by Kyle Shultz
Crispin looked at her hopefully. “I don’t suppose you might get a crisis of conscience and show up heroically at the eleventh hour to give us a hand?”
Yrsa burst into a raspy laugh. “No. Definitely not.”
“Right,” said Crispin, with a weary sigh. “Just checking.”
Chapter 11
More Monsters, of Course
We emerged from a rabbit hole in the middle of the courtyard at Duville Manor. I put a finger to my lips and looked around. The yard was landscaped to perfection—every shrub trimmed, every paving-stone swept, every flower in vibrant health. In between the perfect hedgerows were statues of nymphs and fauns, probably carved by people who had no idea those creatures were quite real. At the center of the yard, there was a gushing, elaborate fountain made of marble. At first, I thought there was a dog playing in it, but a closer look revealed that the water congealed into the shape of a dog as it flowed. Every few seconds, the animal’s breed would change—now a terrier, then a hound, then a poodle, and so on. It cycled through ten different breeds as I watched. The liquid creature scampered about happily in the spray, opening and closing its mouth as if it were barking.
“This must be connected to the magic somehow,” I mused. “I wonder if destroying it would break the spell?”
“Probably not,” said Crispin, shifting out of his White Rabbit form. “Given what Circe said, it seems as if the enchantment is on the water, not an object like the fountain. And you can’t destroy water, just change its state.”
I chuckled. “So you were listening in that school I sent you to.”
“Not for lack of trying not to.” He gave me a stern look. “But you’re changing the subject again. We need to talk.”
“Now is hardly the time. Perhaps we could wait until after we’ve defeated the crazy dog witch?”
“If I let you put it off, it’ll never happen.”
“You might have to take that risk.”
Crispin grabbed me by the sleeve and spun me around to face him. “Nick, what’s wrong? What aren’t you telling me? And don’t tell me there’s nothing, because that’s an insult to my brotherly intuition. I know you, and I know when you’re hiding something.”
I met his gaze with as much confidence as I could muster, which wasn’t a lot. “Does that have to be the explanation? Maybe I’m just worried about you using a power that’s clearly dangerous. No one should have free rein to fiddle with time and reality however they please.”
“Fine. We can agree on that. So let Malcolm teach me how to use these abilities properly.”
I threw up my hands. “Since when did we start trusting Malcolm with stuff as volatile as this? I’m really not sure how trustworthy his moral compass is. I gather he’s got quite the long and complicated past.”
“Well, I doubt he’s interested in punching a hole in the universe, or anything like that.”
“Does it matter?” I looked at him pleadingly. “Crispin, do you even have to use this power? Can’t you limit yourself to instantaneous transportation and leave all that time-travel stuff be?”
“No,” said Crispin angrily, “I can’t.”
“Why not?” I shouted. Then, remembering that we were supposed to be infiltrating the lair of an evil enchantress, I repeated the question in a quieter tone. “Why not?”
“Because…” Crispin broke off and looked down at his hands, a pained expression on his face. “I don’t know if I can explain it.”
“Try,” I urged. I laid a hand on his arm. “I want to understand. Honestly.”
He bit his lip. “Nick, I—I can feel time now.”
This did nothing to relieve my worry, but I tried not to betray concern. I waited quietly for him to explain further.
He touched his left temple. “It’s like there’s a clock in my head.” He hesitated, then moved his hand to his chest. “No, not my head, actually. My heart. I can feel it marking every second, every minute, every day.”
“That sounds like torture.”
He half-smiled. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? But oddly enough, it’s not. It’s as if time is flowing right through me, and it seems…right. Like I was always meant to be this way. And I think I’m meant to be using it to do something good.”
I was silent for a moment, trying to find a way to delve further into this without revealing more than he needed to know.
“But Crispin…don’t you sometimes think that it could all just as easily go wrong? Don’t you get a sense that your powers could…change you? In a bad way, I mean?”
“Yeah, once in a while.” He shuddered. “Now and then this feeling scares me. I have moments where I feel as if I can’t control it all. The clock ticks louder and louder, and the rest of the world goes quiet, and I don’t see people or places anymore, I just see points on a timeline, drifting by, and I’m watching it all from the outside. Like I’m not actually real.” He stretched out his hand. “I could reach into the timeline, rearrange people and events like chess pieces on a board, and no one would even know.” His voice grew softer. “Or I could start from scratch. Rewrite the whole story.”
The fur on the back of my neck stood up. “What do you mean?”
“Wipe everything clean.” Crispin spoke in a murmur now, staring straight ahead. “Like a blank, white canvas.” Then he shook himself and blinked rapidly. “But I don’t let myself think like that, not for long.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, that’s…good.”
Kneel before the White King.
No. He wasn’t going to become that. Not now, not ever.
“So,” he said, “should we get to work?”
His words jerked me back to reality. “Right.” I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Yes. Our first priority should be to find Cordelia. Then maybe she can help us work out how to undo this magic.”
“The question is, where is she?” Crispin glanced around the courtyard. “I can’t keep hopping randomly about this place. I only got here to begin with because I saw a picture of the courtyard in the paper once. If I try making rabbit holes to individual rooms, I could end up landing us in the Anansican jungle or something.”
“Then we’ll do this the old-fashioned way,” I said. “We’ll search the house. On foot, without magic.”
Naturally, at that moment, the monster-dog-men showed up. They bounded out from behind hedges, some on all fours, others standing in a hunched posture on two legs. Unlike all the other transformations Carilla had wrought, these didn’t involve any domestic varieties of canine. They were a mixture of various wild creatures—wolf, fox, hyena, and perhaps some other species I’d never seen before. Crispin and I ended up back to back, slowly circling as we tried to keep all of them in sight. Their muscles tensed beneath the tattered remains of their clothing, and saliva trickled in slimy strings from their enormous bared fangs.
“Great,” said Crispin. “Brilliant. Another monster army. You’d think one of these evil magic people would eventually forget to whip up a monster army. I mean, it’s simple probability!”
I elbowed him. “Stop babbling.”
“Stop judging my coping mechanisms!”
“I need you to focus,” I said, in a quiet, even tone, “and get us out of here. I don’t care if we wind up in Anansica. Anywhere is fine.”
He hesitated as the growling dog-men slowly advanced on us. “I really don’t trust myself not to get us killed in the process.”
“Look, you can do this,” I assured him. “Concentrate on something simple. Something you know you can handle.”
“Something simple,” he echoed. “Okay. Hang on.” He crouched down. I glanced at him over my shoulder and saw that he had changed into his rabbit form. His furred hands were flat on the paving-stones, and his nose twitched as he closed his eyes and focused.
“Simple. Yeah. I think I’ve got it.” He waved his hand.
The ground beneath our feet turned into a whirlpool of swirling white, and we fell through it, leaving the monsters behind.
/> Chapter 12
Oops
“Yes!” yelled Crispin, raising his fists above his head. “I did it!” His ears shrank and his fur receded as he returned to his human form.
“Right, well done…but where have you brought us?” I looked around. We were standing between long rows of huge barrels. “A wine cellar?”
He nodded eagerly. “Exactly! I could sense there was empty space under our feet, so I just took us straight down. You wanted simple, you got it!” He paused for a moment. “Assuming I didn’t take us backward or forward in time, of course.”
“Let’s not worry about that now,” I suggested.
“Arf!”
A high-pitched bark made both of us jump in surprise, as a fluffy little white dog came pattering out from behind one of the barrels. Another transformed man, I assumed…except this dog had a pink bow tied on top of its head, so possibly not a man.
“I wonder who that is?” said Crispin.
“I don’t know. Unless…” A terrible thought struck me, and I crouched down to the dog’s level. “Is that you?” I whispered.
The dog yipped urgently, ran over to me, and placed a paw on my knee.
“Oh, no,” I murmured.
Crispin grimaced. “You think it’s her?”
“Makes sense.” I gazed sorrowfully into the little dog’s eyes. “Cordelia, I am so, so sorry, but I promise, we will find a way to—”
“Excuse me?” said a familiar female voice.
“Yes,” I said, “I know, this is embarrassing, but—”
“NICK!” the voice shouted. “I’m over here, fur-for-brains!”
I glanced up, and to my relief—and chagrin—I spotted Cordelia sitting in the shadows further down the row of barrels. Her wrists were bound behind her, and her clothes looked a bit worse for wear…but she was still fully human.
Oops.
I bounded over to her on all fours, the little dog following. As I got closer, I saw that in addition to the ropes binding Cordelia’s hands, there was a Tartarus Shackle on her left wrist identical to the one I’d seen earlier. I sliced a claw through the cords, and she pulled her hands free with a sigh of relief. Then she gave me a glare that could have melted steel.
“You had better,” she said through clenched teeth, “have had a very, very good reason for assuming that stupid little dog was me. And if you don’t, I suggest you come up with one quickly.”
I know when I’m beaten. “I can’t.” I ducked my head. “I concede. Kill me now.”
She flicked me on the left ear. “I’ll take that under serious consideration for later.” She jumped to her feet. “Right now, I need to get this blasted shackle off so I can murder an old school friend. And I use the word ‘friend’ in its broadest possible sense.”
“If the dog’s not you,” said Crispin, returning to an unpleasant subject at the worst moment imaginable, “then who is it?”
Cordelia looked down at the little dog, who grinned at us with her tongue lolling out. “That is Fluffy McSnookiepoo. I gather she belongs to Gregory, and given her complete lack of a magical aura, I’d say she is and has always been a dog.”
“Well, that’s refreshing,” I muttered.
“Now,” said Cordelia, looking down at her wrist, “I have to figure out how to remove this shackle.” She twiddled her fingers over it. “With a name like ‘Tartarus,’ it’s bound to be tricky. And it’s preventing me from accessing even the tiniest scrap of my magic.”
“Hang on,” I said, “those things attack the person who tries to fiddle with them, right?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
I reached out, took hold of the shackle in both hands, and gave it a twist, being careful not to harm Cordelia in the process. The metal groaned, and bolts of red lightning danced up and down my arms. I felt pain blaze through my whole body, but I gritted my fangs and ignored it. My curse had weathered just about every other kind of magic that had ever been thrown at it, so it could handle this. Hopefully.
“Nick, what are you doing?” Cordelia cried over the crackling of magic. “Stop! You’re hurting yourself!”
“Magic-resistant hide, remember? Aaand…done!” I proclaimed, as I broke the shackle into two halves. I threw them to opposite ends of the cellar with a flick of my wrists and dusted my palms together. “Painful, but straightforward.”
“Good work.” Cordelia experimentally summoned a few runes, which twinkled in the air around her hand. “I’m considering not killing you.”
“Now what?” asked Crispin.
Cordelia’s eyes flashed, and the runes floating over her fingers changed from blue to a fierce, angry shade of red. “Now, we deal with Carilla.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s fine, but first, you have to let me do the thing.”
She frowned. “What thing?”
“The detective thing. The dénouement. I want to explain to Rilla—Carilla—whatever her name is—how I thwarted her evil plan. And how I didn’t even need your help to do it.”
She stared at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“He had a bout of insecurity this morning,” Crispin explained. “Don’t mind him.”
Cordelia’s teeth clicked together. “Nick, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but we are not going to waste time with childish theatrics. There’s no need for this to get complicated. We will go upstairs and find Rilla, and then I will turn her into an ostrich and send her to a dimension overrun by hungry trolls and then bring her back so I can change her into a beetle and shut her up in a glass jar equipped with airholes for a few years during which time I will force her to listen to nothing but bagpipe music and then turn her back into a human so I can challenge her to a duel with enchanted bows that shoot arrows which become live cobras when they reach their target. And if she’s still alive after all that, I may kill her. I haven’t really decided yet.”
I cleared my throat. “Here’s a thought—why don’t we just let Malcolm handle her? They’ve got cells at Warrengate, remember?”
She sighed. “I suppose.”
“Good. Then let’s get cracking on the dénouement. I’m looking forward to this.”
“I’m reconsidering killing you,” said Cordelia.
“Yap!” said Fluffy McSnookiepoo.
Chapter 13
We’re All Mad Here
We ran into Carilla’s monster men right at the top of the stairs leading out of the wine cellar. They were sniffing around with confused expressions on their ugly faces, trying to figure out where their prisoners had gone. As soon as they caught sight of us, they grabbed our arms and hauled us away. Cordelia wanted to fight them, but I advised against it, arguing that the quickest way to Carilla was to let them take us to her. Fluffy McSnookiepoo, I noticed, abandoned us and hid somewhere the second things started to get scary.
Carilla was in the ballroom of the manor, presumably because it was the largest and grandest chamber in the house. She was reclining on a couch in the very center of the dance floor, with Gregory the wolfhound lying nearby.
“Ah,” said Carilla, stroking her ex-fiancé’s furry head. “Beaumont and Beasley, together again. What a lovely surprise.” She shifted into a sitting position. She was wearing a garish leopard-skin coat—ridiculous thing to have on indoors, but then again, she was crazy.
Cordelia pointed to her. “I do hope that fur wasn’t harvested from an animal that used to be human. It would be bad enough if an ordinary leopard had to die for your deplorable fashion sense.”
Carilla smirked. “In this particular instance, the animal had never been human.” She glanced at me. “You know, I could do wonders with that pelt of yours. How do you fancy being a stole and a matching hat?”
My hackles rose. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
Cordelia stepped forward. “Carilla, this ends—”
“Wait, hold on.” I tapped her on the arm. “It’s not time for the ‘this ends now’ line. I’m doing my bit first.”
“For pity’s sake, Nick,
it doesn’t matter how you caught her! Can’t we get this over with?”
“All in good time.” I started pacing back and forth dramatically in front of Carilla, in preparation for my big speech to wrap up the case. Just like old times. Except that I was pacing on all fours, because it was more comfortable.
Carilla stared at me in confusion. “What’s he doing?”
“His detective thing.” Crispin put a finger to his lips. “Shush.”
“It all began,” I said, “when Gregory Duville asked you to marry him. It must have felt like your very own fairy tale. Not only were you madly in love, but all of Camelot was captivated by your romance. Things couldn’t have been better.” I turned to look at Gregory. “But then…betrayal.”
The wolfhound’s ears drooped in embarrassment.
“Gregory told you he wasn’t going to marry you,” I continued, still pacing. “Maybe he found someone else. Or maybe he simply decided he didn’t love you. Either way, he was going to tear down the beautiful castle of dreams you two had built.”
“Very poetic,” Cordelia muttered.
“Thank you. And you couldn’t have that, could you, Carilla?”
An awkward pause followed.
“Well, could you?” I demanded.
She blinked. “What, was I supposed to answer that? I thought it was a rhetorical question.”
“You were furious with Gregory,” I said. “And you decided to take it out on him with the good old-fashioned turn-your-boyfriend-into-an-animal strategy.” My eyes went to Gregory. “I’m not sure if he knew you were an enchantress when the two of you first got together, but he certainly knows it now.”
“ROOF!” barked Gregory. Carilla yawned.
“But then, the satisfaction of your revenge turned to fear. You had a big problem on your hands. Unless you changed Gregory back, there would be a lot of, ‘Oh, I say, what ho, where’s old Gregory got to? And dash it all, what’s this pooch doing here, what what?’”
