The Magic Kingdom of Landover , Volume 1 (121 page)

She had not told Ben. She did not intend to. Ben had enough to concern him, and there was nothing he could do for her, in any case. Besides, she had known the risk when she had decided to come with him. Any fault was her own.

She breathed the close air of the castle, nauseated by its taste and smell. Her skin was pale and damp with perspiration. She forced herself from her hiding place and continued swiftly on. She was on the second floor and close to where she needed to go now. She could sense it. She must hurry, though. Ben could give her only a few minutes.

She reached a single door at the bend in the hall and pressed her ear against it, listening. There was breathing within.

It was the little girl, Elizabeth.

She placed her hand on the latch. It was for this reason that they had come to Graum Wythe at night—so that they could be certain the little girl would be there.

She pressed down on the latch until it gave, pushed the door open, and slipped inside. Elizabeth was in her nightdress, propped up in her bed on one elbow, reading a book. She started when Willow appeared, her eyes going wide.

“Who are you?” she breathed. “Oh! You’re all green!”

Willow smiled, closed the door behind her, and held a finger to her lips. “Shhh, Elizabeth. It is all right. My name is Willow. I am a friend of Abernathy’s.”

Elizabeth sat bolt upright in the bed. “Abernathy? You are?” She pushed the covers back and scrambled out of the bed. “Are you a fairy? A fairy princess, maybe? You look like one, you’re so beautiful! Can you do magic? Can you …

Willow moved her finger to the little girl’s lips. “Shhhhh,” she repeated softly. “We do not have much time.”

Elizabeth frowned. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong? Oh, I bet you don’t know! Abernathy’s gone! He’s not here anymore! Michel had him locked in a cage in the cellars, but I sneaked him out and sent him …”

“Elizabeth,” Willow interrupted gently. She knelt down next to the little girl and took her hands. “I have to tell you something. I am afraid Abernathy did not escape after all. Michel found him and brought him back.”

“Oh, poor Abernathy!” Elizabeth’s face tightened into a knot of anguish. “Michel will hurt him, I know he will! He was starving to death when I helped him escape! Now Michel will really hurt him. That’s how he is! He’ll really hurt him!”

Willow turned her toward the bed and sat with her on its edge. “We have to find another way to help him escape from here, Elizabeth,” she said. “Is there anyone you can think of who could help us?”

Elizabeth looked doubtful. “My father, maybe. But he’s gone.”

“When does you father return?”

“Next week, Wednesday.” Elizabeth’s face knotted further. “It’s not soon enough, is it, Willow? Michel was looking funny at me at dinner tonight—as if he knew something. He kept talking about dogs, and then he would smile, a mean smile. He knows I helped, I’ll bet. He’s just teasing me with it. He’s going to hurt Abernathy, isn’t he?”

Willow squeezed the small hands. “We will not let him. I have friends with me. We are going to take Abernathy away.”

“You are?” Elizabeth was immediately excited. “Maybe I can help!”

Willow shook her head firmly. “Not this time.”

“But I want to help!” Elizabeth said firmly. “Michel already knows I helped once, so I can’t be in any worse trouble! Maybe you can take me, too! I don’t want to stay here anymore!”

Willow frowned slightly. “Elizabeth, I …”

“Michel’s already said I can’t leave my room! I have to stay up here all the time until he says different. He has to know! Tomorrow is Halloween, and I don’t even get to go trick-or-treating! I practically had to beg to get permission to go to the school party tomorrow night. I even had to get Nita Coles to
get her parents to call up and offer me a ride! With my dad gone, Michel wasn’t going to let me go. But I told him everyone would wonder if I wasn’t at the party because the whole school was going—so he gave in.” She was crying. “I guess going to the party doesn’t matter much now, not with Abernathy locked up again. Oh, I thought he was safe!”

Suddenly she stopped crying and her head jerked up sharply. “Willow, I know a way to get Abernathy out! If Michel’s got him locked up again in the cellar, I know how to get him out!”

Willow touched the little girl’s tear-streaked face. “How, Elizabeth?”

“The same way I got him out before—through the passageway in the wall! Michel doesn’t know about that yet! I know because I was in it again after Abernathy got away, and it wasn’t closed off or anything! And I could get a key to those cages again if I had to—I know I could!” She was excited now, her breathing rapid, her face flushed. “Willow, we could get him out tonight!”

For just an instant, Willow considered it. Then she shook her head. “No, Elizabeth, not tonight. Soon, though. And perhaps you can help. In fact, you already have. You have told me of a way to reach Abernathy. That was one reason I came to you—to see if there was a way. But we must be very careful, Elizabeth. We must not make any mistakes. Do you understand?”

Elizabeth was crestfallen, but managed a grudging nod.

Willow tried a wan smile. She had already stayed beyond her allotted time and she was growing dangerously weak from the effort. “You must not say anything about seeing me, Elizabeth. You must pretend I never came. You must act as if you know nothing about Abernathy. Can you do that?”

The little girl nodded. “I can pretend better than anyone.”

“Good.” Willow rose and started for the door, one of Elizabeth’s hands still clinging to her. She turned. “Be patient, Elizabeth. We all want Abernathy safe again. Perhaps tomorrow …”

“I love Abernathy,” Elizabeth said suddenly.

Willow turned, looked at the little girl’s face, and then hugged her close. “I do, too, Elizabeth.”

They held each other for a long time.

T
wenty-five million dollars is a lot of money, Mr. Squires,” Michel Ard Rhi was saying.

Ben smiled. “We try not to put limits on the price of our research, Mr. Ard Rhi.”

Still seated in the stuffed leather chairs, they studied each other in the silence and shadows of the study. No sound reached them from without.

“The subject of our discussion would have to be in good condition, of course,” Ben repeated. “A damaged specimen would be useless.”

The other said nothing.

“I would need to make an inspection.”

Still nothing.

“I would need assurances that Abernathy …”

“There is no Abernathy, Mr. Squires—remember?” Michel Ard Rhi said suddenly. Ben waited. “Even if there were … I would have to think about your offer.”

Ben nodded. He had expected that. It was too much to hope that he would have a chance to see Abernathy right away. “Perhaps if I were to arrange to stay a bit longer than planned, Mr. Ard Rhi, we might continue this discussion tomorrow?”

The other man shrugged. He touched something beneath the table beside him and rose. “I will decide the time and the place of any future meetings, Mr. Squires. Is that understood?”

Ben smiled companionably. “As long as it’s soon, Mr. Ard Rhi.”

Surprisingly, Michel Ard Rhi smiled back. “Let me give you some advice, Mr. Squires,” he said, coming forward a few paces. “You should be more careful with your demands. This is a place of some danger, you know. That is its history. People have disappeared in these walls. They were never seen again. There is magic here—some of it very bad.”

Ben was suddenly cold. He knows, he thought in horror.

“A life or two snuffed out, what does it matter? Even important lives—like your own—can be swallowed up and disappear. The magic does that, Mr. Squires. It simply swallows you up.”

Ben heard the door behind him open.

“Be careful after this,” the other warned softly, eyes hard with the promise that the threat was real. “I don’t like you.”

The doorman stepped into view and Michel Ard Rhi turned abruptly away. Ben walked quickly from the study, daring to breathe again, feeling the chill in his spine begin to fade. He passed back down the empty corridor to the front entry and went out, the doorman showing the way. As he stepped into the night, he thought he felt something brush against him. He looked but there was nothing there.

The door closed behind him. Miles was standing by the rear door, holding it open. Ben climbed into the car and sat back wordlessly. He watched Miles walk around the rear of the limo to the driver’s door. The trunk was already closed. There was no sign of Willow.

“Willow?” he whispered urgently.

“I’m here, Ben,” she replied, a disembodied voice from out of the pool of shadows at his feet, so close to him that he jumped.

Miles got in and started the car. Within minutes they were back through the portcullis, over the drawbridge, up the winding roadway, and out the iron
gates. Willow sat up in the seat then next to Ben and related everything Elizabeth had told her. When she was finished, no one said anything for a time. The car’s engine hummed in the silence as they passed back out onto 522 and turned south toward Woodinville.

When Miles turned up the heater, no one complained.

SNATCH

O
ctober 31 was a gray, cloudy, drizzly day where the wind blew in sharp gusts, and the rain spit and chilled the air, as the whole western half of Washington State experienced a forewarning of winter’s coming. It was a gloomy day of shadows and strange sounds, the kind of day when people think about curling up next to a warm fire with a glass of something hot and a good book. It was a day when they found themselves listening to the sounds of the weather and to things that weren’t even there. It was, in short, a perfect day for an Allhallows Eve.

Elizabeth was eating lunch in the school cafeteria when she got the message that a telephone call from home was waiting for her in the office. She hurried to get it, leaving Nita Coles to guard her double-chocolate-chip cookie; when she returned, she was so excited she didn’t bother to eat it. Later, when they were at recess, she told Nita that she didn’t need a ride to the Halloween party that night after all—although she might need one home. Nita said okay and told Elizabeth she thought she was acting weird.

Ben Holiday spent the better part of that blustery day south of Woodinville and Bothell in greater Seattle visiting costume shops. It took him a long time to find the costume he was looking for. Even then, he had to spend several hours afterward, back in the motel room, altering its appearance until it met with his approval.

Willow spent the day in bed, resting. She was growing steadily weaker and she was having trouble breathing. She tried to hide it from Ben, but it wasn’t something she could hide. He was good about it, though, not saying anything, letting her sleep, forcing himself to concentrate on his preparations for that night. She saw that and loved him the more for it.

Miles Bennett visited several private airports until he found one with a suitable plane and pilot that could be chartered for a flight out that night. He
told the pilot that there would be four of them and they would be flying to Virginia.

They all went about their business, right along with the rest of the world, but for them, it seemed, Friday was an endless wait …