Fiction-Extended-Edition 01-07-2012 by Fantasy

Author:Fantasy [Fantasy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"Mr. Shade!" a man called, and when he turned to see who it was he discovered himself awake, back in the Barlow bedroom, with the client himself trying the locked door and yelling, "Mr. Shade! Are you all right? I heard noises."

Jack sat up and discovered books scattered on the bed and the floor around it, bestsellers and art books from the low decorator bookshelf opposite the bed. They must have flung themselves at him while he slept. Could a poltergeist operate from a dream?

"I'm all right!" he said loudly. "Go back to bed, Mr. Barlow. We'll talk in the morning."

When he heard Barlow leave, Jack lay on the bed, ignoring the books as he tried to steady his breath and lower his heart rate. "Eugenia," he whispered. He thought, as he did so often, of the early days, when cups or plates started crashing on the floor, and then the coffee table flung itself across the room, and all the drawers of his wife's dresser smashed into the wall above the bed. He remembered how Layla had screamed she couldn't stand it anymore, Jack had to do something, how he'd held her and told her, with all the reassurance of his great knowledge, his experience as a Traveler, that it was just a phase, that doing something would only strengthen it. If you left them alone, geists just faded away. Lying in his client's bed, remembering, Jack felt the tears slide down his cheeks until they hit the dead crevices of his scars.

He lay there until dawn, eyes on the ceiling as he waited until first light would allow him to get up and take the final step before he could leave the gray house. Once he was sure the sun had come up he went into the oversize lifeless bathroom where he washed his face and got dressed, all but his shirt. On his way back from the bathroom he noticed something odd, a small black leather copy of MacGregor Mathers's translation of the fifteenth-century manuscript, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage . He smiled. Maybe Alice had advanced beyond the dabbler stage. She must have hidden this behind the big showy art books, where she could count on William never noticing it. Softly Jack said, "You deserve better than the Forest, Alice. I'm coming for you."

Back at the bed he set down a small black rectangular leather case he'd brought with him from the hotel. Various instruments lay inside it, only one of which he needed. A black knife, unadorned, with a polished ebony handle and a double-edged carbon blade exactly five inches long.

He held it up and stared at it awhile as he turned it in the morning light. Then he cut a shallow line along the inside of his arm. There was a network of such lines, light scars, and Jack had often wondered if some doctor, or even a cop if Jack was ever careless enough to get arrested, might think he was a junkie.

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