I realized I was face-down on the rug, and I pushed myself up, heard the rustling of fancy black gowns.
Darla snatched Toadsticker out of my hand.
And then came the scream.
We all heard it, even the quiet ladies with their perpetual smiles and their shiny bright knives. It was a peculiar sort of scream-one that started out small and distant and faint, but quickly grew into a breathless, ear-piercing howl that, impossibly, managed to sound from a place directly behind you, moving with you if you turned.
I struggled to remember where I’d heard that scream before as the numbness spread to my chest and began to inch and ooze its way up my neck.
The smiling women’s skirts grew still. They no longer walked. A tiny portion of my mind recognized this as a very good thing, though I couldn’t place the significance in context just yet.
Buttercup appeared in front of me, her tiny hands lifted, her small but powerful banshee lungs filling the room with a keening, rising howl that filled every nook and cranny until the volume threatened to make your ears burst and bleed.
Darla moved past us, a tall shadow in the dark. Toadsticker gleamed as she raised him and flashed as she swung.
A small shadow fell, and then another, and another. Buttercup’s howl went up and on and up and on, and it tugged at me as if insisting that I follow.
I lost all feeling in my jaw, in my lips, in my nose. I wasn’t sure I was still breathing, and I wasn’t sure that was important.
Toadsticker rose and Toadsticker fell, and still the shapes didn’t move-didn’t resist or flee, didn’t struggle.
Something poked me right between my eyes.
I blinked, barely felt a second poke and struggled to focus.
It poked me again. A pair of small red eyes, each iris a dancing point of flame, stared into mine.
A tiny hand slapped me, tugged at my ear. I tried to speak, couldn’t, and struggled to keep my eyes open.
The eyes flared and in the brief glow of them I saw a thumb-sized impish face appear. It puckered its thin red lips and it spat into my eyes, something that burned and stung and left me blinded.
Buttercup’s cry went silent. My ears rang. She went to her knees and put her face close to mine.
“Dollies,” she said, her voice as high and cheerful as any child’s.
Darla knelt down beside her. Her cheeks were spattered with blood.
I surprised myself by speaking.
“Any of that yours?”
The feeling in my face flooded back. The numbness fled my chest. The sharp wicked pain of a gash across my ribs made me wince.
I found my legs and put them under me and managed to rise manfully to a crouch.
“Thank you, Mr. Simmons,” I said.
If the imp was anywhere around, he didn’t reply.
“You’re delirious,” said Darla.
I made it to my feet. Buttercup danced and clapped her hands in glee.
“Maybe. Are you hurt? Did they nick you?”
“No. They just stopped moving. I don’t think.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t think they’ll get up again.”
I took Toadsticker gently from her hand.
“We need to go. Right now. Before any more show up.”
“You said the blades were poisoned.”
“They were. But I’m all better now, see?” I took a pair of wobbling steps and picked up my gun out of a pool of blood.
Buttercup vanished from my side and reappeared inside our open front door. She was glowing softly, like a cloud-covered moon.
“Dollies,” she said, her tone suddenly somber. She pointed north.
The numbness was gone. My wound was wide but shallow. I’d need stitches but I judged I’d live long enough to get them.
I joined Buttercup in the ruined door. Lights were going on in windows up and down the street. Here and there, the bolder neighbors peeked out of half-open doors, lanterns or candles in their hands.
“Sorry for the noise, folks,” I shouted. “Hedgehogs. Big ones. Had to put them down. I’d stay inside, if I were you. Think we missed a couple.”
With that, I took banshee in one hand, bride in the other, and we ran until we managed to find a Watchman and summon a carriage and bleed all the way to Avalante.
Chapter Seven
Doctors hovered until I pitched a fit and chased two of them out of the room with the same bedpan they were insisting that I use. Darla helped by sitting in a corner and nearly choking with laughter.
Evis himself appeared a few minutes later, noticeably bereft of bedpans or white-coated doctors.
“Well. I see you’re making yourself popular with the staff. Hello, Mrs. Markhat. Is he always this quick to make friends?”
Darla stood, smiling. If you didn’t know her well enough to tell her real smiles from the manufactured one she showed, she looked not only composed but cheerful.
The bloodstains on her blouse were dry, but large and plain.
“You should see him first thing in the morning. It’s like living with an Ogre.”
Evis laughed without showing his teeth and pulled a chair up close to my bed.
“The good news is they can’t find any trace of poison in your blood.”
“Marvelous. Hear that, Darla? I can die of old age after all.”
“Not so fast. We still don’t know what was on the blade in the first place. Stitches says you’re to stay right there, with a doctor at the door, in case there’s some time-delayed element to the agent we just can’t see.”
I groaned. Darla deflated a little, realizing, I guess, that Stitches had just won her argument for her.
“I’m telling you, Evis, Mr. Simmons spat in my eyes and cured me right there.”
Evis nodded amiably, as I might do in the presence of an old man telling tales of flower-gathering fairies in the bygone days of yore.
“I mentioned that to Stitches,” said Evis. “She muttered something about hallucinogens and psychotropic venoms. “
“So you think I dreamed all that.”
Evis turned his dirty marble eyes toward Darla.
“Did you see anything in the room, aside from your headstrong husband and the, um, intruders?”
She shook her head no. “It was dark. I was busy. I suppose something small could have been sneaking about, but…”
Evis sighed and looked back at me. “Maybe you didn’t get a killing dose. Hell, maybe you were saved by imp expectorant.”
“It’s been that kind of night.”
“Let’s hope it’s all over. By the way. We’re moving you two as soon as Stitches is satisfied you’re out of the woods. You’ll be moving into a stateroom on the Queen.”
“On the boat?”
“Third deck, port side, two doors down from me, across the hall from Stitches. Surrounded by the most potent sorcerers and most skilled soldiers Avalante can field. Safest place I can think of.”
“How far from the saloon?”
“Not far enough,” said Darla. She fixed me with her most unsmiling smile. “What about our house? And Buttercup?”
“When you two go home you’ll find all the damage repaired, all the evidence removed. We’ve even convinced your neighbors the ruckus was just kids with fireworks.”
“You’ve got the bodies here?”
I started to rise but Evis pushed me back with that cold, small, halfdead hand of his.
“You don’t have to worry about them. They’ve been rendered harmless. Stitches thought it was worth taking a look. She may have been right. Said this batch wasn’t as finished as the other one we saw. Said the maker might have been in a hurry-might have slipped up somehow.”
“Not as finished? What the hell does that mean?”
“You’ll have to ask her. But not tonight. Tonight, you two are to get some rest. Mrs. Markhat-”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, my name is Darla. Just like it was before we married. Darla.”
“Darla, there’ll be a doctor in a chair outside the door all night. Yell if our patient here so much as sneezes. And you.” He waggled a finger at me. “No more brandishing of bedpans, you hear? We may need all the doctors we can get if this thing goes bad.”