Tracked by Terror (7 page)

As a disgruntled-looking Augustus turned and left the dressing room, Junius roughly shoved Jarvey backward into a chair. “Now, my fine young fellow, you owe us a considerably detailed explanation. Who are you, and what have you done? Why have you brought the Grimoire here? Don't you realize how very dangerous that is?”

“I know,” Jarvey said through clenched teeth. “It can destroy this crazy world you've built.”

“Look at me!”

Jarvey found himself unable to resist the stern order. Junius stared into Jarvey's eyes, frowning. “I see. You are actually one of us. You fit the old rhyme so exactly, midnight eyes, hair like rusty gold. What is your name, boy?”

“I'm a Midion,” Jarvey said. No use in hiding that.

“Midion is an ancient and fearsome name. How do you come to have the Grimoire?”

“I got it from the man who was writing the latest chapter,” Jarvey growled. “I've had it for a long time now.”

“Ah. The latest in the line of sorcerers to hold the book, and yet you are so young. What year do you come from, back on the dear departed Earth?”

Jarvey returned his stare with as much defiance as he could muster. “I left Earth about a hundred and seventy years after you did,” he said.

“So long after my own time! Dear me. I'm sure the cultured world of your age still remembers the famous Midion Theatrical Family. And tell me now, what world were you building when you blundered into mine? That's quite against our family rules, you know, one sorcerer interfering with another's paradise.”

“I wasn't building any old world,” Jarvey said. “I was trying to get out, not in.”

Junius frowned. “You need not lie to me. A Midion has but one use for the Grimoire, and that is to create the world of his delight. For me and my family, that world is the theater, with all its divine illusion and rewards. For my younger brother, it was to be a world of hunting and stalking. One of my remote ancestors even created a frozen world of human statues, where no one at all lived and moved but he. To each his own, you see. Now, you—”

“Father!”

Junius whirled on his heel as Augustus appeared in the doorway. “What's happened now?”

“She's gone.”

“What? Impossible. She was unconscious...” Junius turned back to Jarvey. “Or did she exist at all, I wonder? Was the girl real or a phantasm?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

Junius stood back, with one hand almost caressing the cover of the Grimoire, and began to chant something softly. A column of air beside him shimmered, grew misty, and then began to take on the vague outlines of a human shape. At first a milky white skeleton, then a blur of hair, flesh, and clothing, and—Jarvey could not help shivering—a duplicate of the vanished Katrina, but a Katrina undecayed and in the full bloom of youth and beauty, had shimmered into existence.

“Katrina Four,” Junius said. “My dear, you are to play the role of lady's maid to the countess. Your first line is in Act Two, Scene One. The cue is ‘Pack all my trunks.' ”

“Oh, dear, m'um, I shall never be able to survive a long sea voyage,” the woman said. “Already I feel the stirring of seasickness.”

“Phantasms are very practical as secondary characters, you see,” Junius remarked with a smirk. “None of that tedious memorizing of lines needed. Katrina, my dear, somewhere in the auditorium is a young woman. Go out and find her and kill her, if you please.”

Katrina curtsied and glided toward the door.

“No! Don't!” Jarvey yelled, leaping up.

The hard tip of Junius's cane caught him in the chest and pushed him down into his chair again. “So your friend is not a phantasm, then, but real. Very good. Katrina, forget what I told you. Go find her, and when you find her, seize her and call for me. Mind you do not step onto the stage alone! That is fatal.”

“Yes, Mr. Midion.”

“Augustus, take our kinsman to our rooms and let your mother and sister know he is quite dangerous. He is not to be trusted, and I want them to keep a close eye on him. I will hold the book here.”

“Come on, you,” Augustus said, grabbing Jarvey's arm. “Oh, I say! He's all damp and nasty, Father.”

“Take him along. He will dry in time.”

With the bigger and stronger Augustus behind him, Jarvey found himself stumbling down the hallway that led first to the Midions' apartment, then to the door leading out to the garden. His mind whirled. How could he escape? He couldn't overpower Augustus, and even if he did, he couldn't run this way. They'd trap him for sure in the garden, and hiding out in the apartment was crazy.

“Here,” Augustus said, thrusting Jarvey through the apartment door. “Mother! Honoria! Look here. I was right after all!”

“And your father was wrong,” Jarvey said.

Augustus thumped him in the back. “Shut it, you.”

Sarah and Honoria Midion came in, looking shocked. “Oh, my,” Sarah said, pacing around Jarvey, but keeping a careful distance. “Is he real?”

Honoria stayed well back and crossed her arms as she made a grimace of disgust. “He looks like a drowned rat,” she said with a sniff

“Sit here, boy, and dry a little.” Sarah pointed toward the fireplace, and with a flash and a whumping sound, a crackling fire sprang magically to life. Jarvey huddled in front of it, grateful for the warmth but wondering what had happened to Betsy.

“You were right about what you said to your father in the garden too,” Jarvey muttered again to Augustus. “You're all rotten actors.”

Honoria's face flushed. “What did you say, you horrid little beast?”

“It's true,” Jarvey insisted. “Augustus knows it's true. Nobody liked your old plays, and they thought you were about the worst actors in the world!”

“Child, you are speaking without knowledge,” Sarah Midion said, her face pinched with disapproval. She made a grand, sweeping gesture. “We performed in London and Paris! In England, we toured all through the country, and—”

“I know about your performances,” Jarvey said. “Augustus does too. He told your husband that his plays were no good, that the people laughed at the tragedies and—”

“What do common people know of art?” Honoria demanded. “Mother, make this dreadful child be still.”

“Please do be silent,” Sarah said to Jarvey. “Or else I shall have to do things to you that you would not much care for, my dear.”

Jarvey shivered at the smooth, calm threat in her tone. Sarah Midion was a Midion only by marriage, and she sounded very soft and motherly, but the look in her eyes was ferocious and deadly. He glanced at Augustus, who stood leaning on the mantel, his face closed and brooding. Jarvey thought that Augustus even looked as if he were onstage, playing the part of an angry young man.

The minutes crawled past. Finally Junius Midion entered the room, the Grimoire in his hands. “Your little friend is quite clever,” he growled. “But we are clever here too, as you shall learn. Perhaps she thinks she can hide from me. She is deceived. My boy, you may be a Midion, but your magic is certainly no match for my own.”

“Father,” said Augustus suddenly, “why can't we use the Grimoire?”

“To do what?” Junius asked. “To find one urchin of a pestilential girl? That would be like using a cannon to kill a mosquito, my boy. No, no, I will simply call up our audience, and they will scour every inch of the theater. She cannot hide forever.”

“I didn't mean use the Grimoire to find the girl,” Augustus said. “Let's use it to get out of this.”

His father stared at him. “To get out of what, Augustus?”

“This world!” Augustus snapped. “You may like performing in play after play forever, but you're the star, you're always the star! And none of it is real, Father! I'm a Midion too. I want a world where I can—”

“Impossible,” Junius hissed. “You have no idea what you're asking, Augustus. Do you really want to go back to a world of fools and dunces who don't appreciate you, who have no conception of the noble art of the theater?”

“You never asked me if I wanted to be in the theater in the first place,” grumbled Augustus. “Yes, I remember what it was like being cold and hungry because the theater owner closed our show after one performance. I remember traveling through the mud and mire to get from one dirty little town to the next. I even remember what it felt like when the audience pelted us with rotten tomatoes and old cabbages!”

“Augustus!” his mother said.

A wild look had sprung into Junius's eyes. “None of that matters! None of that is real here! This is our world. Augustus, if there is something you do not like, we can change it freely here. There are no fools about to interfere or to stop us. None except this one.”

Jarvey swallowed as Junius Midion spun and pointed his finger right into Jarvey's face. The family was ready to go for each other's throats, he realized. Maybe they had been making believe too long, with no one real around them. After nearly two hundred years of the same thing day after day, they just might be tired of each other's company. And if he could goad them, maybe they would turn on each other, not on him. “Augustus knows the truth,” he croaked. “This is all just make-believe. None of it is real.”

“You're wrong, young Midion,” Junius said, his lips nearly white with anger. “My world is very real. As real as life and as real as ... death.” His finger stabbed again.

Jarvey screeched as his stomach felt as though it had exploded into fire. He had never felt such pain. He pitched forward from the chair and slammed into the floor, not even registering the impact. He was like a bug on a hot skillet, fire was consuming him ...

Then it passed, and he lay gasping on the floor. “Just a small sample of how real pain can be here, in this imaginary world of mine,” Junius told him. “We have two problems now. One is your blighted playmate, who got away from my foolish son. The other is the Grimoire. It should not be in this world, but back on Earth. If it were accidentally opened here to the right passage, our whole world would be swept out of existence. However, if we send it back to Earth, even if it should be destroyed on Earth, our world would be safe forever. I think once we find the girl, we can solve both problems at once. I shall send you back to Earth with the Grimoire. But perhaps I shall send you to Earth as it was ten million years ago. That should keep you and the book safe. I do not think you have enough magic in you to overcome so huge a gap in time.”

“But he might,” said his wife.

“Not,” Junius replied with a smile, “if I take away his mouth, his ears, and his eyes before I send him on his last journey. Not then, I fancy.”

 

Jarvey could not sleep that night. The Midions threw him into a small room and tossed in some blankets, but sleep was impossible. He worked at the door, but although it seemed to have no lock at all, Junius had enchanted it and it would not open. It had become only a painted illusion of a door, like part of a stage set, and not a real door at all.

The room gave him nothing to work with, no tools for escape. It was hardly more than a closet, with shelves of shoes and hats lining three of the walls. One of those uncanny candles emitted a little feeble light. Jarvey clenched his hands. If he had his way, he thought, the evil magicians like Junius would all be banished from the pages of the Grimoire. If he ever mastered the art of magic, he could use the book for good, not evil.

He could destroy all the chapters created by the evil magicians of the past. Then he could re-create his own world, and his parents would live there, happy and rich. And he would be the best baseball player in the world, he'd win game after game. And there would be no one, no one at all, with hateful or angry feelings, because if there were, he'd banish them forever.

Jarvey crouched in a corner and lost himself in fantasies of magic and revenge. If only ...

If only he could get his hands on the Grimoire.

He took a deep breath. Zoroaster had warned him about this. The Grimoire could corrupt a Midion, could make him believe that he was only acting for the best—but the evil book would trap its user in the end. No, there had to be some other way.

Hours passed before the door opened and Augustus kicked his shin. “Come on, you. Father wants you in the theater.” The older boy reached in, grabbed his shoulder, and hauled him to his feet.

Jarvey hadn't eaten in a long time, but Augustus let him pause only for a quick drink of water. He felt sweaty and dirty as Augustus prodded him down the hall and into the wings of the theater. Junius stood on a bare stage there, the sailing-ship set gone. The only piece of furniture remaining was a tall kind of desk or book stand, and on top of it lay the closed Grimoire, its reddish-brown cover gleaming dully in the stage lights.

Jarvey heard a muted sound of low voices, and squinting against the light streaming down onto the stage, he saw a shadowy crowd in the seats: the audience. “We shall find her, you know,” Junius said casually to Jarvey. “She must be here somewhere. You could save us so much time by calling her to come out from hiding.”

Jarvey balled his fists and stared sullenly at the floor.

He heard Junius sigh dramatically. “No? Very well, then, it is up to the patrons of the theater.”

He raised his voice: “My friends! We have here in our midst this young man. He has lost his dear friend, a young lady with red hair, clothed in gray and white. This will be an exciting game of theatrical hide-and-seek! My friends, you are to explore this theater and find that girl and bring her to me now!”

The audience stirred, rising from the seats, trudging through the auditorium. Junius turned to Jarvey. “And if they do not find her in thirty minutes' time,” he said softly and almost pleasantly, “I shall begin to maim you, my boy, very slowly, with much pain, here on the stage. Your screams of anguish will bring her out, I believe. Then we shall have our little farewell party for you two.”