Game of Cages

“No,” Steve said. “Things have been happening pretty fast around here. Look at this.” He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and held it up. It was already too dark to read it. “I’m the new chief of police in Washaway— temporary emergency position only. Pippa saw to it.”

“The sheriff hasn’t come yet?”

“No,” Steve said, “and I’ve called him eight times today. But I was a patrol officer in Wenatchee for a few years, so Pippa figured I’m the best candidate for the job. Now, tell me where you’ve been, or I’m going to arrest you.”

“At Penny’s. Did you know that Mark is there right now? Sleeping?”

“With a head wound? Is anyone with him?”

“Nope.”

He turned to the others. “We can’t leave that boy alone with a head injury. Sherisse, Ford, would you go and collect him, please?”

They hustled back to their car. Steve turned to me. “You haven’t been at Penny’s this whole time, though, right?”

“No.”

Steve sighed in irritation. “What about the other strangers in town? They’re looking for this thing too, right?”

“Yes, and we can’t talk about this here.”

“Well, we could have talked at the Sunset, if you’d done like I asked, but no—”

“Oh, for … They found me there, okay? They know I want to kill it, and I’m not safe there anymore. I need a new place to crash.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m pretty much running on fumes.”

“Okay.” Steve rubbed the faint stubble on his chin. “Let’s go.”

I followed him through town, turning off Littlemont Road onto a winding asphalt street barely wide enough for two cars. He stopped in front of a clapboard, two-story house with a long garage, walked up the front lawn, and opened the garage door. I pulled inside.

“This is my house, if you haven’t guessed.” The walls were covered with tools on pegboards. There was a thick layer of dust on them. If Steve had been handy at one point in his life, it was long ago.

I followed him through a mudroom into a little kitchen, then a living room. Everything was perfectly clean and neatly arranged, but it was a depressing little house. It seemed to absorb light, but every scuff of our feet echoed as if we were in a drum. He led me to a threadbare couch and offered me tea and sandwiches. I said yes, thank you, and he went into the kitchen.

A four-foot tree stood in the corner. It was undecorated.

Steve returned and set a foldout table in front of me. There were two little plates on it, each with a white- bread sandwich and a handful of corn chips. Beside them were thick white mugs with steaming tea.

I thanked him again and took a bite of the sandwich. It was yellow cheese with mayo and iceberg lettuce. I was hungry enough to enjoy it.

Steve took a bite of his sandwich, more out of politeness than hunger, I could see. When he swallowed, he set it down and settled back in his armchair. It looked too big for him. “I think it’s past time you give me the full rundown.”

“Okay,” I said. I set down my own sandwich and sipped some tea, just to buy time. “Regina Wilbur had this sapphire dog in the little cottage behind her house for decades. It was trapped in there, and she kept it all for herself.”

He nodded. We both remembered how the sapphire dog had made us feel. “You said it was a gift?”

“That’s what she told me. She was grateful for it, but I don’t think the gift giver was doing her any favors.”

Steve opened his mouth to respond, then paused. He knew the history of this town and the Wilbur family. “When she was younger, Regina Wilbur was a terror in this part of the county. She had very definite ideas about what had to be done and who should be allowed to do it. Then she simply stopped coming to planning meetings and became a hermit. Lots of folks were relieved.”

“But something changed recently, right?”

“Well, her niece had her declared incompetent. There was a videotape of Regina pitching a fit in her drawing room, claiming that they were keeping her dog from her. A dog that died twenty-five years ago.”

“Named Armand, right?” Steve nodded. “I thought so. She gave that name to the sapphire dog, too. You can imagine how she’d behave if they kept her from visiting it.”

“The niece … Does she know?”

“She held an auction last night. She sold the sapphire dog to a Chinese guy for nearly a hundred thirty million dollars.” It was hard to believe that all this trouble had taken place in less than twenty-four hours.

“Lord help us. I know about the men, of course. Washaway has been full of rumors that he was looking to invest nearby and had come to see the festival. But they were here for this auction?”

“Yeah, but the creature escaped. Now the Chinese guy—and the others who lost the auction—are looking for it. They all have guns, and they aren’t squeamish about using them.”

Steve winced. I described the groups who had been at the estate in a general way, leaving out the summoning of the floating storm and the spells on Tattoo’s body.

“What about you? Did you come for the auction, too?”