“That Rolls didn’t look shabby.”
Mordecai waved disdainfully. “Overpriced. This I have outfitted with a couple spells. Trouble is you can’t find leaded gas anymore, so it sits.”
They cruised through palm-lined residential streets, sumptuous homes to either side.
“This neighborhood’s certainly not for the hoi polloi,” Incarnadine said.
“Some nice people around here. Some not so nice. But you live and let live.”
After six or seven blocks, Mordecai turned onto a main boulevard lined with boutiques and trendy shops.
“What you got here is Rodeo Drive East,” Mordecai said. “The prices would scare you.”
“No doubt,” Incarnadine said.
“Start with the portal-summoning. First push that third radio button. That trips a facilitation spell.”
Incarnadine pushed the button and began concentrating. He tested the ether with his right hand, angling it this way and that. “I get the feeling it’s east of here. Out to sea?”
“In the Bermuda Triangle,” Mordecai said. “Where else? Maybe we should take the boat out.” He shook his head. “Nah, we’d never catch it in the boat.”
“I’ll try to reel it in.”
“You do that. Open your window. The air-conditioning’s busted.”
They swung through town and veered onto a business-clogged four-lane highway.
“Listen, there’s a nice deli in West Palm Beach. Friend of mine used to own it. A nice Cuban fellow bought it and he’s doing a wonderful job.”
“No time, Uncle Mordy. There.”
Mordecai looked. “McDonald’s?”
Mordecai wheeled into the lot and stopped in front of the take-out ordering station.
A woman’s voice came through a tinny speaker. “Good afternoon, can I help you?”
Incarnadine spoke up. “Give me a fish sandwich, a large order of fries, and a small Coke. Jonath, are you hungry?”
Jonath nodded.
“We also want a large Chicken McNuggets.”
“Any fries with that?”
“Right, large fries and another Coke. You’re gonna love this, Jonath.”
“Me,” Mordecai said, “I like to sit inside when I eat, have a nice piece of fish. Give me a strawberry milkshake, honey!”
They pulled around the building to the pickup window. After a short wait, the food came through. Mordecai paid, and they left.
“It’s moving in, Uncle Mordy,” Incarnadine said, mouth full of fries. “The f’cilitation spell’s working.”
“It’s a doozy. Makes everything happen.”
The huge Caddy swerved between lanes, drawing honks from annoyed drivers.
“Blow it out your keister!” Mordecai drove with one hand on the mint steering wheel, the other casually holding the milk-shake. “Listen, Inky. You say you don’t know where in the castle the portal’s other end is?”
“No, if it’s whipping around here, it’s doing it castleside, too.”
“Hmm. I can get the car through, a portal’s got fuzzy edges. But if we come out into a hallway … Remember to push that second button if we get into trouble. That’s a protection spell.”
“I’ll remember,” Incarnadine said. “All I can do is try to influence the other end. I’ll try to make it come out in the laboratory. It’s mostly empty floor space and there should be some stopping room. With the protect spell we ought to be all right.”
“We’ll be fine,” Mordecai said with a serene smile.
“How do you like the food of the gods, Jonath?” Incarnadine asked, looking back.
Jonath swallowed. “I have never tasted such fare.”
“Try it with the sweet-and-sour sauce.”
Mordecai turned off onto a ramp and squealed around the long turn down to the Interstate.
“What are you getting now?” Mordecai asked.
“It’s close. I think it knows we’re chasing it.”
“Damn frisky things, portals.”
Mordecai bulled into the traffic stream, attracting more retaliatory honking. Still smiling, he took a sip of milkshake, left elbow angled out the window. The wisps of blue-white hair on the back of his head stood out straight, fluttering in the window wash.
“Up ahead somewhere,” Incarnadine said. “It’s weaving in and out.”
“It wants to be caught,” Mordecai said.
Incarnadine wolfed down the rest of his fish sandwich and wiped his mouth. “Can you get up more speed?”
“We got three hundred and ninety cubic inches in the engine and a four-barrel carburetor.”
Mordecai eased the accelerator pedal to the floor and the car’s engine throbbed with gas-guzzling power. Expertly and with equanimity, Mordecai piloted the huge vehicle through foaming channels of traffic, blithely weaving from lane to lane. More horns blared, dopplering in anger.
“I see the little devil now,” he said. “There she is.”
“You have sharp eyes, Uncle Mordy.”
“These glasses are fake, you know. Nothing wrong with my eyes at all. Twenty-twenty. Well, maybe not that good, but I really only need them for reading. How d’you like Florida, by the way?”
“Nice and hot.”
“Ever spend much time here?”
“No, not much. I can see it now.”
Ahead was a fuzzy area of grayness, a shimmering sheet like heated air rising from the hot asphalt. It seemed to move with the traffic, shifting from side to side.
“There we go,” Mordecai said. “We’ll have you back in the castle in no time.”
Behind them, a siren began to whoop.
Incarnadine looked back. “This could be trouble.”
“Don’t worry. I got handicapped plates.”
Mordecai shifted lanes, passed a bus, then swerved back to overtake a car via the inside lane. The speedometer was edging past eighty-five, muggy Florida air blasting through the open windows.
The siren was getting closer. Mordecai swung into the outside lane again.
“Whoops, there it goes!”
“There’s an exit,” Incarnadine said calmly.
The portal had veered to the right, heading off the road. Mordecai careened toward the exit and nearly took the front end off a camper. A chorus of horns screeched their execration.
The caddy shot onto an exit ramp and thundered down it in pursuit of the portal, the siren following. The ramp merged with a two-lane road, which Mordecai roared onto, ignoring the stop sign.
Trees flanked the blacktop, edging a wide shoulder. The police car was gaining now, its whirling red lights dancing in Mordecai’s rearview mirror.
“We may not make it,” Incarnadine said.
In the back seat, Jonath, quite unruffled, popped the last McNugget into his mouth. A smile crossed his lips.
“You married?” Mordecai asked.
“Yes,” Incarnadine said, eyes caged front.
“Children?”
“Two, boy and a girl.”
“Wonderful,” Mordecai said. “A man should be married.”
“I think we lost it,” Incarnadine said, leaning forward to peer through the wraparound windshield.
The road bent sharply to the left up ahead. The portal was nowhere in sight.
“We better think about slowing down,” Incarnadine said. “I’ll pay your ticket — or bail you out.”
“Don’t worry about it. I got friends in this county, and a wonderful lawyer.”
“Wait till the cops get a load of our getups — Mordecai!”
The portal had stopped just around the bend and was waiting for them, a vague patch of wavering nothingness. Mordecai’s foot didn’t have time to hit the brake pedal.
Thirty-two
Inferno, Then Paradiso
The lava flowed, the ash rained down. Smoke and fire rose from gashes in the earth. The tee was a bed of cinders that set the soles of their shoes to smoking. Thaxton had the honor, and drove into a magma flow. One lost stroke. He hit another and the ball bounced among the rocks and disappeared into a crevice.