A pitiful scream came from the backyard and the alarm shut down. A moment later a stink of singed hair rose on the wind as I stepped down to haul Goodall to his feet.
He was hard to see: He’d learned the vampire trick of sliding into the Grey so his normal shape was dim in the real world, but see him I did and I reached for him in a hot rage. But I didn’t grab him by the shirt or shoulders. Instead, I let my hand pierce through the shell of his thrashing, thorn-pricked body and into the whirling colors of his energy corona. I don’t know what I did or how but I closed my hand around the core of his strength and yanked him upright by it. I didn’t think it would tear away and it made as good a handle as anything.
He made a strangled gurgling sound and I shook him like a rat. I felt like I could have snapped his neck with a flick of my wrist and I dropped him only long enough to change my grip to his throat. The shouting chorus of the grid roared in my ears like a conflagration. The voices were obscured individually, but their collective urged me to go ahead and kill him. I quivered, resisting. I wanted to, but I knew I shouldn’t, though why was lost in the crackle and gust of noise. I shook him again. He clutched my forearm and I shoved him back toward the street, watching the flashing, writhing threads of his power try to crawl up my arm. I flicked them off with my other hand and squeezed his throat.
“Harper, don’t.”
I ignored the voice behind me and kept pushing Goodall backward, cutting off his air as I went. He glared pure hatred at me and clawed at my arms, but the dark blue of his aura didn’t move so strongly this time; it only flickered at my grip like the tongue of a dying snake. I could just take that energy, I could push it into the earth like a grounded wire. . . .
“No. Harper, don’t do it. Let the creep go.”
I knew that voice. . . .
“Harper . . .”
I’d pushed him almost to the arch of roses at the peak of the stairs leading to the sidewalk. A gun—a stubby, small-bore rifle with a collapsing stock—lay across the top step, just outside the weak gold line of Mara’s magic. That made me angry, but it was my own, pure anger this time, not something pouring into my head from the Grey.
I opened my mouth to speak and the voice that issued out of me echoed with a dozen strains and cries. “Tell your master I’ll come when I’m good and ready.” The voices in my head changed pitch and volume, singsonging “alone, alone, alone . . .”
I let him go, dropping him, staggering, onto his feet at the stone landing. I was just about to give him a push when a bright bolt of light flashed past me and hit him in the shoulder, setting his shirt on fire. He slapped at it, turning and letting out a gasping cry as he stumbled down the stairs.
“And don’t come back y’feckin’ bastard, or I’ll burn y’to a crisp!” Mara yelled from the porch. She had the eye clutched in her hands, the disk flashing and smoking as the sun touched it. Her shawl was gone, her hair was wild, and her face was streaked with black. Quinton stood beside her with a bucket. Behind them, just inside the doorway, Ben, shocked pale, held Brian against his chest. The boy had turned his face away from the scene and buried it in his father’s jacket.
As Goodall escaped down the street, Quinton took the eye from Mara’s hands and dropped it into the bucket, where it sizzled and hissed with a watery splash. Mara sat down in a boneless heap on the porch. I picked up the rifle and started back up the walkway. I climbed the porch steps and handed the gun to Quinton. He dropped the magazine, cleared the chamber, and slung the rifle over his shoulder like he’d been doing it all his life. I sat down next to Mara.
“Hell of a morning,” I said. “And nice shooting.”
“I thought y’were gonna kill him.”
“I thought you were.”
She shook her head and looked queasy. “I think I’m gonna be ill.” She threw herself full length across the step and vomited into the battered rosebush. We gave her a minute to finish and rinse her mouth with a handful of warm water from the bucket and then Quinton and I helped Mara up and back into the house. She flopped again into the first couch in the living room and Ben sat down beside her with Brian still in his arms.
The three of them curled into a shivering ball as Quinton and I retreated to the hall.
“What happened in the back?” I asked.
“A couple of . . . I don’t know. Stumpy little doll-like things tried to grab Brian. The dog got one and Mara got the other. Or maybe Ben did. I don’t know if it burned up or if Ben kicked it to death. They must have jumped in at the same time that shot went off out front. I guess Mara’s perimeter wasn’t designed for a coordinated attack from multiple points. What about Phoebe?” he added, stooping to pick up the paper shopping bag that was lying on the entry floor.
“She’s downstairs. Goodall was at the condo when she got there and I’d guess he made her call and then sent her to the door to lure me out. He tried to shoot us, but Phoebe knocked us down. The spell on the house might have bent the bullet’s path, but Phoebe probably saved our lives.”
Quinton looked into the bag. “She brought the puzzle.”
“She’s going to be really mad at me this time. And she’s got a gun.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mine is down there. I told her to take it—in case anyone made it through.”
He sighed and then gave me a quick, soft kiss on the lips and glanced at the basement steps. “You want backup?”
“Want? Yes. Taking? No. She’s my friend and it’s my fault she’s scared. I’ll take care of it.”
He nodded and let me go.
Phoebe did not shoot me, though she was very jumpy when I knocked on the basement door. She let me in, looking over my shoulder and all around for any new creeps who might do something nasty.
“It’s all right,” I said, taking the pistol from her gently and putting it back into the holster that should have been on my hip to begin with. “We sent him packing. I’ll talk to the cops about him later—I think I know who he is. How are you doing?”
She was still a little shaky, but she drew her shoulders back and stood up as tall as possible. “I’m OK. Not happy, but OK. Store’s been robbed before. That ain’t the first time some no-good waved a gun at me.”
“I’m sorry.” I was saying that a lot lately. “I wouldn’t have asked you to go if—”
“I know that. Now you tell me what that man wants with you. Why he’s willin’ to shoot three women in plain sight.”
I shook my head. “It’s complicated, but . . . he works for someone who wants me to do something pretty bad. I mean, he wants me to do something that might hurt or kill a lot of people. I won’t do it. I guess that’s not the answer he wants to hear.”
“You aren’t gonna change your mind?”
“No. And I’m not going to let it happen, either.”
“What are you gonna do, then?”
“I’m working on that. I need more information first and that puzzle ball may help me get it. Then . . . we’ll see.”
“ ‘We’ll see’? That’s a plan?”
“Not by itself, but there are other considerations.” I thought for a moment about how much to tell her and what might help keep Phoebe safe and sane. “That man may have helped kidnap Edward Kammerling of TPM, but since Kammerling’s still missing, the situation’s delicate.”
She goggled at me. “I knew he looked familiar! I saw him on the news: He’s that security guy! He kidnapped his boss?”
“Helped. Probably. And he thinks I know something or have something he wants.”
“Why?”
“I just got back from doing some work for TPM in London.”
“And do you know something?”
I cocked my head over and made a disapproving face. “Phoebe,” I chided. “You don’t want to know that.”
“Oh, all right.” She started for the door, then stopped and turned back to me, still a little pale. “You think it’s safe? To go back home?”