Cecilia glowered at Audrey. Without looking at the board, she moved another cube onto the second tier.
Audrey raised an eyebrow. Interesting. In three moves, Cecilia would capture the entire second ring. The old witch apparently had some spark left to her.
“You think me a monster,” Audrey replied. “But you’ve forgotten the real monsters in our world: horrors with bat wings and serpent tongues, nightmares made real.” She cocked her head, hearing the heartbeat and breath she’d been waiting for all morning. “Especially the monsters with sharp smiles and large ears ‘the better to hear with.’ ”
Audrey turned to face the stairwell. “Come in, Old Wolf. The door is open to you.”
Beneath them came the sound of the door’s locks clicking open, the knob turning, and whisper-silent footfalls.
Faint gray shadows crisscrossed the spiral of stairs as a figure came up.
His smile was the first thing she saw, like some hybrid Cheshire cat and great white shark making a grand entrance. Henry Mimes gave her a short bow and then gave one to Cecilia as well. He was dressed for walking today: gray slacks, sensible sneakers, a black turtleneck, and a baseball cap that framed his silver hair.
Dangerously handsome and dangerously deceptive.
And yet. . Audrey could not help but smile back at the fool, if only a little.
“What do you want, Henry?” Audrey said. “Your visits are never merely to exchange pleasantries.”
“It could be that way. . if you desired, my Queen of Swords.” Henry looked about the room. “How quaint. I see you still have my grandfather clock in good repair.” His gaze caught the picture window and its view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. “A lovely location. I approve.”
Cecilia, stone-faced, poured a cup of tea for Henry and offered it to him.
He smiled, accepted her gift. . but paused as the vapors reached his nose. “Thank you, dear witch of the Isle Eea.” He set the cup back on the table. “I think we’ll pass on your poison this morning.”
Cecilia wisely said nothing.
“You’re in an unusually good mood,” Audrey said.
“Am I not always?” His attention drifted to the game of Towers. “But you’re right, today is special: my favorite nephew and niece’s first day of high school. So many plots and devices afoot. It makes for a delectable mix.”
“So many words,” Cecilia hissed, “and yet he says so little.”
Henry’s smile cooled a few degrees, but his gaze did not lift from the board. “You know, old woman, that you can win in six turns? Here.” He reached over and slid two cubes at once to flank Audrey’s collapsed tower.
“That’s not a legitimate move,” Cecilia told him.
“It is,” Henry said. “Just one that you, in your too-long years, have failed to learn. Or perhaps senility has settled upon your once-keen mind?”
Audrey saw that her captured pieces could be used to build additional Towers on Cecilia’s side in three moves-and her own border defenses after that would be insufficient. While she could still get to the center, Henry’s new strategy had her losing her entire backcourt. . and then the game.
She locked eyes with him. There was no more emotion or additional truths, however, behind his sparkling empty eyes.
“One must practice to keep one’s defenses sharpened, no?” he asked.
“The Council?”
“Meeting today,” Henry replied. “They require our presence. I thought that I would offer you a ride.”
“Always and never the gentleman,” Audrey said, and stood. “I accept your offer.”
“Splendid,” Henry cooed. He turned to Cecilia, and his slender hand reached out to caress her face. Cecilia recoiled before this gesture. “Ah, I would bring you as well, my lovely,” he said, “but there are some on the Council who would love to part your head from your shoulders should you cross their path.”
Cecilia gripped a butter knife.
Henry spared a glance at its edge. “Perhaps another time you and I will dance.” He moved to the stairs. “Today, regrettably, we have business to attend to: The Council wishes to discuss its newest members, and provided they are allowed to live. . we shall discuss how to avert the end of the world.”
Audrey gathered her courage and followed. “I expected no less.”
Eliot had this creepy feeling he and Fiona were being watched. Fog and shafts of sunlight swirled around them on the sidewalk. He glanced up at their new house.
He liked it. It wasn’t “home.” That had been their apartment in Del Sombra. This place, though, made up for it by at least having more than one bathroom.
It was a modern Victorian squished on all sides so it towered three stories tall on their lot. The trim was green and gold geometric art deco lines. Three scalloped balconies cupped the sides of the house like bracket mushrooms. A gold solar system weather vane topped the highest spire. It was an odd melding of styles. . but it somehow worked, like something a mad genius architect might have sketched.
Every building was tall and quirky on their street-stacked at least three stories tall. Most had been built with so little room, they actually touched their neighbors. Cee said it was the high cost of real estate that made every home tiny and built this way.
That feeling of being watched, however, was still there. Eliot squinted, but the windows of his house were solid reflections of sky.
Fiona glanced around, too, perhaps sensing the same unease he felt.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Hang on a sec.” Eliot tightened the strap of his canvas backpack. Inside were pencils, notebooks, Cee’s lunch, and a battered violin case (sticking slightly out of the top of the pack), which contained his most prized possession: the violin Lady Dawn. He shifted his shoulders inside his too-big Paxington jacket. No luck there-it still looked all wrong. “Okay,” he told her. “Let’s go.”
Fiona unfolded their map, got oriented, and then pointed. “That way to Lombard Street.” She marched ahead and Eliot followed. She was in her figure-it-out mode, and nothing got in Fiona’s way when she was like that.
For several blocks they tromped in silence and then turned onto Lombard.
A nonstop stream of cars and trucks rolled by. Eliot and Fiona took a step back. The scents of coffee and freshly baked bread drifted with the odors of exhaust. People queued in line for coffee from latte carts.
“All we have to do is follow this street west,” she told him. “That’ll get us there.” She scrutinized the map but looked unconvinced.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Eliot knew it was
Why did she always do that? Leave him behind, thinking she got to lead. Eliot had half a mind to go his own way. . but then, Fiona might get lost and never find the place by herself.
So he followed. For her sake.
One day, though, she was going to find out just how much she needed him.
They passed shoe stores and a Taco Bell and one store that sold nothing but globes and maps. Fiona paused to admire a massive world that levitated magnetically on its pedestal. She checked the building’s street number and then compared it to the address on their welcome letter.
“This is the right direction,” she said. “We should almost be there.”
Lombard veered southwest. The street narrowed and filled with houses and apartments. Eliot didn’t see anything that looked like a school.
They walked another entire block-passing the address where Paxington should have been-the last two digits of the closest number jumped from 16 to 22.
“You’re reading that map wrong,” Eliot told her.
“I’m not,” she replied.
Eliot then did the one thing he had vowed he wouldn’t do this morning. He dug into his pack, found a slender
