Blackwood (22 page)

  She was buying them an escape.
Smart girl.

  "Yeah," he said, "we can make it."

  He crossed to the window, and his mother moved to stop him. Miranda blocked her, leveling the enormous jeweled gun. "No," she said.

  His mother barely paused, and Phillips watched as Miranda's finger squeezed the trigger. Phillips shut his eyes, a reflex against the memory of the powdery burst, a burst that shouldn't have been possible from an unlit matchlock.
It's a magic gun, no fire necessary.

  Only this time, there was the immediate scent of burning. The first sign something had gone wrong.

  The second was the way his mother fell, collapsing in a heap with her head rolled back against his duffel bag. A film of pale dust coated her upper body. Her face was white as a cloud.

  Miranda tossed the gun on the floor, and dove for his mother. "She's breathing," she said. "Oh god.
Oh god
. I shot your mom."

  Phillips struggled to blot out the renewed roar of the voices, the sudden rush of blood in his ears. He bent and put shaking fingers on his mother's throat, feeling through the chalk on her skin to find her pulse. Steady, if slow. Her breathing was regular, too, but shallower than normal. He gently smacked her cheeks, checked her pupils. No response.
Oh god.

  The sirens had almost arrived. At least two cars, maybe more. The occupants would swarm the house. He struggled to think, to breathe.
Mom
. Before he knew what he was saying, he asked Miranda, "How could you?"

  "I didn't think it could go off again," Miranda said, and brought her hand up to cover her mouth.

  He looked away from her to his mom. Whatever the gun had done, the cops wouldn't have a clue. He couldn't just leave his mom here. Roswell might be able to help them figure out how to fix it.

  "We have to take her with us," he said, a snap decision. "There's no time."

  The sirens were so close they screamed louder than the voices of the spirits. He swore he heard gravel flying at the end of the driveway.

  He hefted his mother into his arms and cradled her against his chest. He wasn't sure he could make it down the stairs with her if the voices surged. And his dad's personal car – wherever she'd parked it – was the only possibility they had for getting her much further.

  "I need you to be ready to help me, just in case, OK?" He knew his voice was cold.
She didn't do it on purpose. It's the snake. Not her.

  "No, that way won't work," Miranda said. She scooped up the offending weapon and jammed it into her bag, then motioned for him to release his mother's legs so they could each get under one of her shoulders.

  "She's not nearly as heavy as my dad was," she said.

  The sirens reached the house, followed by the sharp sounds of car doors slamming.

  "We have to go now," Miranda said.

  The roar and protest of the voices was excruciating as they went down the stairs. Not incapacitating, though. Just like at the station, it was almost like the voices were paying attention to what was going on around him. Was that possible?

  They made it to the first floor. People were talking outside, and the cruiser lights flickered a colorless pattern against the walls in the daylight shadows.

  "Back door," he said.

  They reached it just as he heard the front door explode open on the other side of the house.

21

Betrayals

Miranda shouldered the door open. She and Phillips managed the extra surge to lift Sara over the threshold without speaking, neither of them looking back toward the noise of their pursuers entering the house two rooms away.

  Twisting his body so he could use the hand not supporting Sara, Phillips closed the back door behind them. Miranda saw Phillips' father come around the side of the house before he did. Chief Rawling's weapon was unholstered, if not trained on her. Compared to Dee's old pistol, the handgun gleamed like a toy fresh off an assembly line.

  
Oh, the irony if
he
shoots me.

  "Chief," Miranda said, "it's not what it looks like."

  That was a lie. Well, not really a lie, since no one would leap to the conclusion that moments before she'd shot kind, funny Sara Rawling with an antique magic weapon. By accident.

  But it hadn't been by accident, and Miranda didn't harbor any doubt that being a Blackwood branded her as a traitor. Not one part of
her
had planned to pull the trigger of John Dee's gun. She'd removed it from her bag as a phony threat. This hadn't been like when she shot Phillips – there was no phone, no sudden jarring sound. Only the repeat of the sirens, and Sara moving toward Phillips. Only the snake on Miranda's temple crawling with fire.

  Only a need to use the weapon.

  She'd been powerless to stop the contraction of her finger on the rickety mechanism that had released the blast of white powder and smoke. Who knew why it had shot in a different color this time?

  Phillips stiffened at the sight of his dad. "It's really not. Dad, you have to let us go."

  Up close, Chief Rawling's face looked like a combat zone. His mouth dropped open as he realised whose body they were supporting. He rushed toward them.

  "Sara… What's wrong with her?" He didn't forget himself enough to speak loudly, but his questions tumbled out one after another. "Will she be all right? What happened?"

  "I don't know yet," Phillips said. "I think she's stable, but it's hard to tell."

  Chief Rawling touched the pale skin of his wife's cheek, relief clear when chalky powder came away on his finger. His attention darted between Phillips and Miranda, taking in the smears of powder on their shirts and skin. He pointed to a small storage shed at the edge of the yard. "Bring her over here."

  But he swooped in to carry her, lifting her easily. They followed him to the scant cover the shed afforded. Phillips didn't wait for a better chance to bargain. "Dad, we have to get out of here. I think… we need to take her with us."

  The chief asked, "What happened? No, there's no time for that. What are you going to do for her that I can't?"

  Sara's peaceful face was tucked in to Chief Rawling's chest, like a fairytale princess sleeping under some devil's enchantment.

  
The devil in
me
. Or the wicked witch.

  "I'm going to take her to Dr Roswell's," Phillips said, "while we figure out how to stop what's going on. All this–" he nodded at his mother "–has to do with the missing people. You brought me here because the island needed me. I'm here. And I'm telling you there are things going on that do not follow your laws. Things that can't be explained."

  The chief looked down at Sara's face. He said, "She parked my car in your usual spot – I won't report it missing. But you find a way to get me updates." His fingers raked across her hair, smoothing the powered strands back with a tender care that stole Miranda's breath. "I wish my mother was still here. She could fix this."

  Miranda remembered the conversation she'd eavesdropped on the other night, and what Phillips' grandmother had written in the letter about her son's unwillingness to believe, his inability to understand.

  "Dad, what convinced you?" Phillips' surprise was plain.

  The chief looked at Miranda. "I saw the new and improved Hank Blackwood earlier."

  Miranda chilled. The man wearing her dad's body wasn't bothering to hide his wrongness. And, of course, the chief would have recognised him even if nobody else did, after all the time he'd spent as her dad's personal police caretaker.

  A woman not so far away shouted "Chief Rawling!" and the chief said, "Give me two minutes to get their attention elsewhere and then get out of here. Phillips, I know you'll help her. Do what you can to help us all."

  Phillips took custody of his mother from his father's cradle hold. His dad left them at a fast stride, disappearing around the side of the gardening shed. Miranda nearly closed her eyes at the way Phillips was looking at her over his unconscious mother. His sympathy was plain.

  "You didn't mean to," he said. "It was an accident."

  
She
hadn't meant to. But there had been a terrible moment right after the shot when she'd felt two things in equal measure. The first was hers, her shock at Sara lying on the floor. The second was a gloating sense that she'd accomplished a goal. That wasn't hers, but she'd felt it all the same.

  She'd betrayed Phillips and Sara. She'd betrayed herself.

  The letter was right.

When they reached Roswell's house, the driveway was vacant and the windows dark. By all appearances, no one was home. Roswell could be anywhere – in town eating dinner, doing interviews about the townspeople's miraculous return, roaming around Fort Raleigh working on his theory. Phillips looked into the backseat, where Miranda held his mom's head in her lap.

  The voices in his head were a storm, but they weren't helping, no matter what his gram's letter said. They were distracting him, making it harder to figure out what he should do. When the adrenaline wore off, he'd be exhausted. The effort of keeping the voices back was too much.

  "She's no better," Miranda said. She sighed, and then said, "I think you should let me leave you here and take the car back out to the Grove. You're better off on your own."

  He turned off the car and got out, clicking Miranda's door open and leaning down to talk to her. He wouldn't let her get away with telling the back of his head. That made it too easy to run.

  "Sidekick will be fine. We need to help Mom now."

  He reached out to touch his mother's hair. He didn't know what he'd do without her.

  "You're right. She has to be your priority, and you seem to be forgetting that
I
shot her. Phillips, you were right. What you asked back there… How could I do that?"

  "It's not going to be that easy," he said.

  Miranda frowned. "What?"

  "Getting rid of me." He held up a hand to stop her from objecting. "When this is over and both my mom and you are safe, then you can get rid of me. OK?"

  Miranda said nothing, which wasn't a no. A sudden gust of wind buffeted him hard enough that he pitched forward on his toes. A shadow fell over him. The voices prattled and he made out a word repeated in many of them
Look
look LOOK–

  "At what?" he said, without meaning to.

  "The birds," Miranda answered.

  Above them, the sky filled with a wheeling mass of uneven shapes. The frantic noise of their beating wings and screamed calls filled the air. Miranda slipped from under his mother, placing her head gingerly on the seat.

  He noticed Miranda brush at her hair, in what looked like a reflex. "Did this happen before?"

  "No."

  A few birds swooped lower, and the cries from the mass were like those of warriors in battle, the frenzy of their flight causing some of them to injure others. A small bird dropped from the sky to the ground a few feet away. In death, its dingy brown feathers drooped like autumn leaves clinging to a limb. Its eye stared at nothing, a tiny unseeing bead on an invisible necklace.

  "They're so frightened," Miranda said.

  "Something's making them panic," he said. The response of the voices confirmed it. Their chatter was of agreement. The mass of birds was already heading off, but he shut the door to leave his mom safe inside the car and said, "Come on. Let's get the door open, and then I'll come back for her."

  Miranda looked a question to him, but followed as one last sad shape fell to earth.

  No one answered his knock, and Dr Roswell's security turned out to be a laugh – Phillips managed to get past the front door lock with an ATM card and fifteen seconds. Old style locks like this barely existed anymore.

  The house was dark, empty. "They're not here," he said.

  Miranda called out anyway. "Bone? Doctor?"

  No answer. Phillips turned to Miranda, and brushed the hair off her cheek. If he could just make the serpent under his fingertips disappear… What if his mother turned out to be right? What if he'd finally run up against a problem he couldn't outrun or outsmart?

  "You would never have hurt her on purpose. I know that much." He dropped his finger to her lips. "Shhh. We'll figure out how to fix it."

  The protest in her eyes was clear. She
wanted
to pay for what she'd done.

  He dropped his hand. "But why was it different this time? Why the
white
dust?"

  Where had all that powder come from? There'd been way too much for the gun to hold, especially having been emptied once already and not reloaded with anything. What sort of weapon behaved differently at different times? He wasn't sure what the white dust
was
, but it wasn't the sulphur and charcoal that had coated him before. Chalk and something else…

  He went on, thinking out loud, "And why did it put her into a coma–" Miranda's eyes widened "–or a trance or whatever. Even a magic gun should be a little predictable."

  Miranda finally spoke. "What's different now than the first time I shot it?"

  
What isn't?
He intended to give her some answer, but she was nodding.

  "The difference is that they're here," she said. "They're back. My dad – or Dee, the devil – he's back."

  It was as good a theory as any. "Doesn't tell us how to wake up Mom though."

  "Maybe there'll be something in Roswell's papers. I'll get started." She crossed the living room, pulling up the hatch that led to the library. "Go get your mom," she said.

  And she was gone, feet thumping down the ladder.

• • • •

Miranda paused next to the table and chair where Roswell sat on their first visit. The book he'd shown them before lay open on the table.

  It was turned to the page featuring John Dee's portrait. He was a perfect specimen of the kind of noble the actors in Queen Elizabeth's court at the theater were made to resemble. He had a thin face framed by a high collar. A flush of color lit his cheeks in the portrait, pinched spots like the waxy skin of cherries. His eyes stared up at her, two black beetles about to crawl off the page.