“Parris!” she yelled. “Where’s the bloody null generator! I have to turn it off, so I can use my magics on the key!”
But Parris was still laughing wildly. He raised his left hand and looked into his Evil Eye, and just like that, he was gone. He’d escaped from a situation he found intolerable, and all it had cost him was his soul.
The key completed its full circle, and a door appeared in front of me. A flat black door, with the silver key set in a silver lock. The door began to open. I let go of the key, and put my shoulder to the door, trying to hold it closed, and it pushed me back with slow, contemptuous ease. A low whistling filled the room, as the air was sucked past the door’s edges, to whatever lay beyond. I dug my heels into the carpet, and couldn’t even slow the door. Given what it was, and what lay behind it, I probably couldn’t have stopped it even if I’d had my armour.
Molly cried out triumphantly behind the bar, as something smashed loudly. She vaulted back over the bar, and came running back to join me, stray magics spitting and crackling around her. She’d found the null generator. She stood beside me, and hit the door with the full force of her returned magic, and couldn’t even slow it. The air was rushing past the door’s edges now. Crow Lee had put a lot of thought and effort into his last act of spite against the world. The heavy table was edging forward along the floor, pulled by the remorseless force. I looked at Molly.
“Can you teleport us out of here?”
“I don’t know where we are!” said Molly. “Once we passed through that dimensional door, we could be anywhere! I can’t teleport blind without coordinates.”
The carpet was rolling up towards the door. The table was jerking forward. The air was rushing past me.
“Leave the door,” said Molly. “We can’t stop it. Let’s just leave, through the dimensional door, before someone thinks to lock it from the other side.”
“This is a black hole!” I said. “We can’t just leave it! If this door opens all the way it’ll suck in the whole world. Nowhere would be safe!”
“Isn’t there anything the Armourer gave you that might help?” said Molly.
“I’ve already used everything!” I said.
And then I stopped, as a thought struck me. In the Martian Tombs, one of the machines had insisted on giving me something. What Molly called the Get Out Of Jail Free card. I never did figure out what it was, or what it was for, but clearly the machines thought I’d need it. . . . I dug into my pocket dimension, and pulled out the card. I glared at it.
“Do something!”
And just like that, I began to fade away, as a teleport field formed around me. But only me. Not Molly.
“No!” I said. “No! I won’t go on my own! I won’t leave her behind! Take both of us!”
But it wouldn’t. The teleport field faded away. I thought hard.
“All right!” I said to the card. “Do something about the black hole!”
And I threw the card round the edge of the door, and into what lay beyond. Crow Lee magic, meet Martian tech. And just like that the door slammed shut again, and disappeared. The silver key fell to the floor. I picked it up, and put it carefully away, in my pocket dimension. The rushing air had stopped, and everything in the room was still and silent again.
“Deus ex Martiania,” I said. “Get out of Hell free card. I think I may faint. Or puke.”
“Puke first, then faint,” Molly said wisely. She hugged me tightly. “You wouldn’t leave without me. You could have saved yourself, but you wouldn’t leave me. How did I ever find someone like you?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” I said.
Molly pushed me away from her, and glared at me.
“What?” I said.
“Tell me the truth,” said Molly. “How could you be so sure you would win every game, and every cut of the cards?”
“Easy,” I said. “I cheated. Remember the pack of cards the Armourer gave me back at Drood Hall? With a built-in chameleon function, so it could look exactly like the pack it replaced? That would give me the winning hand or card, every time? I swapped it for the hotel’s pack, during Hyde’s first outburst. And no one noticed. Not even you. Parris trusted the pack, because he thought it was his.”
“I think I like Shaman better than Eddie,” said Molly. “He’s so much . . . sneakier.”
“And because neither of us could live without you,” I said.
“I could have told you that,” said Molly.
CHAPTER TEN
Fighting the Good Fight
“All right,” said Molly. “What do we do now?”
“I gave my word I’d do a great many things before I left this place,” I said. “Free all the trapped souls in the hotel corridor; do something to help the generic people on the Medium Games world; and bring down the whole damned Shadow Bank to put a stop to the rotten way they do things.”
“I’ve always admired your sense of ambition,” said Molly. “Caution and common sense just get in the way of having a good time. But first, I have to ask . . . where exactly are we? Since we passed through that dimensional door we could be anywhere at all . . . and I can’t help thinking there must be some really good reason why they covered these windows so we can’t see out. . . .”
She looked thoughtfully at the heavy steel shutters covering the three great windows, and the metal shutters shook and shuddered under the impact of her gaze. She glared at them, and the heavy steel groaned out loud as it fought the locks holding it in place. And then, one after the other, the locks shattered and blew apart, and each steel shutter rolled upwards. I walked forward, with Molly smiling smugly at my side, to look out the nearest window. And there, outside, were the star-filled night skies of the Medium Games world, its wide grassy plains lit by the harsh moonlight of too many moons.
“What the hell are we doing back here?” said Molly.
“You heard Parris,” I said. “This is the home world of the Shadow Bank. No wonder no one could ever find them. And no wonder they used this place to stage the more dangerous games of Casino Infernale. I think . . . there are a great many answers to be found in this other world. Think you can break this glass, Molly?”
“Of course,” she said airily. She glared at the window before us. The glass vibrated, and then shuddered violently, but it wouldn’t break. Molly jabbed an angry finger at the window, but although the glass bowed in and out, and shook desperately in its frame, it still wouldn’t give. Molly spoke a Word of Power; and the wall around the window split and cracked and fell apart . . . while the window remained entirely intact.
“Ah . . .” said Molly. “I don’t think this is glass, Shaman.”
“Maybe we should ask Parris how to get out there,” I said.
“Well,” said Molly. “You can try . . .”
Parris was still sitting in his chair, but it took only one look at his face to convince me there was no one home. His eyes stared unseeingly, his mouth drooled, and nothing at all moved in his face.
“Stay away from the Evil Eye,” said Molly, from a safe distance.
“I had already thought of that, thank you,” I said, not looking round. “I do have enough sense to avoid something called an Evil Eye. . . .”
“News to me,” sniffed Molly. “You know, we could take the Eye back with us. Your uncle Jack always complains you never bring him back a present. . . .”
“I am not dragging a mindless body around with me, just so the Armourer can have a new toy to play with,” I said firmly.
“We don’t need all of Parris,” said Molly. “Just his hand . . .”