The Medium turned her rosy, sanguine face to Gumshoe. “You shouldn’t have sent her here.”
“Shouldn’t I?” Gumshoe crossed the room and lit up a cigarette. “Why?”
He swept some fancy trinkets off a chair by the table, sat down, and drew deeply on his cigarette. Uroboros slid across the table closer to Martha. His thick, heavy body breezed across as if he were a delicate little snake, not a big old hulk of a python. Reaching the edge of the table, Uroboros coiled up and slithered onto Martha’s shoulders, hugging her neck like a scarf.
“Where’s the girl?” Gumshoe said.
Martha stroked the python. “I sent her to City Hall.”
“I see. So what can you say about her?”
The Medium shook her head and pursed her lips.
“Come on, say something.” Gumshoe raised his voice. “I saw her with my very own eyes when she appeared on that square, the one with dead bodies. The dark ones were there, too.”
“Were they? How interesting.”
“I should say so! And not just the dark ones, but also one of those, what d’you call them …”
“An Inquisitor.”
“Exactly. He had a scar on his forehead. He grabbed the girl, and—”
“Was the scar on his head glowing?” Martha interrupted.
“Pardon me?” Gumshoe lost his train of thought. “I didn’t—”
He stopped mid-word. He had indeed seen the scar on the Inquisitor’s forehead glow, hadn’t he? Later, he’d thought that it must have been his imagination playing tricks in the heat of the fight. “Actually, it did. The scar did glow. Why?”
“No, nothing. Go on.”
“Nothing more to say, really. I rescued the girl and took her to the Station. Then I sent her to you. Thought you might tell me something, but instead, I’m the one who’s doing all the telling. Have you tried to find out—”
“I have,” Martha interrupted him. “I could only find out one thing. The Wrong Side.”
“The Wrong Side?” he repeated.
“Those from the Wrong Side of the City want her, for some reason.”
For a while, Gumshoe was studying the Medium through the veil of tobacco smoke. Then he asked, “Are you all right?”
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
“Scared? You? But—” He made a helpless gesture, his cigarette dropping ash onto the table. “You’re to the City as a fish is to water. This place is pure magic. I can’t stand the word. Magic is illogical. But that’s exactly what it is. You yourself are quintessentially magic, so you should be enjoying this world much more than the one you’ve left.”
“Magic is logical,” Martha snapped. “In any case, the girl is now at City Hall. And she’s being hunted. You’d better go there straight away.”
He nodded and rose. “Anything you can tell me about kissing?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“When I arrived, the Inquisitor was kissing the girl. So it’s either that they’d been dating each other for a long time, or—”
Uroboros raised his head from Martha’s lap and looked up at her. She said, “Do me a favor and bring me that book off that shelf over there, will you?”
“Are you talking to me or to your serpent?”
“To you, apparently.”
“Which book?” Undecided, Gumshoe turned to the cabinet overflowing with all kinds of odds and ends.
“The one with the crimson cover.”
“And what about those spirits of yours? I’ve just met one of them at the Station scrounging for free energy. It was as fat as a melon.”
“The girl must have scared them away. Bring me the book, please. It’s called Amor et Mors.”
Gumshoe rummaged through a dozen loose volumes on one of the shelves.
“Amor et Mors,” he muttered, turning to her, book in hand. “Whatever could that mean?”
“It’s Latin for Love and Death. Can I have it, please?”
As Gumshoe stepped back toward the table, he tried to open the book, but Martha raised her voice, indignant. “Don’t you dare! These books are not meant for those who think there’s no logic in magic.”
“What’s gonna happen, then?” He chuckled as he laid the heavy volume on the table.
“The book may suck you in. Or if you do open it, it may bounce you back, sending you into the thick of the mist.”
Not that Gumshoe had believed any of it, but as Martha opened the book, he stepped back just to be on the safe side. A large, ornamental script covered thick yellow pages with fancily decorated margins. She moved her lips as she read. Uroboros recoiled and raised his head, staring into the book. The two exchanged glances. Finally, Martha shut the book closed.
“That’s what it is,” she said.
“What’s what?” Gumshoe asked. “Haven’t we had enough riddles for today? I still have to get the girl from City Hall. Just tell me.”
“The kiss of death,” Martha explained.
“The kiss of death?”
“Have you turned into a parrot or something? Stop repeating my words. The kiss of death is a curse. Spells like that are hard to cast and are even trickier to lift. And living with them is not easy. The curse carrier kills everyone he or she kisses. No, not everyone. Let’s put it this way: a creature more powerful than ordinary people won’t die, although he or she may feel weak for a while.”
That’s what it was. The Kiss of Death. That changed everything. Without saying another word, Gumshoe turned around and hurried out. He had to find Nicole before it was too late.
She looked around a large semi-circular hall. A tall, light brown statue in its center depicted a stone man in a hooded robe. Robes again. Good thing this one wasn’t black. The man raised his hands over a thick book that lay on a tall marble lectern in front of him. He looked as if he was about to cast a spell.
On both sides of the statue, two staircases arched up to the second floor. The walls of the hall were lined with cluttered, overflowing shelves—the place looked more like a dump than City Hall. She could make out some familiar everyday objects—a broken bike and a large, lidless suitcase shedding armfuls of rags—but some of the objects were truly unusual: a ship’s helm leaning against the wall, the lower part of a shop’s mannequin, a wooden model of a horse coach the size of an armchair, all bathed in the moonlight pouring in through the high-vaulted windows.
What was it Martha had said? City Hall was the City’s mouth. She’d also said, “Seek clues inside City Hall.” Was Nicole supposed to seek for clues among all this clutter? What kind of clues, even? Where should they lead?
Nicole paced the hall absentmindedly. She’d been doing whatever Gumshoe had told her to, but it looked like it was about time she made up her mind about what she wanted to do.
Stay in the City. She nodded. That’s what she wanted, surely. To stay here, whatever this place was. True, she didn’t know much about it yet, apart from the main square and a couple of side streets plus a few buildings she hadn’t even had a chance to explore, but already, the City was holding her tight in its invisible grasp.
She had to stay. She had to find out what was going on. She needed to know what it was the men in black robes had wanted from her, why the olive-skinned stranger had kissed her, and what exactly Gumshoe was trying to conceal from her. She needed to know what he suspected her of. Why had he given her that funny look when he handed her the brandy glass?
She also needed to find out what it was that Martha had seen in the crystal ball. What kind of evil force was hunting her down? Why should she avoid the House of Crimson Windows? Then there’s Grandma and her pendant. No, she had to put everything right.
Nicole started searching. She was going to do it methodically, moving clockwise and inspecting all movable objects on her way.
A glittering hair grip, a fur hat, a jar of orange marmalade, a toy monkey on a spring, an ancient typewriter, a straw hat with a feather stuck in its brim, a book in an unknown language, a mismatched shoe
… wrong, all wrong.
She went through the clutter until her eyes were quite sore. Time for a break. A large leather armchair by the front door was just the thing. Nicole lowered herself into it and sat back, closing her eyes.
A rattle behind her back made her jump. Clutching the pendant—which, by now, felt almost like a weapon—she looked around and breathed a sigh of relief. A false alarm, luckily. A sloppily replaced book had apparently fallen to the floor. Nothing else seemed to stir. She was alone in the whole building.
And still, something felt not quite right. But what could it be? Nothing had changed, surely?
Nicole tensed up, realizing the cause of her anxiety. The pendant pulsated in her hand. She let go of it, and it sent its beats even through her clothing, just like a living thing. It felt as if two hearts were now throbbing in her body.
Nicole paused, then reached again for the black eye-shaped gem. She thought she’d detected a weak response echoing the beat from somewhere to her left.
She turned and took a few steps, nearly walking into the statue, or rather, into the tall marble lectern with its open book. Not just any old book. This was a tome to end all tomes. She wouldn’t even be able to lift it. It was open somewhere in the middle. On one page was a red-pointed star. On the opposite, several lines of unfamiliar words. They looked like Latin … probably … and the star had to be a pentagram, right?
Nicole clutched the pendant hard and tried to tune in to her senses. The response signals seemed to be coming from below. She knelt and made out in the moonlight the outline of a face carved into the lectern’s base. On its forehead was an indentation shaped like a third eye.
The pendant pulsated harder, fluttering in her hand like a tiny heart. Carefully, Nicole removed it from her neck and held her breath as she brought it toward the indentation and placed the pendant into it.
Something clicked. The front panel of the marble lectern snapped open, revealing a tiny chamber with two objects in it.
A big, round magnifying lens framed in gold was mounted on a short, black handle, and a glass ball sat on a flat stand.
The marble panel opened all the way down to the floor, clicked, and then began to close again. Nicole hurried to put the pendant back around her neck, and then grabbed both the lens and the ball. With a snap, the panel closed.
Nicole stood up. Now, nothing could be seen of the hiding place inside the lectern. Had it not been for the pendant, she’d never have found it in a million years.
She inspected the ball. She used to have one like it when she was little, only hers had had a magic castle inside. If you shook the ball, snow started to fall on the castle. Nicole had never quite forgiven the neighbor’s cat for breaking it. It had been a magical toy, one of her favorites.
She brought the ball closer to her eyes and froze, open-mouthed. Inside this one, there was no magic castle. In place of it was the House of Crimson Windows.
Her hands instinctively shook the ball, raising a whirl of … no, not snowflakes, but mist. What a weird trick. Nicole knew that these balls were normally filled with water. So it had to be some sort of white muck, a residue rising from the bottom. Whatever it was, it looked very similar to the mist that covered the streets next to the square.
She brought the ball even closer to her face, peering into it. A dark human shape seemed to be standing in one of the windows. Somebody was watching her from this tiny building hidden inside the glass ball.
She blinked, and the shape disappeared. Nicole shook the ball again and again, but the silhouette didn’t come back.
So was this the clue she’d been looking for? If so, what could it mean? Nicole put the ball into her pocket and turned to the other object. Its handle was made of some kind of sparkling stone. The round magnifying glass was set in a solid gold frame—an ordinary lens, nothing special about it. But … .
Nicole peered at the lettering that ran along the gold frame. It looked like Latin. Video inuisibilis tenebrosaque secreta aperiuntur, she read, moving her lips, and shook her head in dismay. Some clue! Martha would have probably known the meaning of it. Well, Nicole didn’t. She shoved the lens into her pocket, her fingers brushing the flat stand of the ball.
She pulled the ball out and turned it upside down. On the bottom of the stand, someone had attached a small photo. The glue had long dried out, and with the slightest tug, the picture came off in Nicole’s hands.
Two people stared at her from the photo. One was a tall man with black, curly hair and an aquiline nose. A pretty woman stood next to him, her eyes intelligent. Both seemed to be smiling at their own thoughts, not for the camera. The man wore a light-colored shirt and a pair of suspenders over his old-fashioned pants. The woman had on a long, flowing skirt and a baggy sweater.
Nicole just shrugged when she recognized the House of Crimson Windows in the background of the picture. What else did she expect?
She studied the woman. Unbelievable. Nicole shook her head, trying to rid herself of the illusion, but it wouldn’t go. Either she was going slightly mad, or she was the spitting image of the woman in the photo. Even her clothes … wait. This was Nicole’s sweater the woman was wearing. What was going on?
Nicole frowned as she studied the picture. Then she put it back into her pocket and, weighing the glass ball in her hand, started for the door.
Her head was the same kind of mess as City Hall. She was failing to finish a single thought that she started. She had long realized that her arrival in the City had been anything but accidental, but now, she just didn’t know what to think about it all. Besides, she could do with a nap. She might think straighter after a few Z’s. Then she’d work out what to do next.
She pushed the door open and walked out onto a wide porch. A few steps led down from it to the sidewalk.
When Nicole saw the creature standing by the steps, she screamed and darted back inside.
Chapter Seven
Gumshoe walked briskly toward City Hall. He’d never liked entering it—there was something about the building that had always given him a bad feeling. Whenever he’d ventured inside, he couldn’t shrug off the sensation of being watched everywhere he turned.
He went past several houses overgrown with ivy. Something was moving on the City Hall steps, still quite a distance ahead. Gumshoe hurried his step. Was it Nicole over there? It didn’t look like her.
The silhouette shifted. It couldn’t be the girl. She’d been dressed in blue jeans and a drab sweater. The shape over there was light-colored and too large to be her. It stood, whatever it was, right on the steps leading to City Hall’s wide front doors. It didn’t look like the Inquisitor. Having said that, it didn’t look human at all.
Gumshoe was covering the last few blocks when City Hall’s doors opened, letting out Nicole Stewart. He ran, pulling his gun out of its holster, realizing that whatever was standing in front of the building had taken the shape of an enormous white wolf—werewolf, rather. Having left the building, Nicole found herself face to face with it.
Her reactions were excellent. You had to give her that. The girl recoiled and tried to dive back inside, but the monster took the stairs in one long leap and grabbed her, growling. Then the werewolf reared up, jumped off the steps with Nicole in its front paws, and ran along the wall of the building.
Gumshoe turned onto a parallel street to block the creature’s exit. The girl struggled in the werewolf’s paws, then it was as if she were yanking on something. Gumshoe couldn’t figure out what had happened. He just made out a dull, bluish flash. The magic rune flickered and dissolved in the air. It went out. The werewolf quietly howled, and Nicole went limp in his paws. Without stopping, Gumshoe raised the gun and aimed at the beast’s hunched, hairy back, but the werewolf—an enormous, shaggy travesty of a human being—continued to run on its hind legs, took another turn, and disappeared around the corner of City Hall.
Nicole writhed in the creature’s claws, gasping with pain in its inhuman hug. Her fingers clutched the fur on the th
ick neck. She felt something under its fur, like a thin string or a cord. She pulled on it, heard a snap, and saw a blue flash. A strange sign, seemingly made from the flickering smoke, appeared and then dissolved in the air.
The beast carried her like a baby, only no baby could survive in its grip. Right in front of her, she could see its broad muzzle covered with white hair. The night street around her jerked up and down with the werewolf’s every leap and bound.
Again, Nicole struggled, trying to scream, but the monster lowered its head and growled into her face.
Its eyes glowed crimson. Its hot, fetid breath hit Nicole’s senses, and she went limp in the monster’s front legs, still conscious, but barely able to react to the world around her.
She was being dragged somewhere. The werewolf’s grasp on her body became at times harder, then softer. A growl, and claws scraped the cobblestones. Then she was lying on something hard, the animal’s red eyes glowing just above her, its eyes shining with intelligence. The terrible jaws opened, and froth dripped from its curved fangs, its tongue like a large chunk of bloodied meat. The jaws came closer.
Nicole didn’t know what happened next. A hoarse growl, and then reality started jerking, shifting and darkening before her eyes. Looks like I’m dead, she thought. But if I am, how come I can still think? I must be alive. My eyes are closed, that’s all. But if my eyes are closed, what’s this pale light I’m seeing? So my eyes have to be open. There must be something wrong with my eyesight.
Gradually, reality started to return, even though she felt very, very sick. She was still being carried somewhere. Water splashed nearby. But who was carrying her? It wasn’t the beast any longer. She couldn’t sense its hot breath, and her body wasn’t tossed around as the beast leapt up and down. It had to be a human being, then. The arms were strong, but gentle. It has to be Gumshoe, she thought, closing her eyes and drifting off into a warm, comfortable nothingness.
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