And then we just sat there waiting for someone to say something.
The silence stretched past the point of comfort.
Finally, Myrtle seized the proverbial bull by the horns.
“Barnaby and Moira have shared your concerns with me,” she said.
Oh, great.
Had I mistaken a family intervention for a summit conference?
Myrtle caught the look of uncertainty on my face. “You were right to go to him,” she added.
I let go of the breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding. Everyone else seemed to relax as well.
“I do have to ask, however,” Myrtle continued, “why you didn't speak with me directly?”
She sounded hurt, which made my face color with instant shame.
Tori and I exchanged a guilty glance. I was hoping Tori would answer the question, but she told me in unspoken but no uncertain terms that I was the one up at bat.
Swallowing, I admitted the truth. “We thought you were lying to us,” I said.
This time Myrtle, for all her wisdom, appeared to be perplexed. “Why would you think I would lie to you?” she asked.
The question, so innocently put by a being of her age and experience, made me feel even worse.
I didn’t have a good answer, and Tori’s expression told me she didn’t either. I just did the best I could.
“I’m sorry, Myrtle,” I said. “You’ve always had all the answers.”
“And when I didn’t, you decided that I must be lying?” she asked.
Now both Mom and Gemma were fixing us with their custom versions of the look, and Tori and I were blushing redder by the minute.
“Answer her, Norma Jean,” Mom commanded.
Barnaby came to my rescue.
“It is a human failing,” he said kindly. “It is not entirely Jinx’s or Tori’s fault. They were raised in a world where mistrust in one’s fellow man is quite common.”
Aunt Fiona cleared her throat. “Actually,” she said, “we’re all to blame.”
Every head in the room swiveled toward her.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Aunt Fiona said stoutly. “If you’ll just stop and think about it, you’ll know I’m right. We’ve been feeding these girls half truths from the beginning. We thought we were protecting them and not piling too much on them all at once. Good intentions or not, that is lying whether we want to admit it or not.”
Barnaby sighed. “Fiona is right,” he said. “We’ve asked you to trust us, but we haven’t always given you a reason to do so.”
Until that moment, Myrtle had been with us in her librarian “look.”
Without warning, a gentle wave of golden light washed over her. As she assumed her true form, regret etched Myrtle’s beautiful features.
“Fiona is right,” she said sadly, “and my crime is greater than any sin of omission. I knew something was wrong when Brenna Sinclair returned to Briar Hollow undetected, but I refused to admit the truth. I attributed my failure to the absence of her powers, but now there is the matter of the chessboard. I feel nothing unusual in the store even now, but I am not correct, am I, Moira?”
The alchemist laid a hand on the aos si’s arm. “No, my dear, old friend,” she said softly, “you are not correct. I feel the chessboard and something else above us, something smaller and more confused, but definitely magical.”
“As do I,” Barnaby said.
“If I may?” Beau said.
“Of course, Colonel Longworth. What is it?” Barnaby said.
“Have you determined the origins of the chess set?”
“We have,” Barnaby answered. “It is a magical artifact called the Liszt chessboard, so named because it is believed to have been crafted as part of a dark deal made by the composer Franz Liszt. In exchange for an innocuous device that allowed him to capture musical ideas from his contemporaries, Liszt employed the devil’s chord in many of his major compositions.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!
“The devil devil?” I croaked. “You all said there is no devil. There’s lying and then there’s lying, and if you’ve been . . .”
Moira held up her hand and stopped me.
“In the sense of a Christian dichotomy pitting absolute good against absolute evil, there is no entity called the devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, or any of the other names ascribed to him,” she assured me. “The dark wizard Mephistopheles, however, was quite real.”
While I was still trying to slow down my racing thoughts, Beau said, “Fascinating. The demon to whom Dr. Faust bartered his soul was Fae?”
“Yes,” Moira said, “but one utterly without principle.”
“Hold on,” Tori said. “Who is Dr. Faust?”
Moira nodded at Beau. “If you will, Colonel?” she said.
“Dr. Faust,” Beau explained, “is the central character in a play of the same name written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published in several versions early in the 19th century. I read it during a tour of Europe several years before the conflict you call the Civil War. As I understand it, the motif of a man bartering with the devil for ultimate knowledge is common in German mythology. Herr Liszt apparently made a similar bargain to enhance his musical abilities.”
“He did,” Barnaby said, “and to dubiously earn his reputation as one of the greatest pianists of his age.”
“How do you know all this?” Gemma asked.
“The alchemical diaries,” Moira said. “An alchemist who was a friend and contemporary of Liszt’s had his suspicions about the chessboard. We believe it may have been paired with a secondary artifact, a miniature harp, that is being used at a distance to receive and translate messages.”
Tori was following all of this a lot better than I was. “The pawns are arranged in a code?” Tori asked. “And that message gets sent to the harp and its owner for translation?”
“We believe that to be the case,” Barnaby said.
Chase leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t suppose you know who sent the chessboard to Jinx and Tori?” he asked.
“We do not,” Barnaby said. “But we do know where the chessboard was last seen, in the hands of Hitler’s treasure-hunting institute, the Ahnenerbe, at the end of World War II.”
That was the last straw.
“You are not serious!” I exclaimed. “Nazis? Next you’re going to tell me the Ark of the Covenant is the real deal.”
“Actually, the Nazi interest in . . .” Barnaby started.
“STOP!” I ordered.
The Lord High Mayor of Shevington blinked at me in obvious incomprehension. “I’m sorry?” he sputtered.
“I think what the girl is saying,” Festus supplied helpfully, “is that dealing with the devil and Nazis in the same conversation is more of a hairball than she’s ready to toss.”
“Thank you!” I said fervently. “What he said.”
A trill of laughter rippled through the triplets.
“And what the heck do you three think is so funny?” I asked crossly.
“Jinx,” Earl said, “you’ve seen too many Indiana Jones movies. None of these artifacts is what Hollywood has made of them. Try to think of it all in modern terms. The chessboard is like a hidden electronic bug; it just runs on magic, not on microchips.”
That actually did help. I took a deep breath.
“Okay,” I said, “fine. Let’s just go with the ‘someone has bugged our place’ line of thinking and stop all this evil-Nazi-devil talk. What do we do to take out the surveillance system?”
Still looking a little confused at my reaction, Barnaby said, “We don’t want to take it out.”
“And why would that be?” I asked.
“Because we need to know who put it here and why,” Barnaby replied.
He said it like the answer was so obvious that I was painfully slow for not getting it immediately.
Which I probably was.
But can you see how these magical family conversations tend to go?
I swear to God
I’m going to start demanding somebody type up an agenda so I can prepare for the bombshells the Fae tend to drop without a thought.
“We do have a somewhat larger problem than the matter of the chessboard,” Moira ventured delicately.
“Which is?” I asked.
“Helping Myrtle.”
And this would be the part where I instantly felt all of three inches tall.
17
“Myrtle,” I said, “I am so sorry for doubting you, and for not instantly asking what we can do to help.”
The aos si smiled at me with warmth and affection. “We have asked so much of you these past few months,” she answered. “You have overcome your fears time and time again. I think we are all remiss for not saying more often and with greater feeling how proud we are of you, Jinx, and of you, Tori. Your reactions to the things we tell you are perfectly understandable and . . . well, frankly, often thoroughly amusing.”
I looked at the familiar sparkle in her eyes and couldn’t suppress a sudden giggle. That was all Myrtle needed to start laughing as well. Our mirth proved to be contagious, moving around the assemblage in a wave of snorts and guffaws.
“The ark of the covenant,” Merle gasped, tears of merriment streaming down his face. “Now that one was a classic!”
Wiping my own streaming eyes, I said, “I am so glad you all find me entertaining.”
“Well, dear,” Mom snickered, “you always have been a little given to overreactions.”
“And where,” I asked archly, “do you suppose I got that from?”
It was Mom’s turn to look innocent. “From your father?”
“The only time my father overreacts is when he’s got a big fish on his trot line,” I said.
“Oh, there was that time a grasshopper got down his shorts . . . ” she said.
“Stop,” I begged, doubling over laughing again, “please, I can’t take it.”
It took a few minutes before we all composed ourselves. It might have been a mild instance of group hysteria, but that shared laugh erased all the awkwardness in the room and re-forged the team in an instant — which was good because the game plan was about to get much more complicated.
Chase regained his focus first. “Moira,” he said, “is there a way to help Myrtle?”
“We hope so,” Moira said. “Obviously, artifacts were smuggled into the store by Brenna Sinclair and her associates. Barnaby and I believe there may be something in the store that is specifically damping Myrtle’s powers.”
Gemma beat me to the most obvious flaw in that scenario. “Then why haven’t the rest of us been affected?” she asked.
“I am not like the rest of you,” Myrtle said. “My magic derives from older, more elemental roots. There may be a substance here that directly counters the forces from which I was born.”
Tori snapped her fingers. “Kryptonite!” she exclaimed. “Of course!”
Myrtle frowned. “I’m sorry?”
Earl jumped in. “Kryptonite,” he said enthusiastically. “From the Superman comic books. Kryptonite robbed the Man of Steel of his powers. I loved those comic books when I was a kitten.”
“Uh, just for the record, Earl,” Tori asked, “when did you get your first Superman comic book?”
He thought for a minute and said, “Sometime around 1937.”
“Do you still have it?”
“Yeah, I have all of them. Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “We just need to have a talk when this is all over.”
I sensed an eBay conversation in the works.
Ignoring her daughter’s entrepreneurial side, Gemma looked at Moira thoughtfully. “Are we talking about the unity of opposites?” she asked.
“Very good,” Moira nodded approvingly. “Your alchemical training is returning to you quickly. Tori has intuitively grasped the concept, albeit in a unique context. Gemma, you may recall that it was Anaximander who first posited the idea that every element has an exact opposite or is, in some way, connected to an opposite. His student, Anaximenes, suggested that rather than a war of these substances, a continuum of change exists.”
Even though they were talking way over my head, I got the basic idea. They believed something had been placed in the store that canceled Myrtle out. Any Trekkie could get that concept immediately: matter and antimatter.
“Whatever you choose to call the substance or the item,” Barnaby said, “we need to locate it, and determine the nature of the second magical signature upstairs that Moira and I both feel.”
Chase cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “we have three things we need to do.”
He quickly outlined our conversation with Sheriff John Johnson, finishing with a description of Fish Pike’s hidden room.
Furl hardly let Chase finish before he declared, “We have to see that room.”
“I agree,” Chase said, “but we can’t risk getting on the Sheriff’s radar. Right now, he doesn’t think we’re involved in Fish Pike’s murder. I’d like to keep it that way.”
Festus sat up and stretched. “You thinking what I’m thinking, boy?” he asked.
Chase nodded. “Cat burglary.”
“Hot damn!” Merle said, pumping his fist. “Count me in!”
“Ditto,” Earl grinned, “Let’s hit the alley, boys.”
This was starting to sound too much like one of those “hold my beer and watch this” kind of conversations.
“Hold on,” I said. “What are you guys talking about doing?”
Festus regarded me with that same “slow child” look Barnaby gave me earlier. “The lads are going to get furry, and we’re going to break into Fish Pike’s house.”
“And do what exactly?” Tori asked.
“Evaluate the material and get rid of anything damaging,” Furl said. “It’s part of our job at the Registry. Clean up and obfuscation.”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Cover up,” Tori said. “They go in and sanitize the scene. You know, like on Scandal?”
Oh, right. Huck loses it, kills someone, and the gladiators clean up the blood. Got it.
“And you can do that and not get caught?” I asked.
“Really, Jinx?” Furl sniffed indignantly. “We are professionals.”
After some bantering back and forth, we came up with three plans, one of which was a little unorthodox. First, we were going to send in a rat to do a wizard’s job.
Everyone agreed we couldn’t do anything to cause the chessboard to send messages giving away the nature of our activities. Barnaby found no reference in the historical record to indicate the chess set was animate. In other words, the pieces weren’t moving themselves. It seemed likely that the second magical presence was actually composing the transmissions and activating them in some way. None of us could go looking for that agent, but Rodney could.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” I asked the rat, who sat balanced on my knee, upright on his hind legs, regarding me with bright, expectant eyes.
Rodney nodded enthusiastically.
“You understand what we want you to do?”
He pointed upstairs and mimed nosing around. Then, his inner drama rat took over and we were treated to a rodent pantomime wherein Rodney wrestled a bad guy into a choke hold emerging victorious with fist upraised.
“Okay, Double O Seven,” I said, “you got the search part right. But If you find something, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Come get us. Promise?”
Rodney held up one paw in the Boy Scout salute.
“Do you mean that?” I asked.
His eyes went round, and he put one paw over his heart as if I had wounded him deeply.
“Okay, okay, fine,” I said. “But be careful.”
We all watched as Rodney jumped off my knee and took the steps in leaping bounds. He wasn’t big enough to open the door, but he had one of his own, neatly gnawed behind the shelving unit that sat to the right of the basement entrance.
Next, Merle, Earl, and Furl disc
reetly stepped into the stacks to shift. They came trotting back in as their usual Scottish Fold selves. After some initial protest, Chase agreed to stay behind and join in the artifact scavenger hunt we were about to launch. Festus, as the senior werecat present, would lead the stealth op.
“Dad,” Chase said, looking pleadingly down at his father, “please don’t cause any more trouble. We’ve got enough on our hands. Just get in there, assess the situation, and get out.”
Festus let out with a sound something between a sigh and a hiss. “I was pulling off cat burglar operations before you were born, boy,” he said. “Have a little faith in your old man’s discretion.”
Faith in Festus’ discretion? Yeah. That’s how desperate we were.
The rest of us split up into teams chosen by Moira based on complementary abilities: Mom and Gemma, Barnaby and Chase, Beau and Aunt Fiona. Tori was with me.
Myrtle, Moira, and Darby would remain in the lair doing more research on the chessboard and examining anything we found.
“Barnaby,” Beau asked, “can you give us any direction to guide our search?”
“Those of us who are practitioners should use our senses to read the power signatures of what we may encounter in the collection,” he said. “What Tori is calling ‘kryptonite’ may most directly affect Myrtle, but it should also register as unusual to us.”
“Unusual how?” Gemma asked.
Moira spoke up. “The ‘flavor,’ if you will, of the energy should be caustic,” she said. “It should touch your own magic with a kind of bitterness. Do you understand?”
Gemma nodded. “It’s an antagonist. It should feel like it’s pushing against us.”
“Correct,” Moira said. “If you locate anything that gives you that sensation, contact us here.”
“How?” I asked.
“Why not just use our phones?” Tori suggested.
“I don’t think the signal is strong enough down here,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket and staring at a lone, pathetic bar.
Moira didn’t look up from the stack of books she’d sent Darby into the shelves to retrieve, she just raised her hand and spoke a few words in Latin. “Try now,” she said.
Witch on First: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 4 (The Jinx Hamilton Novels) Page 15