He jerked back into the wall until only his left side and the destroyed top of his head remained. All the faces in the wall opened their mouths and screamed as the blood above them began to run. . . .
I wrenched myself away and bolted back the way I’d come, blind in sudden darkness, reeling up the scarlet gleam of Simondson’s thread as I ran.
I fell out of the portal that had been the second puzzle ball, tumbling and spinning to swipe at the misty shape of the opening, trying to force it closed and cut off the shrieking that roared out behind me. Desperate, I stabbed the key at the incorporeal door and twisted as if locking the thing closed.
The mist slammed shut with a red gust of magic that knocked me to the ground as the chorus of the grid shouted back to life in my head. The puzzle ball, now closed again, rolled against my side, and I scooped it up, turning and looking for the next door while shaking my head, trying to clear the ringing in my ears that the voices made.
But the first door was gone and I was crouching on the weedy grass of the Rose house’s labyrinth as the red light of Cristoffer’s magic seal faded. Simondson’s tangled red shape glowered from where I’d left him beside the other puzzle, which lay open and scattered into a strange figure that gleamed with every color of the rainbow and showed the flickering phantom of the shape Dru Cristoffer had painted on the ball in blood and fire, hovering in air. If I turned just right, I could see the door.
Thinking of my father’s instructions, I left the puzzle ball and its weird door as they were and tucked the other one deeper into my jacket along with my father’s key. I would want them later. . . .
At the distant edge of the clearing, Quinton turned away from staring at the trees and ran toward me. “Harper!”
Simondson spat an ember of fury into the ground even as he twisted with pain. “When—?”
“Soon,” I snapped back at him. “One more trip and you’re out of here, but first you stand guard over this. Anyone comes to close this door, you scare the hell out of them.”
“Me?”
The clamor, the fatigue, and my fright made me snappish. “You’re a ghost, damn it! Don’t you think you can haunt someone here with all this power to use? Just look! It’s like a dead-guy playground here. Just fade back and wait.”
Simondson peered around and spotted the shadow bear in the distance. He grinned, an expression that was truly disturbed. I snapped the tin closed on the end of his red strand of existence and buried the other in the ground at his invisible feet, feeling the surge of the grid into my fingertips as I did. “If I call you, you come; otherwise, it’s all yours.” I could see him wiggling into the banked fire of the nexus and tugging the monstrous bear around like a toy. The sound he made in the unnaturally still air carved a frozen track of horror into my guts.
Quinton pounded up and swept me into his arms. “Thank God. I thought you were lost!”
“I had Simondson to get me out.”
“He makes an ugly guide.”
“He makes an ugly guard, too. Let’s get out of here before the bear notices us. I think Simondson has plans for it, and I don’t want to see them.”
This time we simply ran through the ruins, didn’t even bother with care or delicacy; Dru Cristoffer’s traps were designed to drive people out, not keep them in. We stayed a hair ahead of the storm of dead avians and animals that rose to pursue us. I was glad of the foresight that had made me park the truck pointed toward the road.
Quinton and I dove into the Rover’s front seats, slamming the doors behind us, and the cloud of reanimated birds splashed against the truck’s metal and glass, dissolving into dust and feathers. I started the engine and jerked the truck into gear, pulling away fast enough to raise the litter and dirt into the air in a plume as the remains of ghastly crows and jays sloughed away on the wind of our passage, the bones of dead deer, cougars, and bears scattering across the road.
I tossed the puzzle ball into the back as I drove, needing both hands free. I wanted out of the town of Leavenworth as quickly as possible. Quinton divested himself of his pack, coat, and hat more slowly, putting them behind the seat and frowning all the while.
I felt wound tight and ready to break. My mind, my thoughts, seemed to have been tossed into a blender with the emphatic blaring of the Grey to chop it all fine. At the bottom of North Road, Quinton urged me to pull over.
“Why?” I asked.
“I know you didn’t get any sleep. If you’re ready to head straight back to Seattle, it might be better if I do the driving. The trip out wasn’t a picnic, remember?”
“True.”
“Besides, you haven’t filled me in on what happened in there.”
I’d become so used to Quinton’s presence by my side in the past few days that I hadn’t given much thought to the fact he’d been locked out of the ghostly labyrinths. My father had implied that non-Greywalkers could use the second puzzle ball as a gateway to the hidden bubble of Grey just as well as I could, but Quinton had been cut off behind the wall of Cristoffer’s magic.
I unbelted and swung out of the driver’s seat. “All right. You drive and I’ll talk.”
I gave him the details of what I’d seen and what I’d garnered from my father—so far as I could since a few points about the possible living, collective nature of the Grey and the grid still refused to come out of my mouth. Quinton looked concerned when I got to the bits about Wygan’s intentions and my guesses on why I was suddenly crying blood.
“So . . .” he started, keeping his eyes on the mountain road we were traveling. “According to your father, you’re sort of . . . becoming part of the flow of magic. And you think you cry blood and bleed light because the . . . pressure of magic pushes into your system whenever there’s an opportunity. Because it’s trying to flow through you.”
“Roughly, that’s what Dad seemed to be saying, and if he’s right about what Wygan’s up to and my part in it, that kind of makes sense. Carlos said I was starting to warp the fabric of magic, or would, and that fits with what Dad said and . . . with what I’m observing.”
“Run through that again. I’m not sure what you’ve observed and what’s just my guess. You said you hear voices. . . .”
“Maybe I’m just losing my mind. Cristoffer wasn’t the first to suggest that Greywalkers go crazy. . . . Marsden gouged out his own eyes. . . .”
“That’s a little extreme. And while it’s possible that you’re cracking up, it’s not a complete explanation. I saw some of this stuff myself and I met that . . . woman, Cristoffer. I can still feel those things crawling up my legs. . . .” He shuddered.
“I wish you hadn’t had—”
He put a hand on my knee for a second before driving demanded it back. “I don’t blame you for anything I’ve seen or experienced. Don’t take it all on yourself. You know what they say: Shit happens.” He made a silly face at me and I huffed a laugh.
“All right, all right: It’s not all my fault. Some of it’s Wygan’s.” I could hear the hate and disgust in my voice for a moment, but Quinton said nothing about it.
Instead he said, “And a lot of other people’s. So . . . voices, doorways, dead dads, and Wygan wants to be the Guardian Beast. Sounds like a pretty crappy job. . . .”
“Only if he plays by the rules—and you can bet he won’t. Dad said something about his becoming ‘the Architect of the Grey’ and I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds like it’s not a good thing.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be, not if it means no more Guardian Beast to keep the nasty stuff behind the veil. Any ideas on freeing your dad?”
I shook my head, eyes closed against both the shocks of passing ghosts and the plain weight of sleeplessness. “None. I think I’ll have to work that out on my own. He doesn’t want me to attract any attention by letting him go, but that implies there’s a way. I can always try it on Simondson first. Oh! Simondson . . .”
“What about him?”
“I left him . . . standing guard on the labyrinth. So far as I can tell from Dad, I can use the second puzzle ball as a direct jump back to my father’s bit of the Grey labyrinth as long as the first stage remains open. I’m not sure how it works, though. . . .”