Dangerous girls, p.16
Dangerous Girls, page 16
Because that was what she was, right? A human being? She had to be a human being, didn’t she?
My mind flew back to Artemis’ tales last night. Stories about soul-switchers and unicorns and phoenixes. There were creatures out there that weren’t human or any kind of animal I knew about. Mad, fantastical creatures that I normally could only dream about.
“Are you a unicorn?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I do not have a horn.”
“Fair point,” I conceded. “Are you a phoenix? Or a witch? Or a soul-switcher?”
“I believe not,” she said in a solemn tone. “But there are many roads to my father’s house, and many roads to town, and there need not be only one way with which to spin this spell.”
“Spin this spell?” I looked her in the eyes. “Is someone spinning a spell here? Do you know about that? What do you mean?”
“Spin,” she said with a sigh. “Spin, spin, spin again.”
I was getting a headache. I still hadn’t had my coffee this morning, and I was having to deal with the most Manic Pixie Dream Girl person I’d ever met in my life.
But maybe she had more license to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl than most people.
It had to have been her whom I’d heard breathing behind the wall on the night of the storm. I’d come down here, I’d heard her breathing, and…
And then what?
I still didn’t know.
“You said you were here,” I said in a careful tone of voice. “How long have you been here? In this basement, I mean?”
“The basement,” she repeated, and she looked around the room with the corners of her mouth turned down.
“Yes, the basement,” I said patiently. “I was down here a few nights ago. I broke through the wall, and I think I heard you down here. Were you there?”
“It was you.” She gave me a delighted smile. “You broke us down. You opened us up.”
“It was you, then.” I nodded. “So, then what happened? After I broke the wall down, what happened?”
“All things happened,” the woman said dreamily.
“Yeah, okay, but what?” I persisted. “Did you do something then? I lost three days after I came down here. I have no memory of what I did or where I went, so if you know something about that missing time, then I would really like to hear about it.”
“Three days,” she whispered. “Was it three days? Or seven days? It is seven years to the day in Fairyland.”
“We’re not in Fairyland,” I said firmly. “We’re in Wormwood. What happened in the days after the storm?”
“I drank your dreams,” she said in a voice that was so calm it took me a moment to process what she’d actually just said. “They tasted of grief and confusion and excitement and hunger and power and the legacy of the men who came before you. To this shop. To this town. To this city. To this state. This–”
“You drank my dreams?” I interrupted. “What the hell?”
“I wanted to know who it was that had woken me,” she said like it was a perfectly normal request to make. “I am volatile and delicate, and I must be treated with the right hands. So I drank your dreams, and I found that you are Mike and Michael Wainwright, and so I was happy to see you and that it was you. You have been here before, and we wished to express that we are happy to see you.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “It’s my shop, of course I’ve been down here before.”
“But there was another here before you, was there not?” she asked.
“Yeah, that would have been my Uncle Billy,” I replied. “He owned the shop before me.”
“No.” Her voice came out flat. “No. That is not what I said.”
“Okay.” I looked at her closely. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I wish to sleep,” she said abruptly. “This is not the right time for me.”
“Oh, okay.” I glanced over my shoulder to the stairs leading back up to the shop. “Do you want to crash on my couch, or take the bed, or…”
I looked back around just in time to see her whole arm absorb back into the hole. The woman was leaning against the false wall, and the wall was sucking her into itself like a sponge soaking up water.
“Wait!” I reached forward and grabbed her shoulder– the one that wasn’t in the middle of being swallowed up by the wall. “I have to know more. Who are you? What are you? Are you connected to all these strangers who are coming to town? Do you know something about this power source everyone is going crazy about?”
The girl heaved a deep sigh. She looked at her arm, which was still half-in and half-out of the wall, and then she looked up at me. Her blue eyes looked impossibly huge and impossibly deep. It was like looking into the sky or into a deep, deep well in the ground.
“You do not see,” she said in a sad voice. “And you do not see me.”
“I see you,” I assured her. “I just want to know more about you. About who you are, and where you came from, and–”
“Here.” She cut me off. “I am from here. I have always been from here, and here I will always remain. I be. I are. I am. Come here to me.”
She reached out her free hand, and before I could protest, she pressed her hand against my forehead. Her fingers dug into my temple, and I could hear something thudding very close by. It could have been the blood whirling in my head or it could have been the pulse thudding in her wrist, which was centimeters away from my face.
“See me,” she whispered.
And suddenly I wasn’t in my body anymore.
For a split second of time that stretched for an eternity, I felt my spirit detach itself from my physical form. Every nerve ending was severed, every wrinkle in my brain was scraped clean, and the edges of my soul were spread thin. My essence, my soul, my spirit, whatever it was, was sucked out of me by some huge, impossible force.
And then I was rushing somewhere else.
I soared along the telephone and power lines. I rang along the power connectors and sparked up into the sky. Electricity was everywhere, and I sparked and fizzed and spun like a pinwheel of fireworks.
Then I was rushing up, and then I was in the trees, and then I was in the sky above Wormwood. I had no eyes, but I could see the whole town laid out below me, and beyond that, I could see to the edges of the suburb where the city reached out to the houses and the people here, and tried to call them back.
But the power of the city was nothing compared to the power that was beating below me like an enormous heart.
It was her. It was the mushroom woman.
I could feel her power pouring out into the town like water flowing from a faucet. The power was everywhere. It was in the sky, in the trees, and deep inside the earth.
As soon as I had that thought, my spirit plunged down out of the trees and shot toward the ground. I hit the Earth, but the Earth wasn’t a solid piece of matter anymore, it was made up of a million billion different paths and gateways, and I could feel every single one of them.
My spirit split into an infinite number of filaments, and I was everywhere, I was soaring along every single one of those gateways in the Earth.
I was in the basement next to the wall, I was in Mario’s with the curious mouse scuttling across the silent floor, I was in Jay’s parents’ grocery store with the early morning hustle of customers, I was in the diner with the waitress from yesterday as she clocked in for her shift.
And then I was in the waitress’ house where her partner chopped carrots and potatoes for a casserole that evening.
I was in the woods where a deer leaped in sudden fright across a footpath.
I was on the main road out of the suburb in a car full of screaming children and one harassed father.
A stray cat investigating a trash can in the square.
A pigeon watching the cat.
A dog watching the pigeon.
A kid in a stroller watching the dog.
And I was watching all of them.
My soul darted all over the town, and I knew every single millimeter of it. I could feel the people thrumming inside the town, I could feel their hearts leaping with gladness and sinking with sorrow, I could hear every crackle in their lungs and feel every crack in their tooth enamel.
I was everywhere.
I could feel the mushroom woman with me. Every piece of information, every feeling, every thought, every emotion was filtered through her and came back to her. And as I soared through the earth and flew over the town, I could feel the vast expanse of her power inside me. She was linked to the town in ways I couldn’t properly understand, and with my spirit loose and untethered, I was just like her.
I was free, and I had the power of a million suns burning in my veins.
I was in Wormwood.
And I was Wormwood.
That realization sent a lightning bolt of power and shock through my soul, and it burst out of me like bullets from a machine gun.
Flowers forced their way through cracks in the sidewalk. One solitary cloud burst into a shower of rain that only covered three square feet of ground. The kids on the road suddenly fell quiet as their car engine let out an eerie whistling sound. The stray cat leaped six feet into the air, and the dog let out a wild and desperate howl. The square shuddered, and tiles fell from the roofs of the houses as the town shook with a miniature earthquake.
The customers in the diner and Jay’s parents’ grocery store rushed out to see what was happening, and I saw every single one of them as they stared around in fear and confusion.
I saw them.
I heard them.
I was them.
I felt Mrs. Han’s fear, and I looked into her nervous system and knew exactly how to push that fear into panic or reassurance.
I saw the waitress grip one of her co-worker’s hands, and I could tell how to manipulate the chemicals in her brain to confuse her into thinking she should leave her partner and follow this new person.
I felt the loose tiles on the diner roof and could see exactly how to shake them even looser and send them raining down on the people gathered below.
It was so much.
It was too much.
My spirit reared away from the sight in front of it. I was overwhelmed, and I couldn’t think of anything except how to get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible before I got sucked into the beating heart of Wormwood and couldn’t get out of there.
And then suddenly it was all gone.
I slammed back into my body, and I was suddenly, horribly aware of every physical sensation in my form that was clamoring for my attention. My empty stomach was growling with hunger, I needed a coffee, I needed to take a piss, and my spine ached where I’d fallen on the floor.
I forced my eyes open and stared up at the basement’s gray ceiling.
I was lying on my back on the floor.
I felt like ten types of shit.
“Holy fuck,” I mumbled.
“Did you see?” The mushroom woman’s clear, light voice cut into the dull throbbing pain in my skull.
I heard her bare feet scuff over the floor, and then she was looking down at me with concern in her wide blue eyes.
“I saw,” I breathed. “Holy shit. How do you keep all of that inside you all of the time?”
“Because I am here,” she said, and then she yawned and covered her plump lips with an equally plump little hand. “And because I am very tired.”
“Mike?” Artemis’ voice suddenly rang out above me, and then I heard her feet clatter against the steps as she ran down into the basement.
“I am tired,” the mushroom woman said again with another yawn.
She stepped away from me, and just as Artemis reached my side, she went back to the hole in the wall and leaned her cheek against the plaster. With a little sigh, she absorbed back into the wall. And in a few seconds, it was like she’d never been there at all.
“Mike.” Artemis stared at me with her dark eyes huge in shock. “Did that woman just vanish into the wall?”
“Yeah,” I grunted.
“Okay.” She paused. “So what the fuck just happened?”
“God, I don’t know.” I dug my fingertips into my closed eyelids. “Fuck, I feel awful.”
“What did she do to you?” Artemis demanded. “Did she hurt you?”
“No, not really, she just…” I tried to find the words that would adequately explain everything that had just happened, but I came up short. “Fuck, I don’t know what she did. She showed me– the town, I think? But also she was the town? And she was a mushroom as well?”
“She was a mushroom,” Artemis repeated in a flat voice.
“Go and look in that hole in the wall,” I said.
Artemis got up and went over to look. I managed to sit up again, and after making sure my brain wasn’t going to fall out of my ears, I then managed to get to my feet.
“Fuck,” Artemis breathed. “There’s a fucking huge mushroom in here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s where she came from.”
“But is she–” Artemis swallowed. “Mike. Is she the power source?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, but it hurt my head, so I stopped. “She showed me a vision or something.”
“Are you sure?” Artemis pressed. “I know she vanished into the wall and that was very impressive, but she could just be one of the many magical people who’ve come here to find the source. Are you sure she’s actually the power?”
“Yes,” I said in a heartfelt voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more sure of anything. When I had the vision, I saw her, and I saw where she was in the town, and– and Artemis, she was everywhere. She said she was behind every wall, and fuck, she really is. She’s everywhere in this town, and the power she holds inside her is like… It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before in my entire life.”
“Shit.” Artemis stared into the hole with a slightly amazed look on her face. “It was here. Everyone’s going over Wormwood with a fine-tooth comb to try and pinpoint the location of the power source, and all along it was here in your basement.”
“Yeah, which is great for me,” I said with a sigh. “If people find out, then we’re going to be overrun with even more strange visitors.”
As if to prove my point, a crash came from upstairs.
Chapter 11
Artemis and I looked at each other.
“Fuck,” I gritted out.
There was another crash, and we both darted for the stairs. Our feet pounded on the old boards, and we burst out of the door into the shop.
The two women from before– Viking Lavigne and the woman with antlers– were busily engaged in trashing the shop.
They’d already overturned the rack of postcards, again, and shoved a whole shelf of books from the case onto the floor. Viking Lavigne was behind the counter rummaging through the assorted crap in the shelves underneath, and the antlered woman was attempting to pry up one of the floorboards with her knife.
She’d already made a deep scratch in the floor, and my anger flared into fury at the sight of the damage.
“Hey!” I bellowed. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Both women turned around as I came in.
“Oh,” Viking Lavigne said in a tone of disinterest. “It’s you again. And… a friend.”
“What the fuck are you doing in my store again?” I snarled.
“You’re rude,” the antlered woman said in a dismissive tone. “And your shop is small enough for this search to be over quickly, as long as you don’t get in our way.”
“I’m going to get in your fucking way alright.” I stormed over to her and almost managed to snatch the knife from her hand before she realized what I was trying to do and stumbled back.
“How dare you!” she shouted.
“Um, I beg your fucking pardon?” Artemis stared at the two of them. “You’re literally trashing someone else’s property right now.”
“It won’t take long,” Viking Lavigne said.
“The length of time it takes to trash my shop is not the issue here!” It felt surreal that I actually had to say it out loud.
The antlered woman was staring at Artemis with a puzzled frown on her face.
Artemis folded her arms and glared back at her.
“Witch,” the antlered woman hissed.
“Yeah,” Artemis retorted. “A witch and someone who knows there is no way whoever sent you here is going to be happy with the amount of attention you two are drawing to yourselves.”
“No one sent us here!” The antlered woman bared her teeth. “We have made our troth with no one else but ourselves!”
“Hold on, I thought you guys broke your troth?” I asked. “Not that I care about your personal affairs in the slightest, but I do remember that yesterday, someone got very upset when they thought their friend had made an alliance with me.”
I nodded toward the antlered woman.
“That was then.” She stuck her nose in the air. “We spoke our truths to each other, and we divined in our souls to rebuild the trust that was broken.”
“Really?” I lifted an eyebrow and gestured toward Viking Lavigne. “And you’re okay with the fact that she was so quick to doubt you? And that she was perfectly happy to stab you in the throat when she thought you’d betrayed her?”
Viking Lavigne’s blue eyes lost some of their icy stillness. Her gaze darted between me and the antlered woman.
“Astrid has renewed her troth to me,” the antlered woman snapped. “And you’re right, this is not connected to your interests.”
“Yes.” Viking Lavigne recovered herself and came out from behind the counter to stand by the other woman’s side. “Your interests are your little shop, correct? So if you would like us to not tear it apart in our hunt, perhaps you could make things easier for us. Where is the source?”
“The what?” I scoffed even as my heart thumped loudly behind my ribs.
“Don’t be foolish!” the antlered woman hissed. “We know it’s here.”
Shit.
The card they’d left behind.
It had gotten lost in the struggle yesterday, and I hadn’t known at the time how important it would have been to get it as far away from the shop as possible. The mushroom girl coming out of the wall and showing me that vision must have sent out enough of a power surge to trigger the magical radar tied up in the sigils and alert these two chuckleheads to her presence.
