“Abracadabra,” he said as the holding-cell door yawned open.
I am sorry, Riley , thought Chevie. You told me the truth, and I left you there to die. Forgive me.
Garrick doffed his hat, as though entering a church, then ducked inside the cell.
Chevie closed her eye. She did not want to see what happened next.
Albert Garrick had literally become a new man when he emerged from the sac and stepped into the future. Everything was different: his DNA, his vocabulary, his range of expertise, his stance, muscle development, comprehension. He had even studied Shakespeare, or at least Felix Smart had.
To be or not to be, my little Riley. In your case, I am undecided. It occurred to Garrick that there might be some danger lurking in this facility in which he had materialized, though Smart’s memories assured him that the sole sentry was a young girl, a slip of a thing who one would imagine to be relatively harmless. And yet Smart’s memories told him that she was an accomplished combatant who had performed most admirably in the City of Angels.
And she wears the last Timekey, he remembered. Even though Smart’s memories had emerged from the wormhole intact, his Timekey lay like a cinder on his chest.
Do not underestimate the girl, Garrick told himself, or unto dust will be your own destination.
Garrick planted himself firmly in the real world and cast his eyes around. This was a strange place; windowless walls were lined with colored ropes and wall-mounted machinery.
Cables and servers, the electricity flowing between his new nerve endings informed him.
The gory evidence of Garrick’s passage from the past was evident: blood striped the walls and lay in congealing splashes on tabletop machinery.
“Riley,” he said, testing his voice. “Riley, my son. I have come for you. I know where you are incarcerated. The futurist Smart showed me.”
Garrick headed toward the machinery. This is a laptop, he thought, tip-tapping the keyboard. How charming.
There would be time for such fancies later, but for now he must release Riley, retire to a safe crib, then let the boy bask in his master’s new glory.
There was no obvious sign of Miss Savano. Perhaps the violence of his arrival had done her in?
Or perhaps she lies in wait?
Garrick forced himself to concentrate. He moved to the wall, squinting through the smoke and flashing lights down the red-bricked hallway to the jumble of containers.
There. Look!
An arm was sticking out from the crawl space below the boxes. The fingers twitched spasmodically and the head resting on that arm wasn’t moving. One eye was fully closed, the other glazed and swollen.
That little periwinkle is a shade from death. I will nab my boy, then extinguish her final spark on the way out.
Garrick moved quickly down the corridor, feeling better than he had in decades. The trip through the wormhole had purged his system. He felt like a giddy whelp about to shinny his first drainpipe.
Another challenge lay before him, a challenge for the old Albert Garrick that was. Not the new model.
Version 2.0, he thought, then pinched the skin on his own forearm to force concentration.
The challenge was a keypad for the electronic lock.
This machine can be fed with numbers or cards. I don’t have the card, but the codes to everything in this house are in my head somewhere.
Garrick cocked his head while his brain supplied the numbers. He cracked his knuckles, then tapped the code into the pad. The light winked green and the door popped open.
“Abracadabra,” he said with satisfaction.
Garrick doffed his hat and ducked inside, smiling at the thought of Riley’s amazement.
Oh, my son. We have much to share. So much.
The cell was spartan, with only a narrow cot, a single chair and, of course, a camera crouched like a spider on the ceiling. But that was all.
No boy.
Riley had gone. His son.
Garrick would not allow himself to roar the boy’s name. He had once been a celebrated illusionist, after all, not a simple player of dreadful melodrama. Instead he contented himself with a resounding slam of the door on his way to interview Miss Savano.
How fortunate that I did not kill her before, he mused. Now she may help me find Riley before she dies.
Chevie’s world was spinning in a kaleidoscope of dull colors. Concrete gray and streaked brown. She had been thinking, The boy is dead, over and over, but now she couldn’t remember if that was a snatch of a song lyric or an actual thought she should be concerned about.
Something was happening outside her head to one of her body parts. A shoulder, maybe? Yes, her shoulder. Why was someone shaking her shoulder when all she wanted to do was sleep?
“Miss, wake up,” said a voice urgently. “He’s coming.” Wake up? No, thanks. This was her day off. Maybe a little surfing later on down at Malibu.
“Miss, on your feet now, or Garrick will kill both of us.”
Garrick.
An image flashed through Chevie’s mind of a bloody body emerging from some kind of cocoon.
One of her eyes fluttered open; the other was still swollen like a pink beetle in her eye socket. The boy leaned over her, hoisting her by the lapels.
“Riley?”
“The one and only, Miss Savano. We have to quit this place right now.”
Leaving? But I thought you were dead. I’m just going to close my eyes for a second.
Riley grabbed the agent under her armpits, and hauled her upright.
“Come along now,” he grunted. “Upsy-daisy.”
Chevie’s good eye flicked open. “I am not a child.”
At this moment Garrick appeared in the corridor, his face set like alabaster and streaked with blood.
He is angry, Riley realized, and the sight of his master’s cold expression nearly paralyzed him with fear.
His survival instincts took over. He grabbed Chevie’s pistol, placed it in her fingers, and, clasping her hand in both of his, he aimed the gun at Garrick’s chest.
“Shoot, miss,” he said. “Now!”
With Riley’s help, Chevie managed to squeeze off not one but two shots, both pulling high, but the second slug struck close enough to give Garrick pause. The m
agician snarled like a cornered street mutt and changed his pattern of movement entirely, becoming fluid, but also erratic, never arriving where his body language forecast he would be. When it seemed as though he was committed to a sidestep, his body would make an impossible diagonal lunge forward.
The gunshots jarred Chevie back to reality, and she noted that this Garrick person moved in a way she had never seen. She blinked her good eye.
“What? This guy is like a cat.”
“Misdirection, a magician’s ploy,” said Riley, grunting as he hauled Chevie backward up the stairs. He could explain more about Garrick’s unique style later, when they had escaped this death house, if escape were possible.
Chevie backed up the stairs, keeping her gun trained as much as possible on Garrick. The magician hissed now, like a vampire, and jammed his bowler hat down to his brows so he would not lose it.
He’s getting ready to spring, thought Chevie.
“Yeah, that’s right, fella,” she called down to the magician. “You come a little closer. Let’s see how well your disco moves work in a narrow stairwell. I will drill you right through your eyeball.”
The warning seemed to work, possibly because there was a lot of truth in it. If Garrick set foot on the stairs, he would be boxed in by the wall and bannister. But if Chevie thought the nineteenth-century man would be cowed by her futuristic weapon, she was wrong.
“You cannot escape me, Chevron Savano,” he said, head cocked to one side. “I will have my boy back and the secrets of the Timekey.”
Chevie’s blood ran cold. This guy knew an awful lot for a Victorian.
“Take one more step,” she said, keeping her weapon as steady as possible, “and we’ll see who escapes.”
All this time Riley muttered into Chevie’s ear and dragged her backward toward street level.
“Step and retreat,” he said, trying not to catch Garrick’s eye, for that glacial gaze would freeze and shatter his resolve. “Step and retreat.”
They were near the top step now, while Garrick lurked at the bottom, flexing his fingers in frustration, wishing for a throwing knife. Chevie had an idea.