Mab waited, holding the athame. I looked in surprise at my empty hand.
“Guess I screwed that one up.” Need someone to state the obvious? Call me.
“Practice the incantation again. I’ll do it with you.”
We said the words, over and over. If we’d been in a school-room, I’d have been writing them five hundred times on the blackboard.
After the fiftieth repetition or so, Mab dropped out, motioning for me to continue. The words began to burn themselves into my brain. I could see them, written in a thin, fiery script. I could taste them. Parhau had a chalky, mineral-like flavor. Ireos was salty, Mantrigo sharp and bitter. After a few hundred repetitions, there was no way I could ever forget those words again.
Until I did. We practiced for another hour, and each time Mab came to my rescue. Hellforged would jump from my hand. Or, fearful of that cold, painful spark shooting up my arm, I’d switch hands too soon. Or else the words tripped me up—I’d leave one out or say them in the wrong order. Maybe I just wasn’t fluent in the language of Hell.
AFTER PRACTICE, I DRANK SOME NO-DREAMING TEA AND FELL back into bed. Sleeping was less like sinking into blackness than it was like wandering through a featureless gray fog. I woke up in the afternoon, feeling like I hadn’t slept at all and wondering if the tea was already losing its potency. Mab was right—time was slipping away from us.
I got up, dressed, and went downstairs. On the kitchen table was a note saying that Jenkins had driven Mab and Rose into Rhydgoch for some shopping. The village’s only retail establishments were a tiny grocer and a shop that sold tobacco, candy, and newspapers, so I wasn’t missing much. Still, I would’ve liked to pop into the Cross and Crow to make some phone calls. Telling Mab about Kane and Daniel made me want to hear their voices. I needed to update Daniel on what I’d learned about the Morfran. And I wanted to find out if the local packs had finally left Kane alone at his full-moon retreat.
Jenkins usually went into town for a couple of after-dinner pints at the pub, so I’d hitch a ride with him tonight. My black eyes were gone, and I was more or less presentable. In the meantime, I’d do what Mab’s note suggested: spend some time with The Book of Utter Darkness. Lucky me.
I opened the book to where I thought I’d left off last time, where I’d gotten a brief flash of meaning about the three tests. Almost immediately, the question I’d seen then appeared in my mind: And shall thrice-tested Victory be conquered?
No, I thought. She shall not. Not by Pryce, not by his stupid tests, and not by some bogus prophecy. Next question.
For several minutes, though, that question was all that the book offered. Then, like a blurry movie slowly coming into focus, two more sentences emerged. First, the carrion-eater consumes living flesh. Second, a battle in the world between the worlds.
I stared at the page until a headache clamped my temples, but that was all the book would give me. I closed the cover and sat back to think about what it might mean.
First, the carrion-eater consumes living flesh. Okay, in test number one the Morfran snacked on something other than its usual din-din—that would be me. But what did the next sentence mean? Second, a battle in the world between the worlds. I knew of only two worlds: the demon plane and the human plane, what Pryce called Uffern and the Ordinary. What was between them? My dreamscape? Difethwr used that as a bridge between the realms. But the Hellion said Uffern had expanded, claiming my dreamscape within its territory. The prophecy didn’t make sense.
Not that I expected crystal clarity, but still.
“Don’t try to figure it out,” Mab said when I asked her about it later. “If you grasp at a meaning, you’re likely to latch onto the wrong one. Just hold the sentence lightly in your mind, and be ready for anything.”
Great. So the book would drop me clues, but if I tried to understand them, I’d be wrong. And Pryce’s next attack could jump out at me any time, any place. Helpful, really helpful. I might as well choose random words from the dictionary and string them together into “prophecies.”
“Now, look at this,” Mab said, like she was addressing an overexcited toddler. “See what I’ve brought you from the village.”
She handed me a white tissue paper-wrapped rectangle. Inside was a plaque, about six inches wide by eight inches high. Hand painted, with flowers and a curlicued border and the words HOME SWEET HOME, it looked like something that would hang in a grandmother’s gingham-curtained kitchen, right next to the cross-stitch sampler of a girl in an oversized bonnet watering sunflowers.
“Um … thanks?”
“Look closely. What do you notice?”
Mostly that Juliet would choke herself laughing if I ever brought this piece of décor into our apartment. Then I realized what Mab was getting at.
“It’s made of slate.”
“Very good. I commissioned it from Mrs. Hughes; she’s a highly accomplished witch who lives in the village. The plaque is magically enhanced to hold many, many times the amount of Morfran a slate of this size could normally contain. Everything that looks like decoration, such as these yarrow flowers and the symbols in the border, serves a magical purpose.”
A portable Morfran prison. Cool.
“Well, everything but the inscription,” she went on. “Home Sweet Home was my idea.” The corners of her mouth twitched. It was the closest my aunt had ever come to making a joke.
“My other purchase,” she said, digging in her shopping bag, “was also custom-made. It’s something you’ll see an immediate use for, I think.” She handed me a leather ankle sheath. It had an extra strap at the top, which curved over the hilt and snapped into the main part of the sheath, holding the knife in place. Not very useful for a quick draw in a fight, but perfect for hanging on to an athame that tried to run away every chance it got.
“I want you to wear that sheath, with Hellforged inside, as often as possible. Keeping the athame close against your body will align it with your vibration.”
That sounded like a good idea. I strapped on the sheath and adjusted its buckles. Mab handed me Hellforged, and I slid it inside. I held the dagger in place while Mab snapped the top strap over it. The dagger pushed and struggled. If it could talk, it would have yelled, “Let me out of here!” It strained at the strap until I thought it would rip the snap from the leather.
Eventually, it settled down. The athame lay against my calf, shuddering from time to time, so that I never forgot it was there. It was probably every bit as aware of me. Either we’d drive each other crazy, or we’d finally figure out how to get along.
THAT EVENING, JENKINS AGREED TO DRIVE ME TO THE CROSS and Crow. Mab didn’t like the idea, though she didn’t try to keep me home. She gave me a second ankle sheath and a bronze-bladed knife. Then she asked about five times whether I had Hellforged and the slate, and she fussed over me in a way she hadn’t since … well, ever. By the time Jenkins and I made it out the door, it was past nine.
As we pulled into the car park, the Bentley’s headlights swept across the pub. Mr. Cadogan had made some improvements since the last time I’d been here. He’d put up a new pub sign and installed floodlights that lit up the building’s stone walls, giving it an Olde Worlde, slightly eerie look, the very picture of a haunted pub.
I got out and inspected the sign, illuminated with its own bright lights. Against a background of a gigantic full moon and darkened hills, an eagle-sized crow perched on a gallows, complete with dangling noose. The huge bird looked like it could swallow the next hanged man in a single gulp. I shuddered. This new sign was overdoing the spooky look. Instead of inviting people in to quench their thirst with a relaxing drink, the sign shouted Danger! Death! Run away!
Jenkins paused at the front door, holding it open. “Coming in?”
I hurried over, and we went inside. The ominous feel of the pub’s exterior disappeared as soon as I stepped into the warm, fire-lit barroom with its smells of wood smoke, varnish, and beer. Massive beams stretched across the low ceiling, lending solidit
y and coziness. In the huge fireplace, a roaring fire cast light and heat into the room. Hunting scenes and nineteenth-century prints of the village church decorated the whitewashed walls, along with crossed dueling pistols, old muskets, and an ancient military rifle, complete with bayonet. The wide-board floor slanted the way floors do in old buildings; so did the diamond-paned windows, framed by faded red velvet drapes. I passed a cluster of tables, making my way to the bar. Mr. Cadogan stood there, bald, red-faced, and jovial, talking to a customer. He looked up as I approached.
“Here’s our Vicky, then,” he said, grinning, like he’d been expecting me any minute. “We was wondering when we’d see you.” He noticed Jenkins behind me, took down a glass, and pulled a pint, filling the tilted glass with amber-colored beer. As he poured, he spoke to me in Welsh: “Noswaith dda, geneth. Sut wyt ti?” Good evening, lass. How are you?
“Hi, Mr. Cadogan,” I replied in English because he always teased me about my terrible Welsh pronunciation—in a good-natured way, but still. “I’m fine. I’d have come in sooner, but I’ve fallen asleep right after dinner most evenings. Still getting over my jet lag, I guess.”
“Oh, jet lag.” He handed the pint to Jenkins, who took a long drink and smacked his lips. “Terrible affliction. When the missus and me flew to the Costa del Sol, it took us nearly the whole blasted week to recover.”
Spain’s Costa del Sol was one time zone away, unlike the five I’d had to cross to get here from Boston, but I wasn’t going to challenge him to a jet-lag duel. “How’s Mrs. Cadogan?”
“She’s down in Cardiff, visiting Owen. Be back Monday.” He rubbed his hands. “Now, Vicky, what’re you havin’ to drink?”
“How about a glass of seltzer?”
“Pshaw. That’s no kind of homecoming drink. I’m givin’ it to you on the house, now, miss. Don’t insult me.” He reached for a glass large enough for me to bathe in and started filling it with lager.
“No, really, Mr. Cadogan. I could never drink all that.”
“I’ll take it,” said the farmer who stood at the bar.
“You’ll take it and you’ll pay for it.” The publican straightened the glass to put a head on the beer, then set it in front of the farmer.
“How ’bout a nice perry, then?” Mr. Cadogan asked me. Perry, a hard cider made from pears, was a local specialty. He found a half-pint glass and filled it with a liquid the color of ginger ale. “Half a perry for the lady.”
I took a small sip. It was fizzy, with a light sweetness followed by enough of a kick that you wouldn’t forget it had alcohol. Mr. Cadogan watched me anxiously as I tasted it. “Good,” I said. He mopped his brow with exaggerated relief and grinned again, then refilled his own glass with the same beer he’d pulled for Jenkins.
I looked around. Besides a young couple at a table by the fireplace and those of us at the bar, the pub was empty. “How’s business?” I asked. “I read about the Cross and Crow in a magazine article.”
“Oh, you saw ‘Britain’s Most Haunted Pubs,’ did you? Nice photos, I thought. Hasn’t brought in many customers, though. It’s the bleedin’ economy.”
“It’ll pick up in the spring, maybe,” Jenkins said. “Who comes to north Wales in the middle of winter?”
The three men stared gloomily into their beers.
“How is Spooky Lil, anyway?” I asked.
Mr. Cadogan frowned. “Don’t talk to me about our Lil. Had it up to here with her.” He held his hand a good half a foot above his head to show how fed up he was. “Weren’t enough for her to scare the tourists upstairs. No, she had to start carryin’ on in the pub, too. It’s all very well when she bangs around a bedstead and moans a bit, but she soured two kegs of beer!” He said it with so much righteous anger you’d think Lil had been gobbling up the village children. “An’ she throwed the missus’s pots and pans around the kitchen. Broke a rack of new pint glasses.”
Mr. Cadogan had been busy making up new stories to entertain those anticipated throngs of tourists.
“It all got to be too much,” he said, leaning forward. “So I had the cellar dug up and found her bones. Gave her a proper churchyard burial—cost me a fortune, it did. And how d’you think she thanked me for it?”
His eyes bugged as he waited for my reply.
“How?”
“She up and brought her old bones right back here! The very day after I buried her proper, I flipped on a light switch upstairs and blew a bloody fuse. So I went down to the cellar to change it, an’ I tripped over her bones in the dark, right where we’d dug ’em up. Nearly broke me poor old neck.”
He glanced at Jenkins and, without changing his indignant expression, snapped a quick wink. Jenkins smiled into his pint.
“So what does our Vicky think of all that, then, eh?”
“I think the tourists will be spellbound by your stories, Mr. Cadogan.”
He guffawed and slapped the bar. “She don’t believe me! Every word is true. I swear it on me dear old mum’s grave.”
“Your dear old mum doesn’t have a grave,” the farmer objected. “She’s living in a retirement home in Llangollen.”
“She does, too. She’s paying for a burial plot on the installment plan.”
“It’s bad luck for both of you if you swear on it,” the farmer insisted.
“Now, Tom, you know I’m just—”
Now would be a good time to make my calls. Pulling my phone card from my back pocket, I left them arguing and went over to the payphone, which hung on the wall by the rear door. As I lifted the handset from its cradle, Mr. Cadogan called out to me.
“That reminds me, Vicky. Anna—you haven’t met our Anna yet, she’s the new cleaner. She took a coupla messages for you. I found ’em mixed in with a stack of bills. Just came across ’em this afternoon, else I’d have sent ’em out your aunt’s way with the postman. Now,” he muttered, wiping his hands on his apron and scratching his bald head, “where’d I put those?”
He dug around behind the bar. Then, with a triumphant yelp, he held up two crumpled, beer-stained pieces of paper and waved them at me.
“Thanks,” I said, taking them. I looked around for a table where I could sit and read the messages. The pub wasn’t busy, but the layout of the old building made it impossible to find a seat where I could keep an eye on all the room’s entrances. I chose a bench along the rear wall under one of the windows. Cold air poured in through the skewed frame, but from here I had a good view of the room—unless something decided to crash through the window behind me. I sipped my perry and decided not to think about that.
I spread the crumpled message slips flat on the table. There was no date on either. The first one read For Vicky. Call Cain ASAP. An eight-digit number followed. Eight. Too long for a regular phone number but too short for the number plus an area code. And it didn’t bear any resemblance to either number I had for Kane—his cell phone or the D.C. law firm.
I put the message aside to read the other, which was from Daniel. Anna wrote, Vicky. Everything’s OK. Daniel. I took that to mean no more zombies had died. I hoped it also meant that all was well at Daniel’s job, that Hampson hadn’t found out he’d leaked information to Lynne Hong.
I wondered what else Kane and Daniel might have said. “Our Anna” wasn’t exactly proficient at taking messages.
I checked my watch. Ten past ten, ten past five Eastern time. Daniel was probably on his way home from work; I’d try Kane first. I looked at the slip again, wondering when Kane had called. I wished Anna had bothered to write down the date. ASAP. I hoped there wasn’t a problem. Knowing Kane, if it was anything truly urgent, he’d have called back a couple more times—or six or seven. Unless Anna had filed those messages under a pile of dirty bar towels.
As soon as I stood to make the call, I felt it. Something was wrong.
The room was quiet, but it wasn’t a normal silence. It was heavy, stifling, like someone had stuffed the room with cotton balls. Colors bled away. And I was alone. The publican, Jenkin
s, the farmer at the bar, the couple by the fireplace—they’d all vanished.
“Mr. Cadogan? Jenkins?” I could barely hear my own voice. It was like trying to call out underwater.
I slid Mab’s bronze-bladed knife from its sheath.
A spark shot from the fireplace and landed on the wood floor. Smoke snaked upward.
Gripping the knife, I went over to stamp out the still-glowing spark. Whatever was going on, there was no point in burning down the pub.
I crossed the room slowly, alert for any movement. There was too much smoke pouring out of that one little ember. It massed into a vertical cloud about five feet tall. Then the ember quit glowing, and the cloud began to form itself into a shape.
I stopped—watching, ready—my fingers tense on the knife’s grip.
The shape was human. It wore a dress with skirts that swept the floor. A woman. She was semi-transparent and looked way too much like an eighteenth-century barmaid. Dark, bruiselike spots marked her throat.
I stared at Spooky Lil herself, in the flesh. Or whatever it is ghosts are made of.
24
SPOOKY LIL’S EYES LOCKED ONTO ME. SHE LOOKED SAD, abandoned, lonely. It can’t be easy to wait hundreds of years in a cold grave for a lover who’s not coming. I tried to remember something—anything—about ghosts and how to deal with them. But I never believed in them, so I hadn’t paid much attention.
Ghosts don’t know they’re dead. That was true, wasn’t it? It was their whole problem, the reason they hang around long after their bodies have decayed. I thought of Mr. Cadogan’s story about bones in the cellar. If I showed Lil her bones, maybe she’d understand she was dead and pass peacefully into the next realm.
It was the only plan I had, so I decided to go for it. I set the knife down on a table and raised my hand in a calming gesture. “Lil, I mean you no harm. I want to help you move on to where you’re meant to be.” Mr. Cadogan would kill me for exorcising his moneymaking ghost.
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