“It’s too close to the fighting,” Nick said. “I’m sorry. I told you from the beginning that we couldn’t and we wouldn’t. We’ve already pushed it.”
I winced. “Can’t really stop you.”
“Probably could,” Nick said. He extended a hand. “Thanks for not making a fuss.”
I reached out and shook it.
They took a moment to grab their jackets. In another moment, they were gone.
That hurt. I understood, but it hurt.
“Your friend just replied to the internet message,” Fell said. “You’ve convinced her. She’s got to get her things, sneak out, and she’ll be here soon.”
I exhaled. We got Maggie.
‘Soon’, however, translated to one hour at a minimum.
I looked for a clock and saw it lying on the ground, not mounted in its usual place.
That meant we had a bit of time to prepare, the better part of an hour to endure the hostilities and contest, and then we had Maggie.
Maggie wasn’t a big gun, unfortunately.
It wouldn’t be a game changer.
“Okay,” I said. “Everyone has a weapon?”
Nods all around.
“Do we need anything before we move?”
“Access to that toolbox,” Fell said.
“Go for it.”
He did, opening it. He lifted off the top half to check the bottom.
“And, since I’m not seeing them in here, I need scissors,” Fell said, rummaging.
I fished in the kitchen drawers. All disorganized. As if my apartment had been taken apart, destroyed, and then put back together and cleaned, with an emphasis on sentimentality and how frequently I used things.
I had five pairs of scissors and they were all at the very bottom of the drawer,
I handed him my best pair. He’d already laid a hammer and some nails aside.
“Stand still,” he said.
He snipped off a lock of hair.
He proceeded to grab one of my dining room chairs by the back, lift it overhead and dash it to pieces.
Not the real chair, the spirit-world equivalent. Cheap stuff from a furniture store where the stuff had unpronounceable names.
It still grated.
“Burning off nervous energy?” I asked.
“No,” he said. He grabbed the hammer and nails.
No further explanation. He was helping, but we weren’t buddy-buddy.
One long piece of wood, propped against the wall. He used duct tape to stick the lock of hair to the top.
One horizontal bar, a third of the way down, nailed in place with two deft strikes of the hammer.
Another, at the base, to help keep the thing balanced.
He drew some powder from his pocket, and drew a series of solid lines, forming a triangle around the thing.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It…” Fell said, licking his thumb, then dragging it across the hardwood floor, “is a distraction.”
I could sense the connection shift, and I saw facsimile connections appearing between it and my friends.
Fell’s back blocked my view of the stick thing. When he was out of my way, I saw a Blake Thorburn sitting inside the powdery pyramid. He was so beaten-down that I almost expected to see fraying around the edges of his clothes. He had circles under his eyes, stubble on his chin, and the lines of his face and neck were more defined than they should have been.
His blond hair was almost long enough to cover his eyes, and the only reason it wasn’t was the natural wave, but it was dirty, and it did the same thing my hair did when it was the least bit greasy, twisting away from my head in fat curls.
He looked like I imagined myself looking when I thought of the times I’d been homeless. If I’d been walking down the street and I saw him sitting on a flattened cardboard box, I wouldn’t have thought twice about him. Except for the looking like me thing.
I reached up and touched the part of my head where his hair curled. I felt the hair there, where it had sprung out of place.
“I really look like that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Alexis said. “Wow, that’s creepy. Does it have to stare off into space?”
“It’s a bit of wood from a chair, not a person,” Fell said. “Yeah, it does.”
It was me if I were brain dead, maybe. Sitting with one back against the wall.
“Can we do something with it?” I asked.
“We could,” Fell said.
“Booby trap it?” I asked.
“How? I’m not really a shaman, and I don’t want anything like fire or explosions to burn down your apartment.”
“This version of my apartment, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not?”
“What happens here happens there.”
Meaning it would be fire or an explosion of sorts in my apartment.
“Something nonlethal?” I asked.
He rubbed his chin. “Okay. Let me think… do you have ribbon?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let me figure out where.”
It took only a minute to find. Colored birthday ribbons were sitting in the bottom half of my toolbox.
He unfurled a bit, then handed it to me. “Tie it to the biggest, most inconvenient object you think you could carry. Tie it securely, so they can’t untie it, or break whatever it is you’ve tied it to.”
I headed straight for the kitchen.
Stove? Dishwasher? Too big, too heavy.
Fridge?
They were options, but there wasn’t anything I could tie the cord to. The handle on the stove door was loose, and the fridge handle was recessed into the side of the door. The hinge… it was such a reach I wouldn’t be able to get more than the simplest knot on it.
The microwave, though, was closer.
One loop of cord going vertically around the microwave, another going horizontal.
I tied it firmly.
By the time I was done, Fell was entering the kitchen, scuffing the floor with one toe. Where he scuffed at the ribbon, it effectively disappeared. The part I could see stuck out from the gaps in the tile as if the tile had been laid out over the ribbon.
“Neat trick,” I said.
He used his fingers on the part of the ribbon that stretched up to the microwave, turning it until I was looking straight on at the thinnest side. When he was done, he threw powder at the microwave itself.
“What does this do?” I asked.
“One circle around the effigy, one snare around that. If they get close enough, the snare will attach to them,” Fell said. He led the way back into the dining room.
I felt a little creeped out, looking at my double.
Sure enough, words were written on the hardwood. Simple ones in a foreign language.
“The words?”
“Conditions,” Fell said.
“To?”
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t touch.”
Fell headed to the front door of the apartment. I heard the closet door slide open. A little rougher than the sound I was used to.
Alexis was writing on the same pad of paper I’d used to write up the contract with the imp. I looked over her shoulder, and saw that she was copying the wording Fell had used for the inscription on the floor.
She explained, “He told me it would bind the person to the object on the far end of the ribbon. The snare releases them only so long as they carry the object on the other side. If they put it down, the snare seizes them again.”
I considered it. I could imagine Laird lugging a microwave around.
“Like I said before,” I commented. “I do respect Fell, even if I don’t always like him.”