Free Night Terrors by Tim Waggoner Page B

black brick and is shaped like a turreted tower. In other words, like the chess piece called the rook – get it? I’ve heard rumors that the building existed before the Earth game was invented, and the chess piece was modeled after the Noddian counterpart. I don’t know if it’s true, but it wouldn’t surprise me. A high wrought iron fence topped with wickedly sharp spikes surrounds the Rookery, protecting it in ways mundane, technological, and – for lack of a better word – mystical. There are only two entrances, and there are guards posted there at all times, to supplement the Rookery’s other defenses.
    I was seriously pissed off at how our meeting with Sanderson had gone. I glanced up and saw Espial gazing down upon us from the Canopy above. Irritated, I raised my hand high and gave the enigmatic orb the finger.
    “If we’re lucky, Quietus will kill Damon and Eklips before they even know he’s there,” Jinx said.
    I should’ve chastised Jinx for saying something so nasty, but at the moment, I felt the same way.
    Jinx pulled three shrunken heads from one of his pockets and began juggling them as we walked.
    “What next, Mommy?” he asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I assume you’re going to disregard Sanderson’s orders. You usually do. So where do you want to go? Who do you want to – as they say in old-fashioned gangster movies – lean on? Or to put it more bluntly, whose skull do you want to bash in first?”
    He tossed the heads faster as he spoke, and they began muttering tiny cries of discomfort. Jinx ignored them.
    “Actually,” I said, “this time, I’m going to do what Sanderson says.”
    Jinx stopped walking and turned to look at me with an exaggerated expression of surprise. The shrunken heads froze in the air and remained motionless, staring at me with similar expressions.
    I stopped and turned to face Jinx. “Maybe Sanderson’s right. Maybe Quietus got away because I was off my game. Maybe some rest will do me good.”
    Jinx frowned. He plucked the heads out of the air one by one and slipped them back into his pocket. Then he turned to face me once more.
    “You know I’m not good at interpreting human emotions in my Night Aspect.” He paused. “Any emotions, really. So correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem kind of… down.”
    Night Jinx rarely shows any awareness, let alone interest, in how I’m feeling, but when he does, it makes me uncomfortable.
    “You think?” I said, a bit harder-edged than I intended. I faced forward and started walking again. “C’mon. I need you to find us a goddamned Door home.”
    Jinx didn’t follow me at first, and I wondered if I’d hurt his feelings. But then I remembered he didn’t have any feelings to hurt.
    A few seconds later, I heard the soft slap-slap of his overlarge shoes on the pavement as he followed after me.
     
    We reentered Chicago through a Door in the outer wall of a bank close to Union Station, right next to an ATM. The instant I closed the Door, it began to fade, and I knew we’d made it back to Earth just before sunrise. I was glad. The last thing I wanted to do right then was be stuck in Nod until nightfall.
    Already the streets were filled with cars, although not so many that traffic was congested. Handfuls of pedestrians made their way along the sidewalks, bleary-eyed and moving slowly, most of them carrying cups of takeout coffee.
    I looked at Jinx. Although the sky was still tinged by night, it didn’t need to be full daylight for Incubi to change. All that mattered was that enough sleepers had awakened, weakening the connection between Earth’s dimension and the Maelstrom.
    Unlike Doors, Incubi don’t vanish during the day. Instead, they become denatured, changing from their Night Aspect to their Day. It happens quickly, so fast, in fact, that the transformation is almost impossible to detect. One instant, Jinx was his regular sinister clown self, and the next, he looked like a normal human. Well, almost