Two enormous men dressed in red suits appeared behind the man. They stooped over in the tunnel, but once inside the room they straightened, rising to their full, ominous height. Oona recognized them as the twin hotel security guards, each carrying a thick wooden club.
“Red Martin!” said Katona.
“How do you do?” said the plain-looking man, keeping his eyes on Oona.
Oona’s heart began to race. She had certainly not expected this. Red Martin himself. She did not know what to say. Here was the very man responsible for so many of the crimes on Dark Street, the man that Oona’s father had been trying to bring down before he was killed … killed by known associates of Red Martin. Oona had often imagined this day, when she would finally come face-to-face with the man she believed to be responsible for her father’s death. She had imagined just what she would say to him, sometimes going so far as to rehearse her speech in her head as she fell asleep at night, but now that the moment had finally come, she was speechless.
Red Martin turned to Katona and said: “I just stopped by to personally thank you for the wonderful job you did in obtaining the daggers, Katona … and to give you this.” He snapped his fingers, and the twin with the mustache held up what looked like a bag of potatoes. “I thought you might be running low on the root. Yet what do I find when I arrive, but you telling this foolish girl all of our well-kept secrets? Too bad, really. I suppose I’ll just have to keep this bag of turlock root for myself.”
Katona looked horrified. “No. It was not me. It was Sanora. She’s grown too young. She can’t keep her big mouth shut.”
Red Martin shrugged, as if it did not matter, and then turned to face Oona. “Let’s deal with this little problem first, shall we? I’m sorry, Miss Crate, but I cannot allow you to leave the hill. Not now that you know our secret.”
“Don’t you touch her,” said Deacon, puffing up his feathers to his full, menacing size.
Red Martin chuckled as he slid a shiny dagger from the inside of his jacket pocket. Oona recognized it at once as an exact replica of the one used on the Wizard. “Don’t worry, Mr. Bird,” said Red Martin. “I don’t need to touch her.” He looked admiringly at the dagger. “I believe this little beauty is thrown with the mind.” He gripped the handle tight in his hand and grinned at Oona. “And believe me, Miss Crate, when I say that this one won’t send you to the Black Tower. It won’t even send you to meet your dear, dead parents. This one will wipe you clean out of existence … which is almost too bad. Perhaps in the afterlife you could have told your father what an absolute delight it was for me when I had him killed. Oh, don’t look at me like that. It was simply a necessity. He kept getting in my way, so he had to go.” Red Martin giggled darkly. “Though he doesn’t know it, it was I who influenced the Street Council to give your father’s old position to that bumbling idiot, Inspector White. The man is so stupid he doesn’t even realize he got the job because of me. Life has been so much easier with him running the police force.”
Oona’s teeth clenched. Her suspicions were being proven right, yet it only made her feel angrier than ever. “You murdered my father!”
Red Martin shook his head, tossing the dagger from one hand to the other. “You should know by now that I never hurt anyone. I always get someone else to do it for me. In your father’s case, it was a couple of thieves.” His grin widened. “But in your case, I think I will make an exception. And how convenient that I won’t even need to get my hands dirty.”
Oona’s heart was racing, her mind grasping for some way out. Anything. A thought occurred to her. “You wouldn’t dare do it in front of all these witnesses,” she said. But her voice betrayed her lack of certainty.
Red Martin appeared amused. “I am the only reason these ladies are alive today. They cannot survive longer than a few weeks without my supply of the root. They will keep their mouths shut. And besides, if they should decide to speak out against me, I can terminate the relationship and let them all wither away. It’s quite true that they provide me with a minimal amount of crystals and gold, but I assure you, I do have other prospects for making up the lost income.”
Oona’s hands clenched into fists, her knuckles turning a bloodless white. “Other prospects?” she asked. “You mean like destroying Pendulum House and building your hideous hula-hut hotel and casino?”
Red Martin’s eyes sparkled. “Just think of all those New York fools pouring through the gates to see the magical street. They’ll need a luxurious place to stay, and of course a place to lose all of their money!”
“Horrible,” was all Oona could think to say.
Red Martin gave a little bow.
“But what if it doesn’t work?” Oona asked. “What if when you destroy Pendulum House, we no longer stay connected to New York, and Dark Street becomes isolated from New York completely? Or what if the Glass Gates should eventually fall? What then? The armies of Faerie could attack the World of Man as they please.”
Red Martin shrugged. “A possibility, yes. But I really doubt that will happen.”
“And yet you are willing to gamble with the lives of everyone?” Oona asked, but she already knew what his answer to that would be.
“I’m a gambling sort of man … and I believe the odds are in my favor. They are always in my favor, Miss Crate.”
Oona’s eyes slitted to the size of paper cuts. “Which one of the applicants did you persuade into attacking my uncle?” she demanded.
Red Martin smiled faintly. “You will never know, will you? Good-bye, Miss Crate. So sorry I have to kill you now, but sometimes killing is necessary. I suppose you, of all people, should know that. Really, even I never stooped so low as to kill my own mother … let alone a baby. Perhaps the world is better off without you.”
Oona’s throat constricted, the harshness of the words like a noose around her neck. Red Martin raised the dagger above his head, clearly meaning to make a show of it, and fixed her with his gaze.
Several of the girls took in a collective gasp.
“Stop!” shouted Sanora.
Deacon cried, “No!” as he leaped from Oona’s shoulder and darted across the room. His great black wings fluttered in front of Red Martin’s face, momentarily blocking Oona from view.
“Get away from me, bird!” he shouted, and then brought the blade swiftly down, meaning to cleave right into Deacon and knock him out of the way.
What happened next happened in the space of half a heartbeat. First there was a memory: Samuligan standing near Oona’s bedroom door with Deacon wriggling in the faerie servant’s gangly grip. Samuligan had uttered a single word … except that, in the memory, his voice seemed muffled, like someone speaking through a mouth full of cloth. In the next instant Deacon was standing on the dressing table, looking bewildered, while Samuligan remained near the door with Oona’s hairbrush in his hand. The bird and the brush had magically swapped places in the blink of an eye.
“I just made it up,” Samuligan had said, again his voice strangely muffled, like this was a very old memory that had lost some of its sharpness. And yet it was not an old memory, Oona knew. It was quite recent. The real event had taken place only the day before, and in that half a heartbeat, as Oona saw the dagger in Red Martin’s hand swing down to knock Deacon out of the way, and quite possibly cut him in half, Oona made a decision to do what she had promised herself she would never do again on purpose.
The magic rose to her lips like a drink of water from a deep spring. It felt not only exhilarating, it also felt right.
“Switch!” she shouted, and in the same instant stomped her foot against the floor just as the blade slammed into Deacon’s fluttering wing. Except that it was no longer the dagger that Red Martin swung; instead, it was the candle that Oona had been holding only a moment before. Deacon swatted at the candle with his wing before soaring toward the cave ceiling, shrieking like mad.
“What is this?” asked Red Martin, looking both startled and confused. He gazed uncomprehendingly at the white candle
in his hand. “Where did it go?”
“Looking for this?” Oona asked. She held up the enchanted dagger. She could feel the fiery prickle of it in her hand—the dagger’s enchantment sensing her faerie blood—and the heat was already beginning to grow. But she held the dagger nonetheless, suffering the discomfort, refusing to let it fall from her hand.
Red Martin’s eyes rounded like wagon wheels. He took in a sharp breath of air, and then threw the unlit candle at Oona. The candle went wide and hit the bookshelf containing the newspapers as Deacon returned to Oona’s shoulder.
“Don’t just stand there!” Red Martin shouted at the enormous twins. “Kill her!”
Red Martin then turned and ran abruptly out of the room, disappearing down the tunnel.
The two enormous thugs came at her, clubs raised, the expressions on their broad faces cold, and distant, and eager to pummel. In that instant the pain in her hand was finally too much to bear. The heat had grown too intense, and Oona let the dagger drop to the floor.
The twins descended on Oona like two hulking monsters.
Deacon launched from Oona’s shoulder, attacked the twin with the mustache, batting at his head and clawing at his face. The second twin came straight at Oona, clearly intent on smashing her skull with his thick club. Oona dove out of the way and the club crashed against the floor, sending the dagger skittering across the ground.
The girls screamed as the first twin (the one Oona thought of as Mr. Mustache) began to swat at the open air, trying to whack Deacon with his club. But the bird was too fast. Deacon clamped hold of the man’s mustache and soared upward. Mr. Mustache’s scream was so high pitched, it might have belonged to one of the girls.
Oona jumped back as thug number two took another swipe at her. The swing missed her by mere inches, crashing instead against the side of the chair where Sanora had been cowering, and sending her flying across the room. A quavery wail escaped her lips as she slammed against the floor and then fell silent.
“You brute!” Oona shouted, snatching up a broken chair leg. “You’d strike a helpless little girl?”
The giant man raised the club, and when Oona brought up the chair leg to protect herself, she stumbled over another bit of broken chair and toppled to the floor. She clamped her eyes shut, thinking that this was it, certain the club’s blow would send the life rushing out of her—but the blow never came.
There was a loud thunk, and the man staggered forward. His massive body spun around and collapsed against a carved-stone bookcase. It took Oona a couple of seconds to realize what had just happened. The thug’s twin, Mr. Mustache, had accidentally clobbered his brother with his own flailing club.
Then came a sharp shriek of pain as Mr. Mustache caught hold of Deacon in one enormous hand and shoved the raven against the wall. He raised the club, clearly meaning to flatten the bird, even if it meant crushing his own hand in the process.
Oona knew instantly what she had to do. She sat up, aimed the chair leg at Mr. Mustache like a rifle, and the words escaped her mouth without her even having to remember them.
“Lux lucis admiratio!”
A blaze of sparkling lights erupted from the end of the broken chair leg, shooting across the room and knocking the club from Mr. Mustache’s thick-fingered hand. His grip weakened, and Deacon fell to the floor with a thump. Mr. Mustache cried out in surprise as a second burst of lights picked him up and hurled him across the room. He slammed against a bookcase and collapsed to the floor, bringing an avalanche of books with him. The starry lights swirled around his head, lingering just long enough to singe the ends of his bushy mustache, and then they disappeared altogether. The man’s eyelids fluttered briefly before sliding closed. He was out cold. Oona dropped the broken chair leg and hurriedly pushed herself to her feet.
“Deacon!” she called, and ran to him. “Deacon, are you all right?” Her voice cracked, and her eyes glistened wetly. She knelt to pick him up. Once he was in her hands, she could just make out his faint breath and the beating of his heart against her palm. His body shuddered, followed by a short cough. One eye opened, peering up at her.
“I’ve been better,” he said, and winced as he moved his leg.
Oona felt all of the breath leave her body in a great sigh of relief. “Oh, Deacon. You had me frightened there for a moment. Are you badly hurt?”
Ruffling his feathers, he said: “I believe I may have injured my hip.”
“Can you move it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then at least it’s not broken.”
“Can’t be sure about that,” he said.
“Oh, you’d know if your hip was broken,” said Katona. “I broke mine once, almost a hundred years ago, and I can assure you, there’s no worse—”
“That’s quite enough!” Deacon shouted. He stretched out his wings before hopping to Oona’s shoulder. She felt him wobble for a moment, but he managed to keep his balance. “I believe we should be more concerned about Miss Crone than my hip,” he said.
Oona glanced across the room to where Sanora lay motionless. Filled with apprehension, Oona hurried to the girl’s side, but even as she knelt, she could see that Sanora was beginning to stir. Oona placed her hand on the young witch’s shoulder, helping her to sit up.
“Are you badly injured?” Oona asked.
Sanora gazed up, her vast eyes blinking dazedly. “I … I think I will be all right. The chair took most of the blow.”
The crumpled remains of the chair lay in a heap near the table, along with the broken chair leg Oona had used to cast her spell of light. What surprised Oona the most was that, when she looked at the splintered piece of wood, she didn’t feel one stitch of guilt. She had used magic, and yet there was no trace of the horrible sense of betrayal she’d felt only the day before when she had unintentionally fixed the broken magnifying glass. This time there had been nothing unintentional about it. This time it had been her choice. Lux lucis admiratio. The Lights of Wonder: the very spell that had gone wrong nearly three years ago beneath the trembling leaves of the fig tree. This time the magic had done precisely what she’d intended. This time it had felt exactly right.
“Can you stand?” Oona asked the witch.
“Think so,” said Sanora, and Oona helped her to her feet. Like Deacon, the girl wobbled slightly, but she appeared less hurt than Oona would have guessed, and the dress was remarkably undamaged.
Mr. Mustache moaned on the floor, and Oona approached him warily. His club lay near his limp hand, half buried beneath a pile of books. Oona kicked it away.
“We should tie these two up before they come to,” she said, and then, remembering that she had dropped the dagger to the floor, she quickly scanned the room. For one panicky instant she did not see it anywhere … but the panic was short-lived and she let out a sigh. There it was, lying on the floor in front of the bookcase filled with newspapers, safely out of everyone’s reach. If any of the witches wanted to get to it, they would need to get past Oona, and presently all the witches were standing near the table, staring at her with a kind of openmouthed wonder.
“What is to be done now?” Deacon asked.
“We must still find my uncle’s true attacker,” Oona said. “Nothing else is more important. Red Martin has disappeared.”
“There’s a tunnel that goes all the way to the hotel,” Sanora explained. “That’s how we get the root. He’s probably halfway back by now.”
Oona frowned. “Well, he is still the legal owner of Pendulum House, and he intends on stopping the pendulum at midnight.” She turned to face the witches. “As it seems that you are all now out of Red Martin’s good favor, I’m afraid your only hope for procuring turlock root for your beauty cream will be from Pendulum House. So I suggest that you all help me in any way possible. We must destroy Red Martin’s legal ownership.”
“Turlock root at Pendulum House?” several of the girls said at once. They looked at one another in surprise.
“Yes. It grows in the inner
garden,” Oona said. “But you’ll just have to trust me on that. I’m sure once we have restored the Wizard to his human form, I might be able to convince him to allow you all some reasonable access to the roots.” She walked to the bookcase and stood over the dagger, peering down at its unblemished blade before turning back to face the girls. “But only under the condition that you return the dresses to Madame Iree’s showroom, and admit to having stolen the daggers from the museum.”
Oona slid one of the yellowed newspapers from the shelf—an old edition of the Dark Street Tribune—and knelt down. Moving as delicately as possible, she slid the edge of the paper beneath the dagger, rolled it around both handle and blade, creating a thick tube, and then picked it up. The paper was just thick enough so that Oona could hold the dagger without getting burned. She could still feel the closeness of the dagger, but the paper had reduced the fiery sensation to a kind of tingling heat in her hand.
Deacon half whispered in Oona’s ear: “It’s a good thing that Red Martin did not pay too close attention to the precise wording of the dagger’s enchantment.”
“What do you mean, Deacon?” she asked.
“Well, according to the enchantment,” he whispered, “once Red Martin had brought the dagger into the room, he could have still used it, regardless of who actually held it.”
The Wizard of Dark Street Page 21
