[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

to her, and when the glass blazed with the otherworldly flames, she stepped
back.
 Thank you, she managed to tell him. Her voice was in control, her shoulders
were back, her head held high. She did not try to smile that would have been
too much for her to carry off.
He rested a hand lightly on her shoulder, and said,  For every door that
closes, a window opens somewhere else.
Brian s saying. Her Brian s saying. Her fists clenched again, and she nodded,
unable to speak around the lump that had returned to her throat.
Then he was gone.
CHAPTER 8
Cat Creek, North Carolina
ERIC, HEADING INTO the tiny renovated storefront that served as headquarters
for Cat Creek s Sheriff s Department, caught a glimpse through the front
window of Pete Stark, with his feet up on the desk and his nose buried in a
book. By the time the door slammed shut and he got around the corner, though,
Pete s feet were on the floor and he had paperwork spread out in front of him.
 I don t care if you read.
Pete blushed.  I know.
Page 67
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
 Not too crazy about you having your feet up on the desk, though doesn t look
too good to the people who see you when they drive by. And since they re the
ones who pay your salary and mine& 
Pete sighed.  I got in early. Hoped you d heard something about the Molly
McColl case.
 I m still not even sure we have a case. Girl hasn t been back home, but
there s nothing to say she didn t just go out of town for a week to visit
family and think that she shut her door behind her when she didn t.
 I know. Doesn t feel like that to me, though.
Eric nodded.  Doesn t feel like that to me, either. I have some errands I have
to run today you re going to have the place to yourself for a while.
 Anything big?
Eric shrugged.  Mostly, no. I have one possible lead on what might be the
Molly McColl case if we do have a case, and I m going to check that out in a
while, but mostly I just have some housekeeping to do.
 I ll give you a call if things get interesting.
Eric raised an eyebrow.  And interesting would be& ?
 Riots in the streets, vagrants on the benches, naked women on the green.
Pete grinned just a little and said,  Though if we had naked women on the
green, I could probably handle that myself.
Like Eric, Pete was single, though unlike Eric, he had never been married. He
was a good-looking kid, burly and easygoing, and Eric gave him another two
years in Cat Creek before the boredom of the place and the lack of young,
single women drove him to a bigger town.
 I m certain you could. He yawned and shook his head.  For anything but naked
women, then, you give me a call, all right?
Pete tipped his head and studied Eric through narrowed eyes.  You all right,
boss?
 Not sleeping too well lately.
 Had company?
 I wish.
 You want to go home and get some rest, I ll hold down the fort.
 Appreciate it but today is not the day.
By the time Eric was back in the cruiser, Pete s nose was back in the book. At
least this time his feet weren t on the desk.
Granger had the watch when Eric went into the upper room of the flower shop.
 Quiet?
 Not on my shift. I took over from Willie at one he said he didn t have a
blip. But a rogue gate opened twice on my watch, and there was a power surge.
Vectors point to the same house.
 Lauren Dane.
 Sure looks like it.
Eric grimaced. A traitor, from a family of traitors. It figured. He didn t
like thinking of her that way, but what the hell. People were what they were,
and teenage crushes never changed basic truth.
 I ll take the next watch. You go on to whatever you had to do.
He had a plan, but because he didn t know which of the Sentinels was working
with Lauren, he didn t want anyone around to find out what he was up to. He
had a hard time thinking that Granger might be the traitor on the inside, or
that he might have been the person responsible for bringing such potential
devastation to Cat Creek, but he had to face facts. He wasn t the traitor, and
June Bug wasn t the traitor. But any of the others might be.
 I ll be at home asleep, Granger told him.  Probably with the help of a
couple of Seconal. I haven t had a real minute s rest since& 
His voice trailed off, and Eric nodded.  Me, either. Hope your sleep goes
better than mine.
When Granger was gone, Eric opened the gate in the mirror and settled himself
inside of it, a pad of paper, a straight edge, a protractor, a compass, and a
pencil on his lap. He was determined to get the vectors right; he wouldn t
Page 68
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
accuse Lauren Dane without being as certain as possible that she was the one
responsible for Molly s disappearance, and that meant making sure to within a
fraction of a degree that her house was the source of the rogue
disturbances and that she was the one causing them. It might take some fast
footwork on his part, but he had the plan, he had the tools, and, thanks to
Pete, he had the time.
Sitting bathed in the energy of the gate, he began to revive. He let himself
absorb some of the power that flowed between the worlds; usually the Sentinels
tried to take nothing and leave nothing behind, but he would be useless if he
couldn t stay awake.
By the time he felt the gate open, he was alert, well rested, and ready for
anything. He quickly plotted out the vector, and his heart sank. The gate was
Lauren s. If he hurried, he could get over to her house, and if she had gone
through, he could make sure he was waiting for her when she came back out.
He d considered tracking her through to Oria, but mem ories of the storm that
had come attached to her spell made him think that when he confronted her, he
didn t want to have to deal with any magic she might throw at him.
He took off down the back stairs, gave a cursory wave to Nancine, told her not
to worry about watch that he was on it and took off for Lauren s house.
He left the cruiser running and knocked on the front door first after all, the
gate might have opened because Lauren was returning, not leaving. But she
didn t answer, even though her car was parked beneath the portico. He got back
in the cruiser, drove it around back of the house, and parked it out of sight
of the street, behind the dilapidated old workshop.
Then he broke into her house through the back. He felt bad about it, but he
had to catch her stepping out of the mirror. He had to. He had to know for
himself that she was the one using the gate, that there was no mistake because
he wasn t going to be either kind or understanding to the traitor who had
threatened the survival of his world, and he didn t want to accuse the wrong
person.
Once inside, he locked the back door again, found a comfortable chair that
gave him a good view of the mirror in the hallway without making his presence
immediately obvious to anyone stepping out of the mirror, and settled down for
what might turn out to be a long wait.
Natta Cottage, Ballahara
With Jake on her hip and her parents notebook tucked under her arm, Lauren
went through the gate to find Embar. She had to talk to someone about Brian,
and Embar was the only living creature she knew that she dared confront.
But something was wrong at her parents old cottage in Oria. She should have
stepped through the mirror into the inside of the house, but instead she
stepped through the other side of the mirror into a snowdrift behind the
house, facing the boarded-shut back door. From where she stepped out, she
could see that the once-pristine snow had been trampled all around the outside
of the house, and frozen spatters of pink dotted the snowdrifts beneath some
of the boarded-over windows, reminding her uncomfortably of blood.
Her grip tightened around Jake. She held still, listening for any sound of
intruders, but the only sounds in the clearing were the whistling of the wind [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]