Doc Sidhe (12 page)

Doc didn't look up, but his tone was admonishing. "Alastair."

Harris frowned. "Then what do cars run on?"

"Alcohol, most of them." Alastair fondly patted his red medical bag, where he'd replaced the glass flask. "Oh, not the good stuff, of course. That's for fueling people."

Noriko turned back to face them. "I once owned a two-wheeler that ran on gas I bought from chicken farms and sewer plants."

"Chicken—methane. Of course. This place is an environmentalist's dream." Harris turned away to watch the windmills pass by and wondered why their answers annoyed him.

Probably because their responses were so unquestioning. But that didn't make much sense. He'd seen no sign that the normal people of Neckerdam were fanatically devoted to the clean, organic,
tedious
causes some of his own friends back home were. So why didn't they use all the same things the grimworlders did?

A few miles further on, they reached a large stone sign reading "Wickhollow." At Doc's direction, Jean-Pierre drove through the quiet town with its curiously irregular brick homes and turned down a blacktop country road, then took a narrower dirt road that led far away from the lights of the town. Finally, where trees and thick underbrush gave way to a good-sized clearing, he pulled to one side and stopped the car.

In the light cast by the nearly full moon, Harris could see a large black rectangle in the center of the clearing. On the blackness was a lot of standing rubble, some of which looked like remnants of a chimney. He followed the others as they piled out of the car.

It must have once been a huge house, Harris realized. The black rectangle was an enormous array of foundation stones, now cracked, with weeds growing through them. The blackening looked like old fire damage. After the house had burned, someone had pulled down much of the remainder and scattered the pieces all over the lot.

Doc walked out onto the foundation, looking here and there, pausing for a long moment beside an unmarked section of stone, staring down at it with eyes out of memory. Then he shook himself and looked back at Joseph. "The conjuration laboratory?"

Joseph moved out on the foundation and moved around until he found what he wanted: an irregularly cracked section of stone, an oval roughly five feet long and four high, piled high with a mound of fallen rubble.

"Just below where Duncan died," Doc said, his tone low.

Joseph had to clear the rubble away before he could get at the foundation stone beneath, and this he did with terrifying ease, scooping up thigh-high piles of stones that must have weighed hundreds of pounds and hurling them off the foundation. Then he stepped aside and waited.

"How do you open it?" Doc asked.

"I do not," Joseph said. "It's a deviser's laboratory."

"Ah." Doc closed his eyes.

Harris saw his lips move as he murmured silent words. For long moments nothing happened; then there was a faint vibration in the ground.

A square portion of the foundation stone cantilevered upward, revealing a rectangular black space below. A dry, musty smell wafted out. Doc opened his eyes and nodded in apparent satisfaction.

Alastair brought an armful of long, clumsy-looking flashlights out from the car's trunk—boot? Harris remembered them calling it a boot, like the British—and passed them around. They all lit the ungainly devices and shined their beams down on the dull gray steps heading into the earth. Doc led the way down.

The conjuration laboratory of Duncan Blackletter turned out to be a large, simple chamber. Two facing walls were covered in bookshelves, many of them now collapsed with rot and age and the weight of the volumes they held. In one corner were a plush chair, rotting and bug-eaten, and a collapsed mass that must have once been an uncomfortable cot.

Most of the floor was decorated with what Harris now recognized as conjurer's circles: unbroken rings of paint or carefully laid-out stones, decorated along the rims with painted symbols that looked a little like
Ms
and
Ws
and
Hs
—two or three vertical lines connected at the top, middle or bottom by short horizontal lines. The writing style didn't look at all familiar.

Jean-Pierre cast his flashlight beam again at the standing shelves of books. He looked tense and grim. "With my luck, we'll be digging our way through that until I'm grayed with age."

Alastair peered into the younger man's dark hair. "Too late. Going gray already."

"I am not." Jean-Pierre, scowling, pulled down a lock of hair and put the flashlight beam on it.

Alastair moved to the bookcase. "Stop worrying. It's good to get older."

"You're lying to me."

"The blood cools. Women become . . . less important, somehow."

"I'll die first."

Harris saw Doc smile, just a little, before the man moved to join Alastair.

It wasn't as bad as they had feared. Duncan Blackletter had kept a very organized library, and Joseph remembered which volumes had served it as an index. They were rotted now, whole sections falling to pieces no matter how carefully they were opened, but the pages pertaining to special sendings of conjuration circles were intact. Within an hour they'd found the bookshelf where the appropriate reference works lay and busied themselves looking through the aged and damaged volumes.

Harris found that he wasn't much help. Most of the works were written in that alphabet he couldn't read. Jean-Pierre described it as the old alphabet of Cretanis: "Harder to learn than the modern Isperian alphabet, and mostly forgotten these days. They don't even teach it in school."

Noriko, Joseph, and Harris, unschooled in the antique letters, went back up into the fresh air and left the other three to do the academic research. Harris brushed some of the dust off a level slab of rock, then sat. Noriko announced that she would stand watch. She disappeared into the surrounding woods.

Joseph walked awkwardly among the ruins, never slowing, never stopping for a good look, never evidencing any emotion . . . but the giant's hands would occasionally tighten into fists.

After a while, curiosity got the better of Harris. "Hey. Joseph."

Joseph, poking around in the wreckage of the chimney, looked over.

"If it bothers you so much, why don't you take a walk? Get away from it for a while. I'll honk if we need to leave."

Joseph shook his head. "Too late for that. I am back. Back where I was born. Doc has summoned up the memories. A walk will not bury them again."

"Did you really—" The question was half-out before Harris realized what he was about to ask. He cut it off and frantically searched for another way to finish the question.

"Kill them?"

Harris winced. "Well . . . yeah."

"Yes, I did." Joseph moved up in front of Harris and leaned against the upright section of chimney. "I injured Doc and killed Whiskers Okerry. It was easy. I held him over my head and twisted him until his back broke. He lived for a while. Long enough to see Angus Powrie break Siobhan Damvert's neck."

The giant's tone was so calm that it took Harris a moment to grasp what he was hearing. Gooseflesh rose on his arms. "Jesus Christ,
why
?"

"I had to. Duncan told me to."

"And you did everything he told you to do?"

"Everything." Joseph reached up to rub his forehead. "The words are gone now. The ones once written here; Doc took them away. While they were on me, I did everything Duncan bade." His face hadn't changed, but there was something in his eyes, dark shadows of pain, that suggested Joseph hadn't mentioned the worst of the things Duncan Blackletter had made him do.

It was another moment before Harris realized the rest—the fact that Angus Powrie had murdered Jean-Pierre's mother. No wonder he had become so hyperactive when he learned that Powrie was back.

Harris didn't ask anything more; he let Joseph return to his lonely thoughts.

The limousine, black as a moonless night, glided to a stop behind the anonymous brown Dodge van. A round face appeared in the van's rear window, and its owner gave the limo a thumbs-up sign before disappearing.

Phipps shut the engine off and glanced back at his passenger. "He says she's still in the house." He picked up the object lying on the seat beside him—a device shaped like a volt-meter—and keyed it on. After a few moments he added, "He's right. Your signal and Adonis' nearly drown it out, but it's there."

The old man looked around until Phipps pointed to a specific house—two stories, brick, nicely appointed. "Ah. Lights still on, I see. Night owls. We'll wait until they're asleep."

"Yes, sir." Phipps pulled the stun-gun from his pocket and checked it to make sure it was still charged. Then, his revolver. Left-handed because of the damned injury to his other arm, he clumsily pressed the catch and swung the cylinder out to make sure it was still loaded with the .357 hollowpoints.

Doc, Alastair, and Jean-Pierre spilled up out of the underground lab as though they'd been driven out by a smoke bomb. Doc gave the foundation stone a push; it was an effort, but the stone fell into place with a boom. Then they headed for the car; Harris scrambled to catch up to them. "What's up?"

"We have it," Doc said. He clutched a sagging leather-bound volume to him as though it were precious treasure. He reached in through the driver's window and honked, then climbed into the back; the others resumed their seats, Noriko returning fast enough to beat Joseph into the car. In moments, Jean-Pierre had them rolling back along the road that had brought them.

"So what does that mean?" Harris persisted.

"A complete ritual set," Doc said. "The devisement to take you back to the grim world, Harris. We'll be departing from the conjurer's circle where you arrived."

"
We
? Who's going with me?"

"I am. You need to find Gaby, and I need to find Gabrielle, and we must find out if they are the same woman. Gaby is in danger, and so Gabrielle probably is, too. I want to waste as little time as possible. We need to get clothes and gear back at the Monarch Building, anything you think will not stand out too much in the grim world, and then return to Heinzlin Corners."

"So how does it work?"

Doc patted the leather volume. "The usual way. You assemble sacrificial goods, set up your ritual field, make your invocations and pleas, focus your mind and intent, and it happens. In theory. Each devisement is unique, of course, with variations for the types of the sacrificial items, the exact nature of the invocation and the godly aspect to whom it is addressed, the precise construction of the conjurer's circle—"

"I'm sorry I asked. This is starting to make my head hurt."

Doc smiled. "There is also an expenditure of personal energy, a telling one. Alastair will be performing the ceremony tonight—"

Alastair perked up. "Thank you for telling me."

"— so I will not be excessively wearied by the transfer. That way I should retain the wherewithal to send us back when we wish.

"But listen to me, Harris." Doc's expression, momentarily illuminated by moonlight, had become somber. "If we are separated or I do not survive, I need you to bring Gaby to the conjurer's circle precisely a day after our arrival. Exactly eight bells after the devisement is cast, the far conjurer's circle becomes alive again and sends everything within it back to the fair world. It is a process that does not require the deviser be there. Do you understand?"

"Yeah. It's a deadman switch. I can send her back without you." Harris thought it over. "That's what happened in Central Park. I was standing on the conjurer's circle when the time came up."

"Yes."

"Well, don't make me use the deadman switch. Alastair and Noriko will come across and make me explain why. I don't want to have to do that."

"That's true.
I
wouldn't want to."

Doc's room in the Monarch Building was barely larger or more personal than the one Harris had been given. Harris spent a couple of minutes picking through the man's wardrobe and looking for appropriate clothing. He gave up quickly: "There's no way we're going to make you blend in, sorry. So take this ruffled white shirt job and the brown pants and vest. We'll pass you off as a sixties burnout case or a disco revivalist."

Doc looked confused by the terminology, but retreated to his water closet to change.

Harris nosed around a bit while he waited. The books on Doc's low bookshelf looked like technical manuals, but their titles suggested they were textbooks written by New Age gurus:
Kelloqq's Musings on Excarnation Theory
,
Groundline Interaction With the Tallysin Aura in Controlled Environments
,
Traditional Dances and Heightened-State Mental Acuity
. Harris grimaced.

"Goodsir." It was a woman's voice, low and urgent, with a bit of mechanical hiss over it.

Startled, Harris spun around. There was no one behind him—but against the wall, Doc's talk-box had come alive.

And there, staring at him from the screen, was Gaby.

Again she was against the stony background and wearing the slinky dress he was really beginning to appreciate. He had a sudden urge to see the whole costume. He had another urge to help her take it off.

"Hi." He moved closer to the set, afraid with each step that she'd disappear. "Are you talking to me now?"

"Do you really know me?" Her expression was somber, tense.

"I thought so, yeah." Bitterness gnawed at him. "I guess maybe I didn't."

"Tell me
what
you know—"

Harris heard Doc open the bathroom door. Gabrielle heard it too, looked startled . . . and her picture faded to a little white dot. Harris cursed.

Doc emerged. He wore the clothes picked out for him; his hair, drawn back in a braid, concealed his ears. He looked no stranger than some musicians Harris knew. He gave Harris a curious look. "Who were you talking to?"

As Alastair drove them back to the rented house where the conjurer's circle lay, Harris told Doc about the conversation. Doc looked briefly annoyed that he'd missed Gaby—rather, that she seemed to have deliberately avoided him.