“Rachel, I’m home! I have a surprise!” Sandra’s voice sang out, followed by, “Good gracious! What happened to the front door? Rachel? Rachel!”
Relief flooded through Rachel. Sandra was home!
Everything would be okay.
Serena O’Malley jabbed her in the ribs with the tip of her fulgurator’s wand. Blue sparkles danced across Rachel’s body. Her limbs froze, unable to move.
Then, light was everywhere.
Warm air and the sound of drums was the first thing Rachel noticed. Then the light faded, and she stood under the night sky, surrounded by men in purple robes carrying torches. In front of her, flames leapt out of an open door in the bottom of a huge furnace with outstretched arms and the head of a bull. The firelight illuminated marble steps, columns, and a bit of the brass of the furnace-statue.
Beyond and above, Rachel could see the bulk of the temple, a rectangular building with an octagonal tower that rose from the top of it—each story of the tower smaller than the story below it, like eight-sided nest-&-stack blocks. The whole temple was plated in gold, or perhaps, gold-tinted glass, upon which the reflections of the furnace flames flickered and danced. At the edge of her field of vision, was the glint of city lights. Beyond that was a deep blackness. Rachel could smell the ocean.
In the distance, there was a flash, like heat lightning, across the sky.
“Master,” Serena knelt before a robed figure with glowing coals for eyes and bull-horns protruding from his temples. Rachel recognized him, the man from Beaumont, whom the demon Morax had possessed, “I have brought you a sacrifice.”
The glowing coals swiveled to Rachel. “What good is that one. No one here loves it.”
Serena bowed her head. “I have a plan, your viciousness. We can do it the other way.”
The red-haired woman rose and returned to where she had left Rachel, some twenty-five feet away. “You two, watch her. You six, come with me.”
Serena and her minions departed. In the distance, another flash of heat lightning.
The temple was still forming, Rachel realized. Parts of it were merely ghostly shadows. As she watched, rocks and rubble rose into the air, making the ghostly form solid. The stones rumbled and grated, as they jostled for their ancient positions. Rock dust mingled with the scent of the sea.
More flashes in the distance. There was something odd about the lightning. Rachel recalled it one fraction of a second at a time. Slowed down, she saw white pillars bright against the dark of the night.
Someone was jumping.
The horned man raised his arms. “Ancient servants of my master, arise and serve me! Mine elite, my master’s followers, rise. Stir!”
The ground trembled. The robed cultists with the torches turned and looked outward. Time went by. Nothing seemed to happen, except that Rachel counted more pillars of light, flashing in and out in the distance.
“Why does nothing come forth?” bellowed Morax, through the mouth of his horned human servant.
One of the robed figures stepped forward and bowed to one knee. “Your viciousness, the Romans salted the earth. The dead cannot rise here.”
A noise like the wrathful bellow of a bull rose from Morax. The horned man raised his head and sniffed the air.
“Ah! I call the ones given to my master!” Morax’s voice was beast-like and grating. “Arise! Come forth!”
More flashes in the distance. Suddenly, Rachel realized what she was seeing. The Agents were looking for this place. Mrs. March had alerted her husband, and he had sent his people to Tunis through the nearest glass. Now they were trying to find this temple, but none of them had ever been here or knew what it looked like. They were using an advanced trick to make their jumps look like lightning, so as not to draw the attention of the Unwary.
She wished she could do something to help them, but she could do nothing at all.
It was frustrating not to be able to move, but a strange calm settled over her. Her previous terror fled. She did not even feel frightened. It was as if her lack of ability to act had relieved her of all responsibility, and now she could calmly await the unfolding of events.
In her heart, however, she made one solemn vow. She was tired of being paralyzed during battles. If she lived through this, she was going to insist her parents buy her an anti-paralysis talisman. Once she had it, she would to wear it at all times, even in the bath.
“Morax, I did as you asked. You promised my brother and me a kingdom,” Remus Starkadder’s voice came faintly from the darkness.
The horned man gestured. The ghost jerked into view as if pulled by a chain.
“And so I did. A kingdom of pain!” grunted Morax. “You are of no more use to me. To Hell with you, where you belong.”
The shade of the handsome, blond Transylvanian prince let out a bloodcurdling, horrible scream. Pale, colorless flames lapped at his legs. They began to consume his insubstantial form. He looked so vulnerable, so young, as his face contorted in unspeakable torment.
Paralyzed, Rachel could not avert her eyes or close them. She was forced to watch as the terrified prince was simultaneously devoured by the flames and dragged down into the ground.
It was horrible to behold.
She could not scream or even twitch. The horror remained locked inside her, searing her with an excruciating spiritual agony. The image of his tormented face would be with her for as long as she lived. She did not care what he had done, even betraying her. No one should have to suffer so terribly—not for so much as a moment, much less forever.
Everything within her cried out against such evil as this.
Another flash, this one close at hand. Serena O’Malley reappeared with a paralyzed Sandra and a second person.
Mother!
Three burly, robed cultists hustled Rachel’s diminutive mother up the stairs and to the right of the temple porch. They turned her toward the statue, holding her arms. In the light of the flames, Rachel could see her mother, as gentle as a fawn, with eyes as dark as any doe, staring pale-faced at her paralyzed daughters. Her lovely face was completely calm, but Rachel could see her hands. Her pinky fingers were rigid as stone.
“My, my. The Duchess of Devon,” smirked Serena O’Malley, stalking back and forth at the bottom of the marble steps. “Isn’t it ironic? All that power, and no way to use it. No instrument to play enchantments. No cantrips…since you can’t move your arms. And I have your rings of mastery.” She held up her hand. Objects glittered on her palm. “You’re helpless.”
Serena’s sarcastic banter turned to a snarl. “So here’s the deal, duchess. I am going to kill your youngest daughter. If you do not react, if you don’t weep, or cry, or say word, I will spare your older daughter.” Serena turned to the horned man. “Is that acceptable?”
“Yes. If it proves to be of stern stuff, the older daughter shall go free.” Morax spoke from the man’s mouth. “If not, kill them both before the mother’s eyes and consecrate both the temple and the priest—since our first efforts, last month, were interrupted by the Wisecraft.”
“She’ll crack, master,” said one of the robed thugs. “She’s a frail little thing.”
“But a tempting morsel,” crowed another. “May we have use of her when this is done?”
“Only if it breaks,” rumbled the demon. “Otherwise, it may go free.”
Ellen Griffin’s face was a mask of perfect calm. Her voice was sweet and gentle, and yet it rang out clearly for all to hear. “Touch one hair on the head of a single child of mine, and it shall be the last thing you shall ever do. My husband will find you, and he will destroy you, utterly. And nothing shall keep you safe: neither walls, nor wards, nor sacred weapons.”
Serena O’Malley snorted derisively.
Around her, however, the Veltdammerung followers shifted nervously, as if, perhaps, they did not think being threatened with the wrath of Agent Griffin, The Duke of Devon, was a laugh-ing matter.
Watching her mother, so calm and collected, her eyes ablaze with faith in her husband, Rachel could not help but think that, if they could have seen her now, her imperious Victorian grandparents would finally have applauded their son’s choice of wife.
“Now we begin,” bellowed the horned man. “When this is done, we go to my master.”
Serena’s voice faltered slightly. “Go to him?”
“When first I spied it, I did not recognize his prison,” replied the demon. “Now that I know where he is, it will be a simple matter to rouse him during Saturnalia.”
“Excellent.” Serena O’Malley’s eyes gleamed red in the furnace-light as she rubbed her hands together.
“The hour soon dawns of my master’s return. First, he shall waken. Then, he shall retake his ancient throne. Once again, agony shall be the law of the land, and all the universe shall tremble. And with each sacrifice in my master’s honor, the Enemy shall weep blood—for He shall be forced to admit the slaughter of His Lamb ended in failure. The great sacrifice-to-end-all-sacrifices has come and gone; yet nothing has been accomplished. Mortals still pay my master’s toll of pain.”
The two men watching Rachel lifted her up, tipping her sideways. The star-studded night sky shone above her. For a time, that was all she could see. The constellation of Orion shone above her, the three stars of the hunter’s belt twinkling brightly. Below, she could see the higher portions of the eight-sided tower atop the temple, gleaming like golden glass in the firelight.
The tower moved closer. The heat of the furnace kissed her cheek. Then, it grew uncomfortably warm. Then stifling. She could not even squirm away as Juma had done.
As she stared at the stars, her right cheek feeling as if she had stuck it in an oven, Rachel wondered whether the Raven would have come to rescue her, had she been able to call him. No, she decided. He would not. A supernatural force, like the Horseman, was one thing. Veltdammerung, a group of human beings who had called up dangerous magic, was quite another. It was like the difference between questions about the world Outside and questions about the dealings of men here within.
The heat grew hotter still. Rachel composed herself to die.
She was not happy to be going so young. She had wanted to grow up, to learn magic, to see the Elf’s home, maybe even to marry, have a family, and become the librarian of the Library of All Worlds. True, she had given up all that when she gave her life to the Raven, but he had returned it, and she had hoped to make something of it—to justify his faith in her.
But it was not to be.
She wondered if, once she was gone, Gaius might carry on with that plan in her memory. The thought made her happy.
Around her was drumming and chanting. She thought by the jerks of motion that she was now two stairs from the top. She wondered how those carrying her could stand the heat. Maybe they wore protective talismans or had cast cantrips to shield themselves ahead of time. Though she told herself that she was still fearless, her heart felt odd in her chest.
It was very sad to be about to die and not even able to cry.
Seeking comfort, she thought back, one last time, to her last meeting with Kitten’s familiar in the Memorial Garden. In her memory, the Comfort Lion turned and spoke to her again: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Wait…what? This time was different.
How could that even happen?
The idea he had voiced so astonished Rachel that it entirely derailed her fear. Knowing everything was all very well. But was that what she truly wanted? Or did she want to know the truth? What a shame that she would not live long enough to discover the answer.
“GERONIMO!”
Sigfried Smith plummeted out of mid-air and landed, feet first, on the cultists carrying Rachel toward the statue’s arms. At precisely the same moment, Rachel’s mother whistled. Blue sparks flew from her mouth and struck the nearest of the cultists carrying Rachel. The result was that the five of them, Rachel, the three cultists, and Siggy, tumbled pell-mell down the steps.
Lucky, who had been wrapped around Sigfried, flew free and barreled into the bull-horned man, knocking him backward, toward the furnace.
“Pick on someone of your own supernatural magnitude, your stupid bullish-bully!” growled the dragon.
“Oh, gee!” Sigfried exclaimed in the least convincing voice ever. He stood with one foot on the back of the head of one of the cultists, pinning him down. “I just accidentally fell out of dreamland! I must have wandered too far from Zoë Forrest. Purely by mistake.”
From behind her mother, whom Rachel could see from her current angle, laying head down across the fallen cultists, there came a bloodcurdling shriek.
Rachel knew that sound!
“Siggy, did you fall out again?” came Zoë Forrest’s sing-song voice, as she swung her greenstone patu into the head of one of the brutes holding Rachel’s mother. “You silly boy. I’m sure that happened entirely by accident!”
Freed of the thugs Zoë had just decked, the Duchess of Devon’s voice cried out, “Obé!”
Rachel’s limbs moved.
Without even getting up, Rachel whistled, freezing the man beneath her and then the one struggling under Siggy’s foot. Grabbing her wand from her pocket, she cast one of the shield cantrips stored by her grandmother on herself and another on Sigfried. Then, she rolled to her feet and turned toward where she had last seen Sandra. Spells from angry cultists out in the dark somewhere bounced off the shields. Behind them, the enormous furnace-statue rocked dangerously as Lucky and the horned man wrestled.
“Rachel, are you all right?” came her mother’s sweet voice.
“Yes. Mummy!”
“Stay where you are!”
A flash of light, and Serena O’Malley appeared next to the diminutive duchess, up on the temple porch. The red-headed woman pointed her wand at Rachel’s mother, but the tiny, doll-like duchess threw up a bey-athe shield, deflecting the attack. The Duchess of Devon retreated, moving out of sight, but, Rachel could hear her mother’s whistle and see the pretty glints of tiny blue sparkles dancing in the night. Whether they reached their target, Rachel could not tell.
“We must free Sandra!” Rachel cried. “She’s over there!”
“She’s okay at the moment.” Siggy still stood, one foot still resting on the paralyzed cultist’s head, watching Lucky and the man with the bull horns wrestle back and forth. His arm pointed off to the left, firing bursts of silver or blue sparkles, without even turning his head—apparently he was sighting with his amulet. “I just paralyzed the jokers who were guarding her.”
“Still,” Rachel said, “we should…”
A flash in the sky, closer than before. Its gleam illuminated something strange. A parade stretched away to the southwest. The foremost members had nearly reached the courtyard of large slabs in front of the temple. Hundreds marched toward them, perhaps thousands. A shiver ran down Rachel’s spine. The light of the jump had bleached their faces and bodies bone white.
Click-clack.
Beside her, Zoë shivered. “What’s that?”
“There are people approaching,” Rachel whispered back. “Lots of them.”
Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.
“Why are they making that noise?” Zoë sounded spooked. The three students moved closer together, though Siggy still faced the other way, watching Lucky.
The vanguard of the parade came into the torch-light. They marched with a jerky motion, like marionettes. Yet there was something wrong with this army. Beside her, she heard the hiss of Zoë’s indrawn breath.
Skeletons marched toward them, with bones that were cracked and black with soot. Or rather, some were skeletons. Others had flesh, but it was a dried, shriveled flesh, like a mummy, and what there was of it was blackened and charred.
“Are they ghosts?” asked Siggy, finally turning around. He was trying to make himself look, but his arm was up in front of his face, shielding his eyes.
“Just skeletons.” Zoë’s voice shook.
“Oh, that’s all right.” Siggy lowered his arm and looked at the new arrivals, twirling his trumpet between his fingers. “Um…why are they so short?” His voice caught oddly. “Oh, no. That is…so gross! Why does evil always have to be so gross?”
Rachel looked again, a cold sweat forming on the back of her neck, despite the heat from the furnace up the stairs behind her. Sigfried was correct. The figures were all too short, ranging from four feet tall to tiny ones that crawled slavishly along the ground. Most of them were around three feet. With them walked the bones of some animals, lambs, perhaps, or dogs?
Rachel felt her blood turn to ice.
The ones given to my master. The demon had summoned the remains of sacrificed children out of the Tophet of Carthage.
“Baby zombies?” Siggy’s asked. “That is so wrong! This demon must go down!”
“Skeletons, not zombies,” Zoë corrected, coming up beside him. Her face was grim, but she took a battle stance, greenstone club in hand. “I hate the idea of having to smash the corpses of children. Unfair psychological advantage for the baddies!”
A pillar of light lit the scene. Cain March appeared momen-tarily about a hundred yards away, his Inverness cape billowing around him. He was a lithely-built man, handsome and bearded, who reminded Rachel of a youthful Agamemnon. (Perhaps one whom, upon arriving at Troy, had forgotten about Helen and grabbed Cassandra instead.) He surveyed the scene for an instant, his eyes narrowed, and he vanished again.
Half a dozen pillars of light flashed around the temple grounds. Cain March had returned with some of his Agents. Rachel saw her father appear, along with his best friend and second-in-command, the implacable Templeton Bridges. They stood together illuminated by torchlight, a pale figure and a dark one in billowing cloaks and tricorne hats, with their tall staffs in their hands. Spell-fire flew back and forth between the Agents and the cultists.
Rachel cheered at the arrival of the Agents, but there were only six of them to fight five times as many cultists and an army of undead. True, they were baby undead, but that idea was so disturbing that Rachel did not even like thinking it.
The cultists ran forward toward the Agents, firing off spells. The army of little skeletons surged like a bone-white glacier, coming slowly but inexorably toward the stairs where Rachel and her friends stood. Across the temple courtyard, they swept over where one of the Agents stood. He was knocked from his feet and carried forward by the undead wave. All around him the little skeletons—some dead nearly three thousand years—attacked him with whatever they could grab. Some hit him with rubble or bricks. Some bit him. Other wielded their own arm bones as knives. Rachel saw one of the taller skeletons, perhaps of a boy of nine, stop and put on the Agent’s tricorne hat.
It seemed so much like something a living boy would do that Rachel suddenly found herself unable to swallow.
“Okay…um…suggestions?” murmured Zoë. “I mean, I can play whack-the-kiddy-skeleton as well as the next gal with her own Maori war club. But, even on my best day, I think I can only whack three or so at a time.”
Siggy glanced warily over his shoulder. “Normally, I would sic Lucky on them, lighting ’em up like birthday candles, but he’s a little busy. When do we learn to throw fireballs?”
The clinking-clanking army of skeletal children drew closer. The odor of charred bones reached Rachel’s nostrils. The soot-blackened skulls of the foremost members glistened in the torchlight. Whooping, Zoë ran forward, whacking the taller of the young forms, sending heads flying like balls off a tee. Sigfried played a blast of wind. Silvery sparks that smelled of fresh spring rain swept a swath of them aside, their bones tinkling like ivory xylophones as they collapsed. Rachel tried a blast of wind, too, but hers was not strong enough to do more than rattle bones. Paralysis turned out to be ineffective against skeletons. She attempted a Glepnir bond, but nothing happened.
“How did you two find me?” Rachel called to her friends, as she tried to think of something else helpful to do.
“Mrs. March came to see if you had made it back safely.” Zoë smacked three skeletons. They collapsed like dominoes. The patu’s keening shriek rent the air. “She helped us find the real dream version of the temple.”
“How did you get by the cultists up in dreamland—to get down here?” asked Rachel.
“Goldilocks blinded them with her camera flash!” Siggy shot her a huge grin. “Some of the purple jokers even ended up in another scene, some sunny place. My G.F.’s so smart.”
From their left came a bellow. A flaming something flew by overhead, as if thrown by a catapult. Siggy let out a shout. Whatever it was sailed all the way across the horizon and out of sight.
“Lucky!” Siggy shouted, followed by, “It’s okay. He’s okay. But he’s kind of far away. I think he’s out to sea.”
Another bellow. The horned man now stood in the courtyard. He gestured. Over to the left, Cain March and Templeton Bridges were thrown a good ten yards. Both of them flipped in mid-air and landed lightly on their feet. A flash of light, and Rachel’s father jumped, appearing next to the paralyzed Sandra. He grabbed her from where she stood in the midst of motionless cultists and vanished again.
Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.
Had her father only just caught sight of her sister, she wondered. If so, did he even know that she and her mother were here? Of course, Sandra would tell him.
The flood of undead children was beginning to close in around them. Rachel stepped on the skeleton of a crawling toddler and fell down. The skeletons turned toward her, looming over her. Bones clacked, and jaws snapped. Empty eye sockets stared down at her. One face was black and mummified with withered, raisin-like eyes.
“Obé!” she shouted, gesturing with one hand as she used her other hand and her legs to scuttle backwards and leap back to her feet. The Word of Ending had the desired effect. A few of the closest skeletons clattered to the ground, but there were many, many more coming.
Rachel ran to stand closer to Zoë and Siggy. They tried to retreat up the stairs and around the temple, but four-foot flames shot now leapt from the open furnace door. After only three stairs, the heat was unbearable. They returned to the bottom.
The skeletons were closing in from all directions. The heat of the furnace blew hot on the backs of their necks. Rachel’s leg brushed against the bottom step. There was precious little room left.
“Obé,” she cried again.
Three more fell—three out of thousands.
“If only we could get them to come at us a few at a time,” Zoë said nervously. She glanced from the surging horde to the furnace ablaze behind them. “This is not the greatest spot. We have got to come up with something better. I am so not going to die, killed by skinless pre-schoolers. Should we retreat into dreamland?”
“And let the demon get away?” Siggy blew another blast, scattering another ten children and lambs. “Lucky! Get back here! Hurry!”
Zoë snorted, “I’m having trouble just keeping the baby skellies here at bay. I haven’t the foggiest what to do against the demon.”
“We can’t leave,” Rachel cried shrilly. “My mother is still here.”
She looked up to the porch where her mother had been but saw no sign of her. “Siggy! Can you see her?”
“Sure,” Siggy did not bother turning his head. “She’s fighting the crazy red-headed woman. She’s doing pretty well, consider-ing that she doesn’t have anything but her mouth. Looks like she can do magic by whistling, like you do. She’s really good.”
“I learned to do that from her,” Rachel smiled slightly, her heart beating with concern for her mother, alone against the crazy Serena O’Malley. “We should go help her!”
“Can’t go up the stairs,” Siggy replied. “Too hot. We’d have to get through the bone-kiddies and around to the back of the temple.”
Click-clack. Click-clack. The child skeletons grew ever closer, their bones gleaming golden in the light of the furnace.
“Well, we have to do something,” muttered Zoë.
“I’m not sure what…” Rachel began, searching her memory for anything that might help against hordes of undead—baby or otherwise.
Oh, wait.
Reaching into her pocket, she yanked out the packet she had felt there earlier. Gaius had given it to her on All Hallow’s Eve. The paper was a bit warped from having gone through the wash, but when she ripped it open, hard round peony seeds fell into her hand.
“Here goes!” She threw the seeds, scattering them upon the ground in a semi-circle between them and the approaching army of undead kids.
The skeletons moved forward, as inexorably as ants. But the moment they came near the peony seeds, even though the hard, raisin-sized seeds were barely visible in the poor lighting, each child-like form bent or knelt and began to count. As Rachel watched them, she hummed a soft lilting melody with a simple beat.
Beside her, Zoë and Siggy were humming the same song.
“The children…” Rachel clutched Zoë’s arm. Her mouth felt dry. “I think…they’re singing.”
The eyes of her friends grew round in the furnace light.
“Do you mean that ditty in my head is a three-thousand-year-old, Carthaginian children’s counting song?” murmured Zoë.
“Wait!” Siggy took a step backward, ending up on the first stair. Sweat gleamed on his skin from the heat. “You mean that there are ghosts here? I thought they were just macabre marionettes! I can’t attack the ghosts of little kids! What would King Arthur say?”
“I can see them,” Zoë said hoarsely. “In dreamland.”
The three of them stood, unwilling to attack, as the undead remains of dozens of two and three-thousand-year-old sacrificed children bent over counting peony seeds in the dark. The little skeletons surrounded them on all sides, except behind them where the heat of the furnace had grown unbearably hot.
“If we go back into dreams…will there be ghosts there?” Siggy sounded nervous.
“Yes,” said Zoë. “They’re everywhere.”
“And in dreamland,” said Rachel, recalling the prince of Transylvania, “ghosts are semi-solid. We’d be entirely surrounded.”
Two more flashes, then four, then a dozen. Teams of men dressed in black suits, moving in sync, each knelt and pulled from kenomanced bags some kind of strange device mounted on a tripod. Five teams in all, they circled the demon, each setting up their tripods with the muzzle of their device pointing inward.
“Who are they?” Zoë shouted. “More Agents?”
“No,” Rachel called back. “They’re dressed wrong. They’re…”
In the light of another jump, she spotted a white symbol on the breast of one jump suit.
“Siggy, what is that mark?”
“An infinity symbol,” he replied without turning his head. “Or maybe it’s a snake forming a figure eight and biting its own tail.”
“They’re from Ouroboros Industries!” Rachel cheered. “They must be the O.I. rapid response team, and their new secret weapon. Gaius sent them!”
“Valiant sent us the cavalry?” Zoë drawled. “Good for him!”
Another flash. Her father appeared next to Serena O’Malley, who was standing stock still on the far corner of the temple porch, as far away from the furnace as possible. Rachel’s mother stood on her tiptoes in front of her, prying her rings of mastery, with their decades of stored spells and conjurations, out of the frozen woman’s fist. Rachel’s father picked up both women. As they jumped away, Rachel heard her mother’s voice calling out her name and saw the startled look on her father’s face. Apparently, he had not known she was here.
Crash!
Two O.I. men were thrown across the temple courtyard and into a column, which toppled on top of them. Under the rubble, one man still moved, but the other lay motionless. Two more men in black suits appeared in a flash of light to take their place. There was a whining noise and a narrow beam of umber-colored light traveled from the first tripod to the second.
The demon gestured. Another team was thrown backwards. As they fell, however, they seemed to become weightless and wafted safely to the ground. Rachel suspected they were wearing floating harnesses. Again, more men appeared to take their place. The beam of umber light continued to the third tripod. The glowing line now formed three parts of a pentagon. There were more Agents, too. Some of them flung spells at the horned man, but he shrugged them off.
The umber beam reached the forth tripod. The mechanical whine grew louder. Rachel smelt a strange burnt air smell. One more, and the fiend would be entirely surrounded.
The demon saw this, too. Bellowing, it gestured. A brave man jumped forward, shielding the device. He was thrown headlong into the temple, which trembled, its stone grating.
The umber beam reached the last tripod, closing the five-sided figure. More beams of umber light sprang up, forming a pentacle inside the pentagon. The whole area within the pentagon began to fill with a thick, burnt orange substance, like glowing caramel.
With a bellow of rage, darkness issued from the mouth and nose of the horned man. The umber substance was filling the intervening space, but not quickly enough. Rachel saw that Morax would escape before O.I.’s secret weapon trapped him.
“Lucky!” Siggy wailed. “Hurry. He’s getting away.”
More shadows billowed from the bull-horned man’s mouth and nose.
“Wait. I have this!” Rachel lifted her wand and shot the demon with one of her grandmother’s three precious remaining charges of Eternal Flame.
White fire tinged with gold enveloped the growing shadow. An earsplitting bellow of pain and outrage rent the air. Then, the glowing umber substance filled the entire area. When the white flame died away, the original cultist, no longer sprouting horns, stood next to a large bull with the head of a man. Both were motionless, like flies trapped in amber.
With a loud clatter, all the little skeletons fell to the ground and lay still.
“Phew,” murmured Zoë. “The ghosts are gone.”
A cheer went up from the O.I. crowd. Rachel and her friends joined in. Siggy blew a flourish on the trumpet. Rachel noted that he was beginning to play rather well. Lucky came streaking out of the sky and crooned along with his master.
“Rachel!” her father appeared in another flash of light, his staff in his hand, his cloak billowing, his stars and lantern medallion gleaming on his chest, his tricorne hat at a rakish angle. He paused momentarily when he saw the other two students, murmuring something like, “Where did these two come from?”
“Um. I think this is our cue to leave, Smith.” Zoë threw her arm out and grabbed Sigfried’s hand. Lucky wrapped around his master. “See ya, Griffin.” With a flip of her braid, she glared over her shoulder at Rachel’s father. “You didn’t see us.”
A puff of mist, and they were gone.
Agent Griffin leaned down and lifted Rachel into his arms, and everything became light.
The next morning the three Griffin women sat in Sandra’s dining room sipping hot chocolate, while Agent Griffin and Agent Vicky Armel, her father’s prime Enochian, moved about the flat, laying wards and protections. Hammer blows rang out from where a craftsman from Gryphon Park busily replaced the door.
“Wisecraft Agent Kidnapped in Her Own Flat. I’m going to have a hard time living this one down at work.” Sandra looked both embarrassed and amused. “But at least Mum and Daddy captured that O’Malley woman. She’s a nasty piece of work.”
“So, Mummy had come by to visit me?” Rachel asked, naturally reverting to the more child-like form of parental address when talking to her big sister. She sat petting Mistletoe, who had curled up on a chair beside her, being too large for her lap. “Was that the surprise you said you had?”
“You heard that?” Sandra exclaimed. “You were still here?”
“I heard your voice, right before she took me.”
“Oh, what a relief! I’m glad you were not on your own for very long.” Sandra leaned back in her chair, visibly relaxing. “I was so worried that you’d be frightened there all by yourself. My heart felt like it leapt right through the top of my head when that boy landed on you, and you fell down the stairs. I’m glad you had the sense to keep your head down and stay out of the fire-fight!
“And yes,” Sandra continued before Rachel could get a word in edgewise. “Mum came to see you, as a surprise. Only when we arrived, the door was broken, and you were gone.”
“Then Veltdammerung jumped us.” Ellen Griffin gave her daughter a chagrined and yet impishly-sweet smile. “What ninnies we were, running around like headless chickens, looking for you, instead of taking precautions for ourselves. Your father gave me quite a lecture.”
“What happened to the demon?” Sandra put down her empty cup. “Who caught it?”
“The O.I. rapid response team and their new secret weapon based on the research of our second cousin, Blackie Moth,” said Rachel, wiping away her chocolate mustache.
Sandra gawked at her. “And my little sister knows this…how?”
Rachel raised an eyebrow and gave her sister her best arch and mysterious look. “I cannot reveal my sources.”
“Oh, you’re so funny, Rachel!” Sandra turned to their mother, laughing “Look at Rachel! Imitating Daddy and I. Isn’t she just adorable? Do you remember the time she was four, and she put on Father’s boots and cloak and hat and took his staff and insisted she was an Agent? She wanted to go to work with him?”
“Oh, yes.” Their mother’s dark eyes danced with amuse-ment. “She was so tiny! She couldn’t see from underneath the hat. It came to her nose!”
“And the b-boots!” Sandra could hardly speak for laughter. “They came up above her knees. She could hardly walk!”
They both laughed and laughed until there were tears in their eyes. Sandra reached over and mussed the top of Rachel’s head. “Little sis, you don’t need to pretend you have sources you need to protect, just because Daddy and I can’t tell you things.” She leaned closer and whispered with a happy conspiratorial smile, “It’s all right. I won’t tell anyone Gaius told you.”
Rachel smiled, but underneath, she felt disappointed.
She had been looking forward to telling her family about how she had stopped the demon from escaping. If she spoke up now, it would sound like bragging. Also, it would frighten them, to hear that she had engaged in the battle, rather than keeping her head down.
She gazed down at her cocoa, watching the whipped cream melt.
She hated being treated like a child. One reason she liked Gaius and Vlad so much was that they both always spoke to her as if she were an equal. She felt another pang of sadness. She did know this information, thanks to her wonderful boyfriend who, by now, would have received her letter and who may have decided he would prefer the title: former boyfriend.
Their mother took Sandra’s empty cup and went to the kitchen for more hot chocolate. As Rachel sipped her sweet concoction, she finally found the courage to bring up a subject about which she had been longing to speak to Sandra.
“By the way, I’d been meaning to write you about your pre-vious letter.” Rachel leaned closer to her sister. “If Father doesn’t approve of Bavaria, wouldn’t he favor sending one of his daughters to work her will upon the Bavarian heir? To warp him to the ways of good? I mean, couldn’t Vlad change the government once he became king? So it wasn’t a dictatorship? Father would have to be in favor of that. Really! It’s important to think these things out.”
Sandra sighed and did not answer. Rising, she crossed to the windows and leaned against the glass, staring out at the brightly-colored barges on the canal below.
“Don’t you want to be Queen of Bavaria?” asked Rachel, from her seat.
Apparently, she had spoken too loudly, because from across the room, their mother turned and gazed at Sandra.
Their mother asked softly, “Do you want to be Queen of Bavaria?”
Sandra glanced at their mother and then looked away. She did not reply. Their mother blew on her hot cup of cocoa and sighed.
“I’ll talk to your father, dear,” she said, adding. “Oh, and Rachel, there’s a letter for you.”
Rachel took the letter and brought it over to one of the windows. Inside was a sheet of lined paper. It read:
My feelings for you have not changed. I hope you come back soon, because I can’t wait to see you again.
Gaius