MORTAL COILS (94 page)

Jeremy
closed the distance to her faster than she thought he could move and slipped
his arm around her body . . . leaning in.

Fiona
didn’t know what to say or do.

Her
body had a pretty good idea, though: she brought up her knee as

hard
as she could—connecting with Lord Jeremy Covington of the Galloway Covingtons’
groin.

His
smile vanished, and with a great exhalation he fell to his knees.

“I
like ye spirit, lass,” he grunted.

Fiona’s
fingers twined about her rubber band. She didn’t really want to do this . . .
but she wasn’t sure how far Jeremy intended to take that one little traditional
New Year’s Eve kiss. Under the circumstances, she wasn’t even sure he was alive
or dead, human . . . or something else entirely.

Jeremy
stood. The hunger in his eyes had sharpened.

At
that precise moment, however, a snowball packed to ice hardness shattered on
his lion mask—with such force it snapped Jeremy’s neck back and lifted him off
his feet, head over heels into the snow.

Fiona
turned to see who had saved her.

Robert
Farmington stood ten paces away. Brass knuckles on his fingers glinted. He had
another snowball ready, squeezing it tight.

“Robert!
What are you doing? That’s enough.” Her first impulse was to check on Jeremy,
at least make sure he was breathing, but then she remembered that Robert was
responsible for her being here. She wheeled on him, one hand plucking the
rubber band on her wrist. She wasn’t sure she trusted Robert any more than
Jeremy.

Robert
must’ve seen she was in no mood for games, because he immediately dropped the
snowball.

That’s
when Fiona noticed two things that didn’t make sense. Robert wore his leather
jacket, the same leather jacket—right down to the eagle patch and scuff marks
along the right arm—that she had on. Robert also for some reason held a large
bag of pretzels.

“I’m
so glad I found you.” Robert moved toward her. “I don’t know how long I’ve been
looking. This place is so—”

“Stay
right there. First you better explain why you pushed me through that door.”

Robert
halted. “That’s easy . . . it wasn’t me.”

He
told her how Louis Piper had tricked her and Eliot, separated her from her
brother, then lured Eliot back to Del Sombra.

Fiona
felt dread pool in her stomach as Robert explained. It made sense. It accounted
for why Robert had acted so strange in the tavern. And the two jackets . . .
one was from the duplicated Robert. It also made sense because, given half a
chance, her stupid brother would run off trying to rescue their supposed father
and get himself into even more trouble.

Jeremy
groaned and rolled onto his knees, shaking his head. He laughed and slowly got
to his feet. “Ye have a strong arm,” he told Robert. “No real harm done,
though.” A trickle of blood ran from the snout of his lion mask.

“Just
back off, mister,” Robert ordered. The hand adorned with brass knuckles curled
into a fist.

Jeremy
looked at Robert and then to Fiona. “Oh, I see.” He bowed to Fiona. “I apologize,
my lady. I had no idea ye came to the party escorted.”

“We’re
not here to party,” Robert growled at him. “Come on, Fiona, we’re leaving.” He
shook his bag of pretzels. “I left us a trail.”

“A
trail o’ bread crumbs?” Jeremy asked with great interest. “To the doorway?”

“You
know about that?” Fiona asked.

“I
know the myth,” Jeremy replied. “Like the unicorn, fleeting, there one instant,
gone the next. Easier to chase snowflakes.” A faint trace of his smile
returned. “But ye have a trail o’ bread crumbs . . . that might be a different
story. Fairy-tale magic be strong here.”

“Fiona,”
Robert whispered, and held out his hand. “We should get going. I have a bad
feeling about this place.”

Fiona
reached for him but hesitated. This was the real Robert, wasn’t it? She thought
so. He looked like Robert. But more than that, this felt like the real Robert:
a hero.

She
took his hand. It was warm and strong.

“I’m
glad you came for me,” she whispered.

“I
would’ve found you no matter where you were. No matter what it took.” Robert
nodded at the pretzels scattered behind him. “The snow will cover them up soon.
We need to hurry.”

Jeremy,
without saying another word, ran back to the party.

Fiona
was a little disappointed, but relieved, too. Jeremy had seemed so nice, then
not, then nice again. Why were boys so confusing?

She
and Robert followed the trail. The pretzels were easy to spot on the sparkling
snow, but after a minute, as Robert had predicted, the falling snow clung to
the pretzels and made them hard to spot.

After
a few minutes the trail was lost.

“Don’t
worry,” Robert said. “We don’t need the pretzels anymore. It should be just
ahead.”

“Wait.
Did you actually see the doorway on this side when you stepped through?”

Robert
shook his head. “I made sure to mark it, though. On the threshold, I scattered
a few handfuls of pretzels.”

“Which
we won’t be able to find because they’ll be covered, too.”

He
frowned. “What do you want to do then? Start brushing the snow and look for
every pretzel?”

Fiona
heard footfalls. Jeremy ran toward them . . . along with his pack of friends.
They all wore masks: rhinoceros, ostrich, hyena, and gorilla.

Robert
drew his gun.

“No
need for that,” Jeremy said, panting. “We’ve come to help. The trail be lost,
no? We can find it.”

“Sure,”
Robert said without lowering his weapon.

Jeremy
pointed to six of his friends, then at the snow ahead. They fanned out,
searching. He pointed at the last two, then the back at the village. They ran
off.

“Might
as well let them help,” Fiona suggested.

“I’m
not so sure that’s a great idea,” Robert whispered.

“Here!”
shouted the boy in the rhinoceros mask. “Found it.”

“Good
work,” Jeremy said to his friend. “The rest o’ ye move ahead. Maybe we get a
wee bit more luck.”

Fiona
watched as the pack of boys spread out looking for the trail. If the seven of
them turned out to be not so friendly, she wasn’t sure Robert and she could
defend themselves . . . at least, not without using lethal force.

She
shivered. Then again, away from the fires of the village she was freezing.
There wasn’t much choice.

“Where’d
those others go to?” Robert asked, finally lowering his gun.

“To
get more help, of course,” Jeremy explained. “If ye are to have a snowball’s
chance in . . . well, never mind. Ye know what I mean.”

Fiona
and Robert looked for the trail as well, and soon more people from the village
joined the effort. There were more boys in masks, men in tuxedos, a group of
Indians in buckskins, and a gaggle of those cotillion girls with their hoop
skirts trailing behind them—dozens of them searched through the snow now for
bread crumbs.

Jeremy
ran ahead, seeming to intuit the path, and discovered the vast circular
scattering of pretzels that marked the entrance of the doorway.

There
was no doorway, though.

Jeremy,
Robert, and Fiona pantomimed through the air, feeling for anything.

“Dead
end, I’m afraid,” Jeremy whispered disappointedly. “Rotten luck.”

A
crowd gathered about them, perhaps fifty people from the village. An uneasy
murmur rippled through them.

So
many had joined in the search . . . and it wasn’t just to help Fiona and
Robert. As fun as a continuous New Year’s Eve party might seem, after half an
eternity of dancing, drinking, and who knows what else, they all had to be bored
out of their minds. They wanted out as badly as Fiona did.

“Maybe
we better get back to those fires,” Robert whispered to her. “While we’re still
unfrozen, and before the natives get ugly.”

“I’m
not giving up. There has to be something here.” Fiona snapped her rubber band
and stretched it before her, concentrating. The air crackled and popped as she
moved her cutting edge.

The
crowd backed off several paces. The boy in the rhinoceros mask whispered,
“Witch!”

The
rest of the world, however, fell away as Fiona focused on her line of force.
She saw nothing, but felt textures, ripples, and bumps . . . as if the very
atmosphere were permeated with threads.

Maybe
it was. If her life had a weave to it, with one side that extended into the
future and one to the past, why couldn’t the rest of the world?

She
slipped into that relaxed state of mind that Dallas had spoken of and the
pattern of this place came into focus: a simple back-and-forth, over-and-under
weave. It was featureless . . . save for a single seam.

Fiona
moved closer, and as she did so, she saw that this seam was actually a fold in
the otherwise smooth surface. A pocket of fabric had been tucked
perpendicularly away from normal view.

She
twisted her mind around it and saw a tapestry of an ironbound door. The door
was open, and on the other side were shadows, moonlight, kegs, and cardboard
boxes filled with liquor bottles.

But
the edges of this tapestry were frayed and unraveling at an unnerving pace.

Whatever
she was going to do, she’d have to do it quickly while there was still
something here to work with.

She
cut the threads tacking the doorway in place, dragged it out of its sideways
orientation, and laid it flat upon the fabric of this world. This, however,
only accelerated the unraveling. Maybe she’d better put it back.

A
hand touched her shoulder.

She
blinked and found herself back in the cold.

Robert
was next to her, staring at what had once been empty space.

The
doorway stood before her, open, but fast fading.

“This
way!” shouted the rhinoceros boy. “It’s open! Quick! Everyone through.”

The
crowd surged forward, pushing past Fiona and Robert, forcing them apart and
knocking her to the ground.

Robert
tried to help her, but the cotillion girls ran her over.

What
sounded like a cannon exploded near Fiona.

All
fell silent . . . until the crisp air was punctuated by the sound of steel
being drawn from a scabbard.

The
crowd parted and backed away.

“Enough
o’ that, ye rabble.” In one hand Jeremy held a smoldering flint-lock pistol,
and in the other his saber. “Let the lady go first.”

He
tucked his flintlock into his belt and offered a hand to Fiona.

She
took it and stood. “Thank you.”

Jeremy
bowed to her. Robert glared at him.

Fiona
glanced at the crowd. They looked eager and hopeful, but respectful now as
well. Perhaps a hundred people from the village were now there, with more
running across the snows to join them.