Nikolai hustled across the floor, stopped Zoot with his clawed foot like a soccer ball and then gave him a light shove. He rolled him back over the rug, and Zoot thumped against the front door.
“Yee-hee-hee-hee!” Pernicious howled with laughter as the tubby pink demon struggled, rocking back and forth until he could get to his feet.
Zoot stuck his trident into the wood floor and pushed himself up to a standing position as Nik and Pernicious snickered across the foyer. The pudgy demon frowned, walking around the rug and past them to follow the two Keepers. As he stomped by, he nonchalantly flicked the trident in the direction of Pernicious and Nik, coloring them both head to claw in yellow polka dots.
As Zoot disappeared around the corner, Nik and Pernicious looked at each other. They howled with laughter, pointing at one another’s spots. Then each looked down at himself and realized that they’d both been spotted. Their giggling ceased abruptly.
“I’ve never seen so many in one place,” Lilli said softly.
Nat was pleased to hear her speak. She’d given him only one-word answers since they’d left her empty trailer. Perhaps he could get her talking, he thought.
“This isn’t my personal collection,” he said. “My kind has been gathering them for centuries. I’m just the one currently responsible for their care. And your care too, for tonight. You okay?”
“No,” she said, and she kept walking.
Nat trotted after her and tried again. “Be careful around the mirror in the foyer,” he warned. “It will show you in your underwear if you’re not looking.”
He explained other bizarre furnishings as they went, falling over himself to get each door for her and head off mischievous demons as they tried to make her stumble, startle her, or leap out to tangle themselves in her wild locks. He scooped up the old broom with duct tape around the middle to swat away a squirming piece of chewed gum that first tried to thrust itself under her shoe. When she instinctively dodged the gum, it catapulted toward her head. Nat hit it midair with the broom, knocking it back down the hall, away from Lilli. The gum demon was notorious for sticking itself to shoes and hair, though it usually got into its victims’ hair while they slept.
They passed the bickering masks, who wolf-whistled at Lilli.
“Stop it!” Nat hissed. “She’s fragile right now.” He clapped his hands over their mouths and ushered Lilli past them and around the corner, where Dhaliwahl’s paintings of skeletal figures wailing in agony hung along the wall.
“Art,” Lilli said, immediately reminded of her loss. She stopped and stared.
Nat didn’t interrupt.
“So beautiful, so sad,” she remarked, letting herself drift through their macabre shapes and dim colors as though they might absorb some of her pain. “There’s something guilty in them—dark secrets.”
“I know,” Nat said. “I live with demons, and these still creep me out.”
“Who created them?”
“My mentor. I think he felt bad about locking his own teacher in the basement with a man-eating beast.”
Lillie looked around, unnerved.
“Long story,” Nat said, “and don’t go down there. The point is, it wasn’t his fault. He had to do it. That’s probably why this painting looks guilty.” Nat motioned to a piece depicting a desperate boy with his back against a door, holding it shut.
“So does the next one,” Lilli pointed out as she walked down the hall. “This one with the wrecked boat.”
Their tour led them through the dining room, where they skirted the massive table’s restless clawed feet to avoid being swiped.
“Why do you think we see them?” Lilli asked absently.
“I think it comes from growing up with chaos,” Nat said, “but just being exposed to it isn’t enough. Someone has to point out that the crazy things you’re experiencing aren’t normal. Then you recognize them for what they are. Dhaliwahl did that for me.”
They arrived in the study. The couch quickly scooted itself to exactly the wrong spot in the room, and a small flock of paperbacks fluttered home to their bookcase, stuffing themselves onto the shelves in a jumbled heap.
Nat pointed out the rows of former Keeper ash urns that lined the study. “My predecessors.”
He stood in silence as Lilli ran her hand across the urns, feeling their karma, concentrating. Nat could see her expression change with each urn she touched.
“This one’s empty,” she said.
“Yatabe the Wanderer,” Nat said. “He was eaten.”
Lilli winced and quickly moved on. As she reached upward to touch the last urn, Raja Dhaliwahl’s, Nat saw a huge tattoo scrawled like graffiti across the pale skin of her lower back between the hem of her blouse and her waistband. It looked like the silhouette of an urban cityscape against a sun rising from her skirt. As he stared, however, the scene changed. The sun seemed to be growing dimmer, setting into her skirt instead of rising, and he thought perhaps he had just been looking at the shadowy city the wrong way.
“It’s late,” Lilli said, and she turned to find his eyes locked on her backside. She crossed her hands over her body protectively.
Nat shrugged apologetically, but it was no use. Even with him she didn’t feel safe.
“Where do I sleep?” she asked.
CHAPTER 15
MOBILIZING
Lilli awoke the next morning to find Nat standing by her bed.
“How are you doing?” he said.
“I think I’ve gotten my head together a little,” she said. “Sorry I was so . . . ”
Nat waved her off. “No apology necessary. You had a rough day. Sleep okay?”
“Actually, I had a very weird dream that Richie dumped stinky fish guts under the bed in my room.”
“Your room?” Nat said.
She sat up. The bed was situated squarely in the middle of the foyer over the Indian tripping rug. “Whoa,” Lilli murmured, “freak-a-delic.”
“It’s a sleepwalker,” Nat explained, “a guest bed imbued with the uncertainty of flopping at the homes of others. People who aren’t careful where they lie down can wake up in strange places. It has been harassing Richie, so he was happy to sleep on the couch, but I figured it would like you so it wouldn’t take you anywhere too dangerous. C’mon, let’s get you some breakfast.”
Minutes later, Nik and Pernicious squatted on the breakfast table, eyeing the food Lilli was trying to eat. She didn’t seem too bothered until Nik let out a particular wet belch and Pernicious sneezed stringy green phlegm on her plate. She leaned back from the table and put her fork down. The little demons leaped forward.
“Pernicious! Nik!” Nat barked, dropping a hand in front of them. “Sorry. They do that on purpose to try to get your food.”
Lilli pushed her plate away. “That’s okay. If they’re that hungry, they can have it.”
“They’re always hungry,” Nat grumbled, “and if you reinforce their negative behavior, they’ll only get worse.” But it was too late. Pernicious was already standing in her food, lifting hunks of hash browns to his mouth with his nimble feet while Nikolai scooped her fried eggs into his mouth, dripping yellow yolk on the table.
“What are they?” Lilli said.
“Chaos. Like your living art, only . . . not . . . art. Nikolai is a demon of brute strength. Not too delicate.” Nik guzzled from a mug. His oversized paws crushed it mid-gulp, and milk joined the egg yolks on the table to form a white and yellow river that cascaded over the edge and splattered on the floor. Nik licked dribbles from his blue and yellow polka-dot fur with his long tongue.
“Pernicious is the demonic incarnation of nasty surprises,” Nat said. “He’s one of my minions.”
Pernicious looked up. Snot and hash browns comingled, hanging from the little demon’s doglike snout.
“Can I get you something else to eat?” Nat asked.
“Not too hungry anymore,” Lilli said as Zoot made a disgusted face from where he sat perched on her shoulder.
&n
bsp; “Nik is my other helper. Very loyal. I had a third, but . . . ” Nat sighed.
Lilli nodded and interrupted so that he didn’t have to explain. “Zoot is my companion and complement,” she offered. “My yang, if you know what I mean. I’m mellow, he’s impetuous. I’m gentle, he’s fierce. I’m skinny . . . ” Zoot nodded along, rubbing his huge belly as Lilli spoke. “You get the idea,” she said.
“He seems quite loyal too,” Nat commented.
“He was just a pile of discarded spray paint cans when I found him, and I was a just a kid picking through junkyards.” She rose from the table. “Speaking of junkyards, I need to move my trailer today. My VW won’t tow it after . . . what happened.”
“Why?”
“No more good energy. It was a special car, a special trailer. They were just abandoned vehicles in the middle of the city, but I saw something in them and rescued them. For me they were amazing.” She sighed. “They’re not special anymore. Do you happen to know anyone with a tow truck?”
Nat knocked on Mr. Neebor’s door. He didn’t like talking to Mr. Neebor, or even seeing him, really. But he did it for Lilli. He was doing a lot of things for Lilli. He told himself that he was just helping out a friend, and when Neebor didn’t answer right away, he even ignored his instinct to be thankful for his good fortune and walk away. Instead, he knocked again.
The door cracked open and Neebor poked his shiny balding head out like a skittish seal surfacing from the water.
“Watch out for those blackberries!” he warned, glancing left and right. His ankles and hands were crisscrossed with gauze bandages.
“Mr. Neebor,” Nat said, “do you still have that old tow truck in your garage?”
Neebor frowned but nodded. “Why?”
“We need a tow.” Nat stepped aside, and Lilli grinned at his aging neighbor.
Nat watched the old man’s frown visibly melt before the power of her smile.
“I’ll get my coat,” Neebor said.
Minutes later, they were at the bridge. Lilly’s VW Bug and trailer sat lifeless by the curb. She was right, Nat thought—they actually seemed dead. The happy energy of the flowered car and the funky attitude of the bus had disappeared somehow, as though their lifeblood had been drained. They were just old, rusting, graffiti-covered vehicles now.
Neebor backed his tow truck up to the trailer. It chugged backward with a cough and a rumble. A faded sculpture of a foot hung over the top of its cab. Its cracked plaster toes dipped over the front windshield like limp hair, giving the vehicle a sad, weary look.
Lilli loved it instantly. “This is so groovy.” She clapped her hands. “It has personality.”
“Got it at an auction for practically nothing,” Neebor said proudly. He hit a lever to lower the hoist and locked the brakes. “Picked it up when old Ed Lincoln closed the city salvage yard downtown. I used to go down there and sneak over the fence to play in the junk cars before they crushed them. It’s a piece of genuine Seattle memorabilia.”
The hoist jerked and shuddered loudly. Metal scraped on metal, squealing so that Nat had to plug his ears.
“Too bad it’s all worn out,” Neebor apologized.
“It’s not worn out,” Lilli said as the hoist groaned. “Listen to it talk. It’s telling stories about the old days. It’s full of character, like its driver.”
Neebor stepped out to hook up the Bug, and Nat watched, surprised, as he did something Nat had never seen him do. The old man smiled.
“You just got yourself a free tow, missy,” he said.
Sandy stood on Nat’s porch, pounding on the door. “Let me in, stupid door!”
Finally, the door opened a crack, and Lilli peeked out. She saw that it was Sandy and waved to the door. “It’s okay. She’s cool,” Lilli said, and it swung wide.
“Of course I’m cool,” Sandy snapped. “But I’m wondering if someone told the door not to let a certain person in until that first someone later told the door that the second certain person was ‘cool’ and then it could let that person in.”
“Huh?” Lilli said.
“Never mind,” Sandy harrumphed. “Is Nat here?”
Just then, Nat walked down the stairs. “I heard a pounding noise.” He saw Sandy. “Oh. Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” Sandy said, pushing past Lilli. “Have you seen today’s paper?”
“No.”
“Then it’s a good thing I have. Here.” She tossed the newspaper to him. “Collapsed freeway and a warehouse fire,” she said before he’d had a chance to read it for himself. “People are dead.”
“Dead?” Nat gasped.
Sandy retrieved the Demonkeeper Journal as Richie walked in.
Nat slumped into a chair. “Fire and earthquake,” Nat groaned. “That’s Charr and Wedge.”
“I’ll look for their names in the Journal,” Sandy said. “Maybe we can find out more about them.”
“What about the third disaster?” Lilli added.
“Excuse me?” Sandy said, annoyed at being interrupted.
“Bad things come in threes.”
“That’s a myth,” Sandy said. “Nat, why is she butting in here?”
“She’s helping me,” he said. “She’s part of the team now.”
Sandy bristled. “Who decided that? Did I miss the vote?”
Nat ignored the questions. He was too busy feeling guilty for his failure to capture the Thin Man’s destructive little demons after the minion battle, and he suspected that they were not so little anymore. He opened the newspaper to a photo of the chaos downtown—the raging fire at the warehouse. Another photo showed piles of rubble and crushed cars from the collapsed viaduct that ran along the waterfront. Nat winced. He could see the Thin Man’s demons hidden in the photo.
Richie looked over his shoulder. Nat knew that his apprentice could see them too. To the untrained eye, they blended perfectly, but for the young Keepers whose scattered lives had made them so familiar with chaos, they popped out like bold images in a 3-D hidden picture.
“There they are,” Nat said grimly. “C’mon, we can’t leave them out there among mankind. They’re too dangerous now.”
“This could be my first capture in the wild!” Richie grinned.
“You aren’t ready to take on Charr or Wedge,” Nat said. “Now that they’re running free they’ve grown to lethal size. They’ll be first orders. I’ll deal with them. You just stay close, watch, and please try to do as I say.” Nat turned and whistled. “Minions! To me!”
Nik and Pernicious bounded into the room, ready for action.
“Richie, let Pernicious ride in your pocket. I’ll take Nikolai in the demon box.”
Nat pulled out a square puzzle box the size of an apple and shifted the lid first in one direction and then another. Nik looked on, frowning. He didn’t particularly like going into the box, but it was an easy way for Nat to transport him. The box was a powerful Demonkeeping tool for trapping and containing chaos, but it was also handy for carrying minions. Nik crept close to it and winced. The black void in the lid tugged at his fur and then, like a vacuum cleaner, suddenly sucked him in.
“Wow,” Lilli said.
“A priceless artifact,” Nat explained. “It draws, condenses, and contains chaos.”
“I want to go with you, Nat,” she said. “I can help. I’ll bring Zoot.”
“What’s a Zoot?” Sandy said.
The pattern on Sandy’s blouse shifted and blurred. Zoot separated from her clothes with a faint pop and dropped to the floor, smiling up at her.
“Has that fat, hideous thing been crawling all over my chest this whole time?” she gasped, frantically feeling her clothes to make sure no other strange creatures had pasted themselves to her.
Zoot frowned, looking into a nearby mirror. He hoisted his belly, wiggled his eyebrows, and finally seemed to decide that he was neither fat nor hideous. He pointed his trident at Sandy.
“No, Zoot,” Lilli said, and he lowered it reluctantly.
&nbs
p; “Okay, Lilli, you can come,” Nat said.
“What about me?” Sandy asked.
“You stay here,” Nat said.
“Why?”
“You’re not a Keeper.”
“I helped with the Troll.”
“You just led a goat over a bridge,” Nat pointed out.
“Yeah,” Richie added. “That was a no-brainer.”
“You’re a no-brainer,” Sandy mumbled.
“We’re going after two first-order demons here,” Nat continued. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“But I’m the one who told you about the freeway and the fire!”
“Yeah, and it would be great if you would stay and translate the Journal some more to see if there’s anything else we should know.”
“You don’t even have a clue where to start looking for them,” Sandy said.
“The trashed freeway?” Richie suggested.
“The warehouse fire?” Lilli said.
“Those places have already been totaled,” Sandy pointed out. “I think your demons will have moved on.”
“Where do you think they are, then?” Nat asked.
Angry and hurt, Sandy debated helping them. Finally, she took a deep breath. “Try the Seattle-Tacoma fault line for Wedge. It was destabilized in the huge Cascadia earthquake in the 1700s, and one branch of it still runs under downtown, right beneath the Space Needle. Any destructive fissure would love it there.”
“Thanks,” Nat said quickly. He turned to Richie and Lilli. “Let’s go.”
Moments later, they were gone. Devastated, Sandy sank into a sympathetic armchair with the Demonkeeper Journal. The armchair’s back scrunched over to massage her shoulders.
“Thanks,” she said. Then she did what she always did when she was feeling down. She took a deep breath, held her book to her chest for comfort like a beloved stuffed animal, and began to read.
CHAPTER 16
WEDGE
At home in the fault-riddled earth beneath Seattle, Wedge had become strong. It traveled easily under the surface, where loose dirt and debris had been dumped more than a century earlier to fill marshes and flatten the ground to build the waterfront city.
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