“Get out of the way,” said a young man with a mohawk. He shoved past the girls. He wore a black leather vest that left his tattooed arms bare. Metal earrings hung from both his ears.
“I think he’s a Slaugh!” Chloe squeaked.
“No, he doesn’t have wings,” Violet said, although she continued to gawk at the young man as he joined a group of similarly clad teens by the food court.
The sight of a dress in the closest shop window made Chloe squeak again. It had a flirty ruffle and bright colors. “Ooooh. Look at that! I wonder how much it costs.”
“We shouldn’t buy clothes,” Violet said. She watched apprehensively as Chloe walked, trance-like, to the shop window and put her face up to it.
“Look! Girls are trying dresses on in there! See those little rooms in the back? Let’s go try some on!”
Violet was still hesitant. “I don’t know…”
“Don’t be a sissy!” Chloe said as she darted through a swarm of bag-toting shoppers. Ignoring their scowls, she went to the nearest rack and pulled off several dresses.
Violet shrank back into the rack as though to make herself invisible. “All this stuff looks really expensive. Maybe we should go somewhere else. Uh oh.”
A boxy little saleswoman approached them. She had a tight little perm and a turned up little nose and a nametag that said “Margot” in blocky letters. She zeroed in on the purple hair sticking out from under Chloe’s hat then tried to politely ignore it as though it was a handicap of some sort.
“Can I help you?” she asked as she summed them up through narrowed eyes.
Chloe knew when she was being judged. She straightened her back, lifted her chin and shoved the armful of dresses at the saleswoman. “I’m going to try these on. Prepare a room for me.”
The narrow little eyes showed surprise. Margot pursed her lips. “We require a credit card to hold if you wish to try on our merchandise.”
Chloe and Violet glanced at each other in confusion. Chloe didn’t want to admit to the puffed up little human that she didn’t know what a credit card was.
“We don’t have one,” she said.
“Perhaps one of your parents is around?” Margot said with just the slightest glance to either side.
Chloe grew impatient. This was ridiculous. In Faylinn the designers fought over who got to dress her. “Look, lady, my parents aren’t here and they don’t have one of those card thingies, either. I just want to see how these look on.”
“So you aren’t here to buy?” Margot asked as though this were a heinous crime. “I’m afraid I can’t let you try those on. What would we do if you damaged one of them?”
Chloe felt heat gathering at her fingertips. She thought of how pleasant it would be to torch the insolent woman. Who did she think she was with her stupid perm and her sassy little nametag? Chloe lifted her index finger and pointed at the woman’s nose. “Now just you listen here! I am Queen Chloe de Lolanthe and—”
Violet cleared her throat loudly.
The saleswoman squinted at Chloe with utmost distaste.
Chloe returned the look and crossed her arms. “This stuff isn’t good enough for me anyways! You call these dresses? They look like bath curtains! Come on, Violet.”
She trounced out of the store with a grateful Violet on her heels. She felt the saleswoman staring them down all the way out.
“Witch!” Chloe spat. “I don’t like the mall. Let’s go back to the hotel.”
“But we just got here!” Violet said. “Anyways, not all the people are like that. She must have thought we were poor.”
“Well I think she’s a troll!”
“Hey, cool hair,” said a passer-by. It was a preteen girl with sparkly makeup. She wore barrette clip-ins of different colors in her own hair.
Caught off guard, Chloe muttered, “Thanks.”
“See,” Violet said. “Can we stay? Let’s at least get something to eat. Those look yummy,” she pointed to a cookie stand in the food court.
Chloe eyed the assortment of sprinkled goodies. “Well, okay. I guess.”
After sharing a half dozen cookies between them (and completely befuddling the poor clerk who had to take their money) they set off for further uncharted territory. Chloe found a makeup counter where the bored young man tending the wares was all too eager to give her a free makeover.
“You have the best cheekbones I’ve ever seen!” he squealed. “Are your eyes that green naturally? You’re wearing contacts, right? Who colors your hair? It’s fabulous!”
After the confidence boost Chloe was in a much better mood.
“I think that guy was wearing girl pants,” Violet said as they left the makeup counter. “And he was wearing more eye shade than you.”
Chloe smacked her freshly glossed lips. “He was a sweetheart. I wish I could take him back home with me to do my makeup every day.”
Then she and Violet fell silent because both of them missed home so much. Chloe was seriously beginning to doubt they’d ever see it again.
“Hey, look at that!” Chloe said to distract herself from such gloomy thoughts. She paused before a shop with all kinds of gadgetry inside. On the back wall sat vision boxes of various shapes and sizes. The largest one was so big that the people on the screen looked like they were about to walk right out into the store.
Chloe and Violet walked inside and gaped at the row of screens. They all showed the same program with a man and a woman sitting behind a desk and reporting on things that happened in yet another screen behind them.
“The investigation of the disappearance of prominent Tulane professor Kiros Leboux has yet to turn up any leads,” said the stiff-haired woman on the vision box.
The viewing angle switched to her male colleague while the small screen behind him showed images of a brick apartment with yellow tape stretched across the door. Then the little screen showed a picture of a dark-skinned woman with a patterned scarf wrapped around her head. Even in the motionless picture the woman looked proud and extremely intelligent. She had an air of mystery that made her look striking compared the man and woman reading the news. Chloe’s breath caught as she studied the picture. It was as if she’d just glimpsed through a telescope and spied her old world.
“At the urging of the professor’s son, New Orleans police have stepped up their efforts to determine how Professor Leboux was taken from her apartment,” said the man. “They have already issued a statement that they believe force was used. The investigators were unable to determine the source of the scorch marks found on the floor of the professor’s apartment.”
The vision box cut to a larger screen of the apartment. A tall, dark-skinned young man was standing in front of it, speaking into a stick with a foam ball on the end. He looked to be in his early twenties. He had dark eyes and tight, curly dark hair. His ears stuck out more than most people’s. Chloe only noticed it now that she’d been around humans for so long.
“I just can’t understand,” said the young man. “Why has it taken months? No leads. No leads whatsoever. My mother was a loved, well-respected member of the university. She had no enemies. I can appreciate how difficult the police’s job must be, but somebody must know something.”
The screen cut back to the man and the woman at the news desk.
“That was Tobin Leboux, speaking at his mother’s apartment,” said the newsman. “He’s an engineering student at Tulane and has been the driving force in efforts to uncover the whereabouts of Professor Leboux.”
The newswoman shook her head in a sad gesture. Not a single hair on her scalp moved. “The university has offered a reward for information anyone may have about the professor’s disappearance. Here’s the number to call.”
A series of numbers flashed across the screen. Chloe and Violet stared without really paying attention to them. Chloe got the strange feeling that a snippet of their own world had showed up inexplicably in this one.
“That boy…” Violet said.
“There was something o
dd about him,” Chloe read her mind. “There’s something odd about the whole thing. Scorch marks they can’t explain?”
Violet wrinkled her brow. “There’s something else. That name is familiar. Kiros…Kiros…I know I’ve heard it before. Leboux doesn’t sound right though. Kiros Leboux. No, that’s not it.”
A man in a tie and a nametag walked over to them. Chloe curled her lip until she realized that there was nothing disdaining in the big smile he gave them.
“What can I do for you girls?” the man asked. “Shopping for somebody? You know, Father’s Day is just three months away.” He laid his arm on top of the biggest vision screen. “This baby right here would make a great gift for Dad!”
Violet stared at the floor and said quietly, “Our dad is dead.”
The salesman’s face turned red. “Oh…oh, I’m…terribly sorry about that. How insensitive of me…”
Chloe rescued him by pointing at the screen. “That story that was just on, did you see it? About the professor who disappeared?”
“Oh, you must mean the Leboux case,” said the salesman.
“Where did it happen?” Chloe asked. “They said something about Two Lane, but I don’t know where that is.”
“Tulane University,” the salesman said. “It’s in New Orleans.”
“Is it far from here?” Chloe asked.
The salesman gave her a curious look. “New Orleans, you know, Louisiana? Here, I’ll show you.” He pulled his own rectangular device out of his pocket and pushed some buttons. The little screen on it flashed up with a map. He pointed to a big chunk of land near the bottom of it. “To get to New Orleans you go over here—” he moved his finger to a dot next to some blue water, “—all the way across and down through Louisiana until you get to there.”
Chloe memorized the location. They could be there in a flash if her mother could rig up the Pyxis Charm properly. She thanked the salesman and then dragged Violet back to the mall doors where they came in.
“I think we should go there,” Chloe said. “We need to talk to that boy, the one called Tobin. I don’t think he’s entirely human, do you?”
Violet looked doubtful. “Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, Chloe. Maybe we just miss home so much that we’re imagining it.”
But Chloe was adamant. “Tobin has the same look about him as Emma. Didn’t you see it? He has that sort of glowiness that most humans don’t have.”
“Glowiness?” Violet asked.
“Yeah,” Chloe went on in excitement. “And his ears weren’t quite right for a human. They stick out too much. Besides, didn’t Mother say she was looking for people who could help us? Don’t you think she’d at least want to know about Tobin and the professor?”
“I suppose,” Violet said. “I’m just scared to get my hopes up.”
As it turned out, they needn’t have worried. When they arrived back at the room they found their mother in such a state that it put Chloe’s excitement to shame. The wheel chair could hardly contain Othella as she whizzed about the room, throwing things into the battered suitcases they’d picked up at a thrift store.
“Pack up,” she ordered as soon as the girls walked in the door. “We have a bus to catch.”
This sounded like fun to Chloe. “What sort of creature is a bus and how do we catch it?”
“It’s a vehicle,” Othella said. “We have to travel.”
“What about the Pyxis Charm?” Chloe asked.
Othella paused in her packing and looked sadly at her lap. “It might work once more. Maybe. But we can’t use it to travel here if we’re to have any hope of getting home. We’ll have to travel as humans do from now on.”
“Where are we going?” Violet asked as she scooped up all her papers and brochures.
“New Orleans,” Othella replied.
Chloe and Violet gave each other wide-eyed stares.
“So you saw it too?” Chloe asked. “The story about Professor Leboux?”
“Kiros Leboux, formerly Kiros Rubedo,” Othella corrected her.
Violet’s face brightened and she snapped her fingers. “I knew it sounded familiar! She’s an alchemist, right?” Then she frowned. “She went missing many years ago, didn’t she?”
“Forced into hiding,” Othella said, “along with many others. Most were members of W.R.A.I.T.H. They left Faylinn to hide permanently in this world.”
Chloe understood very little of what they were talking about. Violet had tried to explain W.R.A.I.T.H. to her one night, but Chloe had gotten so angry over being excluded from the secret organization that she’d forgotten what they actually did. It didn’t help that Othella and Violet were always in on the secrets. It was like they had their own language and they left her out on purpose.
It was all for her protection. Othella told her that often. She pointed out that a ruler who is ignorant of illegal activities couldn’t be blamed for them. Now that Chloe was an exiled ruler it hardly mattered.
“So, these people who hid in the human world, that’s who you’ve been looking for?” Chloe said.
“Yes,” Othella said. “Faylinn expatriates. There were half a dozen families.”
Chloe’s head spun. “I had no idea that so many of our people lived in the human world!”
“They had no other choice,” Othella said as she loosened her wheelchair from a snag in the cheap hotel carpet. “If they’d stayed they would have been shipped off to Helm Bogvogny.”
“The prison?” Chloe asked in shock. “I thought we only sent murderers and madmen to that place! What did these people do?”
“They possessed things,” Othella replied. “Traits and actual objects that were considered dangerous by the Seelie Court. Many years ago, the court took a stricter stance on what it considered to be threats against Ivywild. Most of the so-called threatening people were persuaded to join the clergy. Those who refused were forced to live on the run. It’s the fate that befell Emma’s grandfather, Alberich. At first he joined the clergy to appease the Seelie Court, but then he turned renegade. Nobody knew he had a child until Emma turned up.”
The facts swam around in Chloe’s mind like a picture she couldn’t quite focus on. “So…Alberich possessed the flute, right? That’s why they came after him?”
“It wasn’t so much the flute as the power he possessed,” Othella said.
“But you said some of the people had actual objects,” Chloe said. “What about this Rubedo lady? What did she have?”
“The Rubedo Tablet,” Violet said in an awed voice. “It is the key to all alchemy. It lays out all the rules. It’s been in the Rubedo family for ages.”
“Alchemy is forbidden,” Chloe said. “Even I know that. It’s right up there with building machines and all that other stuff your club dabbled in.”
Othella and Violet both raised their eyebrows.
“Ah,” Chloe said. “I see. W.R.A.I.T.H. dabbled in that, too.”
“Alchemy and machinery are just like magic,” Violet said defensively. “They’re only as good or as bad as the person using them. The Rubedo Tablet is harmless by itself. In the wrong hands though—”
Othella gasped. She glanced at the vision box. The news was still on. “Oh, no.”
“What? What is it?” Chloe asked in alarm.
“Her disappearance,” Othella said. “All the strange circumstances surrounding it make me wonder if somebody came after her.”
“Do you mean somebody from our world? Who would come after an alchemist who’s been missing for all these years?”
They all fell silent. Chloe’s head hurt from entertaining all the new, frightening knowledge. She wasn’t one to back down, though.
“Well, one thing is obvious,” she said after a few moments. “If it was somebody from our world, they’d have to have a Pyxis Charm.”
They all paled when they considered what it meant.
“Robyn,” Violet said.
“Unless the Seelie Court was able to fix the one that broke,” Othella said. “They recove
red the pieces, but it’s unlikely that anyone outside of W.R.A.I.T.H. could mend the thing.”
Now the wheels in Chloe’s mind were turning and she began to think like the great strategist her father was often praised for being. “What we have to figure out is who would have the most to gain by abducting an alchemist.”
“Or the Rubedo Tablet,” Violet said. “Maybe they were looking for it and Kiros just got in the way.”
“We know that Robyn does weird things with machines,” Chloe said. “It seems likely that she’d abuse alchemy, too. But how would she know about Kiros?”
“The Seelie Court would know all about Kiros,” Othella said. “I always assumed that if they could acquire the Rubedo Tablet they’d just destroy it. I don’t know what they’d want with alchemy.”
Chloe groaned. “That puts us back where we started.”
Othella snapped her suitcase closed. “We’ll just have to go to New Orleans and see what we can uncover. It’s going to be a long trip. We’ll need a good meal first. You girls finish packing. Hurry!”
Chloe filled her suitcase blindly, tossing things in without a care towards orderliness. Too much else occupied her mind. What on earth was happening in her kingdom? She couldn’t wait to go back and put things right again. If that meant riding something called a bus to New Orleans, then so be it. One way or another she was going to figure everything out and when she finally did make it home, somebody was going to pay dearly.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The weather held during our whole first day of travel. Valory’s skills turned out to be priceless. She helped me make skis out of a split tree branch so that we could make faster progress. Even through the blanket of snow Valory sniffed out the trail that had long been used by fur traders crossing the mountains. Whenever she lost the scent, she flew up above the forest to look ahead until she could pick out the trail again.
I marveled at her talents. I’d never met anyone so resourceful. Valory was perfectly in tune with the environment. I wished I could translate the scents of the wilderness like her or foretell the weather by the pitch of the wind.
The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) Page 23
