“All right,” Potato said. “You guys don’t have guns. I know, because I took them from you. And I got your buddy right here.” He pointed a pistol at me. “You can’t get close to us without stepping on the paper and giving yourself away. And getting shot. So I’m gonna count to three, and if you don’t show yourself, I’m putting a bullet in your pal here.”
Potato aimed the gun at my forehead. Why couldn’t he have chosen a part of me that was bulletproof?
“Go ahead,” Lenard whispered. “So what?”
The smoke alarm suddenly went off; everyone winced except Potato. “Fire department’s on its way!” he shouted. “Time is running out!”
“You’re right, it is!” Arne shouted. He suddenly became visible just behind me. Damn if he didn’t have a gun of his own in his hand, although I had no idea where he got it.
He pointed his pistol at Potato or Francois—it was hard to tell which. The meatheads all pointed their weapons at him. He was outnumbered and outgunned, and I couldn’t figure out what his play was supposed to be. If he had the gun …
“Lenard!” Arne shouted. Lenard became visible just a few feet in front of me, crouching beside a low table. He shrugged, his smiling expression suggesting that he was playing along in a game that was beneath him. The meathead who’d been standing guard over me moved toward him.
Arne shifted his aim and fired a single shot at Lenard. The meathead jumped back. Lenard looked at his old friend in shock. There was a bloody hole in his shirt over his heart. Behind him, red was spattered against the wall; the drape was strong, but not strong enough to hold an exit wound closed.
Arne laughed and vanished again.
“No!” I shouted. There was a loud cracking sound, and beneath the piercing alarm I could hear a droning buzz.
It took a moment or two for Lenard to drop. I grabbed the meathead who’d been guarding me and pulled him away from Lenard’s body. He twisted, thinking I was attacking him, and laid a heavy, door-busting right hook to the side of my face. I tried to roll with it, but it still had enough power to bounce me off the wall and lay me flat.
The noise was oppressive, but the awful mix of sounds helped me stay conscious. I struggled up onto my elbow, trying to clear the blinking white spots from my vision. Two meatheads moved toward Lenard—damn, they were close. I tried to warn them back, but all I could manage was a harsh croak and a vague wave of my arm.
Potato stepped toward them. “Back!” he shouted over the noise. He pulled one back and the other moved, too, as though they were tethered. Just then, the floor turned dark and vanished. Lenard’s corpse dropped away into the void, and the meatheads began screaming.
Five drapes floated through the opening like balloons rising out of a manhole. The yellow light from Francois’s lamps made them look like phlegm. The meatheads gaped, frozen in place.
Potato Face stepped back, and the first of the drapes rushed him. It flopped over him like a net, and he struggled for a couple of moments before toppling to the floor.
The two men he’d pulled away from Lenard’s body turned to run, but drapes were on them before they could take a second step. One fell against a lamp and end table. The other landed on the middle of the floor.
One drape moved toward the guard who’d laid me out, and he fired four quick shots into it. The bullets tore through the predator’s body, looking like clean spots on smeary glass, but the holes sealed over immediately. I tried to stand and push him away, but I was too slow. The man had time to scream once before it wrapped itself over his face and head.
The opening into the Empty Spaces disappeared. The couch jolted to the side as one of the guards thrashed against it, but Potato and his three men had vanished. I reached toward the space where the fourth man had fallen. He was there, invisible and trembling, just like Melly after her protective spell wore off.
Where was the fifth drape? I tried to remember how many men had fled the room and how many should have been here still. The only other person I could see was a lone blond beefhead crouching by the French doors. He stretched his hand out and touched the air at the base of the glass, then yanked his hand back and wiped it on his polo shirt.
Was that the fifth? I touched the one that fell near me, then crossed the room to touch that one. One man had fallen closer to me than I thought, and I nearly tripped over him in my search. Then I found Potato by the back door and the last beside the broken end table.
That was five. If one of the drapes had escaped the building, I didn’t know what I’d do. Luckily, it hadn’t become an issue. There were enough victims right here when they attacked.
And I’d had my ghost knife in my hand the whole time. I’d failed them all.
Worse, now I had to find a way to kill them safely.
That last guard stood. “You!” I shouted, trying to be heard over the blare of the alarm. “Stay here so we can help your friends!”
He stared at me for just a second, then barreled out the door. So much for my leadership abilities.
The alarm set my teeth on edge, and I suddenly remembered what Potato had said about the fire department coming. I rolled to my feet, bumping against one of the invisible bodies. My arm started to itch from the contact, but I pushed it toward the wall anyway. If firefighters chopped the door down and tripped over one of these invisible bodies …
I couldn’t think with that damn alarm going, so I pushed a chair to the middle of the room and stood on it. The alarm was mounted on the center of the ceiling, and the cover came off with a quarter-twist.
It was nothing more than a thirty-dollar drugstore model. I yanked out the nine-volt battery, and the unit fell silent. There were no wires connecting it to the rest of the house, and no way for it to call emergency services when it went off. Potato had been bluffing.
First things first. I went through the open door into the kitchen, which looked like a smaller version of the kitchen at the Sugar Shaker, but without the men in white caps. I rinsed off my hands and searched the house as quickly as I could.
