The Nebulizer Potion and the Electric Compass (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 3)

by Kara Skye Smith

  “You've got to get out of the hut! She means to kill you! Quickly! Call Phyllostomi clue me, clue ne-” the woman’s instructions are cut off as The Witch tosses in a tangle of her own hair. Domina's words are suddenly silenced, and her picture disappears from the brew pot.

  As Domina disappears so does the scene from the In Between with Theopolis carrying out his game of kiboshing which Jessica blames as the source of the problem - having gotten her into this mess with a witch, in the first place. She turns her head away, but only for a moment. The Witch’s gasp brings her gaze back to the fascination of the pot where now the watch potion shows the Witch in the kitchen with Tyrannomous. She stomps out of the kitchen, just as she had done that day, goes into the garden and digs up a root. Then she stomps back in with a root in her hand - just as she had done that fateful day.

  The Witch in the watching potion exclaims, “A little of my Never Fail Potion ought to do the trick!”

  She yells to Tyrannomous who is slumped in his chair,

  “Can 'ya get up? Come over here!” the Witch begins mixing things together into a pot identical to the one now being watched. From several jars and canisters off the shelf on the wall she retrieves bits of this and dashes of that.

  “I'll fix 'ya up!” She says and smashes up several beetles with a mortar and pestle.

  Her mood improves, she almost sweetly shrieks this time, “O, this will do 'ya up good!“ A couple more things, and then five more things; she brings a witchy fingernail to her chin and taps it against her cheek, all but sending that long hair from her cheek mole a-flutter in the wind.

  “Hum! I can't seem to remember, now. Funny, that's never happened to me before.” She looks to Tyrannomous.

  “You been fooling with the bitomen energy? Well, we'll find out.“ As the Witch-in-the-watching-pot says these words, Jessica looks up at the Witch-in-the-kitchen standing next to her chair. The Witch looks at Jessica, eyebrows raised, as innocently as a witch can muster.

  The Witch (in the kitchen with Jessica) clears her throat, “I did my best to help the dozy, dear-one. I did!” They both look back to the watching potion.

  The Witch (in the potion) says, “I think it's three. Two bits of frog jelly, a fluttering butterfly’s ugly parts, and weasel tail, chopped fine. You'll look like you never got hit. You’ll feel like a youngster too!” She traipses back over to the wooden table in the kitchen and practically hums as she chops and mixes. She holds up the bowl.

  “We're done! Let's see. Pull off that coat of yours. O, horsefeathers! You've been stinkin' up that thing something horrendous! You horrible, half-eaten, sun-drenched, salty, mongrel. Don't know why you bother 'fendin' yourself off from those vampires – they wouldn't bite you, anyway! You're a dirt clod with feet, stinky feet! Anyways!“ She begins to administer the Never Fail Potion to the Rock Wound.

  “O, o my ghastlies!“ A puff of smoke rises up from the wound.

  “I don't remember that ever happening before.” She dabs again, with a potion soaked ball of cotton at the wound, giving the ball a squeeze until the juices of the potion drip out and seep into the wound. All the while she is lecturing her reluctant patient.

  “You've got to stay out of those between worlds games of Quash, you know. What do you care the immortals get in? Let the other trolls play. You’ve got work to do, here, with me. I'll be back in in a while.” With that the Witch (in the watch potion) turns and stomps out the back door.

  Where Jessica and the Witch (in the kitchen) observe the pot, Tyrannomous fills the watching potion. Suddenly another, only larger, puff of smoke pouffs out of the wound area where the potion had been applied.

  The Witch (in the kitchen) exclaims, “Well! It couldn't have been the potion…”

  “No?” Jessica scoffs.

  Through the watching potion, they witness the innocent troll go from sitting upright in his chair, to falling, head first, onto the wooden slat floor with a ‘thud’. And, it was evident by the sound, this thud was, in fact, the last and final sound dear, old Tyrannomous Slater would ever make. It sounded more like a fwamp, actually, than a thud, drifting all the way down with him, as he fell from the wooden bench to the slats of the wooden floor, blending together in that last sound, to let the Witch - who wasn't even listening - in on the fact that this was, in fact, the very last breath of Tyrannomous Slater’s life. Period. Gone.

  Jessica looks up from the watching pot at once to declare, “I knew it! You killed him!!”

  The Witch grabs a scissors and immediately snips a piece of Jessica's clothing, throwing it into the watching pot. The scene turns quickly in the simmering murkiness of the pot. The potion reveals Jessica, that sunny evening past, as she waits in the Underworld Castle, watching out the window for her friends. The Witch (in the kitchen) now, looks at Jessica, containing her fury behind a sickly, demented smile.

  “That's not what you saw.”

  “Yes it is!” Jessica insists, “and now I want out of here!”

  “No, dearest,” the Witch tells her, “that's NOT what you saw. I did not kill him. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Your potion killed him, yes it did... I saw it!”

  The Witch slams the stir spoon she is holding down against the watching pot so severely that some of the liquid splashes out toward Jessica causing her to flinch and lean away as best she can, due to the fact that she is held down by the chair. This action causes Jessica’s concealed knifely spatula to fall to the ground - making a ’ping’ and alerting the Witch as to its existence.

  Realizing Jessica's plan, the Witch flies into a fury at the sight (and sound) of the attempted escape. This ‘naughtiness’ overshadows the Witch’s determination to do away with Jessica after Theopolis arrives. The Witch decides, instead, on taking immediate action toward the young vampire‘s demise.

  “Direct descendant you are!! You weasel!! Enough watching!” The Witch lifts the cauldron of the watching pot liquid and grabs a fresh cauldron from the shelf. She pushes and heaves Jessica's chair back away from the pot toward the wall - the very spot where her first victim once fell.

  Jessica admonishes, “I swear I'll never feed again!! I won't want to help the likes of you!”

  This changes the Witch’s dark mood a bit, and launches her into spouting one of her favorite complaints about life in the Underworld.

  “O, it doesn't help me, it helps you! No, if vampires would just be satisfied, you know? With the Underworld... the beautiful castles they've built. But no... just can't keep yourselves from that tempting upside, can you? That celebrity status. Those mortals so awed by your dark souls, your mystic enchantments. The allure to beguile and co-mingle with the very mortals you’d hunt. And what if word got out? The numbers you’ve destroyed, the cell counts your kind has drained? Your unbridled temptations gone ever so low and dishonorable, what do you think would happen, then?”

  Jessica thinks back to her last feed. In her memory, she sees herself sneaking, that night, back into the bedroom she shares with Drew. Sneaking her wings back down, hanging from the balcony while he sleeps. The, now, forever interrupted early morning milk delivery, a milkman drained, the shameful feed outside the Curmudgeon Café, and now a secret held in her immortal soul - maybe her ’promise’ was unrealistic for a vampire? To say the least!

  The Witch, seeing Jessica's expression fill with dread, continues on, “Your reputations, dearie! Who do you think 'covers for you' anyway? Selfish, selfish! But not once your bloodthirst has been put toward a good spell, you know, it then becomes some darkness they can't name.”

  She whispers, “Mag-ic! Nothing to oust you there. That word is so enchanting; it practically brings carnivals to mortals' minds, that word. No flaming torch holders circling your 'stead at night, no metal stake vampire killing kits, well, not usually. Not with me at your ends, anyway. And, I don’t lose any blood – for my hexes and spells.”

  Through the window Jessica can see the sun begin to rise, turning the sky a dark, red color in a line near the
horizon. Across the lane, the Leprechaun ventures out into the light of the Hair Lady's porch. The Hair Lady presses up against the door frame, smiling in her 'short robe' purchased from Inticing, the mail-order catalog so rarely splurged on; and, somewhere in the Underworld, from a frequency unknown, a vampire bat has picked up the sound of Jessica?! He had mistaken the smooth sound of the young voice for Domina’s.

  “Some kind of haunting,” he’d guessed, as the Witch had deemed him forever unaware that she had turned Domina into a tree, way back when. Now that he has unscrambled the sound with the most acute - and most ancient - radar of all beings, he is aware that his sonar has picked up the ancestral kinship line: DeAngeliuson. Frequency: youngest.

  Chapter Nine

  Fallacies, Protocol, and Vengence

  Fallacies are rules of deception, guessed at outcomes from illogical thinking. In other words, untruths.

  Under the stress and duress of the Witch capturing Jessica, both beings involved have come to rely on their best guesses to determine their fate, each believing their predictions at how this capture will wind up. The Witch has, over time, developed some pretty mixed-up ideas as though her guesses will bring about her predicted outcomes of utter nonsense and untruths.

  Fallacy #1 Revealed: Jessica's Father is not coming to save her.

  Not true; and, this is why this is untrue:

  The Leprechaun being asked to leave the cafe after he slides off his bar stool. He nearly stumbles into Crucious Port, just outside the door. Crucious helps the Leprechaun regain his composure.

  Crucious kindly smooths over the blunder, “Hey brother'! Watch your step, there. You okay?”

  The Leprechaun sneers brushing off his velvet coat, “O, what do you know about it?’

  “Say wha'-?” Crucious is caught off guard by his calloused remark, holding onto the Leprechaun’s arm, so he can catch himself and get his balance.

  “You think you know what it's like? I’m a Leprechaun - I get one day a year up here... One day a frightful year, lad! And kicked out, tonight, I was. Thrown off a bar stool by a sharp tooth - an uppity fang guzzler. O, I can tell 'em from us other Underworlders from a mile away.”

  “In there?” Crucious asks and points to the door of the cafe.

  “Yes sir,” The Leprechaun looks up at Crucious, “I bet you're not used to being called sir, are ‘ya?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well, sir, I know good folks... and you, sir, are good folk,” The Leprechaun slurs.

  Crucious whispers, “I'm a troll.”

  The Leprechaun gets lit up, exclaiming, “Well are ‘ya now?! A sort like one of us!” He slaps his knee but misses. Then he nearly gets teary eyed.

  “I only get one day of work up here a year, ‘ya know? Thinkin' about going back to the Underworld. Always, thinkin' about going back.”

  Crucious says, “If there's one thing I don't like to see... it's a man out of work.“ He reaches in his pocket and pulls out the electric compass and asks the Leprechaun, quietly, “Do you think you could do a job for me, man?”

  The Leprechaun nearly snuggles up to him as he slurs, “I like you. I do.”

  Let me cut this scene short for you.

  Crucious is needed inside the cafe. Jessica's waiting for her part in this. She doesn't know it yet, but Crucious is the one who gets her to the Underworld and the Witch's hut, as has already transpired. Going backward, to transpose the way the Leprechaun became involved, it is evident that Crucious wanted to help, and so, he trusts the Leprechaun, too quickly - who becomes involved and is given a vital role in Crucious Port’s plan. Crucious immediately decides to keep the Leprechaun close to Jessica by the use of the Electric Compass and a small listening device as a protective measure. You see, it wasn't ever the intention of Crucious Port to put Jessica into any danger. (Trolls are rarely calculating or manipulative.) And, with the Nebulizer Potion, he figured, she would splash it on the Witch and be out of the In Between in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

  However, at this point: the potion’s been spilled and the Leprechaun is currently detained over at the Hair Lady's place, it seems Jessica is the lamb. Not one soul has heard her cry... or at least, that's what the Leprechaun thinks, because he assumes he is the only one with a device that can detect her cries. He is supposed to be listening to Jessica's situation over at the Witch's hut. Instructing her, as though he is her Father – connected to the scene by way of the Electric Compass, instructing her as to where to go and what to say, under the guise of ‘keeping her safe’; because, otherwise, she might not have gone to aid Crucious in his plan, at all.

  How do we know #1 is a fallacy - a non-truth? Because the words of Jessica's ‘watch father’, come directly from the Leprechaun. But he's discussing the value of bravato in a business deal over chips and salsa, and more than just a few iced teas, with the Hair Lady on the front porch of her cottage, instead. Not listening at all. If Jessica could scream loud enough through two huts, she’d have to hope he isn't munching on any chips.

  Fallacy #2: The summons of a witch must always be adhered to.

  Truly, this is thought to be good manners, yet a simple RSVP (another practice of good manners) would have curtailed the capture of Jessica altogether. You see, her Father didn't actually bid her to go - by word of invitation nor otherwise - to attend this meeting of the Witch's summons. No actually, it was Crucious Port, and therefore, not an actual summons. Tired of his plight, tired of being ignored by Jessica's Father, and secretly angered by his loss; Crucious Port being a man of few words, known by most as a 'do-er', took the situation into his own hands. (Perhaps Trolls are starting to evolve or maybe he’s just reacting.)

  In fact, it was late one night back a week or so before the capture, that Crucious Port sat at the desk, in the study, of Jessica's Father’s house, cutting and pasting photocopied words from her father's handwriting together with scissors and tape. But Crucious, a troll of little to no education, couldn't have written so eloquent a notification, not to be unkind, but dear readers you know that. He did manage, though, to get that note, somehow into similar handwriting; its deceptiveness undetected by the keen eyes of Jessica as a fake. But whose help did he enlist in writing up the information of that summons? Why that came from the waiter Jessica'd drained in the Underworld Castle that very night when the quandry began.

  Jessica’s Father is home planning a dinner party. A get-together with his daughter and (in his words) that nice, yet pitiful, Drew.

  Fallacy #3: Jessica is not keeping any dark secrets; thereby, Jessica is not beholden to answer the Witch's call.

  Because the note from Jessica's Father is a fraud and the summons is a lie, its not true that Jessica must answer to the Witch, unless – O, infernal misfits – yes, she must. Jessica must answer the Witch because she is keeping a dark secret; and therefore, is beholden to answer the Witch’s call! And Nostramadeus, is the only vampire, other than Jessica, who is in on, the complete secret. A secret that the Witch 'covered' for Jessica, from the Underworld, to minimize the disruption to Jessica's Above World life by counting the blood drain (Jessica’s fall from doing her ‘mortal best’ at refraining from vampire thirst replacement) as part of the Witch’s spell. Basically now, the Witch has Jessica in on this, and so Jessica thinks she must abide by the summons and meet with the Witch. Hence, her current situation; for the record: Jessica could have gotten out of this whole mess due to the simple fact that Jessica has not fed enough on the creatures of the world above, nor created enough undead to require a ‘cover up' from the Witch, disguising her actions, by magic hexes, at all. Certainly not the numbers her father once accrued, Nostramadeus, or even Ickabod for that matter. However, she is new to her status - reluctant to take her rightful position at Vampire Station - and her fatherly advice on the problem is coming from the Leprechaun, whose only real concern is that he's gettin' older and he'd like to settle down. Maybe an Underworld cottage would suit him better than the cafe hopping' lifestyle. Seems like the regulars are
n't responding to his funny stories, or his courtesy like they used to.

  “Nah,” he thinks, “a change of pace might be in order. So why not help Crucious, he's a good guy, and as for the old Witch, charge her what she can't pay, and take a time out from his off-duty, party nights at the old Curmudegeon shack for some unknown amount of time.” This counter-plan which Crucious does not know about, weakens the security - he had painstakingly arranged for Jessica - from the get-go.

  “Retire here,” he thinks, completely ignoring ‘the watch’ - the Electric Compass provided him to determine the fate and ensure the safety of Jessica, unexpected heroine of Crucious’ plan and the Leprechaun’s job.

  The complete secret revealed:

  That night, after Jessica stumbled upon the cafe, where she dined on some interesting, but not-quite-nourishing-enough-soup, her vow to stave off a vampire’s calling to feed - mutating live mortals into undead, vampire victims - went unchecked. This giver of sanquine life force to a fresh, young vampire girl, was in fact temporarily zombied-out, drained- by Jessica herself - on the way home from the Underworld Café, where she had fallen in with some very disenchanted Underworld life forms, if only for several hours to unwind and unload as the barista had said would be good for her to do.

  Once home she fell again, but this time into her bed, snuggling up next to her very mortal husband - the unsuspecting and undefiled Drew. It was an innocent feed, as far as Jessica was concerned, by the standards of non-premeditated intent, anyway... in other words, she didn't mean to... it, 'just happened'. And nobody was ever going to know. A complete secret. And since she only had one secret, from Drew - this one - it became the complete secret.