Blood of Amber (5 page)

Several small items, hard and of sufficiently low mass, recommended themselves to my lightning search.
 
I seized upon one, tore it free of whatever held it and called it to me.

A wordless impulse of startlement reached me at the same time as the rushing mass and the return of my Logrus summoning.

It burst about me like fireworks: flowers, flowers, flowers.
 
Violets, anemones, daffodils, roses.
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
I heard Flora gasp as hundreds of them rained into the room.
 
The contact was broken immediately.
 
I was aware that I held something small and hard in my right hand, and the heady odors of the floral display filled my nostrils.

“What the hell,” said Flora, “happened?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered, brushing petals from my shirtfront.
 
“You like flowers? You can have these.”

“Thanks, but I prefer a less haphazard arrangement,” she said, regarding the bright mound that lay at my feet.
 
“Who sent them?”

“A nameless person at the end of a dark tunnel.”

“Why?”

“Down payment on a funeral display, maybe.
 
I’m not sure.
 
The tenor of the whole conversation was somewhat threatening.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d help me pick them up before you go.”

“Sure,” I said.

“There are vases in the kitchen and the bathroom.
 
Come on.”

I followed her and collected several.
 
On the way, I studied the object I had brought back from the other end of the sending.
 
It was a blue button mounted in a gold setting, a few navy blue threads still attached.
 
The cut stone bore a curved, four-limbed design.
 
I showed it to Flora and she shook her head.

“It tells me nothing,” she said.

I dug into my pocket and produced the chips of stone from the crystal cave.
 
They seemed to match.
 
Frakir stirred slightly when I passed the button near her, then lapsed again into quiescence, as if having given up on warning me about blue stones when I obviously never did anything about them.

“Strange,” I said.

“I’d like some roses on the night table,” Flora told me, “and a couple of mixed displays on the dresser.
 
You know, no one’s ever sent me flowers this way.
 
It’s a rather intriguing introduction.
 
Are you sure they were for you?”

I growled something anatomical or theological and gathered rosebuds.

Later, as we sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and musing, Flora remarked, “This thing’s kind of spooky.”

“Yes”.

“Maybe you ought to discuss it with Fi after you’ve talked with Random.”

“Maybe.”

“Speaking of whom, shouldn’t you be calling Random?”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, ‘maybe’? He’s got to be warned.”

“True.
 
But I’ve a feeling that being safe won’t get any questions answered for me.”

“What do you have in mind, Merle?”

“Do you have a car?”

“Yes, I just got it a few days back.
 
Why?”

I withdrew the button and the stones from my pocket, spread them on the table and regarded them again.
 
“It just occurred to me while we were picking up flowers where I might have seen another of these.”

“Yes?”

“There is a memory I must have been blocking, because it was very distressing: Julia’s appearance when I found her.
 
I seem to recall now that she had on a pendant with a blue stone.
 
Maybe it’s just coincidence, but “

She nodded.
 
“Could be.
 
But even so, the police probably have it now.”

“Oh, I don’t want the thing.
 
But it reminds me that I didn’t really get to look over her apartment as well as I might have if I hadn’t had to leave in a hurry.
 
I want to see it again before I go back to Amber.
 
I’m still puzzled as to how that—creature-got in.”

“What if the place has been cleaned out? Or rented again?”

I shrugged.
 
“Only one way to find out.”

“Okay, I’ll drive you there.”

A few minutes later we were in her car and I was giving her directions.

It was perhaps a twenty-minute drive beneath a sunny late-afternoon sky, stray clouds passing.
 
I spent much of the time making certain preparations with Logrus forces, and I was ready by the time we reached the proper area.

“Turn here and go around the block,” I said, gesturing.
 
“I’ll show you where to park if there’s a place.”

There was, close to the spot where I’d parked on that day.

When we were stopped beside the curb she glanced at me.
 
“Now what? Do we just go up to the place and knock?”

“I’m going to make us invisible,” I told her, “and I’m going to keep us that way till we’re inside.
 
You’ll have to stay close to me in order for us to see each other, though.”

She nodded.

“Dworkin did it for me once,” she said, “when I was a child.
 
Spied on a lot of people then.” She chuckled.
 
“I’d forgotten.”

I put the finishing touches to the elaborate spell and laid it upon us, the world growing dimmer beyond the windshield as I did.
 
It was as if I regarded our surroundings through gray sunglasses as we slipped out the passenger side of the car.
 
We walked slowly up to the corner and turned right.

“Is this a hard spell to learn?” she asked me.
 
“It seems a very handy one to know.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” I said.
 
“Its biggest drawback is that you can’t just do it at a moment’s notice if you don’t have it hanging ready-and I didn’t.
 
So, starting from scratch, it takes about twenty minutes to build.”

We turned up the walk to the big old house.

“Which floor?” she asked me.

“Top.”

We climbed to the front door and found it locked.
 
No doubt they were more particular about such matters these days.

“Break it?” Flora whispered.

“Too noisy,” I answered.

I placed my left hand upon the doorknob and gave Frakir a silent command.
 
She unwound two turnings of her coil from about my wrist, coming into view as she moved across the lock plate and slithered into the keyhole.
 
There followed a tightening, a stiffening and several rigid movements.

A soft click meant the bolt was drawn, and I turned the knob and pulled gently.
 
The door opened.
 
Frakir returned to bracelet-hood and invisibility.

We entered, closing the door quietly behind us.
 
We were not present in the wavery mirror.
 
I led Flora up the stairs.

There were soft voices from one of the rooms on the second floor.
 
That was all.
 
No wind.
 
No excited dogs.
 
And the voices grew still before we reached the third floor.

I saw that the entire door to Julia’s apartment had been replaced.
 
It was slightly darker than the other and it sported a bright new lock.
 
I tapped upon it gently and we waited.
 
There was no response, but I knocked again after perhaps half a minute and we waited again.

No one came.
 
So I tried it.
 
It was locked, but Frakir repeated her trick and I hesitated.
 
My hand shook as I recalled my last visit.
 
I knew her mutilated corpse was no longer lying there.
 
I knew no killer beast was waiting to attack me.
 
Yet the memory held me for several seconds.

“What’s the matter?” Flora whispered.

“Nothing,” I said, and I pushed the door open.

The place had been partly furnished, as I recalled.
 
The part that had come with it remained-the sofa and end tables, several chairs, a larger table-but all Julia’s own stuff was gone.
 
There was a new rug on the floor, and the floor itself had been buffed recently.
 
It did not appear that the place had been re-let, as there were no personal items of any sort about.

We entered and I closed the door, dropping the spell that had cloaked us as I began my circuit through the rooms.
 
The place brightened perceptibly as our magic veils faded.

“I don’t think you’re going to find anything,” Flora said.
 
“I can smell wax and disinfectant and paint...”

I nodded.

“The more mundane possibilities seem to be excluded,” I said.
 
“But there is something else I want to try.”

I calmed my mind and called up the Logrus-seeing.
 
If there were any remaining traces of a magical working, I hoped I could spot them in this fashion.
 
I wandered slowly then, through the living room, regarding everything from every possible angle.
 
Flora moved off, conducting her own investigation, which consisted mainly in looking under everything.
 
The room flickered slightly for me as I scanned at those wavelengths where such a manifestation was most likely to be apparent-at least, that was the best way to describe the process in this shadow.

Nothing, large or small, escaped my scrutiny.
 
But nothing was revealed to it.
 
After long minutes I moved into the bedroom.

Flora must have heard my sudden intake of breath, because she was into the room and at my side in seconds, and staring at the chest of drawers before which I stood.

“Something in it?” she inquired, reaching forward, then withdrawing her hand.

“No.
 
Behind it,” I said.

The chest of drawers had been moved in the course of purging the apartment.
 
It used to occupy a space several feet farther to the right.
 
That which I now saw was visible to its left and above it, with more of it obviously blocked to my sight.
 
I took hold of the thing and pushed it back to the right, to the position it had formerly occupied.

“I still don’t see anything,” Flora said.

I reached out and caught hold of her hand, extending the Logrus force so that she, too, saw what I saw.

“Why”-she raised her other hand and traced the faint rectangular outline on the wall-“it looks like a..., doorway,” she said.

I studied it-a dim line of faded fire.
 
The thing was obviously sealed and had been for some time.
 
Eventually it would fade completely and be gone.

“It is a doorway,” I answered.

She pulled me back into the other room to regard the opposite side of the wall.

“Nothing here,” she observed.
 
“It doesn’t go through.”

“Now you’ve got the idea,” I said.
 
“It goes somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Wherever the thing that killed Julia came from.”

“Can you open it?”

“I am prepared to stand in front of it for as long as I have to,” I told her, “and try.”

I returned to the other room and studied it once again.

“Merlin,” she said, as I released her hand and raised mine before me, “don’t you think this is the point where you should get in touch with Random, tell him exactly what has been happening and perhaps have Gerard standing next to you if you succeed in opening that door?”

“I probably should,” I agreed, “but I’m not going to.”

“Why not?”

“Because he might tell me not to.”

“He might be right, too.”

I lowered my hands and turned toward her.
 
“I have to admit you have a point,” I said.
 
“Random has to be told everything, and I’ve probably put it off too long already.
 
So here is what I would like you to do.
 
Go back to the car and wait.
 
Give me an hour.
 
If I’m not out by then, get in touch with Random, tell him everything I told you and tell him about this, too.”

“I don’t know,” she said.
 
“If you don’t show, Random’s going to be mad at me.”

“Just tell him I insisted and there was nothing you could do.
 
Which is actually the case, if you stop to think about it.”

She pursed her lips.
 
“I don’t like leaving you-though I’m not anxious to stay either.
 
Care to take along a hand grenade?”