“I have a bone to pick with you, Twisden!” Elixibyss was bellowing. “Wake up, you idiot!!”
Bone-picking, a specialty of the Impress.
Hearing her icy voice raised to a murderous pitch sent a shudder of apprehension through them all. It’s a wonder they didn’t run off and hide. Instead, Lias said, “Right. This time it’s mine.” With his hair standing straight up on his head, practically crackling, he darted out the door and down the stairs.
“Lias, be careful!” Nieve called, and took off after him, still clutching the plaid scarf. “Kids,” Lirk grumbled, shaking his head as he reached into his pocket. In a moment he was still shaking his head, the only part of him still visible.
A disturbing enough sight in itself, but not one to bother Professor Manning, who was lost in thought. “Molly,” he muttered to himself. “Now, wasn’t . . . Molly . . . .”
When Nieve ran into the drawing-room on Lias’ heels, Elixibyss was busy throttling Twisden. She had him by the neck and was giving him a bone-rattling shake, while the unconscious audience that was gathered around the fireplace looked on and smiled happily (except Sutton).
“She betrayed us!” she screamed. “You chose her, I should have known you couldn’t do anything right. Nitwit! Tell me that you’ve found that formula. Come on, tell me!”
“No, he hasn’t,” said Nieve.
Elixibyss dropped her hands from Twisden’s neck and spun around. She was wearing large bone-rimmed sunglasses, which sat askew on her nose.
“Erk,” Twisden croaked.
Elixibyss adjusted her sunglasses and hissed, “You! You little ingrate! Running away after all I’ve done for you! I knew you’d be here. Simpleton! You cannot, I repeat, you cannot get away from me.”
“What have you done for me?” Nieve stuck out her chin, hoping she wouldn’t get it knocked off.
“I let you live. I could have extinguished you in a trice.” Elixibyss passed a hand before the leaping flames in the fireplace and they vanished instantly, some few left flickered abjectly on the logs.
“You let me live so you could use me.”
“Naturally.” Elixibyss pinched her brow with her long fingers. As the sleeve of her gown fell away from her scaley arm, Nieve saw that she’d patched-up the hole in it with a Band-Aid. “Get with it, dear. That’s the name of the game. People have their uses, that’s how the world works. If you believe otherwise then you really are a simpleton.”
“And you,” Elixibyss now turned her attention to Lias, who was slowly advancing on her, flashlight raised. “You are utterly useless. Think you can hurt me with that feeble little light? Ha! Think again, for once! Honestly, I’ve no idea why I’ve kept you around for so long.”
“But he’s your son!” protested Nieve.
“Stolen,” she said. “And a pain from day one, no matter how much I punished him.” She reached into the folds of her gown and produced the gold box. “But a pain for which there is a cure.”
“Give it to me,” he said, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.
“Oh, sure.” She gave the box a shake, rattling the contents noisily, then raised it high above his head. “Jump, Spot. C’mon boy! Grrrrrr,” she taunted.
Nieve winced to see Lias humiliate himself. He dropped the flashlight and made a jump for it, which of course Elixibyss snatched away with a laugh. Whatever was in that box, he wanted it badly. “Give it to him,” she demanded, moving toward her.
“Don’t touch me!” Elixibyss stepped back quickly.
“Why not?” asked a woman who suddenly walked into the room. “You’re her mother, aren’t you? Don’t you want a loving hug?”
The woman looked terribly pale and exhausted, but intent, and fierce. A fierceness Nieve recognized, because she so often felt it herself.
“Mum,” Nieve whispered.
“Go ahead, sweetheart,” Sophie said. “Give her a hug.”
“Don’t you dare,” Elixibyss warned, backing up to the fireplace. She swept her hand over the grate and the flames leapt up again with a hungry roar. “You touch me and this box goes straight into the fire. And with it, my dear, goes your cousin’s life.”
“Cousin? I don’t have a cousin.”
“You do, Nieve,” Sophie said, regarding Lias sadly.
“Spare me the sob story–” Elixibyss began, then stopped. Something caught her eye. In fact it almost plunged into her eye. “No!” she cried.
Nieve heard it before she saw it. A curious kind of homemade spear whizzed by overhead and struck the Impress. It was made of a brass curtain rod, snapped in half, and was decorated with owl feathers. Malcolm’s arrowhead – the elfshot – was lashed onto its tip with a brown shoelace.
“Get it out,” Elixibyss snarled, bent over and clutching at the spear, which had sunk into her forehead and was stuck fast. Her sunglasses tumbled to the floor.
“Bit gimcrack,” Nieve heard Lirk mumble, although he was nowhere to be seen. “Fixed the headache, heh.”
As the Impress struggled to pluck the spear out of her brow, black smoke began to leak out from around the edges of the elfshot, as well as from around the loosened Band-Aid on her arm. Seizing his chance, Lias lunged toward her and made a grab for the gold box.
“No you don’t, dog!” She whirled around and pitched the box into the flames.
Lias dropped to his knees, shocked, and everyone began to shout and . . . bark?
Artichoke, baying loudly, bounded into the room. Both he and Nieve dove toward the hearth at the same time. But, as she shoved past Mortimer Twisden, who was now fully alert, he caught hold of the tartan scarf still clutched in her hand and yanked her toward him. “You rotten interfering hoyden–”
“Get your hands off my daughter!” Sophie sprang to her defense, but the weed seedling Nieve had picked up in the ditch, sprang even faster. It shot out of her pocket like a jack-in-the-box and sank its tiny, razor-sharp teeth into Twisden’s ear. He wailed so loudly that Sophie snatched up the fallen scarf and stuffed it in his mouth, saying, “Now Nieve, only you can do it. Embrace her.”
“Mum, the box. ”
“Artichoke has it.”
Nieve cast around desperately, and saw that Artichoke, standing shakily by the fire, his fur singed and smoking, did indeed have the box clamped in his teeth.
Smoke, deep black and toxic, was also pouring out of the puncture in Elixibyss’ forehead. She had the spear gripped firmly in hand and was crawling toward Lias, who was staring at her, as if mesmerized.
Embrace her? Elixibyss? What a repulsive, sickening, bizarre idea. Why on earth–?
“Please,” Sophie implored. “Do it!”
Nieve glanced quickly at her mother, nodded, took a deep breath, and ran toward the Impress, arms extended.
Elixibyss dropped the spear and scuttled backward. “Don’t touch,” she pleaded, “ . . . your mother.”
It was the most difficult thing Nieve had ever done – and the easiest. Elixibyss could have been her mother’s twin, so closely and disturbingly did she resemble her. The iciness gone from her voice, she even sounded like her again, so much so that the softened and beseeching tone tore at Nieve’s heart. But the eyes, when Nieve looked at them, had changed. The whites and irises had melded into a smooth silvery metal, cold and frightening. Gazing into them for the merest moment, she caught her own reflection gazing back – a Nieve she never knew existed, didn’t want to know – before jerking her head away.
Without hesitating, she reached out and grasped the Impress’ arms . . . and where she touched . . . she marked her. She left glowing handprints on Elixibyss’ arms, prints that stretched and spread rapidly engulfing them in light. Nieve gasped. The floor beneath was visible through them. The long-fingered light spread over her shoulder, down her back, and along her side. Elixibyss spoke a few faint words in that strange tongue Nieve had heard her use in the garden, and then she sighed once before the light consumed her body entirely, leaving behind a column of black smoke that wavered and dissipated until nothing was left of it but single hair-thin strand, twisting and writhing in the air.
“Catch it!” someone shouted.
Nieve turned quickly, thrilled, to see Gran. She was hurrying toward what was left of the Impress.
Artichoke barked, dropping the gold box, and Lias grabbed it. It was his! But instead of clutching it protectively, as one might expect him to do, he immediately flipped open the lid and dumped the contents on the floor, as if they mattered not at all. Then he went after the wiry wisp of smoke. It twisted away from him, then shot back, twining around and around his wrist. He shook his hand free of it, and pursued it again, leaping after it, snapping the box’s lid, trying to trap the smoke inside. Once, twice, he almost caught it . . . but no, no luck, not this time. It swirled into the fireplace, plaited itself into the rising plume, a night-black strand among the lighter grey, and vanished up the flue.
“No!” he cried, as Elixibyss herself had done only moments before.
“Never mind, Lias. She’ll do you no more harm.” Gran had her arms around him. “Och, better mind me, though. Stepped on your toes.” She bent down and scooped up two small bones from the floor, which she then placed delicately on his palm. “Hang onto these, lad. Seeing as you’ve no shoes now. I suppose she stole those, too.”
Lias nodded, speechless, staring at his long-lost treasure.
“Gran.” Nieve was the next to feel Gran’s arms around her. “But, those bones are . . . toes?”
“Aye. I’m sure he’ll tell you about it when he can. Good work, Nievy!”
She shook her head. “Dr. Morys. Oh Gran, I didn’t mean to–”
“Hush, pet. I’ve had word. Frances got a team to Bone House before it vanished altogether. He’s poorly, but he’s alive. Thanks to you.”
Nieve wasn’t sure she deserved any thanks, but felt a tremendous surge of relief. And a rising excitement. “Gran, d’you know what? I can wake Dad up. And Malcolm, and everybody. I know how!”
“That’s because you’re a cunning girl, love. Ah, here comes your mother. Looks like I’m going to have to share you.”
Sophie was moving toward her, face alight, but didn’t quite make it. Someone else had come charging into the room. It was Professor Manning, red-faced and flustered, with one shoe missing. A rigid Molly Twisden was tucked under his arm and sticking out like a battering ram. Sophie had to leap aside as the professor hurtled her way, enthusing, “Eureka! I have it, the formula! There’s only one ingredient missing!”
Mortimer Twisden, weed seedling still dangling from his earlobe like a kitschy earring, had just yanked the scarf out of his mouth and was about to start bawling again, when Professor Manning spotted Nieve. He turned sharply toward her, which caused Molly Twisden to whack her husband on the head with one of her sensible penny loafers. Much to her satisfaction when Molly later heard about it, she gave him such a sound crack that it not only knocked him off his feet, but knocked him out cold.
“Young lady,” the professor exclaimed, bustling over to her.
Nieve ducked, while Gran and Lias scurried out of his way. Artichoke yipped and danced away, too, then trotted over to Twisden to give his Pomeranian slippers a sniff.
Professor Manning set Molly down, propping her up against the mantel. Then, getting down on all fours, he gave Nieve’s shoes a close study. “Hmm, aah, I thought so. Amazing, truly amazing.”
“What?” Nieve laughed. The shoes were amazing, true. But at the moment they looked like nothing more than a bunch of tattered and wilted leaves clapped around her feet. That marathon run had been hard on them.
Professor Manning stretched a trembling hand out and lifted up one of the leaves. Beneath it was a delicate white flower, freshly blossomed, which he plucked off and held up to the firelight.
“Moly,” he said, quietly, reverently.
“Awesome,” said Lirk, less quietly and a lot less reverently. “By the way, old fella,” he added, finally putting in an appearance, head first, with a twist of a grin on his twisted face, “here’s your shoelace. Came in nice and handy it did.”
No one – not even Nieve – noticed as Sutton’s lips began to twitch and lift into a tentative, and genuine, smile.