“I assume you’ll grant me Cornelius?” Erasmus asked me. “We all know where he would be standing were he here.” He glanced at where Mephisto was doing his best imitation of a whirling dervish and added, “I’ll grant you Mephisto, just to be decent.”
I nodded and looked around. Theo, Gregor, Mephisto, Mab, and Caliban supported me, though I doubted Erasmus counted the last two, since this was a matter of who would lead the family. Logistilla, Cornelius, and Titus supported Erasmus. That left Ulysses. Erasmus and I turned to face him.
“Looks like it comes down to you.” Erasmus crossed his arms.
“W-what? Me?” Ulysses cried, startled.
“We’re going to let him vote?” objected Logistilla. “The man who imprisoned Gregor?”
“You’re one to talk, woman!” muttered Titus.
“He’s a member of the family,” Gregor replied gravely. “Ulysses? Choose wisely. Our future, and that of mankind, may depend on your choice.”
Ulysses looked back and forth between Erasmus and me. “Um…”
Mephisto left off dancing and came skipping back to join us. “What are we doing?”
“We’re voting on who is the head of the family,” replied Theo.
“But I’m the head of the family!” Mephisto pointed at himself with his thumb, his staff flying outwards. Erasmus and I both ducked. “I’m the eldest son.”
“Saved by the raving older brother,” Ulysses murmured, taking a slight step back.
“You’ve been disqualified on grounds of insanity,” Erasmus explained to Mephisto.
Mephisto planted his staff on the ground before him and leaned on it. He stated surprisingly cogently, “It is possible to disqualify a person upon grounds of insanity, but that requires a legal action, and no such action has been performed.”
Theo turned to Mephisto. “Come on, Brother. Don’t be foolish. We’re in a hurry. Father’s life is on the line.”
Mephisto pointed at himself. “But I am the head of the family.”
“Now, Mephisto, don’t make a fuss.” Theo moved toward him.
“No! I think I will make a fuss!” Mephisto stabbed his finger at Theo. “And who are you, of all people, to lecture me, Mr. Think-I’ll-run-away-and-shirk-my-duty! I may be crazy, true, but I have never run away, and I have never shirked my duties!”
Erasmus laughed aloud. “What have you ever done for the family?”
Mephisto cocked his head. “What have you ever done for the family, Mr. I’m-too-busy-to-follow-up-on-Daddy’s-distress-note? Normal people, sure. But Miranda? Ulysses? If we had to wait for you to look out for us, we’d still be waiting, and I’d still be staffless!”
“And what are these duties you’ve performed?” Erasmus frowned severely at Mephisto, much as one might regard a disobedient child.
“Oh, let’s see, shall we?” Mephisto counted off his points on the fingers of his left hand, starting with his thumb. “First, I kept tabs on everyone. Bodyguard, over there, thinks it’s because I wanted to hit you all up for money. That’s not true. I mean, money helps, but why would I hit Theo up for money? Or Titus? They’re poor!
“I kept track of everyone, because that’s what older brothers do, especially older brothers in families where the father is absentminded and can disappear into his study for years, forgetting to tell his enchanted daughter to eat or something. I kept track of you all back when I was sane. You expected it of me then, and I still do it now—even if I’m not as good at it as I used to be.” He looked down, his eyes sad.
“And that’s why we should follow you? Because you knew where we all were?” Erasmus sneered.
“I’m not done.” Mephisto moved on to his index finger. “Second, I took care of Logistilla the time she broke her leg. Fed her animals and stuff.” He pinched his nose. “Phew! Do they stink!”
Titus looked at Logistilla in concern. “I didn’t know you broke your leg!”
“It was a few decades back.” She played with the strap of her shoulder bag. “Before you and I were an item.”
“Third, I kept track of Titus, until the bear thing, which even I couldn’t have anticipated. And, even while he was gone, I did what I could. I gave his kids presents every birthday, and I spent Easter and Christmas with them while he was missing, and most of summer vacation. Well, except for this Christmas, because I was at the North Pole. But I made sure Santa brought them something good.”
Mab had been looking through his notebook. Now he looked up, a gleam in his eye. “‘For T.C.’ That stood for ‘Titus’s Children,’ didn’t it?”
“Yep!” Mephisto put his hands on his hips. His staff shot out sideways, nearly hitting Logistilla in the lip. “How do you know about my private code?”
“I visited your house, remember?” Mab turned to me. “Turns out my theory was right, Ma’am, the one I mentioned in the belly of the thingawhatsy? Those notes at the Harebrain’s place? They were reminders to look in on the rest of the family.” He glanced down again. “What did ‘For E.D.’ mean? On the other box of Christmas stuff.”
“Erasmus’s Descendents,” Mephisto replied. “I give them Christmas presents, too. Not all of them, of course; not even I am that good. Just the children.”
Erasmus gasped in surprise. “You know about my descendents? Yo-you give them presents?”
“Sure. Why not? They’re family, after all. But, I’m not done.” It took Mephisto an obvious effort to keep his thoughts focused. His brow was furrowed as if in great concentration. “Fourth, I kept an eye on Miranda, dropped by from time to time to make sure Daddy remembered her. She hasn’t really needed my help during the last fifty years or so, ever since Daddy put her in charge of Prospero, Inc. She’s sort of been looking out for herself, but I check up on her anyway. Even if she does have me thrown out half the time.”
I gaped at him, flabbergasted. All this time I had thought of myself as so cool and self-sufficient, the idea that somebody—or even worse, my ditzy, mad brother—felt I was so fragile and inept that I needed looking in on wrenched my view of my life so severely that I feared it would never be the same.
“But…” Theo sputtered in astonishment. “You knew? Father had Miranda under a spell, and you didn’t say anything?”
Mephisto shrugged. “I have no idea why she is the way she is. I asked Daddy once, but all he said was that he was doing the best he could for her. Who am I to question the paternal font of wisdom? I’m not in charge when Daddy’s here.”
“There’s going to be a whole lot of questioning of the paternal font of wisdom, if we live,” growled Erasmus.
“The note on the flute referred to her, didn’t it?” Mab asked. Mephisto nodded, and Mab chuckled wryly.
“What did it say?” I asked. I recalled a Post-it on a flute, but that was all.
“‘Bonehead, monthly,’” Mab drawled. “I assume that meant to look in on Miranda once a month.”
“Yep!”
“Bonehead!” I objected.
“Oh, that’s precious!” Erasmus burst out laughing.
“What were a few of the others?” I asked.
Mab opened his notebook: “Pillbox marked: CHECK ON THIS ONCE A WEEK?”
Mephisto grinned. “That meant check on Theo.”
“Golf bag marked TAP with…”
“NEVER STOP LOOKING! I remember that one.” Mephisto thumped Titus on the arm. “That meant I wasn’t going to give up on my big lug of a brother until I found him. Shame I didn’t know to look for a bear.”
“STIRRUP FROM THE STEPPE. CHECK MONTHLY?” Mab continued.
“Check on Logistilla, that was from one of her horses.”
“Horses! Again!” wailed Logistilla.
Mab ignored her outcry. “Wind this bandana in January, May, and September.”
“Cornelius.” Mephisto pantomimed putting a bandana over his eyes. “He had a group of good guys watching after him, so I didn’t feel I needed to check him as often. But after Titus disappeared, I felt I should keep closer t
abs.”
Mab read: “This is a mnemonic. Do not move?”
Mephisto scratched his head. “Don’t remember.” Mab snorted.
Titus hung his head. “Mephisto really was looking out for all of us.”
“Yeppers. Okay, back to the point. Fifth—” Mephisto continued onto his pinky—“I tried to help Erasmus by doing some of Theo’s and Gregor’s tasks for him before he got to them.” He looked sheepish. “I didn’t always do them right, sometimes I made things worse … but I tried.”
“And this is supposed to recommend you?” Theo frowned.
Mephisto turned on Theo, holding up the thumb of his right hand. “Oh, and six, I went by and checked on Theo from time to time, keeping an eye on him. And when he was really sick, I sneaked a drop of Water of Life into his chicken broth. Just to make sure he didn’t die just because he was a being a pigheaded idiot.” He glared at Theo. “Remember the time you had pneumonia, and the time you got gored by the bull? Good thing I did too, considering it turned out you were ensorcelled!”
“How dare you!” Theo cried.
“Leanna was in on it, too.” Mephisto put his hands on his hips. Leanna, I gathered, was the woman from the photos at the farmhouse, Theo’s dead wife. “She didn’t know about the Water of Life, of course. But I convinced her to call me any time you were in a really bad way. She came from a big family, and it made her sad that you were estranged from yours. So, she’d call me secretly whenever things were really bad. Oh, and I was the one who paid off the loan after that really big storm blew the apples down too early. I got the money from Daddy, of course, but I arranged the whole thing. Daddy never knew what I used it for. He just thought I’d been profligate again.”
Theo stared at Mephisto with his mouth hanging open. “I-I had no idea!”
The rest of us were equally astonished. I felt both touched and disoriented. Mab looked more thunderstruck than anyone else. Ulysses quickly stepped up behind Mephisto, followed by Caliban.
“Guess I shouldn’t call him Harebrain anymore,” Mab muttered.
“But you’re crazy, Mephisto!” Erasmus shouted.
“True.” Mephisto’s old characteristic quirk of a half smile, which I had not seen in over three hundred years, appeared upon his lips. “But I’m not partial!”
Erasmus drew back startled.
“Good point,” Titus murmured. He left Erasmus and moved behind Mephisto.
Erasmus turned on Titus. “How so?”
“Impartiality is an important quality in a leader,” Titus replied with his customary patience.
Mephisto put his hands on his hips and looked around, gazing at each of us in turn. “The job of the head of the family is to look out for the family. The whole family, not just the members of it you happen to like. And I”—he raised a hand and pointed at himself—“am the only one who has been doing that. Half of you haven’t spoken to each other in years, and most of you didn’t even know about … well, never mind about that.
“Of everyone in the family, Miranda and Erasmus are the least qualified to lead us because they hate each other! Even if the spell that originally caused their hatred has been destroyed, they still don’t think clearly when it comes to each other. Who can trust them to be fair? Well, actually Miranda would probably be fair, despite hating Erasmus, but Erasmus would constantly claim she wasn’t being fair, which would be just as annoying to the rest of us as if she really wasn’t.” Erasmus gave Mephisto a startled hurt look.
“Hear! Hear!” cried Ulysses. “I can’t abide the two of them bickering all the time.”
Mephisto continued, “I, on the other hand, am fond of each and every one of you—at least when you’re not irking me. But, I do like most of you all the time, and all of you some of the time, which is probably more than anyone else here can say, except perhaps Titus.
“Besides”—Mephisto walked over and slapped Theo on the back—“even if I were disqualified, the job would pass to Theophrastus here. He’s the second born son. You, Erasmus, aren’t even in the running.”
Logistilla gave a haughty sniff. “And women don’t count, I suppose?”
Mephisto cocked his head, his quirk of a half-smile returning again. “Are you arguing in favor of my handing the family reins over to Big Sister Miranda? She is the oldest.”
“I concede the point,” Logistilla replied quickly.
“Oh, and I kept an eye on all of you with the crystal ball, too.” Mephisto tossed the glass orb in the air. Then he frowned at it. “Only it wouldn’t show me Titus the Bear for some reason, so I was worried about him. I’ve spent the majority of the last two years looking for him.”
“My staff alters people enough to hide them from scrying devices,” murmured Logistilla. “That’s why we originally turned Gregor into a leopard—to keep the demons from finding him with their magical mirrors.”
Mephisto hefted the crystal ball and then began rolling it up and down his hand. “It wouldn’t show me Gregor, either, which was weird, come to think of it. I knew the ball would look into Hell. After our heavenly communication spell went awry in 1949—when Daddy was so worried about where Gregor’s soul went—I should have been able to figure out that Gregor was not here. I wonder why I didn’t catch on that something was out of place. I guess ‘my brother was turned into a leopard by my sister’ just doesn’t come quickly to mind.”
Turning to Mab and me, Mephisto balanced the glass sphere on his fingertips. “This was how I really found out about the Three Shadowed Ones attacking your plane, Miranda. I saw it in my crystal ball and used a trick with my staff to move myself to my butterfly, who was hidden on Snosae the Sned.”
Logistilla clapped her hands. “Well done, Mephisto!” She moved to stand behind him, much to Erasmus’s astonishment. “I guess that settles it. Big brother Mephistopheles is the head of the family. He also saved us from Baelor, by the way. I thought our goose was cooked until he came somersaulting out of nowhere and stabbed the demon through the eye.”
“I did that?” Mephisto scratched his head.
“Are you all crazy?” Erasmus cried, gesturing at Mephisto and glaring at the rest of us. “He’s insane, and he’s a demon!”
I glanced nervously at Theo, but he did not appear to have noticed. Perhaps he thought Erasmus was speaking metaphorically.
“Oh, stuff it, Erasmus,” Logistilla responded. “You’ve lost. Get over it.” Turning to Mephisto, she asked, “So, Big Brother, what do we do now?”
Mephisto cocked his head and tapped his finger against his chin thoughtfully. Finally, he said, “We go to Dis. If we can rescue Cornelius quickly, we do. If not, or if we get into trouble, we bug out with Ulysses’s staff and go rescue Daddy.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
The City of Dis
Arriving in the City of Dis was like jumping into a furnace. The very air itself seemed to burn. We threw our hands before our faces, and Ulysses let out a keening wail, for his feet were bare and the street beneath us was scorching hot. He would have teleported away again, had Gregor not had a strong grip on him.
Mephisto tapped his staff, and I began to imagine an eight-foot-tall primate with thick, curly, white fur standing beside him. Then, the yeti was here with us, exuding a very pleasing cold. We huddled close to him, grateful for some relief from the heat. The abominable snowman whimpered imploringly, dazed by the warmth and unfamiliar surroundings. Mephisto took his big pawlike hand and gave him an encouraging smile. Eager to please my brother, the yeti trudged along with us, producing what cold he could muster.
It soon became evident that the heat was too much for the yeti, whose ability to shed cold was merely a side talent he had been taught by his old master, the Winter Wizard. The poor creature was panting, its pink tongue extruding from its mouth. Mephisto tapped his staff again, and I began to imagine that the p-son-en, the great bird of ice we had fought on our way home from Father Christmas’s, circled over head. Then, the snowbird cawed and dived, breathing frigid A
rctic air upon us.
“It’s … that thing that nearly froze us!” Mab exclaimed.
“Went back and got it, of course,” Mephisto declared happily to Mab and me. “I call it P-san, like a Japanese guy.”
The heat was too intense for the p-son-en; the bird began to melt. Mephisto coaxed it to rest upon the shoulder of the yeti, one huge talon on each hairy shoulder. Together, the two beasts were able to protect each other and to keep us reasonably cool.
There was not much we could do about Ulysses’s bare feet, though Logistilla did offer to turn him back into a snake, or at least a toad. Grunting, Caliban leaned down and lifted Ulysses onto his shoulders, as if he was a small child.
“This heat is nothing,” Theo scoffed, teasingly as he strode beside them, smiling up at Ulysses. “Caliban and I had to swim through lava.”
“Be glad it is just your feet,” Caliban grunted cheerfully.
“Burned in lava,” Ulysses shuddered from his perch on Caliban’s shoulder. “You poor blokes! That’s much worse than having to spend a spot of time as a snake.”
“Thank God this all happened right after New Year,” Theo said more seriously. “No ordinary man could have survived what we went through. Even with the Water we just drank, I would not have made it without Caliban’s quick thinking.” He shook his head sheepishly.
Moving over beside me, Theo whispered softly. “To think my life was saved by the same man who, for centuries, I dreamt of hunting down and killing.”
“You, too?” I asked, wiping sweat from my eyes.
“I wanted to bring you his head as a trophy.”
I swallowed and squeezed Theo’s arm. “Back then, I would have liked that. In retrospect, though, I’m glad you didn’t!” I recalled my uncharitable thoughts toward Caliban on the lava flow and felt chagrined. “What amazes me is that Caliban, of all people, had the mental wherewithal to remain calm while he was burning. That’s … just astonishing!”
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