Crook of the Dead (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 3)

by Jen Rasmussen

  Warren looked from his father to me and back again, then smiled. “You want to talk about Norbert, I bet. You have some confidential clues.” He nodded sagely and turned for the house.

  Confidential clues? What was that about? I wondered if he’d been watching detective movies, or maybe playing some kind of spy-themed video game. But I didn’t ask.

  “Charlie—”

  “This was low, even for you,” Charlie interrupted. “Ambushing us out here.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose. I lost track of the time. I was at Martha’s working some rituals, trying to get some clues about Norbert. It would really help if you would let me see—”

  “Stay away from here, Lydia! Martha can come to your place if you want to see her.”

  So now I wasn’t even allowed on his street? Who did he think he was?

  Somebody who’s grieving and not in his right mind.

  I sighed. “Charlie, I will bring him back.”

  He sneered at me. I’d never seen such an ugly look on his face. “Yeah? Going to save him, are you?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “You can’t save him. You couldn’t do it last time, and you can’t do it this time.”

  My stomach sank, and I prayed he wasn’t saying what it sounded like he was saying. “What do you mean?”

  “YOU SHOULD HAVE SAVED MY LAST HUSBAND!”

  I reared back as if he’d punched me. Because really, in every way that mattered, he had.

  My brother and I had always been partners. But when the Turner case came up, I was caught up in my divorce. And it seemed like a fairly simple case. Nat said he was fine to go alone.

  He wasn’t fine.

  So of course I felt responsible afterward. Of course I should have been there.

  But Charlie had been the first one to comfort me. I couldn’t have known, he told me. It wasn’t my fault. I should never blame myself.

  Him, the bereaved husband, comforting me, who didn’t deserve it. Charlie was like an angel in my eyes after that. So I dealt with both my guilt and my gratitude the same way: by replacing Nat, as best I could. By being Charlie’s teammate. Raising his son. Making him and his family the center of my life, for years. Cleaning his house, running his errands, cooking his meals.

  And now, all these years later, here were his real feelings. They were as ugly as his expression.

  “That was low, even for you,” I said, throwing his words back at him. “You can’t—”

  “Of fucking course I can! You fucked up, Lydia. You fucked up, and Nat died. And now you fucked up again. And Norbert—”

  “IS NOT DEAD!” I shouted at him. “And if you would help me find him instead of pointing fingers—”

  “POINTING FINGERS? Pointing fingers! How fucking dare you?” Charlie’s face had gone past red and straight to purple. For a second I was genuinely worried that he was having an attack of some kind. He breathed heavily, while his mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.

  Finally, without another word, he turned on his heel and stalked home.

  I made a promise, right then and there, that the next time I saw Charlie, I would have Norbert beside me.

  I might not ever talk to Charlie again after that. He might never talk to me.

  But I would bring Norbert home.

  I tried an evocation ritual to get in touch with Phineas. It was horrible, as that ritual tended to be. Even more horrible was the fact that he didn’t answer.

  I didn’t know what to make of that. By then my worry was torn in so many different directions that I couldn’t think straight at all.

  The world kept turning, whether I wanted it to or not. I numbly made decisions about the reconstruction of my house that I couldn’t even remember the next day. I was out of money, with no hope for making more. I lost that last client. My own website was pretty much devoid of traffic thanks to my neglect, which meant nobody was clicking on the ads, or inquiring after my ghost consulting services. Not that I would have had any help to offer.

  And still Norbert was gone. And still I had no idea what was going on.

  And still Claudia joined Helen in my mirrors and my dreams, her flat angry eyes condemning me.

  You were supposed to be there. But you weren’t. You ran off and left us at the last second. And we died.

  Sometimes Nat was with them. He said pretty much the same thing, and sneered at me like Charlie had.

  Thanksgiving came and went unnoticed. But two days later, Phineas finally came to my door. Sitting beside him, as though they’d just taken a walk, was Wulf.

  I spent a good three minutes hugging my dog. When I was finished, I was too covered in dog hair for Phineas to want a hug of his own.

  “I have so much to tell you—” I stopped when I saw his face. “And it looks like you’ve got a lot to tell me.”

  “I didn’t just come to bring Wulf back.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’s got my mother. And Norbert. He’s demanding that we come and get them. You and me, both.”

  My heart went cold. “Tell me.”

  Phineas had been tending to his father, who thankfully was recovering well, but was still too weak to get out of bed. Gwen had gone out to restock on some of the herbs Phineas was using for healing. She didn’t come back.

  When Phineas went to look for her, he found a note, attached with a knife to a tree near their tower. Amias was in full-on playful mode, and the game was a pretty standard hide-and-seek, except with hostages thrown in for good measure.

  He wanted both of us to come and get our family members personally, or he’d kill them. He fully intended to kill us no matter what. But this way, we could at least spare their lives.

  “Can I see the note?” I asked.

  He pulled a scrap of something that looked more like cloth than paper out of his pocket. “It won’t do you any good,” he said, holding it out so I could see it. “Our language, our alphabet.”

  I looked at the neatly written lines. “Are those in verse?”

  “Yep. I’m afraid his poetry will be lost in translation, but basically it says everything I just told you about us coming to get them. It also says he’s finally ready to receive us, and then here’s the clue about where: Read backwards to find out what happens next. The Library says the answer is on page 4396.”

  “Finally ready to receive us, huh? So there’ve been some preparations, wherever he is. I bet it’s more than just running the vacuum and putting out snacks.” I studied the note, even though I couldn’t read it. “Is this the number here?” I pointed at four symbols that looked different from the others.

  “4396, yes.”

  “Is it significant that he didn’t put the comma, or whatever your equivalent of a comma is?”

  “No. We don’t use anything like that.”

  I frowned. “Like, ever? You just write huge long strings of numbers, with no punctuation to make them easier to read?”

  “We don’t have much cause to count very high. So what do you make of it?”

  “I would guess that we’ll get his location from page 4,396 of some book in the Library. Read backwards could mean literally read that page backwards, or it could mean it’s a history book?”

  “That was my take, too.”

  “Okay, great. So let’s go.”

  “But here’s the thing: traveling between planes even once when the veil wasn’t thin was dangerous for you. I don’t know how your body will react, if you keep doing it, especially so soon after the last time. You could be seriously hurt.”

  “Don’t care. But we should bring Wulf to Martha’s.” I looked at my dog, who was already on the couch, fast asleep. His visible wounds seemed to be healing nicely, but then they were never the real concern. “I’m guessing he’s too weak to enter into the fray again so soon.”

  “Lydia. You could die.”

  That gave me pause, for a second. I’m kind of proud that it was only a second.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“If Amias is insisting I come too, then I’m coming. I won’t put their lives at any more risk than I can help.”

  He nodded, and I realized that he’d known all along that he wouldn’t be able to talk me out of it. Probably he didn’t even want to. He just wanted me to consider the risks first.

  A few minutes later, we were on our way to Martha’s.

  “You know, a couple of hours or so here won’t make a difference, in my time,” Phineas said. “You should stop and make sure you’re taking care of whatever loose ends you’ve got. You could be gone a long time.”

  I could be gone forever.

  “I already signed something last week that gives Martha permission to make decisions about my house in my absence,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking of your plane, but with everything going on, I figured I might have to leave again. And I have no job anymore, so that’s not a problem.”

  “What do you mean, no job?”

  I waved that away. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “And Charlie?”

  “Won’t even see me.”

  “Well, the next time you see him, you’ll be bringing Norbert home.”

  “Exactly what I thought.” I glanced at him. “You seem awfully calm, by the way.” I knew how much he loved his mother. Hell, I already loved his mother.

  “You said it yourself: Amias has been preparing for us,” Phineas said. “So we need to prepare, too, and to do that we need to be calm. And we can afford to be. He won’t hurt them.”

  “How can you be so sure? He loves hurting people.”

  “Yes, but he wouldn’t want to hurt these particular people until he could do it in front of us. Especially if he knows we’re coming. Amias hasn’t got a lot of virtues, but patience is one of them.”

  That matched up pretty well with what I knew about Amias. I exhaled hard and nodded.

  We set up the ritual at Martha’s, after she sent Max out to the backyard to throw a ball for Wulf.

  “I would come with you, but I can’t leave him,” she said, nodding at Max out the kitchen window.

  “We would never let you come anyway,” I said. “It’s way too dangerous, and much as we appreciate your friendship, this isn’t your fight.”

  She laughed. “It wouldn’t be for you. Not that I don’t like helping. But…” Martha turned away from the window to face us. “Matilda is dead, and Madeline is in prison. Mark is the only family Max has left.”

  “Mark participated in Max’s abuse for years,” I said. “Even if he was still in Bristol, you could never let Max see him again.”

  “Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I’d go so far as to leave him in the hands of this devil. And I love Norbert, too. He always cuts Jenna Sergeant down when she’s nasty to me.”

  “Well, we’ll get them all back,” I said. “Even Mark, if he’s really with Norbert. How’s that?”

  Martha nodded and took something out of her pocket. When she handed it to me, I saw it was a small chunk of amber on a thin silver chain.

  “Wear that for protection,” she said.

  I put it on more out of politeness than anything else. I’d rather have had Wendy or Granny make me a charm of some kind. But I also had Rebecca’s bone dagger, and that seemed as good a defense as any.

  Plus the thought of Granny had reminded me of something else.

  “Martha, do you have any skullcap, by chance?”

  “Of course. What kind of self-respecting practitioner of magic wouldn’t have skullcap?”

  I sniffed and tried not to look hurt. I hadn’t even heard of skullcap until a few weeks ago. “What about cloth and thread? And I know you’ve got ginger and sage.”

  “What’s up?” Phineas asked.

  “You said we had time, right?” I asked him. “I wouldn’t need a lot. Maybe twenty minutes?”

  “All right. What for?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  I made one of the poppets Granny had taught me to make, to help me identify my enemies. I hadn’t quite gotten the hang of using it during my one lesson with her, but I figured what the hell. As long as we were preparing magical defenses, it seemed like the kind of thing that might be useful before throwing ourselves headlong into a known trap.

  It was ugly—I really am a horrible artist—but I thought it would do. As soon as the glue that held the doll’s misshapen shirt together was dry, I hugged Martha, took one last look at Wulf out the window, then told Phineas I was ready.

  The ritual was familiar enough, and so was the pain that followed it. But I was getting pretty pro by then. When I was able to stand again (despite Phineas’s protests that I should sit for longer), I saw that we were in what looked like a public garden, although none of the flowers were familiar to me. The sun was shining, and whether due to geography or just the vagaries of the weather, it was markedly warmer than the last time I’d visited Phineas’s plane.

  “This looks awfully nice,” I said.

  “This is the traveling park. Used a lot for teleportation.” Phineas glanced at a flowering tree a few feet away. It had deep blue leaves and bright yellow flowers, and smelled heavenly. “I guess it is pretty nice here,” he said. “I don’t really notice it much anymore.”

  “How far are we from your tower and everything?”

  “Quite a distance. But we’re pretty close to the Library. Are you sure you can walk?”

  “Definitely.”

  He frowned at me. “How are you recovering so fast? Last time I brought you here it took several hours and a lot of tea before you were even steady on your feet.”

  I shrugged. “It seems to be easier with a ritual. And maybe it’s the opposite of what you were afraid of; instead of cumulative damage, maybe my body is actually adjusting.”

  “Or maybe this plane isn’t entirely rejecting you. Like you’ve got phantasm blood somewhere in there. I’ve never heard of a human who could travel like you’ve been.”

  “Wendy did better than me, that time we traveled to escape the birds. She woke up before I did, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in Bristol has a little phantasm blood.” Phineas took my arm and started walking. “Anyway whatever it is, I’m grateful for it. Now that we’re on my time, I’d like to move fast, if you’re sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Unlike out in the orchards, there were stone-paved walkways in the city. But there was nothing wide enough to be called a road, and no vehicles.

  Also unlike the orchards, the buildings were mostly long and low, so I guessed dragon attacks weren’t an issue. The architecture made quite a lot of use of metal, as well as stone and wood.

  We passed a few people walking, although not nearly as many as you would expect from an entire world’s only major city. I drew some curious stares, but nobody approached us.

  Phineas pointed as we walked by a copper and stone building. “That’s where I work, when I’m here. Although obviously we don’t go into the office much.”

  “Would Justin be there now?” I asked. “Have you told him what’s going on?”

  Phineas’s jaw tensed. “No. I don’t want his help on this.”

  I remembered that day at Rebecca’s farm, when I’d found him shooting the crossbow. This time I intend to kill him. I nodded and didn’t say any more about it.

  “There’s the Library up ahead.”

  It was a stately silver building of three stories, which in this place practically made it a skyscraper.

  “Looks big,” I said.

  “There are even more levels underground,” said Phineas. “Like I told you, it’s our version of school, too. We spend a lot of our childhood here. But it’s not organized or anything. We don’t have teachers, or very much help at all, really. Our parents teach us to read and then pretty much cut us loose to learn what we can.”

  “So where do you live?”

  “What do you mean? You’ve seen our tower.”

  “But you just said that was a long way aw
ay. You must live somewhere while you’re going to school.”

  Phineas smiled. “We can travel, remember?”

  “So you learn to teleport at the same time you learn to read?”

  “Not really. We don’t have to learn it. Not consciously. Traveling is just something we’re born with.”

  We’d reached the entrance by then. Phineas hesitated before going inside. “I’m not surprised his clue required me to come here. And I bet it is a history book that we’re looking for. Amias and I have a lot of personal history at this place. He’d want me to remember that.”

  “He got picked on here.”

  Phineas nodded. “And this is his revenge.” He held the door for me.

  Apart from the fact that it was carpeted and warm, it was more like a supermarket inside than a library: wide aisles, wooden trolleys on wheels, signs hanging from the ceiling, indicating which sorts of books each of the aisles held.

  “Geez, Phineas, there have to be a million books in here. Or more?”

  “We’ll start with history,” he said. “And there are only going to be so many that are over four thousand pages long. It might not be that bad.”

  His optimism didn’t last. At least two hours must have passed by the time we’d made our way up and down just one aisle. I took the really thick books off the shelves, handed them to Phineas, and he checked page 4,396 for anything that struck him.

  Nothing did. Finally, Phineas’s determined calm cracked, and I got a look at just how much it had been costing him to hold it together.

  He let out a string of uncharacteristically vulgar obscenities. “I have no idea what he wants from us.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said.

  “He’s got my mother,” Phineas said in a low voice. “My father is sick, and…”

  He threw a book against a shelf, toppling several other books and winning us a disapproving look from a librarian—I’d already learned to identify her as such by her form-fitting blue shirt and pants—passing the end of the aisle.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I repeated as I replaced the fallen books. I bit my lip. “Maybe we’re missing something.”

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  The librarian doubled back and peered down the aisle at us, perhaps waiting to see if Phineas’s ire was spent.