The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

BACK TO A LONG TIME AGO . . .

Nine Iron wasn’t sure just what he was expecting the Pale Queen to be like. Probably a queen. Like Queen Victoria, who had died and was widely admired by the English for having never had any fun, ever.

“So, tell me,” Nine Iron said to Risky’s back as they walked down yet another tunnel. “What’s she like, your mother?” He was already thinking the Pale Queen might someday be his mother-in-law.

Poor fool.

“Well, she’s very friendly; she likes to crochet and arrange flowers, and loves long walks on the beach.”

“Really?”

“No, you idiot. She’s the Mother of All Monsters. And you’re supposed to be an assassin? It’s a good thing you’re not interviewing for the mastermind position. Do you even realize that we’re inside the Pale Queen?”

“Inside?”

“These tubes, they’re all part of her. Through this series of tubes—what we call the intraweb—she gives birth to and then dispatches her minions. The tubes are connected to the world above and all through the World Beneath. Although the three-thousand-year curse has closed off just about all the world-above connections. Nowadays mostly she has to reach outside the frame.”

Just to make conversation and to ward off his own nervousness, Nine Iron said, “What’s that mean, outside the frame?”

Risky stopped. She turned back to him. They both stood still. “Maybe you’re smarter than you look after all. But you’d pretty much have to be, wouldn’t you?”

Nine Iron said, “Yes?”

“Say you have a picture, right? A photograph? A painting? You put it in a frame. You stare at that picture long enough, it’s almost like you fall into that painting. That becomes the world you know: whatever is inside the frame. Stare long enough, and you can’t even see what’s outside the frame. But you know what, Paddy ‘Nine Iron’ Trout of County Grind?” She plucked at his collar and gave him a little slap.

Anyone else who ever did that to Nine Iron would have lived (briefly) to regret it. He wouldn’t have let the biggest, scariest, most scarred-up, glowering, evil, squinting thug pluck his collar and slap his cheek. Because Nine Iron didn’t fear guys like that.

But there was something about this redheaded young woman that told him he’d best just stand there and take whatever she dished out.

Paddy had never had anyone stand up to him the way Risky did. She wasn’t afraid of him at all. He might as well have been a fly rather than a feared member of the Nafia.

He kind of liked the way she had slapped him.

At that moment her beauty, her fearlessness, and of course the sheer mind-boggling evil that seemed to emanate from her like some intoxicating perfume made him fall just a little in love with her.

Paddy knew at that moment that he would never marry any other woman. Where would he ever find a woman as completely pitiless, cold, and just plain rotten as Risky?

He knew as well that he could never tell her of his love. Because she would totally kill him.

Oh, absolutely.

In a heartbeat.

So he would have to bury his infatuation deep down inside.

Risky leaned close. “I’ll tell you, Paddy: there’s a great deal that exists outside of that frame. Come. I’ll show you something.”

He followed her. He would have followed her anywhere.

She moved faster now, as though she was moving with new purpose, excited, anticipating.

“Oh, I’ll definitely show you something,” she said, and laughed in her delightfully demonic-psychopathic-creepy way.

Suddenly the tunnel came to an end.

They stepped out onto a plateau, a sort of mesa, or maybe just a broad, wide platform. Beyond the plateau the ground fell away out of view. But it glowed down there; it glowed with a rainbow of colors that sent wild shadows up to the vaulted stone roof far, far overhead.

Nine Iron had a sense of a space so vast you could have put all of County Grind there and had space left over for all of New York.