“Mr. Townsend, I believe you are no ordinary Librarian.”
“Let me assure you that they were all ruffians of the lowest caliber. You could have taken them easily yourself.”
“I think that I need more of an explanation of who you really are before I’ll take you in as a houseguest.”
He nodded curtly once in understanding, but was still not forthcoming.
Calidum chose just then to jump out of the fog. “There you are,” I told him. “Where have you been? You’ve missed all the fun.” Obviously I had too however.
“You should come and take a look at what I’ve found,” Calidum told us.
I looked up at Mr. Townsend and asked, “Are you up for some off road investigating?”
“I am.”
“Calidum, will you be able to get us back to the path afterwards?” I asked.
Calidum looked at me quizzically, weighing my words, but then Mr. Townsend answered, “I will.” I looked at him skeptically. Calidum didn’t wait for us to settle things as he slunk off the path. I checked my respirator and then followed him into the red mists, with Colin not far behind me.
First, we passed by the body of the highwayman with the bow and a quiver full of arrows. He would have shot us full of them, if it had not been for Mr. Townsend, but how exactly did they know who he was?
“How did those men know you?” I asked.
“I have no idea how they could have seen us through this muck, and I definitely haven’t a clue as to who they were,” he said sincerely.
I looked at the body more closely and saw that his neck had been crushed. I eyed Mr. Townsend more carefully. There was definitely something off with him. How I wished my eye could see into the past. What kinds of skills were they teaching librarians these days?
Mr. Townsend said nothing as I stared him down. Ultimately, it was his business, and one of the first lessons taught along the bayous was to mind your own business.
Calidum then took off, headed for deeper woods and darker enigmas. “Calidum must have more to show us,” I said. He curtly nodded his head and then went to follow him.
We moved on and the forest was mournfully quiet. It had the occasional wildlife, but if the animals were intelligent, they fled as soon as their business had concluded or they died a slow death.
The subterranean creepy-crawlies were another matter entirely. Besides the worms, there were dirt fleas that were the length of my thumb. The way they survived was by lying dormant most of the time, just below the leaf litter, and only popping up to feed a once a year. It usually took two people to remove them if you were unlucky enough to be bitten by one, since their jaws were spring hinged. If you didn’t get them removed within fifteen minutes, they would remove themselves, and that was where the real problem started. If you were lucky, they would only take the hunk of muscle that they had been attached to, and if you were unlucky, it would be a shard of bone too. They did this in addition to taking a half pint of blood from you as well.
We walked on for about five more minutes, and then there was a darkening of shadows ahead of us. As we cautiously approached it, the shadow resolved itself into something that had once been human; however, it was obviously not anymore. It had reptilian skin, and his mouth had elongated a little. Colin stooped down and opened one of its eyes. It was yellow and had a slit for a pupil, just as an alligator had. I was halfway tempted to flip him over just to see if he had a tail, but judging by the general state of rot his body was in, I thought better of it.
He must have been dead for several days, since gutworm maggots writhed within his torso. They were trying valiantly to survive the fungal gases. Sensing living flesh, slews of them started coming out of the body and began squirming their way to us, in hopes of completing its life cycle within a living host. I took a step or two away from them.
“Come along. This is not what I wanted you to see,” Calidum said in its native language. I frowned at the prospect that there was more than this ahead of us.
I walked past Mr. Townshend, following behind the loping demon.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. Is it from Neverland?” he asked.
“Highly unlikely.”
“What was it like there?”
“A lot like here, but the evil people were stronger and meaner than they are here.”
“How did you survive it?”
“I was not unaffected, even though I survived.”
“Is that how your eye changed?” he asked more with wonder in his voice than condemnation.
“That actually happened off the coasts of Britannia,” I said bitterly as I climbed over a fallen log.
He grabbed my arm, and I turned back to stare at where he had grasped me. Then I allowed my glare to travel up his arm to his face. Blood had speckled his lenses, and his stare was intense. Once he had my complete attention, he said with a hidden ferocity, “I want you to know that it doesn’t bother me.”
“That may not, but this might,” Calidum told us. I pulled my arm from Mr. Townsend’s grasp and tried to see what Calidum was looking at, although my mind kept replaying Mr. Townsend’s words in my mind.
Another ominous shadow laid just out of view. I approached it and when it revealed itself, I wasn’t certain what I was seeing. It seemed as if it was the worst case of elephantiasis on Siamese twins I had ever seen. To add insult to injury, the skin had turned purple, like everything was bruised from the inside out. I did not know what to make of it. This sort of aberration was not illustrated in any of the Summoner classification books I had studied.
“This is most unnatural,” Mr. Townsend said.
“Demon’s work,” Calidum said.
“How so?”
“Smells bad.”
“Look here Miss Beckenbauer, these things are in your own backyard. Is this enough for you to care now?” Mr. Townsend asked.
“Let’s get out of this place, and then we can talk about it at the lake house.”
“After I take a few samples.” He bent down and pulled a small collection kit from an inside pocket of his coat.
I walked up to it, and Mr. Townsend struck out an arm and nudged me away. “Stay away. We’re not sure how the disease or demons are passed to humans.”
“What about you?” I asked, but backed up all the same.
“Don’t worry about me. I have some natural immunity from it.”
“How is that so?”
“It is an inherited immunity. It was one of the reasons I was chosen for this assignment,” he replied absently as he finished collecting the specimen. He didn’t really answer my question, but I let it go. We all had secrets to keep.
Calidum came over and sniffed him. Mr. Townsend clearly wasn’t amused, but did I really just hear him growl?
Calidum backed off and then jumped up onto my shoulders. I asked him in his tongue, “What do you make of him?”
“Am I not to not speak the Queen’s speech any longer?”
Since I was not sticking my tongue out at anyone anymore, I rolled my eyes and said, “Not this time.”
“Very well,” he said in his native language. “He will protect you well.”
“From what?”
“People.”
“Isn’t Mr. Townsend a person?” I asked in demon tongue.
“Not like the others,” he whispered.
“All right, let’s leave this gods forsaken place,” Mr. Townsend told us.
“Calidum, can you lead us back to the trail now?” I asked in English.
“Yes Mistress,” he returned in English, even though he knew I was not fond of the word mistress.
We followed him back to the trail, and since our horses were gone, we trudged along the path hoping it would end sooner rather than later. He insisted on taking the lead again, and I followed behind him. From this vantage point, I was able to observe his strong frame that stalked more than walked. His face was always so congenial, but from behind, his slightly stooped posture was all threat.
&nbs
p; After about fifteen minutes of hiking, I said, “Mr. Townsend, it just occurred to me that you haven’t shown me any papers with your credentials on them. How do I know that you are who you say you are? How do I know that I am not leading the devil into my home?”
He had been leading us, but fell back to walk side by side with me when he replied, “The documents are with my horse. I will gladly show them to you when we are free of the forest. My horse should be there waiting for us.
“As for inviting the devil into your home, I may be a devil, but not one that would hurt you. That is all I will say on the subject.”
“But what if simply being with you, endangers me. It certainly seemed as if those men were gunning for you.”
“How so?”
“They knew you by name.”
“You were also attacked on the way to Convent,” Calidum volunteered.
“You were?” Mr. Townsend asked.
“Unrelated. They were simply trying to rob me. Besides, no one knows for certain that I have come back at all, since I didn’t attend my hero’s welcome.”
“Right,” he said in a manner that in no way indicated that he agreed with me.
Calidum loped ahead, leaving us alone. Traitor.
“What was your position at the Congressional Library?” I blurted out. I reminisced back to when I used to be good at parlor talk, but lately I was too tired for it these days. I just wanted to go to my lake house and try to reach my Grandfather. Why was he making this so difficult for me?
“I was in charge of the Archaic Summoner’s Library.”
“You seem rather young to be in charge of such a dangerous wealth of knowledge,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, because he really had piqued my interest now.
“Do I?”
“Aren’t you? You’ve never left D.C. before now. Here I am twenty-four, and I’ve been across the sea and to other worlds.”
He didn’t say anything to my verbal assault.
I calmed myself down and asked, “Who is in charge of it now that you are here?”
“They’ve shut it down.”
“So no one can look at the books while you are here with me.”
“No one can look at the books most of the time. They usually don’t have the prerequisite clearance,” he informed me. I’ve never used the Congressional Library, since my Grandfather had amassed our own little library to use, but now I wondered what kind of books they might house there.
“How do you get clearance?” I asked.
“You have to be rated nine or higher for my division, and no, there aren’t many besides yourself in the states that could use it. Being that it was illegal for Summoner’s to practice their craft until very recently, it severely cut the applicant pool. Mainly it’s been researchers for textbooks, but it definitely helps if you have a post graduate degree or were in pursuit of one.”
“So essentially no one ever comes to check one out?”
“No one can ever check one out, but you could read it while you sat in a specially designed room under my direct supervision.”
“How many visitors do you average a month?” I asked.
“I am lucky to see a few a year. It’s almost as if I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet you.”
I grimaced at that. I was not a celebrity and he was not a fawning puppy. First things first. “Well, when we get out of the forest, you can show me your papers, and then you can tell me more about this problem that apparently only I can remedy. I’m considering helping you.” He didn’t need to know that I had already made up my mind to help. He was correct; this mess was in my own backyard and regardless of how close I was with my family, which was not very much at all, I was determined to not lose their lives to something that I could have prevented.
Calidum came bounding back to us, “You’re almost out of the forest, but you’re not going to like what you see when you see the house.”
Perfect. Could this trip get any worse?
Chapter 5
The Lake House
Rule number eight: Never read spells in the dark.
When we got out of the forest, we found Tenebris waiting for us, but my horse was still missing. I hoped that it would return to the house by the time Brockhum Company came to collect her; otherwise, I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay them. At least I had my athames and pistol on me.
Calidum had already headed down the path to the house at the bottom of the hill, situated next to Lake Verret. My closest neighbor was four miles away, most of the way to Pierre. There were lots of bayous and rivers to cross if you didn’t go through the forest, but that was why everyone who lived near the water also had a boat. It was usually much easier to simply cross the lake, than to go around it.
Mr. Townsend mounted his horse, and then reached down for me. I took his arm and he swung me up in front of him. “Is it down there?” he asked. Old live oaks and magnolias still blocked our direct view of the house.
“Yes,” I said, feeling a knot of worry settle in my stomach.
He wrapped a strong and warm arm around me and then we trotted down the hill. Once the trees thinned out, the house came into view. Some of my curly dark hair had come loose of its bun, but I left it as it was, since my attention was riveted on the lake house.
Much of the house’s contents had been thrown out onto the front lawn. Rain had soaked the furniture through, and much of the communication room’s contents had been ripped out and sunken into the softened ground, their electronics corroded and useless. I did not see the ticker machine, so I remained hopeful that at least it was still functional.
He jumped down and then helped me off. “I take it that this was not how you left it?” he asked as he released his hands from my waist.
“Hardly. Let’s get Tenebris settled first. He deserves that for being a good horse. With the bolt in her neck, my horse probably went to find a good place to die.”
“All right. Where is your pet demon?”
“Contrary to what I had told my mother, Calidum is not a pet. He is his own person to live and do as he pleases,” I said as I removed my resplug from my nose and then followed it up by removing his horse’s too.
“I’m sure that President Newton’s naysayers will be thrilled to find out a demon has free reign while under her watch,” he said as he took out his own resplug.
“I can turn around and head right back to London if anyone has a problem with him. I have a real home there, where I am appreciated. Also, a position on the Royal Council is being held for me.” Which was looking better and better.
“We both know you didn’t come back for President Newton. This has everything to do with your Grandfather, and I am prepared to help you with that, if you help us with this situation first.”
“Ashley Lancaster told you that, didn’t he?”
“No, it was Mrs. Grey. I spoke with her as soon as you boarded that dirigible bound for the Republic.” I felt the stab of betrayal.
Then he did the only thing that could have diffused the situation, he reached into his breast pocket of his coat and handed me a letter. I took it, and found that it was a wired letter from Wendy to me.
“This arrived this morning before we left.”
“Then why wasn’t it given to me?”
“It was in an envelope addressed to me.”
I examined it more closely and found that the wax seal from the Post Office where the wire had been received had not been broken. I hesitantly folded it up and shoved it into a pocket of my coat, to read for later. Then I took the harness from his hands, and led the horse over to the small barn that doubled as the house’s stable. Fortunately, the hay and oats were dry and undisturbed, unlike the assault on my house. We settled into an uneasy routine of preparing the stall and settling the horse for the night. It may have been spring, but the nights could still be chill.
Once that was done, I went out to look at the cottage. It was a quaint two story, Cape Cod style house with a half attic. It was only two bedrooms and tw
o bathrooms, which had always worked well for Grandfather and me. This way, no one could have an extended visit, if anyone bothered to visit us at all, and that suited Grandfather just fine.
Things weren’t always perfect between us. In fact, most of the time he seemed frustrated with me. Looking back at it now, I recognized that he was merely trying to prepare me for a self-sustaining future, so I wouldn’t waste the potential I had. He knew he wouldn’t be around forever, but neither of us knew how tragically his life would end on a winter’s night over a year ago. Grandfather shouldn’t have died that night; it should have been me.
I was jogged back into the present, when Calidum jumped out of the front door’s entryway. It had been ripped off of its hinges and was lying about six feet from the front porch.
“It is empty,” Calidum said.
“Thanks Calidum. Can you tell if there have been any other demons in it recently, beside yourself?”
“Define recently?”
“How about the last few days?” I asked.
“Yes and no.” This wasn’t working. He was just too much from a different world.
Mr. Townsend took up the torch and asked, “How do you mean yes and no?”
“Hmm. I think the smells were all muddled together in there. Sort of smelled human and sort of smelled like demon.”
“Like they occupied the same body?” he asked.
“Yes… maybe.”
“See, this proves that there have been possessions,” Mr. Townsend said directly to me.
“This proves nothing. Where are these possessed humans now?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but there might be a spell you could use to determine who summoned them. Would you use it if I gave it to you?” Normally, you could only determine that information if a summoning circle had been left behind, which was extremely rare. Something told me that we wouldn’t find any orphaned sigils for me to use.
“If this is one of your archaic spells Mr. Townsend, they usually call for archaic techniques. Ones that I have not been trained in that require ingredients that no longer exist or worse, a human sacrifice.”
“Will you at least try if I help you?” he asked, turning his tone more from domineering to entreating.
The Summoner's Sigil Page 6
