The Amulet of Caorunn (A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 7)

by Juliette Harper

  The icing on the cake, however, was that the Golem told Awenasa that no Daughter of Knasgowa would ever be welcome in their land again. Apparently, they get insulted when people fail their test. If one of us tried, the consequences might be even more severe than those Awenasa suffered.

  On April 10, 1815, Mount Tambora did erupt — an explosion so violent it shrouded the planet in ash for three years, ushering in an event in far away New England in 1816 called the Year Without a Summer. Crops failed, famine and disease set in, and the people turned to religious revivalism and witch hunting in search of answers.

  “That’s why you won’t even let me try?” I asked Mom as gently as I could. “Because of something that happened 200 years ago?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Unless you’re prepared to lose the one among us you love the most.”

  I looked around the room. I wasn’t prepared to lose any of them. Not even to save the Mother Tree. There had to be another way.

  27

  Before we did anything else, we had to locate the Jar of Prometheus. Just to brush you up on your Greek mythology, Prometheus was one of twelve primeval deities known as the Titans. As the human legend goes, he stole fire from the gods on Mt. Olympus and gave it to mankind.

  Prometheus was a Fae being who aided mankind in “discovering” fire and harnessing its potential to further refine their developing civilization. For the record, humans might have been better off staying in the cave, at least according to the Paleo diet folks, but that’s a whole other conversation.

  Anyway, remember that beach scene in the movie Castaway around the bonfire? Tom Hanks pounds his chest and says, with proper caveman intonation, “I have made fire!” For him, stuck alone on that island, the ability to light a fire was one of the factors standing between him and death. According to Charles Darwin, the two greatest innovations in human history are fire and the development of language.

  For most people, the extent of our analytical reaction to fire runs toward good, old-fashioned caveman simplicity: “Fire hot. Fire burn. Ouch!” We don’t stop to consider that not all fire is created equal.

  Flames burn at different temperatures, which are perceived by the human eye along a set color range. The pretty yellow-orange flames in the lair fireplace along with the glowing red embers in the grate create temperatures of 1,200 to 1,500° F. Throw in the effect of air circulation, and that drops to around 1,000° F.

  Blue-white flames, however, can burn at temperatures of 9,010 °F.

  As we set out to locate the Jar of Prometheus, we were looking for something even hotter — something that did not come up on Tori’s nifty location finder app for the archive when I typed the request on my iPad and hit “Find.”

  “What gives?” I asked Myrtle. “There’s no record for this thing.”

  “Of course not,” she said, crossing to the fireplace. “The Jar is in Special Collections.”

  Myrtle pressed a hidden button in one of the braces under the mantel, releasing a trap door in the bricks. Reaching into the recessed panel, she came out with an enormous ring of rusty skeleton keys.

  “Shall we, Jinx?” she said.

  The way she phrased the question left her meaning fairly clear, but I wanted to make sure anyway.

  “Just me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Only the Witch of the Oak may enter the Special Collections area.”

  With that, Myrtle set off at a brisk pace, and I followed — past the temporary guest rooms and into the stacks where we wound through a maze of shelves and larger freestanding artifacts.

  The farther we moved into the lair, the more our footfalls echoed in the vast silence. We passed rows of crates labeled “Library of Alexandria,” and I barked my shin on what looked for all the world like the Rosetta Stone.

  “Isn’t this thing supposed to be in the British Museum?” I asked.

  “Heaven’s no,” Myrtle said. “There’s a version in the British Museum, but we can’t have the humans knowing everything, now can we?”

  Before I could say anything else, she announced, “This is it.”

  We were standing in front of what looked like a bank vault decorated with a myriad of magical sigils or symbols that glowed faintly in the dim light. As I watched, Myrtle selected a key, inserted it into the lock, and then made precise quarter turns accompanied by four incantations.

  As she progressed toward a full circle, the sigils moved through the colors of the spectrum, stopping when they reached violet. The lock tripped, and the heavy door opened.

  Looking past Myrtle, I saw the interior of the Special Collection. We were standing on an elevated platform above an endless sea of shelves, cabinets, and storage bins that made the main archive look like a backyard garden shed.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty much all I’ve got. Wow!”

  “Indeed,” Myrtle smiled, “an understandable reaction.”

  She directed me to step clear of the door, which closed behind us.

  “Do I even want to know how far we have to walk now?” I asked.

  “Not far at all,” she said. “The Jar is kept at the front of the collection in a special room for volatile objects.”

  Volatile objects. Plural. So not what I wanted to hear.

  We descended a short flight of stairs and Myrtle led me into a small, bunker-like chamber set in the same wall as the door. Extracting another key from the ring, she opened a box that looked like it could withstand a nuclear explosion and took out a cylindrical vessel inlaid with transparent panels. Pale blue, roiling flames filled the interior of the tube.

  “The Jar of Prometheus,” she said. “Forged on the anvil of Hephaestus to contain the elemental fire.”

  Myrtle held the artifact out to me. I took it reluctantly, surprised by how cool it felt in my hands.

  “This is supposed to warm up the Mother Tree?” I asked turning the cylinder over. The living fire inside flowed with the motion of the vessel.

  “Do not let the Jar’s benign appearance deceive you,” Myrtle said. “When the lid is opened and the inner core exposed only a fraction, this small vessel emits the radiance of the hottest summer day.”

  “And if the whole core was exposed?”

  “It would rival the heat of the sun.”

  Scared and fascinated, I continued to stare at the Jar as an idea formed in my mind. “If we took it upstairs,” I said slowly, “couldn’t we stop this whole winter apocalypse? Save the state and save the Mother Tree?”

  Myrtle shook her head. “Would that so simple a solution lay at our disposal,” she said. “This is the fire Prometheus kept away from man. It cannot be released in the human realm. Even to do so in the Middle Realm risks breaching its containment, but the life of the Mother Tree must be saved.”

  “You’re telling me that the fire to end all fires is in this jar and we’ve been keeping it right here in the basement?” I asked.

  Myrtle looked puzzled. “Where else would we keep it?”

  Well, of course. What was I thinking?

  We retraced our steps, locking the Special Collection behind us and picking our way through the archive back to the lair. Myrtle returned the keys to their hidden niche, and I gingerly placed the Jar of Prometheus in the center of the work table where it pulsated ominously.

  “So that’s it, huh?” Tori said, bending down to get a better look.

  “Yep,” I said. “Myrtle says it’s pretty much the power of the sun in a bottle.”

  “Cool,” Tori said, unflappable as always.

  Okay, then. So we were going for calm and collected. I could fake that with the best of them, even if we did have a mythological atom bomb currently serving as our centerpiece.

  Inquiring about the weather was out, so I went with work progress. “How’s the research going?” I asked, throwing the question out to the room in general.

  Everyone at the table — even Rodney — sat amid a clutter of books and ancient documents. They were looking for some way to deliver the
warming fire in the Jar to the Middle Realm that did not involve me being the delivery girl.

  “Slowly,” Greer said. “We are attempting to ascertain if any of the other openings to the In Between come with less stringent entrance requirements.”

  She made it sound like they were trying to get me into some toney witch’s finishing school.

  After that, there was no more conversation. Everyone was too engrossed in what they were doing for chit chat. Leaving them to their work, I quietly sneaked upstairs.

  After 24 hours in the lair, I wanted to see for myself what the storm was doing to Briar Hollow. The first piece of information Chase had given me when Myrtle and I returned was that the GNATS drones had all been forced to return to Shevington.

  “They just can’t take this level of cold,” he said. “It’s below zero out there, and the wind chill makes it even colder. The electrical grid went about two hours ago. Pretty much the only power in town is at the gym. The Ionescus have added the third generator so some of the people can overflow into the classrooms, and they took two more generators over to the nursing home.”

  “Has anyone . . ., ” I almost couldn’t get the word out, but the reality of the situation could no longer be denied. “Has anyone died?”

  “Not yet,” he said grimly. “At least not here in Briar Hollow.”

  The rest of the details he shared overwhelmed me. People on the borders had started to try to get out of North Carolina altogether and into neighboring regions where the temperatures remained normal. Cars jammed the major highways and gas supplies were running low.

  In areas like ours where the mountain roads made travel too dangerous, the National Guard wanted to do supply drops, if the winds died down enough to allow the helicopters to fly safely. I felt like we were in a war zone.

  Going upstairs wasn’t just to see what things looked like outside, I needed away from the constant stream of horrible news coming over the television.

  When I stepped into the shop, the cold hit me so hard it took my breath away. Myrtle had taught us how to use a simple spell to envelop our bodies in protective warmth, but I didn’t plan to be in the store long enough to need it.

  That idea lasted less than five minutes. I muttered the words through chattering teeth, sighing in relief as the incantation washed over me. It felt like crawling under an electric blanket on a winter night. If only we could do that for every single person trying to live through the storm.

  As I stared out over the courthouse square, which was completely entombed in ice, that inner voice of wisdom we all possess, spoke to me quietly. “You know you have to go to the Middle Realm.”

  Even if it meant losing the person I loved the most, I couldn’t just let the rest of the world literally freeze to death. Now, as we neared the end of the second full day, the TV newscasters no longer sounded excited to be covering a big story. There was fear in their voices. Conditions were so serious, even the federal emergency teams were having trouble getting into the state.

  Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear Tori come up beside me. The same gentle glow of warming magic engulfed her form.

  “Can you believe this?” she asked in a hushed voice. “I half expect to see a wooly mammoth come walking around the corner.”

  “How’s it going down there?”

  “We’re striking out, Jinksy,” she said honestly. “You know it already, but I might as well be the one to say it. You have to use the door in the fairy mound if you’re going to do this thing.”

  “I know,” I said, still staring out the window.

  She let a couple of heartbeats pass and then said softly, “Jinx, look at me.”

  When I faced her, my tears started to fall. “I believe in you,” she said. “You’ll get through the Moss Forest and into the Middle Realm. Nothing bad will happen.”

  “And if I don’t?” I said, my voice thick and rough. “What if you’re the one I lose? Or Mom? Or Dad? Or your mother? It’s one thing when I have to risk my life. It’s different when I have to risk others.”

  “I get that, but what about their lives?” Tori asked, gesturing toward the window. “Everyone out there is an innocent bystander in this whole mess. They think it’s climate change, or some secret Russian weapon, or God being ticked off. We know exactly who did this and if he kills the Mother Tree, whatever is next on the Chesterfield hit parade will be worse. You have to go, and before you even think about saying no, I’m going with you.”

  “Does that mean you’ll tell my mother?” I asked hopefully.

  “Uh, no,” Tori grinned. “I might be willing to die for you, but there’s not a chance in hell I’m facing Kelly with this news.”

  As it turned out, we were both spared facing the maternal wrath, thanks to an unexpected mirror call — from the In Between.

  28

  Back downstairs, we found the research brigade camped out at various spots around the lair. Darby hummed cheerfully to himself as he set the supper table. By the fire, Greer, and Festus, once again on good terms, periodically exchanged chess moves when they looked up from the ancient tomes they each were examining.

  I was amused to see Festus, who was sitting on the hearth, lick his paw before he turned the page of the book lying in front of him. Then he extended a single claw and used it as a pointer while he scanned the lines of calligraphic type. I wasn’t used to seeing the old scoundrel look so scholarly.

  Beau and Glory worked together at the rolltop desk. Someone had carried Glory’s iPod Touch down from Graceland East. The device sat propped up against an ink bottle playing Viva Las Vegas on the screen. From time to time, the movie caught Glory’s attention. As she watched, she silently mouthed the lines along with the cast. Clearly, she didn’t need sound to keep up with her idol, the King.

  The Colonel had removed his jacket and draped it over the back of the desk chair. His rolled up sleeves and ink-stained fingers testified to his intense concentration. Beau liked most of the amenities of the 21st century, but nothing would induce him to give up his fountain pen.

  While Tori and I paused on the landing, surveying the scene below, Dad came walking back from the comfort station with all six dogs at his heels. Visibly excited about something, he almost grabbed Mom as she came out of their temporary bedroom pulling on a heavier sweater.

  “Kelly!” he said exuberantly. “They poop, and it just disappears. Darby says he can give us the same set up at the apartment. Isn’t that great, honey?!”

  You have to remember that as a fisherman’s wife, my mother is used to responding enthusiastically to statements she doesn’t care about in the slightest. She murmured something like, “That’s wonderful, Jeff,” but then the full import of what he’d said sunk in.

  “The poop disappeared?” she said. “There was nothing left behind?”

  For the record, there are virtually no circumstances under which a girl is going to be thrilled to hear her parents having a poop discussion, but this qualified as an exception. The relieved expression on Mom’s face gave me hope that my parents’ ongoing canine housing argument might be headed for a possible resolution.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” I asked Tori.

  “What?” she grinned. “The disappearing poop?”

  Bumping her good-naturedly, I said, “Wise ass. Yes, the poop, but I meant this.” I waved my hand over the scene below. “Right in the middle of this massive catastrophe, everything down there seems perfectly normal.”

  “That’s what people do when they want to survive, Jinksy,” she said. “They adapt.”

  She was right. Even in circumstances not of our choosing, we had instantly built a new routine. Beau would probably say something about how that proved the “cohesiveness of our troop,” and granted; we were safe and comfortable in the fairy mound. But while those factors certainly helped, living underground while the world froze over our heads wouldn’t have been our first choice. Yet there we all were, doing it — and appearing to do it well.

  “We need t
o get back to work,” Tori said. “Mom’s in the stacks looking at alchemical texts on bilocation. I’m going to go see how she’s doing.”

  “Okay,” I said, as we descended the last few steps, “but it looks like Darby’s about to put supper on the table.”

  “When have I ever willingly missed a meal?” Tori asked, looking at me like I’d taken leave of my senses. “We’ll be right back.”

  As she headed off between the rows of high shelves, I walked over to Chase who was standing near my magical target range. He had his cell phone up to his ear. As I approached, he held up the index finger on his free hand to indicate I should wait.

  “No, John,” he said, “I promise, we’re fine. Fiona outfitted the store with an emergency generator several years ago. Jinx and Tori have been nice enough to let me and my cat come over here. We have plenty of food and water. You let me know if you need me to pitch in and help your deputies.”

  As he signed off the call, I said, “Sheriff Johnson?”

  “Yes,” Chase said. “Everyone in town is accounted for. No fatalities yet and the Ionescus have things running smoothly over at the shelter. To quote John, ‘Strange folks, those I-on-es-cues, but not nearly as uppity as I always figured.’”

  Although the Ionescus are certainly “domesticated” as Strigoi go, they’ve still kept to themselves for decades to hold any possible temptation to feed on humans at bay. Not surprisingly, that’s made them the subject of all kinds of wild rumors around town.

  “How does it look up there?” Chase asked.

  So, someone other than Tori had noticed I was gone.

  “Frozen solid,” I said. “The wind’s blowing hard, but it’s not snowing right now. What are the news reports saying?”

  “The same,” Chase replied. “Lots of speculation about the freak nature of the storm. The newscasters are trotting out everyone from climate change experts to preachers trying to explain the whole thing.”