Rook, page 20
“That sounds about right,” Jackaby panted. “Haven’t you missed this?”
We skidded between two buildings. I had long since lost sight of Grim, but her trail was more vivid than ever—practically electric with intense crackles of fury and fear. We whipped around another corner, and I just about plowed into Agent Kit, whose own trail had veered left, then right, before doubling back on itself. He had lost the scent.
“They went this way,” I called, following the other two auras deeper into the city. I narrowed my eyes and held the twin lines in focus as best I could. I kept atop it for several blocks—I could tell we were getting closer as I spun into another alley just in time to see Agent Garabrand glance up at me, his eyes wide and his aura sparkling with alarm.
Then a glittering flash lit the narrow corridor and Garabrand was gone. Agent Kit barreled past me. “Garabrand?” he yelled. “Garabrand!” It was futile. Both auras came to an abrupt end there, in the alleyway.
“They’re gone,” I panted. “Transported, like the others. She got him.”
Kit cursed and jogged to the end of the alley. I followed, pushing through the cloud of turnippy magic to catch up to him. The far end opened onto the busy Willow Street, a crisscrossing mess of energies as pedestrians and horses and carriages poured up and down the cobbles and in and out of the shops that lined the busy lane.
“Well?” Kit demanded, his eyes darting between street carts and carriages. “Which way did she go?”
I shook my head. “It’s too much. I’ve lost her.”
With a frustrated sigh, Kit spun back to us. “Okay. Spill it! What exactly were you two doing poking around at that hospital?” he said. “And don’t get cute with me. I know you’re up to something. We can’t seem to kick over a suspicious-looking rock in this nutty town without the two of you scrambling out from under it.”
“We were looking for whoever is behind these kidnappings and killings,” I said. “Same as you.”
“And I suppose I just have to take your word on that?”
“You do,” said Jackaby, “but we don’t have to take yours.”
Kit scowled. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“It means I don’t trust you, either,” said Jackaby. “I’m not so sure we really are looking for the same thing. Why don’t you tell us what you were doing poking around that hospital?”
“I don’t have time for this.” Kit shook his head. “Agent Garabrand could be in need of backup.”
“I can see you’re being truthful,” I said. “But you’re still avoiding the question.” I watched the clouds form in his aura. “No lies of omission. Tell me the truth. I’m making you uncomfortable, aren’t I? Is it my abilities?”
“Don’t try getting inside my head. Your special eyeballs don’t scare me—I work with paranormals all the time. Comes with the job. We called in a lady just yesterday to reverse-craft those spells Dupin confiscated from the Finkin house. I supervised her myself, back at the station.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t like her, either,” I said.
Kit clenched his jaw. “Maybe because she smelled bad,” he snarled. “I said stay out of my head.”
“Why were you at the hospital?” Jackaby asked.
“I’m not the bad guy here,” Kit said.
“You truly believe that,” I agreed. “But it’s still not an answer.”
Kit swallowed. “I—I don’t remember,” he said at last. It was true.
Jackaby and I exchanged glances.
“I found a curious note in my files. It was just an address for the hospital—in my handwriting, but I don’t remember writing it. Garabrand didn’t know anything about it, either. He agreed to come with me to check it out. When we got there, it all felt eerily familiar.”
“Memory loss,” I said. “That might have been useful information for you to disclose earlier. Your secrets are getting people killed.”
“My secrets?” Kit shot back. “You mean like being secretly in league with our prime suspect?”
I winced. “Fair. But perhaps now would be a good time for us to begin trusting each other.”
“You want me to trust you?” Kit ground his teeth. “You two have been at the scene of every dead body we’ve uncovered. You’ve admitted to working with that creepy kid. For all I know, you’ve led me on this wild-goose chase just to separate me from my partner.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t trust you. I don’t even like you. And to be perfectly clear, if I find out you’re lying to me, I will not hesitate to put a bullet in you.”
“Pretty standard relationship parameters, in my experience,” Jackaby interjected. “I think my old contract with the police department used similar phrasing.”
“We’re here to help,” I said.
“Oh?” Kit put his hands on his hips. “Then what now, great and magical detective?”
“Now,” I said, “I’m going to go get Charlie.”
Kit’s brow furrowed. “You worked out where he’s been taken?”
“Not in the foggiest,” I said. “But I do know how to get there.”
Jackaby raised an eyebrow.
Kit’s head cocked to one side. “How—”
“Out of curiosity, did she manage to crack it?” I asked him.
“Did who manage what?”
“You told us that you worked with an outside consultant, one who knew magic,” I said. “Did she manage to replicate the Finkin spell?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Copying the spell was just careful penmanship. It’s the precise mixture of the ink that gives it its zing, apparently. She’s still working on re-creating the recipe, but we confiscated enough of Finkin’s original stock for her to mimic the symbol and try it out a few times.”
“And it definitely works?”
“It works. It’s not going to help you find the culprit, though. The symbol just brings the paper and whatever’s touching it back to where it was written in the first place. We figure whoever has Mrs. Finkin has been forcing her to write new spells at their drop sites. The version we whipped up won’t bring you to Charlie; they’ll just zip you right back to the police station where they were made.”
“Perfect.”
“How is that perfect?” Kit demanded, but I had already spun on my heel and made for the carriage.
“Come along. We’ll give you a ride.”
chapter twenty-five
“Where did you go?” Lydia Lee demanded as we neared the carriage. “You said a few minutes! I’ve been sitting here getting the heebie-jeebies from this creepy hospital for over an hour!”
“And you said you were going to watch the kid,” I countered.
Miss Lee straightened her vest self-consciously. “I did watch her. I watched her ignore my instructions and scamper over to try to catch up with you two in the hospital. I’m a driver, not a nanny, all right? I’m not good with children!”
“May be for the best you didn’t follow,” I said. “It seems there are a few things young Grim wasn’t telling any of us.”
Miss Lee glanced over my shoulder. “Who’s the starched collar?” she asked.
“Agent Kit is one of the good guys,” I answered. “Or at least he thinks he is, which will have to do for now. We’re headed for the station house, if you please.”
“You’re the boss.” She gave a little salute and swung herself back up into the driver’s box.
I’m the boss, I repeated in my head as I climbed into the carriage.
The trip was tense and silent, save for the rolling of the wheels and the clop of hooves. Agent Kit sat on the bench across from ours, staring moodily out the window. When the carriage finally came to a full stop, he was quick to climb out.
Before following suit, I leaned back against the seat and pulled the slightly burnt paper out of my coat pocket, smoothing it as best I could. It was wrinkled and sticky, but the symbol was still clear. It glimmered like silver in the daylight. When the light caught the lines just right, it was almost as if I was looking through strings of glass—a window into another place. On the other side of that symbol was Charlie.
“They nearly had you,” Jackaby said, softly. “Do you think that one is a Maeve Finkin original?”
“I couldn’t say,” I answered. “It looks the same to me. The ink is definitely a match.”
“I could examine it more closely in my office,” he said. “Jenny could help. Maybe we could find some indication of where the latest victims are being sent.”
“No,” I said. “We don’t have time to muddle through a lot of science experiments. Whoever is behind this—they know we’re hot on their trail. They’ve already moved their captives once, and they’ll do it again. We need to know where their trap is hidden before they have time to dig another new one.”
“Their last trap caught Charlie, and he’s sharper than your average quarry. They very nearly caught you, too.”
“They only caught Charlie because he wasn’t ready for them. But we are.”
Jackaby tilted his head. “Are we, though?”
“We will be.”
“I know that tone of voice,” said Jackaby. “That’s your bad idea tone of voice.”
“The quickest way to get to the bottom of a trap,” I said, “is to fall into it.”
I hopped down onto the sidewalk.
“Well, at least you’ve the sense to come here first,” Jackaby said, dropping down beside me. “We should be able to assemble a decent bit of backup before mounting our strike.”
“I’m afraid backup isn’t the objective this trip,” I said.
“We’ll be proceeding alone?” Jackaby shot me a glance, but then nodded. “Just you and me against unknowable terrors? Very well. We’ve faced worse. Maybe.”
“No, sir. I don’t mean just you and me.”
“Oh. Well, good. Because that would be beyond reckless, even for us.”
“Not us,” I clarified. I held up the rumpled spell. “Single postage. One package. It’s got to be me.”
Jackaby looked me in the eyes, and his aura flushed with a dizzying whirlwind of fear and concern and perhaps just a little confused pride. “Miss Rook,” he said. “I know I’ve been a terrible influence, but even I wouldn’t—”
“I know,” I said. I tucked the spell back into my coat. “But it’s not about what you would do. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me all this time? It’s about what I would do.” I swallowed. “What I must.”
Jackaby took a deep breath. “This is a bad idea even by the standards of our usual bad ideas.”
“Grim knows we’re hunting her. She’s going to behave rashly. If we don’t act quickly, it could be too late. Charlie could be—” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Tell me what you need from me.”
We mounted the steps into the station house together.
“Abigail!”
I blinked. The cogwheels of my mind skipped several teeth, and my world lurched sideways. There, in the gritty environs of the New Fiddleham Police Department, on the precipice of danger, was the last face I wanted to see—my mother’s.
“There she is! There you are! You see, Daniel, I told you we would find her here. The fellow at the desk tried to tell us that you don’t work for the police department, but I distinctly remembered that you said you were doing some sort of secretarial work or some such with the New Fiddleham police, so I said to your father—I said: We’ll find her at the station. Didn’t I say so?”
My father looked at me soberly as they drew up in front of us. Something about the expression on his face made me feel as though I were coming downstairs for breakfast after sneaking out through my bedroom window the night before. How much did they know?
“Oh, Abigail,” my mother went on. “I am truly concerned about the rumors these . . . quaint people are already spreading about you. That fellow over there with the bushy mustache is under the impression that you walk about on the streets all day looking for common criminals. And his associate seemed to think you were some manner of witchy woman with unnatural abilities. I told them I was quite sure that they were both sorely mistaken, and I scolded them soundly for listening to such preposterous gossip. Grown men, no less.”
“How much of it is true?” asked my father.
My mother batted him in the arm. “Don’t act like a rube, Daniel. Of course none of it is true.”
“There are some strange things in New Fiddleham,” my father continued, his gaze fixed on me. “This is not a normal city, is it, Abigail?”
My mother rolled her eyes. “Your father is convinced that he saw a man with antlers earlier. I keep telling him—”
“I did see a man with antlers earlier,” my father said with a huff. He turned back to me. “How much of what those policemen told us about you is true?”
I opened my mouth, but the words got all caught up in my head before they could find their way down to my throat.
“Normal is such a curious word,” Jackaby said, breaking the awkward silence. “So subjective. And what city isn’t a touch abnormal, when you scratch beneath the surface?”
At that moment, the door to the holding cells burst open with a bang, and the image of a towering troll ducked his craggy head under the frame before emerging. His broad boulder of a chest puffed up as he lumbered out into the reception room.
“Rock-Jaw free once more!” the troll bellowed.
My mother made a muffled squeaking sound.
“Shake in fear, tiny, stupid humans! No bars can hold . . .” The hulking figure caught my eye and hesitated, clearing his throat with a gravelly cough.
“That’s quite enough of that,” I said, sternly. “Behave yourself. And stop yelling at everyone. You’re overselling it again.”
Rock-Jaw nodded, slouching meekly into his enormous shoulders. “Sorry, Miss Detective Human. Rock-Jaw go. Very quiet.” He thudded to the front door, ducked, and squeezed his way out into the city.
I turned back to my parents. My mother’s jaw was quivering and her eyes were wide. My father pursed his lips and drew a long breath in through his nose. “So,” he said, heavily, “it’s all true.”
“New Fiddleham is a very special place,” I said.
“And you came all the way to America to be . . . a witch?” he asked.
My mother made a burbling noise and gesticulated emphatically with both hands before throwing them up and abandoning her efforts at speech altogether.
“I mean to say,” my father went on, “dabbling in the occult is bad enough—and I do not approve—but if you were so dead set on it, what was wrong with proper English witches? We’ve had witches for ages. Shakespeare wrote about them. I’d wager our lot are better at spells and potions anyway. Americans can’t even brew a proper cup of tea.”
“I’m not a witch,” I said. “Although I have met several of them, and on the whole, they tend to be far more reasonable and considerate than the literature would have you believe, English or otherwise.”
My mother looked faint.
“Abigail,” my father said, “this is all a bit much. We—we only want to know the truth.”
“The truth—erm. The truth is—” I hesitated. “The truth is difficult. I will explain, I promise. I’ll explain everything.” I swallowed. “Later. But there are things that I really need to attend to first. Mr. Jackaby?”
I ignored my father’s startled objections and my mother’s incoherent huffs and swept past them and into the corridor. I could hear an officer gently informing them that the area was for authorized personnel only, and willed myself not to glance back as they protested.
“Will you?” asked Jackaby.
I unclenched my jaw. “Will I what?”
“Tell them the truth?”
I took a steadying breath. “Of course I will,” I said. “Just as soon as I’ve settled on which version of it they might be able to handle.”
We passed the holding cells and the evidence locker. Agent Kit waved us toward an open interrogation room. “You two. I want full written statements about everything you saw in that hospital.”
At the sound of the agent’s voice, Dupin poked his head out of his own office. “What is this all about?” he demanded.
“It doesn’t concern you,” Kit countered, his mustache twitching.
Dupin’s nostrils flared. “Really?” he replied through gritted teeth. “This is still my department, and I—”
At the same time, Kit started in with, “You truly have no idea what you’re—”
I seized the moment to quietly step away. Just up the hall, the evidence officer was looking over a file on her desk.
“Pardon me,” I said.
“Oh!” She started and straightened her glasses. “You’re that magical detective with the funny eyes,” she said. “Right?”
“More or less,” I admitted. “The department’s been bringing in more and more special contractors, though, haven’t they?”
She nodded. “We had to bring in a guy who could speak gnomish and a woman who could read and write magic runes.”
“I think I heard about that one,” I said. “The magic consultant who came in earlier—she made copies of the spells from that Finkin case, yes?”
“That’s right,” said the officer.
“Where are they now?”
“The new spell papers? They’re in a red folder, locked up in evidence with all the other ones. I can’t let you have them, though. Sorry. Dupin made a pretty big deal about it. All of it stays locked up. He said not to trust anybody.”
“Good,” I said. “Smart. Dangerous stuff, those spells. Keep them locked up tight, the whole lot. In fact, I have one more that needs to get locked up with them.” I pulled the scorched paper from my pocket.
