by Laura Bickle
Beneath the seething grass, the basilisk hissed as it sank back down to the earth.
Pink morning light streamed through the nursing home window, making a square of perfect sunshine in Joseph Dee’s room. Petra sat in a chair beside her father’s wheelchair, trying to follow his gaze out the window. She always wondered what he was looking at. The window gave a fantastic view of the Dumpster and the parking lot, but it always seemed that he was looking beyond that, at something she couldn’t see. She stared at the Dumpster, but could see nothing more in the open flap than a discarded toilet chair and a bouquet of dead flowers. They might have been the blue monkshood flowers that she’d gathered behind her trailer for her dad last week; she couldn’t be sure.
She turned her attention back to her father. He sat in his wheelchair exactly as the nursing home aides had arranged him, wearing a clean, lemon yellow polo shirt and with a blanket over his lap. His buzzed-off grey hair was still damp from a fresh shampooing. He smelled like soap and minty toothpaste. But he just wasn’t in there—his hazel eyes were too far distant.
That didn’t stop Petra from trying. She turned over his weathered hand in his lap. It was pliable as a sleeping child’s. She placed the gold pendant he’d given her as a girl in it.
“Do you remember the day you gave that to me, Dad?” Her fingers traced the design—a lion devouring the sun. “You’d just come back from a trip to Italy, visiting the Domus Galileana and the Città della Scienza. That was when you were a chemistry professor, remember? You were working on some paper on the history of science—that was what Mom said. You sent wonderful postcards of Milan and Naples.”
His vacant gaze hovered over the necklace. The chain trickled between his fingers like water.
She continued. “It was summer, and nearly my birthday when you came back. You’d said on the phone that you had brought back something special for me. I was thinking about what it could be . . . I think I’d decided that it had to be a rock of some kind for my collection. You were always bringing me stones. Like that piece of meteorite you found in the woods in Ohio? That was something else.
“So I was thinking that perhaps you were bringing me a pretty piece of quartz crystal or maybe a stone from one of the monuments over there. I wouldn’t put it past you to steal a piece of the Tower of Pisa for me.” She smiled.
“But you came back with boxes and boxes of books. And this.” Her gaze lingered on the stylized pendant. “You said that it was a lion for me, since my birthday is in August. I wanted to name him ‘Sol,’ after our cat. Remember him? The orange tom?
“Anyway. Mom blew up. At both the pendant and the books. She said that the pendant was too extravagant for a little girl, and she put it away. ‘For later.’ I finally got it as a college graduation present. But you were long gone by then.” She looked away.
“And the books . . . I never understood why she was upset about that. You always had books. Tons and tons of them. But those books were different. They weren’t new. They smelled like mildew, and their old spines were falling apart. I thought that was why Mom didn’t like them . . . well, that and they came infested with silverfish. Mom threw a fit about that. You spent a lot of time with them, even when she insisted that they had to go live in the garage. I remember you sitting out there in a lawn chair with the garage door open, squinting at those disintegrating pages and taking notes. After you left, Mom threw them all out in the garbage.”
Petra leaned forward, watching his face carefully for any sign of a reaction. “Those books . . . they were about alchemy, weren’t they? And when you left . . . you were looking for a secret. Something that would stop the Alzheimer’s you knew you had. You came here, and you met an alchemist. Stroud. He said he knew you.”
Her dad ran his thumb over the surface of the pendant.
Encouraged, Petra plunged onward. “And this pendant . . . it’s an alchemical symbol. The green lion devouring the sun. I looked it up. It has something to do with vitriol devouring matter, purifying it, and leaving gold behind.”
She dug into her pocket. “And I found another symbol. Well, Sig found it. But I know that it has to do with alchemy. It can find magic.”
She gently removed the pendant and placed the Venificus Locus in his hand, on top of the pendant.
Her father stared at it. His face twisted in an expression of horror.
And he dropped the compass as if it were hot.
It fell to the ground with a clatter, and the pendant rolled away.
“Dad, what is it?” She reached for him. He’d closed his hand into a fist and was shaking. She hugged him, running her fingers over his stubbly scalp.
She bent down to pick up the Locus, to hide it from his view, when her cell phone rang in her hip pocket.
“Hello?” she answered, stuffing the compass into her side pocket.
“Ms. Dee?”
“Yes?”
“This is Dr. Burnard from Park Community Hospital.”
“How’s Cal?” She sat back down. She’d intended to drive up to the university later today to see how he was doing.
The doctor paused. “There was an incident last night.”
Petra squeezed her eyes shut, steeling herself for the news that Cal had died in the night. “Is he . . . ?” She couldn’t bring herself to say dead.
“En route to the medical airlift, he awoke. He got in an . . . altercation with the staff. I’m not clear on the details.” Petra thought she could hear the doctor grinding her teeth over the phone. “But he escaped our custody.”
“Escaped?” she echoed. “Why didn’t you notify me last night?”
“Our insurance company felt making this known was a liability.”
“Great.”
“I was hoping that perhaps you’d seen him, that he’d come back to you. He’s in serious shape and needs medical treatment, or he’s going to die.”
Petra leaned forward and rubbed her temple. “No. But I’ll start looking for him.”
It took much longer to return home than it usually did.
The ravens were injured; they had to stop frequently to rest, shedding feathers as they flew. The birds hopped agitatedly on power lines and tree limbs, grumbling and snapping at each other. Wing feathers and tail feathers were missing, and more than one raven had been partially bleached by the venom, looking like jackdaws as they flew.
They just had to get home, home to the Lunaria.
It was late afternoon before they arrived at the Rutherford Ranch, limping and broken in an opposing wind. The birds made it as far as the barn, where a stiff gust smacked the whole flock of them broadside into the side of the building. They collapsed into black puddles, shadows heaping on themselves, until they could form the heaving shapes of men again. Gabe was missing a leg and half an arm, and the others were no better off. One of the men did not have enough substance left to reform—there were only three birds, rushing against each other as if they expected that they’d melt into a man-shape again. But nothing happened, nothing kept happening, and they were determined to smash themselves to pieces.
A pang in his chest, Gabe carefully picked up those panting birds and placed them in a crate. He’d haul them back to the Lunaria, to the tree. He remembered that man dimly—he was one of the first ones, one of the ones who could pass as human and who could still talk. As if reminding him, one of the ravens began to shout in a hoarse voice:
“Snake! Snake! Snake!”
Feeling the weight of failure upon him, Gabe tried to comfort the hysterical bird by stroking the back of its head. It nipped at him.
“Where have you boys been?”
Gabe turned to see his boss, Sal Rutherford, grinding up to the barn in a golf cart. Rock crunched under the cart’s rubber wheels as Sal pulled up beside the edge of the gravel drive. Sal was not in good shape—to Gabe’s eye, an eye that had seen Sal since he wa
s a child, the middle-aged cattle baron looked like an old man. His face was swollen and his eyes sallow. He was weak enough now that he could only get around by golf cart or wheelchair. He’d been undergoing chemotherapy for his liver cancer, but Gabe could smell death on him already.
Being weak made him three times as mean. He glared at Gabe, his protruding lower lip demanding an answer.
Gabe lifted his chin, summoning as much dignity as he could muster with one leg, one arm, and a crate of hysterical crows. “We went out. We lost Carver.”
“Lost? Where?”
“At the park.”
“You boys aren’t the type to be going on a leisurely stroll. And there ain’t a helluva lot that would cause one of you to get lost or hurt . . .” Sal reached into the box and wrapped his hand around the neck of one of Carver’s ravens.
“Snake! Snake! Snake!” its verbal fellow screamed.
Rutherford’s eyes narrowed as the bird flailed. “You know what I think? I think you boys were on a mission.”
Gabe set the box down clumsily and tried to reach for the bird. Sal put the golf cart into reverse six feet and watched Gabe hop. He shook the bird, whose tongue began to protrude beyond its beak.
“I think . . .” he continued. “That you boys heard the rumor of that damn snake they’re talking about on television. And I think that snake got the better of you.”
Gabe made another grab for the bird. “And. So?”
“What do you want that snake for?”
Gabe snarled at him. “For you. It can heal you.” It was a lie, but Sal was in a desperate place. The rancher had been receiving a steady stream of packages containing crystals, candles, and herbs from dubious Internet suppliers, all promising to heal him. No local shaman would see him, so he sent away for a faith healer from the East Coast. The healer had stormed out of Sal’s house, waving his Bible and condemning the rancher to hell.
“Oh, yeah?” Sal lost his concentration. Gabe hopped over to the bird and snatched it away, tucking the exhausted raven into the box on the ground.
Sal began to drum his fingers on the steering wheel. “Is that snake one of Lascaris’s experiments? Like you? Is that how it could hurt you?”
Gabe felt less chatty now that the bird was back in his possession. It was true—the Hanged Men were mostly invulnerable to injury—to bullets, to knives, to trauma. To everything but wood. The snake had been different. The snake had been magic. “Maybe. I don’t know for certain.”
Sal rolled forward. He shoved his cane into Gabe’s stomach. “You get that snake for me. If it’s got what I need, you get it.”
Gabe’s mouth twisted. “Yes, Boss.”
Satisfied, Sal began to retreat back up the drive with his golf cart. The evil glint in his eye made Gabe certain that Sal would have them do whatever it took to get the basilisk.
“Snake!” insisted the raven.
And Gabe would do his damnedest to save the Lunaria.
More of the Hanged Men trickled in from the field to help the wounded to the tree. Carver’s ravens settled down, perhaps lulled by the gentler motion of being carried by a man with two legs. With help, Gabe climbed into the back of a pickup truck with the other wounded. The truck bounced over ruts and rills in the land, toward the Lunaria.
The Lunaria’s brown leaves rattled like rain on tin overhead. Gabe and his men limped down out of the truck, and one of them lifted up the trapdoor at the base of the tree.
With a sigh, he lowered himself into the darkness of the chamber below. Sensing he was injured, the roots of the tree lifted up to help him down. The earthen cellar beneath the tree was lit with dim sunshine twisting through the roots of the tree. In an earlier era, Gabe could have sworn that it burned brighter, almost like the light of day. But now, only a faint, soothing glow emanated from the Lunaria.
Carver’s ravens were released. They flitted around the chamber like bats before roosting in the warm roots.
The Lunaria’s roots reached down for Gabe, pulling him into its tangled underground nest. Gabe shut his eyes, feeling the energy buzzing through him, reknitting muscle and bone.
He closed his eyes. He never liked to watch this part, the regeneration.
When he closed his eyes, the darkness became a dream. It became a dream composed of fragments, bits of memory welling up and receding without connecting. He heard a deafening noise, an explosion, the one at the Garden that had nearly destroyed him. He saw the face of the woman he’d seen at the hospital. He saw her holding a gun on him. Gabe was afraid of very little in his unlife, but he was afraid of her. Something about her spelled certain death to him, more than Sal or the basilisk or the dying tree. He’d sent a raven to spy on her periodically, to figure out what she was about. It perched in the windows of the Compostela, followed her beat-up truck, even peered at her as she slept through the window of the silver trailer she called home. But the raven had come up with little that was remarkable—she slept and woke and worked and socialized at the nearby reservation. There was no suggestion of magic and mystery about her, even when she sat at the Eye of the World with her friends. She had all the magic of a two-dollar fortune teller.
But he could not escape the weight of those hazel eyes staring over that gun at him.
In his sleep, he shuddered.
He knew that she would be the death of him.
CHAPTER SIX
HAUNTED
All of Cal’s old haunts were empty.
Petra drove home, hoping to find Cal peacefully passed out on her doorstep, cuddled around a bottle of vodka, but had no such luck.
Her next thought was to return to the hospital, where he’d last been seen. Maybe he was lurking in the vicinity, or maybe he’d said something cryptic that she could decipher. Maybe someone else had come to visit him, someone she could track down. It seemed like her best bet.
She chewed on Cal’s disappearance on the drive over, her gaze lingering on each abandoned trash bag and roadkill, hoping that she wouldn’t see Cal dead by the side of the road. She was shocked that he’d found the strength to get out of that isolation tent and make it to the men’s room, much less escape from the premises. He looked like he was on death’s doorstep. But Stroud had looked like that, too, more than once. Something about the mercury had saved him. It was weird magic, and she didn’t understand it.
She had clearly fucked up, taking him to the hospital. Maybe she should have taken him to Frankie, instead. But she had to find Cal, had to figure out what was happening to him, before the kid died.
The hospital parking lot had emptied out from the previous night. There were no signs of the news crew—maybe they’d been booted off the property. She parked in the middle of the parking lot and watched for a moment. No cops.
“Hey, bud,” she said to Sig. “Do you wanna go for a walk?”
Sig perked right up, grinning. He tried to scramble over her to get to the door. Petra reached under the seat for a leash and had clipped it to his collar before he noticed what she’d done.
And when he did . . . there was such a look of desolation and abject betrayal on his face. It was as if she’d murdered his last puppy.
“Jeez, Sig. It’s a disguise, okay? Pretend you’re a working dog.”
He stared at her morosely, one gold ear flipped over, his eyebrows twitching in bewilderment.
“C’mon. Humor me.”
She popped the door open. He refused to budge from her lap. She picked him up and placed him on the blacktop, where he remained, like a mortally depressed dog with no will to live. She turned to close the door when he took off, ripping the leash from her hand.
“Sig!” she shouted. That little shit.
He tore across the parking lot for all he was worth, the blue pennant of the leash flying behind him.
Panic rose in her throat. What if he’d finally had enough of her human b
ullshit, the rules about where and where not to pee, the baths, shots, and flea dips . . . and he was running away? What if he did and got hit by a car? What if he made it to the wilderness and got snagged on a tree by the leash and hanged himself? What if . . .
“Sig!” she yelled, running after him. She’d throw herself under a bus for him. If something happened to him, she’d never forgive herself.
Sig slowed, but didn’t bother to turn around and make eye contact with Petra. He sprinted to the far end of the lot, stopped before a Humvee parked on its own, and circled it with his leash dragging the ground. The Humvee was painted in camo with U.S. government plates—clearly, it wasn’t a civilian vehicle. It seemed like it had been parked there since sometime last night, when the lot had been full, and no one had been back out to move it. Maybe it was a coincidence—a case of illness that struck a soldier in an otherwise-uneventful supply convoy through the state. But there was something about it that bugged her. She hadn’t noticed it when she had arrived last night with Cal.
She caught up with Sig, snagged the end of the leash, and reeled him in. She threw her arms around him.
“You scared me,” she said into his fur.
But she noticed that his ruff was raised, and there was an inaudible growl rumbling under her hands, deep in his chest. He was staring at the Humvee with his upper lip twitching, as if he was tempted to go after one of the tires.
“It’s okay.” She stroked his forehead, stood, and tightened her grip on his leash.
There was no one in the Humvee. She stepped up on tiptoes to peer in the driver’s side door. Nothing out of the ordinary: just a couple of coffee cups and a muddy, utilitarian interior.
When she glanced in the back, she froze. There was a stretcher behind the front seat, from which Velcro restraints dangled. Perhaps not unusual, if the vehicle was driven by a medic, if they had brought someone here for an emergency. But there was a blanket folded in a neat square on the backboard and an oxygen tent perched above it, so crisp that the fold marks were still in the plastic. They hadn’t transported someone here; they were going to pick someone up last night. And they still didn’t have that person.
