Her lips thinned to a frustrated line. Then she gave a sharp nod and sucked her tendrils of power back to the edge of the willow’s curtain. “All right.”
“The earrings for the ball.”
“Yes, yes. Give them to me.”
“Say it: The earrings for the ball.”
She growled. “The earrings for the ball.”
The world seemed to shiver and the grid flashed, throbbing under us, the voices shouting with its energy. I stooped and dug the buried earring from the muddy ground. I held them both out.
She turned the ball over into her right palm and spat on the bloody blot that marked where it had hit her. She chuckled quietly in her throat and drew a figure in the blood with the middle finger of her left hand. Then she blew on the figure, making the wet surface sizzle and smoke as if her breath were fire. Once it satisfied her, she smiled and lobbed the puzzle ball at me as I tossed the glittering earrings into the air near her.
I caught the ball and winced from the heat of the thing. It smelled of singed flesh and teakwood. Where she’d drawn on it, a complex symbol remained as if branded into the surface.
She snatched the earrings from the air and slipped their wire loops into her ears with a sigh. Then she looked at me, one side of her mouth curling upward. “Take it and go. You’ll only need that one, once you open the way. When you’re done, make sure they both burn to ash. The salamander’s call will start the fire,” she added, pointing at the symbol. “Be sure the other ball burns with it. You have three days, for I intend to raze the labyrinth to the very bedrock, and if the doors haven’t burned by then, they will by my command. You won’t want to be near them when they do, though I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to add an enemy or two to the pyre if you have some handy to throw in. Such things like blood sacrifices.”
She started to walk away; then she cocked her head and half turned back, the dark-red gems glittering at her earlobes even through the gloom. She regarded us over her shoulder as the willow branches lifted aside like a theater curtain. “One other thing: Your friend’s trick might work on the wards I hung for Edward. It was quite a while ago that I raised them, so I may not have buried the tap as well as I would now.” Then she chuckled and it felt like hail on my skull. “Good luck with them.”
She stepped through the open willow swag and over the red line of her own magic, which drew back in as soon as she was across. Quinton sighed in relief and I lunged forward, thrusting my empty hand through the willow fronds before the red lines closed completely.
“Wait!” I shouted. The fiery marks snapped onto my forearm like teeth and I yelped in pain. “Where is the maze?” I gasped.
Dru Cristoffer laughed on the other side of the green veil. “Find it yourself, Greywalker. I’ve done enough—more than enough—to save that pesthole city. And more than enough for you. Next time I shan’t open my door.”
I felt blood running down the hidden side of my arm. The warm liquid seemed to loosen the clamp of the magical lines and I yanked my arm back, feeling invisible barbs scrape gouges in my skin as I withdrew. Cristoffer’s laughter receded into the fallen darkness beyond the tree’s swaying curtain of leaves. I didn’t want to stay there, but at the moment I was shaking too much to move and I sat down hard on the ground at the base of the willow.
Quinton plopped down beside me. “Well, that was lovely, in a tea-party-with-Satan kind of way. You all right?”
“I’ll heal,” I observed, closing my eyes to the sight of my skin knitting up over pinpricks of light and lines of blood. “How about you?”
“I think I might have some welts, but I’ll be fine.”
“Welts?”
“Yeah, that magic of hers is like stinging nettle, only worse. Burning nettle might be more accurate. And that was just the friendly parts.”
“Well . . . we did get the puzzle ball, and some useful information—maybe.”
“But we still have to find the labyrinth.”
I nodded, taking a couple of deep breaths and heaving to my feet. “I don’t think we’ll do it tonight, though. We need some sleep and we can start looking in the morning.”
Quinton crept out of the willow’s shroud behind me. “Got any ideas where to start?”
“Historical society. This is the sort of town where all the buildings are documented by someone, even the outlying ones and especially the interesting ones. I’d think a house with a maze would rate at least a mention.”
“As long as we don’t have to go back to that . . . woman’s.”
I saw the Rover still standing at the side of the road, trailing the tattered Grey rags that seemed to adhere to everything I owned for more than a week. Nothing had disturbed them and no new colors of magic clung to the truck.
“She’s a blood mage,” I said as I climbed into the safety of the Rover’s front seat.
“You mean Cristoffer?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I probably would have guessed in a while, but that trick with the puzzle ball was pretty obvious. And she mentioned the wards in Edward’s bunker—those had to have been hung by a powerful blood-worker, which would be her.”
“She’s got to be a lot older than she looks,” Quinton added. “Not that I want to know. . . . Do you suppose she actually knew Andrew Jackson . . .?”
“I think she probably saw him in diapers.”
TWENTY-TWO
T
he hotels were full and we ended up sleeping in the Rover at a campground east of downtown Leavenworth—probably just as well since using a credit card for the deposit would have left a trace of our presence. Beside us the river gurgled to itself in the dark, lending a descant to the singing of the grid. The back of the Rover was a bit crowded and smelled of dog, but it was acceptable and Quinton fell asleep with ease. I lay on my side, tired and wanting to sleep but afraid to. The strange voices of the grid were increasingly present and increasingly loud. They chilled and compelled me, drawing me too close to the warp and weft of the Grey.
I was certain that anyone I asked would say, “Just don’t listen to them; don’t do what they say.” But that wasn’t so easy and the voices, singing in ever-closer harmony, hadn’t always been wrong. If my dad’s advice was what I thought, then I needed to listen—to “know” what they sang. And yet . . . those voices had urged me to kill Goodall and to do something to Will. One of those I had recoiled from and the other hadn’t worked. I had destroyed Alice, but that didn’t seem to me the same as killing Goodall. But it was difficult for me to articulate the difference and why one was acceptable and the other wasn’t. I hated the hard shell of ice that seemed to be growing around me, dragging me away from compassion where it seemed most deserved.
And I wondered what was I going to do once I got to Dad. Supposedly he would tell me Wygan’s plan and how to stop it. But what if he didn’t? What if it was a trap, as Mara had suggested? Or a wrong turn? Ghosts don’t know much and what they do know may be wrong or incomplete. I wasn’t sure why I assumed my father’s shade was different, but I did and I hoped that meant I hadn’t become a ruthless machine of some unknown retribution. “Paladin of the Dead” was what Carlos had called me. . . . What dread thing did that make me . . . ? In the dark, lying beside Quinton and yet feeling alone, I did not know what to do, which instinct or voice to give ear to. I felt I was not myself anymore, that my decisions were those of a foreigner in my skin.
I’d thought I understood who and what I was two years earlier, before I’d died in an elevator. I’d thought I had control of my life—at last—that I was the person I wanted to be, doing the job I wanted. Part of that certainty had been torn away from me when I ceased being blind to the Grey, when I became something I did not want to be and didn’t understand. I thought I had regained some equilibrium since then. I had come to accept what I was and what I did and make the best of it. Sometimes I’d even gotten a little smug about it. But I’d still been wrong. I wasn’t what I’d thought, nor had anything about my life been what I’d believed. Deceptions, manipulations, and illusions had shaped the fabric of my life and I had not been blameless in making it—I’d destroyed my own memories and lived in the bitter confines of my anger at my parents. I’d clung to my beliefs without questioning them and learned I was wrong. I’d reacted, rather than acting. I’d done the predictable thing and run the maze like a good little rat. Was I still a rat, still going where I was pushed?
Now I was further away from what I’d been—or thought I’d been—than ever. I felt something powerful and frightening coiling under my skin. This ability everyone pushed me to embrace would change me fundamentally. I knew this without any question; the rising, clarifying song in my mind and the cold electricity across my nerves told me it was so. It was one of the few certainties I had, and yet I did not think I had a choice to reject this power. Among the dozens of questions I couldn’t answer, one occupied and terrified me most: Would I, if I survived this, still be human? And if not, would I be able to stave off destruction of all that was dear? This sleepless horror held me until dawn.
By the time Quinton opened his eyes to the morning light, I was damned tired of being damned tired. He noticed I was dragging.
“Didn’t sleep?” he asked, sitting up and putting his arms around my shoulders.
I rubbed at my eyes. “No. It’s awfully noisy in my head these days.”
“I keep thinking I should be able to help you, but I’m not sure how.”
I gave him a weak smile. “You do. Just keep on doing what you already do.”
He made a rueful face. “You say so. . . .”
“I do. Now, let’s get moving and see if we can find this maze.”
We were still a bit ahead of the Maifest crowd, and the Upper Valley Museum, which housed the Upper Valley Historical Society, wasn’t open yet, so we were able to get some breakfast first and wait on the stonework terrace that surrounded the old house that was now the museum. It sat well back from everything else on the north side of the Wenatchee on a large swath of high riverbank land at the end of a small street that marked the eastern edge of Leavenworth’s Bavarian theme. The building itself—a fieldstone craftsman bungalow with a low, arched roof and lots of wood and windows—predated the theme by at least fifty years. Most of the houses and shops on Division Street were plain late-Victorian clapboard structures and a few much later condos, so the gracious low lines of the museum stood out even more as it rested in green isolation at the end of the road. From the back terrace I could see the willow trees where we’d stood the night before with Dru Cristoffer, but there was no sign from this distance across the river, other than a thin red haze in the Grey, that there was anything magical on the opposite bank.
Quinton and I had done some reading up on the museum and historical society during breakfast. The building had been the summer home of the Lamb-Davis sawmill’s owners, and then the local banker’s house for many years before becoming a bed-and-breakfast, and then the museum. There’d been some information about it online, but not much else about any other buildings, much less one with a labyrinth—plenty about Spring Bird Fest, though, which was upcoming at the museum in a week. I couldn’t say I was sorry to miss it, since I was just as glad not to be eyed by the wild raptors of the local bird rescue group or surrounded by children in songbird costumes. The old house was far enough removed from Front Street to still be peaceful that morning and the clear, constant babble of the river seemed to calm the chorus in my mind, so sitting and waiting suited me fine.
Two women in their late fifties arrived on foot at 10:45. They smiled at us and waved. “We’ll be open in just a few minutes,” one of them called to us. “Just sit tight a bit longer.” They began unlocking and setting up the museum to welcome the day’s visitors. One of them struggled out carrying a sandwich board events sign and Quinton jumped up to help her take it down the steps to the driveway. I drifted toward the door she’d left ajar and slid inside the building.
The house wasn’t very large, at least not on the main floor, and I imagined the one basement floor didn’t add much living space. I found myself in a wide, shallow entry with doors on each side and an open post-and-beam arch ahead of me. The remaining woman stepped out of the doorway on my left, which was labeled “Gift Shop.” She was a soft-looking woman, a little round everywhere without being fat, her blond hair fading but not to silver. She was wearing a brown sweater set over camel-colored trousers and brown loafers that cost more than I made in a week.
She jumped with surprise when she saw me. “Oh, we’re not quite open yet. . . .”
“Actually, I’m looking for some information about an old house in the area. It must have been torn down or otherwise destroyed about two years ago.”
“Oh. A house. We don’t knock down many houses around here, you know. Most are historic one way or another.”
“This one may have been historic in its way. Apparently it was very old, at least two stories, in one of the orchards, and it had a maze or labyrinth on the property.”
“Oh. A labyrinth. In the orchard. My, my. That must have been the Rose house.”
“Rose house? Was that a family name or did that refer to roses on the property?” Maybe I needed to look for rosebushes as well as apple trees. . . .
“No, no. I’d have to look it up to get the family name of the owners, but the house was called Rosaceae originally and it got shortened over time to Rose.”
An electric current seemed to run through me when she said the original name. That was one of the words I’d heard from the voices of the grid: “rosaceae.” I could feel the humming delight of the chorus tingling over my nerves. “That’s a funny name for a house,” I said, coughing a little on the grid’s excitement.
“It’s the scientific name for the plant family both apples and roses belong to.”
“Apples
and
roses?” I wouldn’t have imagined them to be related.
She smiled a bit smugly. “Yes. Roses, apples, hawthorn, cherries . . . they’re all part of Rosaceae. My family planted some of the earliest apple trees in this valley.”
I noticed she didn’t say “the first.” I shook my head as if amazed. “You must know a lot about the area, then—and the fruit trees.”
“Oh, I do!”
“Why did the owner give the house such an odd name?”
“I don’t think anyone’s sure. Except that he was very eccentric. He didn’t lay out his orchard in the usual way, either—not in square rows but in a kind of crazy radial pattern around the house and the maze. So the most efficient way to harvest the fruit was to spiral out from the middle or in from the edge. Except you couldn’t, since the house took up a big square in one quarter of the array. And the orchard wasn’t all apple trees, either. Some pear and cherry were mixed in, too, though that isn’t really wise if you’re producing commercial fruit.”
The other woman reentered with Quinton at her heels. Up close, she was plainly the subordinate of the pair: Her hair was cheaply dyed, her clothes weren’t so expensive or well maintained, and her complexion bore the ruddy marks of a harder, more outdoor life, though they were otherwise much alike. “Janice,” she puffed, “this young man—oh.” She caught sight of me and came to a sudden halt. “Oh, well, here she is, then.” She turned and looked at Quinton. “Here she is! This is your lady friend, isn’t it?”
Quinton nodded. “Yep, that’s her. Thanks for helping me find her.”
The other woman blushed. “Oh, it’s nothing. Thank
you
for your help with the sign and the garage doors—they’re so heavy!” This last declaration came with a sharp look askance at Janice.
Janice ignored that. “Belinda, do you remember the Rose house?”
“The house in the crazy orchard on North Road? I sure do. They finally tore the old wreck down about two years ago.”
I turned to look at her more directly. “Why was it torn down?” I asked her.
She rolled her eyes and made half a grin of shameful pleasure. “The upper story caught fire once—don’t know why it didn’t light the trees—but after it was put out, it just sat there for years. No one lived in it and it was turning into a real danger. The kids from the high school would come out and dare each other to go in at night and do something foolish like take something or paint their name on something. Crazy things like that. I did it too when I was a kid, but Nils and I—he’s my husband now—we got chased off before we could get in trouble.”
“Who chased you off if no one lived there?”
“Well, that’s why it was such a big dare. People said the house was haunted. There was always strange stuff going on around there. Lights at night in the trees, wolves and bears and rabid raccoons running around. And oh my God, the crows! Crows used to nest all over the orchard, even when there wasn’t any fruit, and they’d dive-bomb you if you tried to walk through it.”
“Animals chased you off?” I asked.
She nodded. “Oh, yes. I think it was a bear—just a little bear, mind, but a bear all the same. I couldn’t swear, because I didn’t see it very well in the dark and it’s been a long time, but it smelled bad and it growled and charged us, and we ran like the dickens!”
“Oh, Belinda, it couldn’t have been a bear all the way down there,” Janice chided.
Belinda dropped her eyes to the floor for a moment. “Well, I said I wasn’t sure. It might have been a dog, maybe. . . .”
“I don’t know,” Quinton speculated. “It’s not that far from the hills. If the deer come down, why not the bears?”
“Well, yes. Now, that’s what I thought,” Belinda said, shooting a defiant glance at Janice.
Janice sighed as if indulging a child, but said nothing.
“Where was this house?” I asked Belinda.
“Out near the old cemetery.” This just got better and better, didn’t it?
“Could you tell me how to find it?”
“Certainly!” She crossed the room in a few strides and grabbed a handful of flyers about donating to the museum and wrote on the back of one. “See, you go up Division here to Highway Two. Turn right. Then you go just a little ways to Two-Oh-Nine—that’s Chumstick Highway—and you turn left, which is going to be northerly. Then you go on up Chumstick just a mile, past the county shop yard, and turn right onto North Road.” Belinda drew and lettered a map as she talked. Her printing was precise and very quick, her demeanor entirely confident as she worked. I hated to interrupt her.
“What’s a shop yard?” I asked.
Belinda looked up just long enough to give me a smile. “It’s the county’s equipment maintenance shop and storage yard,” she explained before she returned her gaze to her map in progress. “After the yard, you cross the railroad tracks and then take the first left—that’ll be the cemetery road. It’s not much of a road and it’s not marked too well, but you’ll see the sign for the graveyard. Stay to the left, ’cause the orchard there is private property. Pass the graveyard and stay on the orchard road along the railroad tracks until you get past the end of the orchard boundary. There’s a real small road there on the right—it’s hard to see but look for a pair of lightning-burned trees standing side by side. That’ll be the road. Go up that and follow it around the hook to the old orchard. You’ll have to walk up from the edge of the property. You’ll know you’re there ’cause there’ll be an alley of pear trees and then a lot of old stone lying around. That used to be the house foundation. And then the trees start up all around, like a big circle with a slice out of it, and you’re there.”