“I dunno. Howard’s kind of a shithead capitalist sometimes, but he’s not mean.”
“You mean he wasn’t mean before,” Goldie observed. “He might’ve turned into something that’d make a Ferengi look like a Keebler elf.”
Enid was nodding rhythmically, as if affirming something whispered by an invisible companion. He looked down at me finally, face set. “I gotta go to Howard. That’s what all this means, isn’t it?”
Goldie and I exchanged glances. Had I just uncovered something that was going to send us on yet another detour?
I glanced at Magritte, still sleeping peacefully in the arms of gravity, her aura dimmed almost to invisibility. Her flesh no longer glowed; it was merely pale. Her hair was no longer flame; it was merely strawberry blond silk. She looked almost like a normal woman, with little about her of the dryad. She looked completely vulnerable … and reminded me forcibly of Tina.
I brought my eyes back to Enid’s face. It was more gray than brown and gleamed with a sudden cold sweat.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked me. “I gotta find Howard
and get him to let me use my music the way I want to use it.
But how do I do that? What do I say? What’s the loophole?” “There is no loophole,” I said. “You don’t need one.” “The hell I don’t. This thing’s sucking the life out of me!” “When did you sign this contract, Enid?”
“Last February. Why?”
“And did it say any of this stuff about ‘spells of mist,’ and ‘spirits,’ and ‘covenants’ at that time?”
“Hell, no. Think I would’ve signed it if it did?”
“Well, when you track Howard down-”
“Shit, I don’t have to track him down. I know where he is.” “How?” Goldie asked.
“You know that little something you got goin’ with the Storm? Well, I got something like that goin’ with Howard.” I kept my lawyer face on. “Where is he?”
“Chicago. Didn’t imagine he’d ever leave. He hasn’t.”
“Oh, shit.” Goldie murmured the words just loud enough for me to hear, then got up and went to the window, arms wrapped around himself as if he’d caught a sudden chill.
I half watched him as I spoke to Enid, wondering if I’d ever be completely at ease with his sudden mood shifts. “Well, what you say to Howard is that this contract is not the same one you signed in February of this year. It’s changed. Basic law, Enid: no party may change a contract after it’s been signed. This is no longer legally binding.”
“Then why’s it still eating at me?”
I tapped the release clause.
“So, I gotta meet the little shit on his turf? Well, so be it.”
We woke Mary and the others then, in the deep, dark heart of the night, and told them what we’d found. When the telling was over, we sat in silence for a moment, listening to the newly set fire roar in the grate while Doc fed it wood and Colleen poked it into submission.
It was Mary who ended the hush, her eyes on me. “My God, it’s like something out of somebody’s Book of the Dead. So you think if Enid goes to Howard and confronts him with the changes in the contract, he could get out of it?”
“If this legal twist parodies real law, yes.”
“And that will cure him?” She glanced at Enid, worry darkening her eyes. “That will keep these … side effects from happening?”
“I can’t be sure, but it seems to me it’s the only chance he’s got. Unless he stops playing music altogether.”
Enid stared at me. “I can’t do that. Music’s in my blood. In my soul. If I stop playing, I lose myself and…” His eyes moved to Magritte. “I lose everything, everybody I care about. There’s no way in hell I can do that. No, I gotta follow this thing through. I’m going back to Chicago, and I’m gonna settle this-” He hesitated, looking to me again. “Chicago wasn’t where you were headed.”
“Enid, I’m not exactly sure where we’re headed. We follow Goldie’s lead in that. Chicago may not even be out of our way.”
“It’s not,” said Goldie quietly.
I glanced over at where he sat, perched on the arm of a chair, Magritte hovering beside him. “What? Something about Chicago we should know?”
He shook his head, his eyes on the frayed knee of his jeans. “Don’t know.”
This was really the wrong time for Twenty Questions. “Did you… see something? Hear something? What?” “Nothing I saw. Or heard. Just… a feeling.”
“Convenient,” murmured Colleen.
Goldie glanced at her, then met my eyes. “Look, if we expect Enid to help us free anybody from the Source, we need to free him first. That puts the Windy City on our itinerary, wouldn’t you say?”
He was right; Enid wouldn’t survive the trip otherwise. “And of course, Magritte is going with us.” Colleen stirred the fire absently, not looking at us.
“Sure she’s going with us,” said Enid. “Why wouldn’t she go with us?”
Colleen gave the logs a sharp jab. Sparks shot up into the flue. “Because if she does, you’ll have to shield her. And if you shield her-”
Magritte’s aura flashed azure and violet. “I gotta go with you,” she said. “I gotta protect Enid.”
“If he doesn’t play, there’s no reason to protect him,” Colleen argued.
“No, you don’t understand,” Enid said. “If Mags doesn’t cover for me, Howard gets control.”
I shook my head. “Gets control?”
“Of me. Of my music. He pulls me to him. He … Look, you know that old story about the red shoes?”
Know it? I lived with it. I used to tease Tina that she practiced as if she wore those damned slippers and that if she didn’t take them off once in a while she was going to dance herself into a coma. “One of my sister’s favorite stories,” I said. “You put the shoes on, you can’t stop dancing.”
Enid nodded. “Howard gets a hold of me, I can’t stop playing. I can’t control what I play. And I can’t control what the music does.”
“Well, considering what it does when you do control it,” said Colleen, “that’s a damn ugly thought.”
Damn ugly. I wondered how many more dire revelations Enid had tucked away in his guitar case.
He sank to the sofa, eyes on his hands. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “I’ve turned trees to glass and rocks to powder. I’ve turned water to blood and I’ve made rain burn. And worst of all, I’ve twisted people, and those people know what I done to ’em. My songs are supposed to soothe souls. To lift them up. D’you know what it feels like to have them…” He lost his voice and struggled to recover it. “I gotta get free of this thing, dammit! I’ll do anything to get free of it.”
“Well, I always say,” said Goldie, “when God opens a door, He closes a window.”
Enid ignored him. “Every time I use the music outside the Preserve, I have this dream. There’s a chain around my neck and there’s a chain on my guitar. And the chain leads to this tower. I try to pull myself off the chain, but the Tower says, ‘You can’t go, boy. You belong to me. Your songs belong to me and your soul belongs to me. Read it.’ And then this wind comes up and the pages of that contract dance all around me while I try to gather them up. But I can’t lay a hand on ’em.”
A chill from the heart of a Manhattan January had risen up out of my breast. “A tower?” I repeated. “What was it like?”
Other voices echoed mine. “Was it shiny and black?” demanded Colleen, and Doc asked, “Did it glisten, as if wet?”
“Sweet Cherry Garcia.” Goldie, half standing, sank back to the arm of his chair, his face ashen.
I could see it in their eyes. “We’ve all dreamed…” Everyone spoke at once, fear and discovery tumbling out into the room. I raised my hands. “One at a time! Doc?”
He nodded, flashing a haunted look, before he turned his face back to the fire. “In my dreams of Chernobyl, the Black Tower is there. It watches everything I do. I, too, wear chains.”
“Marionette strings,” murmured Colleen. “We’re all connected to it by marionette strings and it’s making us dance.”