All That Lives Must Die (55 page)

59
.
Marchantiophyta
is a division of plants commonly known as “liverworts” which are typically small and low to the ground with flattened leaves.
Monoicious
is a term indicating both male and female reproductive structures are located on different branches of the same plant. Therefore this insult makes reference to a person’s small size and relatively primitive and isolated sexual characteristics. —Editor.

               65               

A VERY LONG DISTANCE CALL

Audrey shut and locked the door to her new office. Her space occupied the topmost floor of the house’s Victorian turret.

It was a tiny space, clean, and lit by skylights.

Behind the plaster of walls and ceiling and under the oak floors were sheets of lead burned with mathematics and arcane symbols to keep outsiders out . . . and her thoughts in.

Her favorite books sat on the encircling shelves: The works of Aristotle and Thoreau, Norse proto-runesongs, and the secret whisper hymns of the Saints of Glossimere. These comforted her.

There was a chair with ample padding and a desk. What more did one require?

Privacy.

She strained to hear Cecilia prattling about the house. Not a sound. The old hag slept more each day, saving her strength, she claimed.

Audrey held her breath.

All this waiting drove her mad. Once she thought her patience limitless—before the twins had come.

She ran a hand over the desk and settled into her chair.

But was not waiting an action, as well? No. Waiting was waiting. All the philosophizing in the world did not change that.

Her desktop was a slab of partially marbleized limestone, streaked with color and crystal, and tiny snail and trilobite fossils. She traced their curls. So old. And like her, frozen.

She had to start, a tiny step forward, her journey toward action . . . by seeing what she could.

From a drawer, she with took out a corkboard, a box of plastic pushpins, and a ball of yarn. She picked pins at random and—without looking—stabbed them into the board. Her other hand wound the yarn about the pins.

She stared at the leaded crystal skylights; refracted rainbows streamed through the air and onto the blank walls. Audrey didn’t think . . . she drifted . . . let her subconscious surface.

Her hands continued to move, sticking the pins, wrapping the yarn.

Some pinpoints turned in the box, and stabbed her. She let them taste her blood. This was part of the ritual as well.

At last, she exhaled and stopped.

Her pins had been arranged on the cork, and tracing a web of connections among them was the yarn, dotted with her blood.

In the center were two pins—one red, one blue—together (although they leaned away from one another). This represented Eliot and Fiona.

Surrounding them were random constellations of the other pushpins. The yarn twined about them, this way and that. Audrey discerned three linked groups: The League, the Infernals, and scattered hither and yon, the so-called neutrals of Paxington.

Two pins were near the twins: one green (this had to be Dallas) and one silver, leaning at a rakish angle (which was Henry).

One frayed line, however, connected Henry to a Paxington neutral. Curious.

She’d suspected, even
expected
him to be engineering some trickery with Aaron and Gilbert. But to align with the neutrals? That was trouble of an entirely other magnitude.

For now, she would keep this a secret . . . until it could be wisely spent.

Her hand drifted to the pin box. Only two were left: one black and one white. The white was bone white, death white—that was her. The black had to be Louis.

Where did he fit?

And more interesting, why hadn’t she placed either of them among the others?

She focused all her attention back on the board, and only now saw there were dozens of pins along the very edges—as if repelled from the center . . . far away from the main players and events.

She touched them. Felt nothing.

They were not League members, nor were they Infernals, and all the Paxington neutrals were accounted for.

That left whom . . . the mortal magical families? She scoffed. All too feeble to be involved in any significant way.

This mystery drifted through her mind like mist, filling it with silence and dread. After all these years, who else was out there?

She jumped. Blinked.

There was no reason to start . . . but her gaze riveted upon the black 1970s-era phone on her desk. It had not rung, but it
felt
like it had. The ghost of its trilling hung in the air.

She waited for it to actually ring.

It seemed like it wanted to sound, as if there was someone trying to contact her, and yet so far off, it had not the strength to quite make the connection.

Audrey tentatively picked up the receiver and listened.

There was a hiss and a crackle, and a voice broke though the white noise.

It was Louis. He was singing off-key: “
Six little children to market went: Orpheus and Faustus, the Empress of Kansas, the Spirit of Christmas, Bacchus, and the Governor of Texas—”

“Louis?”

He stopped singing.

“Audrey!” he cried. “Beloved, it is your Louis!” His enthusiasm deflated. “How long have you been listening? No, never mind. There is little time. I’m using Eliot’s phone and a child’s trick with a Klein sphere to make this connection.”
60

Audrey’s first impulse was to hang up on Louis, the greatest of all liars. But he was also the Louis she loved.

She held those thoughts balanced in her mind. Tip one way and she would hang up and forever sever their connection on more than one level.

Or listen, and tip the other way: embrace this madness she felt for him still.

Cutting the tie would be easiest. She had done that before with Eliot and Fiona, leaving her maternal duty but severing the irrational love.

But what was
easiest
often was not
best
. . . and not without regrets.

“Please,” Louis whispered. There was desperation in his voice.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“This is not about us—well it is in a way, and I know I have made an ultimate mess of things between us, all my fault . . . again, not the point. What I’m trying to say is it’s about the children.”

Audrey glanced at the red and blue pins in its center of the corkboard. So many other pins surrounded her children, so many who would use them or remove them.

“I must be quick,” Louis whispered. “I am down to one pixel on this phone’s battery, and it’s winking red.”

There was a burst of static. Audrey pulled the receiver away until the noise died.

“Louis?”

“Yes . . . still here.” His voice was barely audible. “My relations make their move
today
. You must save Eliot and Fiona before they make decisions that cannot be undone. Before they are lured—”

A whoosh of screams and crying and the laughter of the mad flooded the connection.

There was a click. Then nothing.

“Louis?” Audrey whispered.

Her heart pounded and she rose. She believed him.

She had to go to battle, fight, protect her children from the others, and somewhere in those feelings was the foolish urge to protect Louis as well.

Audrey looked back to the corkboard and yarn and pins.

She then understood why her subconscious had left those last two pins. She had to make up her mind—deliberately, and accepting all the consequences—where they belonged.

And so she did.

She set both black and white pins together . . . nestled next to the red and blue pins of Eliot and Fiona.

She slammed the receiver to the cradle and then picked it up and dialed the direct line to Lucille Westin’s private and personal office. She’d have Fiona and Eliot pulled from class and kept with Miss Westin until she could get there.

If there was still time.

60
. A Klein sphere is a contradiction in terms. In mathematics, a Klein bottle has a single continuous surface in a tube or bottle shape; i.e., there are neither distinct inner or outer surfaces (cf. the Möbius strip). A sphere, however, has distinct inner and outer surfaces. Modern mathematicians continue to puzzle over if this reference is a misnomer or if Infernals have a hitherto unknown understanding of topology.
An Introduction to the Mathematics of Myth,
Paxington Press LLC, San Francisco.

               66               

ONE THING ALMOST EVERYONE HAD FORGOTTEN

Cecilia watched Audrey storm out of the house, not even bothering to close the front door.

She followed and eased it shut, spotting Audrey’s Jaguar XKSS through the door’s stained glass windows as the roadster roared out of the driveway. The car smeared into a midnight blue streak of chrome and taillights.

Audrey was gone. Finally.

Cecilia locked the door and meandered upstairs to the dining room. The long-abandoned game of Towers she and Eliot had been playing had been moved to the end table. The circular mat and cubes were covered in dust. Smudges dotted some cubes where Eliot had touched them recently, perhaps thinking of his next move.

On the surface, this was just a game . . . but deeper, it was a magical metaphor for all their lives . . . and deeper still, it represented a game of dire consequences played by those with millennia more experience than she or Eliot possessed.

With that in mind, Cecilia had no qualms about cheating.

Her eyes filmed over milky white, and she fumbled over the playing field, feeling the threads of fate that wove about the pieces, pulling and tugging, and with tiny clockwork flicks advanced them forward to their next moves.

To the future.

Audrey would have Cecilia’s head if she knew. But the great Cutter of All Things was not here to stop Cecilia this time.

Still, she took great care not to let a single quantum vibration escape her fingertips. There were others than Audrey who would not approve of her prying into their affairs, others who were
far
crueler.

In her mind, she saw the Towers field—lines and circles radiating from the center like a spiderweb. Many of the stone cubes were easy to identify: Audrey, Eliot, Fiona, that boy called Robert, and a smattering of Infernals, humans, and Immortals.

Fiona’s piece was near the center, but tiny cracks crisscrossed the white marble. Eliot’s cube was by hers. They both stood before a stack of five black, a tower whose might was unassailable.

Eliot’s cube had one face smeared with soot (or possibly blackberry jelly), a black spot upon the white. Audrey would’ve denied it, but Cecilia knew this was an omen most ill.

Poor Eliot. It was too late for him.

But it was not too late to adjust
her
plans. She had always been good at turning lemons into lemonade—why, look at her now! How far had she come in this so-called body and her half-cheated immortality?

She blinked and her eyes cleared.

Yes . . . Cecilia knew what to do. She always knew. If others had not the conviction to protect her lambs, then she would.

She rolled up the Towers mat—pieces and all—so they scattered into chaos, and put it all in the cupboard. She then ambled back to the children’s bedrooms.

Fiona’s door was locked, but a simple word of unbinding did the trick, and she entered.

The room was as neat as a pin. Cecilia was so proud of Fiona. All that schoolwork and responsibility, and she still had time to make up her bed. There were precise stacks of papers on her desk, neat piles of books, flash cards, and a sketch of the Immortal family tree.

Fiona was a good, hardworking girl, and it pained Cecilia to do this. She took careful note of the location of every object—and then ransacked the room, turning over pillows, pulling out books, tossing clothes from the hamper, pulling out drawers and shaking their contents onto the floor.

When she got the lowest bookshelf, she tossed aside
Rare Incurable Parasites, Volume
3, and found a hidden shoe box.

She cradled it with trembling arms and sat on the rumpled bed.

Inside, carefully placed was a scandalous bikini. Cecilia held it before her. She could not imagine her Fiona ever wearing such a tarty thing. She set it aside.

Next was a stack of old-fashioned Polaroids showing Fiona and that boy, Robert, splashing in the water, palm trees in the background. Those were from last summer, when Henry had flown them out to his island before school (chaperoned by Aaron, so she knew Robert had made no ungentle-manly advances upon poor, innocent Fiona).

There was one last item in the shoe box: a rolled-up sock.

Inside was something heavy and hard.

Cecilia took the sock out, unrolled it on the bed, and then gingerly coaxed out the object within.

She gasped as a sapphire the size of an egg tumbled upon Fiona’s gray wool bedspread—gleaming with blue brilliance and crisp facets.

The stone’s name was Charipirar. It was the mark of power of that Hell-creature Beelzebub, Lord of All the Flies, once Chairman of the Infernals, and the beast whom Fiona had killed—by pulling this, his own talisman, through his neck.

She’d kept the trinket as a souvenir.

And everyone had forgotten about it. Almost.

She found herself gazing into the depths of the stone, and quickly averted her eyes before it pulled her too deep. Using two pencils, Cecilia pushed and prodded the stone back into the sock and rolled it up.

This could change everything, even save Eliot . . . and perhaps damn millions of souls.

What did that matter? As long as Cecilia saved the ones she loved.

               67               

THE BIGGEST LIE OF HIS LIFE

Eliot stared at his teammates.

They stared back at him like he was crazy. Even Amanda—always on Eliot’s side—looked shocked.

“Rescue Jezebel?” Jeremy asked with a smirk.
“The
Jezebel who is an Infernal duchess? The one who could pummel you if she had half a mind to do?
You
want to rescue
her?”

Eliot took a step toward Jeremy. His classmate didn’t know how far Eliot had come in the last few months. How Jezebel had smashed a rock against his head that should’ve crushed it and he’d barely felt it. How he’d leveled a few city blocks with his music in Costa Esmeralda.

And how . . . right now, he was more than willing to prove himself to the ever-irritating Jeremy Covington.

Sarah jumped up and stood between them.

Eliot’s temper cooled a bit as he remembered how she’d been nice to him recently.

Jeremy, however, continued his mocking glare.

Sarah said, “It’s a noble thing you’re proposing, Eliot, but Jezebel has withdrawn from Paxington. There’s nothing to be done.”

“Jezebel withdrew because she
had
to,” Eliot said. “Because she’s trapped behind enemy lines. We get her out, and that all changes. Miss Westin said she was ‘inclined to grant the request’—she hasn’t actually done it yet. There’s still time.”

Fiona shook her head and wouldn’t even look at him.

“She needs our help.” But Eliot’s plea was weak and pathetic—everything he was trying
not
to sound like.

How could he be so powerful and heroic one moment, and the next be such an ineffectual dork?

They were all silent. Eliot’s gaze dropped to the black-and-white checkerboard floor of Miss Westin’s waiting room.

“Just to be clear,” Amanda finally whispered, “you are talking about going to
Hell
? The real burn-forever-in-eternal-torment Hades?”

“I’ve been there,” Eliot told her, unfazed. He looked up. “It’s not that bad . . . well, parts of it aren’t that bad.”

Fiona scoffed. “We were at the Gates of Perdition. Once. We never went inside.”

“I’m not talking about that,” Eliot said. “I took the Night Train into Hell. It runs from the Market Street BART station into the Blasted Lands, and then to the Poppy Lands where Jezebel lives. It’s no big deal.”

Fiona’s eyes widened. “You did
what
?”

A few months ago, he would have told her everything he’d done. Now he was able to keep secrets.

He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

Eliot explained it all to them: the Night Train, the conductor, and how there were even private trains in Hell to take them back.

“What about the war?” Amanda asked, twirling strands of hair about her pinkie. “That sounds dangerous.”

“There are a few shadows loose,” Eliot said. “But Fiona and I have fought them before. Heck, the six of us together? Nothing could stop us. It’d be easier than a gym match, I bet.”

Jeremy laughed, sat, and reclined on one of the waiting room’s chaises longues. “Oh, to be sure—minus the medics on standby and the ten-minute time limit, and being in the middle of one of the most treacherous-to-mortals places in the outer realms.”

His cousin Sarah shot Jeremy a withering look, which he ignored.

Eliot continued, “But we’re not going to
fight
their war. We get in, get to Jezebel’s twelve castles, and get her out.”

Sarah bit her lower lip. She looked . . . Eliot wasn’t sure what the look on her face meant. It was the look she’d given him after he played at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Part impressed at his bravura, but something misty in her gaze that might have been disbelief at his stupidity. It was so hard for him to tell with girls.

“
No
way,” Fiona said, folding her arms over her chest. “If you go, you’re on your own.”

“Then I’ll go by myself,” he said, “if I have to.”

There was no challenge in that statement. It was simply a fact.

Fiona narrowed her eyes to gray slits and looked at him like she thought he was the biggest moron in the universe.

And maybe he was, because there was one small fact he hadn’t told anyone: Jezebel didn’t exactly
want
to be rescued. She was loyal to her Queen and the Poppy Lands. Her strength and life were literally tied to those lands.

So Eliot would stay there this time and fight with her—win this stupid war. How hard could it be? A few more Droogan-dors? What was that after he’d blown up a jet? And if he could get Robert or Fiona to come with him, it’d be that much easier.

Eliot decided not to mention this detail just yet. He figured it was already implied by him saying they had to “rescue” Jezebel.

No. He couldn’t fool himself. That was a lie.

It was only a lie by virtue of leaving out selected truths . . . but that was worse. It was more calculating.

He knew what he felt, though. He’d gamble everything, his life and the lives of the others, lie, cheat, and steal to save Jezebel—or lose it all.

“I’ll go with you,” Amanda meekly offered. She stared at the checkerboard floor, unable to look up.

Eliot blinked, surprised. She was the last person he’d expect to go willingly to Hell.

“I’m part of the team, too, aren’t I?” Amanda said. “I like Jezebel, though I don’t think she likes me. That’s kind of beside the point. I just want to help.” She swallowed and continued, “Guess if our positions were reversed, I just wish someone would come and rescue me like that. That’s what friends do for one another, right?”

Amanda pulled back her long brown hair and tied it into a knot. She finally looked up. Her dark eyes smoldered with determination.

“Hey, if Amanda’s going,” Robert said, “I’m in, too.” He cracked his knuckles and then shrugged. “How hard could it be? Plenty of guys have gone to Hell and come back—Dante, Ulysses, Orpheus, Bill, Ted. Besides, you know I’m a sucker for that damsel-in-distress stuff.”

“Thanks,” Eliot told them . . . although a rotten feeling started to gnaw at his stomach.

No. He wouldn’t chicken out now. He was going. And he’d take any help he could get.

And he’d accept all the consequences.

Sarah worked her mouth. Nothing came as she struggled with her words.

“It’s okay,” Eliot told her. You don’t have to—”

“We be coming,” Jeremy said, getting up from the chaise longue. “Was there ever any doubt? A bonny adventure in the outer realms? Perhaps even a wee bit o’ treasure in it for us, eh?” He winked.

Sarah looked shocked.

Jeremy gave her a subtle look, and there passed between them some kind of speed-of-light nonverbal communication—just as Eliot and Fiona sometimes managed, but on a frequency Eliot couldn’t decipher.

Sarah twisted back around, uncertainty and fear in her eyes, but she nodded. “Of course we’ll be going.”

“Uh . . . thanks,” Eliot said.

Something nagged Eliot about Sarah’s reaction and Jeremy’s never-fading mischievous grin, and how easily he’d agreed to risk his own neck. But who was he to understand the motivations of a nineteenth-century Scottish conjurer, one who’d been stuck in the Valley of the New Year for hundreds of years and then thrown into the present?

Eliot turned to Fiona.

Fiona hadn’t unfolded her arms. She hadn’t dropped her narrowed slit of a stare, either. If anything, her arms were more tightly crossed and her gaze sharper as she turned and assessed them all.

“Don’t encourage his suicidal delusions of grandeur,” Fiona told them.

Eliot wanted to admit to her that above all others, he needed her help on this—that they were stronger together. But he couldn’t say any of those things. It’d just give her a reason to stay—be the anchor that kept him here . . . because she
was
that stubborn.

He took a step closer to his sister and whispered, “In Costa Esmeralda, when you were about to get cut down by that strafing MiG—I didn’t tell you what you were doing was suicidal or a delusion of grandeur.”

“That was completely different,” she whispered back, her face scrunching into angry lines. “People’s lives were at stake.”

“Yeah, it
was
different,” Eliot told her. “I didn’t ask any questions when I stepped between you and certain death. I just saved your life because I’m your brother, and that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

Fiona’s eyes went wide and her gaze bored into his.

“You owe me,” he said.

It was a rotten card to play on his sister, but Eliot had to. He needed her . . . even if it meant she’d be mad at him for the rest of his life.

Fiona hissed through clenched teeth, and it sounded like exploding steam. “You’re going to get yourself and the rest of the team killed.” Shaking her head, she continued. “So, I
cannot
believe I am saying this—but all right, I’ll go. If for no other reason to make sure you all come back in one stupid piece.”

Eliot wished he could tell her how much her coming meant to him, but he only managed a nod.

“But we make a beeline straight for Jezebel,” Fiona told him. “Get her if we can and get out. And if things get too dangerous, we stop and turn back.”

“Sure,” Eliot said.

He looked over his teammates and considered telling them everything. They deserved to know all the details of Jezebel and her ties to the land.

He exhaled and shut his mouth.

He wished Mitch were here. His white magic had kept them safe before from the shadows. That would have come in handy. And having him there would have been a great boost to Fiona’s morale.

Robert glanced at his wristwatch. “You said there was a train to catch?”

Eliot stuffed his moral misgivings into a dark corner of his mind to sort through later. “Yeah,” he replied, “there’s a secret entrance to the Night Train under the Market Street BART station.”

Sarah pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll have a cab meet us outside the Front Gate.”

Before Sarah punched a single button, however, another phone jangled: an old-fashioned trilling bell inside Miss Westin’s office.

The sound went straight through Eliot’s skull and down his spine like a shock.

He jumped. And so did Fiona.

They looked at each other. Fiona’s eyes were wide and her pulse pounded along her neck. Both of them went still.

The phone jangled again (he swore this time louder and sounding impatient).

Eliot and Fiona together whispered, “Audrey.”

“She knows,” Fiona said.

Eliot wasn’t sure how they knew it was Audrey, or how they knew she knew what they were about to attempt . . . but he knew that feeling was right. Why else would she be calling Miss Westin at this
exact
moment?

There was a third ring—although this one terminated mid-jangle.

Eliot breathed a sigh of relief.

But an instant later, from inside Fiona’s book bag came the stirring notes of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” Her cell phone’s ring tone.

“Don’t answer it,” Eliot said.

Fiona pursed her lips, and he could see her mentally teetering back and forth, deciding . . . but then she nodded.

“Come on,” he told them all, “we don’t have much time.” He sprinted for the stairs.

They followed, running as if the building were on fire.

________

Eliot stared at the sign hung on the ticket booth window. He couldn’t believe it. All that convincing and cajoling, all the struggling to overcome the moral ambiguity of the situation . . . for nothing.

They’d ditched class, run out of Paxington, and caught one of the eco-friendly SF Green Cabs. (A wad of cash from Robert persuaded the driver to let them all squeeze in.)

They’d gotten to the Market Street BART station, tromped down the out-of-order escalator, and found the hole in the wall. After carefully crossing the tracks, they’d entered the breach and clambered down the steep staircase into the hidden Infernal train station.

Only to find the ticket booth abandoned, and a sign that read

All trains, including but not limited to: the Marshall Pass Express; the Six Pence; and Der Nachtzug (aka the “Night Train”) are hereby suspended due to civil conflicts in the realms they service. The management apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause, and full service shall resume as soon as possible (as demanded and required by the Infernal Transportation Code, Section IX).

“Rotten luck,” Jeremy said, reading over Eliot’s shoulder. “I suppose our dear Jezebel will have to fend for herself.” There was genuine disappointment in his voice.

“But there’s another way,” Fiona said. She stared at Eliot. “And you’re going to try it, aren’t you? No matter how dangerous it is.”

“I am,” he said. “Even if it is the long way around.”

“What do you mean ‘dangerous’ and ‘long way’?” Amanda asked, her fingers worrying together.

Fiona held up a hand to forestall questions, got her cell phone, and dialed. She handed it to Eliot.

“She said she’d give us a ride if we ever needed one,” Fiona told him. “But
you’re
going to have to ask her.”

Eliot scanned the number and name just before the phone connected.

“Hi? Aunt Dallas? It’s Eliot and Fiona. We kind of need a lift.”

Fiona rolled her eyes at this colossal understatement.

“Really? Thanks. Where? I can explain on the way. Oh, uh, okay . . . well, Uncle Kino’s graveyard. The Little Chicken Gate.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, so Eliot continued, “I need you to keep quiet about it. Yes—I’ll explain everything. Outside the BART station on Market Street. Okay. Thanks again. Bye.”

He handed the phone back to Fiona.

“She’s picking us up in five minutes,” Eliot said.

“And taking us where?” Robert asked, looking concerned for the first time since agreeing to go.

Eliot swallowed, and then replied, “The Lands of the Dead.”