by Ken Brosky
He looked up at me, a look of despair in his eyes. “Because you’re the hero.”
Chapter 10
Seth parked a block away from the strange little house. He leaned forward in his seat. “You sure that’s it, rabbit pal?”
“Indeed,” said Briar from the backseat. He pointed with his paw. “That is the home of the Order’s money keeper.”
We were on the east side of Milwaukee, near the lake. North of Grayle Incorporated and the other big buildings downtown. There were a lot of historic mansions that ran along the lake, protected with tall gates and stone fences. Our destination was about a block away from the St. Mary’s hospital, sitting at the end of a row of very nondescript two-story houses with red-brick chimneys.
This particular home had a sign in front of its brown porch. The sign looked old, rusted where the nails held it to rotted wooden posts. It read “Kensington Accounts” in bold, black letters. The grass in the front yard was well-groomed, and all of the fallen brown leaves from the nearby ash trees had been raked into a neat pile.
“Well,” I said, “whoever this Alexander Kensington is, at least he’s neat and tidy.”
“Could use a new sign, though,” Briar murmured thoughtfully.
“OK, does anyone else have the urge to jump in that leaf pile?” Seth asked.
Briar grabbed his shoulder with one paw. “Best not to, friend! Who knows what nefarious spikes and traps are waiting underneath all those leaves?”
“That’s a bit much,” I said. “But regardless, we’re going to play this one straight.”
Briar’s head snapped to me, one narrowed eye studying me. He was definitely in battle mode, all giddy and nervous and twitchy. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean we’re going to walk right in and demand answers.”
Briar’s right ear flopped over onto my head. “Is that wise?”
I swatted his ear away. “No. But if this accountant of theirs has a business out in the open like this, maybe he’s not entirely Corrupted. Maybe we can reason with him.”
“Or her,” Seth said. “Don’t be sexy, Alice.”
“Sexist,” I corrected, rolling my eyes. “All right. Wait for us here.”
I opened the door and got out, waiting for Briar to follow.
“You’re invisible to everyone but me, right?” I asked.
He nodded. “I can assure you, my special power is totally under control.”
I shut the door, my hand going to the pocket of my jeans just like it always did in moments like these. The pen was there. So were a few sticks of gum, a necessity following a homemade spaghetti dinner heavy on the garlic bread. I’d nearly fallen asleep right on the plate halfway through, prompting Dad to try and carry me to my room. But I wasn’t a little girl anymore, and my dad’s back nearly gave out as he tried to lift me from the seat. It had taken a fair amount of convincing to get the OK to go hang out with Seth.
I was wearing a violet sweater, thick enough to stave off the autumn chill. For a few minutes, at least. Besides, that wasn’t its primary purpose. Its primary purpose was to let my arms move freely—something a loose jacket with bulky sleeves couldn’t do as well.
“I hope you have a Plan B,” Briar murmured, hopping beside me. The sidewalk was empty, and cars periodically passed us on the street. “I couldn’t find a darned thing about this Kensington fellow. Not even a clue as to who he might be from the fairy tales.”
The sun was setting, burning orange over the commercial buildings to the west. Clouds were gathering to the south, rolling toward us. The sight of them made me uncomfortable, as if my dreams were encroaching on reality. I had to stop a moment, taking a deep breath to keep the world from spinning.
“Alice …” Briar put a paw on my shoulder.
“We’ll improvise once we’re in there,” I said.
We walked up the steps to the porch. Briar ticked off the details: “Hasn’t been painted in a while … curtains in the windows are pulled back … hmmm, three of the floorboards are loose … no bulb in the light over the door … no stray leaves anywhere on the porch …”
“The brown totally doesn’t go with the green window trim,” I added.
Briar looked at me. I shrugged.
“Ready?” I asked.
He took a deep breath. “This is always so tense.”
“Just stay back and try not to get your furry butt in any trouble.” I opened the door, walking casually in and immediately letting my eyes sweep around the room. My hand drifted to my pocket, ready.
It was not what I expected. The office was large, with a single door behind the counter that must have lead to the rest of the house. On the counter were a dozen ledgers bound in leather, two ink quills, and about a dozen staplers. There were old Renaissance paintings on the walls, two filing cabinets along one wall and a tall grandfather clock along the other. A tall lamp in each corner. A bookshelf to my left, filled with old books. A flat screen television in the corner to my right.
Except … everything was cut in half. I mean actually half-missing! The pendulum of the grandfather clock swung inside its case one way, then swung outside the case the other way. The paintings and their frames were cut in half—in one, a little chubby cherub reached out to something, but whatever it had been was ripped away. Even the TV and desk were cut in half.
The only thing intact was the frumpy-looking old man sitting behind the counter.
“Miss?” he asked in a gruff voice. The air that blew in from the open front door had blown his thin white hair out of place. He smoothed it out, carefully putting it to rest across his balding crown. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah …” I walked closer, giving the room another looksee. There was no other exit except the doorway behind the counter. Briar skulked beside the bookcase like a ninja, invisible to the man. Invisible because the man wasn’t a Corrupted.
“Well?” the man asked. “Out with it, sister! This isn’t some hangout for teenagers. Do you have accounting business?” He eyed me closely over his thin little glasses. A wattle of loose, wrinkled skin hung from his chin.
“I’m looking for Alexander Kensington,” I said.
“Why, that’s me!” said the man. He was wearing a striped button-down shirt with a ridiculous little black bowtie that his fingers found and ceremoniously adjusted.
“No,” I said. “No you’re not.”
“Yes! Yes, I am!” He nodded, his jowls flapping. “It’s true!”
I shook my head. Briar watched beside me, curious.
The man glared at me a moment, then grunted. “Wait here a moment.”
I watched him leave through the doorway behind the counter.
“What the heck was that about?” Briar whispered.
“I have no idea.” Something on the half-bookcase caught my eye. “Briar, look at this!”
Briar followed me, examining the book I grabbed from the fifth shelf. It had been lying facedown on the shelf, used as a bookend for the other books so they didn’t fall off the edge. “A History of Lesser Magic,” Briar read. “Oh my.”
“The heroes are alvays so curious.”
I spun around, hands going for my fountain pen. My eyes searched the room for the voice—gruff, deep, with a German accent—expecting to see a German soldier pointing a gun at me.
But there was no one.
“Look closer, hero.”
I turned back to the half-desk, narrowing my tired eyes. At first, I didn’t see him. Then, when I did, I gasped in astonishment.
There, standing next to one of the massive leather-bound ledgers, was a sausage.
A talking sausage.
Chapter 11
And what was the result? The sausage trudged off toward the forest; the bird made the fire; and the mouse put on the pot and waited for the sausage to return with wood for the next day. However, the sausage stayed out so long that the other two feared that something bad had happened.[vi]
“Alexander?” I asked.
The sausage nodded, or di
d the sausage-equivalent of a nod. He looked, quite literally, like one of Milwaukee’s famous beer brats, only with a slightly browner complexion. He had little legs, and little arms and a little mouth, too. His eyes were wide, almost cartoonish.
No nose. I guess living, breathing sausages didn’t need them.
“Well, that explains the small pens,” Briar said.
The sausage—Alexander—turned to him. “Who are you, rabbit? Vat do you vant?”
“We vant …” I shook my head. “We want to know where the Order of the Golden Dragon is.”
“Ah! So you are here to fulfill ze master’s prophecy.” The sausage nodded again, his whole sausage body bobbing in the process. “I have expected you for some time. A hundred years, to be precise. Those hundred years have been trying. Dark moments …”
I burst out laughing.
The sausage seemed taken aback. “Vat? Vat is it?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes. “It’s just … you’re a talking sausage.” I started laughing again. I couldn’t control it.
“Quiet now!” the sausage yelled. “Quiet yourself, child! Zis is no time to lose one’s composure.”
Briar chuckled. “You must admit, it’s not every day one converses with cured meat.”
The sausage grunted. The sausage grunted. I burst out laughing again.
“OK, OK,” I said, hiccupping. “I’m done. I’m done. This is just such a welcome change from the usual Corrupted.”
“Well,” the sausage said carefully. “Vat I lack in evil I more than make up for in brains.”
“Would those brains be … smoked or cured?” Briar asked.
We both burst into laughter.
“Ah, very good, very good,” the sausage said. “Yes, it is all so funny. Magical creatures enthralled to dark masters is certainly something to laugh about. Are you finished, or vould you like to come back at a later time?”
“OK, OK.” I waved Briar off, forcing myself to put on a serious face. “All right. Give us the goods. Where is the Order of the Golden Dragon?”
The sausage stayed silent.
“Really,” I said. “Tell us. Or …”
“Or vat?” the sausage asked. “I’m no fool. I know what the hero does and I know what you plan to do vith me. I’m doomed either way.” He walked on his little stick-like legs across the massive ledger. “So vill you hear me out? Vill you leesten to vat I have to say?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry. We’re listening.”
“Because I’m trying to be nice here.”
“You’re right. We’re sorry.”
“Eh …” Briar raised his paw. “Might I inquire as to the unique decoration?”
“Why pay full price for a full piece of furniture when half will do?” the sausage asked. He narrowed one eye. “That is why Agnim loved using me, no matter my qualms vith his plans. Now, are there any other questions? Perhaps you vould like to know about my favorite books? Or my favorite TV show?”
Briar and I looked at each other. “I do believe that’s my only question,” Briar said.
The sausage painstakingly turned the page in the ledger, walking across the book and pushing the piece of paper so it turned over. “I vas conscripted by Agnim because I knew how to make myself useful. I vas more clever by half, and I could very easily keep myself out of sight by entering into … agreements vith people of exquisite taste.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean I let people eat me,” the sausage snapped. He lifted his rump in the air. “They take a few slices off right here. I heal quickly enough, and their stomachs are full. Everyone is happy. That old man you met before? He is quite happy. For lunch today, he enjoyed some pickles, potato chips and a few slices of yours truly with a side of mustard. And in exchange for this never-ending supply of food, he pretends to run my operation so that I may serve my oh-so-vunderful master, hiding his wealth, converting it to gold, paying off ne’er-do-wells.”
“Ingenious!” Briar exclaimed. “And more than a little mouth-watering as well.”
“Yes, indeed.” The sausage put his little hands—made of sausage, too, I guess—on or near his hips. “But I must be careful, you see, because humans have a tendency to want ever more. Sure, it’s a few slices of me here and there, but pretty soon my helpers always vant to stuff me into a bun and eat me whole! Zis is what makes the magician Agnim so dangerous. His followers—his minions!—lust for more and more gold. Zey will not stop, and zey have no qualms with hurting others to get it.”
“A curse,” Briar whispered.
“No, no curse. Zey do it villingly.”
“Villingly!” Briar exclaimed. “I mean willingly! Dear me.”
“Agnim carries a dark secret, hero,” the sausage continued. “He cares nothing for the gold his minions collect from their nefarious war profiteering. He seeks only the birth of the Golden Dragon and uses ze gold to motivate his minions. The dragon will wake soon. Very soon. Agnim promises his minions when this happens, the dragon will give them an unending supply of the shiny yellow stuff. But he is lying.”
“When will the dragon awaken?” I asked. “Where?”
“On ze south side of the city, there is an old movie theater. There, Agnim will be waiting. He has foreseen your arrival, and instructed me to say as much. As for what I’m about to tell you now … I do not think he has foreseen it. Page seventy-four of that book.” He pointed to Briar. “Rip it out.”
Briar pawed through the pages of the book of magic, tearing away the page. “Hmmm. An old language. Not sure if I could translate it …”
“You don’t need to translate it, hare,” the sausage snapped. “You just need to know what it does. It is a reflection spell. It will reflect Agnim’s dark magic. Use it on him. And tell him I never liked working for him.” He turned around. “Now. Do what you came here to do, and make it quick.”
I stepped up to ze—I mean the—counter and pulled the cap off the magic fountain pen. I gently poked the sausage’s body.
“I did not even feel it,” he said approvingly, burning away. Little black ashes floated onto the half-desk.
“Alice,” Briar said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Look at the book!”
I turned to the leather-bound ledger. There was something underneath the next page, which was lined with columns of big, big numbers. I turned the page.
There, sitting near the bottom of the page just below the last entry of numbers: a gold coin.
I grabbed it. Lightning lit up the room, followed quickly by a crack of thunder.
Chapter 12
I crept quietly around the exterior of the movie theater. The Century Theater. It was the only old theater left on the south side of Milwaukee. I could remember as a child, my parents took me there to see a cartoon filled with wizards and ponies. It was a terrifying place, all old-timey, with dim red lanterns that hung from the ceiling in the lobby and lots of shadows near the staircase that led upstairs to the bathrooms and the balcony. Abandoned for years, it was the perfect place for a crazy wizard.
I huddled behind a dumpster and using my magic pen to draw a saber into the concrete parking lot. I pulled it away, then scanned the dark alley for any unwanted company. It was empty.
The clouds above emitted a low growl. A warning.
I hurried to the emergency exit door, using my pen to draw an opening. I quietly pulled back the square of metal and crawled through.
I was at the front of the old theater. To my left was the massive old screen that looked so damaged that it could hardly show movies anymore. In front of the screen was a stage, about shoulder height. Above me was the intricately decorated ceiling, lined with old Chinese dragon sculptures that guarded the corners of the massive theater, their gold paint peeled away in places. Lights hiding behind dark red wall sconces bathed the entire theater in a blood-red glow. To my right were the old plush seats.
Empty.
I walked up the aisle, through the doors in the rear of the bu
ilding. Inside the lobby. Memories came flooding back. V-shaped glass sconces adorned the walls where old wallpaper was peeling away. The concession stand was empty, its glass case devoid of Chuckles and Sno-Caps and other treats I had as a child. The red carpeting, old and worn, muffled my footsteps.
To my left was the grand staircase, its brass railing lined with dust. The staircase led to darkness, just as I remembered it as a child. There were bathrooms up there, along with plenty of shadows. Creepy, dark shadows created by dim lights and north-facing windows that were typically covered by thick red curtains. I could remember as a little girl, I always needed someone to come with me up those stairs so I could use the bathroom. I was too afraid.
A clanging noise echoed behind me. I walked back into the theater, searching the empty seats. I reached the stage, feeling my shoes adhere to the hard, sticky carpeting. Another noise came from behind me. I turned, sword held out defensively.
Sitting in the seats were men. Dozens of them, clad in black robes, each with a golden dragon pendant around their necks, hoods drawn low to hide their faces.
“Alice.”
The voice came from the far end of the seats, near the door that led to the lobby. In the dim lighting I could barely see him, but I recognized the voice.
“Agnim!” I called out. “Let’s do this. You and me, buddy!”
A great cackling laughter echoed through the large space, bouncing off the decorative soundproof walls. Agnim floated halfway down the aisle, then stopped.
“No,” he said finally. “I think I should like to see my minions destroy you instead.”
They all stood as one. They were scattered in the rows of seats, but when they stood I could see something was wrong. There were no men inside the robes. They were just ghosts filling out the robes, the hoods drawn over their invisible heads just in the same way Agnim wore his. No hands protruded from the sleeves. No feet—they simply floated over the seats.
Right toward me.
I clutched my saber, opening up my stance, using the corner of my vision to take in the details of the setting. Beyond the stage in front of the screen was a little pit where there used to be a piano. Beyond that was another emergency exit, stage-left.