7
ELLEN
THE BRIGHT LIGHT WAS the only light—the shining glow of the recessed track lighting in the bedroom of Patrick Dawes’s hotel suite (the hotel suite that would be his for just a few more hours, until Saturday’s checkout time), where Mary Shayne—Real Mary—was approaching the bed with the wooden box that held the gun.
Mary was standing in the middle of the room, amid the piles of party trash, below the white haze of smoke that still hung in the air. She was Ellen. She knew she was Ellen because she recognized her own scent; she knew it because she could feel Ellen’s clothes on her and the cool wind on the back of her neck, exposed by Ellen’s practical, shapeless bob. And she knew, because Ellen was the seventh soul.
They were all around her, standing in the shadows: Amy and Joon and Scott and Patrick, flanking her like sentinels. Patrick had just activated the stereo system and Nickelback was blasting; Real Mary, twenty feet ahead of her, in the suite’s bedroom, couldn’t hear anything from this room.
Mary remembered that distinctly.
This is it, she thought. This is the end of the line.
I made it.
Without doing anything to alert the others around her in the darkness, Mary began flexing her feet, getting ready to sprint. When the moment came—and it wasn’t far off now, a matter of seconds—she’d have to move very fast.
Staring through the doorway at Real Mary, at her own back, she remembered something. It wasn’t her own memory—it was Ellen’s—but it came into her head unprompted as she stared through the doorway at herself, clenching and unclenching the muscles in her—in Ellen’s—legs.
IN HER MEMORY, ELLEN was in nearly the same position as right now, looking at Mary’s back—but Mary’s back was nude.
They were alone, the two of them, on the second floor of the SoHo Crate and Barrel. In her pocket, Ellen had the keys to the store, which she’d gotten from Scott Sanders, whose father’s company owned the building. When she was finished here, she would head to Scott’s apartment to give him his note and his special instructions.
The only light came from outside. Mary was completely unconscious. The Nembutal Ellen had injected into the wine bottle they had brought for Mary’s birthday dinner at Eduardo’s had done the trick. She’d known that Mom wouldn’t touch the stuff, just as she’d known that Mary would have three glasses, no more, no less.
By the time Mom had left, Mary had begun to faint; her head was lolling on her neck and several of the restaurant’s patrons had turned to watch. But it was no problem. Ellen assured the maître d’ that she’d take care of Mary, and then she’d gotten her outside and into the taxicab she’d had waiting and had brought her sleeping sister down to SoHo, to Crate and Barrel.
A few minutes later, as she pulled Mary’s clothes off (accidentally leaving deep scratches in her back that started bleeding almost immediately), Ellen realized she was crying—but she was able to stop herself as she gently lowered Mary’s naked, unconscious form onto the bed by the window, glancing though the glass at the wide black sky above Houston Street.
(The Sorcerer utters the Incantation before an Unclothed Victim, Slumbering beneath an Open Southern sky)
“Here goes,” Ellen said, her hands trembling as she pulled out Horus’s book—the one her father had pored over endlessly, leaving reams of notes that she’d studied over the years—and opened it to the marked page.
The wide, dark showroom floor was deserted and quiet as Ellen read the incantation, spreading her arms wide, as the sorcerers did when addressing the pharaohs.
This is for you, Mom, Ellen thought, beginning to cry again. And for you, Dad—I miss you so much.
“I Stand in the Center of the Infinite Circle,” Ellen recited. She realized she didn’t need the book; she had the incantation memorized. “I Stand in the Sign of Blood and Flame. Around Me Billow the Forces of the Air. Around Me Flow the Forces of Water. Around Me Flare the Forces of Fire. Around Me Rage the Forces of the Earth.”
Beneath the comforter, Mary was silent and motionless on the wide bed. There was no sign of anything having happened. Outside, a car horn honked; inside, a distant series of clicks and hums indicated that the air circulation system was working.
Are you sure you want to do this?
Yes, Ellen thought. After ten years, she’d never been so sure.
“I Cast Wide My Arms,” Ellen said firmly, tears running down her face. “The Powers of Death, the Powers of Life, Are Mine.”
IN FRONT OF HER, REAL Mary knelt by the side of Patrick’s bed and opened the polished wooden box. She hadn’t taken the gun out yet, but she was about to.
Now, Mary thought.
With as little windup as possible, she started running toward herself. She figured it would take something like five seconds to tackle herself and get the gun away—the gun that only she knew was loaded.
She ran two or three paces, the paper plates and plastic cups underneath her trampling feet slowing her down.
Patrick caught her. He wrapped his powerful arms around her, holding her in place. She bucked and twisted, but it was no use.
“Nobody chickens out,” Patrick snapped, directly in her ear. “Nobody turns back.”
No, Mary yelled—or, she realized, tried to yell. With the deafening music pounding, it took her a moment to realize that she hadn’t made any sound.
“We’re all in this all the way,” Patrick said fiercely. “That was the deal.”
The gun’s loaded, Mary screamed. Don’t you understand? She’s actually going to die—
No sound. There was nothing coming out of her mouth.
In the bedroom, visible through the doorway, Real Mary was pulling the gleaming handgun out of the wooden box. It shone in the overhead lights, a gleaming talisman of death. Real Mary couldn’t hear anything—Nickelback was playing too loud.
Mary began bucking in Patrick’s grip, trying to catch her breath. She couldn’t. She couldn’t seem to fill her lungs with air.
Can’t breathe, she thought desperately. I can’t breathe—
Somehow, Patrick sensed that something was wrong; he let go of her, holding her shoulders and staring at her face. “Ellen?” Trick asked, peering at her in concern. “Are you all right?”
I can’t breathe! she tried to shout back. But nothing came. Her vision was changing, turning red, getting dimmer. Her ears were singing. She was losing her balance, stumbling backward against Trick’s wide shoulders, clawing at the air.
The hotel suite’s front door had banged open, and Joon had been looking right at it.
Dylan Summer had arrived.
His shirt was crimson with blood; the entire top half of his jeans, down to the knees, was stained dark purple, as if someone had dumped a case of wine on him. He was deathly pale; his face was covered in sweat and his scruffy hair corkscrewed in soaked strands around his skull like seaweed. He was staggering, grimacing with unbelievable pain.
Mary couldn’t see behind her, so she didn’t know how Patrick reacted to the latest arrival to his suite, but suddenly his hands were gone and nothing was holding her up, and as her ears sang louder and began to sting and pop, and a crimson fog overtook her vision, she weaved and dropped to the floor.
“Ellen?” Dylan shouted, stumbling forward. She could barely hear him—she could barely hear anything. Dylan dropped to the floor and crawled toward her, elbows leaving bloody imprints in the Peninsula’s expensive carpeting. “Ellen? What’s wrong? What happened?”
Mary had tunnel vision; her brain was losing oxygen. She heaved for breath and failed again—she realized she was about to pass out.
It’s me, she mouthed. It’s Mary.
He understood. Somehow, he understood as he stared down at her. She reached up and pulled the torn page of Horus’s book from Dylan’s breast pocket. She waved the page in his face, and he took it, confused—obviously, he had no idea how it got there.
Wrong, Mary mouthed. You said it was wrong. Dylan was staring at the gray image of hieroglyphics on the page she’d handed him. His eyes widened as he scanned the page.
“The translation’s wrong!” Dylan yelled over the music. “The last line of the spell—he got it wrong!”
I can’t breathe, Mary tried to say. She was beginning to faint. Help—I can’t breathe—
(breathe)
“He says if the victim lives, the spell ‘expires.’” Dylan held up the page and pointed at the picture of Horus’s original scroll. “But it’s a different glyph. It’s not the spell that expires—it’s the Spell-Caster. If the victim lives, the Spell-Caster expires!”
What—? What does that mean?
But she knew. She knew because Ellen knew—Ellen remembered.
(breathe)
RUN TO AN OPEN window and breathe.
That was what Mommy had told Ellen to do when there was smoke and there was fire and she couldn’t find a door. Run to an open window and get your breath and then scream for help. Ellen hadn’t actually seen the fire, but she had heard the giant explosion at the door, like God had punched a crack in the world, and she had heard Mommy screaming for her to run, so she was running as hard as she could. If she could find an open window, then she could scream for help, and Mommy and Mary would come back for her.
She hated the old wooden house. The little rooms were dark, because Mommy hadn’t turned the lights on and so Ellen couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t see where she was going, but she couldn’t stop running, because there were still explosions coming from behind her and the horrible sounds of angry men yelling at each other. She was trying to find her way, but even the walls were a dark black musty wood. In her apartment, there was light everywhere—the duck lamp in her room, and the pretty lamps all over the house that Daddy collected, and the streetlamps on the sidewalk—but she didn’t know this place. She didn’t even know why she was here.
She finally saw it out of the corner of her eye. A silvery circle of moonlight reflecting off a dusty mirror by the small kitchen.
The sliver of light was coming from a room up the rickety wooden stairs. Ellen didn’t want to go upstairs.
But there was another ear-splitting boom, and then another. Ellen cupped her hands over her ears and screamed a high-pitched squeal, the kind she hadn’t made since she was a baby. She knew she would die if she stayed down here. She knew she would burn up.
There was no other choice. If she could get to a window upstairs, then she would be saved. She followed the tiny shaft of moonlight and climbed the tall, narrow stairs with her hands and feet, like she was climbing a ladder on the jungle gym. She scraped her index finger on the scuffed wooden stairs and ripped off a splinter that stung like a shot at the doctor’s office, but that didn’t matter.
Once she was at the top of the stairs, she realized that the light was coming from a small, cluttered room. The window there was a circle instead of a square.
She walked to the room’s warped door, which opened out into the hallway, and grabbed the brass doorknob with both hands—tugging on it with all her strength until the door finally clicked shut. She flipped the lock and then hurried to the circle window. It was too high for her to see out of. She almost started to cry, but she knew there wasn’t time. Mommy and Mary would be gone, and then she would be left alone.
I could make stacks from the books.
The window wasn’t that far up—just a little too far over her head. If she could stack the books that were on a shelf in the room, then she could climb to it.
Heaving for breath, she pushed the dusty books together and made a stack shaped just like her Paddington Bear stepladder at home, even though her finger with the splinter hurt so bad. She climbed gingerly, step by careful step by careful step … and then she could see them! Through the bottom left portion of the window, with her fingers clinging tightly to the frame and her neck stretched high, she could see Mommy and Mary running through the trees, leaving deep tracks in the white snow as they ran.
“Mommy!” Ellen screamed. “Mary!” She rapped her fist against the window as hard as she could, but they were too far away to hear her. She checked the window for a handle, but there was nothing to pull on. There was nowhere to open it.
“Mary!” she squealed again, pounding both her hands on the window again and again. But she could only watch helplessly as Mommy took Mary’s hand and pulled her through the snow, farther into the trees—farther away from Ellen and the old wooden house.
And then Mommy stumbled. Ellen’s eyes widened with terror as she watched Mommy tumble forward into the snow.
Ellen was right about those horrible explosions. God really was punching cracks in the world, and Mommy had fallen into one. She was flailing her hands at the edges of the crack, trying to claw her way back out. But Mary hadn’t fallen in: she was standing right at the edge, near Mommy. She could help pull her out….
Only Mary wasn’t moving. She was just standing there, stock-still, like a frozen little doll in the snow. Ellen tried to pull herself higher to see better—to understand what was wrong with Mary. She smacked her palm against the window till the skin was pink and burning.
Pull her out, Mary! Give her your hand! You can pull Mommy out of the crack!
Mommy was reaching up for Mary’s hand—reaching and reaching—and Ellen kept slapping her raw palm on the window because it was all she could do. But Mary didn’t reach down for Mommy. She took a step back. She stepped back from the edge, and she watched Mommy struggle and scream. She watched for a few more seconds and then she turned around and began to walk away.
“Mary, what are you doing?” Ellen howled. “Where are you going?”
“Ellen?” A man’s shaky voice came from the hall just outside the door. “Ellen, is that you?” The brass knob on the warped door rattled violently. He was trying to come in. “Ellen, it’s Uncle Larry—you’ve got to come with me now. Right now, okay? Unlock the door.”
“Mommy’s dying!” Ellen cried out, looking back through the window. “She’s dying in the snow and Mary’s going away. Why is she going away?”
“Ellen, please, sweetheart, just open the door. We don’t have any time.”
Ellen heard a pair of heavy footsteps bound up the rickety stairs, and then there was another man’s voice in the hall. A very angry man.
“Don’t talk to my daughter,” the deep, angry voice said. Even though it sounded so horribly mean, Ellen thought she recognized it.
Daddy?
“Mort, something’s wrong with you, okay?” Larry said, breathing heavily. “Something’s wrong. I know you, all right? We made a mistake, but … you’re not a violent man. This isn’t you. Just put down the gun, all right? Let me get your daughter out of here, and then we can talk. We’ll talk—just you and me.” The doorknob rattled again—so loud and so hard that it looked like it would burst off. “Ellen, sweetheart, open the door now. Open it.”
“She’s not your sweetheart!” Daddy growled. “Don’t talk to my family!”
“Daddy?” Ellen called out. “Daddy, Mommy’s dying in the snow and you need to save her.”
“Mort,” Larry pleaded. “Please don’t. Please. Just let me get Ellen out.”
On that last word, Larry broke the knob clean off the door. He pulled the door open partway, when Ellen heard two more deafening cracks. She covered her ears and backed up against the window.
Larry was standing strangely still in the partially open doorway. There were two little, smoking black spots on his chest, and red blood trickling down his arm. Something was wrong with his eyes. They looked dazed and his arms and his legs went limp. He lurched forward, collapsing at the door.
Suddenly, there was the oddest silence. Ellen was so scared that she couldn’t get her body to stop shivering. She felt like she was going to pee.
Larry’s body was lying in a heap, in front of the partially open door. Ellen could see only a sliver of the dark hall outside, and she couldn’t see her daddy at all.
“Daddy …? Daddy, are you out there …?”
There was no answer, and she began to shiver worse than before.
“Daddy …?”
She craned her neck to try and see around the door, but loud sounds scared her back against the wall. First the sound of metal clattering to the floor, and then something much heavier. Something big. It hit the ground so hard that she felt the vibration in the wood under her feet.
“Ellen …” She heard her name in a choked whisper. “El,” the voice said again. “Come to the door.”
It sounded like her daddy. Stepping off the stack of books, Ellen crept to the door and peered through the crack, over Larry’s motionless body.
She saw her daddy sitting on his knees. His square, stubbly face was drenched with sweat and as white as the sky. His jet-black hair was stuck to his forehead like a wet mop. He was still wearing his suit from the party, but it was rumpled and dirty, and he was tugging desperately at his shirt collar with both hands.
“El,” he croaked. “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong with me….”
He was making horrible hiccuping noises in his throat like he was choking—like something wouldn’t let him breathe. A flush of blue and purple was showing under his pale white skin, as his eyes grew wider.
“Daddy, what’s happening? I don’t understand what’s happening.” Ellen was so scared she couldn’t move.
“El, don’t hate me,” he said. “Don’t hate …”
And then he stopped. Everything in Daddy just stopped. His head fell to his chest, and then the rest of him fell forward. The side of his face slammed flat against the floor. His bulging eyes were wide open, but he wasn’t moving.
“Daddy?”
He wouldn’t answer her.
“Daddy, what’s wrong? Daddy?”
She darted back to the window and climbed her stack of books, peering out into the distant trees, where her mother was still trying to dig her way out.
All Ellen could do was stand there and watch Mommy suffer. She could only watch and slap at the window with her numb, burning hands.
Where are you, Mary? Where are you? Why did you walk away into the snow? You can still come back and save Mommy. You can save all of us.
* * *
IF THE SPELL FAILS, the Spell-Caster expires.
It’s me or Ellen, Mary thought. So what do I do?
But she knew. She’d known for a while; she’d observed over and over that she couldn’t change what had happened—thinking about it had been too confusing, and her faith that she could save herself was too strong to let her face it. But she’d always known.
With her final, desperately weak store of willpower, fighting the agony of not being able to breathe, she began crawling toward the suite’s bedroom, mustering a hidden reserve of adrenaline that got her to her feet and let her stagger forward through her darkening tunnel vision. She was barely staying upright as she stumbled toward Mary Shayne. Mary had dropped the gun, and in her final moment of consciousness before Ellen’s body collapsed from suffocation, Mary swung her arm down and swept the gun from the carpet, pulling the slide back as she collapsed forward onto her own back, pushed her own body down onto the bed, pressed the gun to the back of her skull and pulled the trigger.