Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels) (13 page)

“One more thing,” Mel said, shutting the door for privacy. “First, I want to say how proud of you I am.”

“Me?” I almost squeaked.

She smiled. “You. In the past couple of months you’ve really grown. Matured. You’ve never backed down from trouble, but this time you’re facing it in a way you never have before. Carefully and thoughtfully.”

“I think you just said that I have had a habit of going off half-cocked,” I said, scrunching my nose.

She smiled, giving me a little shrug. “You are smart and have a good heart, but too often you don’t think through your decisions. You also have a habit of doing things on your own. I’m pleased you finally understand you’re not alone, and that this family stands together.”

I swallowed, confessing my fear. “What if something happens to one of you? Because I dragged you into—”

“Stop.” She put a finger over my lips. “Did you put your life on the line for Josh?”

I nodded.

“How would you have felt if you didn’t try and Josh ended up a Sparkle-Dust wraith or dead?”

She didn’t let me answer.

“Nothing could have stopped you. You had to try. All of us do. Because we love one another and we wouldn’t be able to bear letting each other down. If anything happens to one of us, remember that and don’t blame yourself. Each of us are doing this because we want to.”

Emotion knotted in my throat, and I hugged her. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, how much she meant to me, how grateful I was to her for always being there, like a rock under my feet. I couldn’t find the words.

She hugged me back. “I know,” she said against my ear. “I love you, too.”

That’s the nice thing about Mel being a reader. She always knew how I felt.

Chapter 10

I DIDN’T THINK I’d sleep, but I must’ve have passed out almost immediately. For a while I slept heavily. Once the worst of my exhaustion was gone, I started having nightmares of Price reaching out to me, begging for help. I tried to grab hold of him, but I couldn’t. He kept calling my name, and his face broke into pieces like a bad Picasso painting. Then the nightmare started all over.

Taylor woke me. The overhead light made me blink as it came on, and she shook my shoulder.

“Up and at ’em,” she said.

I groaned and sat up. The blankets were knotted around my legs, and I’d knocked the pillows to the floor. My eyelids felt sticky and dry when I tried to blink. My entire body ached.

“Here. This will help,” Taylor said, offering me a cup of coffee. She’d mixed in a healthy dose of cream and sugar.

I sipped, closing my eyes as the nectar of the gods warmed my insides. “I needed that.” I glanced at my curtained windows as the coffee got the blood circulating to my brain. “What time is it?”

Taylor returned, handing me a glass of water and aspirin. “It’s just about three. Just got the coordinates from Jamie. Get dressed, we’ll eat, and then be on our way.”

Urgency zinged through me like an electric charge. My nightmare spun through my head. What had happened to Price in those hours? I must have looked as scared as I felt. Taylor sat down and put her arm around me, saying nothing. Stillness wrapped her in quiet folds. It wasn’t calmness. Everything about her radiated coiled readiness, but overlaid with a shell of steady patience. This is what made her a good pilot, I realized. She kept a cool head. Not always. Not when the love of her life had been brutally kidnapped. Now she was steady as a rock.

I leaned into her, gathering myself, pushing away my fear. The best thing to do was to get moving. I pulled away and got up, heading for the bathroom to pee and wash my face. When I returned, I pulled on my clothes laced on a pair of boots.

On top of the dresser was the gun Touray had given me. I pushed it into my rear waistband. I stashed my phone in my front pocket and turned back to Taylor. She was wearing tactical gear—black pants and a long-sleeved shirt, both with pockets and fittings for optimal movement, storage, and protection. She’d braided her hair tight to her head. Leather boots completed her outfit. All of her clothing looked creased and well-used. Familiar.

I could hardly believe this woman was the same sister who kept a house that could grace the pages of
House Beautiful
. Ordinarily she dressed in designer clothes and shuddered when a nail broke. How could both sides of her coexist in the same body? I’d have thought she’d explode, like mixing vinegar and baking soda. Or maybe marrying a Hatfield to a McCoy.

“What?” she asked when she caught me staring at her.

“I just haven’t seen this side of you,” I said. “We never saw any pictures from your war years, and you don’t talk about it. When you do, you don’t say much.”

She rolled her eyes. “I like nice stuff. And a good mani-pedi. Sue me. Besides, it helps with cultivating the Diamond City upper crust. They don’t want a foul-mouthed, ex-private-military pilot with all the manners of a goat stinking up their excursions. They want class. I give it to them. They don’t care that I can dig around in an engine and fix it; they don’t care that I can do a strafing run at a hundred feet. They want Grace Kelly touring them around in the sky. For that, they pay through the nose. As for the war stories—” She shrugged, a haunted look flickering over her face. “Not much to tell.”

That was a lie, and we both knew it. But if she didn’t want to talk about it, I wasn’t going to push.

“I hate that you’re going to lose your business.”

“I was getting bored, anyway.”

“Right.”

“You’re more important to me than any business. End of discussion.”

Emotion welled up in me. For all that my dad had fucked with my mind, for all that I didn’t know if anything about my childhood was true, one thing was certain: my sister and my adopted family loved me. Far more than was reasonable, even.

I reached out and gripped her hand and let it go. It wasn’t much of a thank-you, but for the moment, it was the best I could do.

We stopped in the dining room to have an early dinner of roast beef, baked potatoes, roasted vegetables, Waldorf salad, and cherry pie. And coffee. I ate like a starving coyote. I didn’t know how long it would be before I got my next meal, and the food was delicious. Mel didn’t join us. When I asked, Taylor explained she’d been taking care of some personal business. I translated that to mean Mel was preparing not to be able to return home. Suddenly the food in my stomach hardened into rock. I pushed back, downing the rest of my cooled coffee and standing.

“Ready?”

“I’ve just been waiting on you to stop shoveling food,” Taylor said. “You eat like a horse.”

“You weren’t exactly picking at your meal,” I pointed out.

“Still finished faster than you.”

“Didn’t know it was a race,” I muttered as we made our way into Mel’s basement. One of them, anyhow. From there we went into the wine cellar and through a hidden door in the back. It was keyed to members of the family. My dad, too, I thought, since he’d had to have used one of the doors in his escape. The idea that he could come and go at will irritated me.

“Has he been in the house before? Since he left ten years ago? Has he been spying on us?” I wondered aloud.

“I doubt he cared enough for that,” Taylor said, not having to ask who
he
was.

“He sure as hell seems to care now.”

“About you, maybe. The rest of us can suck eggs.”

I could hear the brittleness beneath the scorn in her voice. “You’re better off.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. He’s fucked up. Never should have been allowed to have kids.”

Since I had nothing to add to that, I let the subject drop.

On the other side of the wine cellar, we went through a long straight tunnel. Lights flickered alive as we opened the door. The walls were rough, but it was dry. The mineral smell of being underground made me cringe. I’d managed to get through going down into the basement without hyperventilating. The wine cellar was still big enough that I didn’t break out in hives. But now the walls closed in. My skin went cold, and tremors ran through my muscles. I clamped my teeth tight together to keep them from chattering and wrapped my arms around my stomach. My shoulder scraped against stone, and I flinched away, only to stumble into the opposite wall. I clenched all of my muscles and then forced them to relax, breathing deeply.

“Stupid, stupid fear,” I muttered as I managed to start walking again.

“Haven’t gotten over that yet?” Taylor asked cheerfully, striding along ahead of me. “Have you tried counseling? I wonder where it comes from, anyhow,” she said.

“If, by counseling, you mean stupidly going into small places with great regularity, then yes, I’m counseling the hell out of myself. It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s a phobia. It just is.”

She gave a little shrug. “Sure.”

“What? You think something caused it?”

“Maybe.”

I frowned. “Like Dad?”

“Who knows?”

It sounded ridiculous, but my father had deliberately made me paranoid about trusting people. He’d gone so far that his little tinkerings in my head had sent me rocketing into a sort of fugue state when I tried to reveal that I’d discovered I could touch the trace realm. I’d gone so deep inside myself I might never have come out if not for my dreamer friend Cass fishing me back up. So it was entirely possible my claustrophobia
was
a special gift from him.

“God, I’m so tired of wondering where I leave off and Dad begins,” I said. “How am I supposed to know what’s real and what’s not anymore?”

Taylor didn’t answer. There was something about the quality of her silence that sent little prickles of worry through me. I grabbed her arm and turned her to face me. “What’s up?”

She licked her lower lip and her eyelids dropped to hood her expression. “Reality is overrated.”

My frown deepened. “What does that mean?”

She grimaced and pulled away. “It means that you aren’t the only one having trouble figuring out where reality stops and everything else begins.”

That’s when I realized what she was talking about. My stomach dropped. “Sparkle Dust? But Cass fixed what it did to you. You’re clear of it, aren’t you?”

“She did what she could.”

“You haven’t started using, have you?” The claustrophobia panic was nothing compared to the sudden terror of Taylor using Sparkle Dust, of thinking her fading into a wraith. Relief made my knees sag when she shook her head.

“I’m not using. I want to, but I’m not.” She made a little face. “I’m fine, really. I’ve had some weird dreams and nightmares, that’s all. Stuff that feels really real, you know? When you talked about trouble separating what’s real from what’s imagined, it hit me. But I’m good. Now, let’s go. Your boyfriend’s waiting.”

The mention of Price got me moving again. I wanted to ask more, but Taylor just waved away my questions.

We reached the end of the corridor. It simply stopped. While I made myself stand still and wait for her, Taylor crouched next to the left wall and ran her fingers upward until she found the spot she was looking for. It looked like an outcropping, but her hand passed through easily. Another bit of magic keyed to family blood. She tapped out a sequence with her fingers, then drew back. We waited a few seconds, and then the wall melted away. We stepped across into the small chamber beyond. I shuddered as the wall reformed solidly behind us.

“Only way out is through,” Taylor said, but sounded more sympathetic. “Can I help you?”

I shook my head, my teeth clamped together.

Before us sat a small car on rails that ribboned away into darkness. It was cigar shaped with single padded bucket seats. Both ends had levers, though the rear set controlled the speed and braking, depending on which direction the cart was running. All in all, it resembled a Disney ride. If Leo and Jamie built Disney rides.

Taylor climbed into the rear seat. I took the one in the front. There were five seats in total. I buckled the seat belt and gripped the arms tightly as I pushed myself back as hard as I could. The tunnel ahead was black. Taylor turned on the bright headlights. There were five. A string of small lights sprang to life along the top edge of the car, with more underneath the canopy to light the interior.

“Ready?” Taylor called. She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she released the brake. We shot forward like a bullet.

I gasped, my stomach twisting. We sped up a slight grade, and then the tracks plunged downward along a corkscrew pathway, taking us from the Uptown level all the way to the Downtown level in a matter of a few seconds. The rails and wheels were spelled, so there was no danger of jumping the tracks. Taylor would have done a precheck of the alert system that would have warned of any debris on the tracks or any other obstacles.

Just below the Midtown shelf, we flattened into a long wide curve without slowing down. I knew we were nearing my house when the car abruptly hooked and turned back, then dropped down a steep slide before rising up an even higher hill. Luckily, magic made sure we made it to the top, just as magic would guarantee an equally swift return back to Mel’s. Not that we were going back there.

My heart pounded as we came to a rest in a chamber nearly identical to that we’d just left. Taylor set the brake and shut down the lights. I unbuckled and hopped out, then leaned against the side of the car as the ground shifted and rolled beneath me. I breathed deeply, trying to calm my pounding heart. I’d sweated enough to soak my tee shirt beneath my hoodie. Thank goodness for deodorant. I never used the cigar car unless I had to, which was more often than not, since traveling the subway up to Mel’s would have been just as bad. Worse, really, since I was underground longer.

“Come on. We’re wasting time.”

Taylor hooked me under my right arm and pushed me to the wall. She opened the passage and closed it again. On the other side was a set of steep rock stairs leading straight up. I grabbed the rail and went ahead. The passage was tight. I kept my eyes on the steps and tried not to notice how low the ceiling was or how the walls leaned inward.

At the top, I fumbled with the lock and opened it. The wall pivoted with part of the floor. The other side was my basement. Taylor swung the door back around, securing it behind us.

“Nice,” she said, glancing around. Mostly the place was dusty. I kept a collection of potential null-making material on the racks down the opposite wall. Other than that, it was bare. “Love the decorations.”

“It’s a basement,” I said.

“I’m sure the upstairs is much better.”

By her standards, it wasn’t. I didn’t say so. No point in stating the obvious.

The basement wasn’t much more than a ten-by-ten space, and given how little I liked being underground and in tight spaces, Taylor ought to have been surprised that I used it for anything at all. I hurried up the steps and escaped into my kitchen, heaving a huge sigh as I did.

My house, if you could call it that, had been custom built for me by Leo and Jamie and some good old-fashioned muscle.

A couple hundred years ago, a fellow by the name of Frank Karnickey had located an incredibly lucrative diamond mine in a narrow snaking canyon on the north side of the Downtown shelf. He’d built a compound to protect it. The area rapidly expanded into a warren of ramshackle buildings for his miners and their families, which came to be known as the Karnickey Burrows. With the towering trees on the heights and the steep walls of the canyon, it had been a gloomy place, but inside the buildings it was comfortable and cozy enough, especially since Karnickey provided the housing for free.