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Freddy Krueger, with a handful of knives and the ability to turn dreams to his advantage. Who died at the end of every movie and came back again and again. Some joke. “Is he that bad?”
“I’m scared of him. I think my father’s scared of him.”
“And your father’s never even seen Nightmare on Elm Street, unless he bought it from somebody else. You knew I sold videos to your father?”
“Hell, yeah. That’s how you wound up at the Underbridge.”
After a moment I said, “Pardon?” Well, this wasn’t supposed to be painless.
Theo must have understood. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t — look, my dad and I don’t get along. I mean, if he was just a guy I knew, I wouldn’t like him. And contrary to popular belief, being A. A. Albrecht’s kid is not the coolest thing in the world. I make a point of not telling people. So I couldn’t just march up to you outside my dad’s office and tell you about the Underbridge. And I couldn’t ask you to sign on, anyway. It’s Robby’s club.”
“So you asked Robby to ask me?”
“So I told Robby that you might know the stuff we needed, and that he should check you out. I told him where he could leave a message for you.”
“You knew all this about me?”
He flung his free hand out to one side. He would have flung the other one, too; I saw him wince. “You were interesting! All right? D’you know how many other people care about this stuff? Electronics and old video and recorded music?”
“We’re throwbacks,” I said. “No, you’re a throwback. I’m sort of a throw-forward. If that cigarette you showed me downstairs has marijuana in it, would you be willing to share it with me?”
He pushed his glasses back up his nose and poked his hand through his smooth brown hair. “It’ll put you on your butt. It’s high-test stuff.”
“You’ll be amazed.”
“I’m already amazed. Let’s get petrified instead.”
We’d passed the thing back and forth twice, in near silence, before I said, “Did you tell Frances I knew my way into Ego?”
Theo looked insulted. “Hell, no.”
“Why not?”
“Because I figured if you wanted her to know, you’d tell her.”
“Are you going back with her?”
He shook his head. “I think she wishes she could ask. But, man, I’ve talked to Kru — Worecski. And I’m staying right here ’til it’s over. I’ve got a good excuse.” He tapped the sling.
“I owe you for that,” I said softly.
He gurgled. “Heck, I didn’t do anything. And now I’ve got this cool dueling scar.”
“But you tried. And you didn’t have to.”
He looked at me owlishly. Finally he gri
“In ca
“Can’t,” he sighed, leaning back against his pillows. “We finished it.”
“You’re no fun,” I told him. “Guess I’ll just go away.”
I felt relaxed, but not at all absentminded; Theo would have been amazed, if he’d still been awake. I finally found Frances outside, on the broad covered porch that faced the driveway. She was sitting in a wooden chair with her feet on the porch railing and the chair balanced on its back legs. She didn’t move when I came out the front door.
I dragged up another chair, its back to the railing so I could see her face. “Last night, Mick tried to talk me into going with you.”
“I hope he didn’t spend a lot of time on it.” Her gaze moved idly over the distant edge of the garden.
“Why?”
“Because I won’t take you. Or him, or anyone else.”
For several minutes we sat in uncompanionable silence, while I tried to talk myself out of doing the inevitable. Was it inevitable? I thought of Theo, recuperating upstairs from the wound he’d received on my behalf. Even if Frances left the City now, left Worecski undisturbed, he could never go back to Ego. He had stepped between Myra and Dusty — Worecski’s servants — and their quarry, and they would remember. And how long would it be before Theo let slip that he knew who and what Worecski was? But if Frances killed Worecski and left town, Theo would be safe. I would be safe, too. Frances would be gone, Mick would leave, Myra and Dusty would take their orders from someone else, and I could go back to something like the life I was used to.
“If you get Worecski, will you go away?” I asked, to be sure.
For the first time since I’d come onto the porch, Frances looked at me. “If I kill Tom Worecski, you’ll never see me again. My word of honor, for whatever that may mean to you.”
I took a deep breath and sighed it away. “The guard shift at the front door changes at midnight,” I said. “They get sloppy then. The only working security camera is on the front door, and it doesn’t pan anymore, so it covers a pretty small area. The fire stairs are great for getting out, but they won’t do you any good getting in; the doors lock from the stair side on all the floors. So you want to go up in the elevator, which, as long as I’m with you, is no problem.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Then I have a problem.”
“Because you won’t have me with you? Bet you five bucks, hard.”
“Do you know what Tom would do,” she said, her voice low, “when he found out what you are? My God, he’d love it. It would be horrible. You, of all people, are not going in with me.”
This wasn’t supposed to be painless for her, either. “What can he do to me that you and Mick haven’t done already?”
A muscle fluttered in her jaw, but she didn’t turn away.
“Did Theo give you a good technique for getting in?”
“He couldn’t,” Frances said, as if she hated to.
“I can. Unfortunately for both of us, it needs me to work.”
She spread her fingers like a fan across her forehead. At last she said, “Why?”
She didn’t mean, “Why does it need you?” Because something has twined you and me and Mick Ski
I told her. I told it again to Mick Ski
It required me to spend that afternoon in the cellar learning the ways of movable type, and sent Theo and me to the Underbridge for a day and a half of hard work making equipment do things it wasn’t designed for. Frances probably spent the time cleaning guns; I didn’t ask. On Thursday afternoon we came back to the house on the island. I went up to my room, to try to get some of the sleep I was going to lose that night.
When you’re lying in a room that isn’t yours, on an uninhabited floor of a house that isn’t yours, trying to fall asleep in spite of the rat maze your mind is ru
Later (it seemed like fifteen minutes, but it might have been three) I heard someone knock there, and Frances’s voice. Then someone else’s. The creaking floor, and the door opening. Voice, voice, the door closing. The intermittent rise and fall of conversation from Frances’s room. Then quiet.
That’s what I heard with my ears. But the other things, what I didn’t hear, or maybe heard with other ears than mine; and what I didn’t quite see, and didn’t quite feel, but thought I saw and felt all the same -
I can’t describe it. I can half explain it: Mick had been in my head several times. Frances once, but she’d been there. Frances herself had said that there was a co