Game of Cages

“I’m leaving that for you two.”

It was my turn to be shocked. “What? You’re going to face him without me? Boss …”

There really wasn’t a delicate way for me to ask if she could take him in a fight. She was powerful, but she wasn’t the most powerful. Besides, she’d used up a lot of her spells on the floating storm. She needed me.

She narrowed her eyes at me. As it turned out, I didn’t have to ask that delicate question. She understood exactly what I was going to say. “Yeah, he’s dangerous, Ray, but you know what? If he can be killed, I can kill him.”

“Okay, boss.”

Annalise turned to Catherine. “You follow his lead in this. You’re good at what you do, but he knows this.”

Catherine nodded and looked at her shoes. Annalise turned to me. “You just worry about taking care of that predator.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t have much choice. Annalise rushed out of the booth and slipped into the tree line.

“What’s the plan?” Catherine gave me a steady look.

I pulled the ghost knife from my pocket, then stuffed it down the front of my pants. I had an absurd moment when I worried it might slice off something I wanted to keep, but of course it didn’t. It didn’t cut through the bottom of my pocket, after all. “I’m going to get myself captured. I’ll make a big enough distraction that you should be able to get to the parking lot and steal a car. Can you steal a car?”

“Yes, but Annalise—”

“Annalise told you to do what I say. The best way to get through all these people is to let them bring me to the sapphire dog. If I can kill it without hurting them, maybe they’ll get better.” I tried to say it with conviction, but I didn’t have any. I’d never had much luck curing the victims of a predator. I didn’t expect it to work, and I didn’t expect to get out of there alive. But there was no need to say that aloud. “But you’re an investigator. You got us where we need to be.” I was tempted to say You don’t have to die, too. “You have kids.”

“A lot of these people here have kids. Somebody needs to stand up for them. Somebody has to be ready to pay the price, Ray, and I’d rather be good than safe.”

It seemed the definition of good was more fluid than I thought. “I’m not doing this to save your life,” I said. “Well, not only to save your life. Washaway is full of these bastards. Someone ought to report this—” I stopped talking for a moment as a sudden migraine overtook me. Catherine winced, too. Don’t think that thought. Instead, I said: “I might be the one who makes it, not you.”

Catherine sighed. “If we both survive, I’ll buy you a beer. If you survive and I …” She took a deep breath. “I have two daughters, Ray. If something happens to me, I want you to stay away from them. You and the whole society. There’s nothing you can tell them about me that they don’t already know. Okay?”

“Absolutely. Here.” I offered her Ursula’s gun. “They’d take this off me anyway.”

She took it. “Ray, I’m going to say this quickly and get out of here. You’re a decent guy, but you’d better do what you have to do. You’re sending me away, so I’m relying on you. Whatever it takes. Okay?” I wasn’t sure if she was telling me to kill or be killed, and I don’t think she knew, either. She turned and scrambled into the woods.

I took a candy out of the crate beside me. It was delicious. Then I stepped out from under the table and vaulted into the open.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I sprinted through the stalls, dodging between the tents and hopping over cables. Someone shouted, “Hey!” and I turned at a right angle and ducked under a sign that said SNOWMAN CONTEST HERE!, then ran around a tarp covered with melting, machine-made snow into the open field. I heard shouts behind me and, because I wasn’t really trying to get away, glanced back.

Men, women, and children raced across the field after me. They were slow, even the teenagers, and for a few moments I worried that they wouldn’t be able to catch me. Then I saw a pickup bounce across the field in my direction. It was the guards who had replaced Waterproof.

I ran faster, knowing I would only reach the safety of the trees if the truck bottomed out or wrecked.

For a moment I thought they might try to run me down. I prepared to veer off to the side, but the driver slammed on the brakes a dozen yards away and the men in the back aimed their weapons at me. I stopped and raised my hands. “Don’t move!” one of them shouted.

“What are you guys doing?” I shouted back, letting my voice crack with fear. Staring down the barrels of their guns, I didn’t have to put much effort into acting. “I just want to leave!” I hate to be afraid, but they’d be suspicious if I didn’t show some fear, and I hated them for it.

The driver climbed from the truck. Three dozen people were running toward me.

As I expected, they were complete amateurs—they stepped into the gunmen’s line of fire and generally milled around me. When they patted me down, they missed the ghost knife.

One boy of about fourteen, sweat running from under his knit cap, took up a position behind me, knife in hand. I told them I would go peacefully, but they didn’t care. They made me walk with them toward the field house and continued milling as we trudged through the mud. The smallest of them, a handful of kids that barely came up to my armpits, had enough energy to run wide, looping circles around me. A couple of them had guns, but most had knives, hammers, shovels, and other household tools.

I wanted to look over at the pastor’s house, but I didn’t. If Zahn was watching, and I suspected he was, I didn’t want to give anything away.

Hondo was right beside me, a smear of auto grease on his forehead, and once I’d seen one familiar face, I saw more: one of the stilt walkers, Sue the paramedic, Justy Pivens. None had a white mark that I could see, but they all had the single-minded glare of the sapphire dog’s pets.

One of the men walking beside me was a tall guy with a jaw like a train cowcatcher and sullen eyes. He stumbled slightly, then turned toward me, his left eye closing in a slow-motion wink. He said: “Buh buh guh glerr,”