Fantastical Island (Old School Book 2)

by Jenny Schwartz

  Dressed, boots on, and hair tamed into a short braid, Naomi walked to the stairs. The door of Corey’s room stood open, but she couldn’t hear him moving around. He’d probably beaten her to the kitchen, but at least, thanks to Cait, she didn’t have to waste time collecting clean clothes from the boarding house. They needed to hold a strategy meeting.

  She descended the solid staircase slowly, appreciating the smooth surface of the bannister and the lack of creaking underfoot. The staircase, like the whole of Bunyip House, was elegant not because of elaborate decoration or expense, but due to excellent workmanship. It was a house that endured and sheltered—and Cait had been right yesterday: it needed to be warded.

  In the kitchen, Cait and Otis were seated, drinking coffee. Corey stood by the toaster. No one was talking.

  Naomi took a bowl from a cupboard and poured in granola and a generous amount of milk.

  Corey handed her a mug of coffee.

  When they were all seated at the table, Cait broke the silence, her voice brisk. “Yesterday, I reported Roy and Janelle’s activities to Vanessa for her to raise the issue with the government’s anti-magical terrorism unit. Today, she phoned me with an unwelcome update. There have been two potentially magic-based terrorist events. The first is in Cleveland with a gastro-disease outbreak being described as a bacterial infection, although it possesses a wizard’s miasmic signature. The second is an explosion in a small town in Florida. A meth lab will be the official explanation, but a team has been sent to investigate peculiarities in the sheriff’s panicked report. That team was meant to come to Catalina Island.”

  Corey dragged his coffee mug closer. “So, we’re on our own.”

  “That’s up to us,” Cait said.

  Corey and Otis frowned, puzzled.

  Naomi swallowed her mouthful of granola. “The Old School will send us help if Cait or I request it.”

  “What kind of help?” Corey asked.

  She shrugged. “It depends. I’ve never entered an orange alert.” She looked a question at Cait.

  The older woman nodded. “Vanessa heads up a management team of three. None of the Old School members work full-time for the network. We volunteer. So need, availability and competing demands have to be balanced. Vanessa could send us anyone from a non-magical former FBI agent to an animal mage.”

  “Volunteers.” Corey finished a piece of toast dripping butter and honey. “No.”

  “No, we don’t need help, or no, you don’t want women putting themselves at risk?” Cait asked.

  He gestured around the table. “Four of us. Plus Iovanius when he rematerializes. And we won’t be underestimating Roy and Janelle again. On the boat, with their plan in place, Roy and Janelle had an advantage. But now they’re improvising, and I’m better at it. Catalina Island is my home.” He looked at Otis. “Our home. Roy and Janelle have only been here a year.”

  His gaze met and locked with Naomi’s. His green eyes burned with determination. “Before the kidnapping, we weren’t sure how to handle the hunters. We were willing to settle for discouraging them, driving them off the island. But now we have a government agency which, presumably, can handle unconventional criminals. Moreover, we’re past the point of trying to keep Catalina Island’s fantastical creatures a secret from the government.” His right hand curled into a fist. “We capture Roy and Janelle, and then, we deliver them to justice.”

  He pushed back his chair. “Naomi, can you sew?”

  Bewildered, although impressed by his decisiveness, she nodded.

  “Meet me at my workshop in ten minutes.”

  They listened to him jog up the narrow back stairs.

  “Don’t ask me,” Otis said when Naomi widened her eyes at him.

  So she finished her coffee and cleared the table before heading for the back veranda. She stepped out and there were Poppy and Cliff dozing in the sun on the decking. The island smelled wet and green, alive after the storm. Birds sung madly in the garden, flitting in and out of the lemon tree and zooming over the garden bed filled with poppies. The golden flowers had been beaten into the ground by the rain, but they’d rebloom.

  Naomi focused on the baku and the behemi. They were in the backyard, but hardly hidden. She unlooped the amulet from around her neck and dropped it onto the porch swing. As it left her hand, the baku and behemi both vanished.

  “Thank goodness.” She retrieved the amulet and slipped it over her head and under her sweater again. Both the baku and behemi were fully glamoured.

  Of course, it was possible that either Janelle or Roy could see through glamours, but their behavior suggested otherwise. If they could have seen through glamours they wouldn’t have needed to spend over half a year on the island, staking it out and observing, before starting their hunt. Nor would they have started by scooping up the least glamoured, most vulnerable creatures, intending to shred the mesh of glamours that hid all of Catalina Island’s fantastical creatures. If it had been in their power, Janelle and Roy would have targeted the rarest and most magical creatures from the start.

  The roc pair’s presence, the lightning bird in front of the storm, and Poppy’s dozing form on the veranda all indicated that Roy and Janelle couldn’t see through glamours.

  If they learned of the amulet that hung around Naomi’s neck, even Janelle’s obsession with bakus would be pushed aside to attain the power to pierce glamours. Which was something to consider: Naomi possessed a precious item that could be traded or used as bait.

  “Open the door, please,” Corey muttered indistinctly.

  She spun around and found him standing on the inside of the screen door, his arms full of cushions piled high enough to obscure speech and vision. She opened the door and reached for cushions.

  “Great.” He passed most of them to her and hurried back inside with a large cushion under both arms.

  Her cushions were fluffy orange and cream brocade. His were an ugly vivid purple.

  He returned with the gladius. “Iovanius should have regained enough strength to rematerialize. I want to talk with him when he does.” Corey led the way to the workshop, holding a large cushion between his knees and off the wet ground while he unlocked the door. He pushed it wide and threw the cushion in. “Cushions here.” He directed her to the far end of the large table. “I’m going to make a decoy model of Poppy. Rip open the cushions, spread out the fabric, but save the stuffing. Then this cushion.” He waved one of the furry orange ones. “Shave it down. I have scissors and a razor.” He gave her the tools.

  She stared from the pile of cushions to his intent face and guessed part of his intention. “What will you do with a model of a baku?”

  He put the gladius on a shelf and began opening cupboards. “Janelle and Roy need a target. I don’t want it to be a real one.” A furry robot dog, about the size of a terrier—or a large house cat—toppled onto its side as he put it on the table. Corey went to another cupboard and returned with foam, glue, a roll of calico, chalk and a pencil. “I think best while I’m working.”

  “O-kay.” She pulled up a stool and began snipping open the old cushions.

  He grinned at her dubious tone; a tight, fierce smile. “We have the advantage now. We have what Janelle wants. Poppy. We’re also no longer handicapped by uncertainty.”

  Naomi paused in ripping a seam. “How were we uncertain?”

  He was working fast, stripping the soft covering from the robot dog’s head and legs to reveal the metal body. “It’s basic project management. We had our motivation right. We want to save the fantastical creatures of the island.”

  She nodded.

  He unscrewed the dog’s paws. “But our goal was too vague. We were going to force the unknown hunters off the island by scaring them. We broke that down into a first step of identifying them. That part was sensible. But now we know that scaring Janelle and Roy isn’t an option. They have to be caught to be stopped. Actually, it makes things easier.”

  “How?” She was fascinated by how swiftly he wor
ked. While she had to concentrate on the simple task of gutting cushions, he was already screwing extensions onto the robot dog’s legs. A baku stood on longer, skinnier legs than a dog.

  “Scaring people requires identifying their fears. Movies do it by focusing on popular phobias: spiders, dying, false imprisonment, heights, ghosts.” He glanced at the gladius that lay unmoving on the shelf. “A movie also relies on building tension. We’ve got the tension. Roy and Janelle’s failed hostage exchange has left them little time or space to maneuver.” He tightened the leg extensions and reached for the discarded paws.

  “I can cut the fur off them,” Naomi said, anticipating his reach for his knife.

  “No need. Just cover them in some of the orange cushion material. The paws will be barely visible, so that’s good enough.” He cut thin strips of foam and began winding them over the metal legs. “Our first step was to identify the hunters so that we could work out what would scare them off the island. It might have taken a few experiments, trying different things till we tapped their fear. It was always a shaky strategy, but I thought we had time and…I didn’t think they were as violent and ruthless as Roy and Janelle have shown themselves to be.”

  “Nor did I,” she agreed fervently. She contemplated a gutted cushion. What shape should she cut to wrap around a robotic paw? Honestly, gift-wrapping was simple compared to this! She decided on a triangle. Then she’d fold over the three corners and tape them to the bottom of the paw.

  Corey taped his strip of foam in place on the first leg. It had the shape of a race horse’s limb, skinny yet strong. “Now our goal is simple. We want to capture Roy and Janelle. They’re going to make it simple for us because we have what they want. They’ll come to us.”

  “You want them to come to Bunyip House?” She wasn’t sure she did.

  He glanced up from the robot dog. His green eyes blazed with an anger that he hadn’t allowed to leach into his voice. “No. They had planned to force my family to feel desperation so as to lure Poppy here. If they had kidnapped Uncle Otis instead of me…”

  As energetic and determined as Otis was, he was also in his eighties. He could well have died if he’d been kidnapped and treated as roughly as Corey had been.

  Naomi wrapped cloth grimly. Corey had every reason to be furious.

  He returned his attention to winding foam around the second front leg. “We need another location. I’m thinking of the lighthouse.”

  She stared at him blankly. “How would we lure them there? They’d be suspicious.”

  “I’m still working on that part of the plan.” He glanced again at the gladius.

  Naomi set down the last robotic paw she’d stripped of fur. “If you’re thinking of using Iovanius—”

  “I’m thinking of asking him to help.”

  She shook her head at his interruption. “Yesterday, Otis fed Iovanius energy—I’m assuming via the gladius—to assist him in rematerializing, but he didn’t appear. Nor did Iovanius materialize overnight. He’s not here, now.”

  “His efforts with the fake mothman at the lighthouse were beyond most poltergeists’ power.”

  “Were they?” She put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “How many poltergeists have you worked with, other than Iovanius?”

  Corey frowned as he shifted the robot dog to work on its hind legs. “Worked with? Only Iovanius. But other ghosts have thrown things inside Bunyip House. Iovanius is powerful.”

  “And not here.” She sighed. “It’s been so busy and confusing, it’s easy to overlook things. It only occurred to me this morning, when Iovanius still wasn’t around. When he first appeared, and at the lighthouse, Poppy wasn’t here. Bakus drive away evil. What if Iovanius can’t appear, and shouldn’t help us, because he’s wicked?”

  The gladius spun off the shelf and plunged down to strike the table in front of Naomi.

  “I am not evil,” Iovanius howled.

  That he was here was proof of that—unless Poppy had left? As much as she feared turning her back on the raging poltergeist, Naomi slid off her bar stool and peered out the workshop door.

  Poppy still slept in the sunshine on the back veranda.

  Naomi grimaced. “Sorry, Iovanius. You’re not evil.”

  “Sorry? Sorry!” He seized the gladius.

  “No,” Corey said firmly and took the sword from the ghost.

  Iovanius struck the table with his spectral fists. The table rocked. Cushion stuffing rose in the air. “I am not a slave. I am not yours to summon,” he raged at Naomi.

  “Did you get the energy Otis sent you?” she asked.

  He spun away, his solid-looking back to her, the toga slipping.

  “Iovanius?” she prompted.

  “Yes,” he hissed and scattered all of the cushion stuffing.

  Corey caught her arm and urged her to the door, out into the fresh air.

  “Why didn’t you help us?” she demanded. “Corey was kidnapped. He was in danger. We could have used your help.”

  “My great-uncle was Julius Caesar.” Iovanius dove for his gladius, but Corey kept hold of it. Iovanius punched the wall of the workshop. The building shook. “Octavian was my cousin. He became the first Roman Emperor. He was Augustus. That should have been me! I should have been the hero. I was destined for glory.”

  Corey punctured the spectral tantrum with a single pointed comment. “Instead, you wouldn’t even help an ally.”

  “Pardon?” The cushion stuffing that had been whirling in a tornado within the workshop dropped into a pile on the table. Iovanius thrust his ghostly face an inch from Corey’s. “Do you dare to question my honor after she—” A dramatic gesture in Naomi’s direction. “Called me evil?”

  Corey retreated a couple of steps until they stood on the wet lawn in the sunlight.

  In the clear light of day outdoors, Iovanius was transparent; far less solid than in the workshop. But no less angry.

  Corey released Naomi’s hand and folded his arms. “Iovanius, two nights ago we worked together against an enemy. You discovered the enemy’s identity. But when the enemy attacked, when I was not here to ask for your assistance, you now confess that you left me at their mercy.”

  Abruptly, Iovanius’s shoulders slumped. He clutched at his sliding toga and fidgeted with it. “We had no formal treaty of mutual assistance.” He glowered at Corey. “You would not help me if I needed it. You threatened to throw my gladius into the ocean.”

  Naomi pressed her lips together to stop her own angry comments. Corey had said that Otis left him to negotiate with ghosts, and she saw why. He had managed to engage Iovanius’s attention, and not so incidentally, to distract the ghost from causing further chaos inside the workshop.

  She had to leave him free to negotiate.

  Corey, though, appeared dumbfounded. “I forgot.” He shook his head. “Iovanius, I won’t throw your gladius in the ocean. It was an empty threat. I would never have done it. But I’m sorry I said it.” He inhaled deeply, resolutely. When he continued, his voice was kind and without judgement. “Is that why you refused to materialize yesterday? You have a half-mile range from the gladius, so Otis would have had to fly the gladius out on a drone to hover near the boat, and in the storm, the drone and your gladius could have fallen.”

  Into the ocean and been lost forever. Iovanius would have been condemned to haunting the seabed.

  Naomi’s shoulders sagged in sudden shame. She didn’t regret her single-minded focus on saving Corey, but now that he was safe, she had no right to hold a grudge against the innocent, if annoying, ghost. “Iovanius! I hadn’t considered the risk to you.”

  “Risk is nothing to me,” Iovanius proclaimed. “I am of the family of Caesar.” His voice dropped to a mutter. “But I do not like the ocean. It has rough waves and I used to always get seasick. Do you know my uncle Julius was kidnapped by pirates? When he was freed, he came back and slaughtered them.” Iovanius stared at Corey. “Is that what you intend to do to your kidnappers?”

&nb
sp; “Slaughter them? No!” Corey pulled a disgusted face.

  “Civilized, civilized. The world is not civilized. An eye for an eye.” Iovanius cut and thrust with an imaginary sword. Corey retained possession of the gladius. “A man must kill to be a hero. I shall help you.”

  “Not to kill,” Naomi interjected.

  Iovanius turned his back to her. Since the sunlight made him translucent, it was an oddly ineffective snub. Naomi looked right through him to the veranda where Poppy was awake and watching them.

  “Why are you a ghost?” Corey asked.

  Both Iovanius and Naomi spun around to stare at him.

  He looked steadily at Iovanius. “Two thousand years is a long time to haunt a sword. To haunt it as a poltergeist requires even more energy. Why haven’t you gone on? If the gladius did end up in the ocean or wherever, why couldn’t you leave it for the next world?”

  “Because I refuse to meet my family as a nothing. I was to be a great warrior, then a senator, then ruler of the empire!”

  Aim high, much? But Naomi kept her thoughts to herself. In truth, she was stunned. Iovanius had spent two millennia as a ghost for the sake of his pride?

  “Or none of those things,” Iovanius said. “But the minimum was that I die with honor, that I die a hero.” He kicked at a dandelion plant that had sprung up in the middle of the lawn. Its bright yellow flowers jolted. Insubstantial though he was, he’d managed to strike the flowers in daylight. Otis’s attempt to channel energy had definitely worked. Iovanius brimmed with paranormal energy. “Instead, I died of a fever. A stupid summer fever.”

  “The mortality rate in Ancient Rome…” Naomi shut up at the look on Iovanius’s face.

  “I died having done nothing,” he shouted.

  Corey stared at the dandelion flowers still shaking from the ghostly kick. “It’s different here on Catalina Island, though, isn’t it?”

  Neither Iovanius nor Naomi answered him.