Fall of Light (30 page)

Magenta had said that to Opal the first time Opal woke up. She had had her clothes then. Gone inside herself, and awakened again in the real world, back on the altar. A time jog had happened, or something else. “How many times did we—were you always out here?” she asked Phrixos.

“No,” he said. “Sometimes I was in two places at once. You took me with you.”

“There's a clear piece of time in the middle of it all when Magenta and I were awake and everyone else was still under the influence.”

“Yes,” he said.

“When I woke up again—”

“It was fun, wasn't it?”

“You're gloating. I hate gloaters.”

He smiled, stroked his hand down her hair. She jerked out from under his caress and strode toward the crew corral. It was deserted. The canvas-backed chairs with the names on them had been packed. Opal found Doreen's yarn bag in the half-crushed grass, with its crochet projects inside. Knitting needles might have made noise during takes, so Doreen had been teaching herself this new skill.

“I used to have clothes,” Opal muttered, abandoning the bag. “What happened to my damned clothes?”

More important than clothes, what had happened to the young actresses? Into her mind rushed a spell she had often used as a teenage mother surrogate, a Locate-Lost-Objects Cantrip, because the kids were always losing things, and they got in deep trouble if the things were important and stayed lost. She visualized Gemma and whispered the spell. A thin thread of silver faded into view in the air before her, leading toward the forest. She raced off along the line, stumbling as she left the lighted clearing and headed into the trees.

No sound followed her, but she felt his presence behind her, Phrixos, a large displacement of space, a traveling nexus of energies. The thread led her past bushes and under branches, over roots and rocks. Some small animal startled out of her path, the sudden rustle of it scaring her so she stumbled, but he reached from behind and steadied her. She stilled, her elbow cupped in his hand, and paused to listen to the night, the diminishing racket of the animal crashing away, an owl calling from farther, and the sound of the stream. The night was damp and smelled of fallen leaves. In the still, she suddenly realized her feet were bare and battered, that she'd stubbed her toe against a rock. Pain signals flared, all the feelings she had blocked in her sudden panicked desire to find the children. Her calves were scratched and bleeding.

She muttered, set healing in motion, stood with the warmth of his fingers braceleting her elbow.

The crickets started up again, a song she had interrupted by running.

“They're all right,” he said.

She was angry all over again that he could use Corvus's voice so well she couldn't tell the difference. “Whose definition of all right are you using?”

“Good point.”

She pulled her arm out of his grasp and started forward again, slower this time. She flicked a small greenish globe of witchlight from her fingers so she could see where to put her feet down.

The silver seek-thread shimmered in the darkness ahead of her. It led her, eventually, to a nest of dried ferns and damp earth, where the two girls, still in their special ritual dresses, all tatters now, were curled up in each other's arms, their faces and arms smudged, their hair full of twigs, their breathing slow and steady.

Phrixos stood beside her as she stared down at the sleeping girls.

“They weren't part of it?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“The energy affected them, but I sent them away from it.” Now he spoke in a distant voice, the voice of someone else, not Corvus nor Phrixos, someone she hadn't met. The glittering shadow she had seen hovering above him when she first woke up.

“Why?”

“I knew you wouldn't like it,” said the stranger.

“You care what I think?”

“You're a key element,” it said. “I wish to keep you happy.”

Good news and bad. She didn't necessarily want to be a key, but if it wanted to keep her happy, maybe she had leverage. “Who are you?”

“I was asleep and now I'm wide awake, thanks to everything you've done for me.” He stroked a hand along her shoulder, down her back, trailing warmth and pleasure.

Creepy.
She knelt and touched Gemma's shoulder. Gemma's face contracted into a frown. She rubbed her cheek against Bettina's shoulder, frowned again, and opened her eyes. “What?” she asked, as though puzzled by everything. She rubbed her eyes with dirty fists, then stared at Bettina's angelic sleeping face so close to her own. She glanced around, found and fixed on Opal's face. “What's going on?” This time, her voice had sharpened into confusion and dismay.

“Lots,” said Opal. “Strange things happened to everyone. You and Bettina went off in the woods. Can you get up?” Opal touched Bettina's shoulder. “Bettina?”

Bettina burrowed deeper into the hollow where she lay, hunched her shoulders and hid her face.

“Bettina,” Opal repeated. “It's dark and cold. I should get you back to your hotel, or wherever you're staying. Wouldn't you like a hot bath?”

Bettina slowly turned toward them. Her face showed traces of muddy tears. She opened her eyes. A new tear ran down into her hair. “I would like that above all things,” she whispered.

Gemma sat up. She worked her legs free of Bettina's skirts, rested her hand on Bettina's shoulder. “Let's get out of here.”

Bettina nodded, mashing her crinkled hair against the damp earth. She let Gemma pull her upright. She and Gemma worked together to scramble out of the hole they were in. Phrixos reached down and helped haul them to their feet. “You will never,” Bettina said in a low voice to Gemma, “tell a soul what we did. Ever.”

“What did we do?” Gemma asked. “I fell asleep and had really weird dreams. God, where are we?” She turned her head, glancing at the darkening forest around them.

“We're a ways into the forest.” Opal touched the witchfire ball with a finger, fed it more energy so that it brightened enough to light the ground for a few feet in all directions. She lifted it so it hung in the air just above their heads, though not so high as Phrixos's head. “Let's go back.”

“What's that thing?” Gemma asked in a flattened voice.

“Special effects,” said Opal.

Phrixos strode in front of them, the light at his back, coating his robe with soft greenish yellow color. The two girls held hands as they walked just ahead of Opal. She didn't think they even knew.

As they forged toward the clearing, she said her cantrip again, this time focusing on Doreen. A slender thread of rose pink led toward Doreen; Opal broke away from Phrixos and the girls and followed her thread. It led to one of the crew Porta-Johns. The door was locked. Opal knocked several times and got no answer, so at last she unlocked the door with a tiny push, another skill she'd honed while caring for her siblings, though she'd only seriously used it a few times. Usually, she figured that if they were hiding, they needed to hide, not be found. Once in a while, necessity had pushed her.

“Doreen,” she murmured. She opened the door half a foot. “Doreen?”

The door pulled out of her hand, opening wider. Doreen sat on the floor, a miserable ball, her eyes puffy, her face stained with salt tear tracks, her hair greasy as though sweaty hands had stroked through it too many times. She groaned and climbed to her feet.

“Whore,” she said.

Opal flinched, straightened. She thought about what had happened that afternoon and wondered who and what she really was. Had she had any control over events? Had she given control away? She had definitely had sex in public, which was pretty skanky, but . . . “It had nothing to do with money,” she said at last.

“Not you,” said Doreen. “Well, you, but . . .” She ran her fingers through her hair again, pulled herself together. “God, I need a bath. A shower. Another bath.”

“Mom?” Gemma said, tentative.

“Gemma! Oh my god! Are you all right?” Doreen came out of the Porta-John and reached for her daughter, who flinched and backed away, pulling Bettina with her. The girls still held hands; it was as if they didn't know how to disconnect.

“I'm fine,” Gemma said, and held up her free hand in a “stop” gesture.

“Did you—where were you when—are you going to need therapy?” Doreen asked.

“Oh, who doesn't,” said Bettina, her voice acid.

“Whatever it was, I kind of slept through it,” Gemma said. She looked around. The clearing and the waiting area were trashed in some strange ways, but empty of people. Most of the equipment had been put away for the night. “What happened?”

“Thank God for small mercies,” said Doreen.

“You really don't remember any of it?” asked Bettina.

“Why? What do you remember?”

Bettina's gaze went to their linked hands. She bit her lower lip. Her brow furrowed, and she said, “Well, I shan't tell you now. I wonder what it means in the long run. Perhaps nothing, if it wasn't as real for you as it was for me.”

“But, on a more immediate note . . .” Opal glanced around. “It looks like everybody left. Or maybe they're hiding. I have a car. Doreen, did you drive yourself, or do the three of you want a ride somewhere? Phrixos and I were going to supper.”

“After everything that's happened, you're going to eat?” Doreen asked, outraged. Her stomach rumbled and she glanced toward it. Her eyebrows rose. “Oh.”

“Has anyone seen Rica?” asked Bettina. “I can't remember the last time I saw her.”

Opal said, “Do you want me to find her now? I'll need something of hers. I don't know her well enough to track her.”

“What are you, psychic or something?” Bettina said.

“Something,” said Opal, as Gemma said, “She found Mom, didn't she?”

“Good grief, that's right.” Bettina bit her bottom lip, swung Gemma's hand. “Well, I suppose I don't really want to find Rica. I suppose I hope she's all right. If what happened to her is the same as what happened to everyone else, I wish I'd had a camera. Pictures would be worth a lot in our future relationship.”

“Eww,”
said Gemma.

“If you can drive us to our B&B, that would be good,” Doreen told Opal. “I did drive myself and Gemma to the location this morning, but now it looks like my car is gone.”

Bettina said, “May I stay with you two? I don't want to go back to my room alone.”

“Okay,” said Gemma, then glanced at her mother.

Doreen nodded, her face pale. “I don't want you to be alone, either.”

Opal led the way to the Lincoln. Everyone piled in. She didn't think she should let the girls and Doreen go without making sure they were all right, but she didn't know what to do for them. She was still appalled and confused about what to do for herself.

Doreen, her voice tired, directed Opal to another early-twentieth-century house in town, where the girls and the woman got out and slammed the car doors without saying good-bye.

“What do you think?” she asked Phrixos after they had sat in silence, parked outside the B&B. “Where do we go next?”

He smiled down at her. “Back to the nexus?”

“Is that the altar?”

“Yes. We could go back and add to the work we've started. We are close to completing all the necessary steps.”

She didn't want to know about steps, or where they led. “I don't want to go back. I'm dirty and tired and hungry. The choices are your place or mine.” She thought about running into Neil at the bed-and-breakfast. He'd been pretty mad when the confusion wore off. It was possible he would blame her for everything. He wasn't pleasant at the best of times. “Scratch that. We're going to my hotel.”

“Do you have clothes for me there?”

“Nope, but I've got clothes for me. I can make clothes for you. I have an industrial-strength shower, too.”

“You've made up your mind.”

“I have.” She started the car and they drove back to the hotel in silence.

The front desk clerk in the lobby opened his mouth to speak when he saw them, but they pushed past to the elevators without giving him time to say anything. Opal pressed the up button, then leaned on the wall, tiredness weighing her down. She knew how to deal with that, didn't she? She could draw energy from her reservoir and pull herself together. Just now, she felt too tired to do it.

Before the elevator arrived, she heard a voice greeting the desk clerk in jovial tones. “I'm looking for my niece,” said Great-Uncle Tobias. “Opal LaZelle.”

The clerk said, “I think she's registered here—”

Opal opened her eyes and straightened. “Uncle.”

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