CHAPTER SIX

Poor Old Malcolm Finnegan, Begin Again

The moving panel brought us into a chamber much smaller and darker than the ballroom. The only light came from a line of flickering candles on a long table that took up much of the room. Kanin sat at the head of the table, and four other people were seated along it. Or rather, three of them were—one was a centaur, which meant he couldn’t use chairs. He just stood.

I recognized him. In fact, I recognized everyone, but for now I focused on the centaur and the young blonde girl sitting next to him. He wore a double-breasted jacket over his human torso, while she was dressed in a violet gown. Her hair had been dark the last time I’d seen her, but I still recognized her.

“Bryn!” I said. “Alan! You’re all right!”

Alan gave me his usual dispassionate expression and shrugged. “More or less,” he intoned, in his northern drawl.

“Nick! Cordelia!” Bryn the pooka was almost completely human when we first walked in, aside from her ears being those of a cat. She changed fully into a cat and bounded across the table toward us, then resumed her mostly human form once she reached the other side. “So good to see you again!” She took our hands and beamed at us.

“You say that every time,” said Alan. “Don’t you ever get tired of having to say hello to them over and over?”

“Well, they don’t remember.” Bryn vaulted over the table and returned to her seat. “I’ve got to be civil.”

I stared at her. “You’re…different, somehow.”

“I know!” She brushed her tousled blond hair back. “Do you like it?”

“Very much,” said Cordelia, “but I don’t think that’s what Nick meant.”

“Your accent’s different,” I said. “It sounds northern, not Caledonian.”

“I’ve always been able to speak with both. I was born in Caledon, but raised by Alan’s family. It’s been a long time since I left Caledon, so I’ve been using the northern one more lately.”

“But it’s not only that,” I said. “You’re not quite as scared, either.”

“I’ve been through a lot.”

“We all have.” Alan stamped his hoof. It made an odd, metallic clanking noise.

I peered over the table at his left front foot. What I saw made me gasp in horror. “Alan! Your leg!”

He glanced down. “What about it?”

“It’s turned to clockwork!” I gaped at the gears and hinges that began above his knee and ended in a solid steel hoof.

“No, it hasn’t. It’s been chopped off.” He lifted the leg with a whir of machinery. “This one’s new. Like it?”

He was perfectly calm about it all, but I was aghast. “You got your leg cut off?”

“Yeah. Long—”

“No, no ‘long story.’ Spit it out. How did this happen?”

“Beatrice had the clockmen cut it off after one of our escape attempts.” He still didn’t appear bothered in the least about it. “It’s all right, though. I’ve got three more.”

“Alan, you’re part-horse! You need all your legs!”

“Beatrice didn’t allow the leg to be restored when the clock turned back,” said Kanin. “Instead, she replaced it permanently with that prosthetic. A grim warning, in case we should try to escape again.”

I was so fixated on Alan’s injury that I barely noticed when one of the two people on the other side of the table clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Do we have to go through this explanation over and over again? It wastes a lot of precious time. Find a way to streamline it, for pity’s sake.”

I recognized the voice. Malcolm was there, sitting next to the tall young woman from the drawing Levesque had shown us. He looked twenty years younger than the Malcolm I remembered—though I supposed he was actually over a hundred years younger. His hair was entirely red, with no grey at the temples. He wore a long, dark-red leather jacket with a texture resembling scales.

Melody Nightingale wore a red dress, but she had apparently ripped the skirt in half to allow herself a little more freedom of movement. She had one leg thrown over the other, and was toying with a golden locket around her neck. She acknowledged me with a nod and a brief smile.

Malcolm stopped me with a gesture before I could speak to him. “Please, don’t say anything. Whatever it is, I’ve already heard it.” He started doing a very poor imitation of my voice and accent. “Malcolm! Crikey! You’re so young! What’s going on here? Who’s that girl? I’m so confused! Oi!”

“I do not sound like that,” I growled.

Melody smacked him on the back of the head. “Don’t be rude, grumpy-scales.”

“Ow!” He rubbed his head and glowered at her, but there was a notable lack of fire-breathing. He must really like her, I thought.

“How do you do?” Melody rose to her feet and held out her hand. She spoke with a northern accent as well, a dialect specific to the county of Darkwater. “Melody Nightingale, notorious jewel thief. You may have heard of me in the future; I’m sure I’m a figure of legend by then.”

“Ah…yes,” I lied.

She laughed. “I never get tired of that. You’re adorable when you lie.”

“Perhaps,” said Cordelia, looking annoyed, “we should get down to business before this loop comes to an end.”

“Definitely.” Kanin indicated two chairs at the end of the table nearest us. “Have a seat. I officially call this meeting to order.”

“Okay, then.” I pulled out Cordelia’s chair for her, then sat down myself. “I have many questions. First of all—”

“The White Rabbit Society is now assembled.” Kanin’s tone was solemn and ceremonial. “May the clock strike twelve.”

“May the clock strike twelve,” echoed everyone, including Cordelia.

I looked from one to the other in bewilderment. “Right. That wasn’t weird at all.”

Cordelia elbowed me. “Hush.”

“Has Nick started to remember at all yet?” Kanin asked her.

“Bits and pieces,” I said. “Nothing’s really clear.”

“Right. Then I’d better explain everything.”

“That would be nice,” I tried to say. My voice was drowned out by the weary groans from everyone else at the table besides Cordelia.

“Oh, grow up, you lot,” Kanin scolded. “I know this is tiresome, but we have to all be on the same page if we’re going to escape. All right?”

“Can I take a nap until you’re done with this part?” asked Alan.

“No.”

“Drat.” He folded his horse legs under him until his equine body was lying on the ground, then leaned over the table, resting his chin on his folded arms.

“How much do you know already about what’s going on?” Kanin asked me.

“Something about…time loops or time scratches or time…somethings. Cordelia tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t really understand.”

She looked miffed. “I thought I explained it rather well.”

“Let’s start from the beginning,” said Kanin. “On November 17th, 426 B.E….”

Alan yawned loudly.

Kanin gave him a stern look. “Alan.”

“Sorry.”

“As I was saying, on that date, a royal ball was held at the Castle of Basile so that Prince Matteo of Vetri could choose his bride from the eligible young women of the kingdom. He’d been more interested in weapons than marriage up until that point, so the regents who assisted in his rule decided they had to make him select a future queen.”

“Barbarians,” said Malcolm.

“You won’t think it’s so barbaric when we get married,” said Melody.

“We are not getting married.”

“Oh, we will. Just you wait.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of Melody by my time. Most likely, she’d died of old age. Not a pleasant thought. I wondered if she and Malcolm ever had gotten married.

“The ball,” said Kanin, struggling to maintain control of the discussion, “began promptly at eight o’clock P.M., and was scheduled to conclude at the last chime of midnight. However, the stroke of twelve never came.”

“And it still hasn’t,” said Bryn. “This evening has lasted over two thousand years, and it’s still never quite midnight.”

“Time keeps turning back on itself, you see,” said Melody. “Beatrice’s magic is channeled through that big clock in the ballroom. Every time it strikes twelve, the hands start going backward, and time is dragged along with it. Everything gets reset to the way it was when the ball first began.” She hesitated. “Mostly, anyway.”

“The precise sequence of events in these four hours has altered somewhat over time.” said Kanin. “For example, you and Cordelia obviously weren’t there in the fifth century B.E., when all this started. But then, in one of the cycles, you arrived around nine-o’clock-ish and kept arriving for every cycle after that. I always show up around a quarter past nine.”

“The people who have been caught up in the magic of Basile over the centuries got…incorporated into the time loop,” Cordelia explained. “And it seems like they were always there, even though they weren’t.”

I held up my hand to silence everyone. A horrible thought had occurred to me. “Wait a minute. You’re saying that time keeps going around and around in circles inside this castle…” I motioned vaguely to the wall. “…but out there, time goes on normally.”

“Right,” said Kanin.

“And we’ve been through quite a few of these loops.”

“Yes.”

“So a lot of time must have passed out there by now.” I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I had to. “How much time?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. “It’s difficult to tell,” said Kanin at last. “Over time, our memories stop getting reset along with the time loop, and we retain our recollections of previous cycles. It happens to everybody eventually; seems to be something Beatrice can’t control. But we never fully recall every single one of those loops starting from when we first got here. So it’s impossible to tell precisely how long ago any of us arrived.”

I felt sick. “So Cordelia and I could have been in here…what, weeks? Months?”

“More likely years,” said Malcolm casually.

“Years?” I choked. “So we’re not in the past, we’re in the future?”

Malcolm rolled his eyes. “And here we go. Crispin and Molly, whoever they are, could have been trapped at Warrengate for ages and ages. Same song, same verse.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to bore you!” I snarled.

Cordelia touched my hand. “Nick, try to calm down.”

I ignored her. I wanted to yell at someone, and Young Malcolm provided an excellent target. “It’s not as if I have anything to worry about! My brother’s only being held prisoner by a Council of evil enchanters! He probably thinks I’m never going to come for him! And what are you doing about it? Why haven’t—”

Malcolm raised a hand to silence me. “Please, allow me. Why haven’t I changed into a dragon and reduced Beatrice to a literal Cinder-ella? That was the brilliant pun you were going to use, right?”

I blinked in surprise. “Er…yeah.”

“Then allow me to inform you, for approximately the millionth time, that I can’t do that. All these old castles are equipped with enchantments that prevent dragons from assuming their true forms while inside them.” He motioned to himself. “So I’m stuck like this.”

I clutched at my mane. “But there must be some kind of magic we can use to—I don’t know—”

“Poof ourselves out of this castle?”

It was as if he’d read my mind. “Yes, that’s…exactly what I was going to say.”

“But there isn’t anything like that,” said Alan. “Plus, I don’t think ‘poof’ is a verb.”

“There are ways to instantly transport from one place to another,” said Cordelia, “but they require magical ingredients we don’t have.”

“And besides,” said Kanin, “they wouldn’t work in this case. Not only are the clockmen guarding the exits—and there are hundreds of those things skittering around, by the way—but there’s a magical barrier around the castle. Those pumpkins outside bring people in, but nobody can get out.”

“How can you be sure the barrier would stop us if we tried to transport magically through it?” I asked.

“Because I’ve tried it.” Kanin’s voice was stern. “Look, jumping from one place to another happens to be my specialty.”

“I’m getting very tired of that rabbit pun.” Malcolm rubbed his eyes wearily.

Kanin glared at him through the mask. “It’s not a pun, thank you very much.” His gaze went back to me. “I can create holes in space and time that instantly take me from place to place. Rabbit holes, if you will.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“That is actually what they’re called,” said Cordelia. “It’s a concept in theoretical magic. A hole in reality, connecting one location with another.”

“They couldn’t have come up with a less stupid name than that?”

She pursed her lips. “Well, some people call them ‘worm holes’ instead.”

“Ugh.” I made a face. “Never mind. Let’s stick with rabbit holes.”

“But I can’t create those portals in here,” said Kanin. “The barrier always blocks them.”

I dug my claws into the table. “There has to be something we can do!”

“Nick.” Cordelia’s tone was stern as she met my gaze. “Listen to me. I know exactly how you feel. I care deeply about Crispin too, and Molly’s the only family I have left. But we have to focus on stopping Beatrice first. We don’t have a choice.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. The idea of Crispin and Molly being held at the mercy of the Council was enough to drive me insane. In our little team, I’d always been the voice of reason and caution. Cordelia, Crispin and Molly were all prone to impulsive decisions. I was generally the one holding them back, telling them to calm down.

I didn’t want to be calm now. I wanted to go crazy and attack Beatrice; force her to free us from this nightmare.

But you’re a detective, not an animal, I reminded myself. You can’t save Crispin if you throw common sense to the wind now. Don’t be emotional. Take a breath, count to ten, and focus on the facts.

I took a breath, counted to ten…and roared at the top of my lungs.

Everyone already had their ears covered before I started.

“I do that every time, don’t I?” I panted, once I ran out of breath.

“Pretty much,” said Melody.

“Good thing I cast a spell to sound-proof this room,” said Cordelia.

“Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system,” said Kanin, “let’s get back to the business at hand.”

“Right.” I exhaled slowly. “At the risk of repeating myself—which is apparently all I’m doing right now—I do have two more questions.”

“Go ahead,” said Kanin patiently.

“You mentioned something before about Beatrice sending people to the dungeons. How does that work, then? They stay there, even when the clock turns back?”

“Yes. Beatrice can alter where people are when the loop begins. If she discovers that someone has started to remember the prior loops, she usually imprisons them downstairs. Then they all start out in the dungeons at the beginning of the loop instead of arriving at the ball at their usual time.”

“They’re all locked away down there,” said Alan. “All the people who remembered and tried to escape—or who went mad.”

“Ah.” I shuddered.

“And the other question is, what about Cinderella and Prince Matteo, right?” said Malcolm.

I ground my fangs. It was getting to be tiresome, having everyone know what I was about to say before I said it. “Yeah. That’s it.”

“There are many stories about what happened to them,” said Melody. “Legends, I suppose you’d call them. This place has become like a little civilization over the centuries, with Cinderella as a mythical figure.”

“Some say she’s a hero who escaped the castle and will one day return with an army to vanquish Beatrice,” said Bryn. “Others claim she’s a heartless monster who doomed us all, and who’s now suffering for her crimes down in the dungeons.”

“Either way,” said Kanin, “people tell stories about her to make themselves feel better about their own fate. Anyone who knew the facts about where she ended up is long gone.”

“Everyone remembers eventually,” said Alan. “They all try to keep it hidden from Beatrice and the clockmen for as long as they can, but sooner or later, somebody cracks under the strain. It’s exhausting, putting up with these loops over and over again and pretending it’s new every single time. The people who don’t remember yet are the lucky ones.”

A solemn hush fell over the White Rabbit Society. “So what do we do?” I asked. “You’ve all been meeting and planning for this long, you must have at least a few ideas.”

Kanin reached up to straighten his mask. “We—and by ‘we’, I mean all of us including you and Cordelia—have tried practically everything.”

This complicated matters. It was demoralizing to try to think of a clever idea while knowing I’d already failed countless times. “We did all that, and we’re still not in the dungeons?”

“I think Beatrice finds our efforts entertaining,” said Malcolm. “She only got rid of Sylvia because she went completely stark-raving bonkers and started trying to beat all the clockmen up. Our plans are usually more subtle than that.”

I recalled the incredibly-annoying rules of magic that Cordelia had taught me after I’d first become a Beast. “All magic spells—”

“—have living sources,” Alan finished. “We know.”

I fought to keep from snapping in irritation. “All right. So have you—”

“—tried to find the source of this one, so we could disenchant it?” Melody inspected her fingernails. “Of course we have; we’re not idiots.”

“And?” I snarled.

Alan shook his head. “No luck. If it’s inside this castle at all, it’s extremely well-hidden.”

“For pity’s sake, why are we even bothering any more?” Malcolm drummed his fingers on the table in impatience. “We’ve tried every spell we can think of; magic so intricate and powerful that most people can’t begin to comprehend it. And it still wasn’t enough to stop Beatrice. Isn’t it about time we admitted defeat?”

I wasn’t remotely ready to accept that. “Have you tried—”

“Yes.” Everyone spoke in unison.

Except Cordelia, that is. She pounded on the table to get their attention. “Now, wait a minute. If we’re ever going to get out of these loops, then we need to do something different from what we’ve already been doing. Right?”

“Obviously,” said Malcolm.

“Well, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed in every loop. All of you ignore Nick every time he tries to come up with an idea.”

“He’s not a Charmblood,” said Kanin. “And this is extremely high-level magic we’re talking about. No offense, but I’m not sure he has much to contribute to the discussion.”

“Offense taken,” I grumbled.

“But don’t you see?” Cordelia said to Kanin. “That’s exactly the problem! All the magical brains in this room have been trying and failing for no one knows how long. Perhaps we need an ordinary, non-magical detective’s input on this problem.”

I twitched my tail. “Not sure I’d describe myself as ordinary or non-magical right at this moment.”

“Never mind that. Go back to your roots. Nick Beasley, private investigator. Set aside all the magic, all the strangeness, and think about how you’d get us out of this mess. Your awareness will be different now that you’ve started to remember, so perhaps you’ll finally be able to get us out of here.” She slapped me on the back. “Take all the time you need.”

As if on cue, the big clock out in the ballroom struck ten.

My eyes widened as an idea exploded in my mind. “That’s it,” I murmured. “That’s the answer.”