The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (16 page)

Squire dove across the kitchen, toward the sink. He grabbed
the handles of the two small doors under the sink and yanked them open. Even
with what light there was in the kitchen the patch of shadow was deep and
black. He ducked his head inside the cabinet and his shoulders were too broad
to fit.

"Shit," he whispered, glancing back.

The Corca Duibhne had thrown their injured brother to the
ground and were trampling over him. Even as he looked, Squire saw one of them
stomp on the cleaver buried in the creature's chest, driving it deeper. Putrid
blood ran in rivulets across the floor. The nearest one laughed as it spotted
him.

"Where do you think you go, now, ugly turnip?"

Squire sneered. This guy was calling
him
ugly?

And then he pushed. His bones popped out of their joints, his
arms folding in upon his body, and he drove himself inside the cabinet and into
the patch of shadows within. One of them snagged at his foot and he kicked its
claws away and with one last, solid plant of his boot on the interior of the
cabinet, thrust himself into the shadows.

The shadow-paths opened before him. He could feel them,
sense each walkway around him. His eyes were open but there was no color, only
levels of its absence. Squire felt at home here, much more so than he ever did
in the other world. This was where he belonged. He was not small here, not ugly
or freakish. He was not a monster. Here in the shadows he was agile, graceful,
and strong.

There was no time for him to pause and reflect now upon
Morrigan's attack and what it might mean. There was time only to move, to walk
the shadows. He had survived. Now it was on to his second priority.

The darkness rushed past him, caressed him, as Squire
hurried along the shadow-path to his first stop. He could feel Conan Doyle's
house around him, navigated by instinctual awareness of the ways in which the
real world entwined with the shadow world. Moments after he had disappeared
inside the kitchen cabinet he reappeared inside another, much larger enclosure
on the second floor of the house.

The weapons closet.

Hobgoblins could see better in the dark. Squire looked
around and felt a surge of grim pleasure as he surveyed the swords and daggers,
the bows and battleaxes, the maces and morningstars, and the more arcane
weapons, his favorite bits and bobbles. Poison dueling pistols. Ectoplasm
garrotes.

Beyond the doors of the weapons closet, which allowed only a
sliver of light to enter, he could hear the thumping of the Corca Duibhne's
incursion. Glass shattered and doors slammed. Morrigan must have been aware
that he was a shadow-walker, but still they were searching for him, or trying
to find out if anyone else was in the house. There were animal growls that went
along with the Night People's movements through the house, but Squire was no
longer listening. He was in a hurry now.

He began with his favorites, unbreakable blades and
enchanted arrows, others that he had relied on over the ages. As quietly as he
was able, Squire filled his arms with weapons and slipped back into darkness,
stepped into the shadow-paths, and made his way into Conan Doyle's garage. Nothing
was darker than the trunk of the limousine.

Emerging inside the trunk, he paused to listen but heard
neither grunts nor footfalls nor clattering of vandalism that would have
accompanied the Night People into the garage. Still he was careful to be quiet
as he laid the first stash of weapons down at the back of the spacious trunk.

Then he went back.

Quiet. Careful. Swift.

Squire made jaunt after jaunt from weapons closet to trunk,
slipping along the shadow paths and retrieving blades and poisons and blunts. He
was many things to Arthur Conan Doyle — valet and chauffeur and
confidante — but the most vital part of his service was as armorer . . .
as squire. It was his duty to care for the weapons, to supply them when needed,
to see that Conan Doyle and his comrades were never unarmed. It would have been
simple for him to escape the house, to leave Morrigan behind, but he was not
going to leave the weapons.

On his seventh trip into the weapons closet, he heard
voices.

Squire froze with his hand upon the grip of a scimitar whose
blade was engraved with ancient symbols even Conan Doyle didn't understand. He
quieted himself, holding his breath, and he listened. They were speaking
Danaaini
,
the language of the Fey. One of the voices belonged to Morrigan and the other,
a male voice, to another of her kind.

So the Corca-dweebs aren't the only ones taking orders
from her,
Squire thought
.
He wasn't fluent in Danaaini, but he
understood enough to get at least part of the conversation.

"Prepare," Morrigan said.

The other Fey muttered some sort of subservient bootlick
response that Squire didn't bother working too hard to translate.

"We must be very careful if we are going to open —"
Several words he did not understand followed this. And then: "Tell the
skulkers to keep an eye out for Conan Doyle. I want to make certain he receives
a proper welcome when he . . .

"What is that smell?"

Squire grunted in annoyance. Like humans, like the Fey,
hobgoblins had their own scent. He couldn't smell it himself, of course, but
Eve had often told him he smelled like rotten apples.
And who would know
better?

Silence had fallen in the room outside the weapons closet. The
Fey could walk without any noise at all if they wished to, but Morrigan did not
bother. Squire had an image in his mind of her sniffing at the air, of her
pausing to glare at the doors to the closet. He heard her footfalls on the
hardwood as she marched toward him.

With deep regret Squire glanced around at the weapons that
remained, trying to choose what he would rescue for his final trip. There
really was no question, however. There was a longbow on the wall that had
belonged to Ceridwen, a gift she had given to Conan Doyle before he had left
Faerie. Squire snatched the bow off the wall just as the closet doors flew open
and Morrigan stood silhouetted in the light from the room beyond.

"You should have run further than this, wretched thing,"
she snarled, the red scarf that had covered her hair now down around her neck. Her
nostrils flared. "Go on, hobgoblin. Choose whatever weapon you like."
With a flourish she gestured to the armaments that remained in the closet.

The light from the outer room reached deep inside the
closet. Morrigan had him trapped. Or so she thought. For the wicked bitch had
barely noticed that she cast her own shadow, and it was as black as her heart.

"Sorry, babe," Squire said, taking a single step
toward her. "I'm a lover, not a fighter."

And he dropped away into the shadow on the floor, her scream
of rage following him down into the darkness.

In the living room at the Ferrick house, Clay stood behind a
high-backed chair with his arms crossed. Eve sat at the edge of the chair,
resting her hands on her knees, and when she spoke she sounded more earnest than
Clay had ever heard her. On the sofa, Danny Ferrick stared at her, brows
knitted beneath the little nubs of his horns. He was slouched down as though he
might sink into the cushions, baggy black pants hanging on his legs like
curtains. The boy's mother was so pale Clay thought she would either vomit or
faint within the next few seconds.

She surprised him. The woman was stronger than she looked.

"You're lying!" Julia Ferrick said, her chest
rising and falling quickly as though she was trying to keep from
hyperventilating.

Clay put both hands on the back of Eve's chair. "No,
Mrs. Ferrick. I can assure you that she's not."

Beside her, on the couch, the boy she had always thought of
as her son began to laugh softly. Clay was unsure what to make of that laugh
and he narrowed his eyes as he studied the boy, who kept rubbing the soles of
his red Converse high-tops on the carpet. Danny Ferrick shook his head and
reached up to run his fingers over his small horns again. He sighed, glanced at
Clay, and then focused on Eve. He was a teenaged boy and Eve was every teenaged
boy's dream of a woman, and so he trusted her.

"Seriously. You're not just messing with me?"

Eve shook her head. "No, Danny. No way."

The kid frowned again, narrowing his eyes. "So who is
this Doyle guy again?" He turned to his mother. "How did you meet
him?"

Mrs. Ferrick gazed at her son as though another word from
him would shatter her like a china doll. She fidgeted with her hands again, and
for the first time, Clay noticed how short her fingernails were. A couple of
them were ragged. The woman had clearly been stressed even before all this
lunacy had come into her life. Danny's mother gnawed her lower lip.

"I don't suppose either of you has a cigarette?"

No one responded. Mrs. Ferrick shook her head. "Just as
well. I quit." Then she lowered her eyes. "Mr. Doyle came to see me a
few years ago. Just showed up on the doorstep one day while you were at school.
Your . . . your condition had already started to show up. Your skin. But only
just. I . . . I'm not even sure you had noticed it yet, but I had, just at the
back of your neck one morning at breakfast.

"Mr. Doyle rang the bell. He was so polite, and so
well-dressed, I thought he must be selling something or . . . or trying to
convert me or something." She uttered a tiny laugh of disbelief that
sounded very much as though she were choking on unshed tears. "He said —"

The woman shook her head. Clay wanted to go to her, to sit
with her and comfort her, but he knew there would be another time for that. For
now, the truth was what mattered, and he did not want to interrupt the telling
of it.

"What did he say, Mom?" Danny asked, trying to get
his mother to look up at him. "Did he tell you . . . what Eve just said?"

"No," Mrs. Ferrick said, catching her breath. "All
he said was that . . . that someday I would want to ask him some questions
about you, and that when the day came I should call. And he gave me his card
and he . . . he just left. I thought he was some nut. Some . . . some asshole,
thinking he knows something about my son that I don't."

Eve sat back in her chair and lifted her chin, appraising
Mrs. Ferrick. "But you kept his card."

The look the woman shot at Eve was full of venom. "Yes.
Yes, I kept the card. He's my son. I brought him up myself. Everything I've
ever done has been for him. I'd do anything for Danny. So, yes, I kept the
card. Now you come telling me he's some . . . some demon child, some changeling
baby, whatever the hell that even means."

"I explained what it —" Eve began.

"I don't want your explanations!" Mrs. Ferrick
said, her voice on the edge of hysteria. She brought one hand up to her mouth,
gnawing a bit on her thumbnail, oblivious to their attentions.

"Mom," Danny said, his eyes revealing his pain,
and he touched her arm to try to calm her. She grabbed his hand and held on
tight.

"Now you come telling me that he isn't my son? That
Danny isn't my boy at all? To hell with both of you and your Mr. Doyle, too."
Mrs. Ferrick glanced at Danny. "He's all I've got."

Eve began to say something more but now Clay leaned down and
touched her on the shoulder and she closed her mouth. For a long moment the
Ferricks, mother and son, just sat there holding hands, both of them staring at
their unwelcome visitors. They were a strange sight, the woman in her suburban
mother uniform of khaki trousers and white blouse, and the boy in his baggy,
unbuttoned shirt with the bright orange surfing tee underneath. Clay focused on
Danny. The boy seemed not to want to look at him, but at last he did. Clay nodded
gently. Danny swallowed and licked his lips, baring his needle teeth, if only
for a moment. He took a deep breath and turned to his mother.

"Hey. Mom. Look at me."

Mrs. Ferrick studied his eyes.

"No. I mean look at me."

Defiantly, she continued to stare into his eyes.

"It's killing me, what I see in the mirror, y'know?"
Danny said, and the anguish in his tough-guy voice was enough to force Clay to
glance away a moment. "But, well, what they say makes sense. Sucks, but it
makes sense. And if it's true . . . God, if it's true I'm sorry, 'cause that
means the kid you had in the hospital . . . he's somewhere else. I don't know
where. But you're my mother. And you're the best. Seriously. You are.

"But if it's true . . . and I can't lie to you, it
feels
true. If it is, it means I'm not a freak. I'm not some fucked-up kid who doesn't
fit in anywhere, 'cause I don't have to. I'm not one of them. One of the nasty
little pukes I go to school with. If it's true . . . and I think I want it to
be. That would be better, I think. Better than the way things have been."

Mrs. Ferrick recoiled from her son, stood up and turned her
back on the sofa, on her guests. She was quivering and hugging herself, and
when she turned again, there were tears streaming down her face and she had
bitten her lip hard enough that a small trickle of blood went down her chin.

"How can you . . . how can you say that?" she
whispered, sniffling, wiping away tears and blood. Then she shook her head
again, with finality, and stared at Eve and Clay. "I don't believe it. I
won't believe in it. I've never believed in angels and demons, no heaven or
Hell. That's all bullshit. None of it is real."

Eve began to stand, but Clay was faster. He moved around the
chair and strode toward Mrs. Ferrick. She flinched as though afraid he might
attack her. Clay passed her and went to the window, then quickly drew back the
curtain.

"Have a look, Mrs. Ferrick. You've seen what's going on
out there. Are you telling me none of that is real?"

She hesitated a moment, then joined him at the window. Clay
looked with her, and together they gazed out at her neighborhood, overrun with
a crimson fog, at the sun blacked out by an eclipse, at a swarm of mosquitoes
that clung to a car as it careened down the street, tires squealing, only to
bump up over the sidewalk and crash into a minivan parked in a driveway just a
few houses away. The shattering of glass and crump of metal upon metal made the
woman flinch.