MORTAL COILS (91 page)

Mr.
Mimes shook his head and arched his eyebrows. “I suggest you answer it.”

Robert
had a bad feeling about this, but he nonetheless did as he was told. “Hello?”

“That’s
weird. I didn’t even dial.” Eliot’s voice was on the other end. “Robert? Is
that you?”

“Uh,
yeah.” Eliot Post was the last person Robert thought would be calling him. He’d
never given him his number.

There
was a long pause on the other end.

“Eliot?
You still there?”

“I’m
here. Were you just with me a few minutes ago?”

Mr.
Mimes leaned closer, listening.

“There’s
no way I was with anyone a few minutes ago. Trust me on that. Are you in
trouble?”

“You
could say that. First things first, though. How did you get on this line? You,
or someone who looked a lot like you, gave me this phone. I just turned it on,
and you were on the other end.”

Mr.
Mimes held up a finger.

“Hang
on a sec,” Robert told Eliot.

“You
have been cloned,” Mr. Mimes explained. “Someone has copied you to such an
exacting detail that even your psychical artifacts were duplicated. This is the
only way to account for this other person . . . and the phone, which apparently
shares identical electronics.”

“How
is that possible?”

Mr.
Mimes shrugged. “It should not be. The two creatures I knew with such a talent
are both dead. Apparently though, one is not as dead as I believed,

which
gives rise to many interesting possibilities.” He gestured to Robert to return
to the conversation.

“What
kind of trouble are you in?” Robert asked.

“It’s
too much to explain over the phone. I had to ditch the car. It was running
funny anyway. I think they’re after me.”

Eliot
sounded scared, but not the kind of scared where you’re worried about your own
skin. Something else was going on.

“Wait.
Back up,” Robert said. “You were driving?”

“You
told me to—or rather some other Robert told me. I don’t know. It might have been
Louis.”

“Louis?
Louis Piper? With the other family?”

This
seemed to make sense to Mr. Mimes, because he nodded.

“I
think it was him,” Eliot replied. “So much happened so fast, and now Fiona’s
stuck in this other place.”

Fiona,
of course. If Eliot was in trouble, she had to be, too.

“Where
are you?”

“Ten
minutes south of a place called Last Sunset Tavern on Highway 1.”

“Okay.
Sit tight. I’ll be there as fast I can. Don’t call anyone else.”

Eliot
hesitated, then said, “Yeah . . . okay. Just hurry.”

Robert
hung up.

“If
either family is involved,” Mr. Mimes said, “you must make all due haste.”

“I
agree.” Robert held out his hand. “Give me your car keys. I’m going to have to
steal the Maybach.”

A
Cheshire cat grin appeared on Mr. Mimes’s face as he handed the keys to Robert.

There
was so much more Robert wanted to say to Mr. Mimes . . . mostly that he was
sorry for ever doubting him. But there was no time for that. Fiona and Eliot
were in a heap of trouble.

He
ran outside.

Robert
had never opened up the Maybach to find out exactly how fast she could go—but
he was about to find out.

70

DECIDED
WITH DICE

Eliot
sat on the edge of his seat. Robert decelerated the Maybach from its surreal
pace.

“That
driveway up there,” Eliot told him. “There were at least twenty guys with
knives and pistols.”

Robert—the
real Robert—nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off the road.

At
least, Eliot hoped this was the real Robert Farmington. He talked and moved
like Robert. He even radiated his usual tough-guy, supercool aura. And the very
first words out of his mouth when he had come for Eliot had been “Where’s
Fiona?”

Eliot
rested Lady Dawn on his lap. Could he use his music to kill again? The notion
chilled his blood.

In
self-defense, yes. To save Fiona . . . well, he’d already proven he could. He’d
never thought twice about playing Lady Dawn before . . . now he always would.

He
ran a finger over her polished wood grain. When he touched her, the pain in his
arm vanished. In fact, the fingers on that hand actually felt more limber.

The
other Robert—Louis—had seen his arm and the poison. What did he say?
Problematic . . . but fixable.

Robert
turned off the road and the Maybach’s fat tires crunched over the gravel
driveway of the Last Sunset Tavern.

“Here
we go,” Robert whispered.

The
place looked the same: a dozen Harleys and pickup trucks parked by the front
porch, and neon flickered inside the darkened tavern.

Eliot,
however, spotted a few critical differences. The front windows of the tavern
were busted. Bullet holes riddled the side of one pickup. He smelled smoke and
a curious whiff of brimstone.

Robert
eased open his door. “Stay here.”

Eliot
gave him a look. He had to be joking. If Eliot hadn’t been stopped by an
ancient crocodile, a guy who burst spontaneously into flames, or an air force
base full of guards . . . Robert wasn’t going to pull that “it’s too dangerous”
stuff on him now.

“Okay,
okay.” Robert shook his head. “Just keep behind me.” He got out, his gun in
hand.

Eliot
climbed out of the car and followed.

No
music played from the tavern. There wasn’t a single voice.

Robert
halted before the porch and stared at the gravel.

A
splash of semicongealed blood made a large arc across his path.

Robert
swallowed, glanced around, and continued on . . . but slower.

Eliot
skirted around the blood, trying not to look at it, but he failed, and his eyes
riveted on the spatters of crimson brown. He tore his gaze away—creeped out by
his fascination with the stuff.

Robert
held up one hand and paused in the doorway of the tavern. He ducked inside,
then eased back out. “It’s safe. No one’s home.”

65

Eliot
entered. Inside was eerily silent. All the lights were broken, save a few dim
lines of neon that still flashed. The tables and chairs were splinters. Oddly,
the bottles behind the bar were intact. There were even filled shot glasses on
the counter.

Had
Louis disguised as Robert done all this damage?

Eliot’s
eyes fixed upon a pair of dice on the bar. They looked like tiny rubies . . .
just like those Uncle Henry had made him toss at that first Council meeting.
Eliot’s fingers itched to touch them.

“Where’s
this room with the door?” Robert continued to look around as if someone, or
something, might pop out of the shadows.

“By
the bar.”

Robert
crept toward the kicked-in door. He shoved aside the mound of

65.
Although the crime scene at the Last Sunset Tavern (dubbed the Sunset Tavern
Massacre by the press) was destroyed by the riot that evening, the initial
police investigation discovered the remains of six individuals. One severed
finger matched the bouncer, a wanted felon. None of the patrons who matched the
registries of the parked vehicles were, however, ever found. Gods of the First
and Twenty-first Century, Volume 11: The Post Family Mythology, 8th ed.
(Zypheron Press Ltd.).

kegs
and boxes and bottles that Louis had pushed over. There was no trace underneath
of the three men that had come after them.

Robert
glanced over the back room, strode to the door with a shotgun blast in it, and
checked that it was still bolted. He then went into the freezer compartment,
came back out, and shut that door behind him, too.

“The
door was over here.” Eliot moved to the wall and ran his hand over the painted
bricks.

He
remembered how the disguised Louis had shoved Fiona through and slammed it shut
behind her. That valley had been subzero cold. Fiona could have hypothermia by
now.

Eliot
didn’t understand why Louis had done it. Was it to protect his sister from the
bar thugs? If so, why hadn’t he pushed Eliot through as well? But Louis had
given her his jacket beforehand, as if he were really concerned for her. It
didn’t add up.

“It’s
just bricks and paint now. But it was here.”

“I
know.” Robert slipped his gun into a holster. He stared at the door-knob on the
ground, looking scared to touch it.

Thankfully,
he didn’t ask how this could have been a real doorway. He believed Eliot. Of
course, working for Uncle Henry, he probably saw this stuff all the time.

And
yet, while Robert was far too cool to be what Eliot considered normal, he did
seem very human. It reassured Eliot to know a person could be exposed to this
craziness and be, more or less, a nice guy, unlike the rest of his family. They
were so cruel—and liars all.

“What’s
it like working for Henry?”

“What?”
Robert looked perplexed. “Now isn’t the time for this. We have to find a way to
get your sister back.”

Eliot
nodded, but he nonetheless asked, “I mean, is he a good person?”

Robert
sighed. “Yeah, he’s the best.” Emotions played over his face, then Robert
finally tore his gaze away from the doorway. “Really, he is. Most of the time I
can’t understand half of what he does or says—but he’s always been fair, even
nice, to me, and I guess he’s saved my skin more than once.”

Eliot
could tell there was a lot more that Robert wasn’t telling him, but he sensed
enough truth in what Robert said to be satisfied.

Eliot
turned his attention back to the doorway. He picked up the knob. It was solid
brass and mirror-polished. He stuck it back into the wall where it had been,
but nothing happened.

“When
it opened before, it looked like the door was stuck. It took a lot of strength
to get it open. Maybe it’ll take both of us.”

“I’ve
only heard about these things before.” Robert cautiously ran one finger along
the doorway’s edge. “It’s going to take a lot more than muscle to make it
work.”

“Like
what?”

Robert
shrugged. “Magic is more your department.”

Magic?
Grandmother had made sure to explain to him and Fiona that there was no such
thing. It was “the primitive mind’s misunderstanding of natural phenomena.”
That’s why she crossed out all those passages in their books . . . so their
reasoning wouldn’t be compromised.

But
what about all the things he had seen? Souhk? Mr. Millhouse? And how had he
called all those rats? Made the fire sing back to him? Conjured a fog full of
nightmares?

Maybe
Grandmother had forbidden all the folklore and fairy tales because they were
real. And dangerous.