What I Wore to Save the World (17 page)

“The e-mail's the easy one; I'll get to the bottom of that sooner or later,” Colin explained briskly. “It's shockingly simple to hack someone's account. When I'm back at the computer lab at school I might be able to figure out who did it, or at least where the server's located. Most of the serious hackers are based in Russia and China, but this could've been done anywhere.” He shook his head. “They did a decent job of writin' in me own distinctive prose style, I'll give 'em credit for that much.” He gave me a meaningful look. “They must've had a good time readin' our mail.”

I blushed. The e-mails Colin and I had been exchanging during the past few months were noticeably steamier than they'd been before I turned seventeen.

“But—hmmm.” He frowned in concentration. “Even if they did read all yer mail, I hadn't yet written ye about me trip to Wales. But I booked the ferry and cottage from me cell phone . . . I'd best give the company a call and see if the line's been compromised. As fer Mr. Hacker pretending to be me tellin' ye that something weird happened—well, that's a generic thing to say. Probably just a coincidence.”

“Wow.” For a guy who didn't believe in faeries, Colin had some wild imagination.

“Identity theft is serious business. I don't mean to alarm ye, love, but there might be some con artist out there right now taking out student loans using your personal identification. Ye have to promise me to follow up on that. I'll talk to yer da about it if ye like.”

“Oh, he works at a bank, I bet he knows all about that stuff,” I said quickly. “But I'll definitely tell him.”

“Now, about the message in the dirt.” Colin smiled. “Let's assume, fer the moment at least, that despite how warped the situation appears there's nothing supernatural involved.”

I nodded, trying not to spit out my coffee.

“One theory I've been considering: Maybe it's the work of a graffiti artist, ‘save the world' bein' yer basic feel-good type of message. And ‘Morgan' could be a tag of some kind.” He gave me a teasing look. “A tag, ye know, that's what them graffiti types call the names they sign on the walls.”

“I know what a tag is, silly.” Trying to follow Colin's theory was like watching a game of Twister being played by a contortionist, though I was impressed by how many of the dots he'd managed to connect. “So you think there might be a graffiti artist on the premises who tags his work ‘Morgan'?”

“Why not? Ye're not the only person named Morgan in the world, ye know.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know! Morgan Fairchild. Morgan Freeman.”

“How Grandpap loved him in
The Bucket List
,” Colin reminisced. “Though I preferred his work in
The Dark Knight
meself. Ye know, I might have it bollixed up, but now that we're makin' a list of Morgans, I could swear me granny used to tell stories about some old fairy-tale character named Morgan, or Morganne or some such. Wonder what she's all about? P'raps we should look her up on Wikipedia.”

I almost upchucked my breakfast at that remark. Luckily Colin moved on to other topics. “Graffiti's a common thing in Dublin. Some of it's bloody artistic, in my opinion. But I'll tell ye one thing—if there's a tagger named Morgan wanderin' Castell Cyfareddol, he—or she, I suppose!—is not goin' to be content leavin' his mark in the woods where hardly a soul will see it. It'll be showin' up other places as well.”

“In that case,” I said, thinking fast, “I propose that we take a look around and see if we spot any other marks or messages anywhere on the grounds of Castell Cyfareddol.”

I liked this plan for two reasons: It would keep Colin busy while I tried to figure out where the Rules of Succession might be written. And it kept us away from the forest, which at the moment was inconveniently infested with unicorns.

“Deal,” Colin said after a moment. “And later on we can head back to the forest and look for any unusual activity there.”

“Sounds good,” I said, while thinking,
Would a herd of unicorns performing a halftime show count as “unusual activity” in Colin's eyes?

Or would he find a way, no matter how convoluted and improbable, to explain that away too?

fifteen

colin puttered around gathering pencils and graph paper, and wrote a quick note to Grandpap telling him where we were going. Now that we had a “game plan,” Colin wanted to proceed in a scientific and methodical fashion, starting back at the hotel so we could survey the grounds of Castell Cyfareddol thoroughly, from one end to the other. Together we'd mark down everything we found that might have some relevance to the mysterious Morgan message in the woods.

We left the cottage, passing the jockey and his trusty steed (whom I now thought of as Seabiscuit, of course), and headed toward the boardwalk. Soon we reached the dragon statue. Colin stared at it curiously.

“How do they manage the iridescence in the scales, I wonder?”

“Scales?”
Last time I'd seen the dragon it had been carved out of stone.

“I never noticed it before either, but there's some kind of finish on the stone. Makes it look like the scales are catchin' the light.” Colin reached up and ran his hand over the dragon's enormous back. “See how it shimmers with all the colors o' the rainbow? Must be the angle of the early mornin' sun that's makin' it visible now.”

“Must be,” I said, while thinking,
This is what the unicorns meant when they said the veil-slippage had already begun.
Colin stroked his hand over the scales again. A deep rumble shook the ground where we stood.

Oh fek,
I thought.
The dragon is purring.

“Wow.” I forced a weak laugh. “Earthquakes in Wales, who knew?”

Colin shook his head. “Probably some eighteen-wheel lorry makin' a delivery to the hotel.” The rumble subsided. We walked on, and I glanced back over my shoulder. The dragon's eye was the size of a basketball, with a feline metallic sheen.

As if someone had drawn it with a pen, an ink-black vertical slit opened down the center of the eye. The pupil widened slightly. Then the dragon blinked.

I whipped my head around so fast it was like I'd walked in on my parents making out.
It's already started,
I thought in a panic.
I've got to find these Rules, fast.

“If it's feedin' time at the conservatory we might want to stop in,” Colin remarked, as we waited for the waterfall to let us pass. “Watching the plants eat is bound to attract crowds. Perfect lure for a chap cravin' attention, like our hypothetical tagger.”

I didn't get it. “Why would feeding plants attract crowds? I've seen my dad do it. It's just like watering, except you sprinkle Miracle-Gro in the water. Totally boring.”

Colin smiled. “Not at Castell Cyfareddol. It's a carnivorous plant conservatory. The place is brimmin' with bloodthirsty petunias.”

“Carnivorous? What do they eat, cheeseburgers? Oh my God, look!”

“What's the matter?” Colin asked, worried.

“Oh, nothing.” I waved it off. “Just noticed the gargoyles had been moved, that's all.” Up and down the boardwalk, the stone pillars were empty. Damp reptilian footprints led from the boardwalk into the shrubs beyond.

“Huh. They probably took 'em off fer cleaning and repairs.” Colin kept walking, a little faster than before.

I followed, but I couldn't help glancing into the shadows underneath the bushes. If the gargoyles weren't on their perches, where were they? Would we soon see them skittering around the boardwalk like stray cats?

And if we did, what kind of scientific explanation would Colin come up with for that?

 

 

 

“careful, mor—see, i told ye to keep yer hands in yer pockets!”

I snatched my hand back from some creepy-looking flower that was visibly salivating at my presence.

Colin moved methodically through the conservatory, examining the walls, the floors, and—very carefully—the containers that housed the bloodthirsty vegetation. “It's a fascinatin' notion, innit? Shrubbery that eats meat. See any graffiti yet?”

“No,” I said, preoccupied. I was still thinking about the gargoyles. And the dragon. And these fekkin' Rules of Succession that I needed to locate, pronto.

I tickled the mouth of a Venus flytrap with a twig I'd found lying on the floor, and watched in fascination as it closed. “I guess photosynthesis just isn't enough for some plants,” I remarked.

“It turns the whole food chain concept on its arse, if ye ask me. Imagine if all the green grass of Ireland developed a taste for bangers and mash! There'd be a general panic, not to mention a run on the pubs. What's this, then?” Colin's voice had suddenly dropped half an octave. I moved to join him, but he gestured at me to stay back.

“Did you find something?”

Colin stood staring at the door that led out of the conservatory. Using his foot, he slowly pushed it open. He looked, and then stepped through. “Bloody hell,” I heard him mutter. Then he started to chuckle.

“What is it?” I pleaded.

“Yer man's losin' it. See fer yerself.”

Stenciled on the door in bright silver paint was the unmistakable silhouette of a unicorn.

“It's not graffiti. It's just a sign,” Colin explained, dragging me to the arrow-shaped marker in the center of the tiny courtyard. “Leadin' visitors from one exhibit to the next. See? Go ahead, read it.”

I vaguely recalled what the unicorn tapestries were; I'd seen them in a museum in New York on a middle-school field trip. They were enormous wall hangings, woven many centuries ago when people had time to do stuff like that. And they told a story—a bloody, violent story about humans hunting a unicorn.

I remembered that the museum had looked exactly like a castle, and that, once our class arrived, Sarah and I made a pact to talk in English accents for the rest of the day. The task absorbed all of our concentration. As a result, I didn't retain too much information about the tapestries—like why someone would plant a garden because of them.

Or whether the unicorn was killed in the end.

Colin squeezed my shoulder reassuringly. “Just goes to show: If ye keep yer wits about ye, there's always a rational, scientific explanation. Shall we have a look?”

 

 

 

i followed colin in the direction indicated by the sign. We passed through a curtain of vines and into a larger, square garden. In the center was a gnarled tree laden with strange-looking red fruit. Every remaining square inch of ground was planted with flowers, all in full bloom. The effect was dizzying.

A tour guide stood at the far end of the garden with her back to us, chatting happily into a wireless lavalier microphone that fit snugly over her head. The mike seemed like overkill to me. The garden wasn't that big, and there were only a half dozen visitors standing around listening to her spiel to begin with.

“More than a hundred different plants are depicted in the unicorn tapestries! A
hundred
, can you imagine? Honestly, I didn't even know there
were
that many types of plants!”

What made the microphone even more out of place was that the tour guide was dressed in medieval style, in a floor-length, high-waisted dress. Her hair was piled high on her head, with a flowy, princess-style train pinned to the back.

“Let me see: We have wild orchids, and some thistle, and this skah-
rumptious
pomegranate tree, and ooh, just
so
many others! Great care has been taken to reproduce the plants shown in the tapestries
exactly
! Though I couldn't for the life of me tell you why someone would bother. I mean, who cares, really? I'd much rather be out clubbing. But wait, we have some new arrivals.”

The tour guide wheeled and faced the newcomers—meaning, Colin and me. “Better late than never, I suppose! You just missed the part where I explained how this garden strives to reproduce the unicorn tapestries
exactly
, down to the last stitch. And of course, that includes the one-horned star of the show—that mysterious, mythical creature herself. Let's hear it for . . . the unicorn!”

She clapped loudly and whistled right into her mike. The sound was so piercing I had to cover my ears. My eyes were wide open, though, and as I looked at the all-too-familiar face of Queen Titania, with that ridiculous microphone curved around her gaunt cheek, just like Madonna, I got angry. So angry that I could barely tear my eyes away from her mocking gaze to see the blinking, terrified creature that now stumbled reluctantly into the garden.