THIRTY-THREE

Logically, I knew the sheriff had to be dead, but I tried hauling him toward safety anyway. Without much success. As anyone who has ever taken a pottery class can attest, there is nothing heavier than wet clay, and that was what the good sheriff looked like: a statue made of wet clay. But the minute I’d seen him, I’d touched the moonstone locked around my neck and known I had to try to rescue him. Even if he did look like he belonged in the Pottery Barn.

“Emmet!” Nothing. I tried slapping his face, yelling in his ear. Okay, so he couldn’t be roused. I called the dogs, and pulled at the sleeves of Emmet’s jacket to see if they would get the hint.

After a moment, Shep grabbed the corner of the sheriff’s sleeve and started tugging at it. Working together, we dragged him about a foot before collapsing.

This wasn’t going to work. I estimated we had about two minutes before the storm reached us. Pulling his hat back from his forehead, I saw that the last letter of his tattoo had been smudged. Or maybe it was the first letter; I’d read that Hebrew ran right to left. Since the rain couldn’t have reached the tattoo under Emmet’s hat, it seemed logical that the smudging had come at some earlier time—maybe even before the good sheriff had turned into a big heap of dirt.

I needed something sharp—the hypodermic needle. Using the largest size I had, I carved out the letter as best I could, following the faint lines and trying to remember how it had looked the last time I’d seen it.

“If that doesn’t work, I’m going to have to leave you,” I said, squinting up at the sky. The rain was falling so hard that I could barely see the shape of Moondoggie’s twenty feet in front of me.

“It worked,” said Emmet. He dragged a hand over his face, and loose clay came off, but what was underneath sure looked like human skin. “I owe you one.”

“Hey, I owed you. Now we’re even.” I helped the sheriff to his feet, and then we took off in a lumbering, staggering jog, the dogs racing at our heels, giving agitated yips and casting nervous glances behind them as the storm drew closer.

I was heading for the front of the restaurant, but Emmet tugged me toward the side of the building.

“Not the front door,” he yelled, “we need the storm cellar.”

I’d never really paid attention to the sloping white cellar doors before, and if it hadn’t been for Emmet, I never would have gotten them open. Even for him, it was a bit of a struggle.

“Go on,” he said, and the wind half blew me inside, the dogs’ claws scrabbling on the cement stairs as we went down into the dark. Emmet was in a moment later, his massive arms trembling as he pulled the doors closed behind him.

“Jesus Christ, that was close,” I said, pulling the slicker’s hood off my head. I just sat there for a moment with my back to the door as I drew in air with great, gasping pants. The floor underneath was dirt, and I could smell cool, moist stone. I didn’t know how big the room was, but I could feel a draft against my cheek. Heaven.

“You can’t stay here,” said an unfriendly voice, and then my eyes adjusted enough to the gloom for me to make out faces instead of just rough shapes.

Now that I could see, the cellar had roughly the same dimensions as the dining room upstairs. There was an old couch down there, and a few wooden chairs from upstairs, along with a broken table, some ashtrays, and a fair number of empty wine bottles.

I recognized a few of the waitstaff seated around the cellar, including Kayla, who had a cut on the side of her face and dirt stains on her white shirt. A few of the other waiters looked equally rough, and I figured that, like me, they’d had one hell of a long day.

“I said you can’t stay,” repeated the owner of the unfriendly voice, whom I now recognized as Marlene Krauss. “And neither can the dogs.” Baby, Hudson, Bon Bon, and Shep had arranged themselves around me in a black, white, and brindle pattern of panting dogs. The rest of the cellar’s inhabitants were regarding the wolfish canids with varying degrees of alarm.

“Marlene,” I said, “you’re talking about Baby there.” I pointed to the smaller of the black dogs. “Don’t you recognize her?”

Marlene narrowed her eyes, as if trying to see the outline of her little Peke in Baby’s large adolescent form. “That’s not my Baby, not anymore. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a dangerous and diseased animal. And you’re a werewolf—maybe you’ve got it, too.”

There were excited murmurs and whispers as the others took this in. In Northside, nobody ever mentioned people’s supernatural status—it was as gauche as walking up to a movie star and announcing that you knew they were famous. You pretended they were normal, and they pretended they were normal. The unwritten rule of Northside.

“Please,” I said, “it’s not even a full moon.”

“That didn’t stop you from nearly biting my head off a few weeks ago!”

“Marlene,” said Emmet in his steady, John Wayne drawl, “I think you’re letting your emotions get the better of you.”

Marlene’s leathery face creased with displeasure. “Sheriff, you’re okay, of course. But there isn’t enough food and air down here for everybody.”

It was hard to tell, but I thought Emmet might be amused. “How about I only breathe once every other minute,” he said, “just to make up for Abra.”

“Very funny, but who knows how long this storm is going to last? And look at the town. By the time we get out of here, it’s probably going to be a jungle.” Marlene shook her shopping network turquoise bracelet watch farther down on her wrist and assumed the manner of a bank officer refusing a loan. “I’m afraid we need to husband our resources.”

“She’s right,” said one of the waitstaff.

“No, she’s not,” said Kayla, as the wind rattled the cellar doors. “She can’t go out in that.”

The doors rattled again, this time harder.

“She has to go now,” shrieked Marlene, pointing her dragon lady nail in my direction. “Before she turns on us!”

With a whimper, Baby scurried over to my side and cowered between my legs.

There were murmurs of agreement and others of dissent, and I instinctively stepped a little closer to the sheriff.

The doors banged this time, and someone gave a startled shriek. “Oh, my God, we’re all going to die!” It was one of the waiters: Kayla slapped him.

“Get a hold of yourself,” she said, and then put an arm around his shoulders as he started to cry.

“Wait a minute,” I said, “that’s not the storm—that’s somebody trying to get inside.” I could hear it now, the sound of someone’s fist pounding against the door.

“Don’t let them in,” bellowed Marlene, and Kayla told her to shut up and sit down. I was liking the waitress better all the time.

“All right, listen up, everyone,” I said. “I’m going to open these doors, because we are not just going to let someone die out there.”

“Don’t listen to her!” Marlene, of course.

“This isn’t just about survival,” I said. “This is about surviving with our humanity intact.” Granted, I was probably not the best person to lecture anybody about intact humanity, since mine had been showing some definite wear and tear of late. But for some reason, nobody called me on it. “Okay,” I said, trying to make eye contact with as many people as possible, “everybody grab hold of something and brace yourselves.” I turned to Emmet. “Sheriff, can you help me with the door?”

Emmet gave me a little tip of his hat, which I thought might have been ironic. Then he grabbed the door handles, and I grabbed on to him, and we pulled hard.

Just like in the cartoons, the door opened with no resistance whatsoever, sending us both flying backward.

And as I looked up into the clear, warm summer night outside, Magda stepped out of the shadows. She was dressed in black commando gear, with a knife strapped to her thigh, a gun at her waist, and a rifle slung over her shoulder.

“The storm is over,” she said in a low, authoritative voice. “But that was just a burst of fireworks intended to shock and awe us. Now the enemy is going to send in the ground troops.” She surveyed us, as if sizing up our willingness to fight. “Some of you may have heard about bear attacks. Some of you may have heard about a new kind of rabies. The truth is that our town is being invaded by creatures that don’t belong in this dimension.” Magda’s Romanian accent made this speech sound uncannily like one of my mother’s less successful movies. In the dramatic pause following this last remark, Marlene and Kayla began to chatter until Magda silenced them with one upraised hand. “There is no time for debate. The threat is real. And you may think you’re safe down here, but once you step out of this cellar, you’re just collateral damage.”

Of course, once Magda had said it, it seemed perfectly clear to me. The Manitou were trying to take over our reality, and the storm had just been their first salvo. I stood up. “Magda’s right,” I said, about to launch into a little spiel about banding together against a common enemy. Unfortunately, no one paid the least attention to me: instead, they all streamed up the ladder, peppering Magda with questions and suggestions. The sheriff tried to wait for me, but Magda beckoned him over and told him she needed his advice about the layout of the town.

I should have been glad that we were all teaming up. But as I climbed up out of the cellar, I couldn’t help thinking that my delusion that I was going to be a kick-ass heroine had just been cured. I was being relegated to bit player, and once again, Magda was taking the lead.