CHAPTER 23
Jennifer
They were in the
parking lot—everyone from the hospital Jennifer realized, except
for a skeleton crew that was taking evacuated patients back
inside—when Evangelina and Dianna returned.
They approached
Elizabeth first. Dianna shimmered until she was in the form of a
woman nearly as tall as the doctor, with jet-black hair that framed
a pale, freckled face and spilled down freckled shoulders. Her
simple jade gown wrinkled as she bowed to the other
woman.
“Dr. Georges-Scales.
I’ve waited a long time to meet you.”
Jennifer watched her
mother almost faint. “Dianna. I’m afraid I don’t know what to
say.”
“Neither do I, for
sure. But I will try by saying, I’m sorry for your loss. Jonathan
was an extraordinary man.”
“Thank you. I’m
sorry, too.”
Feeling like she had
not so much to do here, Jennifer looked at Evangelina, who had
changed into human form at the same time as Dianna. Evangelina was
a dark mirror of her half-sister—they shared many of the same
facial features as their father, but the older sibling’s hair and
freckles were distinctly from her mother’s side.
“I—I don’t know how
much time we have,” Elizabeth suddenly said. “Thank you for what
you’ve done here. I don’t know how you stopped his sorcery, but it
probably saved lives. My worry is that Skip may try
again.”
“Evangelina can
consume anything my son produces.”
“Are you sure? The
last couple have come in rapid succession.”
“I am sure, for at
least a while.” Dianna’s eyes were a reassuring cerulean—but
Jennifer knew they would change color before long. “Skip has
learned how to create servants who in turn can create more
servants. A troubling development, to be sure; but we have at least
some time to discuss how to stop him permanently.”
A murmur went through
the crowd, and Jennifer felt a weight lift from her heart that she
hadn’t realized she had been feeling. It’s
over. Dianna can make it all right. She can turn things back to
normal, like she did before.
Elizabeth nodded
again, less formally this time. “Thank you again. It’s been a long
time since we’ve had a reason to hope for anything in this
town.”
Dianna looked up at
the shimmering shell above. “Yes. I can imagine. Edmund Slider has
left quite a legacy.”
“I hope it’s not
presumptuous to ask: is there anything you can do about
it?”
The downcast eyes of
the sorceress shifted to olive. “Ah, you get right to it. And
there, I have less comforting news. I alone cannot reverse what
Edmund Slider has done.”
The crowd murmured
again, less encouragingly now. “But you’re Quadrivium,” Jennifer
pointed out in exasperation. “Like Slider was. In fact, you’re more
powerful, aren’t you? You travel through dimensions. You can’t help
a single town?”
“Jennifer. They
have helped this town.”
“Jennifer Scales.”
Dianna’s smile returned under indigo eyes, and the warmth in her
voice appeared genuine. “I am sorry for your father, but I am so
pleased to see you still well.”
“I’m not well. Not at
all. Let’s get to it, please—or did you come
empty-handed?”
Evangelina frowned
with distaste. Even in human form, she did not use her
voice.
Time has passed, Mother—but she’s still a bitch. I don’t
know why you like her.
Jennifer jumped.
She’d never get used to telepathy. It was so sudden and
intrusive.
“Oh, Evangelina. I
don’t know why I like her, really. Maybe it’s the parts of Jonathan
I see in her. Maybe it’s her ability to bite off more than she can
chew, and swallow it anyway. And maybe it’s the fact you
don’t like her that makes her so
appealing to me.”
“Hello? Standing
right here. So you were saying how despite your amazing
multidimensional powers, you have no antidote to the sorcery of a
dead arachnid.”
“Jennifer,
please.”
“Let them answer,
Mom.”
“The answer does not
lie with us,” Dianna said mysteriously. “I can only presume that it
lies with you.”
“Could you be more
precise? We’ve tried a lot of shit on that wall.”
“I have nothing else
for you—just my own knowledge of Edmund Slider. He was not the type
to leave a town to die, with no way out. He wants something from
you. You must give it to him.”
“He’s
dead.”
“That’s not the
point.”
“It seems
relevant.”
“Come, Dr.
Georges-Scales. Surely you’ve seen one or two things that manage to
last beyond death.”
“The seraph,”
Elizabeth whispered.
“The
what?”
“A protective spirit
left by my friend. It sacrificed itself at Jonathan’s funeral so
that he could move on.”
Dianna thought about
that. “Edmund enjoyed the idea of self-sacrifice. Has anyone tried
to leave the dome since that day?”
“We have scouts
attempt every day. They test with their hands, shoot weapons, we’ve
even rolled cars into the thing. The day of Jonathan’s funeral,
after everyone left that field, I tried to leave
myself.”
Jennifer scrunched
her face. “Mom?”
Elizabeth sighed.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sky. I
wanted to go with him, more than almost anything.” She turned back
to Dianna. “No matter how hard I tried, or how little, it didn’t
work.”
“Sacrifice could be
necessary, but not sufficient.”
The doctor’s features
hardened. “The sacrifices we’ve made, I would deem more than sufficient.”
“I don’t mean to
sound insensitive.” Dianna tossed the remark out casually. “I mean
that Edmund put up this wall for logical reasons. Everything he did
was based in logic.”
Jennifer recalled
Edmund Slider’s geometry classes, and his relentless focus on
logic. “Where’s the logic in all the suffering?” She surprised
herself by asking the question out loud.
“Don’t look for the
logic in the results. Things happened that he clearly didn’t
expect. Instead, look for the logic in his goal. What drove Edmund
Slider?”
“We don’t know,
exactly.”
“You will have to
find out.”
Elizabeth rubbed her
chin as the crowd absorbed this information. “Okay. The dome has
been up for months; it can stay up a bit longer while we figure
this out. Meanwhile, we’re left with the matter of Skip and the
attacks. You imply that your defenses can’t hold
forever.”
“Correct. The
sorceries are getting stronger by the day.”
“So we need to stop
them, the sooner the better.”
“Agreed. It is a
difficult decision for me, but I am ready to carry out what must be
done.”
Elizabeth paused.
“What did you have in mind?”
Dianna tilted her
freckled face. “Why, the only certain solution at our disposal.
Death. As Evangelina and I are the only two inside or outside this
dome powerful enough to stop a werachnid like this—all due respect
to your dragon friends, Jennifer—the task falls to us. We will
implement immediately.”
“Hold on!” Elizabeth
almost grabbed the other woman before thinking better of it.
“You’re going to resort to murder?”
With black irises,
Dianna licked her lips. “I’m not looking forward to this, Dr.
Georges-Scales. The responsibility is mine. I don’t see another
choice.”
“I do. We should
attempt a diplomatic solution.”
“Diplomacy?” Dianna’s lips actually curled upward,
and a less-than-friendly sparkle shone in her vermilion eyes. “Why,
that’s absolutely adorable.”
Oh, here we go.
“My daughter and I
will go out there, then; and instead of stopping the problem, we’ll
begin a fireside chat; you can ask them nicely to stop sending
lethal missiles through this prison wall of yours. Since you have
absolutely no way to stop them and no leverage of any kind, I’m
sure they will unilaterally decide to take up a different hobby,
like quilting.”
“Anything sounds
impossible when you use that tone,”
Jennifer snapped, freshly annoyed because Dianna was right. “So,
new plan, okay? Eddie could help. In fact, we were talking about
that when—”
“Your bow-toting
boyfriend will be the next target,” Dianna
interrupted.
“He’s not—well, maybe
in a different set of circumstances, we could—there’s really not a
lot of dating going on since—”
“It only makes
sense,” Dianna continued, and Jennifer decided not to notice the
older woman’s eye-roll. “The first murder was your father, to hurt
you. The next will be your boyfriend,
while you watch helplessly. Whether they tear apart your mother
immediately afterward or leave her for later is really a matter of
personal style—”
“Never mind Eddie or
me,” Elizabeth interjected quickly. “We have you to stop this. You’re our
leverage.”
So why not stop him now, without the talking part?
Evangelina kicked the
dirt and bit her pretty lip.
I told you, Mother. We should not have come here first. They have no power, no place in determining our actions.
“Bye, then!” Jennifer
said with faux brightness.
“We came here to pay
respect to your father,” the sorceress tersely reminded her
daughter. “Part of that respect is discussing our next move with
his wife and child. The last time you blundered into this dimension
and decided to play judge and jury, you caused needless suffering.
Let’s do better.”
Jennifer stirred at
being called a child, but did not need the stern look from her own
mother to stay quiet.
“Dianna. If you’re
truly interested in what Jennifer and I think, then I’m asking you
and Evangelina to help us do this right. For heaven’s sake, Skip is
your son. I can’t imagine how I would—surely you want to consider
alternatives to killing him.”
“I’m hoping we don’t
need to kill him.” Dianna was almost
smiling again. “This sorcery requires two people—one to give the
creature life, and another to give them power. Remove his new
girlfriend, and all Skip can do is send scribbles your way. For a
while, anyhow.”
We kill Andeana, then. It will show my half-brother that we are serious.
Evangelina’s thought
was briskly cheerful: they’d thought up a chore that wouldn’t be
very hard, and would be helpful to all. Like raking leaves when it
was nice out, and you wanted a little exercise anyway.
“We don’t need to
kill her, do we?” Jennifer turned to Elizabeth. “We could talk to
her. That’s our leverage. We find a way to talk to her, pull her
away from Skip. Andi can’t be going along with this willingly. It
makes no sense. She’s not violent.”
“She killed Mayor
Seabright.” It was hard not to see the anger in the doctor’s eyes.
“Matricide is violent.”
“Yeah, but . . . she
was under a sorcery. She had no willpower.”
“She has little to
begin with,” Dianna explained. “That is not how her father created
her. She has always been a vessel—first for me to pour knowledge
into, and now for Skip to pour his own purpose out of. She’s
nothing more than a tool. Break the tool, save the
town.”
“What is she, a
faulty screwdriver?” Jennifer hissed. “You don’t need to break her.
And she’s not a tool; she’s a human being who can make her own
choices.”
Choices like, “Don’t kill your own mother”?
“Stop pretending to
give a shit about anything.”
“Jennifer.”
“Mom, you can’t be
seriously considering this! Why is it okay to kill Andi for what
she did to Dad but not Skip?
We’re agreed, then. We kill them both.
“Why are you here?
Why are we pretending to have a conversation like normal people
when at least one of us is a proven murderous
sociopath?”
“Honestly, pet. You
could do more to help.” Dianna shook her head and thought a moment.
“What if we found Andi and brought her here, alone? You could try
to convince her to do . . . whatever it is you think she will do
for you.”
This is useless.
“That might work,”
Elizabeth agreed. “We’ve never considered pulling her away from
Skip before, because it seemed impossible. She’s devoted to him,
and Eddie reports they rotate through lairs unpredictably. Do you
think you can find her?”
The answering smile
nearly split the sorceress’s face open. “My dear Dr.
Georges-Scales. I already have. We’ll be back
momentarily.”