Lyda looked up at the ceiling, palms out: Well?
Sasha was not about to unlock the door. Lyda tried the door again.
“There’s nothing in there,” Bucko said. “Get her to turn around.”
“How?” Sasha asked.
Fortunately, Lyda changed her mind. She spun about and walked back to the left … and passed the office door. She was headed straight for Grandpop’s bedroom!
“Oh my stars and garters!” Mother Maybelle exclaimed.
Sasha quickly opened a new set of controls and typed STOP! The word appeared on the wall between the office door and Grandpop’s room.
Lyda looked straight at the wall—which gave the illusion that she could see Sasha and was looking into her eyes. The woman’s eyebrows were raised, and she wore a slight smile. Sasha suddenly realized that Lyda knew exactly what was happening and who was doing what.
“She’s jerking you around!” Bucko said.
“Ah think it’s Miss Rose who does not appreciate being ‘jerked around,’” Zebo said in his deep alligator voice.
Sasha typed: The office is open. She’d unlocked it before she woke up Lyda for this treasure hunt. I won’t be able to see or hear you in there. Sasha cleared the screen and typed a new line. The paintings are leaning against the wall.
Lyda saluted. Then she slipped into the office and closed the door.
“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” Sasha said.
“It wasn’t the most straightforward way to proceed,” Zebo said. “But ah approve of any tactic which keeps you at arm’s length from Eduard.”
None of the Imaginary Friends were fans of her parents, though a few of them pitied Suzette. Their opinion on this newly discovered bio parent was divided. Could Lyda Rose be trusted? If she cared for Sasha, why hadn’t she shown up before now?
One fact trumped everything: Lyda had her own IF. She was like Sasha, and Grandpop. That meant she already understood her in a way that Eduard and Suzette never could. Lyda would get to the bottom of what Eduard was up to, and Sasha would stay safely on the sidelines.
Ever since she’d discovered who Lyda Rose was, Sasha had nurtured a secret wish, a daydream really, which she so far had managed to keep from the IFs. That was no easy trick; they were an intuitive bunch, and Mother Maybelle especially was attuned to what Sasha was feeling. But Sasha held the dream inside her, and when no one was looking she lifted the lid to check on it:
Tomorrow, or the day after, Lyda moved into the big house in the desert, and there she lived with Sasha and Grandpop and Esperanza. Eduard and Suzette vanished off to London or New York or wherever it was that they really wanted to live, and Sasha was finally able to bring the IF Deck out into the open and talk to her friends whenever she wanted. Because Lyda wasn’t just her birth mother, she was like Sasha and Grandpop, what he called “God-blessed.” The three of them understood each other in a way that outsiders, alone in their heads with only their own voice to keep them company, never ever would. Oh, Esperanza said she knew exactly what was going on in Sasha’s head, but she didn’t, not really. Everything would finally be—
“Motherfucker!”
The shout came from the wall, which was still tuned in to the hallway outside Eduard’s office, but it also traveled through real space and down the hallway to Sasha’s room. In the magic mirror, Lyda Rose had stepped onto the balcony, holding a big beige cube. It was the thing from the package Sasha had found a few days ago in Eduard’s office, the one that had been too heavy for her to lift. It looked like a printer/copier.
“Edo!” Lyda yelled. “Get the fuck out here!”
She threw the cube off the balcony. A moment later Sasha heard the crash. Sasha quickly flicked through the various screens until she got a shot of the great room. The cube had hit the big granite coffee table and exploded. Pieces were everywhere.
“That,” Bucko said, “was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Sasha flicked her hands at the wall, making the sign for mosaic, and two dozen mirrors opened at once, showing almost every room in the house and a few views of the outside. She watched Esperanza throw open the door of her room, pulling on her robe with fire-drill urgency. Rovil, still wearing all his clothes, stood in the middle of his room, looking at the door as if deciding whether to come out. And Grandpop, poor tired old man, was the last to appear, wearing nothing but boxer shorts. By the time he stepped onto the balcony, Lyda was already below, pulling at pieces of machinery.
“What have I done?” Sasha cried. “Why is she so mad?”
Elk Heart’s knuckles tightened on his spear, but the chief said nothing. Squidly drifted down to place a tendril on her shoulder. Tinker watched her with his headlight eyes.
“Maybe we should turn off these windows,” Mother Maybelle said.
“Screw that,” Bucko said.
Lyda and Grandpop were fighting now, or rather, Lyda was yelling at Grandpop and he was trying to get her to calm down. Then Esperanza turned on the lights to the room, which startled them both and interrupted Lyda’s shouting—but only for a moment.
“Should I go out there?” Sasha asked.
“Ah advise against it,” Zebo said. “For now.” HalfnHalf nodded his two heads in agreement.
Tinker pinged significantly, and Sasha noticed something strange in one of the far windows. Somebody was moving out by the garage. She zoomed in, and saw that it was a man in a black cowboy hat, a white man she’d never seen before. An electrical box attached to the garage was open. He reached inside it—
The wall blanked. The mirrors were gone, and with it all light in the room. Sasha flicked her hands, but the house, her faithful house, refused to respond.
“Uh-oh,” Bucko said.
A tiny flame flared in the corner of the room. Sasha stood up.
He leaned against the wall, the brim of his hat pulled low over his eyes. He touched the match to his cigarette, puffed once, then dropped the match to the floor.
Bucko said, “How the hell did he get out of—?”
Sasha held out her hand. The bear shut up.
The Wander Man ground out the match with the toe of one black boot. “You know who that man is out there, right?”
Sasha nodded. “He’s you.”
“Close enough, Miss Sasha. Close enough.” He looked up and smiled. None of the IFs moved. They were all, even Elk Heart, terrified of him, and he knew it.
“You listen carefully,” he said. “And do exactly what I say.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“You crazy motherfucker.” I threatened him with a fragment from the broken machine, a length of flat steel that ended in a sharp tip. “You’re building them.”
Edo blinked at me as if the light was too bright. Esperanza and Dr. Gloria hovered in the corner of the huge living room, like seconds ready to step between the combatants. Well, good luck with that.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I’ve never seen—whatever that is.”
“The paintings are upstairs, Edo. The fucking blueprints. You got Gilbert to design it for you, and you fucking made it, then you’ve got one sitting in your fucking house.”
“Please, Lyda, I—”
“How many did you make, Edo? Where’s the factory putting them together? How many churches do you have out there?”
He stared at the coffee table and the remains of the printer. Most of the machine was intact, but shards of plastic and bright pieces of stainless steel were scattered over the wooden floors. “Did this—did you get it from Eduard’s office?”
“Do not try to blame this on him,” I said. “You’re the evangelist, Edo. I never thought you’d actually try to do it, but then I saw the first one in Toronto—a chemjet to print One-Ten.”
“I swear to you—”
“Stop lying. I know about the churches. I know about ‘Logos.’ Just tell me what you’ve done to Sasha. Are you giving her Numinous?”