Gypsies

And then the corridor straightened and she saw him again—heartbreakingly, even farther away. “Michael!” She called out his name, and her own voice sounded strange to her, as shocking, in this dim door-less hallway, as a gunshot. “Michael—!”

But he was ru

She gasped and began to sprint. She felt a kind of submerged panic, something that would be panic if only she could think more clearly. The important thing—the only thing that mattered now—was to keep him in sight.

She ran as long as she could run. Periodically Michael would stop, look back, and he was too far away for Karen to see the expression on his face, but she was afraid that it was a kind of taunting smile, a way of beckoning her on. It was cruel and she could not understand it. Why would he act like this? What was he thinking?

But there was nothing to do but follow.

When she could not run any longer she careened up against a stone wall. The wall was cold against her shoulder but she couldn’t move, could only huddle against the pain of her struggling lungs. She looked up finally and saw Michael again, closer now, his face unreadable; she staggered forward and saw him sidestep through an archway. It was the only door Karen had seen in this labyrinth and she approached it warily. She understood now that something was wrong, things had gone wrong in a fundamental way, a way she had not foreseen. But here was Michael again —she saw him clearly through the empty doorway— alone in a small room watching her impassively, waiting for her. Karen made a small noise in her throat and stepped inside, reaching out for him.

But it wasn’t Michael after all.

She blinked at the image, which would not focus. Suddenly this was not Michael but, horrifyingly, a thing the size of Michael, but smooth poreless plastic, and she recognized it: it was Baby, it was the doll the Gray Man had given her all those years ago, grotesquely inflated and staring at her through painted china-blue eyes.

Karen bit the heel of her hand and took a step backward.

And then Baby was gone, too, and there was the final image—a fleeting impression—of some wrinkled, shrunken creature gri

She turned to leave. But she was tired. She was as tired as she had ever been in her life, and her feet wouldn’t do what she meant them to do, and so she sat on the cold stone floor and folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes—just for a minute.

5

“It’s done,” Neuma

Cardinal Palestrina listened to the cheering.

Chapter Twenty-two

1

Karen wasn’t certain how much time passed.

She woke and slept and woke again, but the waking was partial and transitory. When she came fully to herself at last, she was in a room larger than the one she remembered; and there were old-fashioned-looking wooden chairs, and a single door—and she was not alone.

Laura was here, too, blinking at the light. And Michael. She felt a rush of gratitude. They were together. That, at least.

Tim was there, too.

She sat up—she had been lying on the cold floor— and made her way to one of the chairs. Michael, doing the same, gave her a look, a sort of “I’m all right,” and that was good. Laura struggled to her feet.

Tim, who was standing already, and whose expression was calm and endlessly patient, said, “You’ll feel better soon.”

Karen could not at first understand what he meant. It was like a message from another planet, a foreign language. Feel better soon? Was he insane?

Laura said, “You knew… you were a part of this.”

Tim did not deny it. Karen looked at him with her mouth open. Well, maybe he was capable of that. It was possible.

He said, “Tell me if there’s anything you need. If you’re hungry or you’re thirsty. You don’t have to suffer here, you know.”

Laura shot him an outraged look. Karen expected some kind of outburst from her. But all she said was “Go away,” and her voice was flat and distant.

“I’ll be back,” Tim said, “later.” He left through the room’s single door. And Karen understood, without having to think about it, that she would not be able to follow, that the doorway was barred to her, that this was a prison and that none of them would be allowed to leave.

They had not been beaten or intimidated or tortured; only confined. Karen tried to explain the trick that had been played on her, the false image of Michael; but Michael began to look shamefaced and she stopped, because he wasn’t responsible and she didn’t want him to think he was. He was apologetic: “I only meant to find out what we were getting into. I came here because I wanted to save Laura the trouble.”

Laura said, “If you hadn’t gone they would have used me. A lure.” She added, “Michael, I appreciate what you did. It took courage.”

“It was stupid.”

“Not in any way we could predict. Anyway, what we have to think about now is getting out of here.” Michael said, “We can’t.” “You don’t know that.”

His eyes were empty, cynical. “You must be able to feel it. There are more than four walls in this room. I guess some sort of magic. We could walk out of any ordinary cage… so they had to build a special one.”

Laura opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. What he said was true and even Karen could feel it, a dulling, a suppression. Nowhere to look but up, down, left, right. It was ironic, in a way: all those years she had wanted to feel this, this utter ordinariness, to be anchored this firmly in one time and place. Well, here she was. But it was not an anchor; it was a leash; it was a chain.

She retreated to a corner and thought about Tim.

They had trusted him because he was family. But she guessed family had never meant that much to him. Maybe there was no reason it should. Family was Willis, with his flattop Marine haircut and his big fists. Family was Jea

So he doesn’t care, she thought, that we hate him for it. He wants the hate. He would be rewarded for it: by the Gray Man, or the faceless magicians who had confined them here. She wondered what reward they’d promised him. But it hardly mattered. The kingdoms of the Earth. A paperweight.

She thought: Tim became the thing Willis always feared. So, ultimately, it was Willis’s fault… this was the harvest of his frightened love.

But the question followed: Have I done any better?

All she had ever wanted was to protect Michael. And that was all Willis ever wanted, she thought, to protect us—he claimed so. But it wasn’t enough. He had admitted that. It’s not worth jack shit. He tried to protect us with fear, she thought, and I tried to protect Michael with ignorance. And here we are. It doesn’t get worse than this. I wounded him, she thought bleakly, as badly as Willis wounded Tim. And here we are.

It goes on, she thought, the wheel turning, and it never gets better, and maybe that was the most frightening thing of all, that for all her wanting and all her trying she was not, in the end, any better than Willis Fauve.

2

Cardinal Palestrina moved quietly with Carl Neuma

“They can’t,” Neuma