She whirled back to face them, her eyes brilliant and bright. "Beauty, knowledge, courage. That's the three of us, that's this place. And the dream, that was my fantasy, my idea of perfection. So it had to be my place."
She pressed a hand to her heart as if to keep it from leaping free. "The key's here. In this house."
In the next instant she was alone. The staircase behind her filled with a thin blue light. Like a mist, it rolled toward her, crawled along the floor at her feet until she stood ankle-deep in the damp chill of it. Rooted in shock, she called out, but her voice rang hollow in a mocking echo.
With her heart drumming, she looked at the rooms on either side of her. The eerie blue fog snaked and twined its way up the walls, over the windows, blocking even the gloomy light of the storm.
Run! It was a frantic whisper in her mind. Run. Get out now, before it's too late. This wasn't her fight. She was an ordinary woman leading an ordinary life.
She gripped the banister, took the first step down. She could still see the door through that sheer blue curtain that so quickly ate the true light. Through the door was the real world. Her world. She had only to open that door and walk out for normalcy to click back into place.
That was what she wanted, wasn't it? A normal life. Hadn't her dream shown her that? Marriage and family. French toast for breakfast and flowers on the dresser. A pretty life of simple pleasures built on love and affection.
It was waiting for her, outside the door.
She walked down the steps like a woman in a trance. She could see beyond the door, somehow through the door, where the day was perfect with autumn. Trees a wash of color gilded by sunlight, air brisk and tart. And though her heart continued to gallop inside her chest, her lips curved in a dreamy smile as she reached for the door.
"This is wrong." She heard her own voice, oddly flat and calm. "This is another trick." A part of her shuddered in shock as she turned away from the door, turned from the perfect life waiting outside. "What's out there isn't real, but this is. This is our place now."
Stunned that she'd nearly deserted her friends, she called out for Dana and Zoe again. Where had he put them? What illusion had separated them? Fear for them had her rushing back up the steps. Her flight tore the blue mists, only to have it gather back into nasty ribbons be-, hind her.
To orient herself she went to the window at the top of the stairs and rubbed away those frigid mists. Her fingertips went numb, but she could see it was still storming. Rain whipped down out of a bruised sky. Her car was in the drive, just where she'd left it. Across the street a woman with a red umbrella and a bag of groceries dashed toward a house.
That was real, Malory told herself. That was life, messy and inconvenient. And she would get it back. She'd find her way back. But first she had a job to do.
Chills crawled along her skin as she turned to the right. She wished for a jacket, for a flashlight. For her friends. For Flynn. She forced herself not to run, not to rush blindly. The room was a maze of impossible corridors.
It didn't matter. Just another trick, one meant to confuse and frighten her. Somewhere in this house was the key, and her friends. She would find them.
Panic tickled her throat as she walked. The air was silent now, even her lonely footsteps were smothered by the blue mist. What was more frightening to the human heart than being cold and lost and alone? He was using that against her, playing her with her own instinct.
Because he couldn't touch her unless she allowed it.
"You're not going to make me run," she shouted. "I know who I am and where I am, and you're not going to make me. run."
She heard someone call her name, just the faintest ripple through the thick air. Using it as a guide, she turned again.
The cold intensified, and the mists swirled with wet. Her clothes were damp, her skin chilled. The call could have been another trick, she thought. She could hear nothing now but the blood beating inside her own head.
It hardly mattered which direction she chose. She could walk endlessly in circles or stand perfectly still. It wasn't a matter of finding her way, or being misdirected now. It was, she realized, nothing more than a battle of wills.
The key was here. She meant to find it; he meant to stop her.
"It must be lowering to pit yourself against a mortal woman. Wasting all your power and skill on someone like me. And still, the best you can do is this irritating blue-light special."
An angry red glow edged the mist. Though Malory's heart plunged, she gritted her teeth and kept moving. Maybe it wasn't wise to challenge a sorcerer, but aside from the risk she realized another side effect.
She could see another door now where the red and blue lights merged.
The attic, she thought. It had to be. Not illusionary corridors and turns, but the true substance of the house.
She focused on it as she walked forward. When the mists shifted, thickened, swirled, she ignored them and kept the image of the door in her head.
At last, her breath shallow, she plunged a hand through the fog and clamped her fingers around the old glass knob.
Warmth, a welcome flood of it, poured over her as she pulled the door open. She started up, into the dark, with the blue mist creeping behind her.
* * *
Outside, Flynn navigated through the mean-tempered storm, edging forward in the driver's seat to peer through the curtain of rain that his wipers could barely displace.
In the backseat, Moe whimpered like a baby.
"Come on, you coward, it's just a little rain." Lightning pitchforked through the black sky, followed by a boom of thunder like a cannon blast. "And some lightning." Flynn cursed and muscled the wheel in position when the car bucked and shuddered. "And some wind," he added. With gusts approaching gale force.
It hadn't seemed like more than a quick thunderstorm when he'd left the office. But it worsened with every inch of road. As Moe's whimpers turned to pitiful howls, Flynn began to worry that Malory or Dana or Zoe, maybe all three of them, had gotten caught in the storm.
They should have been at the house by now, he reminded himself. But he would have sworn that the rage of the storm was worse, considerably worse, on this end of town. Fog had rolled down from the hills, blanketed them in gray as thick and dense as wool. His visibility decreased, forcing him to slow down. Even at a crawl, the car fishtailed madly on a turn.
"We'll just pull over," he said to Moe. "Pull over and wait it out."
Anxiety skated up his spine, but instead of easing when he nudged the car to the curb, it clamped on to the back of his neck like claws. The sound of the rain pounding like fists on the roof of the car seemed to hammer into his brain.
"Something's wrong."
He pulled out into the street again, his hands vising on the wheel as the wind buffeted the car. Sweat, born of effort and worry, snaked down his back. For the next three blocks he felt like a man fighting a war.
There was a trickle of relief when he spotted the cars in the driveway. They were okay, he told himself. They were inside. No problem. He was an idiot.
“Told you there was nothing to worry about," he said to Moe. "Now you've got two choices. You can pull yourself together and come inside with me, or you can stay here, quaking and quivering. Up to you, pal."
Relief drained away when he parked at the curb and looked at the house.
If the storm had a heart, it was there. Black clouds boiled over the house, pumped the full force of their fury. Even as he watched, lightning lanced down, speared like a fiery arrow into the front lawn. The grass went black in a jagged patch.
"Malory."
He didn't know if he spoke it, shouted it, or his mind simply screamed it, but he shoved open the car door and leaped into the surreal violence of the storm.