It was true, Jekjik realized in sudden shock. In the rush to deliver his report, he had forgotten to acquire and bring along a gift. In the absence of this expected homage, he tried to offer an explanation.
“I thought it was more important than anything else that Master be informed of the status of the followers, with whom he was so concerned. Next time,” he added hastily, “I will bring two presents.”
“Your swift rationalization commends you,” the Crub murmured unemotionally. “Commends—but does not excuse.” Sitting back on his haunches, he raised both front legs. “I forgive you your abject failure to halt the enemy. Clearly, you do not possess the necessary skills. But forgetting to bring a gift—that is unpardonable.” While whiskers stiffened and tail stirred lightning from a low-lying haze of methane gas and oils, the right paw gestured to its right, the left paw to its left. Aroused and alerted, the ratainers of the Crub pulled their muzzles out of masses of decomposing dog food and began to inch forward.
“No, Master—please! I have a mate, I have a family!” Consumed with sudden horror, Jekjik started to back rapidly away, nearly tripping over his considerable tail in the process.
Spinning around faster than any human could manage, a wide-eyed Jekjik bolted for the nearest tunnel. The Crub’s bodyguards caught him before he reached the first yawning opening. One clamped slavering jaws firmly on the squirrel’s tail while the next dug its claws into Jekjik’s back. In less than a minute, half a dozen of them had swarmed the unfortunate servant. His small, pitiful screams were horrible to hear. They rose even above the surging babble that filled the chamber and echoed off the walls of peeling metal and crumbling stone.
From his position atop the throne, the Crub observed the actions of his ratainers with a mixture of approval and distaste. Approval for the speed and efficiency with which they had carried out sentence. Distaste for table manners that were deplorable even by the standards of rodental etiquette. It was a shame to lose one as knowing in the Ways as Jekjik, the Crub mused regretfully. But to forget to bring a gift, regardless of circumstances … It was an oversight that could not be overlooked. No matter. So, those who had followed had succeeded in entering the kingdom. Very well. The closer they came, the more in the way of horror and awfulness the Crub could place in their way.
One last time the Crub raised his eyes to peer in the direction of the late Jekjik. Not much left of him now but a few bones, with those being snapped and crunched between strong jaws so that their owners could get at the sweet marrow within. The awkward episode only confirmed what already should have been known.
Never send a squirrel to do a rat’s job.
“There’s another one!”
Amber was pointing excitedly down the street. Like her sisters, she had excellent vision, and had spotted the empty taxi that was heading their way before anyone else.
“Not that one,” came a voice from within the pet transport.
Frowning, Amber put her hands on her hips and turned to look at the gray box. “Why not? What’s wrong with it?” Overhearing, a passing insurance broker favored her with a look of confusion. Noticing the man’s reaction, she reacted testily. “What are you looking at?”
Quickly picking up his pace, the man hurried on his way. Anywhere else, he might have been inclined to have had a word with such a blatantly disrespectful young girl. But not in New York, where children younger and less well turned-out than the four standing on the sidewalk sometimes concealed weapons of a distressingly adult nature on their persons.
“It’s another Ord taxi,” explained the voice from within the depths of the cat carrier.
“Pithfwid’s right.” Standing on tiptoe to see over the heads of the opposing rivers of preoccupied pedestrians, Simwan continued to search for appropriate transportation. “It’s yellow, like most of the cabs in New York. Some of the other ones are green, some white. Dad said to be sure and look for one that was pale. ‘Behold a pale taxi,’ he told me. Said it would be cheaper, save time, and we might learn some stuff from the driver.”
“There’s one!” shouted N/Ice elatedly, being the first to spot it because she was more than a little pale herself.
As the three girls hailed the cab and Simwan bent to pick up Pithfwid’s carrier, the vehicle worked its way across the line of traffic and pulled up to the curb. It looked exactly like any other taxi on the busy street: bright yellow, with a rectangular illuminated plastic sign on top and appropriate inscriptions on the sides indicating how much its driver could charge. But if you had been trained to look closely at such things, and shut one eye just so, and squinted at it just right, it took on the appearance of a jellyfish that had been stretched out and dunked in stiffening preservative preparatory to mounting: just a faint outline whose interior, including bench seats and trunk and meter, were clearly visible through the supposedly solid sides.
“Hisss!” whispered the driver as he leaned toward them.
“Excuse me?” Simwan dropped his backpack onto the floor and slid into the front seat with Pithfwid’s carrier on his lap.
The driver looked startled, glanced into the backseat where the three giggling, excited girls were settling themselves in and wrestling for space, then eyed his front-seat passenger carefully.
“I mean, where to? You’re from out o’ town, ain’tcha?”
Simwan nodded. “Pennsylvania.”
At this the driver grinned, showing rather more teeth than was normal. Also bigger teeth. Also sharper teeth. “Got Knowledge?” A faint white horizontal line appeared just above his mouth.
“Some,” Simwan admitted modestly. “My sisters and I are in town to visit our uncle.” He gave the address.
“I know where dat is. Nice neighborhood on the Lower East Side, near da bridge.” Sticking his head not out of but through the driver’s side window, he yelled at a passing delivery truck that had nearly taken off his side-view mirror. “Hey, ya smelly spawn of da Unnamable, watch where you’re goin’!” Pulling his head in, without any damage to the rolled-up window, he smiled anew at his passenger.
“Sorry for da language, kid, but dis is New Yawk. You don’t stick up for youself here, you might as well be drivin’ in Hell.” Hands on the wheel, he depressed the accelerator and pulled away from the curb.
“Are you a demon?” N/Ice inquired politely from the backseat.
“Well, sure. Whattid ya think? Dat some Ord would be drivin’ a cab like dis?” Affectionately, he reached out to pat the dash to the right of the wheel. “Thoity million miles on ’er and she’s still runnin’ strong. She’s got a top-drawer engine enchantment, but more dan dat, I was smart when I bought her license. Paid for a warranty dat covers me throughout all dimensions Now and Forever. ’Cept for da after-market accessories I added on myself, of course.”
“Uh, I don’t want to tell you your business, sir,” Simwan spoke rapidly as the vehicle careened crazily toward a momentary gap between pedestrians, “but aren’t we heading straight for the side of that really tall, really solid-looking skyscraper?”
“Appearances can be deceivin’, kid. Especially in New Yawk.” Gripping the wheel with both hands and prehensile tail (the latter having slid out from beneath the driver’s seat), eyes wide and expression maniacal, the cabby sent them hurtling straight toward a towering wall of stone, steel, and glass. Behind Simwan, the girls shrieked in delighted anticipation. Simwan just closed his eyes.
Only to open them again an instant later. Still accelerating, they were racing through the building. Occasionally, they would also pass right through an Ord, who would pause briefly and alternately blink, wince, belch, or otherwise react reflexively to the momentary unusual intestinal disturbance they could feel but not see.
Wheels screeching silently, the cab slid sideways, throwing Simwan against the door on his side and the laughing, squealing girls against one another. Simwan didn’t see what the driver was fighting to
avoid because he was too busy hanging onto the cat carrier (from whose darkened interior arose increasingly acerbic comments of displeasure regarding the violent turn their taxi ride had taken) and staying upright on his own seat.
“Shortcut.” Exposing pointed, six-inch-long fangs, the driver grunted at Simwan, then yanked sharply on the wheel again to steer clear of what appeared to be a small volcano erupting molten mercury. “I tell you, dis city ain’t no place for da faint o’ hearts.”
Shrinking back in his seat as they plunged into the nebulous interior of what appeared to be another solid, impenetrable building, Simwan could only agree. The Deavy coubet, meanwhile, acted as if they had been given a free pass to ride all day on a multi-dimensional roller coaster. Their enchanting (if not enchanted) shrieking and giggling filled the cab as it careened from one seemingly fatal encounter to the next. From within his cat carrier, an irritated Pithfwid snarled something about spilling newly carbonated milk, but otherwise kept to himself.
That left Simwan free to be alternately relieved and terrified, depending on the route the cab happened to be taking at that particular moment and the apparently solid objects at which their driver continued to insist on hurling it. Then, almost as soon as the wild ride had begun, they were back out on a normal street again. Second Avenue was also full of traffic, but in contrast to the jam they had left behind, it was manageable traffic.
“Sorry ’bout the detour,” the cabbie apologized. “Dere’s a dead dragon blocking da intersection up at Thoity-thoid Street and I’m damned if I was gonna wait around for Spectral Removal to show up and haul it away. ’Course,” he added pleasantly, “it wouldn’t really ha’ mattered that much ’cause I’m already damned anyway.”
Eventually, they reached the far Lower East Side, down near the Manhattan Bridge, and found themselves in one of the oldest parts of the city. Here, where the East River flowed past the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the other side from Manhattan Island, remnants of the great city’s nautical history and financial future were to be found.
The girls had gone silent. Heads tilted back, necks craning, they strained to see the fronts of the old apartment buildings that rose several stories high on either side of the constricted lane. Save for a brace of imps pushing a cart piled high with fresh fruits and vegetables and a cable installer truck parked outside one building, there was a notable absence of other vehicles. Shut out by walls of brick and chiseled stone, even the sun seemed to have taken a bye.
Emitting a grunt of satisfaction, accompanied by a match-size flicker of flame from between his otherwise tightly clamped lips, the driver slowed and stopped at one curb. In places where the concrete was cracked and buckled, weeds and grass broke through, announcing their imperfect but determined attempts to recoup the land for a paved-over Nature. On the surrounding structures, crows and ravens, sparrows and pigeons staked their claim to nesting spaces in a profusion of nicks and crannies and rooftops. Few were the windows that were not masked from within by thick shades or heavy curtains. A shadowy silence hung over the street, a quietude that affected even the air, which did not move. An old newspaper page that was skittering down the center of the street was doing so on its own, too impatient to wait for a following breeze. This was a neighborhood that had been overlooked by the ages.
Turning to Simwan, the driver extended a hand. The expectant open palm was rough-surfaced and covered with scales, not skin. “Yous won’t find dis street on no regular map o’ da city. That’ll be ten lucks, please.”
For a moment, Simwan wondered if they had been brought to the right address. Eyeing the stolid buildings that constricted the street like a Sphygmomanometer around a bare arm, it didn’t look as if anyone lived in any of them. On the other hand, he decided, if the cab driver had wanted to cheat them, he could have continued driving around Manhattan for another hour without his young passengers being any the wiser.
Digging out his wallet, he handed the driver two bills: a dollar (for a tip), and a ten-luck. Reflecting the nature of the unique currency, the face on the front of the latter was that of an older, happier Alexander Hamilton: one who hadn’t died as a result of wounds suffered in his duel with Aaron Burr. In the currency of another place and time, Hamilton had lived on—a fact reflected in the knowing wink the face on the bill gave the driver as Simwan passed him the note.
Pulling his head and tail back inside the taxi, the cabbie pulled away from the curb and drove off, disappearing around the next corner. Or maybe he disappeared before he reached the corner. Simwan couldn’t be sure. Turning, he put the cat carrier down on the crumbly, ancient sidewalk and together with his sisters, stood studying the building that loomed before them.
Constructed of brown brick the color of weathered wood, it boasted narrow curtained windows and touches of decorative gray granite. The pair of stone gargoyles that served as downspouts for the rooftop drain were just that: inert stone. In contrast, Simwan was sure that the pair of windows that fronted the small area that was visible below street level had blinked at him at least once. According to the information his parents had given him, Uncle Herkimer lived on the top floor. That meant a better view, more isolation from any street noise (assuming there ever was any noise on this street, he mused), and cleaner air. Picking up his backpack, he slipped the shoulder straps over his arms, hefted Pithfwid’s carrier, and started toward the dozen or so wide stone stairs that led up to the building’s front door. Chattering among themselves, his sisters followed, lamenting the neighborhood’s apparent absence of any boys older than themselves. The nonappearance of any other type of human being did not particularly concern them.
The front door opened into a small alcove. Embedded in one wall was a single row of metal mailboxes. Inspecting them briefly, Simwan was unable to decide if they were made of weathered, blackened brass or true gold that had been disguised to look like weathered, blackened brass. The other wall boasted a somewhat haphazardly written list of residents and a built-in intercom. Befitting his location at the top of the building, the top of the list featured the name they were looking for: J. Herkimer. Simwan pressed the small, square black button opposite the name. Within the wall, something buzzed. There was no reply. He buzzed once more. Again, nothing.
Behind him, the girls crowded close. “Let me try,” offered Rose. Stepping aside, Simwan let each of them take a try at the button. The buzzer-bell worked fine, but no voice responded from the speaker set into the wall.
“Pick me up.”
Doing as Pithfwid requested, Simwan lifted and awkwardly held the front end of the cat carrier so that it was facing the wall speaker. From within the carrier came a peculiarly modulated yowl that to a non-Ord would have sounded no different from any other feline yowl. It sounded only a little different, and was equally incomprehensible, to Simwan and his sisters. But there was an immediate response from the speaker.
“Well why didn’t you say so?” rattled a voice from within the wall. Listening to it, Simwan wasn’t sure if it was the speaker or the voice that rattled. It didn’t matter. It was the fact that they had finally roused a response that was important. “Marty and Melinda Mae’s kids—I’ve been expecting you, already.”
The high, narrow double doors that blocked the entrance to the interior of the building promptly swung aside, opening inward, groaning and squealing alarmingly as they did so. Once more a voice issued from the speaker.
“Don’t mind the doors. It’s their job to scare off nosy salespeople. Everybody should have a job, even a door, yes? Come on up.”
The girls ran toward the broad central stairway that extended itself slightly to greet them. Simwan followed more slowly. He was tired from the trip, from the effort of battling the evil that had tried to drown them beneath the Hudson, from the responsibility of looking after the coubet, and from the less than tranquil taxi ride they had suffered from the train station. It would be good to relax for a while. He was also looking forward to sitting
down and chatting with his uncle Herkimer. Even if he was dead.
VIII
The condition of the hallway reflected that of the apartment building as a whole: somewhere between decrepit and spotless. Certainly, it was quiet as they started up the wide, carpeted stairs. Dead quiet, Simwan decided. But it was not deserted. Occasionally, sounds loud enough to be heard reached the ascending Deavy brood: the muted mutter of televisions, the hum of people conversing behind tightly closed doors, the muffled chatter of a pet parrot. On the second-floor landing, a door opened and a hand emerged to place a bag of trash outside. The trash was ordinary but the hand was not. It was bright green, covered with large dark blotches and warts, and boasted six fingers that terminated in long, curving nails. Of the owner of this singular appendage they saw no more than the hand and the olive-skinned arm to which it was attached.
The third floor reverberated to the beat of fugitive music. Also to the footsteps of a diminutive elderly lady wearing a tutu; shiny white, cut-off top ballet slippers; and a harried expression. Hefting what looked like a butterfly net but wasn’t, she was huffing and puffing as she chased the music around the central stairwell. As the Deavys looked on, the woman swung and swiped the net back and forth until it finally collapsed around something invisible to them but clearly not to her. Firmly holding the mouth of the net closed, she hurried past them, breathing hard.
“Terrible sorry; ’tis I.” She held up the choked-off white mesh net. Neither Simwan nor his sisters could see anything inside, but the frantic jerking and twitching of the gauzy material clearly indicated something was trapped within. Each time the net heaved, a different discordant melody rocked the hallway. “ ’Tis a pirate recording, you see,” the little old lady explained, “and as such, ’tis ever attempting to flee its proper venue. Sometimes it gets out, and the neighbors rightly complain.” Lowering her voice, she sidled closer. Gesturing with a nod of her head, she singled out a door identified as 3C by the large brass letters that had been screwed to the wood.
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