Wild Ride (20 page)

“Gus, you got the key for this?” Ethan called out. “If the stuff‘s in here, I'll get it.”

“Yeah. The chalice mold's up there. And the weapons. Hold on a minute.”

He slowly climbed the stairs, and Ethan winced with him as he climbed. No wonder Glenda didn't want him in here alone. Gus produced another iron key and opened the door and went in.

Ethan started to follow and then paused, sensing something. He turned on the landing and knelt, pulling his gun out and pointing it at the open door below. The door behind him swung shut with a click, Gus on the other side.

Down below, the man in black slid in the open door, holding a large, strange gun, like an oversized shotgun with a large round drum magazine.
He had hard black body armor on the upper body, goggles, and a mask over his mouth as he looked around the room, coming to stand directly beneath Ethan.

It wasn't demons, but it was something real he could fight.

Got you
, Ethan thought, and jumped.

 

W
hen the ambulance had taken Delpha away, Glenda said, “I have to talk to you,” and led Mab into Delpha's Airstream.

Mab's only two previous experiences of Airstreams had been Glenda's retro green-and-yellow barkcloth with red Formica, and Gus's camouflage with industrial shelving, but Delpha had taken trailer living to a new level. The walls were painted blue with tiny gold stars, the couch was purple velvet scattered with heavily embroidered velvet pillows, the tabletop was a huge cracked slab of malachite, and the crown molding was branches, twined around the living area for Frankie, who was roosting up there now, in a nest over the entry to the kitchen, where Delpha had hung a dark blue bead curtain. The place looked like a seraglio with an aviary.

She must have loved living here
, Mab thought, and stroked her fingers over the malachite. Even cracked, the table had to be worth thousands; it was beautifully made and very old, but then Delpha had been very old. Maybe she'd gotten it for a steal because it was cracked, at some secondhand shop back in the forties. Maybe . . .

I should have talked to her more
, Mab thought with real regret.
She knew so much, and I just ignored her.

Of course, she ignored everybody. She didn't do people; she did work. Suddenly, Joe made a lot more sense. Seize the moment, be happy,
connect—

“Sit down, Mab,” Glenda said, taking a seat on the velvet couch, and Mab sat down opposite her in a beautifully carved, wide-seated ebony chair, determined to listen this time. To connect, goddamn it.

“I'm so sorry about Delpha,” she said, leaning forward a little over the beautiful table. “I know how close you were. She really was an amazing woman—”

“Thank you,” Glenda said, red-eyed but calm. “She left you everything.”

Mab blinked at her, stunned.

“She wrote out a will, so we have that if anybody makes trouble, but nobody will.”

She left you everything.
The ebony chair, the malachite table, the Airstream,
a home—

“She told me last night before we went to catch Tura,” Glenda went on.

“She said that she wanted you to have everything, so I'm handing it over.”

“No, no,” Mab said, wanting it all and knowing it wasn't hers; everything she owned fit in two suitcases, that was best, no ties. . . . “It should go to you,” she said to Glenda. “I didn't even know her. You were her best friend.”

“I have everything I need. She knew that—”

“Glenda, this table alone is worth thousands of dollars—”

“—you would be called to succeed her.”

Mab blinked again. “Uh—”

“She had this all planned,” Glenda went on. “She cleaned the trailer out. The trash cans are full, and there's a box on her bed labeled ‘Goodwill.' ” Her face began to crumple, but then she got control of herself again. “She knew. She was a Seer. And she said the next Seer is you.”

Mab sat back as far as she could. Taking the trailer, staying in the park, surrounded by people—“I can't.”

“You have to.” Glenda was the one leaning forward now. “There's nobody else. She left you everything you need to take over for her, this trailer and its contents, like this malachite table. It wards off evil, you know.” She looked down at it sadly, running her finger along the crack in its surface. “This crack is new. Too much evil to ward off last night.”

“Maybe you didn't hear her right. You know, Delpha wasn't always clear when she said things.”

“It's the curse of the Oracle,” Glenda said. “They get obscure messages. Like ‘There will be a great victory.' ”

“Huh?” Mab said.

“This famous general asked an oracle once who would win the battle
he was going to fight, and the oracle said, ‘There will be a great victory,' and—”

“And the general assumed that meant him and he went out and got his ass kicked.”

“You know the story.”

“No, but it sounds like something a military guy would do,” Mab said, and then remembered Ethan was Glenda's son. “No offense.”

Glenda shook her head. “Besides the trailer, you get the Delpha's Oracle booth, a ten percent share in the park, and Frankie.”

Mab looked up at the raven perched over the kitchen archway.

Frankie looked back down.

“I don't think so,” Mab said.

“You need Frankie,” Glenda said. “Once your power hits full strength—”

“Power?” Mab said, startled again.

“Well, of course, you get her sight, too.” Mab must have looked confused, because Glenda prompted her. “Her visions.” Mab still frowned, so Glenda said, “Oh, for heaven's sake, you're the one who painted the Oracle booth. Did you miss the sign that said ‘Psychic'?”

“No,” Mab said. “But I didn't miss the sign that said ‘OK Corral,' either, and I don't think those are real cowboys. Look, Glenda—”

“She had real powers, and now they're yours. You're the Oracle now. And . . .” Glenda began speaking very slowly. “You're part of the Guardia now, too. The Guardia is—”

“A bunch of people who fight demons,” Mab said. “No, I can't.”

For the first time since Mab had come into the trailer, Glenda looked at a loss for words.

“Nothing personal,” Mab said. “It's just not something I'd be good at. As I told Delpha, I'm not a joiner. People . . . I don't do people. So this inheritance should go to whoever does join—”

“You don't understand,” Glenda said. “The Guardia isn't a club, it's the world's only defense against the worst demons. Demons are
real
, Mab—”

“I know. I was possessed by one last night.” Mab wrapped her arms around herself, remembering all that murderous blue-green pressing down on her heart.

“Tura possessed you?” Glenda said, definitely off balance now.

“Tried to kill me.” Mab shook her head, back on safer ground now. Reality was demons who tried to kill you, not supernatural powers. “Dumb bitch said I was cheating on the guy with the glasses in the Dream Cream. Where she got the idea that he and I ever said boo to each other, I don't know. I don't even know his name. So go, Guardia—that's what I say. Just not with me.”

“We can't.” Glenda looked upset now. “We need all five to capture, and you're refusing. If you're not with us, the demons win.”

That was annoying, a flashback to her mother, threatening her with demons. “Why do you sound like the Department of Homeland Security?”

“Because we are, in a way.” Glenda leaned forward, intense. “The five demons here are special, the Untouchables, they can't be exorcised or cast out, so we guard them—”

“Wait a minute,
five
?”

“Kharos, Vanth, Selvans, Tura, and Fufluns.” Glenda smiled encouragingly. “They're imprisoned in wooden chalices that are locked in the five iron statues in the park with their keys kept in hard-to-get-to places. All we have to do is put them back in their chalices if they get out. You're our new Seer, so you'll see them, of course. Kharos is a red spirit, Vanth blue, Selvans orange, Tura blue-green, and Fufluns—”

Mab put up her hand. “Okay, hold it. I'm having problems with this because I'm not used to believing in demons, although I do now, of course, and five, that's not good news, but why in the name of god would you put all of them in the same place?”

Glenda opened her mouth and then closed it again.

“Why didn't you each take one and bury it in an ocean far from the others? What idiot thought it was a good idea to bring them here, all together, and lock them in
statues
, for Christ's sake? And then put the keys to the statues on rides? Was this person insane?”

“Possibly,” Glenda said, taken aback. “It was before my time. They have to be together because the Guardia have to be together to watch them and capture them if they escape. And it has to be here, because this is a place where our powers are the strongest. And—”

“You never questioned it? You just accepted that you were as trapped in this park as they are?”

“We're not trapped. That's what Young Fred says. Neither one of you understand, this is a
calling.
”

“I'm not accepting the call,” Mab said. “I've restored the park, there's nothing left for me here, and I'm not the kind of person who hunts things. You want an amusement park demon repainted, I'm your girl, but hunting them down? Me? Look at me. Do I strike you as anybody you'd send to beat somebody up? Look, I want to be
normal
. Or at least in a position where I can fake it—”

“You have to accept.” Glenda began to look put out. “You have no choice—”

“I always have a choice.” Mab stood up. “I really appreciate Delpha leaving me all of this—” She looked around. “—especially the mint vintage Airstream, which makes my heart beat faster, and I truly regret that I didn't spend time with her, talk with her more, she was an amazing woman, but I can't take her legacy. I'm not a Seer. I'm
normal.
”

“But, Mab . . .”

“No,” Mab said, “thank you, but no.”

She left the trailer trying to be calm but then she hit the midway and realized she was shaking. Nobody was going to make her weird again; sure as hell nobody was going to trap her here with demon talk. Yes, demons were real. But she was free—

She heard a caw, like a cheese grater on a fire escape, and looked up to see Frankie flying above her.

She stopped, looking up. “Okay, look, nothing personal, but—”

He swooped down and landed on the shoulder of her paint coat, digging his claws into the canvas enough to hold on but not enough to hurt, and she found herself looking into dark, bright, wise, dangerous eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment, and she could have sworn he was evaluating her.

“I don't think—” she began, and then he put his head against her cheek, his feathers softer than down, and she closed her eyes and stopped shaking and thought,
Mine
, and heard an echo,
Mine.

She didn't want a bird, but this one was hers.

“All right, I'll accept you, but not the rest of it,” she told him, and walked back to the Fortune-Telling Machine with him on her shoulder, wondering what had happened to her life and what the hell ravens ate.

 

T
he man in black tried bringing the gun up, but was too late; Ethan landed on top of him and they crashed to the floor. Ethan levered his forearm underneath the mask's mouthpiece, while he jammed hard with his knee into the guy's midsection, shoving the bulky gun out of arm's reach. That gave him the time to draw his own gun and push the muzzle into the man in black's right ear.

Which was a mistake. The man in black rolled, knocking the gun away with a forearm swipe and hitting Ethan in the center of the chest with an open-hand strike. Ethan winced as the bullet stabbed inside him but went with the blow, rolled, and came to his feet, hands at the ready for combat. He blocked a snap kick toward his midsection, followed by a spinning back-fist, giving ground until he was backed up against an old wooden statue. He feinted a punch to the head and then snapped a blow for the neck. It missed as the man in black stepped back and whipped out a short wand, pressed the base, and expanded the thing to a three-foot-long baton.

Ethan stopped. “Could we talk?”

The guy jabbed the baton toward his face, and he jerked back.

“That's not the appropriate way to wield a baton,” Ethan said as he backed up. “I'll show you how to use that if you—”

The man in black jabbed again for the face and Ethan ducked, rolled away, grabbed his pistol, and came to his feet, gun at the ready. “Drop the baton.”

The man in black hesitated, then dropped it to the ground with a clatter.

“Thank you. Take your goggles and mask off.”

The man in black took a step toward him. “You won't shoot me.” The voice was a whisper.

Ethan shrugged. “I'm in a bad mood. Too many people hitting me in the chest.”

“You won't.” The man in black took another step closer. “That's not who you are.”

“Sure it is.” Ethan pulled the trigger. The round hit center of mass into the body armor, and the man in black let out a surprised yell as he slammed back to the ground.

Ethan walked forward, put his knee right where the round was embedded, and ripped off the goggles.

And stared right into Weaver's electric green eyes.

“Oh, crap,” Ethan said.

 

W
hen they got to the Fortune-Telling Machine, Frankie flew up to sit on the peaked roof, and Mab peered through the dusty glass to see if there was a demon loose in there. She was not joining the Guardia, she was not going to mortgage the rest of her life to a bunch of crazy people and demons, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to be careful. There was too much dirt to really see anything, so she gave up and went around to the back, trying to remember what Joe had told her about opening it. Something about pushing and lifting . . .