“You mean the bloke who stole all the glory from Mr. Fisher?” Siggy had crossed over to the stage and was examining a music stand. He seemed to be trying to determine whether it could be turned into a weapon. He called, “The one with the comics, who helped him destroy the Terrible Five? Ace!”
“That’s just amazing! You are the first of us to meet him!” Joy cried. She squeezed her pink and blue Witch Baby, hugging it to her. “My sister Mercy is a huge fan of the James Darling, Agent comics. And Faith has a huge poster of him on her wall.”
“Nastasia isn’t the first.” Rachel vainly tucked an escaped strand of hair behind her ear. It sprung free again. “Mr. Darling is a friend of my parents. He used to be my father’s partner, years ago. Together, they hunted down the remnants of the Morthbrood. They captured some of the big names: Johan Faust the Sixth, the necromancer Claudius Stark and Eliaures Charles, the Serpent Master.”
She did not add that she had a crush on James Darling’s son.
Or, she had.
“Mr. Darling gave me a broom ride once, when I was little. He’s an even better flyer than I am.”
The princess nodded, as if acknowledging the honor that had been conferred to her. Then her expression grew grim. “But, alas, Agent Darling was unable to help, because that night, the creature with the wings of flame came into my dreams—where the Agents could not protect me.”
The girls gasped. Rachel leaned forward, intrigued. “Can you tell us more about this flame-winged thing? Where is it from?”
The princess spoke gravely. “He called himself the Lightbringer. Only he said it was easier for him to go to places without light. Maybe one does not bring light to places that have it?
“Either way,” Nastasia concluded, “he did not have much chance to say a great deal, because a raven came and told him his time was up.”
“Was it the very large raven with red eyes?” Rachel recalled the moment, the previous night, when the bird saw her watching it. Remembering Mr. Badger’s warning, she shivered again.
“Yes! Exactly,” the princess continued. “So far as I could tell, they were working together. The raven seemed to be in charge of keeping things out of our world. But he had let the Lightbringer in.” A frown appeared on her perfect brow. “Also, this raven was somewhat…uppity.”
Rachel recalled the gruffness with which the bird had spoken to the lion and smiled in spite of her trepidation.
Valerie looked up from her notebook. “So now that…”
Whatever Valerie might have intended to say was lost, because Zoë Forrest stepped out of the sleeping Kitten Fabian.
One moment Kitten snored quietly in the armchair by the fireplace. The next, Zoë had stepped out from the space Kitten’s body occupied. Landing hard on the slate before the hearth, she looked up into the faces present and winced. On her shoulder, her tiger-striped quoll—which really had spots rather than stripes—blinked its beady black eyes.
“Oops,” Zoë murmured.
“Wha…how did you do that?” Rachel stared at Zoë, amazed.
Not only had she appeared from nowhere, but her hair was blue and green plaid. Rachel could not imagine how to do that with hair dye!
Kitten stretched and stifled a yawn. “How peculiar. I just had the oddest dream about you, Zoë.”
Nastasia sat with her hand covering her eyes, overcome with some emotion. When she recovered, she said simply, “I did not tell anyone about you, Zoë…as we had agreed.”
“Um…yeah. Thanks for that.” Zoë crossed the room and threw herself down into an armchair. The feather in her long braid of hair swung back and forth like a plumb bob. The quoll sniffed at it. “Not that it does me a lot of good now…but that’s not your fault. The last few days, when someone was asleep down here, it was Sarpy—Umberto Sarpento, the school custodian. Usually, when he is asleep, no one is nearby. Sarpy snores something fierce.”
“How did you do that?” Valerie echoed Rachel’s question.
Zoë stuck one leg in the air, waving strap-up, leather sandals—the kind heroes were always shown wearing in Greek myths. The soles were the same shade of silver as a familiar’s paws. “These were made for me by Aperahama Whetu, a Maori shaman. They let me walk into the Long Ago Dreamtime.”
“The what?” Joy put her doll down.
“That’s what the folks Down Under call the place where dreams take place. You know how a familiar can grab stuff from the world of dreams and pull it into the physical world? I can do something like that, only I can cross physically and walk through dreams. But someone has to be asleep nearby for me to move in and out.”
“Wow!” Rachel whispered.
“She came into my dream last night,” the princess stated softly.
“She was in my dream, too. Just now.” Kitten brushed hair from her face and petted Leander. “I was dreaming about our fabulous magic carpet—the one that my brother Squirrel’s phoenix used to take us on wonderful trips. My siblings say I’m daft. That this never happened. Only I remember it quite clearly. We went to the beach once, and to a tower filled with treasure.”
“Treasure?” Sigfried’s eyes gleamed. “Where exactly was this?”
“What do you need more treasure for?” Valerie scoffed, her eyes dancing with mischief. “You already have an entire dragon’s hoard.”
“You can never have too much treasure,” said Siggy, who was trying to fire the music stand, as if it were a rifle. Something about his voice reminded Rachel of Lucky, who was nodding emphatically.
“Let’s talk about treasure later.” Rachel leaned forward. “I want to understand what happened.”
Zoë shrugged. “I came through Kitten’s dream just now. I should have known it wasn’t Sarpy. He would never dream about well-dressed children. You were wearing really odd clothing, Kitten.”
“Not odd. Just…old fashioned.” Kitten scrunched up her face, striving to remember. “I could swear we used to dress that way. Maybe Squirrel and Bobcat are right, and I am bonkers.”
“Whatever.” Zoë shrugged. “But I did walk through your dream, and I was there last night, in the princess’s. I wanted to help, but there wasn’t much I could do against that…what was that thing? I was going to hit him with my patu, but he left.” She turned to the princess. “You were so impressive. He kept threatening you, and you just defied him. You didn’t even lose your temper or anything.”
“I behaved as becomes my station,” Nastasia replied with quiet dignity. She frowned, dissatisfied with herself. “Alas, I was ineffective. I need to grow stronger.”
“You were awesome!” Zoë flipped her forelock braid containing the feather over her shoulder, to the consternation of the quoll. She grinned. “That guy was freaking scary. I would have been bawling like a baby.”
Curled up in one of the comfortable leather armchairs, Rachel played back the memory of Zoë’s arrival. It was hard to pinpoint. It was as if she woke from a dream, and there Zoë was—very much like when Jemima Puddleduck had appeared in their Art class.
Siggy put down the music stand and crossed to where the princess sat. He sank down on one knee. From his robes, he pulled a dining hall steak knife and laid it at the princess’s feet. “Ma’am, into your service, I offer my life, my strength, my fealty. I have already vowed to defeat your sworn enemy, the rabbit. Grant me the honor to bear my blade in your service! In life or death if I may serve you, I will. I have no sword to offer, but when I get one, I shall! Meanwhile, this knife will have to do.”
Some emotion crossed the princess’s face very quickly. Rachel played it back and saw sadness and something else she could not quite place. Pain, as if Nastasia’s feelings were hurt perhaps? Either way, Nastasia rapidly hid it. As gracious as the Lady of the Lake, she rose and took up the knife, tapping him with the blade on either shoulder and the top of his head. “You do me great honor. Rise, Sir Sigfried.”
“Now you have a knight, like a real princess,” Joy giggled, gazing admiringly at Siggy and Nastasia. A loo
k of eagerness came over her face, lighting it up. “I want to serve, too! We girls can be ladies-in-waiting.”
“I’m not waiting on anyone.” Zoë waved a hand in objection. “I’ve waited enough tables, thank you!”
“Waited tables? Have you really?” Kitten looked up from where she was petting her tiny lion. “But you’re only fourteen, aren’t you? Is anyone here older than fourteen?”
Everyone shook their head.
Rachel murmured. “I’m thirteen.”
“One of my great uncles made me help out in his restaurant,” shrugged Zoë. “Besides, things are different in rural Moldova.”
“Moldova? I thought you were from New Zealand,” Rachel asked, surprised.
Zoë rolled her eyes, which she did with great enthusiasm. Her whole face looked lively. “I’m from everywhere. My grandmother was a Moth, from the far flung Moth clan. So I have relatives in every corner of the earth. More relatives than you could count in your worst nightmare. After my mom died, I got to live with them all. Or at least, it seemed like it. Nothing helps a little motherless girl discover her place in life like sleeping on the couch of relatives who talk in front of her about how much she doesn’t matter to them.
“Eventually, though, I ended up with a cousin in New Zealand who was a Maori tribesman. My mother was half Maori. This cousin had left his tribe and was living in town, working as a barber. But part of the family still lived the old way. One of them, the shaman, took me under his wing—he was a bit crazy, but he cared about my opinions. He made me these silver sandals and gave me my enchanted patu—my Maori war club.”
Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out a short paddle made of shiny greenstone. Intricate spiral designs had been carved up and down its length. Some formed a terrifying face, the eyes of which were inset with a pale blue stone.
“The Moth family…You mean like the nurse and the dean?” Valerie flipped through her notes to a list of names. Zoë nodded.
“One of my aunts married a Moth,” said Joy.
“Wish I’d been sent to live with her.”
“She married a cowboy.”
Zoë nodded. “I’ve got pretty colorful relatives. At least a third of them are cowboys. They live on some huge ranch in Uncanny Valley, Nevada, where everyone is welcome. Only my father never saw fit to send me there. No. He went for the really eccentric ones. The mountain climbing couple in the Swiss Alps who were never home because they competed in yodeling contests. The wacky billionaire who gave all his money to a charity that did pot-bellied pig rescues and went to live in a grass hut in Bangladesh. That was a fun three months. Have you seen the size of the insects in Bangladesh? Imagine finding them inside your unmentionables.
“Then there was the French family where everyone was impeccably dressed. If you committed a fashion faux pas—like, say, wearing sneakers with a skirt, or socks with sandals— you were locked in the attic without dinner. I’d like to see them deal with huge bugs in their unmentionables!
“Then, there was a Russian great aunt who only ate oatmeal and pickles, which would not have been so bad, had she not insisted that I eat only oatmeal and pickles, too. I won’t even tell you what she did the time she caught me eating a ham and black bread sandwich. It was bad enough that my father yanked me out of there. Then came the old Japanese guy in his nineties who made me dress like Alice, from Alice In Wonderland, and wear bunny ears…all the time. Otherwise, he wasn’t so bad, really. Oh, and the coupon-cutting fanatic who forced me to climb into dumpsters to retrieve sales flyers. Let me tell you, after them, the Maori barber seemed positively normal.”
“How did you meet Seth Peregrine?” Kitten petted the purring lion. “You knew each other before coming here, right?”
“My dad lives in the same town in Michigan as Seth and Misty Lark—in the U between the thumb and the finger.” Everyone else stared at her blankly. Zoë chuckled and pet her quoll, “Sorry. A little Michigan humor. Two years ago, Dad decided I was old enough that I could live with him during the school year. I met Seth at the dojo. I wanted to win a fight for a change.”
“Seth does martial arts?” Sigfried made a karate gesture with his hands. “You mean, like Ju Kwan Do and Tae Jitsu?”
Kitten asked, “Are those real martial arts? Or did you make them up?”
Valerie rolled her eyes. “He is mispronouncing Tae Kwan Do and Ju Jitsu.”
Zoë shrugged. “Seth’s a hockey player. Hockey players need to know how to fight.”
Rachel rested her chin on her knees, watching Sigfried and Lucky mock jab at each other. She felt terrible for Zoë. Her situation was almost as bad as Sigfried’s. How horrid not to have a proper loving family.
“Misty Lark. Does she have short straw-colored hair?” Nastasia glanced at Zoë, who was chewing on one of her own plaid locks. Zoë nodded. “I saw her with you and Seth in the vision I had when I touched you. You were standing on a silver road surrounded by fog, facing off against what looked like knockers or kobolds—some kind of fey. You each wore a bandolier that held little glass bottles with cork stoppers. Something swirled in the bottles. You had panpipes on lanyards around your necks and carried—I am not sure what it was? A bat? A hockey stick? You stood together, back to back.”
The others listened in astonishment, but Zoë merely shrugged, unimpressed.
“Sounds cool,” she said, “but it means nothing to me. Though I am glad to hear that Seth and Misty were my friends, even before I came to this world.”
The princess’s brows drew together in thought. “I wonder why some students from the same landscape know each other, such as you and Seth, and some do not. When I touched Sakura Suzuki, I saw her with Enoch Smithwyck in what I took to be ancient Japan. But they do not know each other now.”
“Sakura Suzuki?” Valerie asked. “Is she the Japanese girl whose spells go horribly astray?”
Joy nodded. “She is my roommate.” Leaning toward them, she lowered her voice respectably, though a note of excitement crept in. “She’s an orphan. When she was five, her mother and father were killed right in front of her. She watched them die.”
“How tragic.” The princess’s voice broke slightly.
The others were quiet for a time. Siggy seemed particularly dismayed. He frowned, his face a sullen mask. Rachel looked down, tracing a triangle on the thigh of her robe. Not having a family was bad enough. But having one and losing it? The idea was so horrid, she did not even know how to feel about it.
Eager to think about something else, she turned to Valerie. “You had a question earlier that got interrupted?”
“Oh, right!” Valerie spoke up so brightly that Payback’s ears perked up. She spun her pencil around her hand and caught it.
“She makes that look easy, Lucky. It’s not. I’ve been trying,” Siggy muttered to his dragon. “I drop it two out of three times.”
Valerie grinned. “You should see what I can do with a butterfly knife.”
Siggy and Lucky both cocked their heads at the same angle and stared with the same awed expression. Siggy murmured dreamily, “with a butterfly knife!”
In the exact same tone, Lucky murmured, “Look at all that golden hair. It’s like she has her own head-hoard.”
“Butterfly knife?” exclaimed Zoë. “Aren’t they illegal in sixty-two out of fifty states?”
Valerie grinned. “Being a cops daughter does have a few perks.” She turned back to Nastasia, “But about my question, Princess. Is it no longer safe for you to touch people?”
Nastasia shook her head. “No. I have only been warned not to touch two people. I do not seem to be in danger otherwise.”
“Two people?” Rachel leaned forward. Valerie leaned forward as well, notebook ready.
Nastasia nodded. “Xandra Black—or the voices that possess her—warned me not to touch Mr. March. Last night, my father came to visit me at the Halls of Healing. He told me that under no circumstance must I touch Vladimir Von Dread.”
“Is that so?” Rachel r
ecalled the prince of Bavaria striding across the lawn, students scurrying out of his way like leaves before a storm. “I wonder why. Do you think he is being tortured, too?”
“More likely, he himself is evil.” Valerie chewed on a stray blond lock as she wrote furiously in her notebook. “I bet Salome is right about him.”
The princess stated, “My father confirmed that the Von Dread family is wicked. The King of Bavaria refuses to uphold the rules of the Parliament of the Wise. He lets people practice forbidden magic without facing prosecution.”
Joy leaned forward eagerly. “Everyone knows that Bavaria is where the last of the Morthbrood are hiding. My sister told me that the King of Bavaria offered money to any Morthbrood member who wanted to come and live in his country—as long as they shared their secrets.”
Valerie’s comment about her friend reminded Rachel of one of the puzzles she was still mulling over. “In the princess’s vision of Salome Iscariot, she had been dead for twenty years. What does that mean?”
“Wait, Salome? My Salome?” Valerie jumped to her feet. “You are talking about my best friend, here. H-how could she be dead?”
“Maybe she’s a ghost,” Joy whispered, spooked. She sat down with her knees pulled up against her chest and hugged her Witch Baby. “I remember when you touched me, you said nothing happened. What about everyone else? Have you touched us all?”
Valerie opened her mouth as if she was going to object to the change of subject and then shut it again. She crossed to the far side of the music room and began pacing. As she walked back and forth, she snapped her lens cap on and off, chewing worriedly on her lip.
Sigfried crossed to where she was pacing and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “There, there.”
Valerie snorted in sardonic amusement, but her cheeks turned slightly pink.
The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) Page 16