took the Car King’s
arm and let the two of them escort me through the gate.

The train station
waited right across the street. It looked rather unspectacular to
me, though very clean and modern, more like a people-mover at the
zoo than a train. I could see passengers sitting in some of the
cars, but no one I recognized.

We crossed the
street and climbed aboard an empty car, Sir John and I on one side
and the Car King across from us. I couldn’t tell if he felt miffed
about that or not. The train began to move as soon as we settled
in, starting a gradual climb through the hills. Sir John’s pipe
left a steam engine trail of puffs behind us. Soon I could see what
he had meant about how lovely it was. The moon climbed high again,
illuminating the strange and wonderful houses we passed on our way
up.

“Is this what
things really look like?” I asked Sir John.

He pondered that.
“Well, at the moment it is.”

I wasn’t sure what
to make of that, but didn’t want to press my luck by asking another
question. The Car King studied me with a faint smile, his beautiful
hair trailing in the breeze. “Surely you know that you’re as
responsible for this configuration as the rest of us. Your longing
for the strange and the marvelous and all that.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know
whether he was insulting me or not.

But Sir John patted
my hand. “You have a vivid imagination. We needed some new blood
around here.”

We climbed around
and up another hill, passing so close to houses that we could look
right into their windows at exotic interiors. They sat jumbled
together like condos, built right into the hillside, and they had
lovely gardens climbing up their fronts. Blossoms brushed our faces
as we passed, and suddenly I felt very happy, exactly the way I
felt that night Mom and I sat under the Faerie tree with our
rootbeer floats. I leaned against Sir John and smiled. He smiled
back, and for a moment, he reminded me of someone. Someone so
familiar, I should have known immediately who it was. But the
notion slipped away before I could really get a grip on it.

We had to get off
near the top of the hill. There was a path that led to the crown,
and the two of them immediately led me up, as if there were no time
to waste. When we reached the top, the sky unfolded before my eyes.
Stars crowded the span from horizon to horizon, as usual – but
something strange was happening at its center.

“Is that the Night
tornado?” I wondered.

“No,” said Sir
John. “It’s a hole. We’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

We stared at the
distortion. To me it looked rather like the yolk of an egg after
it’s broken, but just before the yellow stuff has lost its shape
completely. In this case, the yolk was dark blue – almost
black.

“Could the day
world be trying to break through into the Night?” I suggested.

“That’s a good
hypothesis. But we don’t think so. This isn’t quite how that would
look. No, we think this is a gate.”

“
A
gate
? For whom?”

“I don’t know,”
said Sir John. “Someone rather large, I should think.”

I glanced at the
Car King. He looked heartbreakingly noble, standing there in the
moonlight with his beautiful face so serious. He even seemed a
little worried.

As we watched, the
hole seemed to get slightly larger – and lighter. “Am I imagining
that?” I asked Sir John.

“No. It’s been
growing steadily.”

“What will happen
when it fills the whole sky?”

“There’s an
interesting question,” said the Car King. “Perhaps we’ll find out
what’s on the other side.”

We stood and looked
at it some more, until Sir John finally sighed and turned to me. “I
had hoped you might give us some insight. Does anything occur to
you at all?”

I thought hard
about it. “Maybe,” I finally concluded.

“Something better
than that,” said the Car King, his tone as well-honed as a
dagger.

I almost felt like
being stubborn and making him wait for my answer, but I gave in
when I saw the look of concern on Sir John’s face. “It looks –
maybe familiar.”

“Ah!” Sir John
brightened. “That’s more like it. You must have seen something like
this before.”

“
That’s it! I
think it started in the bookstore, down in the storeroom. I thought
it was a monster coming up the stairs, but now I know it must have
been
this
thing.” I gestured to the gate in
the sky. “I don’t know
how
I know that, but
it sounds right. And I think I even saw it once before that, but
I’m not sure – I can’t remember – “

“That can be
remedied.” The Car King took me by the shoulders. “You learned
something when you made love with the Masked Man – “

“That’s none of
your business.” I blushed. “What are you, some kind of voyeur?”

“Do you think
something of that magnitude could occur here without everyone
feeling it? What a selfish little creature you are.”

I tried to
pull away from him, and he seized my chin, but his face softened as
he looked deeply into my eyes. “Listen to me. He isn’t the only one
who can teach you. I have things to teach. We
must
find out who is making this gate.”

“Don’t push her,”
warned Sir John. The Car King lifted his chin, but kept his eyes on
mine. Behind me, I could feel a storm brewing. I was sure it could
be spectacular.

“My crystal heart
doesn’t trust you,” I told the Car King, though my heart hardly
pained me at all.

“Let’s put it to
the test.” The Car King bent to kiss me. I found myself wondering
if he were as good a kisser as the Masked Man. His lips had barely
brushed mine when Sir John cried, “Wait!”

He pointed toward
the sky gate. It had shrunk a little, and the center had developed
a red spot, like a spark of fire. A bolt of lightening shot out of
it and hit the ground not five feet from of us.

“Get down!” Sir
John pushed us to the ground. The Car King went gracefully, but I
rolled out of control, losing sight of everything in my dizzying
descent.

“Help!”

I felt hands
grabbing for me – but they couldn’t catch me, so down I went.

•

I finally came to a
stop near a black pool, barely managing to keep myself from rolling
into it. A weird smell drifted into my face, and I quickly backed
away from the brink. It was Nostradamus’s pool of black manna.

I had landed in
absolute silence, and with a sinking heart I looked around for Sir
John and the Car King. Of course, they were gone. In fact, the
entire hill was gone, and so was the hole in the sky. I stood in
Nostradamus’s back yard, with his tacky lawn furniture and the icky
swimming pool, apparently alone. No lights shone from any of his
windows, and the arcadia door was shut.

“Sir John!” I
called, hopefully. When he didn’t appear I felt more than a little
disappointed. It seemed like I never had the time to ask him the
questions I wanted to ask, or even just to enjoy being with him.
And that kiss from the Car King had been worth savoring. I allowed
myself a secret regret for that, too.

Now I was alone
back in Boring Creepsville. But I didn’t think that would last for
long. This was Nostradamus’s territory, he could show up any
minute. So I went in search of a gate. The last time I had done
something like that, I looked on the right-hand side of the house.
This time I decided to try the left.

I rounded the
corner and came face to face with a young girl.

Actually it wasn’t
face-to-face. It was face-to-buns. She was in the process of
climbing the fence. She looked over her shoulder at me through
long, blonde hair and said, “How come this stupid place doesn’t
have a gate?”

“I don’t know.”

She gave an
impatient sigh. “Well, help me over then! I want to be as far away
from that disgusting pool as possible. It
smells
.”

I felt an
urge to give her bottom a good shove, but I resisted it.
Why does she bother
me?
I wondered. Her behavior
was a little rude, but she was just a silly kid – couldn’t have
been older than eleven or twelve.

“Let me get up
there and see what’s on the other side,” I decided.

She frowned. “What
for?”

I ignored her and
climbed up the cross beams. On the other side I saw more boring
tract houses. Funny how Nostradamus seemed to provoke a lack of
imagination from the City of Night. But as boring as the houses
were, the streets looked empty and fairly innocent, while behind me
I could feel a growing sense of menace, definitely emanating from
the pool.