The Collected Christopher Connery (9 page)

For a few minutes she searched the room for a pen,
pencil, chalk, anything she could write with that didn’t involve using her own
bodily fluids, but found nothing except for the chalk that not-Arthur had
crushed to useless powder. Either the illusion was hiding them from her or
whatever impulse had motivated Arthur to walk off with Connery’s head had also
made him to steal all her writing implements.

Giving up, she tucked the razor and the dropped scalpel
carefully into the belt of her dressing gown. After rubbing her tired eyes with
her uninjured hand, she looked up and noticed her reflection in the mirror in
the corner. It was staring back at her with a dark accusatory expression,
staring at her dead-on, in fact, though she was standing at an angle to the
glass.

Nia went to the mirror and turned it around, ignoring the
steady distortion of her reflected features. It wasn’t real, but it was still
unpleasant to look at.

Using the scalpel, she scraped a circle into the top of
the desk – she would need to remember to repair the damage before they checked
out – and placed her hand inside it. Instantly, the darkness drew back further.
She could feel the protective magic gathering around her like a shield,
repelling Connery’s influence.

Beyond the protective barrier, the room seemed to grow a
fraction unfriendlier.

Nia concentrated hard on where she knew the sun should be
shining through the window, and a small golden square appeared on the floor.
She smiled with satisfaction. She might not be able to break the illusion
completely, but she could certainly poke holes in it.  

Giving the square of light one last look, she went to the
door. She felt her protective spell tremble a little as she stepped into the
dark hallway, but it didn’t break. In the distance, something growled, rough
and deep.

“Very well, Mister Connery.” Nia touched a finger to the
handle of Arthur’s razor as she set off toward the sound. “If you wish to play
games, let’s play games.”

After the incident with the phone, everything had gone
fucking bananas. All the phones had started screaming at her and she’d had to
run to the kitchen with her hands over her ears just to keep from going deaf.
She had slammed into several tables on the way and by the time she had stumbled
through the swinging kitchen door, she had a maplike bruise blossoming on her
side and a painful scrape on one elbow. She could still hear shrieking coming
from the lobby, but it was distant enough that she didn’t fear for her
eardrums.

Slumping back against a counter, she tried to work out
what the hell was going on. Everything had been fine at breakfast, she was sure
of that. So what had happened between half-past-ten and a little past eleven
that had made everyone disappear and turned the phones evil? She could only
think of one answer: magic.

She wasn’t a stranger to magic that messed with her head.
Connery had often used it to confuse the cops and PIs trying to raid his
various strongholds around the city. The trouble with it was that even if you
knew it was happening, you couldn’t tell what was real and what was just in
your head. That confusion had led to more than one PI mistaking a very real
lackey of Connery’s for a hallucination and getting shot for their trouble and
cops blowing away their buddies because, in their eyes, said buddy had just
sprouted tentacles and lots of teeth.

Maybe it was lucky she didn’t have her gun on her.
Anyway, the only thing she could do was find the magicians. Nia probably had
some spell that could snap everything back to normal. She glanced around to
make sure nothing was sneaking up on her then –

“Gail-baby?”

No. Damn it, not one of these. She’d seen it happen to
other people before. Sensible men and women who’d gone screaming off bridges
after dead loved ones or broke into sobbing wrecks when they heard the whispers
of magical phantoms. Gail had never been confronted with one herself, but it
looked like it was finally her turn, because she knew that voice.

Dad.

Don’t look at it. Just run through the door and get
back upstairs. Whatever you do, just don’t fucking look at it.

“Gail.”

She looked.

Her father gazed at her sadly. He looked almost exactly
like he had in the days before his death, his skin gray and his eyes and cheeks
so sunken that his skull seemed to be poking through. His ribs were clearly
visible under his thin shirt. After the bad water poisoning had caused his body
to purge for a week straight, there just hadn’t been enough left of him to go
on living.

“Hi, Gail,” he said, his voice little more than a hoarse
whisper. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad, Dad,” Gail found herself answering. “How’s it
going with you?”

“Not so good these days.” It was then that Gail noticed
that there was water running from her father’s mouth, eyes, ears, anywhere
water could run from. It soaked his clothes and pooled in a puddle around his
feet.

“Why’d you drink the water, Dad?” Gail hadn’t asked back
when it happened. She’d been just barely nine and had lost her mother a year
before to the fever that had devastated the wet underbelly of Gracetown. It had
seemed impossible that Dad would leave her too, but then he’d broken his leg in
an accident at work and their little stash of money had disappeared almost
overnight. Gail had done her best, begging for food and hauling what water she
could from the pumps, but then the rainy season had hit and hit hard. “I
brought you as much good water as I could. Why’d you have to go and drink the
bad shit?”

Dad shrugged and a wave of water rolled off of his
shoulders to splash on to the floor. “I was thirsty.”

So was I.
But Gail knew further conversation with
this thing shaped like her dad was a waste of time. “Sorry to run out on the
family reunion, Dad, but I’m on the clock.”

Keeping her eyes on the door, Gail walked past the magic
pretending to be her father. Her hand was on the door when Dad said, “Leaving
again, kiddo?”

“I didn’t leave the first time, Dad. That was you,
remember?” She pushed the door open and stepped into the empty dining room.

“Gail, honey.” The whisper was oddly distorted now, like
her father was speaking through a mouth full of water, which Gail supposed he
was.

“Bye, Dad.” She walked forward, making her way to the
stairs.

Behind her she heard a loud splash, then several plates
and glasses falling off of tables with strangely muffled crashes.

What – ? She turned just in time to be engulfed by a
roaring wave, a wave that twisted itself into a horrific parody of her father’s
smile before it crashed down on her.

The water burned like acid where it touched her skin. It
forced its way into her mouth and down her throat like million squirming worms.
Twisting over on to her belly, she spat out a mouthful, clawing at it with her
fingers when it tried to crawl back past her teeth. Closing her eyes tight
against the torrent, she dragged herself across the floor, grabbing on to table
legs and shoving past chairs. Despite her effort, the water leaked past her
eyelids, first stinging then burning. Blinded, she could only hope that she was
moving in the right direction.

“Where are you going, Gail-baby,” the water burbled as it
smashed over her head.

Gail’s lungs were screaming for air and every inch of her
skin felt like it had been flayed by a hot knife. Soon she would have no choice
but to breathe and the water would shove inside, choking the life out of her
even as it poison filled her blood. So she did the only thing she could under
such circumstances.

She crawled faster.

Just as she was sure she was going to have to breathe
even if it meant drowning, her hands found the first step. She dragged herself
up hand over hand, her knees slipping on the wet wood.
Up,
she thought
through the stabbing in her chest,
up, up, up.

Then, as if she had crossed some invisible threshold, the
water slid away, rolling back down the stairs like a retreating tide. Unable to
hold her breath for another second, Gail collapsed on the steps, gasping. Her
skin burned where the water had touched her, but the sheer relief of having air
in her lungs overrode the pain.

As her heart slowly stopped slamming against her ribs,
she heard a voice whispering, “Gail, Gail, Gail,” from the bottom of the
stairs.

Growling under her breath, she forced herself up onto her
knees and then her feet, all without looking behind her. “Shut the fuck up,”
she spat. “You are not my dad and you don’t scare me, Connery.”

The voice kept whispering, but Gail wasn’t listening. She
stomped up the stairs, counting each step to distract herself from any other
magical bullshit.

She stopped counting when she reached forty-five. That
was way too many steps. There wasn’t enough space for that many steps between
the lobby and the second floor. But all she could do was keep climbing.

So up she went. Up and up and up until her knees ached
and she was almost as winded as when the water had tried to drown her. Finally,
she stopped, her hand braced against the wall. Clearly this wasn’t working.
Maybe she had to go through the lobby. She wasn’t sure how she would get past
the evil water, but maybe if she grabbed a table cloth, she could absorb it to
death.

But that was probably just what Connery wanted her to do.
She wouldn’t fall into another trap. Annoyed at herself for even considering
it, she continued upwards –

And walked directly into a wall.

For a second, she could only stagger as painful bursts of
white exploded behind her eyes. After making sure her nose wasn’t broken, she
set her hand against the new wall and ran it slowly from top to bottom, left to
right. As far as she could tell, it was completely solid, made of the same wood
paneling as the other walls in the hotel. All in all, a perfectly ordinary wall
– except for the fact that it hadn’t been there a second ago.

But that didn’t make any goddamn sense. Walls didn’t move
and stairs didn’t go on indefinitely.

Well, maybe in evil enchanted hotels they do. What
would you know about it, Lin? It’s not like you’re an Illuminator. Why did you
take this case in the first place, you idiot?

Somehow, in that complete darkness, every hateful thought
in Gail’s head was magnified. Each doubt became a screaming voice and she was
tempted to sink to her knees and slam her head against the floor until it
stopped.

“Goddamn this place,” she said in a whisper, then,
“Goddamn this place!” when her voice seemed to make the darkness retreat a
little.
I’m not going to let you scare me, Connery.
Then she repeated
the words out loud, making sure the hotel heard them. This place might kill
her, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to bully her. First plan of action: find
Nia Graves. The Illuminator had to have some magic to combat this spell.

And since it looked like the only way she could go was
down, down she would go.

The trouble with illusion-veiled buildings was that even
after they had ceased to be frightening, they were still incredibly difficult
to navigate. It had taken Nia more than seven attempts to reach the lobby and
when she finally arrived, she found it distressingly empty.

“Arthur? Detective Lin? Is anyone here? Please answer if
you can hear me!”

No one answered, but if she strained her ears, she
thought she could hear… footsteps? Yes, footsteps descending the stairs, but
they sounded so distant, much more distant than the stairs should have
permitted.

“Aha!” Hurrying over to the stairs, Nia pulled the razor
from her belt and gently reopened the wound on her hand. She dabbed blood in a
circle on the bannister, ignoring whatever was making that hideous choking
noise behind her. Spells for creating labyrinths were complex, but thankfully
the spells for breaking them were much simpler. A circle, a few lines, and the
world changed just slightly, like the wind switching directions.

Nia had no time to step back before Gail barreled over
the last stair. The detective crashed into her, knocking her to the floor,
while Gail caught herself on the edge of the reception desk.

Gail stared at her silently for a long time.

Nia waited patiently for her reaction. It was probably
best to let the detective express her fear and confusion before Nia attempted
to explain what was going on. It would be healthier.

After another moment, Gail pushed herself away from the
reception desk and sat down in front of Nia. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What the hell?”

Nia giggled and Gail looked at her warily.

“I have another question.”

“Yes?”

Gail studied her through narrowed eyes. “Your head’s not
going to fly off and start screaming rude things about my mother, is it?”

“No, of course not,” Nia answered seriously. She held on
to the seriousness for another second or so, then her lips twitched upward.
“I’ve never met your mother.”

A tight smile. “Not funny.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why don’t I believe that?” Gail rubbed her hands down her
face. “But you are you, right? You’re Illuminator Nia Graves, magician assigned
to find Christopher Connery and crazy warrior princess?”

Nia laughed again. “I am Nia Graves, anyway. And you’re
Detective Gail Lin, private investigator.”

“That’s me.” Gail returned her smile then turned to look
around. “This place has really been messing with my head. I’ve been trying to
get down the stairs for hours. I thought maybe running would help, but –” Her
mouth snapped closed and the color drained from her face.

“What is it?” Nia asked, leaning forward.

Gail’s eyes closed tightly and she swallowed hard before
answering. When she finally spoke, her voice was carefully steady. “It’s not
actually raining, right?”

Nia blinked. “Raining? No, of course it’s not.”

“Good to know.” But Gail’s eyes were still closed and her
hands were clenched into tight fists.

Rain? Why is she so frightened of rain?
Then Nia
chastised herself for wondering. Not only was it not her business, but she
should be helping Gail, not analyzing her. “Hold on just a moment. I can help.”

“I would appreciate it,” Gail said in that deliberately
calm voice. “I’ve seen this sort of thing before, but never anything so…” She
laughed, a small choked sound unlike anything Nia had yet heard from her.

Nia bit her lip. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to dispel
the illusion completely until we find whatever Connery has hidden here.”

“Oh. Great.”

“But I can clear your head a little.”

“I’d be much obliged.”

“Just give me a moment.” After squeezing a little more
blood into her palm, Nia reached for Gail’s hand. She drew another protection
spell onto Gail’s palm, then just for safety’s sake, added a layered clarity
spell that should make any personalized illusions seem fake and foolish to
Gail’s eyes.

She was nearly finished when Gail opened her eyes and
said, “Holy hell, is that blood?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Nia, putting the final touches on
the clarity spell. “It’s only mine.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“I’m sorry, but this is currently the only medium
available to me.” When the spell complete, she closed her fingers around
Gail’s, shocked at how cold the other woman’s hands were. When she triggered
the spell, she felt a flare of warmth against her palm and heard the illusions
leave Gail’s mind with a small silvery sound.

“There,” she said, smiling. “That should help.”

Warily, Gail looked around then managed a wry smile.
“That’s better.” She squeezed Nia’s hand once in gratitude before climbing to
her feet. She reached down to help Nia up, making a face when she saw the state
of Nia’s injured hand. “Did you cut yourself open on purpose?”

“I cut my
hand
open and even that’s an
exaggeration. All of my writing implements were stolen. How else was I supposed
to do any magic? I can’t carve every single spell into the floor with the
scalpel. We’ll be here for years!”

“So you chose –?” With a disbelieving huff, Gail reached
into her pocket and pulled out a notebook and pen. “Use this next time, huh? I
guess the evil hotel didn’t think steal this from me.”

Nia took the pen and paper with a smile, ignoring the
twinge of pain in her abused hand. “Technically Arthur stole them, but the
crime was doubtlessly committed while he was under the influence of the ‘evil
hotel,’ as you put it.” She tucked the pen and notebook into her dressing gown
pocket.

“You’re in your pajamas,” Gail informed her. Then she
took hold of Nia’s arm and turned it toward her. “Did you do this too?”

“No, that was – that was the illusion’s doing.”

Gail’s eyes flicked back up to hers. “The
hotel
cut
you?”

“Yes, but I dealt with the threat. Don’t worry!!” Nia
fought to keep her voice bright and cheerful to reassure the detective.

It didn’t work. Gail just raised her eyebrows a bit and
said, “At least let me wrap it up for you.”

“Well, I – all right, if you insist.” Thanks to the pen
and paper Gail had given her, she was no longer in dire need of fresh blood and
the scratch
was
beginning to sting. She stood still as Gail tore another
strip from her dressing gown and wound it carefully around her wounded upper
arm.

Nia looked sadly at her ragged sleeve. It couldn’t even
properly be called a sleeve anymore; really, just a collection of rags. Oh
well, it couldn’t be helped. She thanked Gail graciously for her help then told
her that their next move had to be finding Arthur.

“I fear he will be having a terrible time.” Nia
remembered how horribly real her own visions had appeared and knew it would be
even worse for Arthur.

“I haven’t seen him,” said Gail, “but then I’ve spent
most of my time walking down the stairs.” She scanned the dark room slowly then
paused. “But if we’re going to start anywhere, over there might be a good
place.”

When Nia came to her shoulder, she saw what Gail meant.
The once straight path to the dining room and kitchen had become a twisting
labyrinth of tunnels and rickety staircases.

Nia folded her arms over her chest. “Only one of those
ways can be correct.”

“Yeah, but which one?”

Nia narrowed her eyes, trying to see past the illusion.
She could feel reality hovering just out of her perception, but Connery’s magic
was powerful and though she listened with all of her might, the ring of truth
kept slipping away before she could pinpoint it.

Fear closed on Nia’s heart like a fist. “I need to find
Arthur,” she said again as though saying it would make it possible. “He’s not
equipped to deal with such hostile magic.” She thought of the false Arthur with
his empty eyes. How long would it take for the real Arthur to become like that,
all sense stripped away?          

Gail nodded seriously. “I follow you, but we need to get
through there first.”

Nia shook her head slightly as she wracked her mind for a
solution. Forcing the false paths to condense into one would require too much
time and energy, but if she could map a way to Arthur, search for him specifically,
then maybe…

As she pulled out Arthur’s bloodstained razor, Gail said,
“Oh, not that again,” but Nia ignored her and placed the razor on the floor.
Thankfully, since the razor belonged to Arthur and was already covered in Nia’s
blood, she wouldn’t have to do any more damage to her hand. Sketching a spell
on a page from Gail’s notebook and sliding it underneath the razor was more
than sufficient and almost before she was done, the razor was wobbling in
place, eager to point the way.

Nia picked it up again, smiling as she felt it tugging at
her arm. “There we go. This should show us the way.”

Gail looked at the bloody razor doubtfully, but just
shrugged and said, “All right, lead the way.”

And together they started down the first of the impossible
staircases.