“Well, if you’re here, I’ll teach you. Meanwhile, we should get dinner started. You can chop the onions.” She nodded at my hand, wrapped around my mug. “Or maybe not. Looks like you’re not so good with the chopping.”
I’d gotten so used to missing half a finger, it took me a second to realize what she was talking about. Usually I lied when people asked me about it, but I found myself telling Granny the truth.
“No, nothing to do with onions,” I said. “A poltergeist forced me to bite it off.”
Granny let out a squawk of laughter. “I’ll bet that sucked.”
“Sure did.”
The dinner was lively and, dare I say it, fun. I almost wished Phineas would stay away a little longer, so I could keep pretending I was on a mini-vacation, visiting friends. Not that I didn’t miss him. I just didn’t miss dealing with Amias and the birds and a mass murder plot.
Plus, I really did want to learn more magic. So a part of me—a big part—was relieved when it was Granny and not Phineas who knocked on the kitchen door the next morning. She had a basket of crafting supplies, for making the dolls.
“I’m not very artistic,” I warned.
She waved that off. “If you make it with your own hands, it doesn’t have to be pretty. You can make them for others, but that takes a little more than you’re going to learn today.”
It took us maybe an hour to make the poppets, but much less time for Granny to show me how to mix the intuition potion that went inside.
“That’s it?” I asked as I spooned it—messily—into a tiny vial. “Don’t I need an incantation to give it power?”
“Words have power, but only the power we give them,” Granny said. “They’re just a way to focus your own power and energy. Your life force, if you like those new-fangled terms better. You can do that without words, if you’re good enough.”
“What if I’m not good enough?”
“Well, let’s find out.”
We sat at the kitchen table for the rest of the morning and half the afternoon, while Granny taught me to focus my mind, to put one kind of energy into the poppet, and draw another kind back out of it. At first I had no idea how to even begin, but then I thought of the netherworld, and how I’d learned to focus my will there. It was a little easier when I thought of working with the poppet the same way.
Finally, I caught a brief glimpse of something in Granny. Something warm and soft, although of course you can’t see either warmness or softness. But I don’t know how else to describe it.
“I think it’s working!” I said.
Granny wasn’t quite so ready to declare victory.
“You need more practice,” she said as she stood up. “But that will have to do for now. I have a date tonight and I’d like to get my hair cut first.”
“A date? Like with a man?”
She laughed. “Maybe you should try it sometime.”
See Granny, I would, except the last time I tried it, I didn’t get to go. Because I found a mutilated corpse in the parking lot instead.
I thanked her with a hug, and she went on her way. But she wasn’t gone five minutes before there was another knock on the back door. I thought maybe she’d forgotten something, until Wulf started to howl. He came tearing into the kitchen so fast he skidded across the hardwood floor.
It was Phineas, of course.
“Come on in,” I said.
“Can’t.” He gestured at something over his shoulder.
At the same time, Wulf shot outside, baying.
I grabbed my sneakers and ran out to see what was going on. Then stopped abruptly beside my dog, who was now standing still and shaking.
There were two other men—phantasms, I supposed, although I wasn’t close enough to see their eyes—standing on Wendy and Caleb’s tiny back patio, struggling with thick ropes.
The ropes were tied to the legs, tail, and snout of what I could only describe as a dragon.
At least the dragon wasn’t gigantic, like they always are in movies. Maybe it was just a baby. More-or-less man-sized, it flapped in the air almost upright, tail down, legs out as it wriggled and struggled against its restraints. A low, threatening sound came from its muzzled jaw. It was covered in yellow-orange scales, with a darker belly, and its eyes and claws were red.
“What the… are… is that a…?”
“If you’re about to say dragon, then yeah, pretty much,” Phineas said. “It’s the only natural predator of the shadow eaters. They thought it was our best bet for exterminating so many of them at once. At least, it was the best idea we could come up with on short notice.” To the others he called, “You guys ready?”
“Lead the way, Detective Doom,” one of them said in English. The other smothered a laugh.
Detective Doom?
I looked curiously at Phineas, but judging by how red his ears were turning, he wouldn’t be enthusiastic about fielding questions. Instead I went back inside to get Wulf’s leash.
“So I’ll meet you there, I guess?” I asked when I came back outside.
Phineas shook his head. “You have no idea how difficult it is to teleport with that thing. We don’t want to do it any more than we have to.”
“Couldn’t you put it in a netherworld?” As far as I knew, he still had my favorite travel mug, which he’d turned into a vessel like the canteen.
“Nope. Dragons are largely magic resistant. Most rituals won’t work on them.”
“So what do you propose? That we actually walk through Bristol with it?”
“I’m afraid so.” Phineas took something out of his pocket and walked over to the men holding the dragon. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll need its mouth open.”
One of them, the one who’d called him Detective Doom, laughed. “Easier said than done, detective.” But he handed the ropes he was holding to his companion and took something from his own pocket. At first it just looked like a small stick, no longer than the palm of his hand. Then he shook it, there was a soft clang of metal, and it extended to the length of his arm.
While the dragon struggled—able to thrash even more, now that only one person was holding it—the phantasm with the metal stick thrust it forward like a rapier and fit it between the beast’s jaws, then slowly and with what looked like a great deal of strain, pried them apart the tiny bit that its muzzle would allow.
Phineas flung whatever was in his hand. As it flipped through the air I thought it might be a vial, but it went too fast to know for sure. It flew into the dragon’s mouth, the other phantasm removed the stick, and the dragon chomped down with a roar.
Almost immediately, the roar changed until it was a sort of howl, and suddenly the dragon looked like a golden-orange dog, tied around its nose and chest with the ropes. Not any breed of dog that I’d ever seen, but still. Dog-like enough for us to walk around with it, if nobody inspected us too closely.
The one holding the ropes bunched them together like a leash, and stepped forward. The dragon-dog was pulled along, although not on its illusory feet. It glided rather than walked, clearly still flying despite the disguise.
Wulf, lowered almost onto his belly, stretched out his neck and sniffed, then whined.
“Yeah,” I said to him. “On second thought, I think we’ll leave you here.” I put him back inside Wendy’s house, and for once he didn’t seem to object to being left behind. I gave him a treat and left to rejoin the phantasms.
“Well,” Phineas said. “I suppose some introductions are in order. That’s Julius”—he pointed at the one holding the ropes—“and Lawrence”—then at the one who had pried the dragon’s mouth open—“and this is Lydia,” he finished with a gesture at me.
“Nice to meet you,” I said automatically, although I wasn’t necessarily sure that was how I felt. I’d done a lot of strange shit in my time, but walking through Bristol with a dragon, in hopes that it would take care of a flock of killer birds, had to be up there.
At least it was a small town. It wouldn’t take us long to g
et to the Mount Phearson, then across the hotel grounds and (assuming we didn’t get waylaid by any Underwood-Goodes) into the woods where Silas’s place was.
But Julius’s face already looked strained with the effort of controlling the dragon. I hoped we’d make it to the woods without accidentally letting the thing loose to do whatever it did to the town.
“So, you’ve seen these shadow eaters personally?” Lawrence asked me as we walked.
“Yes.” I held out my arm and pushed up my sleeve to show him the marks there. I’d taken the bandages off the day before. The flesh was a mottled mix of cuts and burns. It didn’t look like Bella’s—I guessed they hadn’t been at me long enough to really start digging in—but it didn’t look pretty, either. “And felt them personally.”
Lawrence stopped and took my wrist, frowning over my forearm. Finally he shook his head and said to Julius, “Can’t tell for sure.”
“What do you mean, can’t tell for sure?” I gaped at Phineas. “They don’t believe us?”
While the other two snickered, Phineas said, and not in a very pleasant tone, I might add, “Of course they believe us. They’re here aren’t they?” He pointed at the dragon-dog, who was still struggling against the leash and growling as Julius dragged it along. “You think they regularly take that thing for walks just for fun, wishing they could make a pet out of it?”
“Okay, okay.”
Clearly it was not okay. But I’d corner him about all this later, when we were alone. I had no desire to embarrass him in front of these… whatever they were. Besides assholes, that is, which seemed to be a common trait among phantasms. They were more-or-less following his orders, but they sure weren’t showing him any respect. Coworkers? Hired help?
We made it to the woods without incident, although not without a few curious stares. The closest we came to trouble was one angry-looking woman snapping at us, from across the street, to get a proper leash, because it was cruel to walk our dog with ropes that might burn him. I nodded, but kept moving too fast to encourage any further engagement.
From the hotel end of the trail, it only took a few minutes to walk to Silas’s house, but the path was narrow. Phineas and I took the lead, with Julius behind us tugging the dragon, and Lawrence picking up the rear.
“So what will happen when we get there?” I asked Phineas. “Does this dragon of yours actually breathe fire?”
“Not really, but sort of. You’ll see. It won’t be pretty.”
“I’m sure it won’t, but I bet I’ll still find it satisfying, watching those little fuckers die. I don’t suppose it could burn up that damn poltergeist Silas while it’s at it.”
“When did he get promoted to poltergeist?”
“Right around the time he threw me into a pit full of killer fucking birds.”
Phineas chuckled, but he didn’t get to say any more: we were there.
And unfortunately, it wasn’t satisfying at all.
There was no sign of Silas, but worse, there was no smell like a bird cage. I sniffed the air and gave Phineas a questioning look, which he returned. He frowned and stepped forward.
Julius and Lawrence hung back, holding the ropes, I guess waiting for Phineas to draw the birds out.
But the shadow eaters were gone.
We searched the ruins for half an hour. There wasn’t so much as a feather left behind.
Looking at the faces of Lawrence and Julius made me want to march right up to that hotel and burn the whole damn building to the ground. Julius seemed angry, speaking to Lawrence in a language I recognized as the one my incantation was in, the one I’d always associated with magic. Lawrence seemed more amused than anything, which was worse.
Phineas stood there, red-faced, and said nothing.
Finally, after exchanging a few terse words with Phineas, the others left, taking the dragon with them, its roar lingering after they disappeared.
“The trip home won’t be any fun for them,” Phineas said, not without satisfaction. “It’s hard traveling with creatures like that.”
“So you said. What just happened?”
He glared at me, then turned away. “What just happened is that Amias made a fool of me. Again. It’s one of his favorite pastimes.”
He stalked off, back in the direction we’d come from, and didn’t say another word until we were back at Wendy and Caleb’s house.
I called Norbert while I was packing up the car to go.
“Can’t talk long,” he said. “Charlie’s on his way home, and he says we need to talk.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Tell me about it. But real quick, I did get into Madeline’s account finally. There was nothing related to Amias at all.”
“When was this?”
“Just this morning.”
I thanked him and hung up, then shook my head at Phineas’s raised eyebrow. “Nothing. No mention of the birds. Or of moving them. We’re kind of at a dead end again.”
He nodded and turned away, swearing under his breath.
We stopped at the Witch’s Brew on our way out of town. Wendy and Caleb couldn’t drum up much sadness that the birds were gone. I could hardly blame them. They asked what else they could help with, but there was nothing. And even if there had been something, they had jobs and lives and this wasn’t, it seemed, Bristol’s problem anymore. I thanked them for their hospitality, and extended my regards to Granny.
Phineas still didn’t talk, not until we’d left the mountains well behind us, and Wulf was snoring loudly in the back seat of the car.
“He always does this,” Phineas said finally.
Although it was certainly true that Wulf was always sleeping, and snoring, I assumed he meant Amias. I made a sympathetic noise and waited for him to go on.
“He loves making a fool of me. Tricking me into calling for backup just so he, or whatever evidence there was of him, can disappear. They all think I’m crazy.”
“I’m sure they don’t think that.”
“No? You think Detective Doom is a term of endearment?”
“I didn’t want to ask about that.”
He shrugged. “Nothing to tell, really. They think I see Amias, and therefore death and destruction, everywhere I look. That I’m paranoid. Off.” Phineas sighed. “And it’s not just that it makes me look bad, although believe me, I don’t much like that part. We’re not going to be able to count on them for help. They’ve wasted resources on what’s turned out to be nothing too many times. Catching a damn dragon, traveling with it, bringing it here…” He shook his head. “That’s bound to be one of the last straws, if not the absolute last.”
“That’s fine,” I said with a confidence I wasn’t anywhere close to feeling. “We’ll handle this ourselves. And when you present them with Amias as your prisoner, they’ll be throwing you a party and giving you medals. Do you guys have cake?”
“No sweets.”
“That’s right, you told me. I just find it so hard to believe that I block it out.” I glanced at him to see if I was making him smile at all. I wasn’t. “Okay, well, the sooner we get down to business, the sooner you get that medal. So. What the hell do we do now?”
“If we can’t get rid of the birds, we have to stop whatever he’s going to do with them.”
“Which is kill a bunch of people, most likely. Which people? Where?”
“I don’t know, but if whatever he’s planning is at the end of this month, we don’t have time to be wrong. That only gives us two weeks.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I think it has to do with the Traven sisters. Halloween—Samhain—is a big thing for them. They gather from everywhere, or at least they used to. All the ones who’ve left them and spread out come back. Sort of like our Homecoming holiday, but they made their own here on earth.”
“Why would Amias want to kill all of them?”
“I have no idea, but he wanted to kill Bella. Why not the others? And why does Amias want to kill anybody? I suppose the souls of w
itches might be more valuable than just plain ordinary souls, in his mind.”
I shook my head. It was nothing but a guess. But then, I didn’t have any better ones.
“Either way, they’re wrapped up in this somehow,” Phineas said. “They were like three heads on a hydra, or something. If Bella was involved, they all are. I think they’re our best bet for finding out what he’s up to.”
“Yes, which is why we’ve been looking for them since it happened,” I said. “But we’ve hit nothing but brick walls, and now we’re running out of time.”
“We’ll have to find them the old-fashioned way.”
“Which is what?”
“On foot.” He pulled my laptop case out from under the bloodhound in the back. “I’m booking us a flight. We’ll just have to start at the last place I knew them to be, and go from there. You can leave first thing in the morning, right?”
“I guess, but I’m driving, so I can bring Wulf. And can’t you just teleport and meet me there?”
“I could, but I think we should stick together.”
“Which is your way of saying you want to protect me, without sounding sexist about it.”
“Yep.”
“Fine. Just remember I’ve protected you, too.”
Wulf sat up and started whining, either because he wanted some credit for protecting both of us, or because he had to pee.
By the time we got back to my apartment that night, we were too worn out to even care that we’d had no dinner. (Well, two out of three of us were. Wulf was, in fact, very indignant about it.) All I wanted to do was throw a few clothes into a suitcase and get to sleep.
Unfortunately, Charlie had other plans.
It was pretty unusual for him to come to my apartment at all, let alone without calling first. So I knew before I saw how red his bald spot was that I was in trouble. No doubt for the same reason he’d wanted to talk to Norbert: we’d been discovered.
Sure enough, he started bellowing almost the second he walked in the door. Wulf, the coward, howled once and then went to hide under my bed. Meanwhile Phineas came to stand beside me, looking stern. But I waved him off, and he reluctantly followed Wulf into the bedroom.
Crook of the Dead (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 3) Page 7
