There was a loud crash downstairs. Annalise had finally arrived.
A sound like water flowing through a tunnel came from the first floor, and I shoved Bud through the door toward it. He let me. An eerie orange light shone up the stairs; was the building on fire? I hurried toward it. Bud curled his arm across his body and moved his feet as fast as I pushed him, but the vitality had gone out of him.
At the foot of the stairs, we found the ground-floor hall blocked by a weird twist of the air, an orange glow that made the air seem to flow toward the front of the house. I didn’t know what the hell it was, but it felt fundamentally
Bud drew back, not wanting to touch it. The weird flow was close to the bottom step, but I couldn’t judge how close. It was coming from somewhere in the front room and flowing toward the front door—from Wally toward Annalise, I assumed—but I didn’t want to get close enough to look down the hall to confirm it.
Then the flow reversed and I felt a weird pressure wash over me. I started rethinking all my thoughts of the last few seconds, but backward. I fell against the stairs, disoriented, feeling unmade in some odd way I couldn’t understand.
My skin crawled. Whatever strange magic had been flowing toward the door, it had been turned back on itself, and I’d felt the effects. The flow faltered and stopped.
I tried to raise my hand, but it swung downward instead of up and I banged my wrist against the edge of the stair. The spell Annalise had used to turn Wally’s magic back on itself was still affecting me, making me move in the wrong direction and sporadically think backward.
Bud’s drape must have shielded him from the effects, because he stepped off the bottom stair, turned toward the front of the house, and raised his good left hand. He was holding a tiny pistol, and I had no idea where he’d gotten it. He looked tired and sad, as though he’d given up any hope of living out the day. Annalise strode into view. Bud aimed the gun at her throat and, from barely six inches away, shot her.
She didn’t even flinch. She swatted his hand away, and his face came alive with sudden, startled pain. Annalise grabbed him by the belt and collar, then raised him over her head.
“Boss, no!” I hadn’t gotten the words out of my mouth when she threw him down onto the floor with such force that the whole house shook and the floorboards cracked.
Bud suddenly turned crimson—all the blood that would have splashed out of his shattered body washed over his skin, held in by the drape. Someone was screaming and the wooden floor kept cracking, although part of my disoriented brain knew the sound wasn’t coming from the floor.
Annalise stared at Bud’s corpse, her brow furrowed as she watched his blood disappear. A buzzing noise grew louder and I struggled to my feet. Annalise reached toward her vest.
I tried to move toward her but took two steps back instead. Damn, her reversal spell still had me all turned around. I let myself fall toward her—she grew larger in my vision, at least—just as the floor vanished.
Bud and Annalise both dropped into the darkness below. Annalise gasped in surprise just before I caught her sleeve. The Nomex was slick; for a moment I thought it might slip out of my injured hand, but it didn’t.
I jammed my foot between banister posts so I wouldn’t slide in after her. Annalise slid out of the oversized jacket—it wasn’t fastened, and she didn’t fit into it anyway—but she caught hold of the hem and swung out over the void. She looked up at me, and God, for the first time ever she looked genuinely afraid.
And there, below her, was a huge mass of drapes moving toward us.
Just as I was about to start hauling Annalise in, she did it herself, scrambling hand over hand up the length of her jacket, then over me. She hopped up onto the stair behind me and said: “Don’t lose my jacket.”
The drapes were coming, and not in small numbers. Not five, not six … This was a swarm of thousands. I scrambled to the side, trying to get away, but I was too slow. Too slow! The drapes were already here.
The predators burst up through the opening in the floor just as a ribbon zipped over my head and burst into a huge bubble of green flame.
There was no keening this time, no death cries. The drapes died suddenly and violently.
When the green flames faded, I saw the predators swirling around the opening—close enough that I could have rolled over and slapped one—but not coming through. Then the floor reappeared and became solid, sealing over the opening.
Thick wads of gray sludge covered the baseboard and wall. Damn if we hadn’t just found a way to kill the drapes without letting more into our world. I saw Annalise pluck another green ribbon from her vest. It was her last one.
“Boss, don’t kill the ones who can turn invisible.”
“He didn’t look invisible to me.” Police sirens grew louder. “Remember what I said about the police.”
She stepped onto the hall floor, one hand on the banister just in case the portal reopened. It didn’t. I stepped out behind her. Wally stood at the end of the hall, with an open door behind him that led to the backyard. The front of his shirt was torn, and his swollen belly had burst open. I could see dark, wet things moving inside.
He held Lino Vela beside him. Lino looked at me, gasping for air. He was so freaked out that any of us could have controlled him with a gentle word. At the edge of the room stood Summer and Fidel, and they looked just as shaken and helpless as Lino. Flickering light from a fire I couldn’t see played against their faces.
“This guy,” Wally said, his voice quavering a little, “can help us find the Book of Oceans. We can make a deal. Your people are looking for it, too, and—”
Annalise lowered her shoulder and ran through the gray sludge at him.
Summer and Fidel vanished.
Wally shoved Lino in front of him. “Listen! Wait!” he said, but that wasn’t going to stop Annalise. Lino cringed.
“Boss!” I shouted, moving toward her, but it was too late. She threw a ribbon into the room. A greenish black tentacle whipped out of the open wound in Wally’s gut and slapped Lino toward it.
