That’s what Midheaven ran on. Names, desires, attributes, powers and skills-all the building blocks of a viable life-form. I had to admit, I’d probably still be irked too. But I’d paid him back with a chip of my own, and the power he’d taken was more than a revealed name. Shen had stripped me of my ability to heal quickly, like a superhero.
Not that it mattered now.
I could tell it also didn’t make us even in his eyes. He scuttled over to me like a bug, a sourceless wind catching the sandy dunes behind him, making them shimmer and slide in the cold red light. “If you didn’t want to be here in some small part of your thieving heart, then you wouldn’t be…and neither would I. So just tell me what you want. I have to get back to my game.”
“I’m the reason you’re here?” I asked as he came to a stop in front of me.
“Men are never allowed into the elemental rooms without invitation.”
Because women ruled Midheaven. Gazing around, I wondered which element this room represented. The last time I was here, I’d visited only one of the four rooms upstairs-Solange’s fire room. It’d been remarkably absent of fire, but for the stars burning up the night sky of her makeshift planetarium.
Yeah, makeshift. Comprised of people’s friggin’ souls.
But what could a vast expanse of arid desertscape be? The earth room? Or was that too straightforward?
“Am I really here? I mean, I was drugged. I didn’t cross here via the line.” I swallowed hard, hopeful even though my body continued to buzz like a live wire, and the question rebounded back at me.
Shen tilted his head, looking at me like I’d just gotten off the short bus. “Your ignorance is appalling. Drugs allow incorporeal passage for those with the ability to interact with this world. If you didn’t want to be here, you shouldn’t have taken the drug. Or called forth the world in your mind.”
Carlos, I thought, gritting my teeth. That’s why he’d had me repeat the word he whispered into my mouth. But why? What was I supposed to do here? And, more importantly, how the hell did I get out?
“And you’re going to help me?”
“I am a man. You are a woman.” Shen rolled his dark, jaded eyes. “And the task would be infinitely easier if you actually told me what you want.”
But I had no orders to give him. I had no idea why Carlos would send me here, or what I was supposed to do now.
Then the other sound rolled over the sky again, not in the tinny tones of my voice’s echo, but the whipping arch from before, like the bright sweep of a lionfish’s tail as it sped along the ocean floor. It sounded like color, and moved like it came from within me. I followed it, neck craning from one side of the “ceiling” to the other, though the room sat like an island between red horizons. “What is that?”
“Finally,” Shen muttered, as if I’d made a wish. He reached into his robe, and I braced for the appearance of a weapon, wondering if he could go Jet Li on my ass in my own dream. The question became moot when all he did was pull out a forked branch and held it in front of him.
I palmed my hip. “What are you doing to do, poke me in the eye?”
He shot me a look of ill-concealed disdain, gripped one side of the branch in each hand, palms down, and pointed it in front of him. Head bobbing beneath his conical hat, he began muttering as he circled me. I frowned, then straightened. “Wait-are you dousing?”
I tried to recall what I knew about divining rods and dowsers. They were used to find water. Only seconds after this great mental leap, the rod took a dive of its own, seemingly flying from Shen’s hands to bury itself, single point down, right between my feet. It found a soft, or softer, spot, and sunk straight down, though the sand around it, and beneath me, remained unmoved. Relieved, I glanced back at Shen.
He lifted his head, the giant hat sliding away to reveal a mocking grin. Then he flipped me off.
A whirring sound started up underneath me, growing louder as the grains began to drain between my feet. The rod’s handles became propellers, blowing sand outward in a whipping blast to sting my bare skin. The ground altered elevation, and I backpedaled as if balancing on a rolling ball. I did a fair job of remaining upright-my dream, remember?-until a pair of rough hands found my lower back and gave me a good hard push.
“You little-”
Flailing, I slid in a roller coaster arch down the waterfall of sand, the light of the red sun disappearing like it’d been swallowed in one bite. Or maybe it was me. I thought of Carlos’s worms, burrowing through the years, existing underground, ingesting the old and birthing the new in the gritty darkness. Was Shen right? Had I called all of this to me? I waited for the drugs to wear off, and-as I continued to fall-prayed for a soft landing.
Sliding to a surprisingly easy stop, as if flowing off a large silk veil, I spit grit from my mouth, wiped it from my eyes, and tried to regain my bearings.
“Here.” An unsurprised voice-one that didn’t echo-sounded next to me, before a cool, damp cloth was pressed against my cheek. I wiped the sand from my face, noting the sound of running water as my dirtied rag was replaced. As I wrung water into my eyes, another voice, farther away, piped, “If you hadn’t fought it you would have arrived as you were meant to, clean and on your feet.”
I sighed, because I knew that voice. It was both chipped and singsong, with a light tone and dark smoky texture. I’d left its owner, Diana, in Midheaven too. “Ah, but this makes such an impression,” I muttered, then squinted, gazing about. “Where am I?”
The metallic taste was worse down here, weighed down and compressed like a silver bar in my mouth.
“The water room, of course.” Her voice didn’t echo either.
So it was one of the elemental rooms. Squinting, I looked about. At least more of one than the dust bowl upstairs. It had glass sides and a sandy rooftop, yet it tinkled and flowed, its perimeter completely awash in clear water that fell over the walls in a steady rush. Slate shelves caught the musical liquid, spilling it to the ground in beautiful, almost balletic, designs.
The room’s center was dotted with basins: black marble, clear crystal, hammered copper, and rose glass. Each bubbled in competing heights, and where there wasn’t water, there were mirrors, including underfoot. Strawthin streams backlit with firefly lights filled in the blank spaces, and behind all the watery reflection was the constant movement of white sand shifting against crystal walls. It added to the eerie movement of the room, so that I felt caught in the middle of an hourglass.
There was no music, but the various pools sang as though charmed. The thought kept me alert as I turned my attention to the room’s occupants, three in total. The one with a waist comprised of dangerous S-curves still loomed above me, but two others lounged in webbed hammocks winking with gold fringe. None looked particularly surprised to see me, and the voluptuous one even offered me a hand up.
“It’s a water vein,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “Both the water and the electromagnetic current from our bodies allow the dowsers to measure our depth and location.”
“And time,” Diana added, swinging in her hammock like a bright, overgrown black widow. She wore voluminous skirts in layers of taffeta, and black fishnets studded with crystals that flashed when she kicked her heels. The venomous spider analogy, I thought as she smiled, was something to keep in mind. “They can also douse for a specific place in time.”
And time didn’t pass the same way in Midheaven as it did in the real world. Here it bent and twisted upon itself, eating large chunks of a lifetime even in a blink. I hoped that wasn’t also true when visiting in your dreams.
“How would you prefer to die?” The woman next to me tilted her head prettily. “Fire or ice?”
“You giving me an option?” I said, returning the dirty cloth to her. My echoing voice made the question sound more forceful than I intended, but she took the cloth without moving to harm me. I remained wary. The women in Midheaven, powerful to the last, were never exactly what they seemed.