This was too eerie, too out of place.
Something was wrong.
“Gut feeling on an escape route?” I murmured, a little quieter than before.
Evan turned his head.
I glanced without turning my head. He was looking at a police van, fairly nondescript, but for a red and blue stripe at the side and a coat of arms on the side. The nose pointed at me, rear bumper facing the chain-link fence.
Good enough.
I bolted, and Evan took off in the same moment.
I stepped up onto the bumper of the van, then the hood, slipped, and climbed onto the roof on all fours.
One of them was doing something, because my legs were moving more sluggishly than my upper body, as if I were wading through water. My shoulder ached something fierce, and I couldn’t think back to any incident that might have caused it.
Evan’s passing flight helped me shift my legs into position, and helped dismiss whatever effect was accumulating there.
The top of the van was slick with wet snow, but I managed to find my balance.
The top of the chain-link fence was just about level with my collarbone. A short jump, easy enough to make, even with me in a less than stellar physical state.
I didn’t make it.
Evan was the reason. He flew past me, and he altered my trajectory.
I wound up stepping right off the side of the van. I dropped and crashed onto the trunk of the police car parked next to it.
The kid with the sticky pads had bolted to the fence. He touched one sticky note to one of the posts with three fingers extended.
I could smell the burning air. No flickers of lightning or anything of the sort, but the smell was thick and pronounced enough to suggest that I might not have survived contact with the fence.
I groaned as I rolled off the back of the car, careful not to touch the fence.
“Sorry,” Evan said, as he landed on my shoulder.
I groaned again, quieter, while rotating my shoulder.
The other three kids were closing in on me. The younger girl, the older girl I’d seen the Bloody Mary cut, and Sunglasses.
“Laird’s sending his nieces and nephews to do his dirty work, huh?” I asked.
“Not just nieces and nephews,” the kid with the sticky notes said.
The older girl Mary had attacked spoke up. “We volunteered. We take you out, the family fortunes improve, and because we had a hand in it, our fortunes improve too.”
I had to bite off the urge to make a sarcastic retort.
“I see,” I said. “Where does this go? Killing me?”
“Binding you,” Sunglasses told me. He looked at the younger boy. “Craig?”
Craig tore off a sticky note. The one on top that I’d seen earlier. Like a piece of clockwork.
Why was I here? What was going on?
I’d beat them. Slipped away.
The old man Other was still looming, cutting off my escape.
The other escape routes included the fence, which was awkward, especially now that they expected it, or making my way back into the building.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there, but with very few alternatives…
Slowly, I climbed up onto the trunk of the car next to me. The kids maneuvered themselves to stay an even distance away from me.
“Again, Ainsley,” Sunglasses said, speaking to the girl that Mary had sliced.
Ainsley drew a striped candle from her purse with one hand, and it lit itself. She already had needles in her other hand.
I couldn’t imagine many situations where one of my enemies using needles was a good thing.
I pointed.
Evan darted straight for Ainsley and the candle.
He stopped a foot in front of Ainsley, and I felt as though I’d been hit by a car. I tumbled, landing with my back to the fence.
Or, more to the point, I felt like I were a bird that had just flown into a solid surface.
“That never gets old,” Craig said, still holding his sticky notes.
“Shh,” Sunglasses told him.
Ansley slid a needle into the candle, right at the base.
“Zero hour,” she murmured, “Let us begin.”
This pain is an illusion, only a matter of perception, I told myself.
I tried to struggle to my feet, and found the strength wasn’t there.
They’d turned things around on us, and they had me in the worst position possible.
I just wish I knew how.
“Hour one,” Ainsley said, sliding a needle in at the first stripe. “I bind your legs, Blake Thorburn. I bind the pigeontoed that first held you up. I bind the legs you wear as a man, now, and the crooked weary hips that will be yours when you’re old.”
I could feel my legs getting heavier again.
“I reject your binding,” I spat the words, “Because I have sources telling me I won’t fucking make it to old age. Your third point doesn’t stick.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sunglasses said.
Ainsley nodded, grave.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
She found another needle. “Hour two. I bind your legs with the folly of childhood, the trials of adulthood, and the frailty of age.”
My legs grew heavier, as if she’d laid something heavy across them.
I started to get my bearings, grabbing the side of the car for support, but my legs felt three times as heavy as the rest of me.
Evan fluttered, trying to put distance between himself and the kids.
Sunglasses kicked him.
Only the fact that I was leaning heavily on the cop car kept me from collapsing.
“Hour three,” Ainsley said, “I bind you in place, the cradle with its bars. The career with its trappings. The cage of the body, the deathbed, the coffin.”
“I reject your binding,” I gasped, as I slumped down. “I rejected it once, I reject it again. I was never going to be able to hold a career, I can’t now, as a diabolist and a target for just about fucking everyone. I’m probably not going to die an old man, either. I reject it, I reject it, I reject it!”
“This isn’t about you,” Sunglasses said. “It’s about saying things that other forces understand. But by all means, please keep going.”
“Hour five…” she said.
“You skipped one,” I said, as she worked a needle into the soft wax. She didn’t flinch as hot wax dripped past her fingertips, catching on the needles.
She shook her head. She was almost a quarter up the way of the candle, skipping several stripes. “…I bind you to remain in place until such a time as you’re released by my word or the breaking of this small totem. I root you where you now kneel.”
I needed Evan to break the spell as he had before.
“Then I want to fly,” I said. “Evan, I name you. We’re kin in our desire for freedom, our desire to keep moving. You and me are bound, what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine. Lend me your power, give me your wings.”
Evan started to move, but a tap of someone’s boot sent him sprawling, and left me on my hands and knees on the ground, grunting at the pain in between gasps for air.
“You’re just guessing, aren’t you?” Sunglasses asked.
“Doing my damndest,” I panted.
“Might have worked if you didn’t-”
Evan, having faked how hurt he was, took off, flying under the nearest car before he could be kicked again.
I caught him.
The effect didn’t break.
“Lay it on thicker, Ains. Craig? Go get your dad. Watch the barrier at the doors, we don’t want the others coming through to rescue him.”
Sticky Note Kid glanced at us as a whole, then bolted for the doors to the police department.