The Caryatid nodded. Dreamsinger smiled back, then squatted beside the anchor box. She slid one finger under the tethered end of the smoke-tail, slipping her fingertip into the mouth of the tube… and suddenly her whole body was sucked inside, her bones, her flesh turning as malleable as clay. It looked like something from a comic drawing, a woman's body pulled thin as a garter snake, then rammed into an aperture no bigger than a mouse hole; but there was no humor in seeing such grisly distortion for real. The whole thing lasted less than a second, and made no sound except a soft swish of air — otherwise, I might have been sick on the spot.
The Caryatid, looking equally queasy, forced herself to press the anchor's toggle-switch. Click. Immediately, the smoke-tail slipped free, jerking loose from its tether and bounding high into the sky like a taut rope suddenly cut. It soared halfway to the clouds, dropped down once more to the treetops, then flew straight up out of sight.
Mission accomplished. The tube had removed Dreamsinger to Spark Royal — whence, presumably, she'd ride a similar tube to Niagara Falls. There'd have to be an anchor device somewhere in the Niagara area, ready to catch hold of the tube's tail end… but I suspected there were anchors all over the world, planted in out-of-the-way corners, waiting for the day a Spark Lord needed to get somewhere in a hurry.
There'd been one in Death Hotel — a place the small device could lie undisturbed for centuries. It was probably radio-controlled, ready to activate itself when a signal came…
My train of thought was interrupted by someone behind me seizing my arm. I looked around. Elizabeth Tzekich was there. "The Spark Lord's run off," she said. "Leaving you to my tender mercies." Her eyes flashed. "Now you're going to tell me what's going on."
12: DEMON, DEMON, LOVER
Tzekich pulled me across the parquet littered with glass. I tried not to tread in the blood of the dead… but Knife-Hand Liz walked straight through. When she reached a clean section of floor, she left sticky scarlet slipperprints.
Back at the windowsill, the Caryatid and Impervia climbed inside. Staying loyally with me, even though they could have run off into the night. My friends.
Meanwhile, the surviving bully-boys from the Ring un-holstered their pistols. Behind the enforcers, Xavier broke into a wolfish leer — he must have regarded us all as human punching bags, here to help him forget the humiliation of submitting to a Spark Lord. Lucky for us, Tzekich outranked the old bastard… and she was so irked by Xavier's stupid intransigence, she treated Impervia, the Caryatid, and me with utmost gentility. She obviously wanted to annoy her deputy as much as he'd annoyed her.
"Please sit," Tzekich said, gesturing toward a black leather couch. "Tell me everything you know."
We sat, we talked. The facts, but no interpretation. I didn't recount Chancellor Opal's encounter with the Lucifer, nor did I mention what Dreamsinger whispered to me before she left. I'd have to ponder her words some time soon, but not with Elizabeth Tzekich and two armed guards hovering over me. For now, I just stuck to the bioweapon version of the tale; suddenly changing my story might antagonize Knife-Hand Liz to the point of violence.
She was angry enough as it was — during my recitation, Xavier made a constant nuisance of himself with pointless intrusive questions, aggravating Tzekich to the verge of fury. I couldn't understand why she didn't toss him from the room… or borrow a gun from an enforcer and create a new opening in her organization. But she tolerated Xavier's petty interference with clenched teeth, only once giving him a lethal glare and saying, "I am trying to find out about my daughter."
Of course, Tzekich asked questions of her own — and from their tone, I realized she didn't want to believe her daughter was dead. If there were two copies of the girl, why couldn't the one still alive be the real Rosalind? Perhaps an enemy had created a sorcerous duplicate of her daughter as a way to infiltrate the Ring of Knives. But Rosalind had defeated the double by using the impersonator's own cottage cheese bacteria; then the girl had run off with "that Sebastian boy" to escape before more enemies arrived. Elopement was so utterly ridiculous at Rosalind's age, it must be a ruse to throw off pursuers.
That made sense, didn't it?
No one wanted to argue — not even spiteful Xavier. There are some things it's not safe to say when a mother is being willfully blind.
Tzekich rose from her chair and snapped her fingers toward her men. "We're leaving now. Let's go."
Xavier grunted. "Just like that, we're off?"
"To Niagara Falls. Get your fastest boat."
"Ach… it won't be as fast as that Spark Lord."
"No," Tzekich said, "but it might be fast enough to catch the Hoosegow."
Xavier shook his head. "They got a good wind, a long headstart, and the Falls are only ten, twelve hours away. Hoosegow will beat us."
"We'll still be close behind." Tzekich headed for the door. "I refuse to sit here while my daughter's in danger."
Xavier's expression was easy to read: The girl's not in danger; she's dead. But he simply pointed a thumb at Impervia, the Caryatid, and me. "What do we do with them?"
Tzekich stopped in the doorway. She turned back to consider us. Impervia and I tensed, ready to put up a fight… but the Caryatid simply toyed with the anchor device Dreamsinger had left in her keeping, idly tracing one finger along the inlaid gold horseshoes. Did Tzekich want to mess with a Spark Lord's "dear sister"?
A tense silence. Then Tzekich said, "Forget them." She glared in our direction. "Get the hell out."
We didn't need to be told twice. Before Tzekich vanished from the doorway, before Xavier could have us roughed up behind his boss's back, we three teachers were out the window and scurrying into the darkness.
The guard dogs raised a ruckus on our way off the property; but with the Caryatid waving flames in the dogs' faces and Impervia swinging a fallen tree branch as a club, the animals soon decided their duty lay in snarling from a distance rather than outright attack. They saw us to the gate, yapping all the while and continuing long after we were gone. Dogs on other estates took up the barking, making an awful racket… and I cringed at the noise until I realized it was harmless.
We'd survived.
After running afoul of a spike-armed enforcer, a Sorcery-Lord, and the Ring of Knives, my friends and I had survived. We were also cut loose from our burdens: the Sparks were on the case, and didn't need help from mere schoolteachers. We'd even told Knife-Hand Liz her daughter was dead… and once you've informed the authorities and the parents, what more must a teacher do?
Quest over. Home to bed.
But even as these thoughts passed through my head, Impervia asked, "So how do we get to Niagara Falls?"
I groaned.
Arguing with Impervia was futile. Besides, my heart wasn't in it — though part of me wanted to run back to Simka, another part oozed with guilt at abandoning Sebastian. If I could believe Dreamsinger, it seemed certain the boy was now in the clutches of a Lucifer. Furthermore, the Sorcery-Lord was in hot pursuit of the couple; even if she saved Sebastian from the shapeshifting alien, I doubted that she'd treat the boy kindly. A lunatic like her would probably consider Sebastian the Lucifer's partner-in-crime.
Boom.
Besides, if we went home now, we might never learn what was going on… and despite my past deficiencies in scientific curiosity, this time I wanted to know everything. Therefore, when Impervia began preaching about our divine calling to see this business through, I put up only a token protest: I just pointed out that Dreamsinger and the Ring might both slit our gizzards if we meddled, and that by the time we got to Niagara Falls, all the excitement would likely be over.