center. Though it was made of dust, light and memory, touched into life by the powers she’d reclaimed, it had sufficient self-intent to immediately turn its fury on the panicking fools stumbling among the overturned chairs. It loosed a roar, and the church’s stained-glass windows blew out.
“Reverend!” Futterman said. He had crawled away from the place where he’d fallen, and was at the minister’s feet. “Forget her! Please! You’re a man of God. Summon up an angel. Make this thing go away.”
“There’s nothing there,” Bill Quackenbush said, still holding Candy. His fingers had gone to her neck, his thumbs pressed against her windpipe, cutting off the flow of air. “It’s just something my idiot daughter gave birth to.”
“Well, tell
“You heard the man, Candy. Make it go away,” Bill said, and he squeezed tighter.
“. . . can’t . . .” Candy said.
“Can’t or
Despite her desperate situation, Candy managed a tiny smile.
“Say good-bye,” her father said to her. The tone of his voice was matter-of-fact. He was simply stating the truth. “You’re not my daughter. I don’t know whose you are, but you’re not mine.”
He pressed his thumbs down even harder on Candy’s neck. She fought for breath, but none was coming. All she could think to do was to summon the Efreetian Beast she’d conjured back to her. It came. She saw it rise up behind her father’s head, the veins in the stretched flesh around its mouth throbbing. He saw its reflection in her eyes, it seemed, because he turned and, an instant before she lost consciousness for want of breath, his grip on her throat loosened. She gingerly extracted herself from his hands and slid down the wall, gratefully drinking the air.
The Fever Gibe was leaning over her father. A string of saliva ran from its gaping mouth and landed on his face. It must have stung because he cursed, then retaliated against the Gibe with his own silver-tipped darts. When they struck the beast, it curled and eddied like smoke, only to recover its form once the dart had passed through it.
“How dare you bring your filth into this holy place!” he yelled.
He turned to face the mirage, firing his bolts into it over and over. The coherence of the image could not hold in the face of such a consistent assault. The holes in the creature grew larger, its matter growing thin and finally dissolving completely. There was a long moment while everyone recovered from the events. Candy didn’t wait for her father to renew his attack. She moved around the side of the altar and then began to race toward the door.
“No way out!” her father yelled behind her.
She’d seen him close the door and bolt it to keep Norma Lipnik from leaving, but that couldn’t keep her from unbolting it, and getting back out onto the street.
They had seen what their Reverend was capable of and out of blind fear they did as he instructed. Candy kept her eyes fixed on the door, but from the corner of her eyes she could sense her father’s people closing in on her from both left and right. She wasn’t going to make it to the door before they laid their hands on her, she knew. She forced her weakened legs to work till they throbbed, but there simply wasn’t enough speed in them.
“Bring her down!” Bill yelled. “The first one with their hand on her gets to drink from the cup of her power. After me, of course.”
Her own father giving a piece of her away, as though she was his to give? It was too much! She stopped running, and turned on her heel.
“You’re right!” she yelled across the church at him. “I’m not your daughter! You don’t know me! You never did and you never will! I belong—
k
“—to the Abarat,” Candy said in her sleep.
“That’s my girl,” Malingo said softly.
“It’s a fine sentiment,” John Mischief murmured. “I just hope it isn’t the last thing she says!”
Candy didn’t try to retrace her steps to the altar. She knew she had no hope of getting there. The minister’s mob was just a few steps from seizing hold of her. She raised her arms, openhanded.
“If you’re going to take me,” she said, looking at them with naked contempt, “then take me. But be careful. I bite.”
“Take no notice of her!” Bill said. “She has no real power!”
Five of his flock did as their shepherd instructed, and reached out to grab hold of her. As they did so the front doors rattled violently, and the screws securing the iron bolts flew off. Seconds later so did the bolts.
The five brave souls who’d seized hold of Candy changed their minds, and let go of her. Only one, the father of Deborah Hackbarth (Candy’s one-time friend and, later, school-ground nemesis), stepped in to do what the others had declined to do. At school, his daughter had always boasted about her noble origins; hence, she said, her delicate bones and perfect manners. To the extent she had such qualities at all, they did not derive from her father, who was a fat-bellied thing of a man, who took no little pleasure in squeezing Candy’s arm to achieve the maximum discomfort.
Candy felt a rush of wind against her face and a welcome voice said: “Let go of the girl this instant.”
Candy looked toward the front door, whence the voice had come. It was still closed. But Diamanda and Henry Murkitt had passed through it, and were standing inside the church.
“I said, let go of her,” Diamanda said. “Don’t make me force you.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Deborah’s father laughed.
“As you wish.”
She started to whisper something, the words she was speaking forming an agitated cloud in front of her face, which with a tiny flick of her forefinger she dispatched toward Hackbarth. The words were upon him in an instant, circling his head. He tried to swat them away with his free hand, but that didn’t work, and they quickly began to sting him, resulting in a burst of obscene language from Hackbarth. He let go of Candy in order to employ both his hands to ward off the attack.
“You can wake up now!” Diamanda insisted.
“What about my mom? I can’t leave—”
“I’ll take care of her. Get back to the Abarat!
Candy began the process of waking herself. She heard Diamanda speak again.
“Defend them, child! You’re the only one who has a hope of stopping it.”
“Stopping what?” she muttered.
“The war, child! The war between Night and—”
Candy opened her eyes, as the last syllable Diamanda uttered “—Day!” fell away into the no-man’s-land between sleeping and waking. She looked up and saw her friends, Malingo, the Johns, Geneva, and Tom.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m back.”
Chapter 33
No Stranger Now
EVERYONE HAD QUESTIONS, OF course. Where had Candy been in her dream travels? And who (or what) had she encountered on her journey that had caused her to struggle so desperately while she slept?
“It’s complicated,” Candy told them all. “And I’m hungry. Could we go find some food and I’ll tell you while we eat?”
There was no disagreement on that. Everybody was hungry.
