Jackaby (10 page)

J
enny led me straight to the third floor. I stopped abruptly as I reached the landing, marveling at the space before me. Where the stairs on the previous two floors had opened into thin, dimly lit hallways, this level was wide-open. Interior walls had been knocked out on either side, leaving only the occasional column to support a high ceiling. Broad windows on every wall allowed light to pour in, and the scene they illuminated was astonishing.

I stood on a hardwood landing that extended ten or fifteen feet, but which seemed then to warp slightly, melting abruptly into grass and mud. The rest of the floor was a rolling, living landscape. Where the hallway should have been, there remained a solid path of wood, laid with a few narrow oriental runners. A slender margin on either side of the carpeting showed floorboards, but then quickly gave way to damp earth on the left and right. Some of the columns, I realized, were sprouting thin branches, and I wondered momentarily if they bore leaves in the spring.

The dominant feature of the space was the massive pond occupying the majority of the floor. It lay just left of the pathway, an oblong pool of greens and blues, bent slightly like a kidney bean, with a little island in the middle. The island was covered in shrubbery and held what appeared to be a tall armchair with dark plum upholstery. The pond must have been twenty feet across at its widest, and from the look of it, several feet deeper than was physically possible, given the dimensions of the building and the height of the ceiling on the floor below. A few golden orange fish darted about beneath the surface.

Here and there around the earthen floor sat desks and cabinets, half enveloped by vines and weeds. Chairs, chests of drawers, and even paintings on the walls were fringed with moss, as though nature had crept in through an open window and caught them by surprise during the night. They simply became a part of one lush, well-furnished landscape.

“I was against it, at first.” Jenny’s voice came from just over my shoulder. “Jackaby didn’t exactly consult me. He has a way of acquiring a lot of favors, especially from his more unconventional clientele. Now, though, I can’t imagine the place without it. On a clear night you can throw back the drapes and let the stars catch in the ripples, and the water bounces their light right back up to the ceiling. It’s really quite beautiful. For a man who professes to be entirely rational and scientific, he can’t seem to steer clear of the impossible and magical.”

The last rays of the setting sun were bleeding red and orange across the sky, and faint waves of the warm light played across the ceiling above the pond. It made the room feel serene and ethereal. My gaze gradually found its way back to Jenny, who was watching me with pursed lips.

“Do you have feelings for him?” she asked.

“Feelings for who?” The image of a certain young policeman popped involuntarily into my mind, and my cheeks flushed as I pushed the thought away.

“For Jackaby, of course.”

“Oh—goodness, no!” I had not intended my response to sound quite so aghast, but the question had caught me by surprise. My reaction seemed to please the ghost, however, and her expression softened.

“You needn’t be quite so shocked at the idea. He is a good man . . . and a not unattractive one.”

“I suppose,” I said, with some difficulty. “Perhaps if he could be convinced to burn that atrocious hat.”

Jenny laughed, a bubbling, honest laugh. “Oh, I know! I know! I’ve given up on that battle. Don’t worry—he’ll wear it less often come spring.” Her pretty giggle was infectious, and I found myself chuckling, too. “There is someone, though, isn’t there?” Jenny asked.

“I—well, I haven’t—no. Not really.” Strong cheekbones, deep brown eyes, and curls of jet-black hair beneath a police cap snuck back into my mind, and my cheeks grew hot again. “No.”

Jenny sighed. “Don’t waste time. Life is too short for unrequited love. Take it from an expert.” She swept across the woodwork and greenery toward the center of the room. Her weightless steps stirred the blades of grass like a faint breeze. “Fetch a bit of bread from the chest, would you?” she called back.

I glanced behind me and found, against the wall, a simple wooden crate containing a few loaves of dry bread. I selected one and trotted along the path to catch up. The floorboards tapered off into a grassy mound, where the ghostly lady sat perched on a wrought-iron park bench facing the pond. She patted the seat for me to join her.

“Why did you come here, then?” she asked as I sat down.

“It was your idea,” I said. “It is nice, though, you’re right. Very peaceful.”

“Not to the pond, silly. Why did you come to work for Jackaby?”

“Oh, that—well. It happened rather quickly, I guess,” I said. “I’ve been in eastern Europe for much of this past year, and only recently docked in the States. Just looking for work, I suppose. Any job would do, so long as it paid for a roof over my head. And there was a posting . . .”

A mallard fluttered over the surface of the pond toward us, etching a shallow wake with one webbed toe before landing at the water’s edge. I broke a chunk off the loaf and tore it up as I spoke, tossing the crumbs into the nearby grass.

“Now that I’ve gotten involved—I don’t know. It’s all rather exciting, of course, and more than a bit unbelievable. I should very much like to help solve mysteries and save lives. I fancy there are worse ways to earn a day’s wages.”

“He’s quite mad, you know. But adventure can be very appealing.”

I nodded, watching the duck waddle up the bank and begin nibbling at the crumbs. “My father was a bit of an adventurer,” I found myself telling her. “Although I’m not sure he would fully approve of my current situation.”

I chose not to mention that I had carefully avoided knowing what my parents thought for the past several months. Since making the decision to abscond with the tuition money to fund my travels, I had deliberately kept out of touch. I had sent an occasional postcard, assuring them of my safety and well-being, but never with a return address, nor any way to trace my current whereabouts with any real precision.

My mother worried, I knew, but my father . . . For my entire life, I had revered the man, and for my entire life, I had heeded his command to stay behind as the dutiful daughter while he marched into discovery. It was not that his word no longer held its power over me, but just the opposite. Secretly, I feared that if he gained the chance to summon me back home to safe monotony, I could only oblige.

Jenny’s voice gently broke the silence I had left. “Spending too much time around Jackaby can be . . . dangerous. That doesn’t frighten you?”

“Well, yes, it does a bit, I suppose,” I admitted. I had been getting similar warnings all day, from that unpleasant woman at the telegraph office to Inspector Marlowe—even Jackaby didn’t seem to think I could handle the job. “But today—I don’t know how to explain it. It was so easy to get caught up in it. It felt so natural. Like how you think things ought to be when you’re a child and you’ve been reading storybooks and listening to fairy tales. I guess I forgot about being frightened because it felt good to finally be in the adventure.”

Jenny sighed and tossed her head back. She said something very softly, which might have been, “And that’s what makes him so dangerous.”

The duck polished off the bread crumbs and sauntered up for more. He was a stately fellow, with a deeply black head and back, accented in greens and purples. His wings were brown and hung like a prim vest over his white underbelly. His chest was a dappled, reddish color, and it puffed out slightly, like a cravat, tapering away into the white beneath. He came within a few feet and waited, expectantly. I tossed him another handful of crumbs.

“There was a woman,” I recalled. “After Jackaby and I left, there was a woman crying. The victim had a picture of her in his room. The whole thing wasn’t sad—I mean, it was grisly and tragic—but it wasn’t really sad until there was that woman crying. That part didn’t feel like the adventures you read about in books. Jackaby says it isn’t over, either. We met a man today who Jackaby believes will be dead by morning.”

Jenny nodded solemnly, and we watched the duck peck at the bread crumbs for a bit. “You aren’t the first assistant he’s worked with, you know.”

I nodded. “He told me. A handful of them quit on him . . . and wasn’t there someone who stayed on?” I remembered the cryptic journal page I had stumbled upon downstairs, and a grim thought occurred to me. “Is that you, then? You didn’t—you know—during one of his cases, did you?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Die? No, that happened long before I met Mr. Jackaby. And I never worked for the man, if that’s what you thought. This place was my family’s. A number of occupants attempted to move in before he did, but apparently having a resident ghost isn’t good for property values, and word spreads. The lot fell to the city, and that Mayor Spade fellow called on Jackaby in the hopes he could do some sort of exorcism. That was how we met.” She smiled at the memory.

“I take it he didn’t exorcise you?”

She laughed softly. “No, he didn’t exorcise me. He spoke to me. Like a person. He made a pot of tea—even asked my permission to use the kitchen first, and just made a pot of tea. We sat at the table and chatted. It was the first proper chat I’d had in a decade. He poured me a cup and just let it get cold in front of me while we talked about this and that. He was very straightforward. He had no qualms about Spade trying to sell the place, told me the man had every right to. ‘If every dead person decided to keep their property, we’d have nowhere for the living to live,’ he said, which was fair. But he told Spade that I had every right to stay as well. ‘No malevolent spirits, no call for eviction,’ I think he said. And that was that. A week later, Spade gave the place to him.”

“That’s quite an arrangement,” I said. My bread crumb offerings had slowed, and the duck waddled closer, giving me significant looks.

She shook the fondness from her face with a roll of her eyes. “That was before he tore up the kitchen for his silly laboratory. It was such a pretty kitchen, with tiles and lace curtains—and you’ve seen it now. Nearly beat yourself senseless at the sight of those garish bones he’s got strung from the ceiling, not that I blame you.”

I massaged the back of my head at the memory. “You saw that, did you?”

Her eye twinkled in amusement, but she moved on, thankfully. “At least this floor turned out for the better. Wide-open and beautiful, it’s the opposite of that mess of a laboratory. But that’s Jackaby in a nutshell. Science and magic, beauty and bedlam, things that ought to be at odds—they just don’t follow the same rules when Jackaby’s involved. For all his faults, he really is a remarkable man.” She looked out over the rippling pond while she spoke, and her silvery expression betrayed a hint of longing. “I don’t exactly get to go out and about much,” she continued, “so this place has really been a lovely escape. Of course, most of the junk he had stored up here migrated to the rest of the house. I’ve stopped trying to tidy up after the man . . . and the guest room—!” She stopped suddenly with a gasp.

“What, what is it?”

“You need somewhere to stay! You can finally get him to drag his rubbish heaps up to the attic! Do you keep a clean room, Miss Rook?”

“I—er—I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable asking for room and board. I’ve only just been hired on as it is.”

“Douglas takes room and board! Jackaby can’t turn you down. It’s perfect!”

“I don’t know,” I hedged. “And who is Douglas?”

“You’re the new Douglas. He used to be Jackaby’s assistant, just as you are now. These days Douglas just tends the archives.” She gestured at the cabinets against the wall, the tops of which were carpeted with moss and wildflowers.

“Where does Douglas sleep?”

Jenny giggled at a joke I didn’t get. The duck ceased waiting for me to toss another handful and flapped his wings in a brief flurry to land gracelessly on my knee. The bird was not small, at least a foot and a half from beak to tail, and his perch put us more or less face-to-face. He stared at me, and not the bread in my hand, and his tiny eyes bore into mine.

“Douglas?” I wagered.

A reddish orange bill bobbed once. One wing craned out, and the bird wobbled unsteadily to keep balance. Talons on the ends of his webbed feet poked into my leg uncomfortably.

“Well?” Jenny giggled again. “Go on, then. Don’t be rude. Abigail, meet Douglas.”

I took the duck’s extended feathers with my right hand and shook them carefully. Douglas returned to a more dignified stance, briefly preened, and then snatched the remaining half of a baguette and took off. He swooped in a lazy arc to land on the plum-colored armchair in the center of the bushy island and peck at the bulky morsel.

“Jackaby felt really guilty about Douglas,” Jenny told me when he had flapped away. “He used to be a person, of course. Jackaby sent him in alone to check out a lead that might have been nothing, but Douglas stumbled right into the thick of it. By the time Jackaby realized his mistake and hurried to help, it was too late. All he could do was shout out a warning before Douglas was hit with a powerful wave of untempered magic.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “He warned him to . . .”

“Duck.” It was Jackaby’s voice that finished the sentence, and Jenny and I both turned to see him step off the path and onto the grassy hill. “That’s right, and the irony that my attempt to help Douglas became the final mark of his curse was not lost on me. I vowed never to let anything distract me until I had found a way to reverse his metamorphosis.” The detective came to stand just behind the bench, scowling at the memory.

“My goodness,” I said. “But, then . . . are these recent murders somehow connected to the case that transformed Douglas?”

“What? No. The incidents have nothing at all in common.”

“Then, what made you abandon your vow?”

“I didn’t abandon it! I fulfilled it,” he answered. “The solution presented itself after an exhaustive evening’s research and one short trip into the country for supplies.”

“Then, why is Douglas still a duck?”