Chapter 9
A stiff wind blew up out of the ravine behind the house and flung dust and dirt inside the carriage house. The light bulb swung crazily on its cord and the girls' hair whipped out straight from their heads.
"Did it work?" asked Alice. She was still standing in the remnants of the chalk circle. She held her arms out and turned slowly around.
Elizabeth crouched before her, holding onto the notebook and the dish of powder which responded to the wind as one might expect and tossed stinging bits of dust into her face. Her eyes watered fiercely and she pressed them closed. Alice's aura sprang into focus, solidly bright and sparkling. Elizabeth could detect nothing of the curse, even Miss Price's ward had vanished. For good measure, she looked around at the mummy, the car and the spell-casting gear. The mummy looked as cursed as ever, so did the car. The canopic jar glowed with a dull yellow light and the packet of leaves glowed green. Elizabeth opened her eyes and rubbed them. "Hey, these are all are intact. Miss Price could have let us use the scroll after all."
Another gust of wind banged the door of the carriage house against the wall and the cover on the well rattled again.
"So did it work?" Alice repeated. She hopped down off the trunk.
"Looks like it," said Elizabeth, not quite believing it. She closed her eyes and checked again. Alice's aura was definitely uniformly bright and sparkly. The packet of leaves in her own hand was still green, but her hands were not the same bright blue that they had been before.
"Oh no." Elizabeth looked down at her arm and watched with horror as the darkness of the curse reached out from the mummy and wrapped itself around her hands and feet. It snaked up her arms and legs. Skittering away from the mummy, she rolled off the trunk and hit the ground. She scrambled to her feet and ran straight away from the carriage house until she was brought up short by the garden wall.
"What's wrong?" asked Alice.
"The curse! It jumped onto me now. Oh no." She closed her eyes and held her hands up. The darkness threaded through the glowing blue streams in her aura. She looked like a big nasty bruise in the ethereal plane. She opened her eyes, still streaming from the dust, and found Alice staring at her with alarm.
"What should we do? Should we try the spell again?"
Elizabeth said, "No. No, I think that we should get away from the mummy. I think we should go inside and we should call Miss Price. Or find Thomas and ask him what to do. Or anything except more spells." Shaking, she leaned against the wall. Her shoulder throbbed where she had run it into the bricks and sent a dull ache down her back.
"Okay. I'll just lock up here and we'll go back inside." Alice spoke in soothing tones while she picked up the items Elizabeth had scattered in her rush to get away from the car and its contents. She put the canopic jar back in the back seat by the mummy and collected Dirk's candles and the bucket of sidewalk chalk. She handed the notebook and Thomas's notes to Elizabeth who clutched them against her chest as if they could slow her pounding heart to a calmer rate. Alice locked up the carriage house and they walked rapidly back across the lawn to the house.
The lid on the well rattled as they passed it.
"I wish it would stop doing that," said Alice. "That's just creepy."
In the kitchen, Alice set everything on the dinette and put the kettle on. "We'll have some nice, soothing tea. I have some good chocolates up in my room. You can have them all. I feel a lot better now that the curse is gone. It had me feeling like I was coming down with something, so I know how you must be feeling."
"Like hell?" Elizabeth sat down in one of the red vinyl chairs and examined the grimoire and Thomas's notes. Neither said anything about the curse jumping around.
Alice flitted about the kitchen, then ran upstairs to fetch her chocolates. Elizabeth knew the ones she was talking about. Joe had bought her a box of Belgian chocolate at the fancy chocolate store down the street from the bookstore. Alice had been nursing them along to make them last, even after she had given Joe the boot, or however that breakup had gone down.
Elizabeth leaned forward and rested her head on her arms. Something exhausting coursed through her. Not necessarily the curse, she told herself, it's been a long day and you're suggestible. It might just be fatigue. She closed her eyes, a bad idea because she could then perceive her aura and the blackness sliding around in it.
When the kettle began to rumble, she made a pot of tea, selecting not the soothing kind, but a fruity one that would suit the chocolate. While it steeped, she again reviewed the spell, but still she found nothing about jumping curses. She opened up the tissues wrapped around Alice's stolen leaves. The leaves were long and brown, almost as long as her hand and as wide as two fingers. She didn't recognize what kind of plant they might be from, but she never had learned more woodcraft than what had been forced upon her in Girl Scouts. The leaves had a tough, leathery texture and bent rather than broke, or else they would have been reduced to a powder by all the handling they had undergone since Alice had removed them from their resting place. She brought one of the leaves to her nose and sniffed it tentatively. It smelled of the mummy pit and the inside of Alice's pocket.
Alice came back downstairs and placed an artfully packaged box of chocolates on the table in front of her.
"Do you know what kind of leaves these are?" Elizabeth asked.
"No. I figured they might be something Egyptian. I was going to ask Thomas about them. He must have botany books in the library. I know he has books about birds. He's got one of those original Audubon ones? He showed me one day when we were arguing about some bird that we saw in the backyard." Alice sighed and poured herself a cup of tea. "You wouldn't think you could argue with somebody who can only communicate via Underwood, but he argued—argues with everything I ever say." She looked sadly at the old typewriter on the kitchen table and picked up some of the pages from the stack of used paper beside it.
"I hope the boys find Carl," Elizabeth said. "Maybe they'll find him tonight and set the police on him."
"If they do find him, we should call the police, but if the police won't give us back the portrait, then we won't be any better off. We'll have to get it back ourselves."
"You'd think the avatar of War would have a police record," Elizabeth said. "Can't you call Joe and see if he could find out? If they have a last known address or something, we could track him down that way."
"I guess I could do that. I thought about it, but I didn't want to call him." Alice picked up a piece of chocolate. "He was always getting annoyed with me asking him to find stuff out," she said around a mouthful of truffle. "On the other hand, it doesn't matter if he's annoyed with me now. I don't mind annoying him even more." She popped the rest of the chocolate into her mouth and went off in search of the phone.
"Right now?"
"Sure, why not? I think he's working anyway. This is the best time to call him."
Elizabeth heard half the conversation.
"Hi, it's me … What do you mean who? You know who this is. Oh, we're all fine, except for the break-in … No, I didn't break in anywhere. We got broken into. Somebody stole Thomas's portrait and we know who did it, but we can't find him … We can't just sit and wait for you all to find him. They're going to use him for some kind of sacrifice. By the time you guys find him, he'll just be a few little scraps of canvas and chips of gold paint off the picture frame … Well sure, it's Carl Morton. You know, Marla's brother? … But that's the problem, he's not in the phone book. But he must have a record, right? He does all kinds of illegal stuff … No, of course I don't have a record … Well, look him up for us? When you get a chance then. And call me. And, man, you better remember that I know where to find you."
The receiver clicked in the handset and Alice came back to the kitchen with triumph in her eyes. She said, "I think that went well."
The next morning, Dirk and Kevin rolled downstairs with bloodshot eyes and too late for Dirk to cook anything. Normally he made a full breakfast, but today they grabbed a box of cereal and ate it standing up in the kitchen, right out of the box, and washed it down with orange juice straight from the carton.
"Any luck?" asked Alice around a mouthful of toast.
Dirk shook his head. "No. The bar wasn't where it was last time, so we wasted a lot of time driving around to find it. And then when we did find it, they gave us hard time about letting us in."
"Not enough facial piercings," put in Kevin.
"But they eventually let us in anyway because nobody was there and they figured they might as well sell bad beer to the uncool. Anyway, Carl wasn't there. We asked around, but nobody had seen him since the last time the bar moved," Dirk said.
"You know," said Elizabeth, "that's not a really sound business model to be moving around so that even your regulars can't find you."
"What they lose in annoyed regulars, they more than make up for by tax evasion," said Kevin. "How did y'all's curse breaking work out?"
"Well, I am officially curse-free," announced Alice. "But the curse jumped onto Elizabeth so we have no net benefit. Hey, Dirk, you know about plants. Do you have any idea what kind of leaves these are?" She pointed to her stolen leaves, still resting on their bed of tissue.
Dirk took a swig of orange juice and leaned over the table. "Not offhand, no. They look like they're from the kind of plant you find in a bank lobby."
"I guess I could go by the garden center and see if they know," said Alice.
Kevin glanced at the kitchen clock, whence followed the usual Omigod-it's-that-late rush for the door. Dirk and Kevin had not returned home until two a.m. Dirk explained that the bar didn't have a last call, and they had waited around to see if Carl might turn up. Alice was the only one of them at all ready to deal with the day.
The cursed weighed down Elizabeth's limbs till she felt as though she were trying to force her way through solid lead. She found that by concentrating she could force the curse down around her feet, where it chilled her ankles.
The girls made it to the bookstore on time, but Miss Price was too preoccupied to notice. She called them an absent greeting from the office where she was studying the papers she'd removed from her nephew's laboratory. She didn't even notice the switching of the curse until Elizabeth wandered in to the office to add packing tape to the office supply shopping list.
At first Miss Price merely shoved the clipboard with the list in her general direction and didn't raise her eyes from the notebook she was reading, the one Elizabeth had given up on straightaway the night before. The scroll was still enmeshed in its poisonously green cage of wards.
"Uh, Miss Price," began Elizabeth, thinking that she should bring up the whole issue of the curse since it wasn't getting any attention on its own merits.
"Yes?" Miss Price looked up from the notebook. "Oh my, what happened to you?"
"Last night Alice and I tried to do that spell Thomas found for breaking a curse. It knocked the curse off Alice, but the mummy is still as cursed as ever and now I'm cursed too."
Miss Price pushed her glasses up on her forehead and leaned back in her chair. "And so you are. You seem to be doing an adequate job of keeping it at bay. I suppose I will have to take a look at the spell you attempted. There may be some way I can undo it without cursing Alice again. Or myself," she added.
"When?" asked Elizabeth. "Because I went sleepwalking last night and I'm still not getting the cool dreams like Alice did. Could you come over tonight? Or today during lunch?"
"This evening, I suppose," said Miss Price. "I should be able to pencil you in. You don't get any points for your timing, though. I'm still trying to get through all of these notes."
"Did you find out anything about the dig?"
"I've given up on that angle. I don't know. Alastair was at that dig and was quite a brat about it too, but nothing we found warrants his present interest. Now I'm looking over our uncle's notes on the restoration of the Egyptian Building, since Alastair mentioned it at the party. I wish I had the plans for the building."
"Wouldn't the city have them on file?"
"Yes, but I have a feeling that the plans my uncle filed with the city might not match the plans he actually used for the building. There might be some sketches in his notes, but with his handwriting it's taking me a devilish long time to get through them."
"Don't strain your eyes," Elizabeth said. "Oh, I almost forgot. Did Charlotte talk to you? She called yesterday evening and she said she was going to come by."
Miss Price frowned. "No, she didn't. Hah. I'll call her. Maybe she knows what Alastair is after." She picked up the phone and Elizabeth backed out of the office.
Alice waved Elizabeth over to the register. "Can you work down here for a little while? I saw Becky go into the shoe store. I'm going to try and get Carl's address out of her."
"You're not going to be invisible this time?"
"No, I couldn't find out anything that way, but I bet I can goad her into taunting me and spilling information."
"You are an excellent goad," Elizabeth said. She took her sister's place behind the cash register and leaned on the counter. Alice slipped out the door and out of sight. A few customers came up to the register and she didn't have a chance to monitor activity in the ether.
A short while later, Alice returned looking rather deflated and trying not to touch anything. "I can't believe it," she whispered to her sister. "I told her that we needed to talk to Carl and she'd better tell us where he was. And she threatened me with germs! She spat at me! I asked her if she'd given anybody food poisoning lately and she just laughed. I made fun of her hair, I made fun of the shoes. And I couldn't be annoying enough!"
"Hard to believe," said Elizabeth.
"Where's the hand sanitizer? I had to touch the door on the way out."
The rest of the day passed without event. Becky did not come over to harass them in the bookstore. Miss Price hid in her office and swore under her breath at her uncle's handwriting. Elizabeth dragged her feet around the stockroom and put books in boxes. By the time the hands of the clock crawled to five o'clock, she was lying on the floor in a scattering of styrofoam worms and examining the progress of the curse through her aura.
She was the first housemate back home that evening.
Except for maybe Bob, she thought when she stepped over the pile of mail lying inside the front door. He said he'd be around for awhile at least. She poked the pile of coats on the futon hopefully, but he wasn't under there. She sorted through the mail and dropped the advertisements into the wastebasket they kept by the front door. A creased piece of cardboard fell out of a circular and onto the floor.
It was the cardboard from a packet of Camel Lights. Wondering why the mailman was dropping litter through the mail slot, she picked it up to throw into the wastebasket.
Then she noticed that it was stamped.
The rest of the mail slipped from her hands to the floor. She looked at the cardboard more closely. It was addressed in smudgy pencil in a hand that made her heart leap. There was a note with an address which she guessed by the street name and house number to be in Jackson Ward. The note said,
I am here till the evening of the twentieth, when they will move me to some other location. Thus far, Carl has always been out until six-thirty. There are no housemates or dogs. Come up the alley to the back. I had a devil of a time getting this stamp. Always, Thomas
"That's tonight." Her hands shook. She threw her bag onto the futon and checked her watch. It was already five-thirty. She would need help moving the portrait; it was too large for her to carry on her own. Alice would not be back until after seven. Kevin and Dirk would not be in until six o'clock, unless they were meeting somewhere after work and then they'd be even later. For a half second she considered asking Trip to help her break into Carl's house, but she doubted he would go along with that and his car wasn't outside anyway. If Bob were home—
She ran up the stairs. If Bob was at home, and not so deep asleep that she couldn't wake him, she'd have an accomplice.
By the time she reached the third floor, she was breathing heavily. She slapped on the hallway lights and hurried to Bob's room. She knocked lightly as she pushed the door open. The bar of light containing her silhouette fell across the floor and onto the bed where Bob lay on his side with his back to the door. She could hear his deep, even breathing and he lay so still she wondered whether she could wake him. She approached the bed, clutching Thomas's note like a talisman.
"Bob?"
No response.
He drew another breath and his shoulder shifted slightly. In the dim light, she could see that he was wearing an ancient T-shirt, rendered tissue-thin by years of obsessive laundering, which clung to his sculpted shoulders. A sleeve fell back from an excellent bicep. The sheet and blanket were pushed down around his narrow waist. His curling hair lifted softly away from the nape of his neck. He fell still again.
He must be exhausted. She didn't have time for sympathy for the sleepy or for more ogling. She reached out and touched his shoulder. "Bob? I need you to wake up now."
He stirred slightly and she sat down on the edge of the bed at the small of his back. She shook his shoulder and this time he woke up enough to mumble her name.
"That's right, it's me," she said. "You have to wake up now. I know where Thomas is and we have to go get him."
Sputtering into semi-consciousness, he raised himself up on one elbow, but instead of opening his eyes, he wrapped an arm round her waist and swept her across him onto the bed. He curled up around her and rested his head on her shoulder.
Cozy. She sighed and raised her voice. "I mean it, Bob. Wake up. If you don't, I'll pinch you, or step on you, or put cold water on you."
That got his attention. He raised his head and looked at her, confused. "Elizabeth? Not that I mind, but what are you doing here?"
"Waking you up. We have to go get Thomas. I need your help, I can't lift that portrait myself." Holding up Thomas's note, she said, "I know where he is now. He sent us this postcard. They're moving him tonight and he'll only be there for another hour or so. You need to wake up."
"I'm awake, I'm awake." He sat up reluctantly and reached back to turn on the bedside lamp.
Elizabeth sat up too, leaning on one arm, the note clutched in her other hand. Her legs were draped across his lap and she allowed herself one intense, momentary pang of regret, that here she had a warm, cuddly man, all in bed and everything, and now instead of doing the logical thing, she was going to drag him across town to burgle a house. She held out the note and explained the situation while he rubbed his eyes and woke up a little more.
He took the note and read it. "What's this about the stamp?"
"He has a hard time getting stamps. He can't go to the post office and buy them. Anyway, we need to go right away. It's already after five-thirty."
"It's not a good idea. We can't go breaking into houses."
"We have no choice. Even if we called the police, they wouldn't get there in time or give us the portrait back. Besides, Carl broke into our house."
"It's a felony, I think," Bob said. He ran a hand through his hair and made it stand on end. "I thought you were supposed to be the good sister."
Looking deeply into his warm brown eyes, Elizabeth straddled him and put her hands on his shoulders. She leaned forward until her lips were almost touching his and purred, "That's what everyone thinks. Until they get to know us." Definitely awake now, he put his arms around her waist and drew her into a firm embrace.
When she broke away, regretfully, breathlessly, she whispered, "So?"
"Okay. This is insane, but okay," he murmured against her mouth.
"Good." She removed his arms from around her and crawled out of bed. "Get dressed and meet me downstairs. Do you know how to pick locks?"
Left opened-mouthed at the sudden shift in activity, Bob blinked, but caught up after a second and said, "Alice showed me once, but I think we should just break a window. It'll be faster."
"Fine." Elizabeth ran down to her room and change from her work clothes into something black. By now it was full dark outside. With any luck they'd be able to get Thomas without anybody seeing them. Who are you kidding? That portrait is over six feet long. Too bad we can't make it invisible. Ah!
She hurried down to the kitchen and dug the ring of invisibility out of the sugar bowl. The ring would make the wearer's clothes and anything under the clothes invisible. She could hardly fit Thomas's portrait under her sweatshirt, but on the coat tree she found a full length cloak which might suffice. She threw it over her shoulders and tied the cord at her throat.
Bob came down the stairs, pulling on a dark jacket and shaking his head. He was looking more awake, but also much more apprehensive. He balked when they went out the door and she started for her truck.
"We can't take that truck," he said.
"We have to. The portrait won't fit in your car."
"It's got sunflowers painted all over it. It's the most conspicuous get-away car I've ever seen."
"We don't have time to get it painted. Maybe we can throw the ring of invisibility over the turn signal thing and make it invisible. C'mon." She grabbed him by the hand and hauled him over to the truck. "Do you know where this address is? Marshall doesn't go through from East Marshall."
"No, we'll have to take the Leigh Street viaduct."
"Which is where?"
"Give me the keys. I'll drive."
She tossed him the keys and hopped into the passenger seat.
He ran around the truck and climbed in the driver's door. He had to adjust the seat back as far as it would go. "I know your legs are not this short," he grumbled.
"Oh?"
"I pay attention."
He pulled out and drove sedately through the neighborhood. She unconsciously punched her heel into the floor in an effort to make the truck go faster. Soon they were roaring across the Shockoe Valley on a high bridge, then through the backside of the medical college, and into Jackson Ward. Bob got confused on the one-way streets and then they had to find the alley. Elizabeth looked at the house numbers and counted the backs of houses until she was sure they were at the right address. The dead motorcycle in the backyard was a clue, but there were a number of dead vehicles back in the alley, so she kept her fingers crossed that she had counted correctly. It was nearly six-thirty.
They left the truck in the alley. When Bob took the keys out of the ignition, she asked, "Shouldn't we leave the engine running?"
"Not if we want it to be here when we get back," he said, pocketing the keys.
Elizabeth put the ring on and threw the cloak around Bob. He held it around his shoulders with one hand and tucked her under his arm. The cloak wasn't big enough for two. She was invisible, he was sort of invisible. Half a guy walking around is more conspicuous than a whole guy walking around. They scuttled through the shadows.
The house they approached was dark and decayed. A gutter dangled askew from the eaves and an upstairs window was smashed out. Beneath it, a desultory heap of glass attempted to glitter, but could only muster a dull gleam. In contrast, rectangles of yellow light spilled out into the backyards of the houses on either side. To the left, she could see someone moving around in a kitchen. On the right, a dog on the back porch lifted his head briefly, let out a lackadaisical woof, and put his head back down on his paws.
They trod up the porch steps carefully, more for fear of rotten boards than noise. Shadowed by the porch roof, they were invisible enough. Elizabeth slipped the ring off her thumb and Bob handed her the cloak. She put it back on, because it was easier to wear than carry.
The glass window in the back door had bars across it, but the door didn't have a deadbolt. He looked around on the porch for something to break the window. He didn't have many options, but found pieces of the motorcycle heaped on a dead recliner, damp and smelling of mildew. He picked up a dense, greasy object and approached the door. He paused. "Unless you want to do it?" He held the piece of metal out to Elizabeth. "Since you're the bad sister."
"That's okay."
Bob raised his arm. The door swung inward.
"Elizabeth! God, love, did you think I wouldn't let you in?" Thomas appeared in the doorway and looked past Bob.
"I'm here." She slipped in beside him.
"This is it?" asked Bob.
"Yes."
Bob followed her in. The house was even more derelict on the inside. The kitchen smelled of rotting garbage and patches of the linoleum floor were peeling themselves away to freedom. When Elizabeth tripped on one such jaunty piece, Bob caught her elbow and set her back upright.
Thomas led them back into the front room of the house which should have been a parlor, but was being used as a bedroom. On the floor in one corner, a table lamp formed a warm island in the gloom. An opened sofa bed was shoved up against one wall, sheets and blankets wadded up on the bare mattress. A TV stood in another corner. Thomas's portrait leaned up against the fireplace. It appeared to be undamaged, although Elizabeth could see where some of the gilt plaster had been knocked off the frame.
Thomas started to speak, but as he turned toward Elizabeth, he broke off and cried, "What happened to you?" He pushed the hood of the cloak back from her face and looked at her with growing alarm.
"You mean the curse? I tried that spell to get the curse off Alice and it didn't quite work."
"Oh … I didn't mean for you to try that spell alone. I didn't think you would be able to channel that kind of power," Thomas said, then asked curiously, "What happened to Alice?"
"She's fine. She's totally back to normal."
Thomas appeared impressed, till he considered what that meant. "And the mummy?"
"Still cursed."
"Hey, Elizabeth, burgle now, talk later." Bob held up a nasty piece of fabric that had been laid on the sofa bed. It was the Velvis. "Do we want Dirk's thing?"
"No," said Thomas.
"No," said Elizabeth. "Euw. It looks like he's been using it for a snot rag."
"Worse than that," said Thomas.
"Drop it."
Bob dropped it and rubbed his hand on his jeans. "Then let's just get out of here." Bob picked up the portrait . Since he couldn't see around it, Elizabeth helped guide him through the house. Thomas hung close at her heels, wincing every time Bob banged the frame against a wall and knocked more plaster off, which was unavoidable given the narrowness of the hallway.
"Couldn't they have cursed you into something more portable? Like a cameo?" Bob grunted.
They hurried out the back door, leaving it open behind them, and down the steps and across the yard without mishap. The dog next door only banged his tail on the porch when they walked past. Elizabeth put down the tailgate of her truck and hopped up in the back. Bob set the portrait down, leaning it against the tailgate and then tilting it up into the truck bed. Elizabeth guided her end past the wheel wells. The portrait had to lie at an angle because it was wider than the truck bed.
Over Bob's shoulder, Elizabeth saw a pair of headlights appear at the far end of the alley. "Look out, there's someone coming."
Bob quickly shoved the portrait the rest of the way into the truck. It was too long for them to shut the tailgate. "Can you tie it to anything?"
Carl's red SUV pulled to a stop right behind the truck and jumped out, leaving the engine running.
"Stop, thieves!" he shouted.
Bob ran around the truck and jumped in. He started the engine and stomped on the accelerator. The sudden spinning of the wheels sent gravel and dirt spraying back at Carl. The truck sprang forward and Elizabeth fell to her knees. Reaching over the side of the truck, she grabbed hold of Thomas and hauled him in beside her as Bob slithered out of the alley.
With each burst of speed, the portrait slid a few more inches out the open tailgate. Elizabeth scrabbled around for a tie-down and looped it through the hanging wire on the back of the portrait. For good measure, she wrestled an end of the tie-down between the picture and the frame.
Bob reached the end of the alley and swung out onto the street. Carl had leaped back into his truck and now he was right behind them. Bob skidded around the next corner and Elizabeth and Thomas were mashed against the side of the truck bed. Elizabeth slipped one of her own arms through the tie-down and with one hand securely on the portrait, for all the good that would do if it went flying out the back, she dug the ring of invisibility out of her pocket and banged down the back window of the cab.
Bob reached back and opened it. "What?" he shouted.
She punched through the little screen and handed him the ring. "Try this."
Bob took the ring and swerved around the next corner. Elizabeth and Thomas were tossed against the other side of the truck. This time Thomas was crushed between Elizabeth and the wall. She pulled away from him as quickly as she could, fearing she had smashed him and besides, he was cold. In the dappled light she could see him crouched down in the corner, clinging to the side of the truck. He looked around wildly as they drove through the neighborhood, past old houses, tiny corner markets, and restaurants with neon signs advertising their liquor licenses. This adventure was, she realized, about the first time he'd been out of the house in decades.
Tires squealing, the truck turned onto Leigh Street and headed back towards Church Hill. The portrait shifted several inches back towards the tailgate when Bob accelerated. She knew that if the portrait went, she would have to let go. It was heavy enough to pull her out after it. Since Bob was now exceeding the speed limit and getting faster, her landing would be problematic.
Leigh was a straight shot back to the Hill. The only problem was the stoplights. Bob was hitting them at yellow and Carl was taking them at red. He didn't stop for anything. Even when a car from a side street clipped his bumper, he kept coming after them.
Suddenly the truck vanished. Elizabeth vanished, the portrait vanished, everything. All she could see was the city around them and the road whipping by below with sickening speed. Thomas, not being in the visible light spectrum, was visible to her, hanging in the air beside her. Carl was still close behind them. It occurred to her that even if they lost him, he knew where they were going. He could just go to their house and wait for them to show up.
The truck hit a pothole and bounced Elizabeth and the portrait into the air. She and the portrait came down hard another foot closer to the back of the truck. The end of the portrait hung well over the edge of the tailgate. Elizabeth could see it there, hanging in midair beyond the umbra of invisibility. Carl had to be able to see it too. He followed even more closely. The grill of his red SUV was nearly brushing the picture frame.
Bob wove past a van waiting to turn and swung onto another side street and the portrait slipped away.
She felt it go. She grabbed at the frame and chunks of gilt and plaster scraped up under her fingernails. The top piece of the frame, which was secured by the tie-down, tore off as the portrait slid out the back of the truck.
"No!" She grabbed Thomas's ghostly form as he slid past her after it.
Carl followed them through the turn and crushed the portrait beneath his wheels. Blue ethereal fire flared up from the disintegrating paint and canvas, up through the engine compartment of the SUV, and shot like lightning out the grill. Engine dying, the SUV slowed, but bolts of blue light reached after them, groping towards Thomas where he lay sprawled along the truck bed. She had hold of his wrist and hauled him towards her. He was feather light. She wrapped her arms around him, gasping at the chill, and held on as if he were a tithe to Hell.
The ethereal fire seared her eyes and crackled along her body. The icy insubstantial form in her arms transmuted slowly, it seemed, although it must have taken less than a second, into something more solid and with a human-scale chill. Elizabeth's arms went numb around the still, corpselike form. Panic, with extra panic, rose in her breast till finally he shivered and began to breathe.
"Elizabeth?" Bob shouted and reached back through the window. She felt his fingers brush her face.
"We're here," she cried back, but the wind of their travel snatched her voice away. She reached up and grabbed his hand. He squeezed her hand, then pulled his arm back inside to grab the wheel and round another corner.
Thomas was still gasping for breath. She resisted the urge to chant, "breathe in, breathe out" and settled for "everything will be okay" on repeat. He wrapped his arms around her so tightly she could barely breathe herself. Later, when she looked in the mirror, she could see where his fingers had pressed into her back, five blue ovals spread wide. The bruises took weeks to fade. Something else jabbing into her side turned out to be the hilt of a short sword.
Bob drove at a smart clip along Leigh. Since Carl was no longer behind them, he didn't speed and he stopped for stoplights, although that wasn't such a great idea. Other motorists didn't see the invisible truck standing at that stoplight. After a couple close calls, Bob started pulling further into the intersection at stops and then running the lights altogether if there was no oncoming traffic.
After too many terrifying close shaves, they finally crossed the viaduct. The stop light on the far side was red and Bob pulled to a stop as a stream of cars went by. Elizabeth was just thinking it was safe to sit up and let go of Thomas when they were rear-ended. A car crunched into her tailgate and the driver jerked to a halt. The impact slammed Elizabeth and Thomas back against the cab. Caught between Elizabeth and the metal wall of the cab, Thomas had the air knocked out of him and cracked his head with a sickening crunch. His grip on her loosened. He also started to breathe normally.
The puzzled driver got out of his car and began to walk around front to see what he had hit. Bob peeled away from the intersection. "Elizabeth?" he cried again, a frantic edge to his voice.
"We're fine," she called back. "Or, I am anyway."
Halfway down the block, the truck flashed into view and Elizabeth could see the damage. Her tailgate was crumpled like an accordion. Thomas was lying in a limp heap. She reached out and touched his throat. Despite his terrifying stillness, his pulse beat strongly.
The truck wound around the curves beside Jefferson Park and up Clay. When Bob pulled into the space that they had vacated less than an hour before, Thomas was finally stirring. Bob flung himself out of the cab and around to the back where Elizabeth knelt over Thomas, who opened his eyes, wide and confused, and said, "Sophie, what have you done to your hair?"