“Ben…”
“I will come back,” he insisted.
He stepped away, turning again to find Nightshade. He felt empty and directionless, as if some tiny bit of life was turned loose in a sea of debris and blowing winds. He was about to be alone for the first time since he had come into Landover, and he was frightened almost beyond reason.
“Where do I go?” he asked Nightshade, fighting to keep his voice calm.
“Follow the corridor — there.” She pointed behind her, and torchlight glimmered along a shadowed corridor in which mist swirled like a living thing. “You will find a door at its end. The fairy world lies beyond.”
Ben nodded and walked past her without a word. His mind reeled with whispered warnings that he was forced to ignore. He slowed at the corridor entrance and glanced back. Willow stood where he had left her, her slender form a pale green shadow, her strange, beautiful face streaked with tears. He was filled with sudden wonder. How could this girl care so much for him? He was just a stranger to her. He was just someone she had happened across. She had blinded herself to the truth with fables and dreams. She imagined love where there was none. He could not understand.
Nightshade stared after him, her cold face expressionless.
He turned slowly away and walked into the mists.
Fairy
Everything disappeared at once. The mists closed about like a shroud, and Ben Holiday was alone. The corridor tunneled ahead, coiling snakelike through pairs of torches that gave off dim halos of light in a haze of shadows and gloom. Ben followed it blindly. He could barely see the passage walls against which the halos cast their feeble glow, blocks of stone charred by flame and stained by damp. He could hear only faintly the sound of his boots as they thudded against the flooring. He could see or hear nothing else.
He walked for a long time, and the fear which had already taken seed within him spread like a cancer. He began to think about dying.
But the corridor ended finally at an iron-bound, wooden door with a great curved handle. Ben did not hesitate. He gripped the handle and twisted. The door opened easily, and he stepped quickly through.
He was standing in an elevator facing forward. A panel of lighted buttons to the right of the closed doors told him he was going up.
He was so astonished that for an instant he could only stare at the doors and the buttons. Then he wheeled about, searching for the door through which he had passed. It was gone. There was only the rear wall of the elevator, simulated oak with dark plastic trim. He felt along the edges with his fingers, testing for a hidden latch. There was none. The elevator stopped on the fifth floor, and a janitor got on.
“Morning,” he greeted pleasantly and punched button eight.
Ben nodded wordlessly. What in the hell was going on? He stared at the control panel, finding it oddly familiar. He glanced hurriedly about the interior and realized that he was on the elevator that serviced the building where his law offices were situated.
He was back in Chicago!
His mind spun. Something had gone wrong. Something must have gone wrong. Otherwise, what was he doing here? He braced himself against the wall railing. There was only one explanation. He had gone back through the mists completely; he had passed right through the fairy world into his own.
The elevator stopped at eight, and the janitor got off. Ben stared after him as the doors slipped closed. He had never seen the man before in his life, and he thought he knew all of the help that serviced the building — by sight, if not by name. They cleaned the offices on Sundays; that was the only time they were permitted to ride the elevators. He was always there, too, catching up on his paperwork. But he didn’t know this man. Why didn’t he?
He shook his head. Maybe it was someone new, he decided — someone the building supervisor had just hired. But new help wouldn’t work the offices on Sunday alone, not when they had access to… He caught himself. He smiled, suddenly giddy. Sunday! It must be Sunday if the janitors were using the elevators! He almost laughed. He hadn’t thought to ask the day of the week since he had crossed into Landover!