“Is this really the time for a history lesson, Deacon?” Oona asked.
Deacon ruffled his feathers. “I believe that it is. You see, because there is the distinct possibility that when the pendulum is stopped at midnight, the street will simply stay connected to New York indefinitely. Most likely, that is what Red Martin is banking on. But there is also the possibility that once the house is destroyed, the magic will no longer be contained, and Dark Street could simply go spinning off into the Drift, leaving us with no connection to the World of Man whatsoever. There would be no way to get food or supplies. Like a boat adrift at sea, eventually people would begin to starve.”
For a long moment the three of them sat in silence. It seemed almost too horrible to conceive.
At last, Deacon said: “These are, of course, only two theories. Given time, I imagine we could come up with more. Let us not forget that even if Red Martin’s plan works, and the street stays put, if Pendulum House is destroyed, then there will be no power source for the Wizard to tap into should the Glass Gates ever fall. And with both sets of gates open, the World of Man would be completely vulnerable to faerie attack.”
“It seems to be a gamble that Red Martin is willing to make,” said Adler.
Oona’s empty stomach felt as if it had just twisted into a great big knot, and the magnitude of the mystery suddenly hit her. If Red Martin succeeded in his plan, then it was actually possible that everyone on Dark Street could end up dead. And the only way she could see to stop that possibility from occurring was to find her uncle’s attacker and make them reveal the words that would reverse the enchantment before midnight.
A new thought occurred to her, and all at once she saw a glimmer of hope.
“But wait!” she said. “Red Martin can’t have Pendulum House. My uncle is not dead. He’s just been transformed into a toad. I rescued him from the Black Tower this morning.”
Adler blinked at her in surprise.
“It’s a long story,” she assured him. “But it is him, I am sure of it.”
Evidently taking her at her word, Adler shrugged. “That may be the case, Miss Crate, but according to this morning’s paper, he’s dead as all else. Here, have a look.”
He slid a thin, folded newspaper out from beneath a stack of books: The Dark Street Tribune. Oona unfolded the paper and read the headline: “Police Declare Wizard Dead. No Successor Chosen.”
Oona slammed the paper down. “But this is outrageous!” Her voice echoed back at her from the high ceiling, yet again, not a single head turned in her direction.
“Even so,” Adler said, “if what you say is true, and your uncle is actually a … a toad? Then unfortunately he still forfeits his rights to the house. The reason I happen to know so much is because I went to the museum yesterday specifically to look up information on the Wizard and Pendulum House … seeing as I was applying for the apprenticeship and all. Anyway, one of the things I remember finding was an extremely old document, written by several of the Magicians of Old and signed by Oswald himself. That’s some pretty heavy law, just in case you were wondering, and the document stated in no uncertain terms that only a human being could ever be named Wizard. It was a condition made into law to make sure that no faerie could ever hold the position. Unfortunately, that same condition applies to toads as well.”
What about humans with faerie blood? Oona thought to ask. But it was a pointless question, she knew. She had already given up any possibility of ever becoming the next Wizard. Yet still … Certainly there have been Natural Magicians who were named Wizard before. Uncle Alexander told me so. He said they were the best Wizards ever.
Oona shook her head, unsure as to why she was suddenly so concerned with such thoughts. Surely her days of magic were over. It didn’t matter what the laws said.
The three of them sat in silence for what might have been a full minute.
At last Oona rose from her chair and folded the two letters into her pocket. “Thank you, Mr. Iree,” she said.
Adler caught hold of her hand. He did not rise from his seat, but her hand tingled, and all the tiny hairs along her arm stood endwise.
Oona quickly slid her hand from Adler’s, doing her best to remain as calm as she could manage with her heart suddenly racing. Adler frowned, but it was not an aggressive look.
“That thing I saw you do yesterday,” he said. “Fixing the broken glass. That was quite … um …”
Oona’s face flushed red. “Stupid,” she said.
“Stupid?” said Adler. “Oh, I’d not say that. Just the opposite, actually. I’d never seen anyone do something like that in all my years on Dark Street.”
Oona felt a sudden need to fidget with her hat. “I should not have done it … and I won’t do it again.”
“But why?” he asked. “I’d heard it said that you was a Natural Magician. That’s mighty rare, and nothing at all to be ashamed of.”
For a moment she felt like telling him everything. About how the magic had gone wrong, how she could not control it, and how those nearest and dearest to her had paid for her mistake with their lives. But of course Adler would most likely already know this. The incident in the park was far from a secret, having happened so publicly. And yet still, she wanted to tell him how sometimes she would be walking down the street and think that she had smelled her mother’s perfume, and she would turn around, heart thumping, only to discover some other woman, some stranger, and Oona would feel as if her heart might explode. Or how the sound of a crying baby would sometimes cause her to lose her breath, reminding her so much of the sister she’d had for such a short time.
But Oona mentioned none of this, and instead she simply said: “I believe that will be all.”
“Oh, aye,” Adler said, rising. “I’ll walk you out. By the way, that hat looks very fine on you.”
Oona couldn’t help herself—the smile slipped through her defenses and landed quite plainly upon her face. “Thank you, Mr. Iree.”
“Call me Adler,” he said, smiling back at her.
Oona considered this. “All right. Thank you, Adler.” She adjusted the hat on her head, feeling strangely giddy. “It was my mother’s.”
Oona placed her mother’s hat on the seat beside her and stared out the carriage window, her hand resting on the hatbox with her uncle safely inside. She felt lost. Everything she had learned from Adler served only to complicate matters in her head, and she hoped that a visit to the museum would prove helpful in clearing some of the confusion.
She watched the fortresslike structure roll into view. The carriage clattered heavily over several potholes as Samuligan pulled to the side of the road in front of the museum.
Oona threw the compartment door open before Samuligan had a chance to open it. She thrust the hatbox into his hands and said: “Keep an eye on that.”
“Why are we here?” Deacon asked.
“I wish to ask the security guard some questions,” she replied. “Perhaps we will discover something the inspector did not.”
But the first thing Oona discovered was that the giant sculpture in the shape of a top hat was standing right in her way. The sculpture was nearly seven feet tall and perhaps five feet in diameter.
“What is this, anyway?” Oona asked.
“Petrified colossus clothing,” Samuligan said. “Giant clothing so old that it has turned to stone.”
Oona knew from her history lessons with Deacon that colossi—men and women who were reported to have been over seventy feet tall, and who had lived thousands of years before even the Great Faerie War—had at one time used the ancient Faerie road to travel back and forth between worlds.
“You mean to tell me that those ancient giants wore top hats?” Oona said, disbelieving.
Samuligan grinned. “They were quite ahead of their time … fashionably speaking.”
“Well, it’s not a very good place for an installation. It takes up half the sidewalk.” Oona shook her head as she ventured around the giant hat and made her way up the
stone steps to the front door. Regardless of being nearly five inches thick and at least eight feet wide, the wood door opened easily at her touch, swinging inward on its big iron hinges, and Oona stepped through the threshold into the museum.
The entryway consisted of a vast circular room, with high-beamed ceilings that vaulted upward in weblike patterns. A ring of massive monolithic stones stood in the center of the room, and Oona knew from her many visits to the museum with her uncle that this mysterious stone circle was one half of a set, the other half of which stood in the countryside somewhere in England. Though Oona had not seen the sister version of the enormous structure, she did know that it was called Stonehenge by those residing in the World of Man, and that it had not been kept nearly as nice as the one standing in the entryway to the Museum of Magical History. Both rings of stones had been gifts from faeries to magicians thousands of years ago when humans and fairies had traveled back and forth between the worlds in harmony. What their purposes were had long been forgotten.
But it was not the mysterious magical circle that Oona had entered the museum to find. A uniformed guard was posted just inside the front door, a thickset man with arms like mountains and no neck at all. Oona turned to him now and saw that he was staring at her, as if surprised to see someone walk through the museum doors.
“May I help you, miss?” he asked.
“I hope you can,” Oona said. “I was wondering if you were on duty here at the front entrance yesterday.”
The guard’s caterpillar-like eyebrows rose ever so slightly. “I was.”
Oona nodded. “Very good. I was also wondering if you remember seeing a certain man enter the museum. He would have been tall, about your height, with greasy black hair and a bullhorn mustache. Also, he would have been blind, his eyes white like snow.”
“Oh, you mean the actor, Hector Grimsbee,” said the guard.
Oona’s heart gave a heavy thump. “Yes, yes. He was indeed an actor with the Dark Street Theater. That’s him. You saw Mr. Grimsbee enter the museum yesterday?”
The museum guard frowned. “No.”
“No?” said Oona.
“No. Otherwise he would have signed his name in this register book here.” The guard pointed to the thick book sitting on a wooden pedestal beside him. “I’d have made sure of it. By the way, if you wouldn’t mind, you’ll need to sign in as well.”
He handed her a pen, and she signed her name at the top of a blank page. Curious, she flipped the page back one day, and saw that the inspector had been correct: the only two names on the registry for the previous day were Adler and Isadora Iree.
Oona handed the pen back to the guard. “You know who Hector Grimsbee is? You would recognize him on sight?”
“Oh, to be sure,” said the guard. “I would have remembered seeing him come in here. My wife and I are really big fans of the theater, you know. He was in a lot of plays up until about a year ago. Why do you ask? Do you know him?”
“We are acquainted,” Oona said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.
“Oh,” said the guard excitedly. His face went slightly red. “Do you think you could get me an autograph? Not for me, mind you, but for my wife. She would be so pleased.”
“Sorry,” Oona said, “but I don’t think …” She trailed off as a short man no taller than Oona herself came striding through the circle of stones toward the front door. His beard was well trimmed, and his nose was quite pointy. His most recognizable feature, however, was an enormous overbite, which gave him a rather horsey appearance, and Oona recognized him from being at some of her uncle’s social gatherings. He was Mr. Glump, the museum curator.
“Mr. Glump,” Oona called. “May I ask you a few questions?”
Mr. Glump stopped abruptly, looking distastefully from Oona to Deacon on her shoulder, then back to Oona again. “There are no pets allowed in the museum.”
Deacon puffed up his feathers, as if getting ready to explain the difference between a pet bird and a living reference library, but Oona spoke first.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Glump,” Oona said. “I will remember that the next time I visit. You might remember me, I’m—”
“Miss Crate. Yes, I know,” said the curator. “I remember you from one of those Pendulum House parties. I read the paper this morning, and I’m very sorry to hear about what happened to your uncle, but if you have come here to blame me, I can assure you that the reason the daggers were stolen was not my fault.”
“Yes, I know,” Oona said. “Inspector White mentioned that you were out of the office.”
Mr. Glump nodded. “I received a note via flame yesterday that an anonymous guest at the Nightshade Hotel had come across a mysterious black box with all sorts of magical symbols carved into it. They wanted to meet me at the hotel at one o’clock to discuss a possible donation of the artifact to the museum. Well, as everyone knows, Oswald’s wand—the one that some say he stole from Faerie, and which then in turn was stolen from him—was supposedly kept in just such a box. I was immensely interested, so I sent a reply, agreeing to meet the anonymous person in the hotel lobby at one o’clock, as they had suggested. The Nightshade is on the north end of the street, so I left my office around twelve fifteen, locking the door behind me, as I always do. But the whole thing turned out to be some rude joke. The person with the box never showed, and when I returned, around four o’clock, I found my office door hanging wide open, and the daggers where gone.”
Oona tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. “That’s over three and a half hours, from the time you left. If the person never showed, then why did it take you so long to return to the museum? Surely, even the slowest of carriages wouldn’t have taken several hours to make the trip.”
Mr. Glump looked slightly uncomfortable. “I … um. Well, I waited in the hotel lobby for nearly a half hour after the agreed-upon time, and then two gentlemen from the hotel security approached me. I thought they were going to ask me to leave, but instead, after I explained why I was there, the two of them seemed to feel so sorry for me that they gave me several brandies on the house, and a handful of betting chips to pass the time while I waited. It seems that the time got away from me. Lost a bit of my own money when the free chips ran out. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The fact remains that I was not here in the museum when the daggers were stolen.”
Oona scratched at the back of her neck, considering this new information. It sounded suspiciously to her as if someone had lured the curator out of his office on purpose.
“Are you the only one with a key to your office?” Oona asked.
Mr. Glump nodded. “Yes, but of course even the most sophisticated locks can be picked … and that is why we have security guards.”
“And you’re sure you locked the door to your office when you left?” Oona asked.
The curator’s nostrils flared, and he looked all at once peeved at being questioned by a twelve-year-old girl. “I always lock the door! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a headache, and I’m going home early.” He raised one mocking eyebrow at her before adding in a rather sarcastic tone: “That is, if you are done with your questions, Miss Crate.”
“Oh yes,” Oona said. “Quite finished.”
The curator pressed his hand to his head and headed out the front door. Oona was about to make her own exit when the guard called after her.
“You sure you couldn’t get Grimsbee’s autograph for me? I mean, for my wife, that is.”
Oona paused for a moment, long enough to look back at the guard, but her head was too full of thoughts to answer his ridiculous request. She pulled the door open and walked through, letting it fall shut behind her.
“No need to be rude!” the guard called after her. “All you had to do was say no!”
Oona ignored the guard’s shouts as they fell silent behind the thick wooden door and walked to the edge of the first step.
“Grimsbee didn’t go in, Deacon,” she said, sounding baffled. “I don’t understand. First
off, if Grimsbee truly was alone when we saw him, and not arguing with some invisible person, then how did he injure his head? Certainly not shaving his forehead. And why did he disappear?”
Oona began looking around for other possible places where Grimsbee could have disappeared to, but after several minutes she said: “There is nowhere else he could have gone.”
Deacon shifted his weight on her shoulder. “He must have entered the museum.”
“But why did the guard not see him?” Oona asked. “He clearly would have recognized him.”
From her elevated position she could see the street stretching out in both directions. The giant top hat hid part of the carriage from view, but she could see Samuligan waiting patiently for her near the horse, the hatbox in his hands. The sun was high overhead by now, and a cool breeze ruffled at the skirt of her dress.
Across the street stood Witch Hill, looking both barren and unremarkable, save for the single, dead tree at its peak. Next door to the hill, the Dark Street Theater rose several stories tall, with the joke-telling clock out in front on the sidewalk. A sign hung over the ticket booth:
THIS FRIDAY ONLY OPEN-CALL AUDITIONS FOR OSWALD DESCENDS
Oona took one more look around and sighed. “I just can’t understand how Grimsbee could have done it.”
She felt immensely let down for having discovered nothing to prove Grimsbee’s guilt, and, seeing nothing more she could do, Oona began to descend the steps one by one. Overly preoccupied in her disappointment, and paying very little attention to what she was doing, she failed to notice how the old stone steps had broken away in several places at her feet. She stepped down, felt herself about to fall, then briefly caught her balance, only to lose it again half a second later as the stone crumbled beneath her, and she landed hard on her side.
Deacon shot into the air, landing beside her on the cold stone step.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The Wizard of Dark Street Page 16
