Twenty Palaces (12 page)

He bared his teeth and charged at me, screaming in wild, animal fury.
 

Before I could blink, Jon had crossed the six yards separating us and slammed his fist into my stomach. It was a stunning, powerful punch and I saw it sink deep into my guts. Too deep.

The force of the blow lifted me off the ground. Curiously, there was no pain, but I felt my body bend around Jon's fist like a car fender wrapping around a pole. I thought for sure there ought to be pain. I went higher and higher, my hips and legs flailing upward as my heavier torso rotated forward. I thought I would fall flat on my face, but the ground just wasn't there. My backpack--and its precious blue pages--was gone, too.

Everything was happening in slow motion. I'd risen up off of Jon's fist and had a moment of weightless confusion. Where was the pain? I was still tumbling, my feet flying upward, my body finally falling again.
 

I struck my head on a concrete bench and my neck twisted under the weight of my entire body. I felt it turn and compress but I didn't feel it snap. I had no idea that a person could die before they heard their own neck break.

I landed in a jumble of knees and elbows. I rolled out from beneath the study table and scrambled to my feet. I couldn't understand why I wasn't dead and I waited for my nervous system to catch up with the pain I was supposed to be feeling.
 

I looked at Jon. He'd lifted me off the ground with one punch, and the only reason I was still alive was because I had spells in my pockets.
 

Jon tilted his head to one side like a puzzled animal. His eyes were strangely flat and glassy.

The bastard had tried to kill me. I grabbed for the taped-up piece of paper in my pocket, finding the corner of the ghost knife poking out. I pulled it free just as Jon leaned forward and bared his teeth.

I wouldn't survive another punch and Jon was too fast for me to let him get close again. As he started toward me, I flung my arm toward him, throwing the ghost knife spell.

The taped piece of paper met Jon just a few feet from my outstretched hand. Jon stopped his charge and drew back, but the ghost knife entered his breast bone and flew out of his back as though he wasn't there.
 

He collapsed onto his face like a marionette with its strings cut and didn't move.

I staggered backward then reached into my left hand pocket and pulled out my three steeled glass spells. Two were scorched and useless, but the third hummed with magic.
 

Damn. All that pain and effort wasted on my friend.
 

Friend.

"Jon. Oh, shit. What did I do?" I stuffed the spells into my pocket and rushed to him. I'd just used a weapon on him again. My brain and body were still buzzing with adrenaline--
Jon just tried to kill me
--but there was a part of me that thought he had a right to take his shot at me after all this time.

I knelt beside him. The back of his flannel shirt had a slot cut into it where the ghost knife had come out. I spread the cut with my fingers. No blood. The spell had cut his shirt but left his skin unmarked. I turned him over.
 

He grabbed my wrist. "I tried to kill you." His voice was gentle; all the animal fury had gone out of him. "Dude, I don't know what came over me. Something about the way you smelled reminded me of Echo, and it was, like, fight or flight, you know? I'm really sorry." He struggled to his feet. He didn't seem to be hurt, but he moved as if he was exhausted. He touched the front of his shirt. There was another cut in the fabric there and one of his buttons had been sliced cleanly in half, but the skin underneath was unmarked. "Man, what was that thing?"

I held his arm to steady him, although he didn't really seem to need it.

"A spell," I said. "I don't think it hurt you physically, but I think it cut your... ghost." I felt like a dork just saying it.

"You mean my soul?" Jon asked. "Aw, that is so
cool
. Come on, let's get your stuff."

Jon bent over and picked up a sheet of blue paper. I suddenly realized that the blue pages had fallen out of my backpack and fluttered onto the wet cement.

"Oh, shit! Get those papers! I went through hell to--Don't let them tear or smudge."

We picked up the pages as quickly and as carefully as we could. Jon paused to look at one. "More spells! Where did you get these?"

I remembered his punch going deep into my stomach. "Where did you get your cure?"
 

"Fair enough," he answered. He gave the last of the blue pages to me and I looked them over. A few were spotted with damp, but none were ruined. "I'll show you."

I put the pages into my pack, then zipped it closed. He started for the stairs, but I wasn't ready to leave yet.

I could feel the ghost knife nearby. I took a moment to get my bearings. If I'd landed beside that bench over there, and Jon had come at me from that direction, the ghost knife would have gone....

I crossed to a set of stairs on the far side of the study area. I could feel the power of the spell as I approached. The railing for the stair was a simple metal pipe, and there, about four feet off the ground, it was cut through. A moment later I found a slot in the concrete steps.
 

The ghost knife had cut through the cement and embedded itself there. I supposed it could have continued on, cutting through the planet until it skimmed back out of the ground somewhere else, then spun outward into space. I didn't know why it had stopped, but I was glad it had. Because I wanted it, desperately.

The real question was how I was going to get it out. I didn't have a jack hammer handy and the slot was too thin to grab it with a wire or tweezers.
 

But the magic in the ghost knife carried a trace of me. I held up my hand and
reached
for it with my mind, trying to connect. I willed it back into my hand, and it flew out of the slot in the stairs into my hand.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. This spell wasn't
alive
, was it? It couldn't be.
 

Jon watched me from the far stairs. He held his cell phone to his ear. "We're set. We're on our way." He closed the phone. Time to go.

As we made our way across campus, Jon touched my elbow and said: "I'm sorry."

I waved him off. "I have a lot to tell you--"

"Save it," Jon said. "The others will want to hear it, too. You should tell us all together."

I imagined us being pulled over and I wanted to talk to him while I had the chance. Besides, no matter how many times he apologized, I still couldn't stop thinking about that punch. "I don't mind saying it twice."
 

"Bad idea," Jon said. "You shouldn't tell me alone. Tell the whole family together."

I hadn't expected that. I wanted to talk to him and Macy. She was the other person Annalise and Callin had targeted.
 

But Jon didn't know anything about that, of course. "Bingo--I mean, Barbara isn't going to pull a gun on me again, is she?"

"Not while I'm around. But I don't mean that family. We're going somewhere else. Then you can tell your story to everyone."

Everyone? Echo was dead and Payton had a broken arm and leg, and maybe he was still in a coma. I hoped he was in a hospital. Were there others beside Jon and Macy?

Jon didn't want to talk. He stalked across the grass toward the street, his head moving from side to side, scanning the campus and the sidewalk beyond. He looked like a panther on the hunt.

We turned a corner and there was Jon's van parked at the curb. I almost grabbed his shoulder and dragged him away. The back corner was smashed in and there were three bungee cords where the sliding side door should have been.
 

"Oh, come on, Jon. No."

"Let's hurry," Jon said. He climbed in and belted himself into the wheelchair. I looked inside, noting that the hamburger wrappers had been blown, still loose, against the back door.
 

The cops were going to pull us over for sure.
 

I laid my hand on the twisted, torn metal. It was hard and unyielding. I closed my eyes, remembering how Annalise had torn it apart like paper.

"Are you all right, buddy?" Jon twisted in his chair and looked at me through the open doorway. I climbed into the passenger seat. I couldn't imagine how an eyesore like this had followed Uncle Karl in a police car without being spotted. Cops were too wary for that. How had Jon managed it?

"I saw this happen," I said by way of explanation.

Jon was wearing his seat belt. I put mine on, too. Jon pulled into traffic and did an illegal u-turn. "Of course," he said. "I forgot. It must have been bad."

I remembered Annalise stomping Payton's bones flat, and Echo slamming her into the metal van. I remembered their furious fight, and the metal lamp post falling, and the thing that crawled out of Echo's throat.

"It was--"

"Remember all those people?" Jon said. "The sick people outside my house that kept trying to beg a cure?"

"Sure," I said. I was glad Jon had bulldozed into a new topic. "Like the guy who shot you?"

"Naw. That guy thought I was possessed. Try to keep them straight." Jon laughed a little. I glanced at his nine-fingered hand and felt a little sick.
 

Jon grabbed a wrapped-up quarter-pounder off the dash, peeled back the paper and took a gigantic bite. He chewed once, then gulped it down. His face twisted with disappointment and disgust. He threw the rest of the burger into the back of the van.

I twisted in my seat. I hadn't noticed before, but many of the wrappers on the floor of the van still had food in them. How long had they been sitting there?

"Anyway," Jon continued, "one of the sick people out there begging for a cure turned out to be rich. Really, really rich. And he thinks he can put pressure on me, right? So he up and buys the real estate office where Dad works and has him fired."

"You're kidding."

"The sharks are circling, bro."

"What's your Dad going to do?"

"Retire. He's up there already. This just moves his game plan up a few years. He won't have the whole cushion he was planning for, but he figures he'll be okay once they sell a few of the things they were planning to enjoy in their golden years. Mom thinks it's a good thing, actually. She's been worried about his health. Now they're talking about a couple little trips and whatever."

"Still sucks," I said.
 

"Yep." Jon stopped at a red light. The idling van bounced with each rpm. "I've been a lot of work for them over the years, and I haven't always been a sweetheart about it. Now, even after I'm cured, I bring them trouble."

I nodded and looked away.

"Don't make that face. I told you before, it's all different now. Everything's cool with me. I don't even resent that rich guy. I know what it's like to be less than optimal, you know? I know what it's like to want a cure so bad you feel like fucking crying."

The light turned green. Pedestrians gawked at the ruined van as we drove through the intersection. It was a miracle that the cops hadn't pulled us over already.

Jon wasn't finished. "What cost will be too high? How many people do you hurt to get what you want? Right? Do you know what I mean, or am I talking out of my ass?"

"You're worried about the rich guy's chances of getting into heaven."

It didn't seem funny to me, but Jon laughed. "Maybe he doesn't have a soul. You'll have to give him a paper cut and see if he falls over."

"Point me at him," I said, surprised by the earnestness in my voice. I was ready to take on all of Jon's enemies.

"Christ! I'm sick of talking about this crap. Cure cure cure cure sleep cure cure cure cure food cure cure cure. That's all I talk about these days. Let's change the subject. Tell me what you think of the Mariners' chances this year?"

"Well, I haven't exactly been following them."

"What? Did you switch to another team?"

Jon sounded genuinely betrayed. It was almost as if he thought I had cheated on him. "No, I haven't been following any team. I stopped watching baseball."

"Damn. Even I kept watching the games. You didn't even see the M's in the world series?"

I shrugged. "We had some... trouble. The guards wouldn't let us watch."

"Holy God," Jon said. "Jail must really suck! I can't think what would be worse: no M's or all the ass rape."

Jon suddenly gasped and pulled over to the curb, parking in front of a little house. He turned to me with a pained look on his face. "Dude," he said. "That was a stupid thing to say. I'm really sorry--"

"It's okay--"

"No, it's not and shut up while I apologize. I don't want to laugh at the bad shit that happened to you."

"It's fine. Seriously."

"Good. Great. Thank God. You're my friend, and I shouldn't have made a fucking rape joke. Jesus. It's just that, since the cure, I've felt different. More reckless, kinda. It's mostly a good feeling. I feel strong, ready to take on the world, sharks or no sharks, for the first time in years. But sometimes I'm seriously distracted. Sometimes I talk before I think."

"For the record," I said, "I had people looking out for me, so that didn't happen. We don't have to go further into it than that. Prison was bad, but not as bad as this." I tapped Jon's wheelchair.
 

"It ain't a contest."

"And you didn't piss me off."

"Cool," Jon said. "I don't want to offend you. You're my buddy and I need your help."

"You got it."
 

"Cool again." He shut off the engine and opened the door. "We're already here."

I stepped out of the van. We were somewhere north of Ballard on a little block that had missed out on the boom times. Jon crossed the street to a run down little house with a crooked foundation and peeling paint. A downstairs window had been boarded over and the flower garden beneath it had been trampled.
 

I followed him onto the porch. There was broken glass in the garden. It looked as if something had burst through the window and fallen onto the garden, tearing up the flowers.