No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,8
my life in that light. Technically, I’d come out ahead, in that I wasn’t dead. On the other hand, quite a few other people were. I wasn’t all that sure I qualified as the hero of anything.
“Ooh,” Ashley said happily. “Carrot cake.”
Brer Rabbit sat up, paws tucked to his chest, nose a-quiver, just like the most rabbity rabbit there ever was. He looked avariciously at Ashley, who had managed to smear cream cheese frosting all the way from her eyebrows to her chin. I checked the cake, but there was no face-sized imprint in it. I had to admire the kid’s tenacity, in that case.
“Tell you what,” I said dryly. “You can have a piece of carrot cake if you let Ashley go. In fact, you can have the whole carrot cake. A nice full round tummy and a nice warm sun to sleep under. What could be better than that?”
Brer Rabbit’s nose twitched again and for about a millisecond, I thought it was actually going to work. Then he sank back into his seat, whiskers drooping. “I’m afraid keeping the girl is more important.”
“Why?” Nerves suddenly cramped my hands and I was glad I’d remembered to shield my thoughts. None of the stories I’d heard talked about Brer Rabbit stealing children. That was more of an Irish fairy tale.
A thunderous cloud rolled over the sky, cutting out all the light. The Lower World stretched flatter and thinner, like it was trying to hide from something, or, it came to me, as if it was trying to hide something. Me, maybe. Me, or Ashley. My own voice came from far away, pulled into discordant tones by the distorted world: “Who sent you, Bro’ Rabbit?”
He wouldn’t tell me, but I knew the answer already; knew it as though it had been burned into my bones. There was a creature out there, something the banshee had called Master, and he had haunted me since the day my shamanic powers awakened. I didn’t know what he was or what he wanted besides a piece of me, but all of a sudden Ashley Hampton looked like a very tempting piece of bait. I’d followed her into the rabbit hole without a second thought. I’d go anywhere to keep the kid safe. Little girls didn’t deserve to get mixed up in my weird-ass world.
Ashley, miserably, said, “I want to go home.”
“Oh, but not yet.” Brer Rabbit threw off the gloom—literally: the sky lightened again, darkness fleeing before his smooth Southern voice—and I put an arm around Ashley’s shoulders protective. “We haven’t had our cake yet,” he said.
Ashley sniffled. “Okay. But it was more fun before, when we were playing.”
“We can play as long as you like,” Brer Rabbit promised.
Kids were amazing. Mercurial little monsters, in the depths of despair one moment and happy as larks the next. Ashley brightened right up. “Will you dance with me?”
For a rabbit, he did a surprisingly good job of looking non-plussed. Then he stood, came around the table, and swept Ashley up in his rabbity arms.
The child I had my arm around stayed right where she was.
Carrot cake and honey and a pink table cloth stuck to Brer Rabbit’s face and chest and paws.
Ashley grabbed my hand and whispered, “Run!”
We raced back out of the rabbit hole so fast I clobbered my head on the underside of Morrison’s desk. Ashley flung herself to the side, eyes wide and dramatic as she gasped at the ceiling. I rubbed my head and spluttered, then finally began to applaud. “How’d you do that, kid?”
“He said Tar Baby wouldn’t work, but he didn’t say anything about a Honey Baby!” Ashley pushed up on her elbows, eyes still very wide. “I just had to build it real fast while you and him were talking. I pretended real hard that I wasn’t doing anything and hoped he wouldn’t see!”
“I didn’t even see.” And I was supposed to be a grown-up who noticed things. “That was brilliant, Ashley. That was fantastic. You’re amazing.”
She beamed at me, though the expression went away again almost instantly, turning instead to conspiracy. “I think we shouldn’t tell my mommy, okay?”
I laughed, a sort of frantic noise in the back of my throat, and fumbled around for her case file. “I think that might be a good idea. How about we go find this instead, so she can be impressed when she gets back?”
Ashley scrambled to her feet and took my hand a second time. “I’m going to be just like