Hidden Things (14 page)

Calliope's brow creased. “Dragons, I guess. Boogeymen are just . . . scary; they don't look like anything.”

“Which is why they're still scaring the crap out of little kids, but you don't have dragons burning towns down.” He gestured out the window with the rolled-up newspaper. “You look out there and you see cars and trucks and highways; there's nothing magical in this world anymore—that's the nature of the people who control it.” He looked at Calliope, then back to the window. “The things that don't match, the things that stand out”—he made a gesture with his hand—“they go away.”

“They die out.”

“Didn't say that.” Vikous turned his attention to his own gloved hand. “This has been going on a long time. As a general rule most of the things we're talking about aren't very stupid; even trolls and goblins can learn to hide, but it's harder for them because most people would see a goblin and say ‘oh dear, that's a goblin.' Being easily recognizable doesn't help when you're trying to keep your head down.”

“So ‘go away' means hide.”

“Usually.” He gestured, his eyes still following his hand. “For some of them, a long time ago, going away meant literally going someplace that's . . . Else. They had the trick of how to do it, the rest didn't, and now they're gone. They don't come back, ever, so none of the rest of us really know anything about it.” He dropped his hand in his lap. “Mostly though, yeah, they hide.” He looked up. “Some of them have names, and some of them never did: any things that could pass among people without getting noticed pretty much did exactly that.”

Calliope raised an eyebrow. “So . . . every hobo clown touring around the country is a . . . whatever you are, hiding in plain sight? That's—”

“Whoa. No.” Vikous frowned. “I don't think any of us—well, most of us—have ever been that numerous. In my case, what you're thinking of is a culture that built up, was built up a long time ago, on purpose, as camouflage. We passed ourselves off as entertainers and spawned imitators that we could then be mistaken for. I don't know what to tell you I am because we're always something else; fitting into the gaps has been our nature for so long we don't even exist as ourselves anymore. Even those who know about us call us by different names.” His gaze returned to the highway. “It's a good trick, but compared to some folks I'm an amateur. There are things that can live in cracks and shadows, feeding on the prickles on your neck that you get when you walk back to your car at night.”

“You have to know how crazy ‘monsters hide among us in plain sight' sounds,” Calliope replied.

“You're oversimplifying things.” Vikous looked at the newspaper in his hand. “It's not just . . .” He unrolled the paper, flipped through to the center, then folded it back on itself twice. “Here. This.”

Calliope glanced at the paper, then back to the road, frowned, and looked again. The spot Vikous indicated with one pointing finger was a perfect square of random letters on the puzzles page. “Yeah . . . I don't get it.”

Vikous nodded as though he'd expected her answer, then passed his hand over the page. Halfway through the movement he stopped and looked at her.

She glanced back at him. “What?”

“I'm going to do something.” His voice was quiet. “One of the weird things I do.”

Calliope pursed her lips. “Should I pull over or something?”

“Just don't freak out and drive off into the ditch.” Vikous pointed at the page. “This is how the world works.” He shook the paper just enough to make the pages rattle. To Calliope it seemed the letters in the puzzle shifted more than the paper had, as though they'd been jostled loose. “Basically a big jumble of stuff—so much stuff that you have to really concentrate just to find the things that you're
expecting
to find.” He gestured, and the letters seemed to draw back from certain combinations within their midst. Watching out of the corner of her eye, Calliope saw words like
work, family, vacation,
and
car payments
tumble together, then fall back into the mix.

“Okay.” She swallowed, working the muscles of her jaw.

Vikous didn't notice; his black eyes were focused entirely on the page he held. “The thing is, when all you're looking for are the words on the list—the stuff you're expecting—you miss other things sitting right in front of you.” His hand waved, and the words on the page crawled again, cringing away from
troll, witch,
and
monster.

“Okay.” Calliope tilted her head. “Put it that way, it makes a kind of sense; still seems like people would
notice
.”

“It happens. Sometimes. But there are lots of things out there that are even better at hiding than this; they write their names upside down and backwards to make them even harder to see.” He looked down at the page again. “Then there's me.”

“Yeah?” Calliope asked. “What do you do?”

Vikous held up the paper where she could see:

 

C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N

C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N

C L O W N C L O W N V I K O U S C L O W N C L O W N

C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N

C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N C L O W N

 

She snorted a short laugh. “Nice.”

He gestured out the window. “Mostly, people don't want to know this stuff—given any kind of explanation that
doesn't
involve flying cauldrons and trolls hiding under bridges, they'll swallow it, even if tastes funny.” He grimaced, his face twisting in ways that were difficult to watch. “The real pain is the power of belief makes it—” He shook his head. “That's for later.”

The interior of the Jeep was silent for a time. Outside, the city slowly pulled back from the sides of the highway and slid to the rear window of the vehicle, taking the afternoon with it.

“That's . . .” Calliope began, but shook her head. “That doesn't really tell me anything about what happened to Josh or why we're driving into the middle of nowhere or why you're involved in this.”

Vikous tilted his head back, resting it on the seatback. “I'm involved in this because I said I would be, and for now you're just going to have to take that for whatever you want because I don't have anything else.” He looked at her for a reaction, but she gave him none, and he turned back to face the front window. “The rest is more complicated.”

Calliope gave Vikous a glance. “Try.”

His expression grew resigned. “Okay . . . there are places that are easy for us to hide. Forests aren't what they used to be, but you can still get lost in one if you try hard enough.” He paused. “Understand that I'm mostly talking about the lands I know about . . . you go into another land, there are different rules. These are the rules here, right?” Calliope nodded and Vikous continued. “So you've got forests and caves and sewers and dark alleys and mountain ravines and things like that, where it's . . . where hiding is easy. Easi
er,
anyway.” His lip curled up just a bit above a jagged eyetooth. “The home of the stupid and lazy.”

“Says the thing that survives by pretending to be a homeless clown.”

Vikous scowled. “I don't know a lot of trolls that could stand in the middle of the sidewalk next to a city park and have a conversation with a kid's mom while she apologizes for her kid thinking he's scary.”

Calliope pursed her lips. “Okay, good point.”

“She took a flower from me, on top of—”

“I got it, you're amazing. I give, please move on.”

Vikous started to say something further, but gave up. “Anyway, those are the easy places. The things you find in places like that are mostly harmless.”

“Mostly.”

He made a face. “Crossing the street is dangerous if you don't know how to look for traffic, or if you don't pay attention.” He glanced at her and continued. “What's more dangerous are the things that can hide in places where the hiding is hard. They're smarter and a lot more ruthless.” He gestured broadly out the front window of the Jeep. “We're headed into the worst part of it.”

“We're heading to Iowa.” Calliope's voice was flat. “Nothing magical happens in Iowa.”

Vikous seemed to ignore her, but paced his voice carefully. “People's disregard made it possible to slip whole sections of the land out of view, like cutting off swatches for a patchwork quilt. The Hidden Lands.” He paused. “Gluen mentioned 'em. What they left behind is what you remember: empty, boring chunks of landscape between two mountain ranges.”

“The Midwest.” Calliope's voice went from flat to scornful. “The last magical thing that happened there was about ten years ago, the summer of my sixteenth birthday, when I left, and it wasn't
good
magical. You're saying I managed to miss some secret kingdom?”

“You didn't miss anything.” Vikous paused. “Well, okay, a few things, yes, but not the parts I'm talking about. The Hidden Lands aren't
there
to be seen in the first place.” His voice sounded as though he were repeating something memorized. “Somewhere between the back of your mind and the corner of your eye, just beyond the edge of hearing—that's where the hidden things have gathered for years, finding their way there when the world got too hard for them, or too small, or too lonely.” He looked at her. “That's the business that White got pulled into.”

“What? Why?”

His black eyes gave no hint of his thoughts. “It would have been his choice. That's pretty much all I know.” He hesitated, then, softly: “What did
he
tell you?”

Calliope didn't answer immediately, though she'd heard him clearly enough. “He said he was trying to save someone.” Her voice was shaky. “And that they'd killed him. But he didn't say why.”

Vikous shook his head. “I don't—” He glanced out the side window again and frowned. “How long did you plan to drive tonight?”

Calliope shrugged. “I can go for a while. We got started late and I wanted to get some distance before we stopped.” She glanced at him. “Why?”

Vikous settled back and adjusted his seat to give himself more room. “Someone's following us.”

Calliope swore and checked her rearview. “Which one?”

Vikous wriggled his shoulders, trying to get comfortable. “I don't know by the lights—I can feel it.” He glanced across at Calliope. “ ‘Unfriendly regard', remember?” He settled his head back. “We'll have to do something about them when we stop.” He pulled his hood up and slightly over his eyes. “Don't worry about it now; they aren't going to try anything out here.”

“What do we do when we stop?”

“We'll see.” He shifted in the seat. “Wake me up when you get close to where you want to stop. I need to rest up.”

After that, there was only silence.

9

THE RADIO WAS
playing “Dead Man's Party” when Vikous lifted his head. It was hours past full dark, and the highway wound slowly into the foothills of the mountains.

“How we doin'?” he asked, his voice still muffled by sleep.

“Fine,” Calliope replied. Vikous glanced up at her curt reply but said nothing and slowly readjusted his seat, rubbing at his eyes with a gloved hand.

“Are they still back there?” she asked.

He blinked at her, glanced over his shoulder, then settled back in his seat, inhaling through his nose with a loud and ungraceful snort while flop-shaking his head from side to side. Calliope looked at him askance. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I don't wake up very fast.” She remained silent, and he turned his attention to the side window through which only darkness and the occasional house light could be seen. His head tilted slightly to the left as he stared out the window, as though listening.

Finally, he relaxed back into the seat. “Yep, still there.” He almost sounded satisfied. “Closer than they were before, actually.”

“Great,” Calliope said, her voice flat.

He looked at her, underlit by the dashboard lights. “What's the matter?”

Her expulsion of breath was equal parts astonishment and anger. “Oh nothing: ‘We're being followed, Calliope, drive for a while so I can catch up on my no-one-could-call-it-beauty sleep.' The hell have I got to be
bothered
by?” She glared at the dark road ahead of her.

Vikous said nothing immediately, then: “What would you like me to tell you?”

Calliope's eyes widened. “What . . .” She made a visible effort to keep her hands firmly on the wheel. “All right, how about telling me who's back there and what they want.”

Vikous watched her, his expression bemused. “I'm not sure.”

“I'm . . .” Even in the pale green light of the dashboard, Calliope's face seemed to grow darker. “I'm really getting tired of that answer.”

“Sorry, but that's how it is.” He turned back to watching the oncoming road. “They could be waiting to grab us or kill us the next time we stop or they could just be watching us. It really doesn't matter.”

“How could that not matter?”

“Where we're going, we don't want to be grabbed, killed,
or
watched. Any of those options and probably a half-dozen more are equally bad.”

“And the obvious answer to this looming threat is a quick nap?” She made half of a raised-hand gesture from her grip on the wheel. “You've convinced me. Truly, your ways are mysterious.”

He adjusted his position. “I was getting ready for what's coming up. I don't have any pepper spray, so—”

“It's in the back.”

Vikous paused. “You packed it?”

“I didn't think I'd need it right away. Can we get to it? Will it help?”

“Probably.” Vikous considered it for a second. “Probably it would help, I mean.” He shook his head. “We can't get to it by the time we'd need it. It takes time.”

Calliope's jaw was tight. “So that would be a drawback to your magical car-packing ability, then.”

“Looks like. Don't worry, we'll be fine.”

She favored Vikous with a dark look.

Vikous raised a hand in a warding gesture at her sour expression. “We can get this over quick; go ahead and pull over at the next motel sign you see.” He fished in his pockets. “The older and more beat-up, the better.”

 

It was six more miles before the Jeep pulled into the gravel parking lot of a roadside motel—a long, narrow brick building that looked like nothing so much as a stretched shoebox with a too-large lid for a roof, facing a loose-gravel parking lot that looked like it could swallow cars whole. Although it had been built over a half century ago, Calliope didn't honestly think the place had seen better days; she guessed it had been an ugly and unwelcoming last choice of travelers since the day it had opened. It was a nothing sort of place—the kind that grew up like fungus in out-of-the-way corners—and she'd seen thousands like it.

“Perfect,” Vikous said. “Pull up in front of twenty-three.”

Far beyond any sort of calm or rational comment, Calliope complied, shutting off the engine and killing the headlights as they rolled to a stop. Vikous immediately got out, swinging his ridiculous shoes to the ground as though he had not spent over four hours in a cramped vehicle. Calliope followed.

Vikous was already close to the door labeled 23. Something glinted in his hand under the illumination of the lot's single light. The metal-on-metal jingle helped Calliope identify it as a key.

“Where did you—” she began, but stopped as he reached for the doorknob and a light came on behind the thinly curtained windows of that very room. Vikous didn't seem to notice, and she hurried up alongside him. “Someone's inside,” she whispered, but Vikous only glanced at her, his mouth set in a grim smile.

“I suppose there might be,” he said, his voice low and taut. She could see sweat beading on his paste-white forehead as he wrestled the key back and forth in the lock. After a few moments, he let out a deeply held breath, gave a final turn, and withdrew the key. The old, diamond-shaped plastic tag hanging from it did not match the darkened sign near the road.

“No luck?”

“We'll see.” He headed down along the concrete slab that fronted the motel, moving away from the light of the lobby. “C'mon,” he called without looking back. The light in room 23 remained on.

Vikous stepped around the corner at the end of the building and stopped, glancing back toward the Jeep and the highway as Calliope walked past him, the truncated black shaft of an unopened police baton in her hand. Vikous spared it a bare glance, then turned back as a nondescript car pulled into the lot, heading for the Jeep.

“They're going to know we're around here. The Jeep's right there and we're not in that room,” Calliope said.

“Good thing, too,” Vikous replied, his voice slow and almost amused. “Because here they come.”

The car pulled up. Four doors opened. Four large figures got out. Three of them slid things into the night air that gleamed and looked long and sharp in the bare lighting.

“Definitely not here to watch,” Vikous whispered.

They descended on the door quickly and efficiently. One of them—the one not holding a sword—stepped to the center. Calliope could barely make out a few strident spoken tones from the group. Vikous smiled.

“Oh, very good,” he whispered. “You're very good, aren't you?” His eyes were looking down and away from the figures, all his attention on listening. “Here we go . . .”

With the last spoken syllable, the door opened, spilling cheap golden light onto the walk and the front of Calliope's Jeep. The four moved inside so quickly that they barely seemed to cast shadows. The lot echoed with the slam of the motel room door.

The light in the window went out.

Calliope waited, noticing that Vikous's smile was back and spreading too far to look normal.

She squinted at the room, but couldn't make out anything. No lights. No sounds. The door remained shut. Vikous looked back at Calliope, the sweat on his face and his smile making him look like an exhausted but satiated demon clown, which she thought might be a fairly accurate summation of what he actually was.

“Good motel you picked,” he said, his voice pitched at a normal volume. “Real shame we can't stay.” He headed back to the Jeep, only glancing at the door to 23 once, a strange smirk on his face.

“You're going to explain what just happened,” Calliope said from behind him as she walked.

“You kidding?” he said, almost to himself. “I'm going to be talking about this for
years
.”

 

“Reality is like carpet,” Vikous said as they pulled out of the parking lot. They'd checked over the other car for anything that might have indicated their followers' identity and Calliope, who had worked at just that sort of activity for several years, had found nothing that gave her any clues. The vehicle was a nondescript rental with no paperwork inside, not even proof of insurance, which meant that its absence was probably deliberate. If Vikous had noticed anything, he wasn't sharing.

“In some places,” he continued, “special places, it stays nice and fresh and solid, practically like new for all intents and purposes—sometimes even normal people recognize a spot like that—maybe make a holy place out of it.” His expression was unreadable. “In other places it wears down. Even then, the . . . carpet usually remakes itself; it builds its own inherent strength back up from the energy of the same living that's wearing it down—it's not new anymore, not like those really good places, but there's nothing wrong with it. Most places are like that.” He gestured out the window and back, vaguely in the direction of the already-invisible motel. “Then you've got the opposite effect.” He jingled the old motel key. “Places where there's no . . . soul, I guess . . . behind the living that goes on in a place. The carpet wears down to paper thin.”

“That's very feng shui,” Calliope interrupted. “Where did the bad guys go?”

Vikous shrugged. “I don't—” he began, but cut himself off at a warning look from Calliope. “Ahh, see, a magician's not supposed to give away his secrets, but basically what I did was shred what was left of the carpet.”

Calliope frowned. “So they just . . . what? Fell through?”

Vikous shook his head. “I had to have it all
go
somewhere; just ripping open a hole would have been . . . bad.”

Calliope cast him a glance. “Bad?”

“The stuff under the carpet isn't exactly friendly.”

“Cute. So where'd they go?”

“It's a very inexact thing. They went somewhere like the place they'd just left—a motel like that, probably, but somewhere else—maybe not even realizing they were in the wrong place right away, except they probably did
not
all end up in the same place.” He smirked. “Seriously, and don't hit me, I don't know.”

Calliope nodded, feeling oddly calm. “So they could be ahead of us.”

Vikous waved his hand in a broad gesture. “They could be lots of places, so yeah, they might be ahead of us, but if they aren't following us, we don't have to worry about them.”

“At least for a while,” Calliope said. “We couldn't have just broken their kneecaps and left them behind?”

Vikous glanced at her, his expression tired. “We'll have plenty of chances to fight. Usually we won't have a choice one way or the other, so I like to take advantage of it when we do. Besides”—he shifted in his seat—“at least one of them was real good. It's better that we didn't have to deal with them.” He looked out the front window at the oncoming lights of a small exit-ramp town and pulled up his hood. “You hungry? I'm starving.”