The Collected Christopher Connery (12 page)

When Gail stopped suddenly Nia’s eyes instinctively
fluttered open and she had to clench them closed again when all she could see
around her were hallways and staircases climbing and diving at impossible
angles.

Arthur moaned softly and she knew he was having the same
problem.

“What is it?” said Gail.

“Why did we stop?” Nia took a deep breath to calm the
lurching in her stomach.

“It’s dark here. I want to make sure we don’t break our
necks going down the stairs.”

“Which
stairs?” said Arthur. There was a soft thud
which Nia took to be him bracing himself against the wall. That was a good
idea, the reality of the wall would ground him in space despite the mad views
presented by the illusion, but Nia couldn’t make herself do the same. She was
too certain that she would reach out and find just empty air.

“The
only
stairs, doc,” Gail replied. “They’re
steep and I don’t like going down them without light.”

“Wait a moment, and I can draw you a –” But when Nia
opened her eyes to pull the notebook from her pocket, her gaze landed on the
floor beneath her – what little of it there was. To her perception, she was
balancing on a tiny inch of floor, hardly wider than her feet, and below her
was a bottomless pit. Furniture, windows, and lamps all fell with unnatural slowness
into an endless abyss.

She froze, hardly daring to breathe in case the tiny
movement threw her off balance and sent her plummeting into the pit.

And faintly through the silk wrapped over her ears, she
could hear –

A warm arm slid over her shoulders.

Gail was looking at her with concern. “Are you okay,
princess?”

For a moment, Nia was comforted by the lack of fear in
Gail’s face, but then she saw that Gail was perched on the back of a chair that
was balanced precariously on the corner of a dresser, which in turn was just
moments away from sliding down an incline and falling –

She closed her eyes again, but it was too late. She felt
herself sway and was sure she would fall and fall and never hit bottom, all the
while hearing –

Instead she bumped into Gail’s side, head knocking
against her jaw hard enough to make the detective say, “Ow. Sheesh, I don’t
know why I worried about that bump you took. Your head’s hard as a rock.”

In her surprise, Nia almost opened her eyes again – some
instincts were very hard to override – but before she could, a hand covered
them.

“I’m guessing that whatever you two are seeing right now
is bad news.” Gail’s voice was muffled by the cloth shielding Nia’s ears, but
her breath was warm against her face.

“If by ‘bad news’ you mean it’s going to make me sick
then yes,” said Arthur.

“I was just going to make some light for you.” Without
wanting to, Nia remembered the towers of furniture seconds from falling into
the abyss and clutched instinctively at Gail.

“You’re all right – oof! Easy, doc. You’re
both
all
right. You don’t have to be scared.”

“I am not scared. The illusion is simply – unsettling.”

“I’m scared,” Arthur put in helpfully.

“Shouldn’t your spells have stopped you from being
affected by this?”

“I had believed so, but the illusion is stronger than I
thought. It’s shifting, which makes it hard to pin down with a protection
spell. Connery must have specifically designed it this way to make it hard to
fight.” Nia couldn’t help thinking about what would have happened if she had
been here alone. None of the projected outcomes were good.

“Is this another one of those things where if we find
Connery, it’ll stop?”

“Yes. Whatever piece of Mister Connery is here will be
the center of the illusion and once we take possession of it, the illusion will
have no further reason to exist.”

“I guess we better get down these stairs then. I don’t
need the light. You two just be careful. I’ll tell you when to step, so don’t
–” Gail’s voice cut off suddenly and Nia felt her chin brush over the top of
her head as she looked behind them. For several seconds, all was tense,
listening silence.

Through her earmuffs, Nia could only hear the muffled
roar of her own blood. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Gail gave Nia’s shoulder a quick squeeze then
slipped out of her grip to take her hand again. “Let’s just get this over with
before anything else goes wrong. Remember, don’t step until I say so.”

They made slow progress down the stairs. Sometimes Arthur
and Nia had to wait, huddled together, for several seconds while Gail scouted
out the next few steps to make sure that they “hadn’t disappeared or caught
fire or turned into worms or something.”

Once, while they waited for Gail to return from one such
reconnaissance
mission, Arthur leaned in and whispered, “What’s
going on with her?”

Not willing to admit that she had absolutely no idea, Nia
said, “She seems to have a knack for seeing through the magic. Perhaps her
down-to-earth nature keeps her grounded in reality. Or perhaps her mind has
held the clarity spell better than ours. It’s impossible to say for sure, some
people are just… Well, everyone has talents, don’t they?”

The answering silence suggested that Arthur found her
theory less than satisfactory.

“I will have to do more research,” she added quickly. “But
our first order of business is finding Connery and getting away from here.”

“Well, I hope we manage that soon. I don’t know if she’s
got special talents or not, but this can’t be good for her. She’s a layman,
Nia. They’re not supposed to be around this much magic. Even I know that.”

“Who’s not supposed to what?” asked Gail, but before Nia
could come up with a clumsy lie, she took their hands again. “Two steps down
this time, okay? One and two. Good. Now, hold on one more sec, I think we’re
almost there.”

When Gail had moved away again, Arthur said, “Is there
any way you could get just her out? She’s already been exposed to a lot of
magic in the last twenty-four hours. I’m not looking forward to explaining to
the Directors why their favorite PI is magic-addled.”

You
wouldn’t have to explain anything,
Nia
thought, but she managed to hold on to her temper. “She seems to be dealing
with the effects just fine, and even if there was a way to individually remove
her from the illusion, how would we find our way without her? You said yourself
even opening your eyes was making you sick.”

Arthur didn’t say anything right away. Then he sighed and
said, “I suppose you’re right.”

Of course, I’m right.
But for once that didn’t
make her feel any better.

“I found the door!” Gail declared triumphantly when she
returned. “It’s locked, though. And possibly covered in spiders, but I only saw
them for a second, so I’m not sure how real they were.”

“Saw?” This time Nia managed to hold her eyes closed
despite her curiosity. “Is there light down there?”

“Yep! Well, just two lamps by the door.” She took their
hands again. “There’s about ten more steps. We should be able to do them in one
go.”

They were indeed and Nia only stumbled once near the end.
When she caught herself against the door with her free hand, something hairy
and many-legged scurried across her fingers. She drew her hand back with a
shriek of disgust. Then, done with being frightened by Connery’s tricks, she
opened her eyes.

They had left the stomach-turning abyss behind them, but
in the orange light cast by the two lamps on either side of the door, Nia could
see that Gail had not been mistaken. The door was a mass of spider web. Brown
and black spiders, some as big as Nia’s hand scuttled across it. A few were
clustered hungrily around something that looked like it had once been a small
cat.

“Can we open our eyes yet?” asked Arthur.

“You probably don’t want to,” Nia answered, watching as a
particularly large spider killed another in a squabble over the mummified cat
and immediately began devouring the loser.

“Why not –” Arthur jerked backwards with a hiss of
disgust.

“I warned you.”

“I take it you still see spiders then?” Gail squinted at
the door with her hands on her hips. “I thought I saw them at first, but it’s
just a door now.” She glanced at Nia curiously. “Could they hurt me?”

“No, not if you don’t see them. They’re outside of your
perception and you’re outside of theirs. You could open the door and they
wouldn’t react at all.”
Not even that particularly ugly bristly fellow
crouched on the doorknob.

“Hm,” said Gail. “Too bad it’s locked then.”

“Yes,” Nia agreed with a sigh. Gail’s ability to bypass
the spiders was useless if the door wouldn’t open and she had a feeling that if
either she or Arthur attempted to open the door they would be overwhelmed by
hungry arachnids.

“I know there’s a spell for unlocking doors. You used it
yesterday.” Gail tapped thoughtfully on the cobweb shrouded door and a spider
scuttled out from under her knuckle. Another crawled across her wrist before
she pulled back, but neither the detective nor the spider seemed aware of their
interaction.

“Yes, there is, but…” There was a solution, of course.
Perhaps it was the only solution, but it was risky, especially after yesterday.
Could she really ask –

“Let me guess, you need to put the spell on the door, but
you can’t because of the spiders.”

“Yes,” Nia was forced to admit. “You’re entirely right.”
It was possible, she knew, to draw a spell, power it, and then –

“Could I do it?”

Nia started. “Please, detective, I’m trying to think.”
And
it’s very distracting when you keep voicing my thoughts before I get a chance
to finish them.
It also made it that much harder to find a valid excuse not
to do what Gail suggested. Yes, once a spell was drawn and powered anyone, even
a layman, could trigger it. That was likely how Connery’s associates had hidden
him in the first place, but it wasn’t safe. The layman was exposed to a small
amount of magic for every spell they triggered. A small unlocking spell
wouldn’t release much, but Gail had already been exposed to a massive amounts
of magic in the past two days.

Too much,
a voice in her head reminded her and she
wasn’t sure if it was Arthur’s or her own. But she couldn’t think of any other
way. She glanced at Arthur, but his attention was focused on the spiders, one
of which seemed to have taken a dislike to him and was waving two barbed legs
threateningly in his direction.

You shouldn’t be looking to him for help anyway,
she
reminded herself.
You’re the magician in charge of this case. The decision
and the consequences are yours to bear.
“Excuse me, detective, I was
woolgathering, but yes. Yes, I think that would be best.” She took out the
notebook again and drew the unlocking spell. She deliberately kept the lines as
thick and dark as possible, hoping to stop as much magic as possible from
passing into Gail. It wouldn’t be perfect; it couldn’t be and still function,
but it would help. She hoped.

When she was done, she handed the spell to Gail, who
studied it for a moment. “What do I have to do?”

“Just hold it against the door. Once it’s making contact,
it should trigger automatically.”

Gail took a step toward the door then hesitated for a few
seconds, hand hovering above the knob.

Nia clasped her hands together tightly.
Please don’t
look too hard. If you start seeing the spiders, they will see you as well and
we’ll be right back where we started.

Then Gail shrugged and pressed her hand flat to the door.
One spider was hunched just beneath her hand, but it just continued winding web
around a captured fly. Nia felt the magic take effect and saw Gail jump as if
she had received a static shock.

There was a soft click.

Gail looked back at Nia as the spider crawled out from
beneath her fingers. “Is it open?”

“Yes.”

“Now please take your hand off of the door,” said Arthur,
“because –” He broke off when Nia shot him a look. The last thing they needed
was Gail picturing the spiders touching her.

Gail’s hand moved to the door handle, passing through
layers of spider web as if they were made of smoke. “Shall we get this over
with?”

Nia nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

“We could just live here instead,” said Arthur, but Gail
was already opening the door to the heart of Connery’s illusion.

Nia led the way into the basement, holding her dressing
gown tight against her body to prevent any of the spiders from catching hold of
it. She didn’t know if they could leave the door, but why take the risk?

Focused as she was on keeping spiders off of her pajamas,
she didn’t take her first look at the basement until she had taken several
steps inside. When she finally did look around, she cursed Connery with all the
hate in her heart.

They had found the basement at last. There were shelves
stacked high with cardboard boxes and old linen. She could see the boiler
burning brightly against the far wall.

And then there were the arms.

Dozens, no, hundreds of arms, piled on top of each other
in heaps.

Gail stepped up to Nia’s shoulder and described the
situation with admirable succinctness. “Well, we’re fucked now.”

Arthur stumbled into the room a moment later, kicking the
door closed with a disgusted grunt. “If I never see another spider again it
will be too – oh, what the hell?”

Another admirable summation.

Nia didn’t know where to start. There was magic that
could point them to the right set of arms, of course, but without the head… Nia
pressed her knuckles to her temples in frustration. Now she would have to wade
through a sea of disembodied arms, checking each individually, and she did not
have
time
for this…

“Nia!” Arthur’s voice was hushed but sharp as he stared
around the room. “Nia, what are we going to do now?”

“Oh, goodness, Arthur, it’s not as if you haven’t seen
this kind of thing before,” Nia replied in a whisper.

“He has?” said Gail. “And why are we whispering again?”

“I’m a surgeon, remember?” Arthur whispered back. Then he
rolled his eyes and repeated himself at normal volume. “I’m a surgeon, so yes,
I’ve seen amputated limbs, but not on the floor and not
piles
of them.”

Nia pursed her lips as she gazed out over the gory ocean.
“Only one pair is real, we just have to find them.” She looked over at Gail. “I
assume you’re seeing exactly what Arthur and I are?”

“You mean a whole bunch of arms? Yeah.” Putting her hands
on her hips, Gail squinted across the room. “But there aren’t really this many,
are there? There’s just the two and Connery’s messing with us. Unless… No, I
don’t think even Connery would have a severed arm collection. Hopefully.
Anyway, I guess I could try not to see what you two are seeing, just give me a
sec.” She breathed deeply and closed her eyes.

Nia watched her face closely, wondering if she could
actually do it. Illusions like this, illusions hardwired into the spell itself,
were always harder to see through, because they were designed to affect as wide
an audience as possible. Nia’s earlier spells had stopped – or mostly stopped –
the illusion from cherry-picking inside their memories for inspiration, but
that didn’t have any effect on the illusion’s constant set pieces. But the
spiders had been a set piece as well and Gail had seen through them, so
perhaps… The frayed ends of Nia’s earmuffs tickled the back of her neck and she
pulled it off irritably. She listened hard for a moment, but heard only the
crackling fire in the boiler. The tension in her chest eased a little. That
part of the illusion, at least, seemed to be finished.

Then Gail opened her eyes and said, “Huh.”

“Huh what?” said Arthur, following Nia’s example and
pulling off his earmuffs.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Connery did not have a severed
arm collection.” Gail was grinning.

Nia couldn’t resist grabbing Gail’s arm and half-bouncing
with excitement. “Can you see them? The real arms?”

Gail’s face fell. “No. To be honest, I don’t see any arms
anymore.”

“That’s a start!” Finally, things seemed to be looking
up. “They are definitely here somewhere. We just have to find them. Well, you
have to find them.” She smiled apologetically. “I could check all the arms I
see one at a time, but then I’m afraid we would be here for a very, very, very
–”

“Okay, okay, I get the idea.” Gail rubbed her hands
together and started across the room. Nia followed, trying to ignore the brush
of cold clammy skin against her legs and absolutely
not
imagining those
limp hands reaching up to grab her.

Walking fearlessly ahead of her, Gail murmured to
herself. “Now if I were going to hide some dismembered arms, where would I put
them…?”

“I really hope you can’t actually answer that question,”
Arthur called from his spot by the door, which he had pointedly not moved from
since they had entered the basement.

“I know they’re in here somewhere,” said Nia. She could
feel
them, tingling like eyes on her back, but she couldn’t pinpoint the source
among the rest of the magical noise.

Gail stopped suddenly, rubbing her forehead.

“Is your head hurting again?” Nia asked, stomach sinking.
Sudden intense pain was worrying; sudden, intense,
recurring
pain was
even more ominous.

“I’m fine.” Gail dropped her hands and blinked her eyes a
few times. “It was just a twinge, nothing to worry about.”

Nia put her hands on her hips. “Detective, I hope you’re
not one of those people who constantly maintains they are ‘fine’ when they are
in fact ‘not fine,’ because as admirable as it is to not wish to worry others,
in a situation like this, it is important to be frank. We are supposed to be a
team and – Are you laughing at me?”

Gail did a very poor job of twisting her grin down into a
scowl. “Of course not, princess. Trust me, if my head starts hurting like it
did back by the kitchen, you’ll be the first to know. Probably because I’ll
lying on the floor screaming.”

When Gail turned to squint into a dark corner, Nia asked,
“Why do you call me that?”

“Call you what?”

“Princess. ‘Doc,’ I understand given Arthur’s profession,
but princess?”

Gail chuckled. “Sorry, yeah, I probably should have
guessed. Anyway, I call you princess because you’re an Illuminator, which means
you’re smart and in charge of just about everyone – and you dress nice. Does it
bother you? I’ll stop if it does. I’m always making up dumb names for people.
Got the habit from my dad.”

Nia was still caught on the sudden rush of compliments.
Did she dress nice? She tried, of course, but at the moment she was standing in
a basement in only her nightgown and a one-sleeved dressing gown. She realized
she was tugging on a lock of hair and stopped herself with a low embarrassed
cough. “No, it doesn’t bother me. I was just curious about the choice of
epithet.”

“Well, now you know.” Gail smiled at her and Nia was
startled to find herself blushing. Then the detective turned away and went, “Oh
hey, what do we have here?”

As Nia watched, Gail strode across the room, bent down,
and picked up a single arm by the hand. It had been lying close to the wall,
obscured by many others, though Nia supposed that, for Gail, it had been hidden
by no more than a shadow.

Gail wrinkled her nose as she studied the arm. “I can’t
believe he actually agreed to be hacked up like this. You couldn’t get me to do
this even if you did convince me I could come back to life afterwards. Well,
here’s one anyway.” She moved to toss it behind her, but Nia rushed forward to
catch it.

“Careful, detective! We don’t want to lose it again.”

“Oh, right. I forgot.” Gail held awkwardly to the other
end of the arm. “You sure you don’t mind touching it? I can carry it if you
want.”

“Oh no, we all receive extensive biological education at
the Academy. I’m actually certified to perform autopsies!”

“Oh. Good.” Gail bent down and picked up with the second
arm. After handing that one to Nia as well, she rubbed her eyes. “Ow, damn, is
the air really dry in here or is it just me?”

Nia almost dropped the arms.

Gail’s eyes were bleeding.

She gave Nia a puzzled smile. “What is it?” She glanced
down at her hand, at the streaks of red across the knuckles. “Oh.” She wiped
her left eye and looked again. “Oh god… I’m guessing that’s bad.” She stared at
Nia as blood ran in narrow streams down her cheeks. Then her legs gave out and
she collapsed on a pile of severed limbs.

“What happened?” Arthur was running toward them. “Nia,
what –” He broke off with a strangled cry as he was suddenly grabbed by several
pairs of hands. He tried to tear free, but for every hand he managed to pry
off, another lurched across the floor to take its place.

Nia watched in mute horror as Arthur fell forward on his
hands and knees. The arms grabbed his hair and face, dragging him flat. She
heard him scream.

A hand closed on her arm. She whipped around, tearing at
the fingers until she realized they belonged to Gail. The detective stared at
her with bloody eyes. Her lips moved, but Nia didn’t understand her.

“What?” Another hand had fastened onto her leg and she
knew this one didn’t belong to Detective Lin.

Arthur screamed again, but it was weaker this time,
choked and wet.

Gail reached out and took Connery’s arms from Nia,
clutching them tight to her chest. Then she spoke again, a hoarse whisper that
barely reached Nia’s ears.

“Break it.”

Break the illusion? No, she couldn’t, not like this. Such
spells required calm and care, if she got it wrong then –

“Nia!” Arthur’s voice, broken with pain.

Gail, holding the arms tighter, nodded.

A hand gripped Nia’s shoulder, the fingers crawling like
spider legs toward her throat. Not wasting another moment, she ripped the
makeshift bandage off of her hand and sliced open the scab. Blood ran down her
wrist as cold fingers clamped down on her windpipe. She held on tight to her
last breath and smeared her blood across the only empty patch of floor she
could reach.

The spell was clumsy and crude, limited by her choice of
medium and the hand attempting to strangle her, but she all she had to do was
destabilize the illusion, just a little tear in the pocket reality, just a
tiny, tiny rip and…

Gail choked and blood splashed across her chin.

Nia’s eyesight was failing, but a soft shuffling sound
made her look up from her smeared circle. The arms on the other side of the
room had twisted together, rising up in a great mass, fingers flexing as it
heaved itself up from the floor. She could just barely make out Arthur’s broken
body twisted inside the hideous golem.

“No,” she whispered. She reached back and managed to tear
the hand from her throat long enough to squeeze more blood from her wounded
hand and finish her circle. She could do this, she could stop this, she could
save them.

Then she heard it. The song again. So soft, but coming
closer. She knew if she looked up she would see her mother standing over her,
watching her with sad but understanding eyes. She would stroke Nia’s hair like
she used to.

Then she would probably take Nia’s head between her hands
and snap her neck, because that was
not
her mother’s voice and that was
not
her mother.

Nia could feel Connery’s magic trying to hold itself
together, to dig fingers into her mind.

That won’t work this time.
Nia smashed her bloody
hand down on the circle.

The illusion shattered.