Deadly Violet - 04 (9 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

There’d been no sound from the nursery for practically three minutes. And everyone below was getting seriously worried.

“Ross?” Cassie yelled again.

She went right up to the foot of the ladder.

“Ross, are you okay in there?”

Unless he’d gone to sleep, he obviously wasn’t. So she hurried up herself.

“Slow down, young lady!” she could hear Willets calling.

But she ignored that. Going cautiously wasn’t her way of doing things. Her heart was pounding like a drum, her breath on fire. The thought of being in the presence of the Little Girl a second time was really giving her the shakes. But if Ross was in trouble,
nothing
would keep her out of that room. She knew perfectly well he’d be the same, if it was the other way around.

All that she could think of was the way that people had been vanishing. And if he’d done the same …?

Desperation clawed at her. But Cass was too experienced to let it take hold, shaping it instead into a grim resolve. Her jaw was clenched, and there was perspiration on her face, despite the bitter cold. But she pushed on determinedly, not even slowing when she reached the top.

She arrived at the drapes and shoved her way through them, so forcefully that one of them ripped off its hooks along one edge. And as she stepped down into the intense violet light, she could make out Ross’s outline.

At least he was still here. And he didn’t look hurt in any way. But he was simply standing there, doing plain nothing. An indistinct shape against the source of the bright glow. And she noticed that he didn’t look around when she came in.

She shouted out to him again, to no better effect. And started wondering why that was.

But her thoughts were becoming very jumbled, and she never quite reached the end of the question.

“Cassie?”

It had been more than five minutes in total, by this time. Standing in the thick snow, twilight’s faint gloom starting to gather round him, Lehman Willets stared at the high, shattered windowpane. And Martha did the same. Her cheekbones were flushed from the cold, and she was starting to lose the feeling in her toes, but she paid none of that any mind. She was deeply concerned for her friends. What the devil could have happened?

“Do you suppose they’re okay?” she asked the doctor anxiously.

“I don’t believe they’re playing hide-and-seek.”

“Could they simply be communicating with the Little Girl?” she tried.

“It’s possible. But I’ve never known Cass Mallory do
anything
quietly.”

A few flakes of snow drifted down across the broken window, blown off from the roof. But that apart, there was no movement.

“Should we take a look?” Martha suggested.

Willets shuffled his feet and puffed out his cheeks.

“I’m not sure. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I want to help. But if what we’ve been told about this Amethyst is true, it might be pretty dangerous for adepts such as us to just go wandering into that room.”

“What could it do to us?” Martha inquired.

“I’m not certain. But I’m pretty sure it would be nothing good.”

“However,” Willets added, noticing the window’s drapes were now slightly apart, “there might be other ways of going up than by that ladder.”

And before Martha could ask him what he meant, the doctor had lifted his arms out to the sides. He whispered the words of a spell. And then the air around him shifted.

And next second, there were only footprints where his heavy shoes had been. He was rising into the air, going vertically, like a strangely shaped hot-air balloon. The man looked apprehensive, as if he half-expected a violet bolt to shoot out from the opening and strike him any second. But he kept on heading up, until he was level with the house’s second story.

Maybe he’d lose his powers and come tumbling to the ground? But nothing like that happened.

He hovered, about sixteen feet up in the chilly air, and peered in. Took in the scene beyond the drapes, and then called down.

“It seems safe enough. Like to come and take a look at this yourself?”

In another few seconds, Martha was hovering beside him.

“Oh, good heavens!”

They both stared over, trying to understand what they were looking at.

You could have called the scene inside the nursery a tableau, but that wouldn’t have been entirely accurate. The Little Girl was on the move, rotating, with her eyes still closed. But the two adults with her … they were definitely going nowhere.

Lit up by the purple glow, Ross was reaching forward. It was almost like he had been trying to attract the Little Girl’s attention. His back was to the window, so they couldn’t see his face. But it was certain he’d been trying to reach her.

Cass was different. She was closer to the window, and her entire body was hunched over. She hadn’t come up here for any chat. Her sole intention had been to try and rescue Ross.

It was perfectly apparent that they were both stuck, like big flies in purple amber. Caught in the grip of some unfathomable magic.

Martha clenched her hands.

“You don’t suppose they’re hurt in any way?”

And normally, Willets would have extended his senses to discern the truth of matters like that. But on this occasion, he couldn’t risk it.

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “But they’ve gotten trapped as well.”

Martha blinked unhappily.

“Neither of them uses magic. So the Amethyst shouldn’t affect them, should it? Isn’t that why they were chosen in the first place?”

Willets tried to think it through. And when he saw what the answer might be, he practically snarled with sheer exasperation.

“Neither of them do
– that’s right. But both of them have been
conduits
for magic at one time or another. Ross when he defeated Saruak. And Cass when she was taken over by the Shadow Man. Sorcery has left its mark on them, you see. And that has to be what’s made them vulnerable.”

He and Martha lowered themselves quietly to the ground, weary looks on both their faces.

“So what do we do now?” the female adept asked. “To get them out of there, I’d imagine that we’d need to find somebody who’s never used the supernatural arts, or even been the
subject
of them.”

“And there’s not a single person,” Willets harrumphed, agreeing, “not an adult at least, who answers that description in this entire town.”

He gazed around bleakly, dismay contorting his features.

“Which leaves us with what?” Martha asked him.

But the doctor had closed his eyes again. Which meant that he was lost in thought.

At this time of the year, twilight fell swiftly over the New England forest, deepening rapidly to night. The trees turned darker green with every passing minute, till their foliage looked entirely black. Birds stopped wheeling from their tangled branches and were hunched down in their perches.

Willets could detect that on the edges of his senses. He moved rapidly along the two-lane blacktop that led in and out of town, although his legs weren’t playing any part. His arms were spread out to the sides again, and he was floating, only three feet off the ground this time.

His clothing flapped, and the icy air ripped past him, making him feel colder than he already was. But it still beat trudging the whole way out through heavy snow and sludge. He hadn’t been this far from his basement home for years.

He went across the municipal line easily enough since
– being the one inhabitant of Raine’s Landing who hadn’t actually been born there – he was not affected by the curse.

“If I cannot leave, then none of you ever shall. And you shall dwell alone here.”

He would have grinned if he hadn’t been so bothered, since those words meant diddly to him. He could come and go any time he wanted. And found himself wondering, for the briefest while, why he hadn’t done that thing until this evening. Why hadn’t he simply left this town a long time back?

Because of the guilt, he told himself. Because of those twelve innocents he’d accidentally killed. He’d stayed because he wanted
– no, he
needed
– to make amends. This community found itself saddled with grievous problems, time and time again. And if he could help these people, any way he could … well then, that made his own sorry life worth something.

But was it only that? The idea had occurred to him before. Maybe it was more than just the guilt that always plagued him. Maybe he belonged here.

He put such thoughts aside, and concentrated on the job in hand. There was no lighting on this road, but that didn’t bother him in the slightest. He could see with perfect clarity in the dark, and skillfully negotiated every obstacle and bend.

He went around the final one, and reached the intersection with a much wider and straighter road, the same one he’d seen when he’d linked up with the Little Girl. A yellow van was going past. The driver gawped out at him through his side window, forgot what he was supposed to be doing, and the vehicle swerved wildly.

It slowed down, almost to a halt, but then began to gather speed again and moved away as rapidly as it could go.

Uh-oh.
Unless an awful lot had changed since he’d been gone, black men floating three feet in the air were not a common sight out here. Hopefully, that driver would put down what he’d seen to tricks played by the darkness and reflections. What else could he do?

But Willets let his arms drop and his frame descended. There was little traffic about, given the weather. But he couldn’t afford to take any more chances. He would have to walk the rest of the way.

He glanced to his left, and there was nothing off in that direction but a pristine stretch of trees and whiteness. To his right, however, was a single square point of electric light. And he began to trudge toward it.

How long had it been since he had visited the outside world? He tried to recall, but couldn’t. Living the way he did, it was damnably hard to keep a proper track of passing time. Months merged into years, until the whole process lost all its meaning. But an awful long time, surely.

He wasn’t even used to walking these kinds of distances. Usually, he simply turned into a blur and transported himself wherever he wanted to go. But, while that was common in Raine’s Landing, it would definitely spook people from the outside world. And so he kept on humping down the road, the snowdrifts doing everything they could to slow him down.

The source of the light gradually resolved itself. It was a gas station, doubling as a small convenience store. He stopped short of the pumps, and then remembered that the pupils of his eyes were red, a result of his intense magic. And that would certainly spook people too.

Willets tried to make it go away, but found it wouldn’t. So he snapped his fingers, and a pair of shades appeared in his right hand. He slipped them on.

A bell rang as he went in through the door. The guy behind the counter looked up. He was in his forties, short and flabby, with a stubbly chin and a moustache. Wore a plaid-patterned wool vest, sweat pants, and a Red Sox baseball cap.

He squinted past Willets through the window, saw the man had not arrived in any car, and then frowned sympathetically.

“Broken down, bub?”

“Nuh-uh,” Willets replied. “Live round here.”

The guy’s sympathy immediately vanished.

“No one lives round here.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.”

The fellow started staring at him oddly, and Willets could understand why. No visible means of transportation. And wearing dark glasses on a lightless winter’s night. They were both causes for concern.

He tried to ignore the man’s suspicious gaze, and took in his surroundings. A TV was switched on beside the counter, and he hadn’t looked at one of those in years. An advert was running, plugging electronic goods of various kinds. And Willets watched bewilderedly.

What exactly was an Eye-Pod – something to protect your eyes? How the dickens did you fit a camera inside a telephone? And why the blue blazes should anybody
want
to?

Man, the world had turned into a very different place since he’d been gone.

Then his gaze dropped to a rack of newspapers, and settled on the
Boston Globe
. PRESIDENT ADDRESSES SUMMIT, read the headline. Except the photo accompanying it … they had either made a mistake with the resolution, or else the ink had gotten smudged.

Willets picked it up, studied it closer, and a realization dawned on him that punched the breath out of his body.

He advanced on the man behind the counter.

“Are you seriously trying to tell me,” he demanded, brandishing the sheet, “that there’s a black man in the Oval Office?”

The clerk flinched away, obviously convinced that he was dealing with some kind of lunatic. But then his instincts took over and calmed him back down, telling him that this was just a harmless nut. His expression became amused, and then sardonic.