Game of Cages

I checked that I still had my ghost knife, then moved toward the house. Ursula and Zahn lay on the lawn. They weren’t whole, though. You couldn’t have made a whole body out of both of them combined. There was no blood anywhere, just a lack of parts.

Then I saw a flash of blue near the front of the house. I walked around the bodies, trying not to look at them. I felt hollowed out, and I wasn’t ready to fill that empty space with the sight of more dead people, even these.

On the front lawn, the two halves of the sapphire dog’s body were fading in and out, appearing here and there in a seemingly random way. It wasn’t until I realized that the ghost knife had cut through the predator’s eyes, blinding it, that I understood that the two parts were trying to find each other.

The hedge closest to the truck had been spared the collapse of the Wilbur house. I quietly took a set of the woven Christmas lights off the top. There was an electric outlet set in the back of the cube truck. I plugged the lights into it, and they lit up dimly.

I clicked my tongue. The ears on the creature’s head suddenly turned toward me, then the head vanished and appeared beside me. I draped the lights over it, then folded it twice for good measure. It stopped vanishing and reappearing. I had trapped it. It wasn’t the lights—it liked the light—it was the live wires that the predator couldn’t cross. The cages had been spiderwebbed with wires, and the pets had been careful to run cables along only three walls in the field house, leaving one open for an escape route.

I held my hand away from my body and snapped my fingers. When the predator shot its tongue toward the sound, I sliced it off with the ghost knife. The severed tongue fell into the mud and shriveled there. Its body staggered, then crumpled to the ground and lay still.

The head could only twitch its ears. I wondered if it could understand me. “Stay away from my world,” I whispered to it. The ears twitched back and forth as though it couldn’t find the source of my voice. “There are monsters here.”

The head shrunk and bowed in on itself. I backpedaled, but there was no second explosion. The head, tongue, and body each seemed to be sucked into a tiny spot, and then they were gone.

There was still another job to do. I walked to the side of the house. All that was left of Ursula was a pair of legs and the hips to hold them together. The rest of her body was simply gone. Even stranger was that there was no gore or exposed organs at the severed part of her torso. That part of her was covered with smooth, unmarked skin, as though she had grown that way naturally.

Zahn was missing his body from the ribs down. He was also missing one arm from just below the shoulder and the other from just below the elbow. When I bent to see if he also had skin over the severed part of his torso, he called me an asshole.

Yeah, I was startled. I knew sorcerers were tough, but this was a bit much.

“Feed me, and I will teach you,” he said. His voice sounded low and strained. “I will show you the world behind the world.”

“Pass. I’ve seen how you treat your people. No loyalty.”

“They were simpletons and they failed me. But you are something else, yes? Not even a true sorcerer, and look what you did.”

“That’s what I do,” I told him. My voice sounded flat, and it scared me a little. “I kill.”

“I do not believe you. I can see it. You have killed, but you are not a natural killer. You care too much for that. The Twenty Palace Society has lied to you, the way they lie to everyone.”

“Is this conversation going to take long? Because my socks are wet.”

“And you want power. For three hundred years I have been looking for someone clever enough to pass my secrets to. I think that could be you. I need meat. Care enough to save my life, and you save three hundred years of history. In return, I will show you real power the Hosenscheisser in the society cannot. Come on, boy. Care enough to save one more life.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed at him. “You don’t get it, do you? I killed kids today because of the deal you made with that predator. Kids! If you think I’m going to …”

Why was I talking to him?

I dragged the ghost knife through his torso. Black steam blasted out of him. The smooth skin over the bottom of his rib cage where the rest of his body should have been suddenly burst open. He lost blood and magic in a tremendous rush.

I hit him again and again, and it took me a few seconds to realize that he was laughing as well as screaming.

“A ghost knife!” he wheezed. “You are killing me with a ghost knife, and you cast it on a piece of paper!” He screamed, then laughed again, straining every muscle. “I’ll bet you do not even realize what you’ve done!”

I didn’t feel like being laughed at just then. I dragged my spell through his face and head, then stuffed Annalise’s last green ribbon into his mouth. That was it for him.

Once Zahn was dead, I suddenly thought it might be a good idea to call someone outside Washaway who could help. I took a deep breath and let relief flood through me. The town was no longer sealed. Help would be coming very soon.

I gave his three-hundred-year-old bones a kick for the hell of it.

In the truck I found the lightning rod Zahn had used to summon the floating storms, along with a carpetbag loaded with candles, jars, amulets, and other suspicious crap, all in a mixed-up jumble.

I set all that stuff at the top of the driveway. Then I dragged the bodies into an opening in the side of the house, dropping them into the basement. That was an ugly job, but I didn’t have much choice. I wondered whether Regina had gotten away, or was crushed under a beam in the wreckage or rotting in a ditch somewhere, feeding the crows. Maybe I’d never know.

I parked the truck next to the house and lit them both on fire.