chapter 4
THE TRAPPINGS OF THE THRONE ROOM VANISHED. Even the floor evaporated, and I tensed, waiting to drop into some hell dimension. Instead, I found myself floating, naked, in gray nothingness.
Was I really floating? Beneath my bare feet a sheet of gray, as smooth as glass, stretched to meet the gray sky. I could see my feet planted on the floor, yet I felt nothing beneath them. I closed my eyes and lowered my hand. My hand stopped at floor level. I leaned forward, but still couldn’t feel pressure against my palm.
Okay, that was creepy. Still, there were a thousand worse places that the Nix could have sent her last hunter, and if this unsettling illusion was the best she could manage, I was laughing.
I closed my eyes and wished for clothing. When I looked again, I was still naked. Hmmm. I guess nakedness was part of the torture. And for some people, maybe it was, but I’m not the type to be plagued by nightmares of walking through the shopping mall starkers, so it was really no big deal, especially considering there was no one else here to see me.
No one to see me, and nothing for me to see. Nothing to hear, either. Reminded me of the first hour I’d spent alone as a ghost. The most shocking thing about that hour was the silence. When we’re alive, quiet is a relative term. Even if you manage to drown out all the background noise—the clacks and grunts and hums of water pipes and furnaces and refrigerators—you can always hear something, even if it’s only the sound of yourself breathing. But when you’re dead, all the sources of those noises, internal and external, are gone. Still, there’s usually something, if you listen hard enough—the footsteps of someone walking by, a laugh from a neighbor, a bird chirping. Here, in this empty dimension, the silence was absolute.
I could see how this could become annoying after a while. Sensory deprivation, isn’t that what they call it? I remembered reading that this kind of thing could serve as a form of torture. Pretty clever, actually. Didn’t leave any marks, and you couldn’t be accused of doing anything to your prisoner because you weren’t doing a damn thing. Interesting, in a theoretical kind of way.
Right now, all that mattered was that I got the point. The Nix could send me someplace where I wouldn’t want to spend a whole lot of time.
“Okay—” I stopped. I’d felt myself say the word, but hadn’t heard anything. “Okay, ladies!”
The silence sucked up my words before they left my lips.
“Hello?” I tried to say. “Hello, hello, hello!”
Creepy, but not like it mattered. The Fates seemed to hear me whether I spoke aloud or not. When they were ready, they’d bring me back. I settled onto the ground to wait.
Still waiting.
At least a couple of hours had passed. Obviously the Fates wanted to give me a real taste of this wasteland. Like I had time for this. Well, if they weren’t going to bring me back, I’d look after it myself.
I said the words of a travel incantation. I still couldn’t hear myself, but I was speaking and, in magic, there’s no bonus for blaring. I finished the incantation. Nothing happened. I tried a few more, but stayed where I was. Fine. I could wait.
Okay, now I was getting mad. I’d been here at least a few hours, tried every damned spell I knew, even ones that had nothing to do with transportation, and not one of them had worked. What the hell were the Fates doing? They had a murderous demi-demon on the rampage, probably planning her next atrocity against humankind at this very moment, but that didn’t stop them from sparing a few hours to piss me off.
The old Fate was behind this. She hated me. Like my teacher, Mrs. Appleton. I’d never known what I’d done to earn Mrs. Appleton’s hate, but I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that she’d seen something in me, something bad, something waiting to emerge. When the old Fate looked at me, I felt the same thing.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, rested my chin on them, and tried to chase these thoughts from my brain. They clung like burrs, rubbing raw spots in my confidence. I needed to clear my head, needed to do something. But there was nothing here to do. Except think.
“Hello! Goddamn it, answer me! I get the point! Now open the f*cking door!” It was nighttime. Here the light never changed, just a dull glow that came from nowhere, illuminating the emptiness, reminding you that there was no one here, nothing to see. My gut told me it was night, though. Kristof would be at my house, waiting to talk about that “temp job” he’d mentioned.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on a communication spell.
Hey, Kris? Think you can help me out?
Nothing.
My internal clock told me that night had come and gone. Hadn’t slept. We could sleep, but I’d never been able to just curl up anywhere and drift off, not unless I was very, very tired. A ghost never tires. So, unless I was in my bed, I didn’t sleep.
I’d been here for over twenty-four hours. I was sure of that. Okay, enough waiting around for fate to intervene. Time to take matters into my own hands…or onto my own feet. Maybe I couldn’t teleport out of here, but I could still walk.
So I picked a direction, and started out.
Still walking. When I looked around, I saw the same damn thing I’d seen when I’d started, as if I were on a treadmill. But I was moving. I knew it. The lack of landmarks just made it seem as if I wasn’t going anywhere. Every dimension I’d ever been in had come to an end. This one would, too, if only I walked far enough.
It was night again, and I hadn’t reached the end. Hadn’t reached anything. My legs didn’t hurt, though. No pain means endless energy. I could walk forever, and I damned well would if that’s what it took to get out—
The throne room appeared, just as I’d left it, with the elderly crone still at the wheel.
“Happy?” I snarled, voice cracking from disuse. “I bet you got a good chuckle out of that. Were you watching? Seeing how long I’d take to snap? Sorry to disappoint.”
She looked up from her wheel. Her gaze met mine, face expressionless.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I said. “This Nix is out there, killing people, and you left me there for two days!”
“It was two minutes, Eve.”
“Bullshit! Days passed there.”
“Yes. Nearly three. But here it was only minutes. The Nix sent our first seeker there, and it took us five years to find her. That’s what I wanted you to see. That is what this Nix can do.”
Five years in our time? That had to be lifetimes in that place. Alone, with nothing to see, hear, feel, smell…
The middle Fate appeared. “She went mad, Eve. We’ve done our best, but she’s been back with us for over sixty years, and she’s no saner than the day we found her.”
“And the others?” I said slowly. “You said there were two others.”
“The second one failed us. The third one the Nix cast into a different dimensional plane.”
“Where?”
“We don’t know.”
My head shot up. “You haven’t found him yet? Excuse me if the job suddenly doesn’t sound so attractive, but—”
“We have safeguards in place now. We’ve figured out her tricks.”
“So she can’t toss me into an alternate dimension?”
“Not for long.”
“Uh-huh.”
The old Fate took over, eyes sparkling. “Job too tough for you, Eve?”
“Don’t bother challenging me,” I said. “I’ll do this because I made a promise, and I always keep my promises. You’ve shown me the worst, so I’m forewarned and ready to start.”
“Good, then the first thing we want you to do is—”
“The first thing you need to do is tell me how this Nix got out of her hell, and why she isn’t going to do the same thing as soon as you toss her back in.”
“She won’t.”
“Details?”
“I’m not about to explain our security arrangements to—”
The middle Fate interceded. “We initially put her in a place protected against dimensional travel and teleportation, but, after two centuries of trying, she managed to open a portal into the kind of dimension we never dreamed she’d use as an escape route. You’ve heard of animals that will gnaw off a limb to escape a trap? The Nix knowingly leapt into a dimension that made her hell look like paradise, and did so with only the faintest hope of ever leaving it.”
“And that surprises you?” I shook my head. “Never mind. Just tell me that she won’t have that choice to make the next time.”
“She won’t.”
“Good. On to step one, then. I want—”
“We’ve already arranged a plan for you, Eve.”
“Great, and if it’s better than mine, let me know. Now, first, I want to talk to one of these ‘seekers’ you sent after her. Under the circumstances, it isn’t tough to figure out which one I’ll have to choose: the bounty hunter behind door number two, the guy you pink-slipped.”
The child Fate took over. “Can’t do it. Where he is, you can’t go. And, believe me, you don’t want to. You thought that last place was bad? Paradise compared to where he is.”
“But you said the Nix didn’t catch him. You fired him.”
“Yep, we did. Fired him right down to—”
Her middle sister cut in. “You can’t speak to him.”
“Hold on. Is this the incentive program? If I fail, you send me someplace worse than the Nix would send me? No wonder you can’t find any volunteers.”
“We didn’t punish—” She sighed and shook her head.
“The details aren’t important.”
“To you, maybe—”
“There is no punishment for failure,” she said. “Even if you could talk to this man, he wouldn’t tell you anything. You need to pick one of the others.”
“The hopelessly insane one or the hopelessly misplaced one. Hmm, tough choice.”
“It’s unlikely you could find Zadkiel—”
“No kidding! If you guys have been searching—”
“So I’d recommend Janah. The ascended angel.”
“Angel?”
“The first seeker. The one who went mad.”
“Uh-huh.”
“First, though, we have to prepare her. In the meantime, you can—”
“In the meantime, then, I want to talk to someone who worked with one of these seekers. A supervisor, a partner, anyone who might be able to give me some insight into how your hunters worked, because I strongly suspect Janah isn’t going to be my most reliable source of intel.”
“Your partner has experience with the Nix.”
“Partner? What—?”
“You’ll meet him when you speak to Janah. It may take a day or two to prepare her, so we’d suggest you rest—”
“Then I need a necromancer.” Before she could argue, I hurried on. “If I’m tracking a spirit who can enter the living, then I need access to the living world—something you ladies have been denying me since I got here.”
“For very good reason—”
“So I don’t contact Savannah. Fine. But now I need that access.”
The Fate nodded. “You do, and we recognize that. We’ve already arranged—”
“I want Jaime Vegas.”
“I see,” the Fate said slowly. “And that choice would have nothing to do with the fact that she is acquainted with your daughter, and now serves on the supernatural council with Paige?”
“It has everything to do with that. Jaime knows Paige, who can vouch for me. Try finding another necro, outside the black market, who’ll want to work with Eve Levine. Of course, I could just go to the black market, call up one of my old friends…”
“Which you know we wouldn’t allow.” She paused, lips pursing, then shook her head. “Don’t think we fail to see this for what it is, Eve—a not terribly discreet attempt to pursue your favorite—your only—pastime here. But I will allow it, for the duration of this quest, and on the understanding that you will devote your time with Jaime to that quest, and not ask her to break necromantic law by contacting Savannah for you.”
I sifted through her words for a loophole. I didn’t see it right off, but I’d find one eventually. Before I could ask where to find Jaime, the Fate lifted her hands, and transported me away.