The Curious Case of the Cursed Crucible

by Constance Barker

  “Gave it to them?”

  “So it would seem. Probably because they knew it would remain a useless trinket... a waste of magic in my opinion.” He held out a hand. “Unless, of course, one of you has some desire to be possessed by Tomas De Torquemada. If so, be my guest. And you can even take the quill with you.” Then he laughed. “Of course, at that point, you would have to.”

  Suddenly there was a beep and the old man smiled his more evil grin. “That will be my men bringing Leopold Junior home. We should go meet them.”

  As we started back down the hallway, I glanced back at the quill. I was disturbed by the similarity between that curse and the one that bound Edgar and me together. One thing we’d thought we’d learned about artifacts was that no two of them ever had the same curse. But the quill and the pen box were remarkably similar. It bothered me.

  And that raised the question of who Edgar was. I could understand the grand inquisitor feeling the need to inflict himself on future generations. Perhaps, during a normal day at the office, torturing innocent people, he’d stumbled across a real witch and compelled her to put this curse on his quill. How you compelled a witch to do something was a minor stumbling block I couldn’t worry about much, but if you could, a man like that might take advantage. With pyramids being out of fashion, he might’ve seen it as a way of ensuring his immortality—just in case the Pope had made a miscalculation about the afterlife. But Edgar? I’d always assumed he was the victim of a curse. What if that wasn’t true at all? Was he using me?

  Bel walked alongside the old man. “You seem to be rather delighted to have Leopold home. That’s odd, given the way you treated him when he was here.”

  “I’m glad the prodigal son has returned,” he said sourly. “Now he’ll learn that he cannot cross me and get away so easily.”

  Clarence made a tight-lipped sour face. “I’d hardly think of Leopold Junior as a prodigal son,” Clarence said, sounding exactly like Mr. Watkins, my high-school English teacher. He’d been a good, if rather pompous teacher and this was a remarkable impersonation of someone I doubted Clarence had ever met.

  The old man tipped his head. “Really?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Well, what does that actually mean, anyway—what is a prodigal?”

  Clarence touched the tips of his fingers together. Suddenly I was sure he was channeling old Mr. Watkins. “It’s a person who spends, or has spent, his or her money or substance with wasteful extravagance; a spendthrift.”

  “Well, he has spent his goodwill with me,” the old man said.

  “Then why do you want him back?”

  The old man stopped and stared in disbelief. “The same reason I want the crucible back... it’s mine. He is mine.”

  When we reached the sitting room again, the two men in suits were standing with Leopold between them. “He didn’t have it with him and it wasn’t in his hotel room, sir,” the big man said.

  “That’s fine.” He looked at me. “I know where it is now.” He glared at Leopold for a moment, then waved a hand at Clarence and me. “One of them has the crucible. Search them and when you find it, do away with them, please.”

  “What?” I shouted.

  “I don’t need you anymore. I’ve amused myself with you to the limit of that possibility. So...”

  “But we had an agreement.”

  He snorted. “An agreement with you that you can’t enforce. You know so little. And I’m certain any bad will that creates will be offset by the fact that Ulrich Steele and the Cabal will be pleased to know you’ve been dealt with permanently.”

  “What about the idea of not starting a war with the Antique Dealers?” I asked.

  He laughed. “There aren’t very many of them anymore. A dying breed. Hardly enough of them to mount a campaign to revenge two neophytes.

  In a panic, I reached into my bag, opened the pen box, and pulled out the cursed fork that Clarence had bought earlier. I held it in front of me, waving it like a knife.

  The two suited thugs hesitated, but the old man laughed. “And what do you intend to do with that... fork?”

  I had no idea and was relieved when Bel cleared his throat. “I’ve never seen it before, Leopold, but I can tell you that she’s holding an artifact.” Suddenly everyone took a step back. Of course, even if I’d known what it did, I had no idea how to make it do it. Usually, that part was obvious—you put on the cursed spectacles, looked in the cursed mirror, and so on, but unless I had to eat something with it, I had no clue.

  Clarence moved away from me. Curiously, he seemed more frightened of it than anyone. “There’s no reason to do anything drastic, Cecilia,” he said. “The consequences might not be worth it. The damage might extend well beyond this house, these people. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people could die.”

  I waved the fork again, wondering if he’d gone off the rails or if he was simply playing along with my bluff, trying to put the fear of fork into the thugs, if not the old man. “I don’t intend to lay down and die when I can fight back, Clarence. The consequences might be terrible, but if I have to die I intend to take these people with me. If others die, it will be on Leopold Senior.”

  “Let’s not be hasty,” the old man said, holding up a hand. “Look here, we can come to an agreement.”

  “You don’t find it necessary to keep agreements with us,” I pointed out. “I can’t trust you.”

  He looked at Bel. “You aren’t going to permit this, are you? You aren’t going to let her do something terrible are you?”

  Bel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I suppose I could intervene, yet in this case, it might be unwise. My mandate tells me that the right course of action is for me to leave and report the matter to Ulrich.”

  “Call him,” the old man said, digging out a cell phone and holding it out.

  Bel shook his head. “It’s a very old mandate that doesn’t take long-distance communications into account. Or perhaps it did and it was decided that wouldn’t do. At any rate, I need to do that in person, I’m afraid. And you are on your own.”

  The old man let out a sigh. “All right then. I’ll honor our deal. You give me the crucible and I’ll let you take my son away from here.”

  “And you won’t pursue him?”

  The old man bit back some retort. “Yes. I mean, I agree not to. Just put the damn fork away before someone gets hurt.”

  “Not until we are away from here,” I told him.

  The old man dropped his hands. “Give me the crucible and get the hell out of here then.”

  I nodded at Clarence and he took out the crucible. He held it up. “As advertised,” he said. “I’ll give it to one of your men when the others are outside.”

  “Let them go,” he told his men. They moved away from Leopold. I nodded. “Get in the car,” I told him.

  The old man glared at us. I could feel the heat of his anger. Just as Leopold went out the door, his expression changed. “The fork,” he said. “It’s... doing something.”

  I looked and saw that the tines of the fork were curling up. I felt a sharp pain stabbing into my brain, which made me drop the fork. As it hit the ground, the tines straightened again.

  “That was a rather disappointing curse,” Bel said.

  “Get them,” old Leopold shouted.

  “Run,” I shouted. Clarence came toward me as Leopold headed down the steps. The two men spun and headed directly for us at a run.

  “Oh, oh,” Clarence said, reminding me that he was a master of understatement. I would’ve used much stronger language.

  “I suggest you run,” Edgar said. But it was too late.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Desperation is an interesting emotion, or maybe it's a condition. Whatever it is, once you get really desperate, your mind shifts into a hyper drive that can make you do incredibly stupid things. I suppose it’s part of the flight or fight syndrome.

  The thing is, that sometimes the things it makes you do only look stu
pid. If things go right, your subconscious reaches deep and finds a strategy that goes counter to your intuition. In my case, as the two men rushed us and I saw my life ending, I scooped up the fork and hurled it at one of them. Now there was a useless, futile gesture if ever there was one. Clarence acted just as foolishly. With the possibility of outrunning the men and getting away somewhat less than zero, he tossed the crucible in the air.

  His action had immediate results. “Get that crucible,” the old man shrieked. “Don’t let it hit the ground.”

  Both men stopped abruptly and looked up, trying to locate the crucible in the air. As they did, Clarence turned the tables, rushing the man in front of him and shoving him into his partner. With their eyes focused upward and their hands in the air, he caught them unaware and the fell on the floor. As they tangled, trying to get on their feet, something clattered on the marble floor.

  Clarence caught the crucible and smiled at me. I should’ve shot out the door, but I hesitated, watching Clarence for a moment, and that was a moment too long. As I finally turned to run, one of the men snaked out a hand and grabbed my ankle, tripping me. I came down hard, but fortunately with my knee on the man’s throat. As I caught my breath I saw something on the ground—it was the square artifact, the tracker they’d used to find Leopold. I grabbed it and stuck it in my pocket before trying to get to my feet.

  Amid this chaos, I was vaguely aware of the old man standing his ground and slamming his cane on the ground; his impatience boiling over into anger. Suddenly Clarence grabbed me by the arm, pulling me up. He had the crucible. It was tucked under his arm. I reached for it and shoved it into my pocket as he got me to my feet.

  Seeing that the two men were still tangled, I kicked the one who had grabbed me and we turned and ran, heading pell-mell down the stairs toward the car. I saw Leopold Junior, the good Leopold, sitting in the back seat as we piled in.

  On the porch, one of the men pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at me and fired. I cringed, closing my eyes and waiting to be shot. When nothing happened other than Clarence managing to start the engine, I looked at the porch. Bel was standing between us and the men, his arms spread wide. The old man got a horrified look on his face, and he whipped the cane, knocking the gun out of the man’s hand.

  “You fool. You idiot,” he shouted. “Ulrich will raze this place to the ground.”

  I saw Bel slumping. “Bel was shot,” I shouted. I jumped out of the car and ran to him, but he turned toward me and waved me away. “Get out of here. Quickly,” he said. “Now!”

  And I did. Clarence was pulling out even as I got into the seat. The door swung closed and Clarence drove far too fast down the winding drive. “The gate is shut,” he said as it came into sight.”

  “Go right through at the side,” Leopold said. “The hinges are some Chinese pot metal crap that the builder used to save money. My father was not pleased.”

  But we were pleased when the nose of the car struck the gate and sent it flying with minimal damage to the car.

  Clarence did a little NASCAR turn onto the highway and we all breathed a sigh of relief. No one said a word as Clarence drove back to the diner where we’d left our car. “We’ll leave his car here,” Clarence said. It seemed as sensible as any other plan.

  We got in the car and headed back toward Destiny’s Point. As I sat back, something in my pocket poked me. I took it out. “Where did you get that?” Leopold said.

  “I found it during the scuffle in the foyer. I was pretty sure it was the tracking artifact we got from those thugs.”

  “You’re right,” Leopold said. “It’s actually a compass artifact.”

  “North is cursed?” Clarence asked.

  “Are you being sarcastic again?” Edgar asked.

  “He is,” I said.

  “The way it works, you open it up and think of someone, anyone at all. When you get a clear picture of them in your mind, the needle points in the right direction—their direction.”

  Of course, using artifacts always has consequences, and often they are not what I’d call benign, but I couldn’t resist trying it out. I opened it and sure enough, there was a compass. I thought of Clarence and it pointed at him; I thought of Enid and it pointed toward Destiny’s Point.”

  “We can use it to rescue Bel,” I said, realizing that.

  “There’s no need,” Leopold said. “My father would never intentionally harm Bel. And he will get him whatever treatment is appropriate to heal a homunculus and then send him back to Ulrich with a profuse apology.”

  “Why such concern for what Ulrich thinks?”

  “Fear,” Leopold said. “If something happened to Bel, Ulrich would set out to eliminate the family. He’d bring the resources of the Cabal to bear, with one goal—eliminating every DuLac in existence. It would be massively ugly”

  “So you are saying we should leave Bel there? Not go back and get him?” Clarence asked.

  “He’s safer with my father than with us. We don’t have the knowledge or resources to help him and if he died in our care, even if we were trying to save him, then we’d be the ones at war with Ulrich. You don’t want that. He’s a nasty piece of work even under better conditions.”

  My own experience with Ulrich Steele fit with that estimate perfectly. “So what in the world do we do?” I asked. “I felt we are stopped in mid-mission.”

  Leopold smiled. “Not really. Not at all. You said you had a safe place to put the crucible, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We do.”

  “Then put it safely away. Along with the tracker. You’ve then added two artifacts to your list of the ones out of circulation.”

  “And what about you? Your father isn’t the kind to say, ‘Oh he got away. Well, never mind.’”

  Leopold laughed. “That’s true enough. But because of you, I should be safe now. I can’t be careless, but with the tracking artifact out of circulation... well, I learned a bit about keeping a low profile, so even if my father tries to find the compass and crucible, or come after me, he’ll have a difficult time of it. For all intents and purposes, you’ve set me free. And for that, you have my undying thanks.”

  I sat back in the seat for a time, letting the hum of the tires on the highway serve as background music to my thoughts. They were a jumble. I had to say we’d been successful, up to a point. We’d acquired some artifacts, rescued Leopold, although I couldn’t call it saving him, exactly, and we’d learned some things. I agreed with the sad look on Edgar’s face. “I’m glad everyone is safe, and I hope Bel is too,” he said. “But I was looking forward to hearing what Bel could tell me about where I came from. He did seem to know something that might be useful.”

  “So he did,” Clarence said. “The thing is, our paths seem destined to cross from time to time. I’m sure we will have a chance to talk with him.”

  “I hope so,” Edgar said.

  I did too.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Look at what I got,” Leopold said. He was climbing out of a somewhat battered looking sedan. He’d pulled up in front of the curiosity shop. I’d been watching for him and went outside when he got there. Clarence was engrossed in trying to create a website. “Ain’t she a beauty? She was the nicest machine on Honest Charlie's Destiny Point used car lot.”

  Neither of us wanted to shoot down his obvious car owner’s pride. “Umm, sure is,” Clarence said. “But how in the world...”

  “It took all the cash I had left,” he said. “Worth every cent of it though. It’s time to hit the open road.”

  “You’ve been on the road for some time now,” I pointed out.

  “But that was different. I was running away,” he said. “I was frantic. Now I’m free. I need to be a little careful, but because I won’t be involved with miracle cures and not packing any artifacts, there is such a slim chance of my father’s people catching up with me that I can enjoy myself for a while.

  “I wish you’d stay here with us,” I told him. The truth wa
s that I wasn’t sure a man his age should be out there on his own. But then what was his age? Was he thirty or eighty? How did you measure it in his case? He hadn’t had a chance to live.

  He laughed. “I might look ancient, but in here I’m not,” Leopold said, thumping his chest. “There’s a lot of things out there in this world that I want to see. Most people my physical age think they have lots of years ahead of them, but I know I don’t; most people who look my age have already lived their lives, but I haven’t. So, if I only have a little time left, why not spend it moving forward, doing the things I want to do?”

  “I suppose that makes sense.” I couldn’t really imagine the situation from his point of view. I doubted anyone else could. Not really. “So no regrets?”

  “Not for giving up some of my time. I regret some things that I did as part of the family, for the business, but I did what I could to make amends. And speaking of consequences, I hope you and Clarence aren’t in too much trouble because of me.”

  “I don’t think we will be,” I said.

  “The family won’t be thrilled that you made off with two of their money making artifacts. When it comes to the pocketbook, they are not a forgiving clan. And you put them in a bad situation with Ulrich, so keep your heads down for a time.”

  “We will,” I assured him. He smiled, looking happier than I’d ever seen him as he got back into his car. “I’m leaving now,” he said. “There is no time like the present, and for me, not much present, so off I go.”

  “Good luck,” Clarence said, shaking his hand through the open window.

  “Thanks and the same to both of you.”

  And then he drove off. Suddenly I missed him.

  “We should take the artifacts to Enid’s," he said. "She still has some of the special boxes for cursed objects. We can put them in those until we can see about getting them into the Grand Storehouse. Best to get them stored before the DuLac’s or the Cabal come for them.”