Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
Page 52

I thought I could lose her in the backstage maze, circle around, find another exit, get away. Call Evan and Brenda. Call the police. Anything.
I dodged into another hallway, painted black. Then I must have taken a wrong turn, because I ended up onstage, toward the back, looking out over an empty theater and the back of Grant’s equipment. The curtains were open, and Grant himself stood downstage. He looked like he was practicing with the Chinese rings, loops of silver interlocking, clicking as they linked and unlinked so quickly I couldn’t follow.
Then, because Wolf was at the front of my senses, because everything was sharp and brilliant and the world around me was moving a little bit slower—and maybe because I was standing behind him—I could see it. The ring in his hand never moved. He kept his grip on the same spot, always hiding it from the audience, and worked so quickly he only made it look like the rings changed places, linking together, slipping apart. Two of the rings were already connected, permanently, but he kept the joint hidden, so they looked like just two more rings hanging on his arm. And one of the other rings had a gap in it. He kept the gap hidden in his hand while slipping the other rings into and out of it. He handled them fluidly, perfectly. I never would have been able to tell, if I hadn’t caught that odd glimpse.
But it was still magic, because I certainly could never manipulate the trick as well as Grant. At least not without a lot of practice.
He turned around, as if alerted by the pressure of my gaze. The rings stopped and dangled from his hands instead of dancing. At first he seemed annoyed, scowling, but I must have looked desperate, flushed and out of breath, because he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m being followed, they want to kill me,” I said, pointing behind me. I sounded incoherent to my ears, but I didn’t have time to give any more detail.
He glanced over my shoulder, and I turned, afraid that Boris and Sylvia had sneaked up behind me. They hadn’t; only the two of us stood onstage. But I could hear breathing echoing among the rigging backstage. They were close.
Grant must have sensed it, too. He marched to the painted cabinet, sitting innocuously to the side. “If you would step in here for a moment.”
I laughed, a tad hysterically. “You’re going to hide me in your trick cabinet? You really think that’s going to fool them?”
“Please, just step in here. Everything’ll be fine.” He sounded like someone urging me to drink the Kool-Aid. “And whatever you do, don’t move.”
What the hell? Maybe it would actually work. I stepped in, and he closed the door, relegating me to darkness.
Cautiously, I felt around the inside of the cabinet. I didn’t know the trick of the device that made people seem to disappear. Grant hadn’t told me, so I couldn’t activate the mechanism, spring the trapdoor, or whatever. All I could do was stand there. I strained to listen but couldn’t hear what was going on outside. Had they found me? Was Grant able to put them off?
I barely had room to move. I felt the door in front of me, the two sides around me, inches from my arms. I took a step back, expecting to come up against the back of the box. Then I took another step, and another. Three steps back. I’d walked around the cabinet; it wasn’t that big. There couldn’t be that much room inside.
Shifting my arms, I felt for the sides—which weren’t there.
Looking around, I saw shadows. Which was impossible, because the box was pitch-dark—not a sliver of light passed inside. But I could now lift my arms, stretch them all the way out from my sides. My steps didn’t echo like they should have on the wood floor of a cabinet. I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting to see a snow-covered forest and a lamppost. I didn’t see much of anything: shifting tones of gray, like clouds passing over a nighttime sky. A breeze touched my face, ruffling strands of my hair across my face. Which was impossible—I was inside a box.
And standing on a piece of ground, with dirt under my feet. The air had a strange scent, marshy, decayed, like a swamp, or an aquarium that needed cleaning. Algae, fish, and mud. I shivered with cold, and a dampness crept under my skin, touching my bones. I hugged myself.
Then something moved. I sensed it rather than saw it, a shifting on the ground, a displacement of air that brought with it a wave of a new smell, of rotted flesh. To my right, a darker shadow moved, a surface that gleamed in an unseen source of light. Something wet and boneless, creeping toward me. I wanted to scream and run. But I couldn’t do anything.
Three steps forward would take me back to the place I’d come from. But ahead of me lay only shadow. No box at all, no cabinet, no stage, no magician. This was altogether a different kind of magic. No tricks, no mirrors.
Hugging myself tightly, I closed my eyes and stepped forward. One, two, three, exactly the way I’d come from. The air closed in around me, but I couldn’t smell the wood of the cabinet, the sweat of the stage, not like I expected. I didn’t dare open my eyes, in case I didn’t see darkness but those same half-seen shadows.
Something touched my arm, and I screamed.
A hand closed over my mouth, and another hand—the one holding my arm—pulled me forward, out of the cabinet onto the stage. Odysseus Grant looked at me, looked into my eyes. I blinked back at him, astonished, relieved, and confused. I was frozen. Even my Wolf was quiet.
Something like a smile tugged at his lips. “I told you not to move,” he said.
“What—” I stammered. Couldn’t get my voice to work, which was weird. I swallowed and tried again. “What is that place?”
“It’s just a box,” he said. “A magical cabinet.”
He guided me to a chair at the side of the stage, which was good, because I hadn’t realized how wobbly my knees were until I sat down.
“They’re gone,” he said. “They should stay off your trail for a while, but you might want to lie low.”
I wasn’t sure I could manage that. Stifling a smile, I shook my head.
“How’d you get mixed up with them, anyway?”
“This is what happens when a werewolf finds herself at a gun show,” I said. “It was bound to happen sometime this weekend. Apart from that, it’s a long story.”
“You look like you could use a drink of water. Wait here—”
“No—don’t go. I’m okay, really. I just need to sit a minute.”