Chapter Twenty-Six

Somewhere in the human mind there is a door that leads to all the things we refuse to accept as true. An entire life may be lived without opening this door, and most lives are. With it safely shut we can ignore the more uncomfortable facts of our existence, but once it is open, it will not be closed again, and a thousand more doors may await the daring of the traveler that has begun to hunger for their secrets.

To most people, Li was invisible because they refused to see him. Their own inner doors remained tightly sealed, perhaps by birth or by unconscious choice; but shut all the same. The world is neatly mysterious for these people, inexplicable. It is a simpler, safer method of existence, enviable except that in it, there are no unicorns.

Being associated with Li, a part of his unnoticeability surrounded me as well. If I watched carefully, I could see people’s eyes sliding around us, or looking past unfocused. If I had made a nuisance of myself then I’m sure I could have drawn attention despite this effect, but as it stood, I wended my way to the room that had been my dad’s without having to answer any questions. Li was right behind me.

“Remember,” he said, “if you find a sigil, or anything remotely resembling a sigil, call for me. And don’t touch it.”

“Absolutely.” I gave the unoccupied beds a once over. We were looking for a message. Under the Wizards Council was an extremely loose association of magic users and their agents. Not everybody communicated with any regularity, so if the Council had been the ones to pick up my dad, they would have left behind a code for those who came after, whether they had intended to help or just out of curiosity.

Apparently, anything Milton did was a big attraction. If the story sifted around that he had put my dad to sleep, some wizards could be expected to make a pilgrimage solely for the opportunity to examine his enchantments.

If another party had taken my dad, they could exploit the same system to leave traps behind them for the Council, as well as any looky-loos; hence, the “don’t touch it” admonition. Like I would poke my finger into anything I saw that happened to be magical and shiny. No, thank you. I’ve met the Pard.

Early results were not promising. The walls and the windows looked bare to me. Li said I should be able to see the sigils, if not read them, due to my heritage. I wasn’t so sure, but he had no more luck than I did searching the bathroom.

It occurred to me that this would be an ideal time to recall the obscure way my dad used to leave me hidden notes, or how we had played a seemingly innocuous puzzle game that would reveal patterns all about the room. It was not to be. This wasn’t that story.

Damn The Da Vinci Code for getting my hopes up.

There was a knot of nerves in my chest that wouldn’t quit squirming, a sense of powerful anticipation. I wasn’t ready to invest myself yet in the idea that he really was alive. I wasn’t ready for the disappointment. I needed a sign, and even then it might not be really real until I saw him again. If we did find something, I would soon know the truth, but what if it was only an empty room after all?

“Excuse me,” came the voice of someone who did not, in fact, sound as if they needed to be excused. “What are you doing in here?”

I guess Li’s ghostliness wasn’t exactly foolproof.

It was a nurse, a brunette with a congenial face and a pink ribbon pin on the breast of her scrubs. It was the pin I recognized. I had seen her many times before Milton took me away. I hoped she recognized me.

“I’m looking for my dad.”

“Under the bed…?” She was genuinely fuddled. Although, I hadn’t been searching under the beds, I was just glancing . I had already looked everywhere else…

It was clear the moment my face registered.

“Oh!” She paused. “Honey, he left ages ago. I almost didn’t know who you were.” She looked confused again.

“I’ve been with my uncle,” I said truthfully, “in Nevada. They were estranged.”

“But,” she was transitioning into suspicious, though of what I can’t imagine, “no one told you your dad was out of his coma?”

I shook my head. “I just got back.”

She seemed to be about to ask a slightly sharper question, such as “Why didn’t you check with the desk before coming back here,” but Li interjected himself.

“Miss,” he said lightly, “could you tell us who checked him out, and whether they left any message for us?”

I could actually see the question, “Where the hell did you come from?” forming on her lips, and then I saw it melting as she looked into his violet eyes.

“No messages, no.” Her eyes crinkled as if over a puzzle. “His wife came to see him, first time I ever saw her here. But he woke right up, like a miracle. I’ve never seen anyone recover like he did.” She paused, becoming all the more absorbed in her memory over reality, almost mesmerized. “She was so beautiful,” the nurse whispered, trailing off. “So pretty…”

I could hear my heart pumping in my ears, trying to beat away the block of ice that had abruptly crystalized in my chest. His wife? My mother was the one who’d come for him? Had she been the one to kill him? No, there would be no point in waking him up if that was all she wanted. Not unless it was to torture him.

The nurse had closed her eyes, asleep on her feet, swaying by degrees.

“What…” I started to say, but Li wasn’t looking at the nurse. He was staring through the open door as tensely as a cornered animal, poised on the sheer edge between flight and attack.

“Go back to your duties, Ms. Louis. The room was as empty as you expected it should be.”

Milton’s resonant baritone filled the room. He wore a formal, brown, slope shouldered suit, his burnished bronze hair tied back in a ponytail. He was mostly unchanged from the last time I saw him, at least in his bearing, but his face bore five livid scars, two on his cheeks and three on his forehead, raw pink indentions each the size of a fingerprint. They looked like burns.

He entered with the sedate carriage of a dirigible, making a sweeping bow to the pink ribbon pin as she sleepwalked out, closing the door behind her. I noticed he held a thermos in his right hand.

He spared a derisory glance for us both. “Now, children,” he said, “let’s not quarrel. Please, have a seat.”

No one moved. Li looked ready to spring.

The sorcerer shook his head, and turning his back to us, heaved a theatrical sigh. There was a visitor’s chair sequestered in a corner underneath a television. He went to it in the same exaggerated, unhurried way, and settled down with great ceremony. Above his head, the black faced television clicked on to display a field of muted static. Milton affected not to notice.

“Tea, anyone?” He crossed his legs in the European style, unscrewing the cap of his thermos with a casual air. “It’s freshly brewed. Not my best work by any means but…” he inhaled deeply of the ensuing steam. “Ahh, we do the best we can with what we have.”

He tilted the thermos toward me so I could see the orange liquid within, Soma that hadn’t had a chance to clear. “No? I thought not,” he said and took a sip.

“Bastard,” I said, wondering if I looked as tense as Li did. I could hardly feel myself for the excitement of my Shadow. That cramped packet of emotions was expanding, squeezed against the limits of its cage. It was all I could do to hold it prisoner.

Milton choked, then chuckled, wiping his mouth.

“Oh, the valiant vainglory of youth,” he said. “Don’t worry; it isn’t any of the Fae you freed. It’s a bit of the stipend Malice allows me to keep.” His mouth twisted with the bitterness of those words, and he went on more quietly. “You’ve ruined things you can’t imagine, little dragon.”

He belonged to Malice then, she had made him a slave somehow. That had to be what he meant. But why was he talking to us, why hadn’t he cast a spell while our backs were turned to tie us both in knots? I didn’t doubt he could have.

“We broke what had to be broken,” Li said darkly.

Milton looked at him over the rim of his thermos. “Lialanni,” he said, “your kind should know better. The Guardians have always understood the necessity of sacrifice for a higher cause, be it their own lives or…”

It happened so fast I didn’t see it until after it was finished. My mind’s eye pieced it together a second too slow. Li had moved, leapt, and now he hung suspended in the air above Milton. A sword was in his hand, a black sword drawn from nowhere, a keen edged bar of negative light.

He was motionless, caught in near completion of his violent trajectory, even his hair was frozen in mid-fall. The sorcerer sat unperturbed, taking another lingering sip of the Soma before setting the thermos carefully beside the leg of his chair.

“Foolish,” he said to me. “Your friend is foolish, as are you.” Li didn’t appear to be resisting whatever force held him. On the contrary, he almost could have been asleep. Even the hand that gripped the sword was relaxed.

In the back of my skull, the Shadow was howling.

“You may as well come willingly,” Milton continued. “I can’t say that you will survive but…” he cast a meaningful glance at Li’s suspended form. “ I can promise you that he will survive if you cooperate. Once she has you, Malice will be too enthused to remember who helped you escape, and if you are biddable I may have charity enough left in me not to remind her. I do so hate suffering, especially when it is unnecessary.” His face hardened sharply. “She would make him suffer.”

I took a step forward without thinking. We were caught whether or not I went willingly, and I would give anything to stop Li from being hurt. The decision wasn’t a decision at all.

“Please,” I said. “Let him go. I’ll come with you.”

He nodded kindly. “Good girl,” the sorcerer said. “You’re young yet. You haven’t had the chance to learn when to be cruel. I knew you would see it this way.”

He stood, Li’s sword only inches from his face, and gestured to the door. “Let us go. Your friend will be free in a few minutes, and by then we will be too far for even his fleet feet to catch us. All will be well, and you will even be able to see your father again before the end.”

Tears stung at my eyes, but I managed a nod. I couldn’t get away if I tried. We had been idiots, thinking this place wouldn’t be watched, but this way Li would be safe. That was enough.

I felt hate like a dynamo in my skull, but it was all directed at me. If I let my Shadow loose, I thought it might kill me.

Pushing aside that other’s fury, I looked one last time at Li before turning to go, trying to take in all of him with my eyes. He was perfect, and so peaceful, even with his body frozen in action. I stared until my heart felt like it would burst, and then one second more, hoping it would.

What I would say to him if I could trust my voice, I don’t know. Nothing would be enough. How could he be so serene? Had Milton put him to sleep or…

There was a sound like clear glass ringing, crystalline, clarion, pure; expanding to flood the room in rebounding waves. I felt it from fingers to toes, shivering with relief and release and peace. Milton seized Li’s wrist just as the spell shattered, halting the black blade a hair from touching his nose. I heard bones crack as Li was slammed onto the tile floor, his sword disappearing when his hand went limp.

“No!” I screamed, but it was useless. Milton raised one hand high and swung it down as Li struggled to stand, never touching him, but there was a crash and a crunch like the noise of a Titan’s footsteps, and I felt the ground shift under my feet. Li lay in a crater, as if a wrecking ball had been spun overhead and smashed into the tile. He was unconscious and prone, arms curled ahead of his body.

‘Unconscious’ was unwarranted optimism. He was probably dead. Milton held his hand steady as if only its weight was keeping Li down, though it was held at the level of his own chest. Writ large on his features was no satisfaction, only a dispassionate distaste.

My Shadow’s thrashing redoubled. I felt its fervor like a pulsing headache, a pounding drum. It slammed against my mental partition with such force I nearly staggered, my vision blurring with more than tears.

Milton was raising his hand again, preparing for another blow. He seemed to be moving in a thick fog, in a gel that might take him hours to complete the stroke.

I saw blood trickle down Li’s jawline from his exposed ear. “ Who are you fighting for now?” my Shadow seemed to say. I let go. For a moment, the world was black.

I was floating in a void, beyond sensation, but I could see. I could see myself, another version. She was more beautiful than I could ever be, but it was an awful beauty, eyes dark with a terrible hunger.

She blinked, far away, then stood over me larger than life. Her hands grasped my temples, and I could not look away from all that hate, all that hunger, and beneath it, pain.

“How do you stand it?” My lips did not move but my voice was all around us, echoing. So was hers, richer, lower, more assured.

“You will learn.”

Her hand became branding irons, searing, burning.

I went blind.

Milton froze with his arm at the high point of its arc. His eyes went very wide. I saw his lips form the word ‘No!’ but I heard nothing over the hiss.

“Mine!” Milton or Li or both, it did not matter. “Mine!” My blood was rage. He threw a web at me as I charged--a web of light. Why could I never see it before? It was meant to trap me, hobble me, but I could see the threads within threads all bound to a central strand.

Without thought, without even breaking stride I swiped it aside and without that central thread his spell collapsed. Webs, someone had told me once, enchantments were only webs. Milton did not have time to weave another. He hardly had time to scream.

My vision skipped. I could see Milton on his back through the hole in the plaster wall. Or was it stone? Some of his clothing was smoldering, and people were scattering away from my field of vision. Their noises were only bothersome buzzes, insects, prey. Not even sport.

Li. Li.

What was that voice? Who? I smelled an impossible mélange behind me. Fear and agony and… love. Why love?

Li.

I spun on my heels. The sorcerer had been nothing. My true enemy was here, a boy, no, Lialanni, staggering to his feet. I tasted something sour. He was hurt, but why should that affect me? He was so weak, I could see both his bodies easily, one overlaying the other like a transparency. Both were only reflections of the truth. So weak, a pity, but his blood would still serve. I was hungry, so hungry. There was nothing else.

He met my eyes, and I saw myself reflected there. Not myself, another. It was as if my mother had come to stand in my place.

The sudden music was enough to stun me, blind me. Those straining chords were older than time; older than Shadow was that music.

And my Shadow hid as the world turned to black.

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