Spellbound Statues, page 26
“Good. Rest for a moment while I light the candles.”
She closed her eyes and listened to Davyn moving around the bedroom, picking up candles from the debris on the floor and lighting them without matches. When she opened her eyes again after a few minutes, at least a dozen candles of different sizes and shapes spread their cheery light. It was twilight outside, and they brightened the room considerably. Even when the sun was down completely they would keep the room well-lit.
Reg felt the strength from the tiny flames. They would regenerate Davyn as well, and he could go home once he was finished and light a big fire in his fireplace. Or have Ember do it.
She missed Ember. He was too big for her little cottage, and he and Starlight were rivals, but Reg would have liked to see him again. Her eyes closed drowsily.
Davyn moved close to her. He spoke softly so that he would not startle her and hovered over her injured leg, pouring heat from his fire into it. Reg could tolerate a lot more than a non-firecaster would have been able to. That would help it to heal much faster. Maybe she would be better in the morning and not even need the additional doses of Lady Papillon’s medicine. Though it was so tasty, she would take it anyway.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
When Reg woke the next morning, she was still too tired and nauseated to get up and take care of herself and her disaster area of a cottage. Sarah was there to give her the rest of the fairy potion, and Reg went back to sleep.
She thought that Sarah had stayed the night. There had, perhaps, been several awakenings in the night when Sarah had seen to her needs and calmed any fears. But the memories were dark and murky and Reg could not have described them with any detail.
It was early afternoon before she started to waken enough to consider getting out of bed. But it wasn’t that much later than her usual waking time, so maybe she would be fine by the end of the day.
Reg slipped out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom. There were no piteous meows for attention and feeding from Starlight. Sarah had probably dealt with him earlier despite her scolding.
Reg took care of her immediate needs in the bathroom, splashed water on her face, and probed at the inflamed spot on her calf to evaluate whether it was better. It seemed less painful than it had been the day before. It was not any worse. And the nausea and exhaustion that she had been feeling the night before had definitely improved.
Reg exited the bathroom, blinking away sleep and heading directly for the coffee maker. A good jolt of caffeine to get her engine running, and she was sure she would be fine for the day. She would probably be able to meet her obligations to see the clients written into her planner and not have to reschedule any of them.
Her mug was already positioned under the nozzle of the coffee maker, so Reg hit the button to start the coffee brewing and rested against the counter with her eyes mostly closed to wait for it.
Starlight gave a quiet meow from the kitchen island in front of her. Reg opened her eyes to look at him seated on the counter.
“Well, I guess it’s time for the two of us to have a little chat,” Reg told him.
She looked around the cottage and saw that it was spick-and-span, everything back in its proper place, the broken knickknacks repaired or disposed of. Reg smothered a yawn.
“Wow, this place looks great. Much better than it did after your little temper tantrum. It probably took Sarah hours.”
“Not me,” Sarah said, arising from the chair where she had been sitting out of Reg’s sight.
“You didn’t make Davyn do it, did you? I could have done it, you know. If you’d just left it for me today.”
“No, I sent Davyn home to regenerate himself in case he needed to give you more strength and healing today.”
Reg frowned and shook her head, not getting it. Who had cleaned the house, then? Had Sarah called in a crew of brownies to do the job?
“If a cat can make such a mess, a cat can clean it up,” Sarah told her.
Reg looked with surprise at Starlight, who seemed very penitent and contrite now. He made a little trill, encouraging her to pet him, and Reg did so. She looked around the cottage. “How did he do all that? A cat can’t clean the house.”
“You know Starlight has other forms,” Sarah pointed out.
In several emergency situations in the past, Starlight had transformed into an ancient Egyptian warrior in order to help Reg. And while an ancient Egyptian warrior might not want to clean Sarah’s guest cottage, he was certainly capable of it. Reg scratched Starlight’s ears.
“So you had to clean up everything you had made a mess of?” she asked him in her good kitty voice. “It’s not quite so much fun to make a mess like that when you have to clean it up again afterward, is it?”
He rubbed against her until the coffee maker beeped that it was done. Reg had a few sips of her first cup of coffee, then checked the fridge to see what Starlight might like for his dinner.
While Reg didn’t feel like going out to run errands after her brush with death, Sarah insisted that they needed to take care of a few items as soon as possible to try to keep the balance and harmony in Black Sands. She promised that she would do the driving and Reg could just rest and relax in the car as much as she needed to. But Reg knew Sarah’s driving and there was no way she would be able to rest and relax in the car with a speed demon behind the wheel.
“I need to do something,” she told Sarah. “You’ve already done so much. I’ve just been sleeping for the last twenty-four hours.”
“Not quite twenty-four,” Sarah said, though she allowed that it had been a long time.
The first stop was Corvin’s house. Reg wasn’t sure whether they were going to check on how Corvin was recovering from his petrifaction or something else. The warlock had not been eager to leave the house or have visitors since the werewolf attack, and Reg didn’t imagine his spirits had been improved by the elemental attack.
Corvin looked none too pleased to find them on his doorstep. But at least he was able to answer his door this time and was not standing frozen in his study. It was hard for Reg to believe that she had been able to free him and Gideon from their petrifaction spells. The previous day felt like a dream. Looking back, it felt like she had watched it on TV, not that she had participated in it herself.
“Come in,” Corvin invited tersely, his teeth apparently clenched and his lips pressing tightly together after he spoke.
They stopped in the entrance hall, not following Corvin to the study or the living room. Corvin looked back, irritated.
“Do you mind if I check the kitchen?” Sarah asked, pointing in that direction.
Corvin shook his head. “Why?”
“I need to figure out what happened. What went wrong with the healing poultice I made for Reg while you were still indisposed.”
“What went wrong?” Corvin looked at Reg, eyebrows lifted.
Sarah held her head high, maintaining her dignity. It would be hard for her to admit her mistake, especially to Corvin.
“It would seem that… I somehow put aconite in the poultice instead of comfrey.”
Corvin rubbed the whiskers of his short beard. “Good heavens. Are you all right, Reg?”
Reg nodded. “It was pretty sore, and I didn’t feel good. But I had a good sleep, a healing potion, and an energy infusion from Davyn, so now… I’m doing a lot better.”
“You are still pale. You should stay at home for a few days after such a thing. Sarah, you really shouldn’t be dragging her around town.”
“There are issues that need to be dealt with,” Sarah told him, in much the same tone she had used the night before to scold Starlight for his shenanigans. “And as it seems that you are determined to closet yourself up here for the rest of your life and not accept responsibility for your part in it, someone else has had to step in.”
Corvin stared at her, blinking owlishly.
“Now, if I could just take a quick peek around your kitchen to see if I can figure out how things went so wrong with the poultice, that would ease my mind. At this point, I wonder if I am going senile! I don’t know how I could have made such a mistake, even in the urgency of the moment.”
Corvin stepped to the side and motioned toward the kitchen. Sarah strode forward with authority as if it were her own home and started going through the cupboards. She pulled out a glass jar filled with dried, crushed leaves and purple flowers. It looked like any of the many spice jars in Sarah’s kitchen, or Reg’s own for that matter, even though she didn’t cook.
Sarah held it up and tapped a label pasted to the side. It was an old, faded label that looked a hundred years old but was still recognizable as “Comfrey.”
“This is what I used,” she remembered. She unscrewed the lid and poked her nose inside, taking a deep sniff. She put it down on the counter with a bang. “Aconite.”
Corvin’s face grew gray. He approached Sarah and the cupboard in which the herb had been stored. He brushed his fingers along the edge of the shelf Sarah had pulled it from until he found a small slip of paper that he drew out and held between his fingers. A label that had apparently been glued over the original Comfrey label, but had dried out and come loose. He showed the label to Sarah.
Wolfsbane.
Reg stared at it. “Wolfsbane?” she repeated. “You said… aconite.”
“Like many herbs,” Sarah explained, “aconite goes by a lot of different names. Monkshood, wolfsbane, devil’s helmet, queen of poisons. This is what you were poisoned with. I am sorry I did not pay close enough attention to the fact that it was actually what it was labeled. We were in a hurry to get on with our mission. I saw purple flowers and didn’t even stop to smell them or examine them closely. I just measured out what I needed and dumped it into the poultice.”
“This is one of the reasons it is better to use fresh herbs,” Corvin said with a sigh. “They are much easier to identify when fresh. Sarah would never misidentify fresh monkshood as comfrey. But we can’t always have fresh herbs when we need them. I had just recently refilled the jar. The wolfsbane label was on it when I refilled it… but it must have flaked off after I put it back in the cupboard.”
“Why do you have wolfsbane?” Reg asked.
The back of her leg was throbbing. She was sure it was just because she was thinking about it and had been on her feet for a few minutes, and not because she was in such close proximity to the poison. Even though she felt much better than the day before, she knew she had not fully recovered.
Corvin looked at Reg; then his gaze slid over to Sarah. Sarah didn’t make any suggestions as to the use of wolfsbane in healing potions. Reg only knew of one use for wolfsbane. She wasn’t well-versed in herbology, so there might have been a dozen other legitimate uses.
“Do you not think,” Corvin said carefully, “that having been attacked by werewolves once, I would not protect myself against a future attack? Wolfsbane, as I’m sure you well know, is used to repel wolves.”
Reg nodded slowly. “So… you’re going to use it against October?”
“I am going to use it against any wolf who dares to hunt me. I may not be able to use my powers, but the curse does not stop me from using herbs or other physical means to stop them. I do not intend to be taken off guard or unable to defend myself against another attack.”
“But why would they attack you again? They’ve already prevented you from doing anything that might harm them.”
“I do not expect another to think the same way as I do. The wolves, October in particular, have shown themselves to be without honor. A sneak attack in the middle of a spring equinox ritual, their attempt not only to disrupt our ritual and prevent me from sharing powers with the coven, but to punish me when I had done nothing wrong, and to continue to punish me whenever I try to use my powers again, even with something as minor as sensing your mood.”
“You think there is going to be more trouble?”
“How could I know it?”
“But you’re not going to… hunt them.”
Corvin folded his arms across his chest. “I would be well within my rights to do so after they attacked me unprovoked and cursed me.”
Reg stared him down. Corvin looked away from her.
“I am not going to hunt him.”
Reg did not have powers like Damon Knight, who could immediately sense when someone was lying. But she had a feeling that, once more, Corvin was not telling her the full truth.
“Corvin has barely left his house since being attacked,” Sarah pointed out. “I hardly think that he will be out hunting werewolves. Well, Reg, you and I have more work to do. We will leave Corvin to his brooding while we continue to set things to rights.”
Corvin shifted, looking uncomfortable with Sarah’s evaluation. “What happened yesterday?” he asked. “Am I to assume… that you were able to bind the elementals that had escaped and to secure the ones who had not?”
“No, you should not assume that,” Sarah said acidly. “I never told you that was our course of action. The elementals have been released. You no longer hold any power over them and you will no longer be able to use the energy they produce to sate your hunger. They are free.”
His jaw dropped. “How could you do that? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? The elementals must be secured, or they will wreak havoc on the population.”
“So we have heard,” Sarah agreed. “But we have released them. It is done. Since you cannot use your powers, you cannot re-bind them. Nor will Gideon Darkwood, who has passed beyond the veil. Your imprisonment of those entities is over.”
“You will live to regret this action.”
“Is that a threat?”
Corvin shook his head. “It is a prediction. I know what will happen. Maybe not today, but soon. I know what will happen when those rogue elementals are allowed to roam free.”
“They are in harmony,” Reg told Corvin. “They were only a danger while they were out of harmony with humans, because of all that had been done to the land here.”
“All that had been done to the land?”
Reg tried to think of how to tell him everything she had come to understand about how important balance with the land was for the smooth functioning of the environment and climate of the region.
“All the things the settlers did, and the city builders. All the ways that they took from the land and caused the environmental disasters.”
“You think the environmental disasters were caused by human activity rather than the elementals? You weren’t paying very close attention. I was there, Reg. I know.”
Reg looked at Sarah. Sarah patted her on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Reg. You’re looking rather piqued and should rest.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Reg was not particularly happy to find herself at the Cyclone Tower once more.
Sarah had agreed to Reg using her powers to return the Tears of Poseidon home to the Oceanids’ keep by simply sending the vial back to where she had gotten it. Having been to the underwater cavern in person initially, she could simply envision the place where the water relic had rested, and cause it to be transported through space to return there.
That saved a lot of time and energy and saved Reg the trouble of trying to explain to the Oceanids why she had stolen it from them in the first place and why the water elemental no longer dwelt in the relic. They would just be happy to have the relic back and would, presumably, eventually understand that the water elemental being freed was a good thing.
But Sarah would not allow Reg to simply transport the Zephyr Pearl back to the Cyclone Tower. She insisted that it needed to be returned in person.
The last thing Reg wanted to do was meet the flying monkeys again. Or to have to face Skippy the troll, which Sarah insisted upon.
This time, they were written in on the schedule Skippy had clipped to his clipboard. He met them in a clean, pleasant reception area at the bottom of the tower where there was no sign of flying monkeys. The woman at the reception desk looked human to Reg’s eyes. She tapped her computer keys to verify their appointment with the supervisor and asked them politely to have a seat.
A few minutes later, a tall man in a blue uniform stepped off the elevator, clipboard held firmly in his left hand. He looked at the entry and checked it off with his pen.
“Sarah Bishop and Reg Rawlins.” He looked at them, then his eyes went to the Pearl. “It took longer than expected to clean the Pearl,” he said in a slightly accusatory tone.
“Yes, it did,” Sarah agreed. “You can’t rush these things.”
Skippy nodded and sighed. “Indeed. They seem to have minds of their own, don’t they?” He held out his hands for it, tucking the clipboard under his arm.
“No Spanner today?” Sarah asked, handing it over. “I thought he would be the one who would be taking it back and reinstalling it.”
Skippy snorted. “Whoever thought that a gremlin would be a good mechanic should be fired. You wouldn’t believe the number of problems we have had since he took over. I will be glad to be training someone else for the position.”
“He’s gone then? Fired?”
“Better than that,” Skippy told them, polishing the Pearl on his uniform shirt. “He was promoted.”
“That’s better?”
“I don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s someone else’s problem.”
“Well, that’s good, then. You’ll be reinstalling the Pearl?”
“Yes.”
“You might notice that… it has changed a little,” Reg told him tentatively.
Skippy polished it some more. “It has been purified. With all impurities purged, it should function better and meet all specifications.”
Sarah nodded her agreement. “I think you will be pleased.”
“They should have had that done a couple of hundred years ago.” Skippy shook his head. “You just can’t find good help these days.”
