I heard footsteps. Duncan approaching.
I wasn’t interested in a direct confrontation. I took a moment, touching my sliced right arm, raised my shirt, and drew a symbol on my chest.
I hoped I had it right.
I got a running start, one hand on the wall for balance, and I jumped.
Tired as I was , the jump still gave me enough air that I could clear the row of jagged glass points at the bottom of the frame.
I didn’t touch the glass, but I didn’t land on the row of parked cars beneath the window, either.
The wind rune I’d inscribed on my chest was one part of it.
The other rune Duncan had drawn on the windowframe, hidden, was the other.
The same kind of rune, apparently, that connected one part of the stairwell to the other.
The sun flashed in my eyes, and I was back in the stairwell, ten feet above the ground.
Ten feet above stairs, rather.
My landing was a rough one. I was lighter, but not so much that I made it past the entire flight of stairs. I hit the stairwell, and I didn’t have the balance or wherewithal to catch myself. I tumbled, and I hit the ground hard. Pain lanced across my arms, following the tracks of the cuts, reopening them. My elbow hit floor hard.
“That’ll do,” Duncan Behaim said.
I flopped over, still lying on the ground, a matter of feet from the broken window.
He stood at the top of the flight that led up from my current position. He leaned forward to correct the angle of a framed plaque on the wall. “I think we can count this one as a second win for me. In a moment, we can move on to round three.”
“What if I surrender now?” I asked.
“What if you do?” he asked, sounding very unimpressed.
I spoke, coughed partway through.
“It would help if you were a little clearer,” he said.
I repeated myself, about as loud, then rested my forehead on the ground. My arms hurt.
“Shall I get a little closer?’ he asked. “I’ll need to watch my step, lots of glass to slip on…”
A moment passed. I looked up.
He hadn’t moved one tenth of an inch.
“Uncle told me about your mirror-dwelling companion,” He said. He touched the frame in front of him, moving it so it was askew. “I’m not an idiot. You’re going to need to try a little harder than that.”
The frame exploded, all the same. A hand thrust out with the glass, faint, feminine, with nails poised to strike like claws. It grasped blindly for Duncan’s face.
Duncan caught Rose’s wrist. Already, that faint hand was fading.
Before it could, he twisted it, and drove it hard against the side of the frame, where ragged glass still jutted out.
Rose screamed. Duncan let go, and the hand became smoke.
Glass around me shifted as if something was moving through it, until Rose appeared in a larger fragment that rested against the wall, clutching her wrist.
Duncan held up a taser. A spark danced around one of the two prongs at the end. “Need to get a few things in order before I can turn back the clock again. I can’t have you running around while I get ready, so I’m going to have you take a short nap. Your choice. This or I throw down the cuffs and you put them on.”
“How do I know you won’t use both to be safe? You guys like your overkill,” I said. “Looping areas, turning back the clock, slowing time around an entire property…”
“I guess it’s just the taser, then. As for your observation, it’s hard to dedicate your time to appreciating and studying something as vast and powerful as time, without feeling a need to throw your metaphorical weight around,” he replied. “I’m sure you understand that, this in mind, we’re rather concerned about you wielding something approximately as vast and powerful, and rather more dangerous.”
I shifted position, trying to back up some, but apparently an inability to bounce back easily was a consequence bleeding myself out.
He was halfway down the flight. He lifted a picture frame off the wall and tossed it further up the flight of stairs, in my general direction, before Rose could make use of it.
“I have nothing against you, Evan,” he said. “What happened to you was a tragedy. I’m genuinely sorry it happened. But I will banish you if you get in the way, here. Send you to your final rest by force.”
“I wanted someone to find me,” Evan said. “I wanted- help.”
“I know,” Duncan said.
“Evan-” I said.
He was summing up his strength, to break pattern. “He came.”
“I know,” Duncan said.
“Evan,” I said, again. “Rose, please tell him. He shouldn’t make it for nothing, here.”
“Kid,” Rose said. “Blake doesn’t want you to get banished for his sake.”
Evan turned. Duncan paused partway up the stairs, waiting.
“Tell him to go. That I said he should.”
“You should leave, Evan,” Rose said.
“But-” Evan said. He clenched small, immaterial fists.
“Go!” I said.
I saw Evan react, just a fraction.
“He insists,” Rose said, as calm and quiet as I’d been loud.
Evan ran, disappearing down the stairs.
“Thank you,” Duncan said. He resumed his approach, kicking glass off each stair before setting his foot firmly down on top of it. “That was decent of you. If it helps, I don’t have any hard feelings.”
“But you’ll pull out all the stops, huh?” I asked.
“I’m not evil,” he said. “I’m not doing evil. I’m only doing what I can to keep this situation contained, and quite frankly, it’s kind of a rush to do it with the family’s backing. I go years without doing anything on even half this scale.”
Evan reappeared, at the top of the stairs.
Following the circuit, from the bottom stair to the top.
I averted my eyes, and started to struggle to my feet.
“Stay put,” Duncan said.
Evan descended to a stair two steps above Duncan.
Then Evan screamed. Blood-curdling terror distilled, an echo of a memory. All without warning, in the ear of a man who’d thought he was alone with me and Rose.
A man standing on stairs.
Duncan half-turned and tipped over in the process.
He fell down the stairs much as I had.
I moved, reaching for the taser.
Duncan moved faster. He hadn’t spent his blood. He didn’t have gashes running from wrist to elbow. He was athletic, and in peak fighting shape, recent fall excepted.
I caught his wrist, stopping him from jabbing me, but he got one hand around my right arm, and he dug his fingers into the cut there.
I bit back the scream, groaning instead, doing what I could to put up a fight. Which didn’t amount to much.
He pinned me, and panic started to win out. I craned my neck away from the encroaching taser.
Having Evan close helped, somehow. It was hard to define why. He’d fought so hard, and he was counting on me, on a level. I didn’t want him to erode away into becoming another haunt.
I managed to gather up enough presence of mind to twist my head away and scream, “Rose!”
One pane of glass that still jutted out from the window shattered. Duncan let go, and I pushed him off me, scrambling back.
I briefly considered grabbing a large piece of glass and slashing the man while he was distracted. But Evan was close, and my right arm throbbed badly enough that I wasn’t willing to let go with my left.