“We hope. Because if it did, the system would have no guidance. Huh . . . could it be part of a waveguide?”
“Unknown term, geek-boy. What’s a waveguide?”
“Waveguides restrict the radiation of electromagnetic energy into a linear direction. They’re kind of like pipes, but not really. Energy naturally radiates in spherical waves—outward in all directions at the same time and rate. That’s fine if you want an omnidirectional antenna for radio or television transmission, but some kinds of energy, like, say, microwaves, need to be a little more restricted or they dissipate and do damage. The waveguide has to be specific to the type and wavelength of the energy you’re managing. Broadly—and this is really generalized and a little squishy—by pairing the right conductive materials at the right distance, you essentially create an electrical trough for the energy to flow down that constantly reflects the waves back into the trough, rather than letting them radiate outward.”
“OK. I’m not sure I get the details, but I get the idea.”
“All right, so, if the anchor is part of a waveguide for Grey energy, it has to have an opposite polarity mate creating the ‘walls’ of the pipe. Removing one of the pair for either directional leyline basically lets the energy at that end radiate without proper control or direction. Since it’s anchored at the other end by the nexus and partially directed by its other half, what you get is something like a firehouse that’s hooked up to the hydrant at one end and flopping around loose at the other, spraying energy everywhere. With the way this particular energy is influenced by water, I’d guess that the lake itself acts like a conductive sink and lets the energy flow around until the lake’s too saturated, and then the magic starts leaching up through the ground wherever it can. Or wherever the thrashing pipe has hit the ground, creating transient hot spots and upwellings.
“Normally, this system around the lake is restricted and the crossing leylines probably created a single sort of wellhead at the nexus. Once the anchor was gone, the magic became fair game for anyone who could use it. But, and here’s the slippery bit, the wellhead still exists and instead of pumping energy out to whoever’s in charge of the nexus, it’s now able to suck it back from that person when demand is high, which is why Jewel Newman experiences the sensation of drainage when someone else uses it or when it rains and the lake overflows, pulling more energy out of the sink.”
I nodded. “That certainly sounds like our situation.”
“You know it’ll kill her sooner rather than later if the anchor isn’t replaced.”
“Yes, I do, and I don’t have any great soft spot for her, but if what you’re speculating is the truth of the situation, it won’t change or get better once Jewel’s dead. But how do we figure out where to put the anchor to re-create the waveguide and fix this damned problem?”
“You can see the leylines, so if we can figure out what the anchors look like in the Grey, we should be able to calculate where the uprooted one goes by the position of the other three.”
“Only one problem,” I said. “The lake’s more than a thousand feet deep. I’m pretty sure I can’t hold my breath at that depth to go snooping around to figure out where the in-place anchors are.”
“Let me give it some more thought,” Quinton said while I parked the Rover at the end of the road.
We got out under a threatening sky and began walking toward Devil’s Punch Bowl.
Along the way, I didn’t see a single ghost or zombie. That made me a little curious, since every time I’d been past the area before, the place had been populated with ghosts. The wayward energy still swarmed around in balls and strings, pooling on surfaces like light on glass, but there were no human remnants, nor animal ghosts, either.
The last stretch was a raked gravel path that was remarkably free of mud and puddles. As we came around a tree-shaded bend a few dozen feet from the house, something shrieked. Then a fireball exploded against the tree closest to us—an actual fireball like the real-life version of a special effect from a Harry Potter movie. It splattered and left smoldering bits of flame on the tree and the path near us.
“Get off my property!” someone screamed from behind the screen of trees.
I edged around and looked out. A skinny man with dead gray hair and skin that looked as if it had never seen the sun stood on the porch of the low log house, tossing a knot of fire from hand to hand as if it were a potato fresh out of the oven. In spite of the frost-edged air, he wore nothing but a sort of sarong slung around his hips and a gold cross on a long chain around his neck.
“I just want to ask you a few questions, Mr. Costigan,” I called out.
He suggested something anatomically unlikely and gymnastically ambitious in language so blue I was surprised it didn’t hang in the air like fog. “You took ’em! You stole ’em, you sneaking bitch!”
“The zombies? They came after me!”
“You were trespassing! They left you alone once you crossed the bridge, right enough. You didn’t have to snatch ’em and destroy ’em! I’ve been raising those for years! How dare you just go and . . . ruin my work!” And he was off again in a spate of abuse and creative cursing.
One of the curses floated languidly in our direction, a ring of bluegray smoke and nasty red energy spikes. I didn’t like the look of it, and I shoved Quinton backward while I flicked my palm outward in a tiny push on the Grey that sent the thing wafting toward the still-smoking tree.
When the curse touched it, the tree cracked and, with a screech of breaking wood, tore itself into two charred pieces.
Costigan flung the next fireball right behind it, shrieking what I thought was French, but with the way he spat it out, it could have been anything. He made an upward-pulling gesture and the ground heaved in a localized earthquake that spilled Quinton and me onto our backsides. Four glowing green shapes oozed out of the disturbed ground. Humanoid, but not human, they were made of nothing more substantial than colored mist. I still had the feeling I didn’t want to touch any of them.
I scrambled up and urged Quinton back toward the truck, but one of the things was remarkably fast and sighed around behind us, cutting off the path back to the parking area.
The green thing reached out toward Quinton with its ghostly hands. I jumped toward them, yanking a bit of Grey shield between the thing and us, but not fast enough to keep it from drawing a finger across Quinton’s bare cheek.
Quinton never saw the thing, but he jerked away from its touch with a gasp of pain, and a black line appeared on his skin where the thing’s finger had passed. A point of ice seemed to score my own cheek.
Furious, I shoved a hot white wall of energy at the thing, shouting, “Get away from him!”
The phantasm of acid green mist flew backward, shredding into thin wisps that dissipated on the cold breeze from the lake.
Then I turned back to face the other three. I didn’t want to expend a lot more energy on this fight and fall apart as I had last night, but the green things had to go. I pulled on the thin shield and pushed my hand through it, keeping the edge of the Grey between me and the nearest thing as I plunged my hand into it.
Even through the layered edge, the horrible vision wrapped around my hand and burned my flesh. I could see the skin and muscle on my hand withering and blackening while an ice-cold pain sucked all feeling from my hand and forearm. But I clutched onto the thing with pain-dulled fingers and shook it as a terrier does a rat.
It had no core of a soul that I could grab onto—at least I felt none—but it apparently did have some sense and a mind of its own, because the monstrous thing of mist fought away from me and zipped back across the distance between us and Costigan, dragging its remaining two companions with it.
As soon as it was gone, the color and shape returned to my hand and arm, but the flesh still felt burned away by cold and my fingers wouldn’t straighten properly, as if they’d frozen in their crooked position. I glanced back at Quinton. A bit wide-eyed but still with me, he was clutching his own forearm in sympathy. The black line on his face had widened a little and spread a blue-white pallor onto the skin of his cheek. It looked like frostbite and my own face burned in anger.
Costigan had stopped moving around on his porch and stared at us with his three dire companions huddling around him. “What did you do to ’em? Are you gonna ruin all my helpers?”
“No! I never meant to hurt any of them until they hurt me first.”
“You destroyed my work last night. Almost all of ’em. Why? What’d I ever do to you?”
“I destroyed them because you sent them to do me harm.”
“I never did!”
“Then who? Who stole your work and sent it out to attack us?”
Costigan gaped, his mouth working as if he were a fish drowning in air. “But, but . . . no. No. I don’t . .
