False Memory

Unmoved by Nora Lemmon, Eric kept coming, and Dusty scrambled up from the floor, shoved the sideboard, and dove to his left, away from the top of the stairs, behind a sheltering wall, as another burst of gunfire smacked into the toppling mass of fine eighteenth-century cherry wood.

Eric grunted and cursed, but it was impossible to tell from the thunderous descent of the sideboard whether he had been hurt or carried to the foyer below. The stairs were wider than the upended antique, and he might have been able to dodge it.

Standing with his back to the hallway wall, next to the stairs, Dusty didn’t relish poking his head around the corner to have a look. In addition to never having attended a college class in logic, he’d never taken a class in magic, either, and he didn’t know how to catch bullets in his teeth.

And, dear God, even as the thudding-crashing-cracking-banging still rose from the staircase, here came Martie — who was supposed to be gone with the rest of them — pushing a wheeled, three-drawer filing cabinet along the hallway, having commandeered it from Lampton’s office.

Dusty glowered at her. What the hell was she thinking, anyway? That Eric would run Out of bullets before they ran out of furniture?

Seizing the filing cabinet, pushing Martie away, using the four-foot-high stack of metal drawers as cover, Dusty moved to the head of the stairs again.

Eric had tumbled into the foyer with the sideboard. His left leg was pinned under it. He was still holding the machine pistol, and he fired toward the top of the stairs.

Ducking, Dusty heard the shots go wild. They slammed hard into the ceiling, and a few rounds twanged through ducts and pipes behind the plaster. Not even one ricocheted off the filing cabinet.

His heart was rattling in his chest as if several rounds were ricocheting from wall to wall of its chambers.

When he cautiously peered down into the foyer again, he saw that Eric had pulled his leg out from under the sideboard and was getting to his feet. Relentless as a robot, operating on programmed instructions rather than reason or emotion, the guy was nonetheless pissed.

“Eugenie Rose Cheyney!”

Not even limping, cursing fluently, Eric started toward the stairs. The filing cabinet wasn’t half as massive as the sideboard. He would be able to dodge it, pumping out rounds as he came.

“Ed Mavole!”

“I’m listening.”

Eric stopped at the foot of the stairs. The murderous glare melted off his face, and what replaced it was not the flat, grimly determined expression with which he had entered the house, but the glazed and slightly quizzical look that signified activation.

Ed Mavole was the name, all right, but Dusty was still lacking a haiku. According to Ned Motherwell, umpteen feet of shelves in the bookstore were devoted to haiku, so even if all the volumes Ned had bought were now near at hand — which they weren’t — the accessing lines might not be in them.

Down in the foyer, Eric twitched, blinked, and reacquainted himself with his murderous intentions.

“Ed Mavole,” Dusty said again, and once more Eric froze and said, “I’m listening.”

This wouldn’t be fun, but it ought to be doable. Keep using the magic name, snap Eric back into an activated state every time he came out of it, go straight down the stairs at him, snatch the gun from his hand, knock him ass over teakettle, clip him alongside the head with the butt of the gun, just hard enough to knock him unconscious without leaving him comatose for life, and then tie him up with whatever was at hand. Maybe when he regained consciousness, he would no longer be a robotic killer. Otherwise, they could keep him under restraint, buy all umpteen shelf feet of haiku, brew ten gallons of strong coffee, and read every verse to him until they got a response.

As Dusty rolled the filing cabinet aside, Martie said, “Oh, God, please, babe, don’t chance it,” and Eric twitched back to his killing glare.

“Ed Mavole.”

“I’m listening.”

Dusty descended the stairs fast. Eric was looking straight at him but didn’t seem to be able to work out the physics of what was about to happen. Before Dusty was a third of the way down, taking no chances, he shouted, “Ed Mavole,” and Eric Jagger replied, “I’m listening,” and then he was two-thirds of the way down, and he said, “Ed Mavole,” and as he reached Eric, the answer came in that same mellow voice, “I’m listening.” Looking straight into the muzzle, which seemed as big as any tunnel that he might drive through, Dusty closed one hand around the barrel, pushed it aside and out of his face, wrenched the gun from Eric’s slack hands, and at the same time drove his shoulder into the dazed man, knocking him to the floor.