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  I disengage, tingling. The music is laced with a power that tickles my brain, stands my hair delicately on end, and makes my skin itch.

  This is when I notice two other things about my Bluesman. One is that he has an audience. A handful of human people of various shapes and sizes are following him, smiling and looking farmisht and punchy, as if what’s floating out of his guitar is an industrial strength euphoric. He’s smiling, too, and his chocolate skin is gleaming with sweat.

  The other thing I notice is that there is a flare hovering winglessly over his dreadlocks. A flare-like Tina. She- definitely she-is about the size of a twelve-year-old girl, and she is making a magic of her own that drapes a sequined mosquito net of aqua energy all around her musician friend.

  This is no parlor trick. Not the sort of flashy crap I do to impress the natives. This music has a power I can feel deep down in my bones. Is that what’s keeping his flare from being sucked out of real time back to the Megillah?

  I join the Bluesman’s audience, hoping to get a better look at the flare-hoping, against all odds, that it is Tina. I shuffle up beside the guitarist, copping the same beatific smile everyone else is wearing, and I look up at his floating friend.

  The moment my gaze touches her, she feels it and looks back through eyes like topaz purie marbles; like suns. I swear to God, it’s as if she’s walked in through my eyeballs, taken the cook’s tour of my psyche, and made herself right at home.

  She’s beautiful. Her hair, short and wavy, fans out in a pale titian halo within her nimbus of light, which cycles vivid, translucent hues-aqua, azure, violet. Her ears come to a graceful point amid the strands. She’s a mermaid or a mist wraith or any one of a hundred beautiful, mysterious, and impossible creatures that are not supposed to exist in the here and now. She wears what looks like a white silk Chinese lounging outfit, trimmed in red and gold. Not standard mermaid issue, by any means.

  And she’s not Tina. This is not a child; this is a woman.

  I wonder what she was like before. I wonder why she changed. I wonder why she’s providing arcane sun block for her friend, and I wonder how far I will have to walk to find out.

  I stay in lock step with the others, noticing that several more folks have come out of nowhere to do the same-a mother towing a scrawny little boy in tattered clothes, a girl of about twelve whose eyes are empty windows.

  We’ve traveled maybe a half mile when a hand clamps down on my shoulder and I’m dragged unceremoniously into the bushes.

  FOUR

  COLLEEN

  Damned idiot took more than a leak. He took a freakin’ hike. It was a good five minutes before I realized what he’d done. Fortunately, he wasn’t trying to cover his tracks.

  When I caught up with him, he was shuffling along in the wake of some guitar-playing Pied Piper with a gaggle of other music lovers. I swear, except for the guitar, it looked like something right out of an old grade-B zombie movie.

  Okay, there was another difference-these folks all looked blissed, as if whatever this guy was singing was laced with eighty proof Jamaican rum. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty music, and the guy was massively attractive in a Rastafarian sort of way, but I didn’t get why everybody was so gaga over it.

  I followed along, listening and inching my way over to Goldman, when the tune changed. I’m not much into music, but I recognized the song; it was the one Goldman had been singing earlier-the “huddled masses” thing.

  My scalp tingled. I looked again at the faces of Goldie’s fellow travelers. The tingle turned to a chill. These people were dazzled. Enchanted. Bewitched. This guy was hypnotizing them and leading them away to God-knows-where.

  I was pissed. First, I tried to distract everybody by yelling and jumping up and down. They didn’t even hear me. Then I concentrated on Goldman. I walked right up in front of him, but he just stepped around me, staring at the Pied Piper like he was having some sort of religious experience.

  Only force made sense at that point. I grabbed Goldman by the collar of his flea-bit buckskin coat and threw him into the bushes. He landed hard, but when he came up I had his attention.

  “What was that? Dammit, Colleen, I need to find out where they’re going!” He clambered up and started after the parade.

  I kicked his feet out from under him and brought him down again. “You’re bewitched, you idiot! The music that guy is playing is magic or something. Don’t listen!”

  “Jeez, Colleen, of course it’s magic. That’s why I’m following him. That music has power.” He tried to rise.

  “No shit.” I yanked him back. “Come on, Goldman, show some cojones here. Fight it. Don’t let him get to you.”

  He was shaking his head. “No, no, no, no, no. You don’t get it. I’m not bewitched, Colleen-at least not the way you think. I see what he’s doing. What she’s doing. Either they’re working together, covering each other somehow, or he’s drawn her in with the rest of them.”

  “What the hell are you babbling about? She, who? Who’s working together?”

  “Them-the two of them. The Bluesman and the flare.”

  I jerked my head up for a glance down the trail after the Pied Piper and his fans. Shit, I thought, he’s hallucinating. Doc hadn’t prepared me to deal with this. I had not clue one about how to deal with this.

  I took a firm grip on his shoulders. “Look, Goldie. There is no flare. There’s just a guy with a guitar, hypnotizing people. Hypnotizing you. You’re seeing things.”

  He blinked at me, looking confused for a few seconds while his wheels spun and whirred. Then he said, “You’re wrong, Colleen. I’m not seeing things. There is a flare. She’s hovering over the guy’s head. She’s creating some kind of- of aura around him. Don’t you get it? Somehow the Source hasn’t found her-hasn’t taken her.”

  He tried to move again and I tried to hold him. It wasn’t easy. Goldman is tall, built like a big, lanky cat, and is about as hard to pin down. He struggled half to his feet and dragged me about a yard while I fought to make him hear me.

  “There’s no flare, Goldie! Listen to me-there is no flare!”

  “I can see her. Why can’t you?” He twisted and pulled himself half loose. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

  “That’s part of his power,” I panted, digging in my heels. “Maybe he … he makes people see whatever they want to see-whatever will make them follow him.” Sounded good, anyway. I wondered if I dared risk concussing him with a swift kick to the head.

  He stopped struggling, catching me off guard. I could hear the wheels again-whir, click, whir. “Now that almost makes sense,” he admitted, “except for one thing. I didn’t want to see a flare. I wanted to see Tina. This isn’t Tina. This is someone very different. Someone I’ve never seen before.”

  “Then why can’t I see her?”

  He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Why can’t penguins fly? They’re birds. Birds fly; penguins can’t fly. Does that mean penguins aren’t birds?”

  Brain freeze. Goldman used my paralysis to break free. I didn’t react in time and ended up on my keester. While he ran for the trail, I was trying to drag myself out of the shrubbery.

  Cursing, I lit out after him. He was faster than I expected and seemed to have a homing beacon on the blues dude. He cheated-cut corners, crashed boonies. This made him easy to track, but harder to keep up with.

  By the time I caught up again, he was right back in the pack, as close to the guy as he could get, staring at the empty air over his head like there really was a flare up there. And all the while, Mr. Blues kept serenading his audience, wrapping his music and his voice and his words all around them, trussing them up like holiday turkeys.

  I flashed on a dream I’d had last night-the one that had kept me from sleeping. I was a marionette. We were all marionettes. Off to the west, this faceless puppet master stood at the top of a dark, glittering tower with our strings in his hands and made us dance toward the sunset. In my dream I was hungry to go west. Awake, I knew that if we di
dn’t go west, we’d never find Tina, or have a hope of understanding what was happening to our world, or have a chance to undo it or fight it.

  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

  Suddenly, I was pissed again. Who was this guy and where was he taking these people? And why? What did he have to gain by hypnotizing Goldman, or that woman and her little boy, or that girl? The only answer I could think of made me even more pissed: he was a slaver. It was the only thing that made any sense.

  I spent a moment swamped in a hateful, sticky confusion. I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. There were half a dozen people here; I couldn’t exactly run up and knock them all senseless. I had to cut the strings at the source. I pulled my machete, gave a wild-eyed whoop and launched myself at the Pied Piper.

  It was like slamming into an electrically charged rubber wall. Something absorbed my attack, then kicked back like a mule. Fireworks went off behind my eyes. Lights flashed, chased, spun. I was spinning, too-through the air-head over heels over head.

  I slammed upside down and backward into the trunk of an evergreen. Pain-bright, sharp, shattering pain-shot up and down my right side. I roared aloud and waited for a fall that never came. I was stuck to the trunk of that tree like a damned fly in sap; only it wasn’t sap that held me. My legs and feet were tangled in a network of branches, and something held me tight against the trunk.

  Looking up along my right side, I bit back a whimper. A broken limb had pierced that side of my jacket from the back and gone through the sweater and camisole underneath, knitting fabric to flesh. The shattered point stuck out through the jacket just above my waist, stained with blood.

  Panic galloped from one end of my body to the other. It took me a long, crazy moment to rein it in. I was still breathing, I told myself. I hadn’t punctured a lung. I wasn’t dying; I was just stuck and hurt… and alone in a forest where feral shadows roamed.

  And I was alone. The music was gone. Goldie’s blues guy had blown me six ways from Sunday and strolled off, singing, into the sunset.

  I took a calming breath and tried to figure out which was holding more of my weight-the network of twigs or the broken branch. My money was on the branch.

  I pulled my chin almost to my chest, trying to see. Pain flared, making the sparks of light behind my eyes dance and twirl. I reached up and felt along the branch stub. Maybe I could somehow wriggle out of my jacket and get free. Tilting my head back, I peered at the ground. It was a lot farther than I’d hoped. Okay, maybe I could just fall a dozen feet onto my head and break my neck.

  I looked back up at the limbs and branches at my feet, hoping to see something sturdy. There was nothing within reach that would hold my weight.

  I jerked my left leg. It came free in a shower of pine needles. The world tilted dangerously and my side screamed.

  Whatever I did, I had to do it fast, before I passed out. I closed my eyes, took as deep a breath as I could, and grabbed the stub with both hands. I’d count to three, then I’d try to get my other leg free.

  “Don’t move.” Strong hands gripped my shoulders.

  I felt weak enough to weep. “Damn it, Goldman. I thought you’d gone south.”

  “West, actually, but no. I heard you screaming.”

  “I didn’t scream. Not out loud, at least.”

  “Really? Well, then you have very loud angst.”

  I opened my eyes and looked down toward the ground.

  He was looking up at me through those strange redwood eyes, his hands still on my shoulders.

  “I’m going to climb up onto the branch behind you there.” He pointed up toward my feet. “Then I’m going to grab your legs. I want you to try to ease yourself off that … snag. Don’t worry about falling. I won’t let you fall. I promise.”

  I hated that I felt reassured. “Shit, Goldman, don’t be maudlin. Can you even climb a tree?”

  “Never tried. But I figure if I can climb a steam pipe, I can climb a pine. Hold on,” he added, and disappeared from my line of sight.

  There was some scratching and scuffling behind me, then I was hit by a shower of pine needles and bark. I prayed there were no loose pinecones up there. A moment later he had a tight hold on my ankles.

  I dared to look up at him. All I could tell was that he had somehow woven himself into the branches behind me and wrapped his arms around my legs.

  “Okay,” he grunted, “now, see if you can’t get your clothes free of that snag.”

  “Problem. My clothes aren’t all that’s caught.”

  He was silent for a moment, then murmured something under his breath. “What can I do, Colleen?”

  “A knife,” I said. “Mine’s in my boot. Little hard to reach just now. If I cut the jacket away from the branch, might help.”

  “Okay, hang on.”

  The branches creaked and groaned, I felt him fumble with my boot. A moment later something hit the ground.

  “Shit,” he said, then, “Sorry. I guess you’ll have to make do with mine. Reach up toward me. I’m going to slip the knife into your hand, hilt first.”

  I reached. He got his knife into my palm without cutting either of us. It was smaller than mine-lighter. The handle was held together with duct tape. I prayed the tape would hold. I slipped the blade into the torn fabric at my waist and sliced.

  The fabric slit so easily it caught me by surprise. I shot downward-only a few inches. There was a muffled snap and pain shot around my rib cage. I went cold all the way to the bone. It couldn’t be a broken rib-it couldn’t.

  “Colleen?”

  “It’s okay,” I panted, chasing the quivering, icy feeling out of my chest with hot determination. “I just slipped.”

  “I’ve got you,” he said. “I won’t let you fall. Try to get free.”

  I bit my lip and started hacking at the jacket. Finally, it slit all the way to the hem and fell away from the snag. I pushed gently on the broken branch; something tugged and my side shrieked.

  “Oh, shit,” Goldie said.

  I didn’t want to look. I had to look.

  “I can’t see,” I said. Stars danced in front of my eyes; I fought blackness.

  “Don’t look. You’ve got a splinter in your side.”

  I almost laughed. A splinter. How mundane. I pulled my head up so I could see. I was a mess. The good news was that I hadn’t impaled myself on the main branch, but on a shard about two fingers thick. I could see the bloodied tip angling out over my ribs. The bad news was that the other end was still attached to the branch.

  “Give me the knife,” Goldie said.

  “Goldman, if I give you the knife, how are you going to hold onto me?”

  “Good point.” He shifted his grasp on my legs.

  I shuddered as the splinter twisted in my side.

  “Damn! Sorry. Okay, now give me the knife.” I felt him take careful hold of the blade. “Let go.”

  I did, and gladly.

  “This will no doubt hurt like hell,” he informed me. “Are you ready?”

  “Jeez, Goldman-what a question. No, I’m not ready. Cut the damn thing.”

  A kitchen knife is crappy for sawing wood. It took him several agonizing minutes to saw through the thing. I bit my lip, ground my teeth, growled, and panted like a dog. The splinter broke free of the tree in one final twist of agony.

  Oh, God, I thought, as the swirling specks of light gathered behind my eyes, I’m going to pass out. But I didn’t pass out-not just then. I passed out when Goldman, having lowered me as far as he could without falling, let go of my feet. I came down on my back in a shower of needles and bark and an explosion of pain.

  When I woke, there was icy water dribbling into my face. “Drink,” he said.

  I obeyed, taking the squeeze bottle out of his hands. As I guzzled water, he said, “I thought about trying to extract that thing while you were out, but I couldn’t tell how bad it was.”

  “You’re not a doctor, so I’d just as soon you didn’t try to play one.”


  “Yeah, well, I did manage to pull out some of the little bits and I cleaned around the wound and, um, put sort of a poultice on it. But Doc is going to have to perform the miracle today. I’m plumb out.”

  “Getting late,” I observed.

  He nodded, looking around at the striping of shadow and sunlight.

  “Help me up.”

  Getting vertical was hell. Walking was hell. Racing sunset was hell. I did not want to escape the clutches of some stupid pine tree only to become tweak chow.

  At first I tried to be stoic and self-reliant, but by the time we reached the outskirts of Grave Creek, shadows were long, the sunlight was a tired red, and Goldman was practically carrying me.

  When we reached the water tower, a cart came out to get us. I was so bloody glad to be off my feet, I nearly cried. Once we were settled in the cart, my side didn’t seem to hurt so bad. In fact, it felt sort of tingly. I rolled my head along the rail of the cart to get a look at the wound, wondering what kind of poultice he’d put on it.

  Goldman had his hand over it, as if to keep me from seeing how bad it was. The expression on his face was tight and dark. What did he think-that he could pull the damn thing out with his eyes? A snide and indignant order for him to get his hands off me popped into my head, then fizzled. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t hurting me any. Just felt sort of tingly.

  I rolled my head back the other way, gazing out over the rear of the cart toward the blanket of trees. Among the slanting shadows floated several pairs of ruddy embers.

  I’d’ve refused a general anesthetic if they’d offered me one. But Doc gave me a local instead, then got to work cleaning and stitching. It was not a painless procedure. I meditated on packing my saddlebags, saddling and bridling my horse, and taking a trail into the Adirondacks. And I wondered what Goldman was telling Cal.