by Sara Hanover
I shrugged. “Salt,” I told him.
“I can tell.” The handsome creature took a deep breath. “I am not finished with you two,” he said. He clapped his hands and the Hashimotos disappeared, the boat rocking with the force of their exit.
I blinked. “How long will they be gone?”
“If I let them return, it will be quite a while from now.”
I had a feeling his timeline stretched very differently from mine. “Long enough that I don’t have to worry about them?”
Malender’s eyes smiled though his expression did not. He had very small laugh wrinkles at the corners of his lids as if that had been different, once. “It can be if you wish to give me the stone.”
“Mmmm . . . no. It seems to want to stay with me.”
“For now. It has a history, if you didn’t know, of picking its owners. Perhaps I will appeal to it in the future.”
“Que sera, sera.”
“Indeed.” Malender threw his head up, like a stag sniffing the air and discovering a pack of hounds approaching. “You continue to surprise me. You have friends approaching.”
“And I’ll bet they’re your enemies.”
“There are many who have yet to see the wisdom of following me or even what I am. I’ve been gone for too many decades. Rumors arise. Truth twists. I can see I’ve much work waiting.” He arched an eyebrow. “Tell me, Tessa of the Salt. Would you listen if I return to speak with you?”
I didn’t know. I really, really didn’t. He scared the bejeebers out of me, but was that only because of his strangeness? His total impossibility? Or did I know evil when I felt it, a greater evil than I’d ever thought I could encounter? I settled for a shrug. “Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, I guess.”
“Good enough.” Malender began to wind his wrists about each other, his black cloud coming to him and collecting about his hands. “Next time,” he added, “Salt will not likely hold me back.”
“What will?”
That brought a crooked grin to his handsome face. “That’s for you to discover. As for your father . . .” He stood very still. Then he nodded. “Recover the laptop and you should have some idea of how to restore him. If not, we can always make a deal.” He winked and then he disappeared in a puff of white, clean smoke, as aromatic as a virgin spring day. The oily stuff slinked after.
Carter stumbled as he hit the deck in the emptiness left behind. “Tessa! What’s going on?” He straightened and spun about to ascertain his bearings. Four others hit the deck as well, three guys and a really badass looking woman. The Society, I’d guess.
“Ummm . . . attempted human sacrifice by the Hashimotos and Malender was here but now he’s not and, oh, there’s a laptop in the spa that the FBI will want, but I need to get a flash drive and copy some files first, and Steptoe, come out from under there, and see if you can keep Evelyn calm.”
He did, and she did, although she cried a lot first.
Carter did one of his Jedi mind-wipes, though, and Evelyn collected herself like a trooper as we returned to the spa. I helped get her into her gown and repair her makeup. Then I changed into my party clothes, and we escorted Evelyn over to be the star of the auction. With so many bidders, I thought an old-fashioned brawl would break out. Oddly, her father turned out to be the highest bidder. Carter, standing by me at the back of the room, agreed with me that he’d probably done it strictly out of fear of some of the prospective dates. A few words were said about the missing host and hostess, but the party went on, staffed by the charity, and nothing else seemed to go amiss.
Nobody noticed us much, and I thought maybe it was because I stood in the aura of his radiance and we weren’t supposed to be noticed. I had on my sea-glass gown and stood barefoot, my hair down about my shoulders, and felt like I sported a good-sized shiner. Carter had let me slide my fingers into his hand because I’d told him I still felt a bit wobbly. When everyone else surged like an incoming tide to the buffet and gambling tables, we turned and left.
A police cruiser is not a car for a romantic drive home. It smells. Faintly, because I’m sure someone cleans it diligently every day, but a lot of stuff, not the least of which can be an aromatic police dog, happens in the back seat. I didn’t mind it much though, my thoughts drifting to the flash drive in my possession and what Malender had said about it, and about the guy driving the cruiser.
Although we’d left the auction early, night had fallen truly and thoroughly, and the only things lighting the neighborhood as we glided through were the streetlights and an occasional porch light here and there. How nice, I thought, to have a welcome waiting for you whenever you were ready to come home. Had my father looked for that at first? Before becoming trapped in limbo? Had my mother kept the lights on for him at first? I didn’t remember. Maybe I would put a small light in the basement and turn it on, for when the shadows fell down there. Just to let him know we remembered and waited.
Carter led me to the front steps, my garment bag over one arm and the other still keeping me steady. He looked down at me. “It’s a shame not many saw you in that dress.”
“It is, huh.” I looked down at myself. “That just means I can wear it again someday.”
“True.” He handed me my bag and then slowly slid his hand away from mine. The moment he let go, I could feel his warmth retreat and I leaned into it, not wanting to relinquish it.
Carter moved his hand up and cupped the side of my face, gently, and his thumb smoothed over the tender spots. “Those should heal quickly.”
I looked into his eyes. He leaned down a smidgen more and my heart leaped because I knew what was going to happen. My whole body trembled with a kind of “Yes! Finally!” tingle.
His lips brushed my forehead softly.
“Night, Tessa.”
And then he was gone.
I stood, wavering, for just a second before my mother pulled the door open, and the cruiser drove off.
“Tessa?”
I just stayed there, grinning, until she pulled me inside our home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Days Later
“THE ROWAN WOOD is not good,” Brian said mournfully as he took stock of all the items he’d spread out on the picnic table.
I picked up the bundle of twigs. They looked just like their picture on Google. “What’s wrong with them?”
“Not rowan.”
“Are you sure?”
“Fairly certain. Similar but in a ritual like mine, I can’t use substitutes.”
“I’d think not.” I dropped the bundle. “I can order from a different source.”
He sighed. “Tonight’s a blue moon. A most auspicious sign for me.”
“And you’re tired of waiting.”
He held out a hand to me. He wasn’t the strapping young man who’d appeared in Professor Brandard’s backyard like magic. His hand looked nearly transparent and he shook. “I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have the ability to wait.” I covered his hand with mine.
“Where else can we get it?”
“My perdition rod. It’s rowan.”
“But you’d have to burn it! And then, it’s gone. It’s a relic, Brian, you have to hold onto it.”
“I can, if I recover, make another. A trip to England, a bit of hosteling, a bit of luck . . .”
“With Malender on the prowl, gathering up wizards and such like they’re bread crumbs on his trail back to domination?”
He wrinkled his nose. “You make him sound so predatory.”
“And he isn’t?”
“Oh, he is. Definitely.”
We pulled our hands back and thought for a minute about Remy’s fate, and those of the Hashimotos. I echoed Brian’s earlier sigh.
I reached for his cane. He’d been using it more and more not for magical protection but just as the necessary means to keep him steady
while walking. It made that rain stick sound as I lifted it to me, the noise it had begun to make ever since the crab at Cleopatra’s Needle had stolen it. I shook it again. Something at the back of my mind itched.
I pulled out my phone.
“Calling Carter?”
“Heavens no. What would I say to him? Excuse me, Detective Carter, but Brian and I are trying to find out the best way to set him on fire and can you ask the Society if they have any ideas?” Fingers flew over my keyboard rapidly and I looked at the Wikipedia entries in offering. I picked one.
Rain stick. Hollow. With seeds or thorns or pebbles inside that tumble and fall as the cylinder is rotated.
I grabbed up the foot of it and began to twist off the heavy rubber cap. Old and stubborn, like the professor had been, it didn’t want to be removed. Forcing it on the picnic table’s edge, I finally wedged it off and held it out.
A shower of thorns cascaded onto the patio, bouncing about until the cane felt emptied. It was as though the heart of the perdition rod had morphed into what he needed.
Brian looked at them thoughtfully, and then leaned close to examine them. “Good heavens. Those are rowan wood twigs.”
“Less than twigs, but hey, kindling is kindling, right?” I muscled the cap back into place. “How much do you need?”
“A handful, more or less to stand within and that—that is exactly what we’ve got.” He swallowed, hard. “I think . . . I think I have all I need.”
Except courage, and I didn’t think him a wuss for hesitating, not one bit. Who wanted to go up in flames again? But that was the path he’d chosen centuries ago, and he’d not live to see another year if he didn’t follow it again. We both knew that. Brian and the professor needed to be one whole person, with his knowledge behind him and his destiny in front of him. He rubbed the thick gold ring on his thumb for comfort and reassurance, a gesture he did more and more frequently now. It seemed to steady him and give him resolve.
I looked up to see him watching me as if he could read my thoughts. “I’ll be here.”
“I know.”
“Anyone else? Hiram? Steptoe?”
He shook his head.
“My mom?”
“No.” He gave a rueful smile. “A set of clothes?”
“Oh, right. Get them now or are we waiting till sunset or midnight or something?”
He threw his head back. He still had a full and glorious head of hair, red-gold in the sun, and he looked to the sky. He pointed. “The moon is up now.”
And it was, shining as brightly in the blue sky as it would at night. “Wow.” I inhaled. “Well, I’ll run and get some clothes and we’re good to go?”
He put his palm over his store of goods. Frankincense and myrrh. Rowan wood. Stick cinnamon and a few other things, among them a shed snakeskin and a bird feather I did not recognize but looked as if it must have belonged to a glorious bird at one time. A phoenix? He’d never told me.
I left him to run upstairs to the closet holding my father’s things. Suddenly, I wasn’t too keen about giving them away. The files I’d been allowed to copy took hard study, and I’d even downloaded my own dictionary to decipher the Japanese sprinkled throughout, and I figured that one day I’d find the key that would set him free. He’d need a wardrobe. That was then, though, and this was now, and if Brian reincarnated, he’d definitely need a set too.
I picked out a worn pair of jeans, another old pair of sneakers that Barney hadn’t chewed on, and a henley style T-shirt that I didn’t like on my father—he wasn’t a teen any more, after all—but that Brian would look okay in.
Outside the kitchen entry, I hesitated. Then I went to the pantry door and opened it to the basement, sitting on the top step. I hadn’t talked to Dad since that evening days ago when he’d nearly shredded himself protecting me. I don’t know how he’d done it through the stone, but he had found a way, just when I needed it. I didn’t think of him as unreliable anymore. I had put one of those electric candles halfway down the staircase and turned it on every night.
I called down the cellar steps. “Dad. Thanks for everything. I don’t know if you heard anything, you know, through the stone, but Hironori said you’d started gambling to clear Aunt April’s debt. So. There’s that. And you did it. And the other stuff, too, but . . . well, I forgive you. I want you home and I’m working on it. Hang on, okay? For Mom and me. Just—hang on.”
I didn’t get an answer. I wanted one, but he could still be really drained of energy. I know I’d been, for days. I stood up to leave. Then, very faintly, I heard words. “I love the two of you.”
The sound caught on my heart. “I’m getting you out!”
Hugging my bundles of clothes, I left the basement and hurried outside.
Waiting for me, Brian had arranged his little pyre with herbs and fragrances interwoven with the fragile rowan thorns. He managed a feeble smile when he saw me.
“All done?” I plunked his stuff down on the now-empty patio table. I wished Morty were here, his big broad frame as sturdy as an oak tree, his hands broad as a shovel, one of them holding onto mine. Hiram would come in his stead if we asked, but it wouldn’t be the same.
“One last thing.” He fetched a cigar out of nowhere, twisted it open and began to sprinkle tobacco leaf all over the mound.
“Tobacco? Seriously?”
“Hey. Why do you think men starting smoking it to begin with? They saw the wizardly things we were doing with good leaf.”
How gullible did he think I was? I pursed my lips in disbelief but didn’t say anything. Brian laughed as he dusted his hands off, a thin and nervous sound.
“Well, this is it.”
“If it doesn’t work . . .”
“I left a note upstairs in my room. You guys are absolved of everything because I’m delusional.” He winked.
“Yeah, but I can’t . . . I can’t just stand here and watch you if anything goes . . . Well, you know.”
He brought an empty vial from his pocket and tapped it. “This is an accelerant. I’m covered in it. Supposed to be, but, well, it should be quick. Whatever happens.”
The stone in my palm began to throb in time with my pulse, quickening a little. “Okay. Good luck—wait, should I not say that? Break a leg, maybe?”
Brian took a position in the middle of his small pyre. It only spread out maybe three inches further than the length of his feet. “Thank you, Tessa, for everything. The meals, the friendship, the help, the belief, the rescue. Everything and more.”
“And thank you, Professor, for believing in me.”
He rubbed his fingers on his thumb ring. Then he opened the matchbox and struck his match.
I looked at the ring, thinking of all we’d gone through to get him his ritual necessities. Where would we be if Remy hadn’t dropped that by accident at the Washington Monument? It had helped to restore him enough to remember what else he needed.
My stone throbbed.
What was it Malender had said about her? “One of my best lieutenants.” Since when had Remy done anything by accident? Like dropping a valuable she’d been sent to retrieve? Thoughts tumbled through me.
Something felt terribly wrong. Even my stone knew it.
“Professor! Wait!”
Too late. He released the flaming match. It dropped, sizzling as it fell. The tiny flame bloomed larger, blue and yellow. I reached out with both hands, one aiming for the thumb ring, the other to bat the match away.
Time slowed. The match seemed to fall forever and the gold ring gleamed at me, just out of reach. I strained to do the impossible.
I could feel the phoenix power rising to greet both of us as I stepped into his circle.
I could see, just for a split second of a moment, why one would want to be a wizard and own the world, see it, sense it, use it with the giddy power of all the elements just aching
to be recognized and released. It swept through me, and I felt it as a rainbow, colliding with and then gathering me up, carrying me with it, and I realized that I held both the match and the ring, each in opposite hands. That Brian’s mouth contorted in a sound of dismay which hadn’t reached me just yet as I stood, the sole impediment on the bridge he’d built to get from here to there. I could sense the arc of his very long life, the wisdom he’d gathered and the knowledge he’d lost, bit by bit, as his mortality failed him.
I knew why he wanted it all returned to him.
I knew that he couldn’t get it this way. An abyss yawned in his bridge, a chasm that would swallow him up, plunging him into depths I couldn’t comprehend from where I stood, but I could see it. It chilled my bones and stopped my heart for a beat or two to contemplate the mistake. Whatever waited at the bottom for him boiled with evil and impatience, anticipating his fall.
As dark as the abyss loomed, and even though Malender and Remy had been in my thoughts, I didn’t think he was the one who waited. Something worse occupied that void.
The match sizzled red hot against my flesh. I squeezed my hand shut to put it out as I fell out of the circle, overwhelmed, and landed on my hip as Brian finished crying out, “No!”
“Sorry, Professor. It’s the ring. I don’t know how or what, but the ring is no good.”
He clawed at the hand that grasped the lump of gold, his eyes wild, his feet and legs practically dancing in upset. “Give it back!”
“I can’t.” I opened my hand slowly and we could both see the maelstrom stone absorbing the remains of the thick, golden band. It flared hotly in my palm as the ring slowly melted into its undeniable force. The stone absorbed it totally.
We stood, wordless for a moment or two longer as one magic ate the other. Then the professor ran his hand through Brian’s wavy, copper-tinged hair.
“Well,” he said. “I would be madder than a boiled owl, but I can feel the difference already. I had no idea. How did you?”
“How different?”
“More substantial. Stronger. Less scattered in my thoughts.” He looked down at his feet. “It’s a good pyre, but that’s not all that I will need. Whatever made me think it might be?” He gave me a hand up and then bent over to look closer. He made a tsking sound. “Not good at all. This might have wreaked some havoc. I shall have to salvage what I might.”