“Maybe there is something which would connect Raquel Berry to either crime?” Onyx asked, smoothly cutting me off.
Why does he have to know me this well?
“I realize that this case has gotten rather more personal than your previous outings,” my head kitty added in a kinder tone. “But be very careful about letting your feelings get in the way of the truth.”
“Well, If Reg can’t help me, there’s just one thing to do.” I saw Onyx stiffen suddenly. “Well, I’m not going to find the truth about Crow Isle from here, am I?”
“Crow is an inaccessible wasteland, Hattie,” Onyx said. “The tides and undertows surrounding it are notorious among even Nanker’s fishermen. A containment spell involving a never-ending windstorm of toxic pollutants makes broom flight impossible. But supposing you even got past these obstacles, the question remains on how you would explain yourself in the event you are caught there without a permit.”
“I’m still going,” I told him.
Onyx just shook his head with a disapproving mew. “And just how—“
Something flew through the air towards my face. Catching it, I realized it was yet another pendant, a wooden one this time, with a Futhark rune inscribed in gold. A pool of shadow moved to my left, and I spotted the round, golden-orb eyes of my Romeo cat. Shade stepped into the light.
“Thought this might make up for my being such a jerk last night, boss,” Shade said, a little sheepishly. “Got this off my squeeze’s human…it’ll unlock the secret door to Crow Isle.”
“And just where is the door ?” I asked, giving him a mock indignant look.
“Oh,” Shade said, his face falling at the question. “Oh…well, I thought that was something you already knew—“
My own growl of irritation cut him off.
“Smooth, brother,” Onyx said.
“Oh, shut up, O,” Shade snapped. “If it were up to you, she’d never even have…”
I admit that I tuned both of them out at that point. The rune on the pendant looked familiar. Where have I seen this?
Then it hit me. The photograph that Bradford had taken of Marty Fog by the rock wall. “Never mind, Shade. I know where this door is.”
“Hattie…” Onyx said, his tone almost pleading.
“Make sure nobody sees you on your way back to the shop,” I said, turning to leave the alley. “It’ll be a pain having to pick you up from the cat pound at Mutley Crew.”
“Hey, boss!” Shade called after me. “One more thing…the human mentioned that you’d need a good filter mask to be able to walk around Crow. I’d listen to that.”
I looked over my shoulder and nodded. Shade may be vain, but he understands survival as well as any of my cats. I decided my next stop would be the hardware store.
Half an hour later, I had the mask firmly in place over my mouth as I made my way to the West coast of Glessie, across the foothills of the Myrdwen Cliffs. I wanted to see for myself the rock wall with that odd looking rune and see if it meant what I thought it said.
I found the wall easily, and luckily there wasn't a soul around. I glanced between the Futhark on the rock structure and the pendant in my hand. Finally, I found what I was looking for: the rune that I had spotted in the surveillance photograph. The lack of wear and tear on the Futhark told me that it had been made much more recently than its neighbors. It was an exact match for the rune on the pendant, literal translation: “door.”
Great, I thought. Now how do I use this thing to open up the passage?
The answer came as I put the pendant around my neck. No sooner had it left my hands than the rune on the wall glowed. A stone door slowly opened, inviting me forward. I shrugged and walked through.
I instantly regretted it. I was almost blown backward by a furious wind, thick with sticky black ash, whipped up in a multitude of vortices around me. Sure, I had covered my mouth with the mask, but I really should have considered protecting my eyes as well. The air swirling around me was a million burning hot pinpricks. What little I was able to see told me that this place hadn’t supported life in quite a while.
I tried to find my way back to the door, but I was too disoriented by the cover of black clouds of ash. I leaned against a petrified, charred tree trying to get my bearings, opening and closing my eyes in a vain attempt to clear my vision. It was useless. As soon as I opened my eyes, they were immediately flooded by the dark, raging debris. I suddenly felt very scared. Damn, Onyx, why didn't I listen to you?
Without warning, I felt something slip over my head, and settle over my eyes. Goggles. I felt the protective glasses fill with cool, soothing liquid, sloshing around my eyeballs, rinsing them with the saving fluid. The liquid pooled, before draining away down my cheeks, carrying with it the offending ash and pollutants that had near blinded me. The relief was so great that, for just a moment, I didn’t care who or what had come to my rescue. Then I looked up.
My savior was wearing a Mainland WWI-era gas mask. I knew it was a “her” due to the delicate, glove-encased hands and the traditional wicked witch’s wardrobe of all-black, formless robes. The combined get-up made her look like a sinister denizen of the hellscape around me; a land of violent red skies, skeletal trees, blackened soil and an ever-present flurry of dust and ash.
“It seems you had the same idea I did,” the figure said, helping me to my feet. The words instantly told me who its owner was.
“Portia? What on earth are you doing here?” I asked, looking over her shoulder to see if she had company. Hector Muerte could be seen, not six feet behind her, waving his arms uselessly at the swirling matter in the air.
“A favor for Mr. Obonyo,” she explained, waving her hands in the direction I was looking. “The current case against the soon-to-be-disgraced Mayor is good. But, I would prefer it to be air-tight.”
“So you came here looking for evidence that would make it just that.”
Portia nodded.
"What's Hector doing here?" I pointed to the shambling zombie.
“Maude Dulgrey owed me a favor,” Mrs. Fearwyn said. “Loaning me Muerte to find additional evidence settles that debt in full.”
I happened to notice some sort of structure behind Hector as I asked, “One thing I don’t’ get…with the Dragon Moths gone, why not just let all these pollutants disperse into the atmosphere instead of trying to keep it contained?”
Even under the mask, I could feel Mrs. Fearwyn’s sharp stare. “Do you have any idea what kind of a health crisis would result from that? This foul wind would touch down on Glessie in no time. No, better to contain this and let the natural decay of time eventually render this poisonous cocktail harmless.”
“But, how much time are we talking?” I asked.
Muerte interrupted the conversation with one of his usual moans. He pointed at the structure I had noticed before.
“That is something we can save for a later discussion,” Portia said, as she turned to walk away.
I felt my feet sink ankle-deep into the ash as I followed her toward Hector and the curious structure. It resembled a ramshackle cabin. I deduced that it was likely the old ranger station from Crow’s days of being the one and only Dragon Moth refuge. I felt an ounce of sadness at the demise of the moth, and all the rescue efforts that had gone to waste. The Dragon Moth was a beautiful specimen; iridescent green and blue and purple. Nobody exactly knew why the strange bugs sabotaged their own food supply, but the Isle's foliage was proof of the moth's self-sacrificing work.
Muerte opened the door and waited for us to enter before joining us. While he closed the door behind us, I noted the desk in the right corner, the dingy bed to the left of it, and all kinds of discarded detritus that told me that it had been used more recently than it technically should have been.
“Definitely the old ranger station,” I said, looking for clues.
Hector slo-mo shuffled to the center of the room before pointing down at the floor. I felt my stomach turn into an ice ball as a terrible sense of for
eboding hit me. But, it wasn’t until Portia attacked the floorboards with a crowbar she had pulled from under her robe that my chilly suspicions were confirmed.
Six skeletons grinned hideously up at us from a shallow grave under the boards. The bones were blackened in certain spots, and all of them wore yet another pendant; this one depicting a Wyrm encircling a broadsword.
Lifting up the nearest pendant, Portia declared, “The crest of the Besnick Cartel.”
“Were these some sort of rival gang members?” I asked, doing my best to keep my stomach from lurching.
“Hardly, Hattie,” the old witch said, letting go of the pendant. “These men were traitors and, per the old Dragon lore of Nanker, suffered a traitor’s death. These poor souls are forever marked as having fallen from grace from the Besnick family. Both in life and in death."
Well, if anyone would know about this sort of thing, I guess it would be someone like Ms. Fearwyn.
I suddenly noticed that one of them was clutching papers. Notes made moldy and unreadable by the ravages of time and the claustrophobic earth. Portia plucked the script from the skeleton's hand and pulling out a vial of what seemed to be green dust, she sprinkled the powder onto the paper. The words became legible, like new almost.
“Spring Thaw,” I said, quickly recognizing the magic at work.
Portia nodded, pulled out a notepad whose pages were instantly imprinted by a slanting script. The writing was an exact match for a regular human’s, which made me realize that it was an Authoria charm at work; copying to the "T" the writing that the Spring Thaw had resurrected.
Spring Thaw is only a temporary resurrection of old, damaged paper, so it was no surprise to me that the pages wilted like dead roses within a minute. Ms. Fearwyn looked over the notepad, content with gleaning what she needed from the now-dead papers. She finally nodded and handed it to me.
“These notes will be more useful to you than me,” she explained while Muerte labeled the bodies with toe tags. Hector's work ethic wasn't about to be compromised by a hostile environment.
“Thank you," I mumbled.
She produced an identical notepad with her other hand. “I've made another copy just in case," Portia stated simply.
We looked over the rest of the station and found some more incidental evidence of Heimdall’s more recent presence. Still, what we found didn’t teach us anything we didn’t already know. It was frustrating. The conditions outside likely meant that any evidence we might have found had probably been blown away or buried a long ago. Aside from the mysterious skeletons, finding additional evidence here was a bust.
By this time, it became harder and harder to breathe through the mask. Portia, noticing the same problem, said, “For the sake of our health, we need to head back.”
Muerte looked at Ms. Fearwyn and grunted in confusion.
“You can come back for the bodies later, Hector. You have them tagged now, and I'm sure Maude would agree you've done a great job.”
Hector beamed a gray, gummy smile and followed us out of the cabin.
The door shut behind us at the cliffs was a solid thunk. I handed the goggles back to Portia after she removed her own. She took them without comment and gave my clothes a critical evaluation.
“As soon as you get home, get out of those clothes,” she ordered. “Also, make sure you wash them and your body in a good disinfectant to rid yourself of the pollutants.”
Her advice over and done with, she walked over to a crack in the cliff and reached in. She pulled out her broom and prepared to mount it.
“Portia,” I called out, pulling my own broom into me. “I had the pendant to get me through that door. But how did YOU get access to Crow Isle?”
She gave me a knowing smile, then took off to the skies, leaving my question unanswered.
I thought of asking Hector if he wanted a lift back to the morgue, but I could see he was already beginning his slow-motion shuffled back in the direction of town. Suits me just fine.
“I don’t get it, Hat,” Millie called from downstairs. “Why didn’t you wash out all that residue on your clothes as per Portia's instructions?”
“Waste not, want not,” I shouted back, adjusting my shirt in front of the vanity mirror. “There might be something useful in that alchemic soup I took a bath in today. Crow Isle had a lot of unique flora that went extinct with the Dragon Moths.”
I was also thinking of the special properties of the Strands of Araby. I was hoping that the samples of particulate matter might hold an answer or two that might pertain to the Strands chemical make-up.
“If you say so,” Millie answered, not sounding that convinced.
I couldn’t blame her. I mean, I was glad to get the ash off my skin with Grandma’s handy homemade disinfectant. But, as a herbalist and apothecarial practitioner, properties and substances were my business. Besides, harmful substances held as much information as the harmless entries.
Gloom was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs as I came down. She took one good look at me, harrumphed and said, “Better.”
“Yes, much better,” Onyx concurred, from his spot next to the cash register on the counter. "I see you used Chimera's disinfectant."
He sniffed the air around me as he said this.
Ignoring both of them, I looked at Millie and asked, “Is the sample being distilled?”
She nodded and jerked her head towards the back kitchen. “Got it in a water bath right now. Might want to keep an eye on it just to make sure nothing in it is trying to blow us all up.”
"Is Carbon back there?" I shouted in alarm.
"No, no, he's by the fire in the front,” she replied, with an amused laugh. “I just meant, given that the substances seem to be so toxic, I thought there might a risk they have some inflammable properties too."
I nodded and went to the back of the Angel, to Grandma Chimera's homely kitchen. The glass tubes of Grandma’s old alchemic set wound around the back table like the layout of Chutes and Ladders. At the base, a glass bulb, full of a mixture of both distilled water and the combined substances found on Crow, was coming to a bubbling boil. A glass cup was sitting at the end of the setup with four more lined up right behind it like shot glasses.
Knowing it would be a while, I called out to Millie, “So what did you make of those writings I brought back?”
“Wondered when you were going to ask me,” Millie called back. “Near as I can tell, they’re in Trick Tongue, a Romani language that goes back at least a thousand years.”
“Trick Tongue? I don't get it; I can see all the words in English. Okay, so they don't make much sense, but I do recognize the words,” I replied while I placed the first beaker under the glass bulb, allowing the first few drops of distilled liquid to break free.
“Yep, that's how Trick Tongue works,” Millie explained. “You'll see the words in English, and they all seem innocent and fluffy enough. But, it's the way you look at the text. It takes some practice, but you have to read in between the lines to spot the trick, as it were."
"So, clever-clogs, are you going to tell me what it's saying, or --"
“Sorry, Hattie, no,” Millie said, cutting off my question before I could finish. “I know enough to recognize what Trick Tongue looks like. But I’ve no clue as to what it's actually saying."
I heard my assistant sigh from the open door of the kitchen. The drops from the bowl slowed and came to a halt as the temperature in the main apparatus climbed.
“I just wish I had come back from the Isle with some useful information,” I muttered to myself more than anyone else.
“What, the four blackened skeletons were just a harmless cabaret act?”
I heard my cowardly cat's question, but his voice sounded muffled.
I wish I hadn't shared the visual of the shallow grave with him, but I realized he did have a point.
"Sweetie, that's what happens when you're involved in a smuggling --" My words got stuck in my throat, as my nervous cat came into view.
>
"Fraidy, what the --"
"It's for the fumes. It's a gas-mask. Gloom made it for me," came his stifled words.
My timid kitty's face was partially covered by what looked like half of a ping-pong ball. No, wait, it WAS a ping-pong ball, cleaved carefully in half and affixed over Fraidy's nose and mouth by the aid of an elastic band around his head. I noticed his mischievous sister had even taken the trouble of drawing on a very clever imitation of the Hannibal Lecter mask. I heard Gloom tittering uncontrollably from the doorway.
Turning away briefly to stop the laughter which was about to erupt from my mouth, I looked back at Fraidy, and his wide-eyed innocence just tipped me over the edge. I burst into fits of chuckles. He narrowed his eyes in annoyance.
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, my love, it's just that, I think your sister is pulling a prank on you." I wiped the tears from my eyes and tried to compose myself. "Come here, sweetie. Take that thing off. It doesn't even have any air vents, so you won't be able to breathe in a second."
That did it. Fraidy's eyes widened in full-blown terror, and started running around the kitchen in blind panic. "Help! Help! I'm suffocating!"
I could just make out the many sources of kitty laughter over his deafening screams.
"Millie!" I shouted for my assistant. Millie came rushing in, scooped up the freaked-out Fraidy, availed him of his Hannibal muzzle and took him to the front to calm down.
I noticed Shade, lying under the table that held the apparatus, holding his belly, his shoulders juddering from chortling so hard.
"Shade, come on. You guys know better than to taunt your brother like that," I said, trying to keep the smile from my face.
"Sorry, boss-lady," he replied, gaining his composure. "Did I do good, then? The key worked?"
“Oh, you’re more than forgiven, you old tomcat,” I said with a grin, reaching down to rub him. “Sure you won’t have any problem getting the amulet bac—“
“Hey, my lady was able to snatch it off her human no probs,” Shade assured me. “Pretty sure getting it back can’t be that hard. Miss. Poof's got the smarts as well as the killer body.”
The Witch of Bohemia: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 3) Page 16