Burlie jerked around. There the witch was, standing right behind her. His thick hair was pushed back by the brass goggles. This was the closest she'd ever been to him and she finally noticed, as he stood in the bright light of the chandeliers, that he had one green eye and one blue eye. The colors were so vivid she doubted they were real.
"What a pretty pixie village," Fisk said and hovered his hand over the glass as if to check the heat of a stove. "I love antiques. There's a vibration, a real presence. Newly built things don't have this kind of personality."
A witch was attacking. Burlie couldn't scream but she could throw a punch and she did.
Her arm slowed, as if she'd pushed it into thick molasses, and stopped not an inch from Fisk's face. He looked at it, mildly offended.
"You really don't like me, do you? It hurts," Fisk said.
She could still move her eyes and Burlie looked frantically around the room. The guards, the scouts, the dancers, the people peering eagerly into the displays, were still. Even a leaf that a stray gust had blown into the room had stopped in mid-air a few inches off the floor. "Stop," she whispered. "The Sodality will strip your powers. And throw you in jail for life."
Fisk gave a sarcastic little shiver of dread. "I'll only be punished if I'm caught. I ought to know, I've been an investigator for seven years. Seven years. All the ins and outs and ways and means and loopholes. I know them," he said. Fear and anger boiled up in Burlie. Her fist still hovered in the air.
Fisk reached into his pocket and pulled out a few small figures. He rattled them in his hand and Burlie saw a heat shimmer of power rising from his fingers. "But what am I doing, you ask?" he said. He reached down through the glass. It rippled like water around his hand. He gently placed a green sea serpent on the surface of Linger Lake. The Headless Horseman was set nearby. Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster were placed carefully further on and Dracula and the Wolfman topped the Ferris wheel in the center of town. "What is that loony doing?" Fisk repeated. "I'm granting your wish. Here's an adventure for you." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a birdcage Christmas ornament twisted out of fine golden wire. Burlie recognized it. 'The Wirewolf' was selling them at the carnival. He held it up in front of Burlie's eyes.
She saw a flash of red and was horrified. It was a cape. A minuscule version of Lydia. Lydia! The little girl was holding on to the wire bars. She wasn't alone.
Kneeling beside her were her parents. Maeve and Nate looked out at Burlie, their eyes tiny as the heads of pins. Behind them was Deputy Thorson. His blond hair gleamed. "I had to throw him in there," Fisk muttered. "He overheard me talking to your mum. I will not tolerate a competent cop. Even less a cop that can rip my arms off before I even know he's there."
"You shrank them?"
"No," he laughed. "God, no. These are, let's say, representing the essences of your family. Their spirits." He ran his fingers across the glass of the trunk and it rippled again. "You know, of course, that witches can juggle spirits. We send them out, we pull them back. Our own and everyone else's. So let's all have a dream together." The diorama sparked, as if a gleam of starlight skipped across the surface. "A dream of a town that doesn't exist anymore. A dream of monsters inside it." He smiled at her. "And you'll keep on dreaming until I wake you."
"Why?" Burlie whispered.
"Why, why, Wylie McLauren, of course," he said. Burlie wasn't particularly surprised. Aunt Wylie was the only person in the world that had..."Your aunt has money and I want some. Not too much. Just enough. If she wants her family back, she'll pay up."
He placed the cage on the flat of the West turret. "While I'm negotiating with her, here's your present," he said. "Your family is here," he tapped the small castle. Was that the briefest light under his finger? "And you'll be here," he tapped the mirror that was the lake. "Run the monster gauntlet across the town to the castle and rescue them. Then I'll let you all out."
One final tap and the Ferris wheel began to turn. The carnival lights flared. There was shadowy movement in the tiny windows of the castle.
Fisk smiled. "Maybe."
He pushed her backwards and Burlie fell and fell and fell.