The Artifact Hunters

by Janet Fox

  “The wards are gone,” Kat said, her voice a tremor.

  When they reached the kitchen and thrust open the door, they came face-to-face with Lark. Her feet were planted wide beneath her huge orange petticoat, her bright pink hair standing up on end, her eyes wide as saucers. She brandished a pair of kitchen knives, one in each hand. Behind her, lying on the kitchen table, was Amelie with Willow floating above, flitting back and forth. Leo stood on the far side of the kitchen, and the ghost cat zipped from one corner to another.

  “Thank the moonglow and starlight!” exclaimed Lark, lowering the knives. “It’s been all we can do to keep the forest from strangling us.”

  Isaac went straight to Amelie, his heart in his throat.

  “It’s such a strong spell,” said Lark. “Ghillies can reverse spells, but this one is terrible strong. Ghillies have lots of hidden powers,” she added with a snarky glance at Willow.

  “We are not without,” Willow sniped.

  “What if I helped?” Isaac asked Lark. “What if I amplified your spell?”

  “Oh,” said Lark, coming to his side. “Oh, yes, please.”

  Lark leaned over and began whispering, and Isaac felt the hum at once. He channeled it right through his heart. When he did that, he could direct it, an electrical charge over which he had control. He focused Lark’s magic with all the emotion and energy he could manage.

  “Wow,” Kat whispered.

  “Goodness,” from Willow.

  And then, “Hullo?” It was Amelie. “Isaac?”

  Isaac grinned and she smiled back and he was warm all over. Everything around her—everything around him and Lark, too—glowed blue as if they radiated intense energy. The magic buzzed inside Isaac, slowly fading away.

  He had power. He used magic. He was part fae, but he didn’t have to be a monster.

  Amelie sat up slowly. “What happened? I only remember how it was so dark.”

  “Moloch,” Isaac said. “That’s his name. He’s an Unseelie fae. He spelled you to get to me.”

  “But, why?” said Kat.

  “Because I have the key to the Vault of magical artifacts.”

  “Yes!” said Leo.

  “My father gave me the key, and, Leo, you were right. The Vault comes to the command of the Guardian who has the key. Which is what Moloch wants. When my father gave me the key, he made me the new Guardian.”

  “Oh, but, wait,” said Leo, agitated. “That’s not quite right. Not from what I read. Not quite.”

  “Um, but . . .” Isaac paused. “What is it, Leo?”

  “This is important,” Leo said, pacing. “You have to accept. You have to finish the spell.”

  “Finish the spell,” Isaac echoed, remembering Moloch.

  “Right. You aren’t the Guardian yet, officially, until you finish the spell. This is a very dangerous spot to be in. If Moloch gets inside with the key before you finish the spell—rather like taking an oath, but it has to be done inside the Vault—then he’ll be able to become the Guardian. And because he wouldn’t hesitate to use the artifacts for whatever evil purpose, he could be the most powerful being in both the fae and human worlds.”

  There was a long silence.

  Until something thudded against the door.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Salt,” Willow cried out. “Quick! Salt and iron.”

  “Oh,” Lark cried. “Of course.” She ran to a shelf and yanked at a burlap bag, then dragged it to the door and began spilling a thin trail of salt across the threshold.

  Kat grabbed a great iron frying pan, wielding it like a tennis racquet.

  The door shuddered, with a boom, boom.

  “If we can get to the armory,” Isaac said, “we’ll have all sorts of iron in addition to reinforcements.”

  “What armory?” Amelie asked.

  “Very, very deep,” Willow said. “An ancient part of Rookskill. Now with bright swords buried there in the deepest part of the castle.”

  Thud! The door hinges began to work. A nail popped out and flew across the kitchen.

  “Isaac,” Kat said. “Look at the map. I think there’s a staircase behind the hutch.”

  Isaac and Amelie bent over the map. “Yes! It’s there,” Ame cried.

  Bang! One of the hinges popped off the wall.

  Isaac ran for the hutch and began to shove. “Leo, Amelie, give me a hand.”

  They pushed as Kat and Lark braced for whatever was trying to come through the door. The hutch budged an inch, when . . .

  Bang!

  Both hinges popped, and Kat and Lark leapt aside right before the door crashed to the floor of the kitchen.

  “Oh,” cried Lark.

  “Oh, by all the saints,” whispered Amelie. “How horrible.”

  “Miss Gumble?” Kat asked. “Oh, Miss Gumble.”

  The monster version of Miss Gumble, with blank eyes and pincer hands, stood in the doorway. Clutched tight in one of those pincers, dragging behind her like a sack, was the limp body of a still-unconscious Colin.

  CHAPTER 51

  Isaac

  1942

  “Push,” Isaac said as he shoved at the hutch. “Now.”

  Lark stood her ground, armed with her kitchen knives. “Ha! Can’t come over the threshold. Salt.”

  “Oh, Miss Gumble,” Kat said again, her voice full of sorrow, and she lowered the frying pan.

  “We’ve got to get Colin,” Amelie said. She moved away from the hutch and toward the prone boy.

  At that, Gumble took a heavy step right over the trail of salt.

  Lark tripped backward. “No.”

  Kat bent and tapped her finger from the salt to her mouth. “Sugar, not salt!”

  “Oh,” Lark wailed. “I’m hopeless!”

  “Push,” Isaac cried, as the monstrous Gumble dragged Colin across the threshold. Isaac and Leo shoved as one, and the hutch opened to reveal a doorway. Isaac grabbed Amelie’s arm, and then . . .

  . . . everyone froze in horror.

  Slithering behind the unconscious Colin was an even more hideous being than Gumble. Not human (at least, not any longer), not animal (except for horrible sharp teeth and long fingernails), the creature looked straight at Kat, raised one bony arm, and pointed. And gurgled.

  Kat took a step away, dropping the frying pan with a clang.

  Lark cried out and fled to the far side of the room.

  Willow gave a shriek and retreated to the ceiling. “Wraith! It’s the wraith.”

  The hum rose in Isaac, the hum of an ancient dark magic, and he wrestled with it, tried to contain it. He could read this wraith’s tortured mind.

  There was so much confusion, such hatred, in that miserable wraith, and it harnessed a magic different from Moloch’s—older, deeper, more primitive. Isaac’s mind filled with images of bones and sinew, pits of slithering vipers, giant spiders, and tortured creatures fused with wheels, pins, cogs—mechanical nightmares like the poor little mouse and Miss Gumble. The horror of those images chilled Isaac, froze him, made his knees weak.

  But Isaac felt something else deep inside the wraith: longing and desire. Isaac sensed that the wraith wanted love, wanted the love of something it had created, wanted the love of the woman whose soul was locked inside Kat’s thimble, had wanted that love for the longest time, had missed its chance at that love, and the sadness of this realization made Isaac want to weep.

  He was frozen with sadness, with the wraith’s terrible unmet desire.

  Amelie grabbed Isaac’s hands and forced him to look at her, forced him to look into her blue eyes. “You can stop it. Courage.”

  For the second time, Amelie’s strength fed Isaac’s.

  He met her gaze and slowly nodded, turning as the wraith sidled toward Kat and took her right arm, and Isaac knew what it sou
ght.

  “It wants your chatelaine, Kat,” Isaac said. “It wants the thimble. It wants what’s inside. It calls itself magister, and it wants that trapped soul.”

  “I mustn’t let it have it,” Kat wailed, “but I . . . I can’t . . . move.”

  Isaac reached into his pocket as he stepped toward the wraith and pulled out the watch, holding his hand open so the wraith could see the watch. The wraith paused, staring, mesmerized by the grinning Death’s Head skull.

  Isaac opened the skull to reveal the mechanism, and the wraith gave a tiny squeal. It fixed its eyes on the watch and dropped Kat’s arm, just as Isaac had hoped. It moved toward Isaac, reaching.

  Now if only Isaac could do what he must.

  “I’m going to use the watch,” Isaac said, not taking his eyes off the wraith. “For you, it will feel like no time at all. But I’ll take this creature with me and leave it in another time.”

  “But, where?” Ame asked. “Where, and when?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll just have to—”

  A sudden noise came from somewhere outside the kitchen, a howl and then, most horribly, laughter. Diabolical, triumphant laughter.

  “Moloch,” Isaac whispered. His hand was extended toward the wraith, the watch open on his palm, and the wraith started at the noise outside and began to turn away.

  Isaac had to act. He had to act now.

  “Get ready,” he said, speaking fast. “Make for the armory. Amelie, you and Lark grab some of the cast-iron pans to ward off Moloch. Leo and Kat, take Colin. But, Willow, you wait for me here.”

  Willow whimpered.

  With his thumb on the crown, Isaac kept his eyes on the wraith, who looked confused, its head swiveling from the watch to Kat and back. “It’s all going to happen very fast.” He took a breath.

  “Now.”

  With his left hand, Isaac grabbed the wraith’s arm, and with his right hand he turned the crown of the watch a quarter turn and set the time machine in motion.

  CHAPTER 52

  Isaac and the Wraith in London

  Circa 1870

  Isaac and the squirming wraith swirl through space and time. The wraith makes squealing noises, as if it’s in pain. Isaac, knowing what to expect, clutches the wraith’s arm tight. When they land, they land on cobblestones at night. Isaac rolls to his feet, releasing the wraith.

  Isaac’s other time travels had been set by his parents. This time, he wasn’t sure what to do so he focused on one thought: the inscription on the seal of the casket and the meaning of the watch itself.

  Memento mori.

  Which is exactly what he sees when his head stops spinning. Isaac turns toward a shop window, a photography studio. The mullioned window is filled with portraits, and painted on the glass are these words:

  Memento Mori

  Jos. Baker, Photographer

  They’ve landed on the street in the middle of the night. The street is lit by flickering gas lamps, and the air is damp and thick with fog. The only sounds are faint and distant—a horse’s slow clop, the squeak of a carriage, a foghorn. It smells fishy, smoky, and wet.

  Isaac steps closer to the shop as the wraith still squirms and whines behind him. Some of the portraits are family groups, some individuals, all dressed in Victorian clothing. But they seem a little odd, and as Isaac stares in the dim light, he sees why. Even though their eyes are open, even though they all appear to be alive, in each of the pictures one of the people is dead. In some, a ghostly figure hovers in the background.

  Isaac reads the card, printed by hand, that sits inside the window.

  Photographs of you and your deceased loved one. Spirit photographs. Together forever, never apart. Mementos to treasure.

  Ugh. Isaac steps back. He must be somewhere in Victorian England—London, he guesses. He remembers reading that spirit photographs had been a popular notion in Victorian times. It seems an apt place for him to land with a monstrous wraith, the kind of monster memorialized by Poe and Shelley. Isaac will abandon the wraith in London not terribly long after the publication of Frankenstein.

  The watch tick-tick-ticks in his palm.

  He takes another step back and is suddenly thrown, hard, to the ground, a searing pain in his leg.

  Isaac can’t help letting out a yell. As he smacks the ground, his fist opens and the watch rolls away, with a click-click-click on the cobbles, coming to rest at the edge of a grated opening that leads to the sewer. The watch perches precariously, its skull mouth grinning at him.

  This is mori, it seems to say.

  The wraith has bitten into his calf, hard, and hasn’t let go. Isaac kicks at it and tries to wrestle away. The pain is excruciating. He kicks harder, and the wraith finally jumps back with a snarl.

  Tick-tick-tick from the edge of the sewer. If he can’t get to that watch in time, or if it rolls into the sewer . . .

  The wraith springs on top of him again. “Get off,” Isaac yells.

  He hears a whistle and a shout from the far street corner. Two policemen run toward Isaac and the wraith as they struggle on the ground. He remembers from the Alexandria library—in letting go of the watch, he made himself and the wraith visible.

  The wraith pulls away, making for the watch in a quick crab-crawl.

  “No,” Isaac yells, and the policemen’s footsteps grow louder.

  “Here, you,” one of them shouts. “Stop!”

  Isaac leaps over the wraith just as the watch begins to ping its sweet but deadly chime. One, two, three . . .

  How? Not enough time.

  It must be short on time because Isaac didn’t fully wind the watch. Four, five, six . . . He throws himself forward, over the wraith, reaching, his fingers just shy, and the wraith shoves Isaac from behind. His fingers brush the watch and it starts to roll down, down, but Isaac pulls and reaches until he can wrap his fingers around the skull—ten, eleven, twelve—safe in his fist.

  As Isaac takes hold of the watch, the police arrive. The wraith scrabbles on the ground behind the vanishing boy, and the police reach to grab it. Isaac sees their bewildered faces as he falls back through time, now a ghost to them, while they are left to struggle with an abominable monster.

  CHAPTER 53

  Isaac

  1942

  Isaac fell right back into another commotion.

  Everyone was exactly where they were when he left, but they sprang into action when he returned. Leo and Kat ran for Colin, hoisting him between them as they fended off the dreadful Miss Gumble, who reeled with confusion, having lost her creator. Amelie and Lark, carrying frying pans, made for the hutch and the door behind it while Willow hovered above Isaac.

  “Willow! Wait,” Isaac shouted. “Wait until they’re all through the door.”

  Willow made whimpering noises as they zinged back and forth overhead.

  From the shadows of the hallway outside the kitchen, surrounded by brambles, Moloch appeared, his single red eye piercing the dark. Ame and Lark were through the door, and then Leo and Kat with Colin, and Isaac put his shoulder to the hutch and shoved it shut just as they disappeared. Isaac grabbed the scroll map from the table.

  Moloch grinned. “I don’t need them, do I? I just need you.” Daemon bared his teeth and growled.

  Moloch looked up at Willow and pointed at them. “Don’t you dare.”

  Willow zipped back and forth, faster and faster, saying, “Ow! Ow, that hurts! Ow!”

  Isaac shouted, “Willow, now.”

  Willow screeched and magicked Isaac away. In the instant before disappearing, Isaac saw Moloch’s expression change from triumph to anger, and he heard the dire wolf howl.

  Isaac landed in the armory before the others had made their way down, which was good because being transported by Willow hadn’t gotten any easier.

  The bite on Isaac’s leg
throbbed with agonizing pain. He dropped the scroll and sat on the floor and gingerly pulled up his trouser leg. The deep bite into his calf bled, oozing thickly with a greenish tinge. Poison?

  “Ow,” Willow whimpered. “He can even hurt a wight. We don’t like him. Not one bit. We don’t like you, either, making us wait there.”

  “Oh, boy,” mumbled Isaac as he examined his leg.

  Willow lowered themselves to look. “Death bite,” they said. “Maybe it serves you right for making us wait.” Then Willow added, more quietly, “Or not.”

  “Wonderful,” Isaac said. “Do not have time for this.” He stood, exceedingly dizzy. Whether it was the bite or the Willow-magic, he lurched and went down again. “Sir Bedwyr,” he said. “We need you.”

  From Bedwyr’s visor came that quick blue flash.

  “Wow.” It was Amelie. She and Lark, with Kat and Leo supporting Colin, made their way through the heavy door into the armory. “I never knew this was here.”

  “Very magical place, this,” said Lark. “Ancient. Those knights, of course, found their way here later but this part of Rookskill is old. Almost as old as the oldest magic.”

  Almost as old as the wraith, Isaac thought.

  Kat and Leo brought Colin to lay him next to Isaac. Lark put her hands on Colin to revive him from his spell, and he sat up. “Where am I? Where’s Canut?”

  “Isaac?” said Amelie, touching Isaac’s arm. “What’s wrong?”

  He gazed at her as if through a haze. “Lots of iron here. Safe.”

  “Show them,” said Willow. “Show them what’s going to kill you.”

  Isaac pulled at his trouser leg again. The bite foamed green, and his calf had swollen grotesquely.

  “What is that?” Kat asked. “What happened?”