“I love it when you’re coy.” Francis headed off down another aisle. “Just as long as she keeps you from moping… I hate it when you mope. Follow me. The bullets for the twins are over here.”
They found Angus pushing a battered shopping cart filled with boxes of books and ancient-looking scrolls toward them.
“A shopping cart?” Remy looked at Francis.
“Anything to make your experience at Weapons Mart a pleasant one.”
“We just about done here?”
Angus looked into his cart and nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so. Maybe a few more this and thats, but I think we’re good.”
“Can you open a passage to my house?” Remy asked Francis. “There’s something I need to check before we get going.”
“I think I could do that,” Francis said, putting the gym bag down and rubbing his hands together. “While you’re making your booty call, Angus and I’ll check out Stearns’ place.”
Remy made a face, staring at Francis as if he didn’t know him.
“Did you just say booty call?” he asked incredulously.
“I did,” the former Guardian answered, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before starting to conjure the passage that Remy would use to get to his car. “It was the word of the day on my calendar,” he said, as the air before them grew incredibly thin. He reached out to tear through it, revealing another place on the other side.
“And I swore I’d use it in a sentence.”
The little black bugs tasted like peanuts-peanuts boiled in bat piss and then sprinkled with dried shit, but, yeah, he could taste peanuts somewhere in the rancid mix.
Squire took a handful of the squirming insects and dropped them in the pan of boiling black oil. He’d never get used to the screams the little fuckers let out when they went into the hot drink. This brought a smile to the hobgoblin’s face as he squatted before the tiny fire in the shelter he’d made from the skin and bones of one of the shadow region’s larger predators.
There’s no place like home, he thought, stirring the boiling bugs. The little beasties had already started to break down, releasing their fine, stinking aroma.
He couldn’t stop thinking of another home…not his home, but one that felt like the home he’d lost. All he’d seen was the motel room, but Squire got a sense of the world he’d passed into almost immediately. It wasn’t like the one he’d left in ruin, but then again, it was.
Cable television, pork rinds, Internet porn, dollar stores, Doritos; he bet they were all there. He could feel it in the pit of his protruding belly. So much like the one he’d had to abandon.
He poured his steaming bug stew into the open end of a hollowed-out shell and carefully began to eat.
He couldn’t stop thinking about that other world, but he had to. There was no sense in getting attached to another, only to have it yanked away like the first. Squire wasn’t sure he could survive another loss like that.
He sipped at the edge of the shell bowl, sucking pieces of beetles into his mouth. He chewed them quickly, searching for that peanut taste before the other, less appetizing ones, kicked in.
Nope, this was his home now. And it was just the way he liked it: dark, cold and bleak. Nothing to get attached to.
Through the membranous cover of the shelter he’d erected, Squire thought he saw a flash of something… something so bright that it cut through the pervasive shadow like an ax blade through muscle. He sat, sipping his meal, eyes locked to where he thought he’d seen it, waiting in case it happened again.
And it did.
The sudden explosion of light was bright, and it left dancing snowflakes of color on his eyes, now used to the total darkness of the world of shadow.
Downing the remainder of his bug stew, he placed the empty bowl on the ground at his feet and rose to check out what was happening outside.
Squire pulled aside the flap of skin and stepped out into the harsh environment. His goblin eyes scanned the shadows.
“Big fucking surprise,” he grumbled as he caught sight of the mansion that had been nothing but trouble since it had entered his world.
The explosion of light came again, and Squire witnessed firsthand the aftereffects. The air around the mansion pulsated like a long black curtain billowing in the wind. It was as if the very substance of the shadow realm was being tested, reminding him of the time just before the mansion had first appeared.
“That ain’t good,” Squire muttered. He had a bad feeling about what he was seeing, and as he listened to the wails and moans of the various life-forms of this dark, alternate reality, he knew they could sense it, too. Squire always knew that the residents of the mansion were troublemakers, but now he suspected they were something worse than that.
Another flash erupted from the front of the building and radiated out from all of the windows. A rapidly expanding halo of fluctuating darkness around the home again began to show signs of duress.
Squire had a sudden, sinking feeling in his awesome gut that the shadow realm was being threatened, that whatever was going on inside that house was doing something to the fabric of this world’s shadowy existence.
Something that it might not be able to recover from. And then where would that leave Squire?
“Up shit’s creek without a paddle.” The hobgoblin answered his own question, knowing at that very instant what he had to do.
Squire turned and went back into his shelter. He was going to need a few things. From the corner he hefted the old leather golf bag into a standing position and reviewed its contents. There were a few swords, a spear, and his personal favorite: a battle-ax. He had made many of those over the years, but these were the last of them. His babies, tools of his violent trade that he had not been able to part with.
Squire figured that this would be more than enough to deal with what he would find inside the mansion. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he headed out across the sprawling expanse of shadow.
He’d been wanting to have a little chat with his new neighbors. Now seemed as good a time as any.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The passage that Francis had summoned brought Remy to the small backyard of his Beacon Hill brownstone, giving him enough time to zip into his house for a change of clothes. He doubted it would be wise to show up at his girlfriend’s place covered in blood.
He’d already called Linda and found out she and Marlowe had returned to her apartment that morning to do some laundry. Remy had sensed a bit of tension in their conversation, and he’d guessed that it had something to do with the mysterious stranger she had met in the Common. When pressed, she had said that the guy had been kind of weird, but when she mentioned something about the Watchers going to do something terrible and that it was all because of him, Remy felt his blood go ice-cold.
In his calmest voice, he’d told her that he would be there in a few minutes and ended the call. A familiar dread gripped him. It was that same horrible feeling he’d experienced when he’d realized that Ashley had been taken because of what he was.
Now Linda had been touched, as well.
Remy made amazing time from the Hill to Brighton, taking the first parking space he could find and sprinting to her building. She buzzed him in, and he took the steps two at a time, banging on her door perhaps a little too eagerly, hearing Marlowe’s barking response on the other side.
Linda opened the door, an ecstatic Marlowe by her side.
“Hey,” she said with a stunning smile, coming into his arms for a hug and kissing him on the neck before planting a noisy one on his lips.
She pulled away, arms still around his neck, and looked at his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is it Ashley? Is she all right?”
“I don’t really know,” he answered in all honesty. Linda let him into the apartment, closing the door behind him.
