Pay the Piper (9 page)

“Kidnappers?” Her mother's voice broke on the final syllable. “But we don't have much money.”

“Terrorists,” her dad said. “I'm sure of it.”

“Tell me,” the policewoman demanded.

“Now!” her partner added, as if that were the only word he knew.

Callie nodded. “Well, it has to do with rock and roll and…”

“Drugs!” the policeman said. A second word, just as loud.

“No, no, not drugs.” Callie held up her hand. “Geez, officer—these are little kids. Trick-or-treaters.”

The policeman nodded, if a bit reluctantly.

“It has to do,” Callie said slowly, “with the Pied Piper of Hamelin and rats.”

The policeman made a face and turned to his partner. “What's she talking about? She on something?”

“On
to
something,” Callie insisted. “Something I discovered at the Brass Rat concert.”

“Ratter, ratter, mad as a hatter,” her mom began to sing.

“It's the shock, that's what it is,” her father said, putting an arm around each of them.

Callie looked up at him, willing him to understand. “Well, of course we're shocked, Dad. But that's not what I mean. The thing is—the Pied Piper of Hamelin is
here.
He's come around again. Really! I know this because of the dancing rats.”

Tears starting down her green cheeks again, her mother began reciting, “‘Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, and bit the babies in the cradles, and ate the cheeses out of the…'”

The policeman turned to his partner. “Is the whole family nuts?”

“Hank, let me deal with this,” she told him and put her hand out to Callie. “Miss McCallan, we understand that this whole thing is a shock. It's a shock to us, too. But if you have any
real
information, we need to hear it.”

“Wait,” Callie said. “I have something to show you. It's in my room. I'll get it. It explains better than I can.” She turned and ran back into the house. She could hear them following, but slowly, and arguing about how crazy she was and whether, in fact, she was trying to outrun or outwit them.

Taking the steps two at a time, she raced upstairs. At the landing, the clock seemed to shout at her: 9:50. The long hallway was dark, uninviting. She didn't stop to worry about it the way she sometimes did, but went straight to her bedroom at the very end of the hall.

She didn't remember having turned off the light, but her room was now badly lit only by the flickering of the computer screen. Picking up the two remaining balled–up articles from her desk, she ran back out. She figured she'd get the policewoman to read what she'd written, out loud, and then they'd all understand.

As she went down the hall past Nicky's room, she heard something familiar playing on his CD player. Funny that she hadn't heard it before. But it was as if all her senses were now on full alert. She slowed, took a step inside his room, then realized that what she was hearing was Brass Rat's latest CD, the one Nick had gotten at the concert. It was evidently on a continuous loop. The tune was the very one Gringras had been piping to the rats.

“It all comes back to rats!” she said in a hoarse whisper and burst into tears, because guilt had come flooding back as she stood in Nicky's room. If she'd gone out trick-or-treating with him, maybe he wouldn't be missing now.

Or maybe,
her treacherous mind reminded her,
you'd be missing with him.

The flute was mesmerizing and for a long moment she stood still, staring at the blinking light on the CD player. Then she came to, slammed her hand down on the black plastic, turning the player off. The blinking light disappeared, but somehow the song kept going on, a twisting, twining sound that seemed to bind her, to call her, to summon her to follow.

The music made her turn from the player and look at the window. Stuffing one of the paper balls in her pocket, she dropped the other on the the CD player where it rolled off on to the floor. She ignored it and tugged at the window till it opened, then climbed out onto the little balcony where she and Nick had often had tea parties when they were both younger.

There was a soft wind puzzling through the trees. For late October it seemed very warm. The moon was full and orange. She knew in the back part of her mind that her parents and the police were coming up the stairs. Probably talking about her erratic behavior, her smart talk. Arguing about the puzzle of the missing trick-or-treaters. Her mother was probably crying. Maybe sobbing. Her father might still be trembling. The cops were surely flinging accusations.

But that didn't seem to matter now. Oddly, all that mattered was the song. The haunting flute that was calling to her.

She took a deep breath and the air both burned and soothed her throat at the same time.

“Nicky,” she whispered. “Hold on, Bugbrain. I'm coming.”

She was determined to bring him back. She believed that finding him was the least she could do, having failed to go with him or keep track of the time. But her head was muzzy with the flute song now, and she wasn't thinking straight. She reached over, touched the trellis which was still covered with late blooming bloodred roses, swung her leg over the railing of the balcony, and started to clamber down.

She never felt the thorns.

Skirting the empty police car, she didn't notice the light in her bedroom window where her parents and the two cops were opening closets and looking under the bed, her mother crying and her father on his cell phone calling Mars again. Or the lights in the Temples' house next door where people were watching the television, frantic for news. Or the dog on Mrs. Lee's front porch whining but afraid to go down the steps.

Instead, she got to the road and began to dance.

One foot, two, glide and glide, she followed the song of the flute along Elm Street, heading toward Main Street, the piping luring her on and on and on.

17 · A Death in the Family

Flute in hand, Gringras remembered more: he remembered the quiet dinner with his older brother, Tormalas the heir. He remembered letting his brother prattle on about politics and the possibility of war with the Unseelie Court. Meanwhile in the kitchen, Alabas poisoned the food. Poisoned Gringras' food.

Tormalas' tasters had eaten heartily off the heir's plate, pronouncing it safe. After that it was a simple matter for the switch to be made. A little misdirection (“Look out!”), a little sleight of hand (Gringras dabbled in the more mundane illusions as well as the true magic), and soon Tormalas was chewing happily on venison chops lightly seasoned with century plant.

He ate for three more minutes and then slumped to the floor, to all appearances stone-dead. Appearances, as Gringras knew and had planned for, could be deceiving. And nowhere was this truer than in Faerie.

*   *   *

THE HEIR'S BODY LAY IN
state for three days.

On the first day, the attendants washed and dressed the dead prince in his funeral attire of white and gold. They set his body in a bier decorated with wild peonies and cultivated roses. The family gathered in a mourning circle around the coffin.

King Merrias, a stoic figure, sat still from dawn till dusk, while his wife wept impressively and tore at her long silver hair.

Gringras tried to look suitably melancholy. He kept dabbing at his eyes with an enormous white handkerchief. Occasionally he let out a large sigh.

Wynn, the youngest, had been sent for, but had not yet returned from whatever adventure he was currently on. Gringras had counted on that.

On the second day, the antechamber where Tormalas lay was opened to the public. Creatures from afar came to pay their respects. Fey lords and ladies in gaudy, shimmering raiment strode majestically by the body, barely deigning to glance down. Small brownies and hearth witches clucked their tongues as they passed, sighing at the waste of it all. Phookas, selkies, and other shape-shifters padded, hopped, or slithered by. Pixies and winged fairies wafted over the open coffin and wept beautifully, their translucent wings fluttering self-consciously. Even a lone boggart—emissary from the Unseelie Court—shambled past the coffin, glaring at it, perhaps angry he hadn't the chance to kill the prince himself.

Gringras watched the display with amusement, but was careful to show nothing on his face but the expected grief.

Wynn had still not arrived.

Custom and religion dictated that on the third day the body was moved outside and placed on a large wooden pyre, scheduled to be burned at midnight. A crowd gathered early, jostling for position around the tower. The faerie rulers were long-lived and a state funeral was a once-in-a-millennium event.

Gringras stood in the hall outside the throne room, waiting for an audience with his father that would confirm him as the new heir. He knew that, once he was confirmed—even after Tormalas' miraculous recovery, which should be happening a little after sunset—nothing short of Gringras' own death could remove the mantle of power from his shoulders.

A stentorian voice echoed from inside the king's audience chamber.

“Come.” It was the High Chamberlain.

Gringras straightened his cloak and, running first one nervous hand through his hair and then the other, opened the door.

His father was not alone. At the king's side sat a handsome young man, broad of shoulder and strong of arm, with curly blonde locks crowning a pleasant, honest face. He was still dressed in his traveling clothes and, even though it was apparent he had rushed right to this chamber immediately after dismounting, he somehow managed to look fresh, clean, alert, and capable.

Wynn had finally come home.

18 · Music Man

Elm Street was quiet, as still as if it were some sort of painted backdrop to Callie's dance. Even the wind had stopped. No cars purred along the blacktop. No leaves fluttered down from the maples and oaks. No cats prowled the side streets. The traffic lights had for some unknown reason all gone dark. The world was lit spookily by the Halloween moon.

Yet there was one sound Callie could hear clearly, and that was the flute tune that pulled her along. That sound was so real, so palpable, she believed she could have put her hand on it and it would have felt like a rope.

She danced along Elm Street noticing and yet not noticing, the way one does in a dream. One step, two, glide and glide.

As she danced by Greene Hall, where the concert had been held the night before, she suddenly heard another bit of music. The same tune, but a different voice. It seemed to cut through the golden rope that bound her by a single strand.

Still dancing—one step, two, glide and glide—she hesitated a moment to listen more carefully. That hesitation wasn't willed, it just sort of happened.

This new voice was lower, sweeter, less insistent. She tried to think what it could be. It didn't have the breathiness of the flute. The sound seemed more sustained, yet at the same time less fluid. There were occasional chords. Something strummed.

And then, all at once, she realized she was hearing a guitar.

Guitar!

She stopped in her tracks.

Scott played the guitar. Beautiful Scott with the wide Viking face, the long golden braid, and the deep ocean blue eyes. Who was sixteen going on forty. Her crush from what seemed years and miles ago, though it was just twenty-four hours away.

Looking over to the steps of John M. Greene Hall, she saw Scott haloed in the moonlight, hunched over his guitar and playing with such intensity, she thought she would cry. The sound he made was brilliant, clear, beautiful, and much more innocent than the sensuous piping of the flute.

“Scott,” she whispered, his name another kind of song, but he didn't hear her.

The notes of the guitar drew her to him, one step, two, glide and glide. And the flute's binding power was suddenly cut through, as if by a knife.

She danced quietly to the foot of the steps and stopped, watching him play, afraid to break the spell of his music, afraid to call attention to herself, afraid that if she spoke the flute would find her again.

Minute after minute she watched his right hand pick out tunes, strands of pearls on the strings. Minute after minute she watched his left hand crawling up and down the neck of the guitar, marking the notes with precise fingering. But he must have sensed her standing there, for finally he glanced up, his face momentarily innocent of all knowledge but his music. Then his face seemed to clear, as if he'd suddenly wakened.

“Hey…” he said, and stopped playing.

“Hey…” she replied.

He was no longer wearing the pants with the painted rats, but a pair of plain black jeans, and a leather jacket over a white tee. His hair was hanging loose, Alice in Wonderland style, down on his shoulders.

Briefly she wondered what she had on, hoped it was better than her soccer shirt and Old Navy jeans, knew it wasn't, and houghed through her nose like a horse.

“You been here long?” he asked.

“Long enough,” she said.

“It's sure quiet in this town,” he said, then ran his fingers along the guitar's neck, just playing a scale, but the notes shivered up and down Callie's spine as if his hand had wandered there by mistake.

“
Too
quiet,” Callie responded. She tried to say more, but it was as if her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Never at a loss for words, she was wordless now. She tried once more, forcing out the first word: “Rats!” And then it all came out in a rush. She told him everything: the missing trick-or-treaters, Gringras on the fire escape, the dancing rats. She even told him, though she blushed in the telling, what she'd overheard.