I felt myself growing remote and cold against my will. “Michael saved your life. He found you, he carried you out, he took you away. Not me.” My spine seemed to vibrate and ring with the shouting of the Grey voices, and I almost choked on the sound.
Charlie Rice tried to slip away while Will’s attention was on me, but Quinton sidled over and caught him. “Where did the ball come from?”
“Leavenworth,” Rice whispered back, shooting nervous glances at me and Will while trying to move farther away. “Old house in the orchards, but it’s gone. Nothing left but the foundation. . . .”
“Did this house have a maze or a labyrinth, a pattern on the floors—anything like that?”
Charlie shook his head in a spastic way without letting Will and me out of his sight. “Don’t know. I just—” He seemed to catch himself and change his mind before he said, “I just cleared the wreckage.”
Will stepped toward me, reaching with his bent, mutilated hands, his stride crooked and off-balance. “I need you, Harper.” He glanced toward Quinton and Rice, his aura flashing orange, followed by green and red. “The new guy doesn’t need you. Not like I do.” I felt repelled in a way I couldn’t explain, as if Will had become poisonous. Sensations of pity and horror fought with the frigid resistance that welled up in me as if I were splitting in two. This icy disgust wasn’t like me. . . .
Quinton’s shoulders stiffened and he turned a little more in our direction. “No. I don’t need her. I don’t need her to be anything or do anything. I only want her to be what she is.”
“See?” Will implored, laying his wrecked hands on my shoulders. “I need you. I’ll go with you.”
His touch was hot and cold, sharp as electricity; it roused the chorus and made me want to scream with them and shove him away. I gulped in air and swallowed the voices. “No, you won’t. Not there. It won’t be safe—there are monsters in labyrinths, don’t you remember? You’re only safe here, with Michael. Not with me.”
Rice turned to escape again, but Quinton sprang after him and snatched him to a halt nearby, asking, “Where did the other ball go? Who has it?”
“I . . . might have the receipt. . . .”
“OK, then. Let’s look at your records.”
Rice leapt at the chance to get away from Will and me and dragged Quinton back into the office, snapping the door closed after them and leaving us outside in the strange assembly of broken houses. Will tried to grip my shoulders and draw me closer, but his hands felt like giant crab claws and they had no strength to hold me. I slid free, guilty at my relief.
“Will, please. You don’t understand how unsafe you are with me. I didn’t save you from anything; I put you in danger.”
He shook his head and his eyes were bright with an unreasonable adulation. It made me feel sick and I wanted to cry over it, but that was the last thing I would do. “It’s not true,” he whispered. “I love you. You love me; you came after me.”
My voice came out cold. “I came after some work. I found you entirely incidentally. It was luck—mostly bad luck.”
He made a small smug smile and shook his head again. “You can’t get rid of me by lying. I know what you really feel.”
I sighed. “Oh, no.” I tried to turn away and come back later, figuring Quinton would get the information I needed for now. But whatever else I did, I had to get away from the mania shining in Will’s eyes. It tore me into pieces to see it—to see him like this—but still the sensation of being coated in emotional ice deepened.
Will hooked one of his hands under my arm at the shoulder and tugged me back. “We need to be together, Harper. I won’t let you go. I’ll come with you. Trust me.”
There was no way I could. The little voices trilled and chattered: “Touch him, touch him, make him go.”
For a raw, heartless moment I did not resist them. I turned back, letting my body roll into the compass of his arms, not like a lover but like an enemy ducking under his guard, and putting out my hands so the tips of my fingers brushed across his chest. It felt like I’d touched a corpse. I let my hands slide up to frame his face, feeling the rippling colors of his chaotic aura like currents of hot and cold water and sudden spikes of electric shock. I tangled my fingers in the energy strands and wondered if I could do something. . . .
I leaned on all the persuasion I had and tried to think his aura to a calm shade of blue. I doubted it would work, but anything was worth trying. “You don’t need to come along now. You need to sleep. And I’ll be back soon. Just sleep.” No luck: Nothing was happening and, if anything, Will only seemed annoyed by my attempts to calm him down or persuade him to give up.
“Don’t coddle me, Harper.” His tone was sharp with sudden anger.
I stiffened and would have replied, but the opening of the office door cut me off. Quinton popped out, stuffing something into his pocket and closing the door behind him, leaving Rice alone inside. Will glared at him as Quinton eased next to me and put his left hand around my waist, pulling me back from my former boyfriend. I felt something nudge against my side as I dropped my arms and stepped back next to Quinton, but I couldn’t look down. “You ready to go?” he whispered.
I nodded and we started to turn away.
Will stepped forward, trying to reestablish his hold on me. Quinton gave him a narrow look over his shoulder. I risked a glance down and saw that Quinton was pressing the hard handle of a stun stick into my hidden side, offering it to me underhand, as he turned halfway back to say, “Let it go.”
“You don’t understand—” Will started.
“I do. But Harper can’t save you; you need to start saving yourself. And you need to let her go and do what she has to do.”
Will glared at him and brushed past to pull me to his chest again. I snatched the device into my fist as Will yanked me away from Quinton.
“Oh, man. Don’t do that,” Quinton said.
“Will, don’t,” I echoed, stumbling forward, turning the hard shape of the stun stick around in my hand. “Just let go of me. Go home to Michael—”
Heavy footsteps thudded on the wooden floor, drawing closer to the rear of the shop.
“Michael can’t help me—he doesn’t know how!”
“Neither do I!”
“Yes, you do! Yes, you do! You’re the only one. I need you! I’m going—”
He cut himself off as two cops came around the end of the stack of doors and windows. These weren’t slicked-down, tourist-friendly bike cops; they were old-fashioned beat-pounders in full gear. They glanced at Quinton and then at Will, then back to Quinton, their shoulders tensing as they took in Will’s grip on my shoulder and Quinton’s protective arm at my waist, masking the object I now held.
“Mr. Rice?” one of them inquired, but they both kept their eyes on Will. I knew they couldn’t see the madhouse colors around his head, but they still had cop instincts for trouble. Neither reached for their guns, but their hands touched their belts. One of them hung back while the other stepped toward us. “Is one of you Mr. Rice?”
The office door creaked open on its damaged hinges and the owner stuck his head out. “I’m Rice.”
“What’s the problem, Mr. Rice?”
Rice’s voice quavered, but he answered strongly enough. “Mr. Novak is frightening my customers. He should be at home—he’s been in an accident and he’s . . . not himself. I—please. Would you help Mr. Novak get home safely?”
Will whipped back to stare at Rice. “Charlie! No! Don’t do this to me!”
“William, you’re not well.”
Will made an irrational growling sound and released me so he could grab for Rice. The violence of his gesture spun me toward the nearer policeman and I ducked to avoid hitting the man. The cop sidestepped me and lunged forward to catch Will by the shoulders.
In a second, the two cops, Will, and Charlie Rice were a scuffling mass in the office doorway. Will shouted and thrashed, doing more damage to his reputation than anything else, though he did manage to break Rice’s nose with one flailing elbow. The splattering blood sent Will into fits, and he threw himself back from Rice and the cops, exhausted and terrified beyond all reason. Making shrill screeching sounds, he lurched backward into the half-glass doors and tumbled through one of the upper panes with a crash.