Eddie spun and hurled the goblet in his left hand at the window. It was heavy enough, but if the man had spent as much money on his windows as he had on his safe it would be transparent plexi and not gla.s.s, and the goblet would just bounce off it. He dove after the goblet, toward the window.
The window broke.
Eddie fell through, tearing his arm and his sleeve on the jagged gla.s.s. He heard the man scream from behind him, and then the first crash of thunder as a storm rolled in. He hit the ground hard, grating his arm to the bone on the pavement, but he forced himself up and into a run. He still held the other goblet.
Peeve would know what to do. If he could get that far. Lightning crashed around him, casting great shadows against the alley walls.
He didn"t look back.
There was a guy at Peeve"s when Eddie got there, a big black man in a nice suit with a wet overcoat. His head was shaved bald-not just his hair, either... no eyebrows, no beard, no nothing-and he was standing near the end of the counter, ignoring Peeve.
Peeve was Peeve. He stood about five-ten, two hundred pounds. His hair was receding, but he kept spiking it up in the front like he had a shark fin on his head. Hawaiian shirt, shorts, flip-flops. He was four or five stereotypes rolled into one. He looked up when Eddie came in, frowning.
"You"re dripping all over everything," he said.
"Sorry. Listen, Peeve... I need you to look at something."
"Did you get them?" the black man asked. Eddie looked at him.
"Get what?"
"The rings," the man said. "The things you were sent to retrieve." He looked past Eddie at the door. "Where is Gong?"
"Gong"s dead."
"What?" Peeve hustled out from around the counter. He locked the door behind Eddie and then turned around. "How?"
"Did you get them?" the black man asked.
"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" Eddie snapped.
"Edan Boukai," he said, bowing his head slightly. "I am the one who hired Gong to enter Mr. Kim"s home." He looked at Peeve and then back at Eddie. "This was to be our meeting point." His voice was think with accent but understandable.
"We never got the safe open," Eddie said, and turned away from him. "Listen, Peeve-" he began.
"How did Gong die?" Boukai asked.
"That guy-what"s his name, Kim?-he killed him, all right?" Eddie snarled and shook his head. "Listen, Peeve, I need you to tell me what this is." He reached into a pocket and brought out the goblet.
"It"s a cup," Peeve said.
"G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Peeve," Eddie started, but Boukai cut him off.
"Where did you get that?"
"It was on his desk," Eddie snapped. "Shut up a minute, will you?"
"Were there two?"
Eddie waved the goblet. "I"ve only got the one."
Boukai looked down at his hands. "Then they are separated..." He turned away, muttering under his breath. Eddie stared at him for a minute, then looked at Peeve.
"Tell me what happened," Peeve said.
"We were working on the safe, but it wasn"t going well." He told him how Gong had pulled a gun on him. He explained the markings on the safe and how he couldn"t see inside it. "It was like the markings blocked me."
Boukai spun around, eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, blocked you?"
Eddie steeled himself. He didn"t advertise, but the guy had already heard most of the conversation. "I can see through things, okay? Walls, doors, metals, anything. Just like Superman. Except I couldn"t see through the safe."
Boukai"s eyes widened, white-rimmed against the black of his skin. "You are a seer?"
"A what?"
"You can see the inside of things?"
"I just said that, didn"t I?"
"Prove it. What do I wear around my neck?"
Eddie stared at him. He opened his mouth to argue, then thought about it. His head already hurt. His friend was dead. There was a good chance this guy was nuts anyway, and if nothing else, the whatever-that-ate-Gong might catch up with him. He concentrated. "A horse."
Boukai stared. "Who trained you?"
"No one trained me."
"A natural..." He shook his head. "How did you come to learn this?" Then he saw the goblet and shook his head. "Never mind. Tell me of these markings."
"Why do you want to know?"
Boukai took two steps until he was face-to-face with Eddie. "Because I hired you and your friend to retrieve something from Kim"s safe, a pair of rings. Because I recognize the chalice you bear and know that it has a mate that appears identical." He paused. "Because I know it hurts you here," he tapped between his eyes, "to use your Sight." He looked past Eddie, out the window to the rain-filled alley.
"Because I know what is coming, boy. Now tell me everything, beginning with how Gong died."
"You are very lucky to be alive," Boukai said when Eddie was finished talking.
"That"s messed up," Peeve said.
"Yeah." Telling the entire story again made Eddie"s stomach tighten. He rubbed his sore arm and looked at the cracked linoleum floor. It could have been much closer.
"The cloud you describe is a fakir. That is not its true name, but it serves. It is a servant from another realm, and Kim controls it. He has bound it to his command using black sorcery." Boukai faced them, Eddie and Peeve, as they sat on the counter. "He uses it to get what he wants." He spat the last sentence with a vehemence that even Peeve couldn"t miss.
"You really hate this guy, don"t you?" he asked.
Boukai ignored him. "The reason you could not see through his safe door to the tumblers beneath is indeed magic. There are charms that can be worked into metal that protect it from seers or other magical attacks." He reached into his coat and produced a silver flask. When he held it up, it flashed in the light. "Look inside this."
Eddie frowned and shook his head. "It"s got booze in it."
"You haven"t looked. I didn"t ask what was in it. I asked you to look inside."
Eddie swallowed the angry reply that his headache wanted to shout and concentrated. He stared at the flask in Boukai"s hand. He saw the metal. He set his mind, saw the metal again, and pushed. Then he gasped.
Golden letters flickered on the inside edges of the flask. They were written far too small for him to make out from that distance, and yet they showed clearly in his vision. The letters glowed brightly. He didn"t recognize the alphabet.
"I can"t read it," he said, after a moment.
"It"s not a language of man," Boukai said. "I could teach you."
"Not in an hour," Eddie said, shaking the Sight from his head. "So I"m a seer. So what? That"s not going to stop Kim from siccing his fakir or whatever its called on me." He hopped down from the counter and stumbled. His leg had gone to sleep. He bent over to rub the blood back into it, cursing under his breath at the pain of the pins-and-needles sensation.
"You are right. We must deal with Kim first." Boukai looked around. "He will surely be here soon."
"Whoa," Peeve said, standing. "What do you mean, he"ll be here soon? Why would he come here? Why would he even know where here is?" He walked past the two of them and peered out through the store"s front window into the steadily falling rain.
Boukai pointed to the goblet sitting on the counter. "Because of that. Its mate will lead him here as soon as he recovers it. They are linked, you see. In the other realm." He picked the goblet up and cradled it in his hand. "But perhaps..." He looked at Eddie. "Have you attempted to See this?"
"It"s right there," Eddie said.
"You know what I mean."
"Do you have any idea how much my head hurts?" Eddie turned away from him and leaned over the counter. He wanted to rub his head, to reach beneath his skin and stamp out the pain between his eyes. But he couldn"t. He knew if he tried it would only hurt more.
"Your pain is a manifestation of your Sight. Because you"re not trained, you"re forcing it. If you could learn to control it more easily, the pain would lessen." Boukai"s voice trembled and dropped an octave. Eddie looked over his shoulder. The black man was holding his hand over the top of the goblet and chanting. The words were similar to those Kim had said but not the same. "It"s possible," Boukai said, a moment later in his own voice, "that you could be shown."
"How?"
Boukai held up the goblet. "Look at this, and we"ll see."
Eddie turned back to face him. "Why are you doing this?"
Boukai straightened. "Because Kim Lu stole something from me, something very dear. And because he took that, I will take everything from him." He held out the goblet. "And you"re going to help me. Now concentrate."
Eddie held his gaze for a moment. Looking at Boukai"s eyes was like looking at rocks. Finally he sighed and lowered his line of sight. The goblet beckoned at him. He concentrated on the goblet"s rim. Lightning flashed outside. The light flickered against the golden cup but didn"t fade. Eddie"s eyebrows rose. The light kept growing. And growing.
Until finally it became so bright and white and the pain replaced everything else.
"Eddie?"
The pain was gone.
"Can you See?" Boukai asked.
Eddie opened his eyes. He was flat on his back on the floor. From the feel of things, lying in his own puddle of rainwater. He squinted as the fluorescents in the ceiling cut at his eyes. And suddenly he was looking at the stars. He snapped his eyes open. Ceiling. Squinted.
Stars.
"Wow."
"I will take that as yes," Boukai said. "Can you stand?"
Eddie shrugged and sat up. His head swam a little. He put a hand to the side and waited a moment. It pa.s.sed. Taking Peeve"s hand, he stood.
"What"s it like?" Peeve asked. Eddie gave him a look. "Sorry."
"We need to find out what you"ve learned," Boukai said. "He will be here soon."
"Why aren"t we running away?" Eddie asked, looking around for the goblet. "I mean, that"s what you do, when someone is chasing you. You run away."
"We cannot escape the fakir." Boukai brought the goblet around from behind his back. "Tell me what you see." But Eddie had already stopped listening.
The goblet existed in four dimensions. That was the only way Eddie could express it to himself. He saw the goblet in Boukai"s hand, radiant gold against the soft brown of his skin and the deeper black of his coat. But he also saw the ones next to it, on either side, that shifted out of his sight if he tried to look directly at it. "It"s like it"s shaking," he said.
"That is because this chalice exists in all realms," Boukai said, looking down at it himself. "You see this one and the two nearest it. When you bring it together with its mate," he brought his hand overtop the goblet, coverings its mouth, "you can open the way to another place."
"That"s neat and all," Peeve said, looking out the window again, "but if we can"t get away from the faker or whatever you called it, what are we going to do?" Eddie looked at Peeve and then at Boukai.
"That"s a fair question."
Boukai smiled. "We shall take it from him."
Peeve stared. Eddie stared. Boukai laughed.
"First I need to see what Eddie has learned," he said. He held up his flask again. "See again."
Eddie looked at the flask and squinted. The letters appeared before his eyes again... but this time with more meaning. He read them. He could read them. He looked at Boukai. "How did you do that?"
The black man smiled and bowed. "I am not untrained myself," he said.
Peeves looked at them. "What"s going on?"
"I can read the words," Eddie said. He looked again at the flask-through the fabric of Boukai"s pocket this time-and read them again. "Who is Mariel?"
Boukai"s face hardened. "She is dead." He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and held his breath for a long moment. Eddie waited. Finally the black man exhaled and opened his eyes.
"When Kim arrives, he will have the other chalice." He held up the one in his hand. "It is important he not join them." He held the goblet out to Peeve. "You must hide this somewhere out of sight, but somewhere you can reach it when we need it."
"Where I can reach it?" Peeve asked.
"We?" Eddie asked.
"When Kim comes, he will have the fakir. We must be able to overpower him and get the chalice away from him. If we can, we must get the rings from him as well. They control the fakir. It is through them that he binds it to his will."
"The thing that ate Gong. The cloud." Eddie traded glances with Peeve. "You want me to fight that."
Boukai smiled, a predatory smile a wolf might have worn. "No. I want you to manage Kim. I will handle the fakir." And then he laughed, a great and terrible laugh, and shrugged out of his coat. He threw the overcoat on the countertop and stopped laughing as suddenly as he"d begun.
"Hide the chalice," he said. Then he spun to face the door. "He is here."