Lily decided not to pursue that line of questioning. Sebastian’s resentful look was foreboding, and she’d never been good at personal matters anyway.
“Okay, so you ‘acquired’ it from your brother,” she prompted.
Sebastian grinned. “You could say that. I couldn’t stand his Mr. Perfect act anymore, so I took it to prove he’s not as good as he thinks he is.”
That brought a disapproving frown to Lily’s face. “Stealing is wrong, even from your own brother.”
“Well, I wasn’t planning on keeping it, so it’s more like borrowing. I was going to wait a while, then show him he’d been missing it the whole time and give it back.”
“What? Has he not noticed you took it yet?” she asked. “Isn’t he a wizard?”
Sebastian threw back his head and laughed. “Of course he is. I told you, he’s the perfect one. But he doesn’t use magic. My family was not, ah…a normal wizard family. Had some pretty weird ideas about magic. Power corrupts, magic is power, therefore…you get the picture. As for the artifact, he just stuffed it in a safe and forgot about it.”
“So where did your brother get this artifact?” Lily asked. “And you still haven’t told me what it is.”
Sebastian waved a hand. “I’ll get there. It was willed to him by our parents.”
“Oh? Then how did he get it if…I mean…your parents…” she faltered, suddenly realizing the implication of his words.
Sebastian shrugged in an attempt to seem casual, but the sudden stiffness in his shoulders and discomfort in his voice was obvious. “They died when I was a teenager. Car wreck. Freddie was busy getting his degree, so Aunt B. took me in till I was legal.”
Lily looked at the ground, embarrassed. “I’m sorry…I didn’t know.” She felt terrible. It was hard, not knowing who her father was, but at least she had parents. Sebastian had no one. She felt a little closer to him in that moment, both of them being estranged from their families, though for different reasons. She wondered how deep he’d had to bury that loss to act as cheerful and carefree as he did all the time.
They walked in silence for a while.
“So, if Madam B. helped raise you, why did she disown you?” Lily couldn’t help asking.
Sebastian snorted. “That old bat has a superiority complex a mile wide. Freddie was perfect. He was a wizard, even if he did have silly notions about magic. But me, I had nothing. Since I couldn’t be who she wanted me to be, I decided to be someone I wanted to be, someone useful. So I studied witchcraft on my own. It’s all about give and take, favors, who and what you know. I get more respect from the beings I deal with than I ever got from her.”
“Oh,” Lily said, her voice small. So, Sebastian was part of a dying wizard line. That explained why Madam Barrington had always refused to discuss it. She itched to know more, but they were getting distracted from the point.
“So…Freddie was willed the artifact, and you took it. What happened next?”
“Nothing, really,” Sebastian said, a bit embarrassed. “I mean, I fiddled with it some to see if I could get it to work. I thought maybe…well, if it worked, then maybe…the night my parents died…but I guess it only works for wizards. It’s supposed to be this ancient time-control device. My family has kept it for generations, to keep it safe from people who would abuse it. At least that’s what Father said. The whole idea is pretty silly if you ask me. If it’s so dangerous, why not destroy it? I guess I never took him seriously.”
He grew quiet, and Lily gave him space. The sidewalk they’d been on ended and they switched to walking on the shoulder of the road to avoid wading through knee-high grass. The air thrummed with the buzz of grasshoppers in the fields to either side, and the afternoon sun beat down on them, causing sweat to bead on her forehead.
“Anyway,” Sebastian finally continued, “when they died, it passed to Freddie. It came with a letter that carried on and on about the dangers of magic, and how we had to guard the family’s heritage without getting involved in it.”
“Sounds like my Mom,” Lily muttered, “though she didn’t even give me the courtesy of a choice. She just cut me off from my past.”
Sebastian shot her a sympathetic look. “I’m sure she meant it for the best. I’m no expert, but, from what I’ve picked up, wizard families have their fair share of crazies. Using magic can be dangerous.”
Lily snorted, thinking of Annabelle, but didn’t continue the topic. “So, how did the artifact end up here?”
A scowl appeared on Sebastian’s face, and he kicked a rock on the road in an irritated gesture. It skittered off into the grass. “It’s here because of a sorry thief named Cory. We were friends in high school. He’s a decent enough guy, at least he used to be. But after high school he got addicted to gambling and wracked up a lot of debt. I tried to help him out. Well, more like I dragged him out of bars and kept bigger guys from beating the snot out of him. A couple weeks back—well, it could’ve been longer, this place messes with my sense of time—he showed up on my doorstep, plastered, and I took him in for the night. I’d planned to give him a bit of money and send him on his way the next day. But the scumbag was faking it and robbed me blind in the night. He made off with everything he could carry, including the artifact. He probably thought it looked valuable enough to pawn.
“I’ve been searching for him since, only recently gotten a lead on him. He’s been hiding out in Pitts the whole time, that’s why I couldn’t find him in Atlanta. Well, that and the little time-looping fiasco you’re here to help me fix. I got pulled in by accident, and once I was inside I couldn’t get out. Plus, I didn’t have the tools I needed to track him down.”
Sebastian jiggled the pizza box significantly, and a wave of moldy pizza smell, magnified by the hot sun, wafted in Lily’s direction. She coughed and moved upwind.
“Why the heck do you need nasty pizza to track down a thief?”
“You’ll see,” Sebastian said, grinning once more, probably in a better mood now that he was close to finding his quarry.
Lily wasn’t done yet, however. “So what is this artifact? Are you sure it’s what’s causing all this?”
He shrugged. “I’ve no idea whether it can do diddly-squat, but what else could be to blame? You think there’s a wizard running around casting time-looping spells?”
“No.” Lily shook her head. “To even try would be insane.”
“I thought all wizards were insane.” Sebastian grinned.
She ignored his jibe. “What does it look like?”
“Well, it’s a round cylinder about as long as my hand and wide as a silver dollar. It’s made up of rotating dials, kind of like you see on a combination lock. The dials are all inscribed with tiny symbols, like the kind you use. I don’t know what it’s made of, but it feels like clay.”
“Hmm…I guess it could be genuine,” Lily mused. “What’s its history?”
“Darned if I know. Father only mentioned it once, before Freddie left for college. That was before they…well you know. He called it a lu…luglam…lugnam—”
“Lugal-nam?” Lily asked, feeling a twinge of foreboding as she spoke the words. She’d heard them somewhere before, possibly even read them in her eduba. Unfortunately, she’d left her carpetbag full of supplies—including the eduba—in her car, not anticipating being stuck in a time loop.
“Yeah! That was it,” Sebastian said. “I was, er, eavesdropping and heard him explaining how it would one day be Freddie’s duty to keep it safe, make sure no one ever used it.”
“So much for that,” Lily said, rolling her eyes.
“Hey!” Sebastian protested, “I kept it secret and safe. It’s not my fault I got robbed.”
She snorted. “Like you robbed Freddie? At least he kept it locked up. Where did you keep it, in your sock drawer?”
“Well…” he scuffed the ground with his foot.
“You kept it in your sock drawer?” Lily asked, incredulous. “I was joking! Of all the idiotic, infantile—”
“Okay, okay!” Sebastian cut her off. “I messed up, I get it. Now will you please just help me find it and fix this mess?”
She heaved a great sigh. Sometimes Sebastian drove her to the edge of sanity. She wasn’t sure yet, but, if this device was what she thought it was, they were in bigger trouble than even she had feared.
“It’s not like I have a choice, at this point,” she said, motioning to the fields and buzzing insects around her. “But why haven’t you tried leaving? Where’s your car? More important, where’s mine?”
“Not here anymore. It’s back in real time, whereas we’re stuck in a time loop. And I have tried leaving. No matter how far I walk, I always end up back where I started. No idea how it works. I never turn around or reach a wall. It’s like one of those silly strips of paper you twist and tape together, what are they called?”
“A Möbius strip?” Lily asked.
“Yeah, one of those. By my calculations, I’ve been here a week, real-time, trying to figure this out. It’s pretty annoying living the same span of time over and over.”
Lily’s head felt fit to burst, trying to wrap her mind around the situation and Sebastian’s words. The heat didn’t help. Despite growing up in the Alabama backwaters, she’d never adapted to the heat and humidity. She preferred the cool, indoor refuge of her library, along with the relaxing solitude it offered.
“Alright, so let’s say your theory is correct. Why isn’t there a panic? Why isn’t everybody running around, trying to escape?”
“Probably because no one here is any the wiser. It must be part of whatever magic is controlling this train wreck.”
“What do you mean?” Lily asked, confused.
“I made a bargain with a fae once,” he said, nonchalant. “She made it so magic can’t mess with my head. If I remember the loop but no one else does, it must be magic causing them to forget.”
“Is that so?” she asked, incredulous. According to legend, fae could see through illusions and were immune to things like glamour and mind control. But even if they were still around and if the legends were true, what would convince one to share such power, and with a mere human, no less?
“So what did you trade for it?” Lily joked, “a bit of your soul?”
“Are you crazy?” Sebastian sounded genuinely shocked. “People don’t know enough about their souls to understand what pieces to trade. If you just say ‘take a piece of my soul,’ willy-nilly, they’ll take the most important part.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again, noticing as she did how deftly he’d avoided answering her question. How Sebastian remembered the time loop was, at the moment, moot. Right now she needed to focus on stopping it. There would be time to question his tall tales later.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked wearily, wiping her sweaty forehead on her t-shirt sleeve.
“Well, now that I have this,” he held up the pizza box, “we can find Cory. Once we find Cory and figure out what he did with the lugalana…the luglanana…oh forget it, the artifact, we can get our hands on it, and stop whoever keeps restarting the loop.”
“Remind me again, how is moldy pizza going to help us find Cory?”
“Ah, an excellent question. Watch, and prepare to be impressed.” Sebastian winked at her, veering off the road toward a nearby copse of trees. Lily eyed the tall grass with distaste, knowing well that chiggers and ticks hid therein. At least she’d had enough foresight to wear jeans and tennis shoes. She’d learned the hard way that her normal attire of heels, pencil skirt, and blouse were woefully inadequate when involved in one of Sebastian’s adventures. With a sigh, she plunged into the grass after her intrepid friend.
* * *
Sebastian led her to a small spring which bubbled out of the ground within the group of trees. Its tiny flow created a soggy band of turf which meandered out into the field. Verdant weeds sprouted from the almost mini-swamp, and the humid air was ripe with the smell of mud and decaying vegetation.
“Perfect! This is just the spot,” Sebastian said, looking around in satisfaction while Lily tried to find somewhere dry to stand.
“Now what?” she asked, having failed to find said dry spot and resigned herself to muddy sneakers.
“Now you sit back and watch a master at work,” Sebastian said, twirling the box of pizza with a dramatic flourish. He opened the top and started waving it about, no doubt in an effort to distribute its smell over the surrounding grasses. Lily wrinkled her nose and squished away to stand upwind of his flailing display.
“Elwa Grimoli’un,” he said to empty air, startling Lily with his use of some sort of foreign language. Not Enkinim, for sure. Another question to add to her list. “Come out, come out, you old coot,” he continued in a conversational tone, “I know you’re around somewhere. You can smell my aged pizza a realm away. Show your ugly face.”
He continued this for another minute, and Lily wondered if he’d cracked in the heat. But then the grass around them started rustling, as if disturbed by a raccoon-sized animal. A line of swishing grass circled them, moving quickly. Nervous, Lily inched closer to Sebastian, bad smell forgotten. But before she had a chance to consider what spell to ready in case they were attacked, a gray, muddy ball of flesh leapt out of the weeds, aiming right for Sebastian’s box of pizza.
Sebastian must have been expecting it, because he jerked the box up deftly, and the little muddy thing disappeared back into the grass.
“Ah ah ah!” he said. “You know the rules, you cretin. A service for a service. Don’t be shy, the good-looking wizard is with me.”
Lily glared at him and so missed seeing the whatever-it-was emerge from the grass. Thus, when she looked back down, she screamed and stumbled back in shock at finding it at her feet, sniffing her shoes.
“What in the—”
“Calm down, Lil, he’s harmless. He doesn’t eat shoes, or girls, for that matter. Some do, mind you. But he doesn’t. Grimmold, meet Lily. Lily, Grimmold. We go way back, me and ol’ Grim. Don’t we, buddy?”
It…he…the thing ignored Sebastian, staring up at her with beady little eyes, its squashed-in face an ugly mass of wrinkles and mud. Then it scampered away, moving incredibly fast for such a squat, round thing, and clambered up a tree to perch on a limb, now eye-to-eye with Sebastian. She stared, needing to look away and look back in an attempt to focus because there was shimmering around the creature that made it hard to discern his exact features. They shifted, as if flickering between two versions of himself.
“Humph. She smell bad,” it croaked.
“Excuse me? I smell bad?” Lily was outraged.
Sebastian laughed. “Don’t get your knickers in a knot. He has a nose like a bloodhound on steroids, and he’s highly allergic to soap or cleaning fluid of any kind. He probably smells whatever soap you used to shower this morning.”
She crossed her arms, still miffed. “What is it…he?”
The creature glowered at her as Sebastian replied. “He’s a mold fae. They eat decaying things, and Grimmold has quite a taste for moldy pizza. Like all fae, he has a…unique way of getting around, and with his nose he’s absolutely fantastic at finding things. So, I bring him specially-aged pizza, and he finds what I want found. Why do you think I have all those pizza boxes around all the time?”
Lily stared in amazement at the creature. Here, right in front of her, was a real, live fae. She’d read about them. She’d known they existed, in theory. But she’d never really believed it, or imagined meeting one. And in Pitts, Georgia, no less.
“Where did…how did…you find a fae?” Lily asked.
“Hey, don’t sound so shocked. I may not be a wizard, but I’m not exactly your average mundane, either. My parents didn’t want us involved in their world—your world. But that didn’t stop me. I’ve had, ah…dealings with the fae. They gave me this.” He indicated the triangular stone around his neck that Lily had always wondered about.
“What is it?” she asked, too distracted to
point out that Sebastian had not, in fact, answered her original question.
“It’s a seeing stone, the only way non-fae can see through fae glamour. Here, take a look.”
He took the stone from around his neck and handed it to her. Holding it up to her eye, she peered through the hole in the center at the mold fae. She wasn’t sure what she should be seeing, because now he looked almost exactly the same, except without the shimmering. Strangely, however, when she pulled the stone away, everything stayed the same. The shimmering was gone. She handed it back to Sebastian.
“I don’t know if it worked. He looks the same, just without the shimmering.”
Sebastian laughed. “Well, mold fae aren’t very self-conscious about their looks. They’re ugly and don’t care one bit. So they don’t really use glamour except to hide. The shimmering, though…” He trailed off, looking at her strangely.
“Look, we can puzzle over fae later. Right now we have a job to do.”
“Right, yeah. A job,” he said slowly, mind obviously elsewhere.
“Me leaving,” Grimmold grunted from his branch, turning to climb down the tree. He must have been as tired of waiting as Lily was.
“No, no! Hold up, now. I’ve got something for you.”
He took a piece of pizza out of the box and threw it at the fae. In a flash, the creature reached out with arms as long as its body and snatched the piece out of the air, shoving it into his wide mouth. As the fae chewed, Lily stared at Sebastian in confusion. When he threw the pizza, she thought she’d caught a glimpse of a symbol on his hand out of the corner of her eye. Yet when she looked straight at him, it was gone. She looked away, to see if it became visible to indirect sight, but all she could see was that strange shimmering again out of the corner of her eye.
“A gift,” Sebastian was saying, oblivious of Lily’s stare as he focused on Grimmold, “to apologize for the soap. She didn’t know.”
Grimmold grunted in laughter, licking his fingers one by one. “Pizza good. What you need? Me want more.”
“Ah yes, well,” Sebastian juggled the pizza box to his other hand, reaching into his back pocket and pulling forth a ziplock bag containing a much-wrinkled sock. He extracted the sock and dangled it in front of Grimmold’s nose.
Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Beginnings Page 12
