by Sara Hanover
“Better now?”
“Too right.” He shrugged a bit, as if getting his composure back together. An uneasy ripple followed along his coat, as if it might be echoing his movement or maybe heaving a silent sigh of its own. I often wondered if the coat was like his tail, an extension of whatever his actual form might be.
“What happened?”
“Can’t rightly tell you. Creeped out of my gourd, I was.” His face closed up a bit in concentration. After a long moment, he faced me. “There’s something rotten in Denmark.”
“But do you think that’s what’s been watching the house? Broke our door latch?”
“No way of telling until we run into it.” He sniffed. “But it’s bad, Tessa, something dark and ugly, hiding, and getting ready to emerge. It’s been there since I’ve been here in the States, but now it’s creeping into the open. To pounce, as it were.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re wrong on that score. Still up for cruising the city?”
He reached behind him and curled his tail across one thigh, regarding it sadly. “No use. It’s gone dead. Not a twitch in it.”
I eyed him dubiously. “You can still move it, right? I mean, it’s not really dead.”
His tail lashed across his legs. “Affirmative. And yet, it seems to be entirely numb when I think of our crusty old wizard.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that he’s dead and gone, not by any reasoning. I’m bound. I won’t lose that feeling until he is deceased or he destroys the bond.”
“I guess that reassures me.”
“It’s about the only good news either of us is going to get,” Steptoe added glumly. He put a hand on the dashboard. “Home is probably best.”
He’d lost the ruddy color in his cheeks, so whatever it was that struck at him from St. John’s hadn’t left him untouched. I could maybe pry some explanation out of him, but it didn’t seem fair. He’d tell me when he was ready about whatever bothered him in addition to what we already had going on. Home did, indeed, seem best.
Or it did until I pulled into the driveway and saw that the kitchen door was once more flapping in the wind.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SNITCHES
STEPTOE BEAT ME to the door. “Blimey, I swear I fixed it!”
The door frame hadn’t been kicked in or had a tire iron taken to it, but someone had definitely forced an entry. I stood there for a moment, glaring at it. Then I got the great idea to raise my hand and see if the Eyes could help me spot anything. Scout stayed behind me, his muzzle at my knees, and Steptoe behind him. I could hear Steptoe rattling something out of his pockets.
“Got my flash-bangs, dearie, if we need them.”
“Good.” The stone stayed quiet in my palm, and the eyes shut, so I didn’t discern anything unusual. “I want to call Carter.”
“Official police?”
“I haven’t got a reason until we get inside.” Scout pushed his head forward a bit, and I dropped my hand upon his skull.
“Pup doesn’t seem too alarmed.” I could feel Steptoe shiver next to me. He added, “I think we’d best get inside. It’s going to be nasty out here in a few.”
“Fine, fine.” I crossed the small landing steps and went into the kitchen where I could hear the furnace winding up to blow hot air accommodatingly through the old two-story house. The outside door to the kitchen closed behind us as if it had never been forced. “Traitor,” I scolded it.
No sooner had we all entered than the rack on the wall where we kept keys, hats, and a few pots rattled at me.
I blinked. The poltergeist I knew was my dad—and he hadn’t had the energy to rattle at us for weeks. I pushed Scout aside and ran for the cellar door and stairs. I could hear the scrabble of dog toenails after me, as well as Steptoe’s leather soles, but I didn’t stop until I hit the basement flooring, with the lights going on brightly about me.
The professor’s boxes lay scattered about, one had split its cardboard sides, guts spilling out, and not a one remained stacked in place. Whereas the last intrusion had been minor, this was definitely major. Whatever wards had protected it seemed well and truly destroyed. My only questions were who and why.
“Cor,” murmured Steptoe. “What’s missing?”
“A few books, near as I can tell, although the boxes have all been—I dunno—plundered? Not thoroughly, but not all of them are still taped closed like the other night. And they’re all out of order as if someone rummaged about.”
“Something particular wanted.”
“Yeah.” I scanned the basement, wondering if my Sight could catch anything. It did, but only briefly. My dad looked wispier than ever as he gave me a worried frown before winking out. “Thanks, Dad,” I told him. “Go get some rest.”
I backed up and sat on the bottom step a moment.
“He doesn’t look good.”
“I know. Believe me, I know. And he’s not there enough to tell me what happened, only that it did.”
Steptoe put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll make it right, luv.”
“Right. Search the rest of the house first, and then I’m calling Carter.”
“I’ll be directly behind you.”
On some other day, that might have struck me a bit funny. Today seemed determined to be altogether different. We left the cellar without putting the boxes in order.
The living room, foyer, and even Mom’s downstairs office seemed okay. The small fire Simon had started earlier had burned out. When he made his way toward the backyard, he put his head in the mudroom and muttered, “My cot’s in place. Bugger could have made the bed, though.”
I gave a little snort. “Like they broke in to do our housekeeping.” I took the stairs up two at a time. In the hallway, we could see immediate trouble. The tell-tales lay scattered on the hallway runner, their little bodies wilted and drying. I grabbed them up as quickly as I could while Simon found their vase thrown somewhere down the hall and went to fill it with water. The two of us tucked the flower creatures in, while he gave them a soothing pep talk on how well they’d done and how quickly they’d feel better. I doubted him at first until I saw the browning petals begin to uncurl and gain color back again. I sprinted to the linen closet and pulled out an old towel to mop up the spilled water, wondering why our invader had swept the vase out of its niche. Steptoe had told me once that they could stun when alarmed, but if they had, it hadn’t stopped anyone this time.
Steptoe gave the vase a solid pat. “Carry on, then.”
Their little rose faces looked almost back to normal, and I felt anxious to examine the rest of the upstairs.
From there, we went room to room. I had a habit of hiding Morty’s journal whenever I put it down for any length of time, and found it just where I’d put it, buried in the old athletic shoes and sox compartment of my field hockey gear bag. It smelled like a musty old sock when I pulled it out, but it seemed undisturbed otherwise. Good. I left it near the window which I opened a sliver to air it out.
My companion stopped short at the threshold of the room the professor/Brian had occupied for months. The door stood firmly closed in front of him. I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Warded,” he told me. “I can’t even touch the doorknob.”
“Seriously? It’s never bothered me.”
“You,” he said emphatically, “did not spend centuries sparring with him.”
“Or lose.”
“Too true, that.” He retreated a few steps so I could open the room up.
Fear touched me for a moment. I’d been in and out of that room several times this past week and never felt a thing. But what if I’d been cursed anyway? I shook it off. The professor wouldn’t have done that to me. Never. Not in a million years.
I hoped.
I reached for the
doorknob, twisted it, and pushed the door open.
The thing I least expected flew up and hit me squarely in the chest. The room looked untouched, absolutely pristine . . . but his cane, his crystal-knobbed blasting rod, was gone.
I got a sound out before Steptoe could move in behind me, but he saw it, too. Or rather, didn’t see it.
“Damnitall. The cane’s gone. Could it have been the professor?”
“You tell me.” I looked pointedly at his tail.
Steptoe twisted about a bit and did the same. “Noooo. No, it probably wasn’t.”
“And if it had been, why would he break in? Why not just come home and claim it? It’s his. Same thing with the boxes in the cellar. It’s not like we wouldn’t have welcomed him.”
Steptoe ran a thumbnail over a bit of shadow on his chin. “If he remembers us.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“The phoenix ritual can be a rough one. Last time he did it, I had three decades without him in m’ face. Nice break, that was. Then his recollections came back.”
My stomach felt as though it had plummeted toward my feet. “Thirty years? Before he was himself again?”
“Indeed. Of course, times were rough back then. A bit harder to get on your feet and stay out of trouble. He might have just been laying low. We haven’t discussed it. I think he was a tad embarrassed about letting me have free rein.”
“Well, it could be worse this time. Him or not.”
“Why?”
“Because the crystal’s gone absolutely clear again, so it’s powered up for . . . whatever. Whoever has it can use it for just about any kind of trouble.” Worse than that, someone had definitely been in my house again. Where no one should have been but me and my mom and one or two other people we trusted. We were under siege. I looked at Steptoe over my shoulder. “Would the tell-tales have seen anyone? If they had, would they remember? Could they tell you?”
Wordless for once, he merely shook his head.
“And whoever it was really went after the tell-tales. I don’t remember the professor feeling one way or another about them.” I let out a sigh. I went into the room and patted the bedspread down, in case the cane had . . . I don’t know . . . rolled under the pillows or off the bed, as if it could move on its own volition. Nothing. The floor stayed empty and silent as well. It was gone, well and truly gone.
“Someone had to know it was here.”
“The house is being watched,” I told Steptoe.
“It is? Blimey. Those little gits haven’t said a word to me.” He shook a fist in the general direction of the hallway and the tell-tales.
“Outside their range, maybe? It wasn’t close, whatever it was. And whatever it was could have been watching since the professor and then you moved in.”
“Gives me the creeps it does.”
I gave him a long look. “Simon, you’re a demon. What could frighten you?”
“Oh, ducks. I’m a reformed demon, and as things go, I’m way, way down the ladder. I’ve my tricks and a few of my powers, but I couldn’t stand up to an attack of any kind. You want high-powered help, get that Malender of yours to move into the backyard.”
“He’s not mine.” And, after my last run-in with him, I wasn’t any more certain of his good/evil alignment than I’d ever been.
Scout gave a woof from downstairs, reminding me. “Could you go feed him? I’ve got a call to make.”
“Will do.” He tugged on his suit jacket as if straightening out his whole perspective on the world and left.
I went to my bedroom and sat down on the corner of the bed, pulling out my phone. Rather than call, I typed out a text.
Can you talk? I need to.
And waited.
It rang about five minutes later, but it felt like an eternity.
“Are you all right?” Carter asked.
“Somewhat,” I told him. “I have some things to talk over with you.”
“You picked a good time to have a crisis. I’m alone and available.”
His warm voice and tone enveloped me. I started off with the break-in first, then backed up to the abduction after the Society meeting, and the meet with Malender, and the thing that I’d found watching the house. I left out the stalker and the Butchery, though, uneasy that I might conjure it up by just thinking about it. When I’d finished, I found myself breathless.
He waited a measured moment before saying, “Looks like trouble caught up with you.”
“You think? I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ve been minding your own business?”
“As much as I ever do. You know me.”
A soft laugh that gave me a shiver, even over the telephone. I added, “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. Any idea about who would have taken the professor’s cane?”
“Not a one.” Then one did come to me, absolutely unbidden. “Unless it was a harpy. They fought us for it in New York last year.” It didn’t seem all that long ago, but Morty had been alive then and things had happened.
“That’s right.” He’d forgotten, it seemed. “But the nests around locally have been pretty upset and disorganized. Goldie’s been taking them apart. I doubt one of them would have dared a heist.”
“All the more reason they felt they might need a blasting rod.” She had never forgiven her sisters for turning on her, and if there were any traitors left, she seemed determined to root them out.
He made a noncommittal sound, not all that convinced, I realized. I added, “If not the harpies, who?”
“Dark elves possibly. Devian is gone for now, but he had ambitious elves watching him, I’m certain.”
“Oh.” I didn’t like the sound of that. “Would Scout have alerted us to them?”
“Hard to tell. Not unless you’d had unpleasant dealings with someone specific before and he had a scent to remember. Listen, I might come by later, but it’ll be very late, middle of the night. There’s a spell I can put on the room if you close the door and leave it alone.”
“Both Simon and I have been in there.”
“That shouldn’t throw it off too much.”
“Can you really come by?”
“For you, I can.”
“All right, then.” We murmured a few other things to each other and hung up.
We didn’t bother pretending to each other that things were all right. I was worried about him, and Carter was now worried about me.
My mother still hadn’t come home from the university, so we returned to the cellar to put the boxes back in their correct array. First, I strapped them back together. Then, I started stacking on my own and pointed out to Steptoe what went where. After one or two switch-arounds, he straightened and peered at me.
“They’re just boxes. What’s the point?”
“I dunno. It’s just that . . . well, this belongs here and that one belongs there, and the leaky one is at the bottom corner, there.”
“You remember this—why?”
I couldn’t tell him exactly how, only that I felt extremely uneasy if they were stacked any other way.
He jutted his chin at my left hand. “It’s the stone, luv, and those eye shards of Nimora. Their memory is set in marble, as it were, and don’t like to be changed out.”
I looked at my palm, where the Eye of Nimora remained stubbornly shut, but the maelstrom had warmed slightly. “Maybe,” I admitted. I pointed. “Put that one there.”
A little bit of sweat ran down his right temple. He made a slight face. “You do it.”
I gave him a look, but I did it. I had forgotten that the many wards down here probably made him prickly, uncomfortable, and a bit jumpy. I waved at Simon. “You go on up, I’ll finish.”
He lunged for the stairs. At the very top, he leaned down and said, “Colder than a monkey’s brass ass up here. Wha
t’s for dinner?”
“Get out a jar of the tomato puree Aunt April gave us, and a small jar of the roasted red pepper, too. I’ll make soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.”
He disappeared, and I could hear the upstairs door click shut.
I muscled the boxes into order and stepped back. Without the eye shards opening, I couldn’t see my father, but I could feel a faint chill lingering in the air, colder than the wintry outside, creeping in.
“Thanks, Dad, for warning us. I’m sorry you were here to see all this happening.” I sat down on the bottom stair step. Without warning, I could feel my eyes sting as tears began to slowly roll down my face. “I have Morty’s journals. They’re packed with information and detail, and it’s like wading through red clay mud. I haven’t found anything about you yet, just Potion Polly and that’s too far back. But I’ll find it, I promise. I did this to you, and I won’t stop till I can undo it. I won’t!”
I brushed my arm over my eyes, wiping away the wetness with my sleeve before turning and fleeing upstairs myself.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CONFESSIONS
DINNER WENT WELL, and I put the lid on the pot of soup and tucked the whole thing into the fridge so Mom could warm it herself when she got home. Bagged the grilled cheese sandwich left over—I’d had to wrestle it from Steptoe—refrigerated it as well, and left a note under one of the many magnets on the freezer’s door. It was too early to go to bed, but I did anyway, with the idea of doing more reading.
I fell into an uneasy sleep instead. I kept trying to catch Steptoe’s wildly thrashing tail and missing, even as something dark and dreary chased us. No idea where those dreams came from, right?
A tap-tap kept interrupting my dreams. Finally, it was irritating enough that I jolted awake, shutting my mouth and wiping away a bit of drool from the corner. The entire house seemed enveloped by the deepest of night. Even Scout, sprawled across the lower corner of my bed, seemed dead to the world. I watched his rib cage rise and fall in slumbering breaths to make sure he was okay, before sliding my feet from under the covers and sitting up.