Hidden Things (22 page)

I
NTERLUDE

“Baby?”

 

“Calli? Honey?”

“Mmm . . .”

“You sleepin'?”

“Mmmmm . . .”

“ 'Kay, I'll leave you alone.”

 

“Heeeeey . . . aahh. Wh-what're you doin'?”

“Nothin'.”

“Tha— mmm . . . that doesn't feel like nothing.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I . . . I was sleepinngg.”

“Couldn't be.”

“I was.”

“I'm a perfect gentleman, I would never disturb you when you're sleeping.”

“Hmm . . .”

“Am I disturbing you?”

“Just . . .”

“Hmm?”

“Just shut up and keep doing that.”

 

“This?”

“No.”

“Oh. Okay. This?”

“You're smiling.”

“You can't possibly know that. The lights are off.”

“I can hear it when you're smiling. I always can.”

“Huh. Neat trick. This?”

 

“Calli?”

“Y-yeah . . . yeah, do that.”

“You sure?”

“Bastard.”

“Now you're smiling. And what a mouth on you.”

“I learned it all from y— tha-that's new.”

“I've been reading in my spare time.”

“It's . . . 's a good book. C'mere.”

 

“Calli?”

“Mmm . . . yeah.”

“We need to get going.”

 

“Calli?”

“Yeah. I know. I'd just rather stay here.”

“It'll be good to see everyone. I'm looking forward to meeting your folks.”

“I'm not.”

“You don't want me to meet them?”

“No, you go and meet them. I'll just stay here.”

“Heh. Funny girl. We really should get going though. We're gonna be late.”

“Mmm. I'm tired. Someone woke me in the middle of the night.”

“Hotel pixies. Deadly little guys.”

“Mmm . . . c'mere.”

“Sure, what's up?”

“I think the pixies are back.”

“Hey now, we need to—”

 

“You said something?”

“Didn't say a thing.”

“That's what I thought. You like the pixies?”

“They . . . must have been reading that book of mine.”

“I don't need a damn book.”

15

WHEN CALLIOPE WOKE
up, the hotel room looked wrong. Shabby. Smelled wrong. Also, her shoulder ached and she couldn't remember when—

“You talk in your sleep.”

Memory came rushing back. “Hmm.”

Vikous sat in the chair Calliope had sat in the day before, his ludicrous feet up in another chair, legs crossed at the ankles. “Yeah, something about ‘plowing the graveyard would make for good corn.' ” He glanced down at the motel key he was toying with. “Some other stuff.”

Calliope could feel heat creep into her face. She rolled onto her left shoulder, which faced her away from Vikous and was marginally less uncomfortable. “How . . . how long have you been up?”

“A few hours. You hog the bed, too.”

“Sorry.”

“It's all right. I wasn't sleeping that well, either.” She heard him shift in the chair, set his feet on the carpet. “You think you're up to a little hike?” He waited. “Calli?”

“I was thinking,” Calliope said, but didn't continue, suddenly nervous.

Again, Vikous waited before speaking. “Yeah?”

“Nothing.”

“Doesn't sound like nothing.”

She closed her eyes as if bracing for impact. “Maybe we should just forget about it.”

Vikous didn't say anything immediately, but Calliope was certain it wasn't because he was waiting on her. “Forget about it.” His voice was flat.

“Not
forget
forget, but I don't know if we should . . .” She rolled to her back and slowly sat up, swinging her legs to the floor. “I mean, what are we going to find? Are we going to find the guy that killed Josh? 'Cause right now we aren't exactly going to beat a confession out of him.”

Vikous watched her, his expression as blank as the white, red, and greens of his face could be. “You're scared about what's coming.”

Calliope shook her head. “Not scared, I'm just . . .” She paused. “Well, yeah, actually I am scared about it. We've been dealing with Faegos, Walker—they don't even have anything to do with this and we're getting our asses handed to us—what's the big bad going to be?”

Vikous gestured with a gloved hand. “This isn't a video game, Calli. The big boss with a thousand hit points doesn't have to be the one waiting for you at the end. Who says the
end
is even at the end? Life keeps going.”

“Maybe.”

“Sure. Maybe. We could die. We could save the world. Lots could happen.”

“We could turn around and go home.”

Vikous hesitated. “Yeah. Doesn't sound much like you, but yeah, we could do that.”

Calliope glanced up at Vikous, caught his expression, and looked away. “It's just . . . Josh is already gone. I don't want to find out what else I can lose. I'm tired of losing.”

Vikous's eyes never moved. “You said you made a deal that could bring him back.”

Calliope met his gaze. “And you made it sound like a bad deal.”

“It's your deal to make.” He shifted in the chair, his shoulders moving in the slightly wrong way they had. “I'm not going to tell you how this has to go. I'm the guide, and that's my job—I show you the way, and you make your own choices. You don't
have
a job, you have a
life;
if you want to make a deal, you can; if you want to turn around, you can.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the knees of his worn and stained pants. “I'm ready to go on. You tell me if you are.”

Calliope didn't immediately react. Her eyes were wide and unfocused as she stared without blinking at the old and faded carpet. “You're wrong, you know.”

“Mmm.” Vikous grunted. “About what?”

“Turning around and going home,” she said. Her voice was distant and flat, the emotion sapped out of it by exhaustion. “It sounds ex
act
ly like me.” She thought of the argument they'd had as they'd left Los Angeles. “But you know that.”

“I know some history, Calli,” Vikous replied. His voice was low and had lost some of its perpetual rough edge. “And I know you, today. They aren't always the same thing.” He blew air through his teeth. “But all
that
means is you're stuck deciding yes or no.”

Calliope nodded, still facing the opposite side of the room, her thoughts—perhaps inevitably—on another trip.

You don't want me to meet your folks?

“Let's keep going.”

Vikous looked up. “Yeah?”

Calliope still didn't look up. “Yeah. Give me a few minutes, but yeah.”

“All right.” She heard the now familiar rustle that signaled the donning of his concealing hood. “I'll wait outside. Scream in agony if you need help with the shoulder. You'll want the sweater.” He stood.

“Sure. Hey, can you do me a favor?”

Vikous didn't reply, merely waited.

“Could you—” Calliope pulled at the edge of the unused bed cover. “It's not personal, but could you not call me Calli?” She looked up at Vikous, then down. “It was sort of Josh's thing.”

“Sure,” Vikous said. “Sure. Consider it done.” The motel door opened. Closed.

Calliope was alone.

“Josh?” Mikey sits on the floor, shoving matchbox cars around the carpet.

Josh sighs. “Yeah?” He doesn't like being interrupted when he's reading, and his brother does it all the time.

“Do dragons really have beaks, like it says in the Pooh story?”

Josh shrugs. “Just some of 'em.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Josh leans back and looks at the ceiling. “But the ones around here have lots of teeth instead.”

“Cool.”

“And scales.”

“Coool . . .” Mikey picks up a car and swooshes it through the air like a plane. “I want to meet a dragon.”

“It'd eat you.”

“Would not.”

“It'd eat the whole house, then the town.”

“I'd make it like me, then we'd do stuff together.” Mikey lowers his arm to the floor. He is staring out the window. “We'd have adventures all the time, like forever.”

Josh snorts. “There's no such thing as forever, doofus.”

“There is too!”

Josh rolls his eyes at his younger brother's back. “Whatever. Anyway, you'd grow up and have to do grown-up stuff.”

Mikey shakes his head. “We're not going to.”

Josh makes a face, scratching under the edge of the cast on his right arm. “You're a dork; of course we are.”

“NO we're NOT!” Mikey jumps up, face red, hands knotted in fists at his side. His whole body is shaking.

Josh looks away from Mikey, back to his book. “Cool your jets, little man.” The words are out before he even knows they're coming.

Words their dad used to say.

Tears are running down Mikey's face. Josh raises a hand toward his brother—the one not in the cast—but the boy whirls and runs from the room, yelling. At Josh, at the world, at nothing; repeating his denial over and over until the words lose their meaning; empty echoes in the empty house, holding nothing but the anger.

“This would be a lot easier,” Vikous remarked, “if we were along an interstate.” They were walking on the shoulder of Highway 19; had been doing so, without any real explanation from Vikous, for the last hour. Calliope had stopped at one point, refusing to freeze to death before Vikous revealed what they were doing, but he had pulled a pressed flower out of one of his pockets and done something with it that had made the midwestern November cold die away all around them.

Out of gratitude, she had let her questions go even when he stopped to pick up and sniff cast-off tire treads that lay along the side of the road, but this comment was too much for her to take quietly. “It would be a lot easier,” she replied, “if I knew what the hell we were doing.”

“Hunting dragons.” Vikous scanned the highway and shoulder ahead of them in the waning afternoon light.

Calliope didn't reply for the space of twenty more yards. Finally she said, “First of all, you told me that all the dragons were dead; second of all, I know I've been gone awhile, but if there were dragons in Iowa, I think I would have—”

“I never said they were dead,” Vikous said. “I said you didn't see them destroying towns anymore. Doesn't mean they're dead.”

“You remember my skeptical face?”

Vikous sighed. “Just—”

“Trust the guide. Yeah, I'm trying.” Calliope continued on in silence, glancing at a mile marker. “What is it you're supposed to
do,
exactly?”

Vikous scanned the road and shoulder as they walked, paying only cursory attention to the question. “Do for what?”

“As a guide. What do you—what are you supposed to do?”

Vikous glanced at Calliope, his eyes narrowed and careful, then turned back to the ground before them. “I thought the message Gluen gave you explained that.”

Calliope shook her head. “Just told me to go with you.”

Vikous nodded, blowing out a puff of steamy air and glancing at her sidelong. “There's people like you that get . . . involved in things. To keep everything from coming apart at the seams, we . . . there's someone to guide them and try to—”

“Keep them from wrecking everything?” Calliope's tone was sour.

Vikous tilted his head and made a face that said she'd almost got it, but not quite. “Some think that. I'd say help them figure out enough that they understand what they're doing.”

Calliope raised an eyebrow and glanced at her shoulder, her mouth quirking upward at the corners. Vikous scowled. “Also, there're people who try to keep anyone from messing with anything at all. Like Walker.” Calliope could hear the emotion Vikous had penned up inside that name.

“Whom you already know,” she said.

“We've been on opposite sides before.”

“Before,” she said. Vikous nodded.

She hesitated. “How did you end up swearing an oath to him?”

Vikous continued walking for some time as the waning sun left orange and purple streaks across the sky. Just when Calliope thought that the topic had been closed and was starting to form an apology, he spoke. “I was with this . . . someone I figured would really do all right. It looked like it was going to be a big deal.” He shifted within his coat. “We got turned around and ended up in the Badlands, which I don't recommend as a vacation spot if you're in the Hidden Lands. Walker rigged it; got us stranded.”

Calliope waited, walking alongside him through the cold November afternoon that she couldn't feel.

“I cut a deal,” Vikous said, his voice barely audible above the gravel scuff of their feet. He glanced at Calliope. “Not for me.”

“For her.”

“Him, actually. A kid about twelve . . . thirteen years old.” Vikous hunched his shoulders in the coat. “I thought . . . I made a deal with Walker that I'd stand down the next time we butted heads, if he'd let the kid make it through. I thought I could stay clear of him if I had to.”

“Walker came through on your deal?” Calliope asked.

Vikous snorted. “Yeah. You'd have thought he knew—” He shook his head. “I was wrong about the kid. Didn't end well. For anybody.”

Calliope's voice was quiet. “I'm sorry.”

Vikous said nothing. The expression on his face looked as though he'd bitten down on something rotten. Looking up, he squinted into the middle distance. “That looks good.”

Calliope followed the direction of his gaze. In the middle of the right-hand lane, a solid black line about ten inches wide and forty feet long stretched down the pavement. “That's a tire streak. We've passed fifty of those already.”

“Wait,” Vikous said.

They walked up to the end of the streak and Vikous nodded. “Good. Real good.” He glanced at Calliope, who was alternating bemused looks between him and the mark on the road. “Look at the mark. Do you see any treads?”

Calliope frowned and looked back at the streak. Still frowning, she walked along the shoulder to the other end. Her frown deepened. “That's weird.” She pointed at the end of the mark. “If this were a guy peeling his tires drag race style, there'd be tread marks visible on this end where the tire finally started to grip.” She turned and walked back down to Vikous. “If it were someone hitting the brakes, there's be tread marks down here, before the wheel locked.”

Vikous raised an eyebrow. “You know a lot about tire marks.”

“When you grow up in rural America, you learn way too much about the very few things you can do for fun.”

Vikous nodded and motioned at the streak. “So?”