Crook of the Dead (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 3)

by Jen Rasmussen

“Well, I guess that makes sense,” I said to Phineas as we stood up to go. “If finding someone was as easy as a spell, you’d have found Amias a long time ago. I’ll ask Wendy too, though.”

  “I’d very much like to meet this Wendy person,” said Martha.

  I grinned at her. “Now that would be fun. We couldn’t take Max back to Bristol, obviously, but maybe Wendy and Caleb could come here some time. After all this is over.” I gave Martha a hug. “Thank you, as always.”

  Max was sound asleep in front of his movie. Wulf was snoring, himself. I managed to wake the dog without disturbing the human, and we headed out. But I was nervous, going to my car in the dark, even with both Wulf and Phineas at my side.

  Had we been followed? Had I led anything bad to anyone I loved? But there would be no reason for anyone to attack them, surely, even if they were after me.

  Except of course to get to you.

  I had a brief vision of Warren, tied up in a mossy basement that was crawling with worms and stained with blood, before I squashed it.

  “So, your cousin, huh?”

  We’d barely pulled out of Charlie’s driveway. Phineas hadn’t even finished buckling his seatbelt.

  “I knew that was coming,” he said.

  “Yeah, congratulations on that excellent deduction. You didn’t think this was relevant to tell me before?”

  He was looking out the window, so I couldn’t see his expression, but the tips of his ears were red. “It’s not something I like to talk about. As you can imagine.”

  “Well, tough shit! Talk!”

  “His father is my mother’s half-brother.” Phineas gave me a second to process that, knowing from our efforts to untangle the Tanner and Pierce families that I sometimes had trouble visualizing family trees, before he went on. “Amias’s mother—my aunt—left when we were just toddlers.”

  “Left where?”

  “Here. Somewhere. Nobody knows. She ran off with a human man and started a new family.” He sighed, glanced at me, then turned to the window again. “We have a holiday, I guess in English it would be called Homecoming, or something like that.”

  “Like the football game?”

  “No, like exactly what it says. Everyone’s supposed to come home. Because we travel to other worlds so much, and so many of us have lives elsewhere. So that’s the day we make sure we see our families, friends, people we grew up with. We make sure we get together as ourselves.”

  “Okay.”

  “I remember when we were little, before my uncle died, he’d march Amias out to the Homecoming feast every year. He’d make him wait all day. Not playing the games or talking or even eating, not sharing everyone else’s good time. Just waiting. She never came.”

  “What a cruel father.”

  “You know how when people get divorced, the kids often worry that it was their fault somehow? Like that the parent who left didn’t love them or something?”

  “Yeah. So his father tried to convince Amias that he was the reason his mother left?”

  “No, in Amias’s case, he really was the reason she left. She was afraid of him. She hated him.”

  My heart hurt a little for the young Amias, until I reminded myself who he’d grown up to become. “Why?” I asked.

  “Amias had a little sister who died when she was only a few weeks old. His mother was convinced Amias killed the baby.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Three.”

  I stared at Phineas, but he was still turned away from me. I looked back at the road. “Is that possible? Do you guys develop at the same pace we do?”

  “Roughly.”

  “Then it’s not possible. Even if a three-year-old wanted to do something like that, he wouldn’t know how. Or be strong enough. Would he?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Amias has always had a lot of natural talent with magic. I suppose it’s possible. But not probable.”

  “Geez, Phineas. That’s quite a family you’ve got there.”

  “Yeah, well. Like I said, Amias’s father was only my mother’s half-brother. My parents are nice. You’d like them.”

  I was momentarily distracted by the thought of Phineas’s parents. What were they like? What was his house like? He’d told me so little about his world.

  Then Phineas said, very quietly, “I was mean to him.”

  My stomach sank with a vague sort of dread. I waited him out until he started talking again.

  “He was always just kind of wrong. Off. He would stare. Just stare so much. And birds, he was really weird with the birds. And where I live, the birds…”

  When it became clear he was just going to let that sentence die, I asked, “Weird with them how?”

  “Sometimes he made friends with them, which is unusual. We don’t have pets, but he’d have birds following him around. And then sometimes he killed them and took them apart.”

  I pushed the latter image aside. “So he was always a nut.”

  “Yeah but the problem is, I don’t know whether he was born that way, or it was a product of everything that happened to him. Maybe he had a chance not to be nuts, and his family ruined it for him. His father died when we were seven or eight. My mother’s sister took him in after that, but there was a fight first. Nobody wanted him. Amias knew it, I think. He always resented my mother for not inviting him to live with us. And then there was me.”

  “What about you?”

  “He had a lot of worse things than me to deal with, obviously. But we all lived near one another, and Amias and I were around the same age. We were around each other a lot. We don’t have school, but we have something like it. “

  I glanced at him, his broad shoulders. He was tall. He had that smile. “You were popular,” I guessed.

  The left-sided shrug. “I had a lot of friends. Amias didn’t have any. I could have…” He trailed off and ran a hand through his auburn curls.

  “You could have stopped people from picking on him.”

  “Maybe. But instead I encouraged them. I never did anything to him directly. My mother would have killed me. But I encouraged them a lot. And you know how it is when you’re a kid.”

  I had a flash of memory, some of the cool kids in middle school throwing trash at me. Trying desperately not to let them see me cry, to keep walking as if I didn’t even notice it. A cup bouncing off my temple, a dribble of milkshake running down my cheek.

  “Yeah, I know how it is.”

  I tried not to sound too accusing, but I know Phineas heard the hard edge in my voice. He swallowed hard, and it was several seconds before he resumed talking.

  “And I suppose he was jealous of me. I had a normal family. I had everything he didn’t. I think he hated me more than he hated his parents, even. He hated me more than anyone. He still does.”

  I sighed. “Well, that explains some things. I— SHIT!”

  I slammed on my brakes and cut the wheel to the left. Which was a good thing, because had I swerved to the right instead, I might have hit a tree. As it was, I only crashed into the center island, hopping the curb and coming to a stop in the middle of some shrubs, which got the bad end of that deal. I hoped I hadn’t just killed a bunch of rabbits in there.

  For that matter, I hoped I hadn’t just killed Wulf, who had been thrown off the back seat onto the floor. But judging from his indignant howls, he was breathing just fine.

  “What just happened?” Phineas asked.

  I ignored him and got out of the car, then walked into the road. The light from the street lamp had an orange cast that made it look alien and haunted, but it was empty. Now.

  A few seconds ago, Helen Turner had been in the middle of it, laughing so hard she could hardly stand straight. She had one arm slung casually over the shoulder of a bloody woman with empty eye sockets and pecked skin. A woman with no hair.

  I put my hand over my mouth and bit my lip to keep myself from screaming.

  Phineas was beside me by then. “Lydia?”

  “It was… It…” I
had to bite the lip a few more times before I could go on. “I knew I was doing too well with this. I mean, not well, but not bad enough. Obviously. I probably shouldn’t be functioning at all, really, but I have been. Wouldn’t you say I’ve been functioning pretty well? I think I have. It’s because I haven’t been thinking about it enough. Blocking it out, you know. They don’t like being blocked out.”

  “Lydia, you’re babbling.”

  “Yes, but we both know that’s what I do. Babble. It’s what I do, right?”

  “Under certain circumstances. Slow down and tell me what you’re talking about. Who doesn’t like being blocked out?”

  “My guilty conscience. I call it Helen.” I started walking back toward the car, but stopped and turned back to the road again, frowning. “Although she doesn’t always come just to tell me what a shitty person I am. Sometimes I swear she’s warning me. Not because she’s worried about me, obviously. Just to gloat.”

  Phineas put a hand on my shoulder, looking genuinely alarmed. “Did you hit your head?”

  I laughed, which I’m sure didn’t make me sound any more sane. “Something awful might happen. Of course, something awful already has happened. But there might be more to come.”

  “I’m pretty sure we don’t need some sort of ghost prophecy to tell us that,” Phineas said. “Are you okay, or not?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that question. “Is Wulf okay? Go check on him while I have a look at the car.”

  I’d blown out a tire, but apart from that, I thought it would be drivable. At least, it hadn’t burst into flames, and wasn’t obviously leaking anything wet. That criteria was pretty much the limit of my diagnostic powers.

  Wulf appeared at my side, pawing at me. I crouched down to reassure him, for once not minding how bad his breath smelled as he slobbered all over my face. It was nasty, but comforting.

  “Why don’t you take the leash while I change that tire?” Phineas asked.

  I gave him an offended look. “Why are you assuming I can’t change a tire? You think someone from another world where they don’t have cars—or do you have cars?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, but you think you’d be better at changing a tire than me just because what, I’m a woman?”

  He raised both hands, warding off my attack. “More because you’re shaking so hard I thought it might be dangerous for you to try to jack up a car.”

  He was right about the shaking. I took a few deep breaths and said, “I’d like to get through this before the neighbors call the cops. I can change a tire pretty fast, I promise. Will you just take Wulf for a quick walk?”

  I was in luck: no cops came. It took me a little longer than I’d have liked, thanks to the aforementioned shaking, but I got my spare on eventually. Phineas put the old tire in the trunk while I coaxed Wulf back into the car. The latter was not an easy task, and I had to resort to a lot of pushing, which did not make him feel any better about things.

  The shrubs weren’t in great shape, but I didn’t see any little rabbit corpses right off, either. Did it still count as a hit and run, if all I’d hit was plants? Call me a bad citizen, but I wasn’t sure I cared. I was bone weary, and I wanted nothing more than to go to bed. We left.

  But my little encounter with the island had hurt more than just my tire; my alignment was so far off I had to hold the wheel perpendicular just to get the car to go straight. It took us a long time to get home, and when we did, my troubles still weren’t over. Maybe the vision of Helen and Bella had been a warning, after all.

  Wulf started baying and growling the second we walked in the door. Before I could flip the light switch, someone—male, by the shape of them—knocked me off my feet. I tackled his legs and pulled him down on top of me, which was maybe not the smartest choice, because he weighed a lot.

  Phineas was trying to pull him off me. Wulf was biting at his arm. He was flailing around.

  There was a gunshot.

  I was afraid he’d hit Wulf, and I guess a surge of adrenaline gave me superhuman strength. I pushed the man off me and jumped up to turn on the light. The entryway was one big jumble of dog and human limbs.

  The intruder managed to roll away just enough to raise his gun. Phineas froze. Wulf was not that smart. He was biting the guy’s leg, tugging him forward.

  “Get him off!” the man shouted.

  I grabbed Wulf’s collar and yanked him back. The man—the features I most remembered afterward were blond hair and big teeth—scrambled out the door, then turned and ran.

  Phineas moved as if to chase him. I tugged him back the same way I had Wulf, by the collar.

  “Don’t! We don’t have a gun. Bullets do make your kind bleed, no?”

  He pushed me off. “I can at least get a plate number or something, maybe.”

  I followed him out, still holding Wulf to keep him from running off in pursuit. We didn’t see any sign of the guy, or any cars speeding out of the lot.

  “But how did he get in?” I asked. “Around your concoction, whatever it was. It was supposed to put up a boundary, wasn’t it?”

  Phineas didn’t answer, just gave me a dirty look and stalked back toward the apartment.

  Maybe it was the stalking that caused him to miss what I saw when I came in and closed the door behind me. Or maybe he just didn’t think much of my housekeeping, and felt that the debris scattered around my entryway was normal. But it wasn’t.

  First of all, there was a bullet hole in my closet door. The bullet itself was lodged in a shoe rack inside.

  And then there was the floor. It was littered with things that had fallen out of our pockets while we were rolling around. Forty-two cents. A sea shell Martha had (inexplicably, of course) given to Phineas as we left her house. A rubber band. (I thought that was mine, though I couldn’t have told you why it was in my pocket.) A wadded up tissue. And a crumpled piece of paper. Phineas, finally noticing what I was doing, picked that up before I got to it.

  He blinked at it. Then he handed it to me.

  “This explains the forty-two cents. Our new friend paid two dollars and fifty-eight cents in cash for a large vanilla latte three days ago.”

  “And that’s alarming why? Because it’s actually cheap for a large latte? Or because nobody carries cash anymore?”

  I looked down at the receipt, looked up at Phineas, then back down again.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  The receipt was from a coffee shop I knew well: the Witch’s Brew, of Bristol, North Carolina.

  I called Wendy first thing the next morning.

  “There you are!” she said. “Why haven’t you returned my calls?”

  Had she called? Probably. There were a few calls I hadn’t returned after Bella. It was rude when people just wanted to know I was okay, but I couldn’t stand the thought of describing the scene over and over.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But I need your help. Someone broke into my apartment last night.”

  “Shit! Wouldn’t the police be better for that?”

  “Well, the guy had blond hair and big teeth, and a receipt from the Witch’s Brew.”

  Wendy gasped a little. “You’re kidding me. Large vanilla latte?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s why I was calling you. He’s Madeline Underwood’s husband.”

  I laughed for a solid sixty seconds before I asked if I’d heard her correctly. Madeline Underwood, the downright frightening proprietor of the Mount Phearson Hotel in Bristol, was not the sort of woman you could picture as a bride.

  “It gets better,” Wendy said. “His name is Jonas Goode.”

  JBEGOOD. “Where did he come from?” I asked.

  “No idea. He was a tourist or something. He’d only been staying at the Mount Phearson, I don’t know, maybe a week or two before he came in with Madeline, and they announced they’d gotten married. A whirlwind thing, fell in love at the hotel.”

  “Madeline Underwood is… Mrs. Goode?”

  Wendy l
aughed. “Exactly. And the thing is, Madeline Underwood hates me. It’s completely unlike her to just come in here and chat with me and Caleb about her personal life. Jonas was the one who told us, but still. She smiled. At least I think that was a smile. There were teeth involved, but there’s an outside chance she was just trying to bite us.”

  “What’s Mr. Goode like?”

  “Friendly. Likable.”

  “I don’t even know what to say to that. Do they know you and I are in touch?”

  “I don’t know,” Wendy said. “Why?”

  “Making this public announcement. I wonder if they wanted me to know.” I filled her in on who Belinda Palmer really was.

  “So first Amias leaves this woman’s—phantasm’s—body for you to find. Then Jonas Goode makes sure he identifies himself to your friends.”

  “I’m not sure what to make of it all,” I said.

  “They want you to know what they’re up to.”

  “Well then they’re doing a shitty job, because I don’t have the slightest idea what they’re up to.”

  After I hung up, I turned on the oven while I told Phineas the story, and pulled some cookie dough out of the fridge. This seemed like the sort of situation that called for cookies. But after he finished laughing just as hard as I did at the idea of Madeline having a husband, Phineas turned the oven back off.

  “Baking will have to wait. We need to go to Bristol. And I have a feeling our business might take a while.”

  “But I can’t just leave without any planning or warning or cookies! I have to get my car fixed.”

  “We can rent one.”

  “And I have to call my clients.” At least there were only two at the moment. But there were also things to do for my own site, and a huge backlog of email to answer from people with ghost problems. I hadn’t done any work since I found Bella’s body, and as vulgar as my practical concerns might have been under the circumstances, I had bills to pay.

  “You can call them on the way. And pack your laptop so you can work while we’re there, when you get a chance. And…” Phineas looked down at his shirt, which had bacon grease on it. “We’ll stay long enough to do some laundry and pack, and find a hotel. One that’s not in Bristol.”