Dance in the Dark (34 page)

"An impossible … no, that cannot be," Johnnie said. "No one has ever actually made one of the impossible relics."

Laughing again, Ekaterina then recited, "Looking-glass, Looking-glass, on the wall/Who in this land is the

fairest of all?"

"I think you must be mad," Johnnie said. "There is no such thing as a magic mirror."

One moment Ekaterina was standing several steps away—the next Johnnie could feel blood tricking down his stinging cheek from where her nails had scraped it when she slapped him. "You will bring me the mirror, and you will do it in three days, or everyone you know and love will suffer a fate worse than death. When you have the mirror, contact me. Until then, I suggest you do as you are told, and do not attempt heroics. No one but me can break the spell and wake those who sleep here. Bring me that mirror, or else."

Then she was gone, with nothing but a small, pale pink business card lying where she had stood. It bore only a phone number. Feeling numb, Johnnie bent and then tucked it into a pocket of his tuxedo. Then he knelt beside Ontoniel, staring miserably at the proof of his abysmal failure.

What was he going to do? How could he fix this, when he was the one who had ruined everything? It was because of him that people had been hurt, had been killed—and now this. How could he set all to rights, when he had set it wrong?

Johnnie tried to think, but his mind simply refused to work. He was done—done with everything. He was no brilliant detective, he was not a good son, he was definitely not the sort of man anyone would call lover. No wonder Bergrin had not wanted him beyond what he could give Eros.

He wiped his face, furious with himself. They had trusted him to help, and this was what he had done! Pulling out a handkerchief, Johnnie wiped his face, blew his nose. At the very least, he decided, he could make them a bit more comfortable.

First he straightened Ontoniel, until he was laid out neatly on the floor, hands folded on his stomach. Then he stood, and went around the ballroom, slowly dragging, shifting, and arranging all the others, until they were lined up neatly in two rows in the center of the ballroom. Then he went through the rest of the house, making certain the scattered servants were all right.  When he was finished, he made certain the house was locked up, then returned to the ballroom.

They looked, he thought miserably, like corpses.

He hated the sight of Ontoniel like that the most, and he could not even bear to look at Phil and Zach. They had only wanted to help him, and now he would have to find their friends and tell them what he had done. What he, and he alone, would have to do to save them.

Alone. He had thought he was alone before, never quite fitting in no matter how hard he tried. But this—standing by himself in a room full of almost-corpses, with no one to help him lest he hurt still more people.

This was feeling alone, and it made him want to hide away in despair.

But his mind would not stop churning, working; against his will he started sifting through the myriad versions of the tale of the notorious Sleeping Beauty and the truth that lurked, all but forgotten, behind them. It, too, he thought tiredly, had started with jealousy.

A King eager for a child, and angry that his Queen would produce none, had taken a lover—a black witch. That affair had lasted for years, but she had failed to produce a child as well. Then, one day, his Queen had produced a child. Ecstatic, the King had cast aside his useless lover.

Days after it had been born, the child was struck with a curse that she would die on that same day in fifteen years.

From that moment on, the King and all in his kingdom worked to break the terrible curse. They did all that was within their power to break it, to soften it, but to no avail—none but the witch herself was able to break it, and she had not been seen since eluding capture on the day she cast the curse.

As her birthday drew ever closer, the King and Queen grew more frantic, more desperate. The kingdom despaired, and all who had come to love the princess wept, for soon she would be gone from them forever.

One night, several days from her birthday, the Princess went to sleep.

She never woke, nor did the inhabitants of the castle. Those who came to visit the castle soon fled in fear of the terrible magic and what it had wrought. One by one the inhabitants passed away, unable to tend themselves while trapped in a terrible sleep. Then, one day, as the cock in the palace yard crowed, the princess drew a last breath, and died on the day and the hour of her fifteenth year.

As time passed, the kingdom was lost, preserved only in tales and a rare true accounting written by an unknown source.

What troubled Johnnie most was that Ekaterina had somehow duplicated the curse. It had been done before, but by sorcerers and necromancers of greater experience, and only as an experiment under tightly controlled conditions.

He did not want them to die.

But he was overwhelmed by what he would have to do—somehow, he would have to break the curse that had been laid upon him, and hope to god it did not actually kill him. His best chance of avoiding death was to find the sorcerer who had originally cast the spell.

And assuming he actually managed the feat, he would have to go into dreams and figure out where the hell to find the magic mirror.

He felt sick just thinking about it. A magic mirror. It just could not be. There was no such thing as a mirror that would tell a man whatever he wanted to know. Whatever his father had made, it must come close, but it was not an actual magic mirror.

So he had to break his spell, learn how to get into the dream plane, then find a mirror that could be hidden anywhere.

And he had to do it in three days.

He needed help, but there was no one to help him. He dare not go to Rostiya, or even the Bremen, for fear of what Ekaterina might do to them. Bergrin—

Johnnie covered his eyes with the heel of his hands, and tried to laugh, but it only came out a sob. He wanted Bergrin, but Bergrin was gone and it was his own stupid fault. But what could Bergrin do? It was not like he could help Johnnie retrieve the mirror, and he did not want to endanger Bergrin either.

No, he had to do this alone. No one else was able to access the dream plane. No one else would be able to find the mirror.

He had made this mess and so, Johnnie realized, he would have to find a way to fix it, whatever the cost.

The first step was to get a clear head, he decided. He would not be able to think clearly while standing here staring at his family and friends, feeling sorry for himself.

Turning sharply on his heel, Johnnie forced himself to leave the ballroom. Out in the hall, he weighed his options, then headed for the end of the house where Ontoniel's study was located. Though he had expected it to be locked, as the house was full of guests, the knob turned easily beneath his hand and Johnnie slipped inside. He flicked on a single lamp on the desk, then hesitantly sat down in Ontoniel's chair.

He swallowed against the wave of sadness and shame that washed through him. He would yell at himself later, but right now he had to focus.

Ontoniel was meticulous. He might have destroyed all of Tommy's papers and such, but he would have kept what he needed to ensure Johnnie's safety. But where would he keep them?

The desk was enormous, a modern L-shaped desk but designed to look antique. All the drawers were locked, and heavily warded with magic—including against normal tampering, Johnnie noted with frustration, as he was magically zapped in warning with every drawer he tried.

Frustrated, annoyed that Ontoniel clearly knew him far too well, Johnnie sank back into the chair and fought despair. There had to be something, damn it all. He would find it.

Thoughts of finding, of course, immediately led to thoughts of Bergrin, but Johnnie was not going down that path. But memories of the night when everything had changed spurred him to look around his father's study with the eyes of a detective, rather than the eyes of a frantic son.

But it was still the eyes of a son that drew him to the chair where he most often preferred to sit, in the chair before the massive stained-glass window. It gave a clear view of the rest of the room, and provided plenty of rainbow light by which to read—not that he had ever simply kicked back and read in Ontoniel's sanctuary.

What would Bergrin immediately see, with those sly, unknown tricks of his, that Johnnie would take longer to notice? He glanced around the room again, but his eyes kept returning to his little corner. Was something about it actually nagging him, or was it simply that he was drawn to the familiar comfort of it? Because he did not like sitting in Ontoniel's chair—it felt too much like he was accepting Ontoniel was going to die.

Hastily standing up, he strode over to his corner, but did not sit. He continued to frown at it, thinking. Something was bothering him, he decided, but what and why now? He had sat here a thousand times and never noticed anything; hell, he was the only one who ever sat here. Everyone else used the leather chairs in front of the desk, or the sofa and chairs in the little seating area arranged in front of the bookcases.

No one else ever bothered to sit all the way over here, where it was easier to see without really being seen. Out of the way. The few times he had been called in here, growing up, he had preferred this corner. In fact, he realized suddenly, it had not always had a chair. It had been added later, but he could not honestly remember when. But he remembered being younger, and called in here to get reprimanded—but Ontoniel would often be on the phone, or speaking to Elam first, and Johnnie would stand over here and wait, anxious and afraid, for his turn.

To distract himself, he had examined everything about the corner. The stained glass window, the intricate squares of paneling that ran along the bottom edge of the entire study but were most visible here. Each panel depicted the elaborate triad of roses that was the Desrosiers crest. He had traced them over and over, memorizing the pattern, until he had known it in his sleep. He had thought Ontoniel would be impressed he knew the family crest so well, but Johnnie had never worked up the nerve to tell Ontoniel. It was only one of many stupid, pointless things he had done, because he had lived in terror for so long that he would lose his second family, too.

He slumped in his chair and raked a hand through his hair. He had been good at this sort of thing, once, or at least stubborn enough to delude himself. Could he not do it just one more time? He looked around the study, trying to think, to
see
, but nothing presented.

Sighing, he stood and then knelt by the panels he had traced a thousand times—and sneezed hard as he bent close to one. He sneezed again, and reached for his handkerchief, before realizing with a grimace that he had already used it thoroughly.

Tossing it aside, he sneezed against his sleeve, then tried to focus on the panel. Definitely magic upon it, but so tightly confined to
just
the panel that he had never noticed it mingled with the low level of magic perpetually running throughout the house.

Reaching out, he felt all over and along the panel carefully. It was a rich, dark, red-brown color, meticulously cared for over the years, dusted and oiled, lovingly maintained like every other piece of the house. Ontoniel took great pride in his home, and would not tolerate anything less from his servants.

It was only on his tenth pass, as he was growing so angry he was tempted simply to fetch an ax and hack the thing apart, that he felt it. A slight
shift
in a small bit of the fancy ivy pattern that bordered the panel. One of the leaves. It took him a couple more minutes to figure out how exactly it twisted—but when it finally moved, and revealed a keyhole behind it, Johnnie cried out for joy so loudly that Ontoniel would have given him a Look.

He stood up and half-ran, half-tripped his way to the desk where he had left his lock-picking tools. Scooping them up, he returned to the secret keyhole and hesitantly tried his picks—and almost started crying from relief when magic did not push him away.

Ontoniel had seen this panel was warded, but he had not warded it against Johnnie's tricks.

It took him only a few minutes to pick the lock, and another minute to pull the panel open to reveal a small, secret cabinet. It contained nothing but a small stack of papers and a folder—and, he noticed belatedly, a pair of rings.

He took everything out, then after a moment's consideration, took it all back to Ontoniel's desk. The rings clinked together as he sat, and Johnnie reached out to pick them up. They … they were obviously wedding rings. Simple, the sort of rings a middle-class couple would be able to afford. The woman's ring had only a single small diamond set in gold. The man's was a plain gold band. Ontoniel had these? But why, and why had Johnnie never seen them? He had no mementos of his family minus a single album of photos his parents had kept, and which had not been destroyed along with everything else.

Forcing himself to set them aside, he next focused his attention on the folder. It was plain, made of good, heavy stock dyed dark brown. Opening it, he saw immediately it was a formal case report—or rather, he realized after a moment, a copy of one.

The first page was a printed form, the top portion of it listing several things which had been filled in by whoever had written the report. Whoever it was had a brisk, tidy hand.
Case Number: 041 (Sweet Dreams), Primary Detective: Chris, Secondary Detective: Doug. Client: Cordula, Summary: Man trapped in dreams. Resolution: Case solved.