No hope.
Daniel pushed through the thick air to the doorway. Kicked aside dust and debris, stood on the sagging porch. The others—the strong, emaciated men in their soaked black suits—were trying to flee. All but one.
Now he remembered a name. Whitlow.
The memory returned like a sliver of ice shoved into his brain. A memory of compromise, betrayal—the betrayal of an entire world.
The bad shepherd.
Daniel’s lungs emptied in self-loathing.
Whitlow stood on the porch, smiling and unafraid. He had not changed—always the same slender, confident, dignified old man across all of Daniel’s world-lines.
Always the clubbed foot.
Whitlow’s gaze seemed to briefly caress what Daniel held in his hands. The man with the club foot smiled, showing even, ivory-colored teeth. “What’s your name now, young traveler?” he taunted. “Why so eager? Where can any of us flee, but into Her arms?”
Whitlow casually brushed past Daniel, into the house.
And Daniel turned to join him.
CHAPTER 50
West Seattle
The van’s rear doors flung wide. Jack rolled onto the asphalt and tumbled for a dozen yards before slamming into a concrete curb. His exposed hand dipped into a gutter. Water rushed black and silver over his clutching fingers. Dazed, he tore through the abraded sack, spread holes for his other arm, then his torso, kicked his legs through, rose on hands and knees, peeled off the rags…
Stood, head spinning.
For a moment, he wondered if he was losing his sight, or even if he’d died—everything around the accident had skewed, ripped, and was slowly reassembling, like a tossed puzzle reversed in time. He looked up and saw the lightning bolts turn upon themselves and spiral up into a spinning funnel, spitting and hissing like snakes. Rising in the middle of the funnel, he saw a writhing, lumpish form, nearly all middle, with tiny, wriggling arms and legs—falling free, diminishing, flailing, only to be grabbed again by the lightning and lifted higher…all the while crying out, a girlish shriek audible even above the roar. Power lines torn loose from their poles tried to follow, curling and snapping and then straining straight as drawn wire. They broke loose and shot up, then went limp—and fell back like lost pieces of string. The funnel closed. A deluge like the upending of a huge bucket flattened Jack where he lay, pressing his head onto the asphalt until he feared he would drown.
All stopped.
Everything became unnaturally still. Any motion was difficult—painful. He blinked muddy rain from his eyes.
The downpour, the lightning, all of the weirdness—over. For a moment—deep quiet. Nothing but a soft hiss of rising steam and a light, ominous crackle like crushed cellophane. The van had wrecked in a residential neighborhood. Old houses, square and neat, ascended a low hill below a water tower. The houses had blackened—not burned, but converted to a dark, glassy substance, like obsidian. The water tower sprayed liquid from all its seams. Knee-high shining black spikes filled the roadway. As Jack stood by the curb, more spikes shot up, shoving aside his feet, kicking the van around and piercing two of its tires.
The air sparkled with an absence of color, absence of sense. It smelled burned, as did Jack—burnt by a cold, timeless fire.
Inside the van, Glaucous was gasping for air between harsh, guttural yells. The yells became an awful, continuous screech.
Then—nothing.
Everything that Jack looked at hurt his eyes, his brain. The muscles in his neck twisted, fighting over which direction they would or would not turn. He flung up his arm.
Against his better judgment, he looked again.
The not-colors had been filled in like gaps in a coloring book, but the burnt smell remained. The water tower gurgled and spewed its last few thousand gallons. The spikes melted into the asphalt. Rainwater cascaded from overflowing gutters.
The houses had returned to a kind of normality.
Shaking out a bruised shoulder and favoring a wrenched ankle, he lurched toward the van. He knelt by the shattered windshield. Wet and unable to fly, the last of Penelope’s wasps crawled along the crazed edge of glass, twitching and buzzing. Each cast flickering duplicates that peeled away, then returned to merge again.
He looked at his hands—the same stuttering shadows. Something huge had just happened. Time was vibrating like a plucked string.
Jack peered into the van. The driver’s seat was empty.
Both seats were empty.
Nobody left to save.
CHAPTER 51
Ellen drove Miriam’s old Toyota. Agazutta rode shotgun. Farrah sat in the back with Ginny, who watched a necklace of amber beads swinging from the car’s rearview mirror. They turned up one wet street and down another, searching for someone—someone young and male, Ginny gathered from spare snippets of their talk.
Even now, water slopped along the gutters and spilled from over-passes and off-ramps, slowing their progress.
Things had once again crossed the line from puzzling to inexpressibly weird. She was surrounded by spooky, middle-aged women. They were all so curious, but however much they seemed to care, however much they seemed to have a plan, they were just as reluctant as Bidewell to answer big questions. Too many wait and seemoments. She felt tied to their destinies in a way that made her suffer like a caged animal.
The storm had been hunting. That’s what the women had argued about before taking the West Seattle Bridge. Storms didn’t do that, of course.
Agazutta looked over her shoulder. “What do you feel?” she asked Ginny. Ginny shook her head. There was nothing ahead but a frightening solidity—a flat, looming blankness.
“You tell me. I’m just riding along.”
Ellen said, “The storm might not be the only unusual event today. You might be able to help us save someone else, someone as important as you. So please, Virginia—tell us what you feel.”
“We’re like a log that’s fallen out of the fireplace,” Ginny said, then dropped as low in the seat as she could, miserable and scared.
Farrah rubbed her nose. “It doessmell burned.”
“Are you reallywitches?” Ginny blurted.
Agazutta snorted. “That’s a joke, dear. If we had any realpowers, do you think we’d have allowed this to happen?”
Ellen said, “If anyone has magical powers, it’s probably you, or Bidewell. Not that we’ve seen much evidence of it lately.”
“Those books,” Farrah said.
“Fabricated,” Agazutta said.
“They’re old,” Farrah countered.
Ellen made a sound between a tosh and a splutter. “We have to trust him. We don’t have a choice. And we have to trust Ginny.”
“She’s sullen,” Farrah said.
“So were you, in the beginning,” Agazutta said.
“Hell, I’m stillsullen,” Farrah said.
“Are you a lesbian?” Ginny blurted.
A brief but chilly silence followed. “There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding,” Farrah said.
“Someone explain to the girl.”
“Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter,” Ellen Crowe said. “Except for me—”
“Except for her,” Agazutta emphasized with some resentment.
“…this group is sworn to celibacy,” Ellen finished.
“Which explains why we drink so much and read steamy novels,” Farrah said.
“Why aren’t youcelibate?” Ginny asked Ellen, craning her head forward.
“It has nothing to do with magic, but a lot to do with fishing,” Agazutta said. “You’re not the bait, my dear. Ellenis the bait.”
“No one believes me when I say it’s all—” Ellen began, but Agazutta interrupted.
“Is that him?” she asked.