“Let me have a look,” I said. Evis was beside me, though I never saw him move.
“Dammit, Markhat, don’t-”
Before he could finish, the knife was in my hand.
I didn’t take it. Darla swears to this day she didn’t hand it to me. One instant my hand was empty, though, and the next I was gripping a fat silver dagger with a bloody sharp blade.
It went cold-colder than Yule Eve ice. I tried to throw it down. I opened my fingers and threw, but it was stuck to my skin as surely as if it were glued.
The hairs on the back of my neck tried to stand up and scamper away as the hex stored in the dagger settled over me like a blanket woven of frost.
Markhat, said a faint hex-voice in an airy whisper. Markhat.
Evis shouted. “Get Stitches up here now!” One of his halfdead soldiers darted out my door.
The dagger moved and changed in my grasp, became a wine glass, a beer bottle, a vase I’d given Darla to keep her fireflowers in the day we moved into our new house.
Darla, her eyes wide, tried to take the thing from my hand, but Evis grabbed her and pushed her back. “Damn me,” he said, fixing his gaze over my left shoulder. “Marcus. Kill it.”
The remaining halfdead pulled a pair of short silver blades from beneath his dark coat and charged past me.
I whirled. Marcus’s blades were slicing and gleaming, cutting through a thickening darkness in the air but spilling no blood.
The shape solidified, took on the form of a hooded, cloaked figure so tall its hood scraped the ceiling.
It raised a bony hand to point at me and began to speak in that hissing, dry whisper.
Marcus dropped his blades, pulled a revolver, and emptied it into the dark form.
It neither flinched nor faltered. A ringing began to sound in my ears and a tightness began to grow in my throat.
Darla nearly managed to claw her way past Evis when I broke for the door.
“Dammit, Markhat, wait for Stitches!”
I didn’t reply. I hit the hall and bowled over a fat little man in a top hat and I didn’t look back.
I made for the stairs. The vase warped and shook and it was a cold, full bottle of beer. I’d bolted with the intention of throwing it over the side. I was three steps down the stairs before I realized I’d have to go into the Brown with it since it refused to let me let it go.
The beer bottle became a tortoise shell, sealed with old black wax. A single glance behind me revealed the dark form gliding down the stairs, bony finger still raised in silent accusation. A minor stampede started when a half-dozen revelers heading up met me and fled at the sight of my rapidly-gaining pursuer.
So down I charged, for lack of anything better to do. I hit the landing on the casino floor and yelled out a warning and headed for the exit.
My shout was lost in the din. Maybe a dozen people glanced my way, but only briefly, before returning to their games or dates or drinks.
I hit the doors. Cool midnight air and the unmistakable aroma of the Brown’s muddy waters greeted me. I charged a short distance up the narrow deck. I now held the snow-globe Evis gave Darla and me as a wedding present. As it changed and flowed, I brought my hand down hard on the Queen’s iron rail.
Whatever it was becoming shattered. Shards flew.
I brought my hand down again as the specter flung open the Queen’s wide doors and floated toward me, still speaking in a dry, crackling whisper nearly drowned out by the steady thump-thump-thump of the Queen’s paddle wheel.
More pieces flew, steaming when they hit the water.
The phantom was nearly upon me.
I debated pulling my pistol with my left hand, opted for a final hard blow on the rail.
The thing in my hand shattered and the phantom wailed, and an answering shriek from somewhere out on the water startled us both and gave me the chance to shove my free hand in my pocket and thrust Stitches’s fake huldra right under the hooded spook’s vaporous nose.
The bubble surrounding the Queen flared bright and as hot as the noonday sun, blinding me. I tried to turn and went down on my ass instead, and I felt a shadow pass quickly over me, and when I managed to stand the deck was dark and I thought I was alone.
Deeply troubling, said Stitches. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, which showed nothing but spots and a blurry after-image of a length of deck and a robed form. Despite our best efforts, a sophisticated piece of hostile magic was secreted aboard.
“What was that thing?”
I heard Evis and Darla and the sound of running feet. I stuck the fake huldra back in my pocket, leaned against the rail, and crossed my arms.
A distraction. The Regent’s guards were attacked. One is missing. I must attend.
And she was gone, vanishing with the same ease as my phantom.
Evis, flanked by grim-faced halfdead bearing blades and guns, bore down on me, surrounding me.
“It’s gone,” I said. “But you’d better get upstairs. Something hit the Regent’s people. One of them is gone.”
“How-”
“Stitches was here. I’m fine. Go.”
He gave me an exasperated hiss and turned, ordering one of his people to stay behind. The rest flapped away, vanishing into the night like so many agitated crows.
Darla emerged from the rush of retreating vampires and made her way to me, gun still in her hand.
“Are you sure it’s gone?”
“I broke the knife, or whatever it was, and Stitches took care of what was left. I’m fine. You’re not a widow just yet.”
The lone halfdead ordered to stay behind turned his back and hid himself in the shadows. Darla joined me at the rail, staring out at the dark water.
“If we just jumped in now, husband, do you think we could swim all the way back to Rannit?”
“Not in these clothes. We’d sink like rocks.” I put my left hand on Darla’s right, unable to gauge her mood. None of Dad’s advice concerning matters of emotional intimacy with womenfolk extended to the aftermath of near-fatal attacks by magical booby traps. “Anyway, we’re safer here, aboard the Queen. Stitches’s shield is holding.”
“Did Stitches say that?”
“Sure she did. Shield is as good as new. Better, in fact. Nothing at all can get past this time.”
Darla nodded, her eyes still fixed on the night.
“Then why, dearest, did Buttercup just stroll right through it?”
I whirled.
Out on the water, a dozen steps from the Queen’s rail, Buttercup pranced and spun, glowing like a harvest moon. Her dainty little banshee feet kicked up sprays of water, at which she giggled and pointed, but she neither sank nor bothered to swim.
She was well within the bubble of arcane protection we’d both seen keep the first attackers at bay.
“Mama Hog in a rowboat,” I said.
Darla’s gaze followed the rope tied about Buttercup’s waist.
Mama Hog’s distant voice sounded over the Queen’s churning wheel.
“Well, don’t just stand there gawkin’, boy! I ain’t plannin’ on swimmin’ aboard!”
Our vampire friend detached himself from his corner of midnight and joined us at the rail. His dead white eyes were wide, and he forgot his manners and let his toothy jaw hang open.
“You might as well go tell Evis to set an extra place at our table,” I said as gently as I could. “She’ll swear she doesn’t, but she likes beer and cigars.”
Buttercup saw us and squealed, lifting up her arms and simply taking flight. Mama cussed as her tiny rowboat was yanked forward, surging ahead so fast the front half of the boat lifted entirely out of the water.
My halfdead friend’s cloak barely made a sound as he raced for the safety of the Queen’s casino doors.
Chapter Twelve