by Clare Kauter
“Exactly,” he said.
“Wait, you think that psycho ritual has something to do with my kind? Jeez, maybe I really don’t want to know what I am.”
Ed smiled. “What, were you still holding out hope that your magic was made of rainbows and stardust?”
“No,” I said. “I just didn’t expect it to be made from a murdered goblin’s eyeballs, that’s all.”
“No imagination,” he said, shaking his head as if he found my reluctance to be associated with ritual sacrifice disappointing.
“Tell me about the Doomstone,” I said.
“I have a better idea.”
“Really.”
“Yes. I can tell you why Gnawlack was killed.”
I frowned. His offer was intriguing, but confusing. “I thought you said it might be related to me. How can you tell me about it?”
“It’s only tangentially related,” he said with a shrug. “The secrecy spell is very specific – I can’t tell you what you are. I can give you as many clues as I want, though.”
That was something, at least. “OK. Why was he killed?”
“It wasn’t about the Doomstone. He had something else on him that his murderer was after.”
I watched Ed for a moment, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I spoke. “And? What was it?”
Ed shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
With a disgusted noise I sat back in my chair. Why had I thought Ed might actually help me? Surely by now I should have known that his personality was just a litany of disappointments.
“Great. Thanks. Well, this has been fun, but –”
“I don’t know what it is exactly, but I do know some things about it.”
I sighed. “Such as?”
He folded his arms and wriggled back on my bed to get comfortable. Great. This was going to be a long one. “You know virtually nothing about the stone, right?”
“Is this going somewhere?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought you said his death had nothing to do with the Doomstone.”
“It doesn’t. Not directly.”
“Like how it doesn’t directly have anything to do with me?”
“Exactly.”
“I really wish you’d stop talking in circles.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not doing it on purpose. Every time I skirt too close to the truth about you, it’s like my tongue gets taken over and I end up talking about something else.”
Weird. I’d never experienced a secrecy spell before. Not on the receiving side, anyway. “OK, so this does have something to do with me, just not directly. And you can’t tell me what.” I was getting tired just thinking about it.
Ed nodded. “I’ll do my best to tell you what I can, though.”
“OK. Starting with the Doomstone?”
He nodded again. “OK, so the Doomstone is a magical object.”
“When I said I knew nothing, I didn’t mean literally nothing. Like, I got that far.”
“I can’t really be more specific than that,” he said. Realising what he meant, I nodded. That topic was off limits. I would have to find out more about the stone for myself. “What I can say, though, is that it’s part of a group.”
“Like a horcrux?”
“No, it’s –”
“More like a Deltora Quest situation?”
“What? No,” he said. “You really need to stop doing your magical research by reading fictional novels written by normals.”
“Sometimes I read real magical books too,” I said. “They’re just kind of boring. And they’re always written in old-fashioned English. Even the new ones. They’re so hard to slog through. Would it kill them to talk like a normal person?”
Ed didn’t even bother saying anything. He just watched, cross-armed, while I finished speaking. Wow, I was being so annoying that I was irritating Ed, universally acknowledged Most Infuriating Poltergeist In History. Maybe I needed to scale back the whining a little.
“Right, back to you,” I said. “Please continue. I promise I’ll listen.”
He paused for a moment, then seemed to decide that I was sincere about listening and resumed his explanation.
“Like I said, the stone is part of a group of magical objects that are said to share some sort of link. Apparently when they’re together – even just a couple of them, although it would be much stronger if you had them all – they unleash an incredible amount of power.”
“What are they used for?”
Ed shrugged. I frowned.
“Can you not tell me because it’s something to do with me?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
This was unbelievable. “You mean you broke into a bank, murdered a bunch of people and committed suicide just to get a magic rock when you don’t even know what it does?”
“Two is not a bunch,” he said. “And I do know a bit about the stone, but I can’t tell you about it because –”
“Because of the spell, sure. But you don’t know what the other things do?”
He shook his head. “Not really. I don’t even know what the other objects are. I do know one thing about them, though.”
“Yes?”
“They’re linked to the Doomstone.”
He gave me a look like that was significant, but I didn’t get it. “Yes, you said.”
He sighed. “Meaning that when you used the Doomstone this afternoon…”
“The other items would have been triggered!”
Ed nodded. “Exactly. And I’m pretty sure Gnawlack had one of them. That’s why he came to Hell tonight – he was tracking the Doomstone with whatever item he had.”
I nibbled my lip, thinking. “You think he was trying to get a few of them together to harness their power?”
Ed nodded.
“But we don’t know what that power is,” I continued. “Wait, if that’s how Gnawlack was tracking the Doomstone, does that mean that Hecate and Daisy have one of the other items?”
“Mostly likely,” said Ed. “When the Doomstone is triggered, the other items will be drawn to it, like with a seeking stone.”
I nodded. I’d used a seeking stone while I was hunting down Santa. Basically it was a magical GPS that pulled you towards the thing you were looking for.
“Wait, so if there are a bunch of these objects floating around, why is The Department so concerned with the stone? Like if Gnawlack was walking around with one, why weren’t they going after him?”
“The other objects aren’t as strong.”
I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”
“It’s kind of like when you’re in a circle doing magic. You have the one main person who channels the majority of the energy, and all the other people who are there are just adding a tiny bit of extra energy. The Doomstone is the main one. Like the head of the circle. You can get a couple of the weaker ones together and do decent magic, but the stone contains a ridiculous amount of magical energy. It’s by far the most powerful. Like you.”
I let out a snort at that. I didn’t feel that powerful. In fact, I felt completely powerless most of the time.
“I don’t know if you’re right about me, but I can definitely see the stone being dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“Or the right hands.”
“My hands, you mean?”
He just shrugged.
“So it’s like the leader of the weird magical object circle, and everyone who has one of the inferior objects can track the stone when I use it.”
Ed nodded. “Only while it’s active, though, so you’re going to be safe most of the time.”
I nodded. “I don’t plan on needing to use it again any time soon. Unless I’m attacked by another giant horny demon.”
“You really need to work on your phrasing.”
I gave him a look of disgust. “You’re the worst.”
“I do my best,” he replied, grinning.
I would have rolled my eyes
but I was in danger of unscrewing them with all the rolling I’d been doing. Ed should have come with a health warning.
“You can go now,” I said.
“Now that you’ve used me for all my information?”
“Yep. Unless you’ve got any hints about who might have killed Gnawlack for whatever his thing was. Do they have an official title?”
Ed shrugged. “I’m sure they go under a few different names, but I know them as the companions.”
“Great, so I’m going to have to tell the others I’m searching for a ‘companion’?”
He smirked, but then grew more serious. “I don’t know if you should tell the others what you know.”
“Why not?”
“Really?” he said. “Where are you going to tell them you got your information?”
“You have a point there.”
“And since you’re pretending to be blissfully unaware of your connection to this murder –”
“I’m not connected to it!”
“That was so convincing that even I almost believed it.”
“It’s not fair that you keep telling me I’m somehow involved in the death of a goblin when I have literally no control over whatever happened to him.”
“I’m not telling you this to annoy you,” said Ed. “There’s a crazy person who just killed someone for a companion object. They’re going to come after you next. You need to be ready.”
Oh. Shit. “But if I don’t use the stone then they won’t know I have it, right?”
“What’s the point in having it if you never use it?”
“Well, it’s good for emergencies.”
“Exactly. So you are going to use it the next time you get into trouble, which knowing you will be some time in the next couple of hours.”
I scowled at him, but didn’t disagree.
“After that, the murderer is going to come for you.”
“If I use the stone anywhere around Hecate and Daisy, they’re going to know straight away that I have it, aren’t they? Even if I use it while it’s still in my pocket like I did earlier?”
Ed nodded. “Honestly, though, I don’t think they’re your main concern.”
“Well, good luck to whoever the murderer is when they come after me. My body count is five times theirs. Six, if you count that demon. If they attack me, there’s no way they’re coming out alive.”
“That’s the spirit!”
“It wasn’t meant to be a motivational speech,” I said. “More like a sad reflection on my life.”
“No need to be such a downer,” he said. “You are what you are. No point getting all depressed about it.”
“No point in getting hung up on the fact that I’m a serial killer?”
“Exactly! Besides, you’ve only ever killed bad people, so you don’t even count as a real evil person.”
“I’ll let you know when I slaughter my first innocent victim so you can invite me into your Evil Murderous Villains Club.”
He smiled. “I should probably go, anyway,” he said.
“Got somewhere to be?”
“You bet. No rest for the wicked,” he said. It worried me that I’d thought the exact same thing about myself earlier that evening. “You should read up on the Doomstone at the library. See if you can find anything about the murder ritual or the companion objects.”
I nodded. “Yeah, good idea.”
Ed kept looking at me as if he was expecting me to say something further.
“What?”
He rolled his eyes. I just shrugged back at him. Whatever he was trying to tell me, I wasn’t getting it.
“Look up the ritual. At the library. Everything you can about it.”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “I was planning to.”
He sighed in exasperation. “Sometimes you’re really thick.”
Finally it clicked. “Oh! Of course! It might tell me what I am, right?”
He nodded. “Honestly, sometimes you are just too dumb to be –”
But he’d popped out of the room before I heard the end of that sentence.
What now? I could head to the library and get a start on my research, but first there was one other person I knew I should ask about Gnawlack. My upper lip curled at the mere thought of tracking him down, but murders – and deaths in general – were kind of his thing. It made sense to ask him about the goblin. Unfortunately, asking for his help meant I’d have to actually talk to him, but there wasn’t really any way around that.
I needed to speak to the Grim Reaper.
Chapter Ten
As I walked out of the pub I rubbed my eyes, wishing I could just go to bed like everyone else had. Unfortunately that wasn’t an option. If I wanted to question Death and get real answers, I had to do it while no one else was around. If this killing somehow had something to do with me or whatever I was, Reaper wouldn’t be able to tell me about it in front of Department employees. This was my best opportunity for real answers.
The only trouble was that this meant I actually had to speak to him.
Once upon a time – only a few short weeks ago, in fact – I’d considered Death my friend. Then in a series of quick betrayals, the likes of which were rivalled only by Ed, he lost that privilege. Firstly he gave me a quest that involved killing Santa, then he ditched me in the middle of the North Pole to do his dirty work without helping me at all, and finally he dobbed me and Henry in for one little kiss and got the quest declared invalid.
Traitor.
It was pretty quiet out on the street – the equivalent of four or five in the morning on a weekday back on earth. Not many people around. I made my way to the centre of the city where there was a large – well, I guess you’d call it a park. It looked more like a cemetery, but there were no actual bodies buried here. At least not as far as I knew. There were headstones and statues of the Grim Reaper in full work uniform – cape and scythe and all – as well as smaller statues of demons scattered about.
The park was humid and mossy. Hell didn’t have weather like earth did, but this patch of land always had rain clouds billowing over the top of it, only visible thanks to the flashes of lightning that appeared every couple of minutes. It was just as hot as everywhere else in Hell, but thanks to the rain, it was a sweaty, slimy nightmare of a place.
Naturally this was where I had to come to track down the Grim Traitor.
Rather than take the cobblestone path, I picked my way around the crumbling old statues and tombstones, careful of my footing because the ground was so slippery from all the moisture that even the grass was dangerously slick. The cross-country route was still better than the path, though. At least if I fell on the grass I wasn’t going to end up with a broken tailbone. This route was also a more direct way to reach the temple at the centre of the park.
Eventually the temple came into view up ahead. It was a grey stone building that appeared to be completely sealed, with a giant scythe covering its front. Anyone passing by would just think this was a weird tomb, but I knew better. I approached the building and placed my finger on the tip of the scythe lightly. Sighing, I wondered why I had to perform a second blood sacrifice in one day. I began to press down, slicing my finger on the tip of the blade. A small amount of blood dribbled out and I took my hand away. The scythe retracted and a door opened before me. I walked inside.
Death, wearing naught but a pair of Batman pyjama bottoms, was lying on the couch watching TV. (Dance Moms, by the looks of it.) Most people who haven’t met the Reaper think that he’s just a skeleton in a cape, but they are incorrect. Luckily. Because seeing a shirtless skeleton man watching TV might have been a little freaky. Can skeletons even see? Why am I giving this so much thought?
His eyes flicked towards me then fixed back on the television, although he shifted to a seated position and patted the seat beside him, gesturing for me to join him. I would have rolled my eyes, but they were already worn out from my visit from Ed. Besides, Death was so focused on the television that he wouldn’t hav
e even seen it so it would have been a total waste of effort.
Folding my arms instead, I stalked across the room and plonked down – hard – on the couch next to him. He was thrown slightly up into the air and yet he continued to stare at the TV, not seeming to notice. In fact, he didn’t look at me again until I found the remote and switched the television off.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “That was unnecessary. It was just about to finish!”
“Pfft,” I said. Well, I guess I didn’t exactly say it. I just kind of… exhaled loudly. “Just rewind time and watch it again when I’m gone.”
“That’s really not the best use of my time travel capabilities.”
I ignored him. “I’m here for business reasons.”
“Oh jeez, you haven’t murdered someone else, have you?” he said. “The number of souls I’ve had to destroy for you –”
“Five is really not that many,” I said. Death opened his mouth like he was going to disagree, so I quickly added, “But no, I haven’t killed anyone. I do need to ask you about destroying a soul, though.”
“Whose? Ed’s?”
“What? No.”
“Oh, I just thought since you’d come from a late night meeting with him…”
There was no point asking how Death knew. He wouldn’t explain, and even if he did I wasn’t sure I’d understand. His explanations tended to be long and complicated and full of maths that didn’t make sense to me. I think he sometimes forgot that I wasn’t a millennia-old, all-powerful being like him and thus hadn’t learned quite as much about physics as he had over the years.
However it had happened, Death knew I’d met with Ed. I wondered if he was keeping tabs on me, or perhaps keeping tabs on Ed, but I doubted he’d tell me that either.
“I’m not looking to destroy a soul,” I said. “I just want to know how it can be done.”
