Nieve (28 page)

Facial tour complete, it flitted back up Nieve's shirt sleeve.

Professor Manning began blinking rapidly and scrunching up his mouth. He twitched his nose a couple of more times before starting to come around. When he did finally, he registered considerable surprise at seeing two children and a peculiar, wry-faced little person staring intently at him.

“My word!” he said, flustered. “Has . . . has . . . anyone seen my pipe?” He began patting the pockets of his corduroy jacket, raising clouds of dust that made Lirk sneeze. “I seem to have mislaid it.”

“Professor,” Nieve said, delighted. “You've mislaid much more than that. We'll fill you in as soon as we can, but right now, it's urgent, I have to ask you something.”

“Ah, well then . . . certainly. Fire away, young lady.”

“You invented a serum that turns people into, um, usable material, right? Doesn't kill them, but . . . .” Might as well, she didn't add.

“Oh dear,” he said, abashed. “Yes, yes, an accident that was. Discovered it when I was working on a new formaldehyde formula. Got the idea from some old diaries that belonged to my great-great-grandmother. Alchemy, you know. Exciting result, I have to say, wrote a paper on it. No one in the scientific community believed it!” His face clouded. “But then this industrialist fellow got wind of it, wanted to put money into its development.”

“And you didn't?”

“Heavens, no. Sent him packing. Invention of that sort, dangerous really if you think about it.”

Too bad he hadn't! “So you invented an antidote just in case.”

“That's right. When the serum went missing. Funny that, can't imagine what happened to it, really.”

Nieve sighed. Everything she'd read about unworldly professors, including the leather elbow patches on their baggy corduroy jackets, appeared to be true. “Where is it, Professor Manning? The antidote, is it hidden somewhere in the house?”

“Yes, indeedy. In a highly safe place.”

“Where? We've
got
to know.”

He gave her a crafty little smile, and tapped his broad forehead. “In here!”

“Ah, I see. Okay, great, in that case could you–”

“All I have to do is
try
to recall it. Hmmm, now, let me think . . . .”

“Nieve, look at this.” While listening to the professor, Lias had been shining the flashlight beam on all the unusual odds and ends in the room, items, including a jar of powdered newts and a dried scorpion, that wouldn't have been out of place at a witch's garage sale. Standing in the farthest corner, stiff as a pole, was a woman practically buried in coats and jackets, several looped on the fingers of her upraised hands. A straw boater was hooked on one ear and a plaid scarf draped over the sharp tip of her nose.

“My,
my,
what a handsome coat rack,” said Professor Manning. “Don't recall seeing it in the lumber room before.”

“That's because she's not a coat rack.” Nieve walked over and tugged the scarf off her nose. “It's Mrs. Twisden. Molly Twisden.”

“Most handsome,” murmured the professor dreamily of the tall, stick-thin and not particularly comely Molly. So lost in admiration was he, that he was completely unaware that the others were regarding one another in alarm.

Nieve clutched the plaid scarf in her hand, listening to the sound of a car whining as it crunched down the gravel drive
(ouch, ouch)
. This was followed almost immediately by the sound of a door slamming
(whaaaa!)
, someone pounding up the front steps, then crashing explosively through the front door of the house, bellowing as they stormed through it.

“Guess who's here?” said Lirk.

–Thirty-Three–
Toehold

“
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.