'Morgan.'
Ignoring all the sound advice she had ever heard about entering a residence that had been recently burglarized, she hurtled through the door.
It was Morgan who was sprawled on the kitchen floor. A small plastic envelope half-filled with gritty gray crystals lay on the table. Next to the envelope was an empty glass. There was a filthy gray residue at the bottom.
She knelt beside Morgan and fumbled desperately for a pulse.
He was still alive. She glanced up, saw the phone on the wall near the icerator, and started to get to her feet.
Before she could move something scraped in the hallway behind her. She whirled around and found herself confronting a man in a black ski mask. He held a burn-hag jelly-ice candle. As she watched, he casually tossed aside the ice-match he had just used to light it.
'So you wanna play with fire, do you, bitch?'
Orchid opened her mouth to scream, but at that moment the walls of the hall and kitchen twisted in an impossible manner, curving and bending around her. The floor sank away beneath her feet. Her stomach reeled. She reached out to clutch the table to steady herself, but it was not where her eyes told her it should be. Instead it was tilted at a wildly improbable angle. She could not reach it.
It was as though she had stepped into a bizarre carnival funhouse. Or another universe. Voices came out of the spinning void that was the kitchen hall.
'Shit, Jink, it's her. The one who was with that guy at the house we were watching. The one who kicked me.'
'It's all right. She's alone today. She won't give us any trouble. The illusion will keep her occupied while we finish the job.'
Orchid thought she heard a man's laughter. She could not be certain. Her world had narrowed down to the small, horribly convulsing kitchen. She felt as if she were on a roller coaster. Every time she tried to orient herself, the place shifted around her.
'Watch this,' someone said out of the void in the hall.
She saw the flame of the jelly-ice candle grow larger. It was the only thing in her field of vision that did not waver. She stared at it with desperate concentration. For an instant she thought the world steadied. Her hand finally made contact with the edge of the table.
Then the flame exploded into a great conflagration. Fire filled the void. Waves of brilliant orange flames lapped at the kitchen.
Panic seared her senses. She had to get out. Now. Fire blocked the hall. That left only the window.
She groped for and finally found Morgan's ankle. She tried to tug his unconscious body across the undulating kitchen toward the window. It was impossible to make any progress. The walls flowed into new configurations every time she took a step.
She thought she heard more laughter. It was followed by a woman's scream. She thought it was her own but in that wild, chaotic kitchen-universe, she could no longer be certain of anything.
Chapter 11
She could not smell the smoke.
The realization struck her with blinding clarity. Flames billowed toward her, consuming the hallway, but she could not smell any smoke. It was thick in the air around her, but if she concentrated, she had no trouble filling her lungs with clear air.
Orchid released Morgan's ankle and forced herself to think. An old adage reverberated again and again in her brain. Where there's smoke, there's fire.
But what if there was no smoke? At least, none that you could smell?
Orchid closed her eyes. Instantly the room stilled. She could feel the kitchen floor beneath her knees, right where it should have been.
She was right. There was no smoke in the kitchen. Nor could she hear the roar of the flames in the hallway.
Illusion.
She kept her eyes closed, cutting off the vision of an inferno in the hall. Gradually her jangled nerves stabilized. In the absence of visual input, her other senses began to convey logical information once more.
She became aware of the sound of rain pounding on the roof. The storm had struck. Voices came from the front room. The same voices she had heard last night when she and Rafe had encountered the two men in the unnatural fog outside Theo Willis's house.
'It has to be here somewhere.'
'We've turned the place upside down, Jink. Come on, we gotta get out of here.'
'Keep looking. He won't like it if we don't find it. Let's check the bedroom.'
'What about the woman?'
'Forget her. She won't give us any trouble. She's too busy having a nervous breakdown out there in the kitchen.'
Orchid listened to the footsteps of the two men as they receded in the direction of Morgan's bedroom. Very cautiously she opened one eye.
The flames still consumed the hall. The kitchen writhed.
Orchid quickly closed her eye. The illusion-talent was strong. So was his prism. Together they were powerful enough to maintain the vision here in the kitchen while they searched the bedroom.
There was no way she could get down the hall and across the living room without the two men noticing. Her only option was the wall phone.
Unable to trust her visual sense, she kept her eyes firmly closed and tried to recall the exact location of the icerator. Directly behind her and a little to the right.
She turned, crouched, and began to crawl blindly across the floor. Thuds echoed from the bedroom. It sounded as if the intruders were pulling drawers out of a dresser.
Orchid knew she had found the icerator when she banged her head against it. Damn, damn, damn. But she managed not to cry out.
She used her sense of touch to guide her to her feet.
The icerator handle was reassuringly firm in her grasp. She clung to it with one hand and groped for the wall phone with the other.
A jolt of unwarranted relief raced through her when her fingers touched the receiver. Then she realized she would have to punch out the numbers without opening her eyes.
Where were the numbers on the phone?
Think. The number one was at the top on the left. The nine had to be last. No, that wasn't right. There were all those other little buttons. The pound key. The star button.
She risked opening her eyes long enough to squint at the number pad. A mistake. The keys swam before her, each digit moving in meaningless circles.
Hastily she closed her eye and stabbed at the key she thought might be the nine. Then she fumbled for the number one key. She punched it twice. Nothing happened. How hard could it be to dial 911 without sight? she wondered.
The answer was very hard. It took her two more tries before she got it right.
'New Seattle Emergency Center.'
'Fire,' Orchid whispered. She hoped that the driving rain would keep the men in the other room from overhearing her. 'Shelter Cove Marina.'
'Please speak up, ma'am. I can barely hear you.'
Orchid raised her voice slightly, listening all the while for sounds from the bedroom. 'There's a fire. At Shelter Cove Marina. Houseboat number four. Hurry, please.'
