Ghostly Echoes (20 page)

A heavy fist slammed down where Charlie had been standing, flattening nothing but empty clothes as the hound whipped aside. Charlie's instincts, although always keen, were sharpest when he was on all fours. He wasted no time vaulting atop the craggy arm, his eyes hunting for a weakness of any kind. He bounded to Autoch's shoulder in one leap and went straight for the brute's eyes, which glistened like jet marbles in the shadow of his heavy brow. Autoch did not even flinch as Charlie's claws glanced off of the polished obsidian orbs. The attack left not so much as a scratch on the great elemental.

Charlie hit the ground again and bounded back to place in the portal. Whatever came, he could not allow that gap to close. The veil-gate only extended as high as Autoch's broad slab of a chest, and the giant had to stoop down to see Charlie. It made a sudden grab for him with fingers as thick as a grown man's waist. Charlie dodged again, and the creature gave him a meaningful nod, those glistening eyes sparkling like gems.

Charlie wasn't sure if he had seen it correctly, but Autoch repeated the motion. It was as if the creature were trying to communicate. The hound followed the elemental's gaze to a sturdy steel cuff affixed to Autoch's wrist. The band was fastened by a single seam along the inside of his wrist, a long hinge with a fine silver pin holding the two sides together.

“Now why would anyone with skin like yours need to wear something like that?” Charlie wondered. The stony creature swung again, and Charlie barely managed to duck under the quick strike. Autoch's expression was annoyed, although his anger seemed to be directed not at Charlie but at his own hands—almost as though they were acting against the elemental's will. “I really hope I'm right about this,” Charlie thought to himself. The hound fixed his eyes on the silver pin and pounced just as Autoch reached for him.

Autoch moved faster. He caught Charlie in one rocky fist and pulled him off of the mound and into the Annwyn, dangling him upside down. The elemental squeezed and the air rushed out of Charlie's lungs in a wheeze. He felt his ribs screaming in protest. As Autoch lifted him high into the air, Charlie caught a glimpse of the portal behind them. Either his vision was going dark or the window into the human world was closing. With the last of his breath leaving his body, Charlie changed.

His muscles shuddered and his bones rearranged themselves. For a moment he wore neither one form nor the other. In that fleeting instant he slid through the creature's stony fingers and onto its wrist. His human lungs expanded. The moment his fingers had fully formed, they began to pull at the pin, working it loose from the fixture.

Autoch shook his heavy arm widely, and Charlie sailed through the air to land on his back in the dirt and leaves. The hulking figure plodded forward to loom over him.

As the figure stalked up, filling Charlie's field of vision, Charlie held up his hand. Clutched in his trembling fist was a long, thin silver rod. Autoch stopped. He held up his own hand and regarded his wrist. The bracer clinked open, loosely. The giant reached up with his other hand and ripped the metal off of his arm. He flexed his fingers experimentally and tossed the cuff away into the forest.

Charlie stood, nervously. “Feel better?” he asked.

Autoch turned his obsidian gaze toward the policeman for a few seconds, and then lunged forward without warning. Charlie fell backward, but the giant's hand sailed high above his head. When Charlie looked up, it took him a few seconds to understand what he was seeing. Autoch's outstretched arm hung perfectly still, and one stony finger seemed to end abruptly at the knuckle. A halo of light shone around the stump.

The portal! During the scuffle Charlie had been thrown away from his post, and the veil-gate had all but sealed behind him. Autoch's finger was all that held it open now. With his other hand, Autoch gestured Charlie forward.

Charlie stepped cautiously up to the oreborn's hand, which less than a minute earlier had been doing its best to crush the life out of him. Autoch removed his huge finger gently and Charlie took his place, using both hands to hold open the impossible hole in midair. The window into Rosemary's Green was barely larger than Charlie's head.

He looked back over his shoulder. “Thank you,” he said to the elemental giant.

Autoch pounded a fist against his chest with a sharp clack, and, without further explanation, plodded off into the blue-green forest.

Concentrating hard, Charlie managed to coax the entrance to grow larger and larger until it was once more wide enough for a body to pass through. Shaken though he was, he slipped back into his clothes and resumed his place as a sentry. His heart thudded in his chest as he caught his breath.

He was not alone. A snow-white hunting hound with ears of bright crimson stood watching him silently from the underbrush. How long it had been there by the time Charlie noticed it, he did not know. It was lean and angular like a greyhound, far smaller than his own canine stature—but something about the beast made Charlie feel as though he ought to kneel or bow or roll over and show his underbelly. He straightened up instead.

“Hello, friend,” Charlie said.

The dog stared deep into Charlie's eyes, and then in a flash of milky white fur it was gone, and Charlie was alone again.

Back beneath the towering yew tree, Morwen gasped. The little brown stone on her necklace splintered and fell apart, nothing but tan pebbles and rock dust trickling through her fingers and down the shimmering blue-green dress. “No!” she shrieked. Her hex broken and her minions free, the nixie panicked. She fumbled with the pouch at her side, pulling out a handful of acorns.

The whole world was still spinning around me, but up close I could see that scraps of folded paper had been stuffed inside each of them. More hexes. She loosed one at me and I managed to duck away from it without falling over. Morwen snarled and let fly the whole handful. There was no chance that I could dodge them all.

A sudden gust of wind whipped up before the projectiles could reach me, sending them tumbling harmlessly into the roots. “LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE.” Jenny was nowhere to be seen, but her voice was everywhere and hard as steel. Dust began to form little eddies as the air spun all around us.

Morwen cursed and ran for the machine, slapping the brass fixtures into their traveling straps clumsily and folding the legs shut. Across the clearing I could see Jackaby's body still trapped in the grip of the giant's unyielding fingers, and Finstern still fighting his own limbs.

“Sister!” Finstern cried. “Help me!”

“We needed a demonstration,” she called across the windy clearing. “And you have provided that. Father will be very pleased with your efforts on our behalf, dear brother. I'll take your little toy, but your presence”—she secured the last strap and hefted the device over her shoulder—“is not required.”

Finstern cried out desperately, but Morwen turned her back on him and ran for the forest. I willed the world to hold still and flung the silver knife at her as hard as I could. The blade whipped through the air. It caught her leg a glancing blow, slicing a hole in her shimmering skirts and bouncing off into the roots. She glared back at me icily for just a moment, but the attack did not even slow her down. In another moment she had vanished into the woods.

Jenny Cavanaugh materialized in the center of the clearing. Freezing wind whipped around her.

“Jenny!” called out a familiar voice through Finstern's mouth.

The inventor's foot stumbled across the threshold just as Jenny turned. She eyed Finstern angrily. “Jackaby?” she said. “Are you in there?”

Finstern shook his head violently. “Argh! Get out! Get him out of my head!” he hollered furiously in his own Welsh accent. Then, in an American voice much softer and kinder than that of the insufferable cretin we had come to know, the man spoke again. “No. Not Jackaby. It's me, Jennybean.”

The wind stopped.

I realized what had pushed me across the threshold, what was fighting Finstern in his own skin. Howard Carson. He had followed me after all, only to rush into the path of the machine and channel his own soul into the mad inventor's body.

Jenny's eyes were wide. She hung motionless in the air. For several seconds the only sounds were the creaks of molten rock gradually solidifying in ashy lumps beside us. Swirling tendrils of blue-black mist were beginning to creep up out of the cave in the tree. One of the wisps of the Terminus, the End Soul, clung to Finstern's foot and climbed his leg, winding upward like a smoky snake.

“Howard?” whispered Jenny.

“Keep back,” he said. “I can't stay. It's already pulling me down. I can feel it. ”

“Howard? Howard—I looked for you. I waited for so long.” Jenny's voice shook.

“Don't wait any longer,” he said. “You've lost enough time waiting, and it's all my fault. I should have listened to you from the start. I would give your whole life back to you if I could, and mine right along with it.” The mist grew thicker, moving, swirling, undulating all the time as it coiled around the inventor's waist. “I can't. What I can give you is a little more time. Use it well. Every second. Find Poplin. Mayor Poplin was the only one of us to meet the council face-to-face. Find Poplin and you'll find your answers.”

“I don't want you to go,” Jenny breathed. “I'm not strong enough to lose you again.”

“You're stronger than you think. You always have been. Listen to me now—losing Finstern will only slow them down. It won't stop them.” The shadowy tendrils had coiled around his chest. “Stop waiting,” he said. “You've always been strong for me. It's time for you to be strong for you.”

“Howard—”

“Good-bye, Jennybean. Be amazing.”

And then Owen Finstern fell backward across the threshold.

His arms flailed once, as though he were waking from a nightmare, and his startled scream was cut short mid-breath as his body collapsed to the ground, just as mine had done when I crossed over. Above the man's still corpse not one but two spectral figures appeared. The spirit of Howard Carson drifted serenely backward into the darkness of the yew tree. He reached into his pocket and flicked a single coin in the air and caught it. The obol I had given him. He had managed to keep it after all. He stared lovingly at Jenny until the mist had claimed him.

The departure of Owen Finstern's soul was not so peaceful. His mouth broke open in an anguished snarl, and it was clear he was fighting forces against which he could not win. Behind him, in the shadows of the great tree, a figure appeared, dressed in an impeccable black suit. The stranger watched as Finstern's soul spasmed, watched as his head shot back. It was as though invisible chains were dragging the inventor's ghost forward and backward at the same time. He twitched and bucked, then shuddered wretchedly, coming apart at the seams. By the time his broken soul finally tumbled backward into the hole, it did not look much like a man anymore. Something else—no more than a sliver of darkness—skittered away into the roots in the opposite direction like an angry black insect.

Charon had warned us. The part of Finstern that was inhuman could not enter, and the part of him that was human could not escape. The crossing had completely torn Finstern apart.

“What will become of them?” I called to the dark stranger in the shadows. “Will Mr. Carson get to go back to his afterlife?” The stranger did not answer right away. “Is Owen Finstern just gone, now? Does whatever is left of his humanity get its own special place in the underworld? Does he join the End Soul?”

“Ask me those questions,” said the echoing voice, “when next we meet again, little mortal.” And then the shadows were empty. The stranger was gone.

With a clatter of crumbling stones, Jackaby finally kicked his way free of the Alloch's ruined hand. He brushed off his coat and crossed the clearing to stand beside Jenny Cavanaugh.

“Jenny?” he said.

“I told you there was no other woman,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the tree.

“You were right,” Jackaby conceded. “It looks like the only thing that could tempt that man away from you was you. She's a nixie. Nixies are shape-shifting water spirits.”

“He was a good man,” said Jenny. “You would have liked him.”

“I think you're right,” said Jackaby. “He gave himself up to keep you safe.”

“Twice,” said Jenny.

I stepped forward hesitantly. “Are you all right?” I said.

She took a deep breath. “No,” she said. “But I will be. It's good to know the truth. I saw what Howard told you in the underworld,” she said. “I saw everything the moment you got back. I saw it in your head. I can't thank you enough for what you've done for me.” She smiled at me and then cringed. “Oh, Abigail, your face!”

I reached a hand up and felt the cut. It was long and tender, but it wasn't deep. Morwen had struck a line straight across the middle of my existing scar. Each investigation I pursued with Jackaby seemed to leave me with larger and more visible injuries. At this rate, I would be escalating to decapitation by our sixth or seventh case if I wasn't careful. “I'll live,” I said. “I'm sure it looks worse than it is. Really.”

“You can't fool me. I was in there when you got it,” said Jenny. “I'm so sorry.”

“That scar is nothing to apologize for,” said Jackaby. “It may very well be the only reason Miss Rook is still alive. Look. Just like the devil going after old Will o' the Wisps, Morwen managed to inscribe the mark of a cross without meaning to. Unseelie Fae don't handle religious iconography well. It's in their nature to reject contradicting powers. Come on. We'll get you patched up back at the house.”

“No,” I said. “Carson was right about that, too—we can't wait. Finstern's machine in those monsters' hands is bad enough, but the Dire Council is already constructing something else—something capable of enslaving entire cities at a time.”