The Wizard of Dark Street

by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

A fierce pain seared through Oona’s hip, and she could feel it instantly begin to bruise. She clenched her teeth together, biting back the pain.

  “Just my hip,” she said, sucking air through her teeth before giving Deacon a roguish smile. “At least it’s not broken,” she added. “I hear there’s no worse pain.”

  Deacon scoffed.

  It was then, as she stifled a laugh, that she saw something on one of the lower steps. The sight of it so surprised her that the pain quickly dulled.

  “Look, Deacon. Do you see it?”

  “See what?” he asked.

  Oona pointed. “Blood.”

  She pushed herself up on wobbly knees, wincing slightly at the ache in her hip, but shoved the discomfort aside as she descended several steps to examine the splattered stain on the step. Oona pulled her father’s magnifying glass from her dress pocket and used it to study the blotch.

  It was dried blood all right. Taking a further look around, Oona spied another splatter of dried blood a few steps down, and another after that. By the time she reached the sidewalk, she saw that the trail of splatters came to a stop behind the giant top hat.

  The hat loomed several feet over her head. She circled it twice, yet found nothing new. The trail of blood simply stopped there on the sidewalk.

  Or started there, Oona considered.

  She came to a stop beside the carriage.

  “Is everything all right?” Deacon asked.

  Oona did not answer him. She was afraid that if she did, then she might begin shouting that, no, everything was not all right. Her uncle was a toad, her home was going to be destroyed, and there was a possibility that the entire street might just spin off into the Drift, disconnecting them from New York and their only supply of foods and goods. The other possible scenario, where Dark Street became a giant tourist attraction for the benefit of Red Martin’s new casino, was perhaps better, but the fact that this exposed the World of Man to faerie attack made it simply unacceptable. Oona’s own father had been trying to bring down Red Martin’s criminal empire for years, and Oona would love to finish the job. But first she would need to find out which of the applicants was in cahoots with the master criminal. Which one had a connection?

  She stared thoughtfully across the street, toward the Dark Street Theater, and the sign out front:

  THIS FRIDAY ONLY OPEN-CALL AUDITIONS FOR OSWALD DESCENDS

  Something clicked in her head. She walked partway around the hat once again, looked down at the blood, and then back up toward the sign over the theater. It came to her in a flash.

  Oswald! she thought. Of course. But it only makes sense.

  “Deacon!” she called as she moved hastily toward the carriage.

  “Yes?” Deacon replied.

  “Tell me. What building do you know of that has a large stairway leading up to its front entrance?” she asked.

  “Well, there is the museum, of course,” Deacon said, gesturing with a wing.

  Oona nodded. “Yes. Yes. We know that. Any other such steps that you can think of? Something comparable in size to those leading up to the museum?”

  Deacon considered this for a moment, then said: “The only steps I can think of would have to be the ones leading up to the Nightshade Hotel.”

  “Very good, Deacon,” Oona said. She snapped her fingers. “And it is my guess that that is precisely where we will find him.”

  “Find whom?” Deacon asked.

  Oona climbed back into the carriage. “Grimsbee!”

  They found Hector Grimsbee precisely where Oona had thought he would be. He stood halfway up the marble steps that led to the Nightshade Hotel. The hotel guests circled wide around Grimsbee as they made their way up and down the steps. Oona could understand why. Grimsbee looked quite angry, gesturing grandly with his arms and arguing with what appeared to be no one at all. The bandage around his head looked as if it had not been changed since the previous night, and it was drenched in sweat.

  By far the most luxurious and opulent-looking building on the street, every window frame, handrail, and door handle of the hotel glistened with gold-flecked paint. At a mere four stories tall, the building was not the largest structure on Dark Street, but then again, Dark Street did not get many visitors. And besides, it was not so much the hotel that kept Red Martin in business, but the gambling and the other seedy activities that took place behind its golden doors.

  With the box containing her uncle once again under Samuligan’s watchful care at the curb, Oona cautiously ascended the steps, Deacon at the ready on her shoulder.

  “Mr. Grimsbee!” she shouted in order to be heard over the blind man’s babble.

  Grimsbee stopped his gesticulating and turned to look at them … or appeared to look at them. His solid white eyes gleamed as he sniffed the air. “Ah. If it isn’t Miss Crate, and her smelly birdie wordy. Or should I say, wordy birdie?”

  “What are you doing up here on these steps?” Oona asked.

  “I am rehearsing,” Grimsbee replied. “There are open-call auditions this Friday at the Dark Street Theater, you know. I shall be in top form.”

  “I see,” said Oona.

  “I don’t,” Grimsbee replied, and then burst into laughter, as if this were the funniest joke he had ever heard.

  “What will you be performing?” Oona asked.

  Grimsbee gave his mustache a twist. “I shall be enacting the final conflict of the play, where Oswald heroically battles the Queen of Faerie, throwing spells and repelling fire, all of which takes place upon the fabled steps to Faerie.”

  Grimsbee pressed his fist to his heart and bowed his head dramatically.

  “Yes,” Oona said, quite unimpressed. “I thought so.”

  Grimsbee continued: “Unfortunately, I could not remember where I put my umbrella. I was using it to represent Oswald’s wand. I think I might have left it at Pendulum House last night, by mistake.”

  Oona remembered seeing Grimsbee the day before with the red umbrella on the museum steps. This memory in turn conjured up another image: this one of Isadora Iree kicking over the umbrella stand in the Pendulum House entryway, and a tall red umbrella shooting out and nearly poking Adler Iree in the leg. Oona was about to tell Grimsbee as much, but he cut her off.

  “Once the director sees my performance,” Grimsbee declared, “he will be forced to hire me in the lead role, and all my fans will flock to the theater for my triumphant return.”

  “Isn’t it a bit dangerous for a blind man to rehearse on the stairs?” Oona asked.

  “Nonsense!” Grimsbee shouted, making Oona jump. Clearly, the subject was a touchy one, and Oona felt certain that she was on to something. Grimsbee smoothed out the lapel of his jacket and recomposed himself. “I am able to fulfill the role as well as anyone. Even better. I am one of the greatest actors to have ever graced the stage. And why should I need a working set of eyes when my sense of smell is so clearly superior in every way. If that ridiculous director can’t see that, then he is just as blind as I am, and deserves another sandbag dropped on his head.”

  Oona decided to ignore this last comment. “Isn’t it true, Mr. Grimsbee, that you were rehearsing for your audition yesterday? Before your appointment at Pendulum House?”

  “Why … uh … yes,” said Grimsbee. “But how could you know that?”

  Attempting to hide her excitement, Oona shrugged. “It was only an educated guess. You see, Deacon and I saw you on the steps of the museum. And I’m also guessing that while you were preparing, you had a rather unfortunate accident. Neither I nor Deacon saw it happen, because something distracted us while we were watching you, but I believe that you were practicing for the auditions when you fell down the steps of the museum and hit your head several times along the way.”

  Grimsbee’s ears went red, and his eyes, despite their sightlessness, slitted as if leering at her. His eyebrows drew together, making one lone brow across his forehead. “It … I … It was …” And then, the menace in his face suddenly dropped away. He
fell to his knees, nearly falling down the steps as he did so, and folded his hands together as he began to plead: “You must keep your mouth shut about that. It wasn’t my fault. The steps … they were old … they crumbled. That’s why I came here, to the hotel, to rehearse today. I can do the part. Really, I can. But the director must not hear that I fell, or I will be ruined.”

  “So I guessed correctly—you did fall,” Oona said. “You tumbled down the steps, hitting your head several times in the process and landing on the sidewalk.”

  Grimsbee ran his bony fingers across the bandage on his head. “Yes.”

  Oona turned to Deacon, triumphant. “That is why he disappeared so quickly. Grimsbee didn’t go into the museum, Deacon. He fell down the stone steps in the exact instant that you and I heard the scream come from Madame Iree’s dress shop. We looked away, Grimsbee fell, and when we looked back, we couldn’t see him because he was lying on the sidewalk behind the enormous sculpture of the top hat.”

  “So that means …” Deacon trailed off.

  “Grimsbee couldn’t possibly have stolen the daggers,” Oona finished.

  Grimsbee stuck his jaw out indignantly. “That is obvious. I was at the doctor’s office getting my head wrapped until just before my appointment at Pendulum House. And do you know what the doctor said to me?”

  Oona and Deacon shook their heads.

  “He said that I was lucky I didn’t break my hip,” Grimsbee said. “No worse pain, the doctor told me.”

  Deacon shook his head. “I do wish people would stop saying that.” He turned to Oona. “So if Grimsbee couldn’t have done it, then who did?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said Grimsbee. “It’s that little witch. You can smell it on her.”

  Oona threw her hands to her hips and shook her head. “You can’t smell if someone is a criminal. And besides, that was probably just her pungent facial cream you smelled. It had a very strong … a very strong …” Oona trailed off, lost for a moment in thought. Finally, she said: “It had a very strong herbal smell.”

  “With a hint of cinnamon,” said Grimsbee, pushing himself back up from his knees.

  Oona was nodding. With a hint of cinnamon. That was exactly right. But the smell beneath the cinnamon had been herbal. And just now, it occurred to Oona that it had also been a familiar smell. The cinnamon had thrown her senses off, but she thought that she knew now where she had smelled it before.

  “Yes, of course,” Oona said, her bright green eyes going wide with excitement. “Come, Deacon. We should return to Pendulum House at once.”

  “What for?” Deacon asked.

  “We need to visit the garden.” She scratched at her head, but before Deacon could question her any further, she added: “One other thing, Mr. Grimsbee. If you are so intent on being an actor, why did you apply for the position of Wizard’s apprentice?”

  Grimsbee shrugged. “Something to fall back on, I suppose. But then again, I don’t see why I couldn’t do both.”

  The words surprised Oona. Do both? she thought. It was an intriguing thought; one she’d never really considered seriously before. But the idea was interrupted by the sound of the hotel’s large golden doors slamming open. Oona glanced up, only to find two enormous men in bright red suits hurrying down the steps. Clearly identical twins, the only difference between the two hulking figures was that one of them wore a bushy mustache in need of a good trimming, and the other was clean shaven.

  They stopped on either side of Grimsbee. Matching badges on their red lapels read: NIGHTSHADE HOTEL SECURITY.

  Grimsbee sniffed at the men uncertainly.

  In a hushed, throaty voice, the twin with the mustache said: “We’ve received several complaints, sir, that you are frightening the guests. We’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “But…,” Grimsbee began.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the man with no mustache, in a voice identical to his brother’s. “No buts.”

  Faster than Oona would have believed such massive men could move, the twins picked Grimsbee up by his bony elbows and tossed him toward the street. Grimsbee howled as he collided with a carriage horse at the curb.

  The horse neighed its disapproval, and Grimsbee pushed himself roughly back to his feet. Meanwhile, Oona was staring up at the hulking twins. They stood over her like two nightmarishly tall bulldogs, arms bulging beneath their jacket sleeves, looking as if she might be their next victim.

  Deacon rose to his most menacing height, but the security guards appeared unfazed.

  “Indeed,” Oona said, backing gingerly away, feeling her presence at the hotel was suddenly less than welcome. It was as Oona backed down to the sidewalk that she got the curious feeling she was being watched, and not just by the monstrous twins. As if by instinct, she looked up and spotted a set of eyes leering down at her through the slit in a red-curtained window.

  For the simple fact that she was standing in front of the Nightshade Hotel, she had a sneaking suspicion just whose eyes they likely were. She shivered at the thought of the notorious Red Martin himself watching her.

  “Samuligan?” she said.

  “Yes?” replied the faerie servant. He stood just behind her, holding the box with the toad.

  “I think it is time to leave,” she said.

  Samuligan, who was also looking up at the ominous set of eyes, said: “Most wise.”

  Twenty minutes later, as she entered the inner courtyard at Pendulum House, Oona could still not shake the awful feeling those eyes had given her.

  “What are we doing in the courtyard?” Deacon asked.

  “I have a hunch,” she replied.

  She wound her way past the sprawl of the magnificent glass tree—which by day projected fantastic prisms of sunlight about the courtyard walls—and stopped at the edge of the soil patch where she had caught Isadora digging the night before. Heedless of her dress getting soiled, she dropped to her knees.

  Deacon looked at the sign sticking out of the soil.

  “Turlock root?” he said, sounding quite astonished. “But I thought it only grew in Faerie.”

  This was Deacon’s first time in the inner garden, Oona realized. Deacon had been a present for her eleventh birthday, and they had been together for nearly two years, but she had never brought him out here. This had always been her place to be alone, and clearly Deacon had respected the house rules and had never ventured out here on his own.

  “Don’t forget that Pendulum House is built on Faerie soil,” Oona reminded him.

  Deacon nodded. “Oh … yes, of course. That makes sense. But still I had no idea. And why are we here?”

  Oona lifted a handful of the dark soil to her nose. It was, of course, the same herbal smell she’d caught a whiff of the night before, when Isadora had smeared the soil across her face. But it was also familiar for another reason. She dug down into the dark soil, feeling around until her hand closed around something slick and smooth. She tugged. A moment later she was holding a bright green root above the ground. She squeezed it lightly in her hand, and a greenish substance oozed out around her fingers. The smell was quite powerful and conjured up an image of Sanora Crone, her face covered in this same slimy goop.

  “You might want to wipe that off your fingers,” said Samuligan. The faerie servant stood just behind her, holding the box containing the toad in one hand and offering a handkerchief with his other.

  Oona dropped the root on the topsoil and received the handkerchief.

  “Thank you, Samuligan.” She wiped the goopy substance from her hand and then examined it on the cloth. She sniffed it. “It is just as I thought. This is the same substance that Sanora Crone had on her face last night. Witchwhistle Beauty Cream, indeed!”

  “Ah, yes,” said Samuligan. “I thought I smelled something familiar on her. I could not place it last night. Now that I know what it is, however, it is obvious that she was attempting to mask the smell with cinnamon.”

  Deacon hopped to the ground beside the root. “Turloc
k root? But where would Sanora Crone get turlock root? And what does it have to do with the attack on your uncle?”

  Oona had already considered both of these questions. Turlock root could only be grown in native Faerie soil. The only place to find Faerie soil other than Pendulum House was in the Land of Faerie itself. It was yet another mystery.

  “I don’t know where she’s getting the root, Deacon,” Oona said. “Certainly not from here. But as to your second question, what it means is that Sanora Crone is not what she seems. In fact, she is likely older than she appears to be.”

  “But why would she make herself so young?” Deacon asked. “To what purpose?”

  Oona rose to her feet, letting the handkerchief fall to the ground. “For the answer to that, I think we will need to ask Sanora herself. Come, let us make for Witch Hill immediately.”

  “Ah, but the entrance is secret,” said Samuligan. “Even I, who have lived on Dark Street for nearly five hundred years, do not know how to get inside. It is bewitched.”

  Oona took the hatbox from Samuligan and cracked open the lid. She peered inside. The toad sat in the center, looking up at her with its wide toady eyes. They were bright green eyes that, the more she looked at them, the more they reminded her of her uncle’s. They seemed so unmistakable. Those were the eyes that had looked so disappointed when she’d decided to give up the apprenticeship for another life. A life as a detective. And here she was, living that life, yet it was not at all how she had thought it would be. In truth, she had never thought it would be so … personal.

  And then a horrible notion invaded her thoughts. A stabbing sense of doubt. What if she was just seeing the similarity between her uncle’s eyes and the toad’s because she wanted to believe it? What if this was just some toad that had found its way to the top of that tower? Maybe the tower was infested with toads, and she did not know it. As unlikely as that might seem, the thought still managed to spoil her conviction that the toad and her uncle were one and the same. What if this was not the Wizard, but some long-forgotten faerie that had been imprisoned, like Samuligan, during the Great Faerie War? And that would of course mean that her uncle was, in truth, dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.