world is about to end. And she knows this how? How does she know this, hmm? Upon what is this based?”
Johnny looked up at her mutely, as if waiting for it to be over. I recognized that face and wished I could surreptitiously squeeze her shoulder or touch her hand, the way I did with the kids when they got yelled at. Especially because no one ever spoke to Johnny like that. She wasn’t the one who would come home with low grades or truant notices. No one, since the day she’d begun speaking, had ever accused her of being a terrible scientist.
“But you believed me,” Johnny said. “Or you wouldn’t have let Omar come for us.”
“We believed at the time that you were credible. Then we began to make our own inquiries,” Helen said.
“So you know what’s happening.”
“No. Nothing is ‘happening,’ Joanna.” Helen crossed her arms over her chest, the pale scarf spilling over them like milk. “There… is a little more raw material around than usual, but well within background levels.”
“Background levels for here. You need to get out of the city,” Johnny said urgently. “There’s so much that Nick can see th… can see things.”
“The uninitiated cannot recognize the products of magic,” Tariq said, still smiling. “Not even ordinary trickery. Pick a card, mm?”
“Don’t talk down to me,” Johnny snapped. “Listen, if you would just let me look for the scrolls—”
“Absolutely not,” Helen said.
“Why would I lie to you?”
“Lie, perhaps not,” Tariq said soothingly. “Exaggerate, surely. There have been alignments before; you said as much. And I, in my lifetime, have seen three. They are asleep, Joanna. For what we understand as sleep. For what They understand.”
“They’re about to not be,” Johnny said urgently, leaning forward on the bench. Her bag slid off and landed on the floor with a thump that sent the cat careering off into the scented darkness, slinking back slowly. “Did I not make that clear? That They’re awake, that They’re coming? Would we have come all this way for a—a—a vacation?”
“Ah, but it is lovely here,” Tariq said.
Helen ignored him. “Would you?” she said. “Why would They target this alignment out of all others, why even approach? What have you seen?”
Johnny hesitated, visibly. Maybe not a bad scientist, but a terrible poker player: I knew that already. And Tariq and Helen looked like they suspected as much. If Johnny admitted what we knew, she might also have to admit, cagily, to being the one whose invention had awakened Drozanoth from its shallow, watchful sleep. To have, even without meaning to, drummed on the membrane between our two worlds, sending the sound as far and as deep as the dropped stone in the Chamber of Mazarbul in The Lord of the Rings. Not a hero selflessly saving the world from a random disaster, but someone frantically trying to clean up her own mess.
Johnny swallowed, and hung her head. “We need to find and shut a great gate somewhere near here, and soon. When I called, I didn’t say what I meant. What I meant was, will you help us?”
Helen fell silent, watching Johnny’s face, still ignoring me. “You are too used to living a life without help,” she said. “Before you reply, no, you are wrong, Joanna. Hiring people is not help. Who would help you without recompense?”
“Is that what you’re asking for?” Johnny said. “Recompense? Is the world not enough for you? Is life not enough?”
“It is not a matter of enough,” Tariq said firmly, looking up at Helen. “Every price comes with a new payment. And the price can change any time; and you, little one, have changed your prices on us too many times for us to look each other in the eye. You will never change. What we do, we have always done for other reasons.”
“So you say,” Johnny said. “So you always say. Listen. You dragged us here to get answers, and I don’t have time to give them. Let us go, if you’re not going to give us anything. Just let us go. I know you’re going to call the authorities as soon as we go. Do that, if you want. I don’t care.”
“Ah yes, the defiance that covers fear,” Helen said. “Like a snake that hisses and hisses and hisses and will never bite, because it knows it will not be able to kill.”
“Good one,” Johnny said. “I got called a dog earlier today.” But she didn’t get up. My skin was crawling, and I felt