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But there was no way I could leave my house unlocked and unattended—even if it meant risking the wrath of Qianru. I ran back to the faeries’ castle armed with a glass of very cold water. Garbage Blossom was the most difficult, but she was also the brightest. And the most mercenary. I was going to owe her a lot for what I was about to do.

I pried the war stick, a fortified twig that looked vaguely like a primitive two-pronged fork, out of her hand and dunked her head first into the ice water. I was hoping the spell had been cast long enough ago that the effects were already wearing off and the water would work.

The glass almost exploded in my hand.

Garbage Blossom came up kicking and screaming. Or would have been if her mouth hadn’t been full of water.

“What. You. Do!” Not a question really, but more of a warning to explain fast or she was going to attack.

“Sorry, you and the others were spelled. I needed to make sure you were okay.” A lie, but I needed to work around to the task I had for her and I didn’t have much time. “Someone spelled you three, kidnapped Alric, and broke the locks to the house.” Was that steam coming off her wet head? “I have to go to work, but I need you to go find Harlan, and get him to watch the house until I can fix the door.”

She took a deep breath at the mention of Harlan’s name and shook the remaining water off.

I raised a hand that held a slightly stale sweet I’d had in my pocket. “I know all about Harlan and what he’s been having you three do. He knows I know.” She still had a set to her shoulders that I didn’t like even after she swallowed the treat. “If he doesn’t come here and protect it, someone could steal your things. And your castle.”

That got her. She might not care about my things, but her things were sacred. “I get. You work.” Luckily, I’d left the front door open as she tore out of there without pause.

I showered, changed, and left a long detailed note for Harlan, only to crash into him as I fled my house.

“Now what has happened?” He was still in his costume, or spy wear as he thought of it. But it had obviously been put on hastily. The two sides of his face didn’t match.

“No time to talk, I’m late for work.” I swung my jacket on and started walking away from the house. “I left a note for you—the girls can confirm what happened.” He may not have wanted to believe any of us three months ago that Alric was still alive, but hopefully he would this time.

“But Garbage Blossom said there was someone trying to take her stuff? What stuff?” Harlan kept pace with me but kept shifting a heavy-looking satchel between hands. Most likely his prized possessions and the rest of his costume were in there. Garbage Blossom popped her head out from where she’d been traveling in his pocket.

I almost got run over by a morning milk truck, so I turned to him while it passed. “Not just her stuff, all of our stuff. Someone broke in last night and blew apart the locks on my door. I just need you to stay in the house until I can get someone to fix it.” I narrowed my eyes. “That’s all.”

I know threatening someone who you are asking for a favor from isn’t really a nice thing to do, but I put as much threat as I could into my face right then. I needed him to protect my house, but I also didn’t need him to try and fix anything.

“Ah yes, watch the stuff.” He nodded slowly and winked.

I was really going to be late if I didn’t move it. “Harlan, I’m serious, just watch the house. Read my note and watch the house. Trust me, the note is a big enough issue.” But he was already heading back toward the house. He gave a vague over-the-shoulder wave, so he might have heard me. But I had doubts that he was actually going to pay attention.

I needed to get to work and hope that I had a home left standing when I came back.

Even though I’d been running late, I managed to beat Qianru and Joie this time.

The sun had come up for good right as I’d passed the watcher’s station. The bird didn’t seem to like it, but those things didn’t like anything. Which meant there was plenty of light to approach my dig site and see the massive destruction in its full glory.

Chapter Eight

It wasn’t just that someone had mangled all of Qianru’s fancy tents and tables. It went far deeper than that. Literally. Someone had been digging, and digging deeply and violently with no care as to what they were destroying.

There were more than fifteen large holes in the area. I’d stopped counting after that because my head was starting to swim. All were big enough for me to drop into with room to spare, and the single one I actually looked down was too deep for me to see the bottom.

I leaned against the wreckage of one of the tables as my vision went from swimming to dim. For a digger, relics and artifacts were sacred. The sites they came from almost even more so. Yet someone or something, or most likely plural of both, had torn through here like it meant nothing.

A broken salt shaker left by the rubble of one of the closest holes almost sent me over the edge.

A few deep breaths, and I’d steadied myself enough to approach the hole again. Maybe I could find out what left such holes in such a short time and had been silent enough to not disturb the night guard and watcher.

I crouched down near the mouth of the hole, partly to see better but also to steady myself. Hyperventilating and collapsing was still a viable option. Not only could I not imagine anyone in the digger community doing this, I only just now realized this might cost me my job. If Qianru didn’t have a place to dig, she didn’t need a digger.

I was still envisioning living on the streets and begging for food when Qianru and entourage showed up. Yes, entourage. This time she had even more things with her and was trailed by six houseboys dressed in the same horrific household livery I’d seen on Joie yesterday.

From my position on the ground—it just seemed easier to stay that way—I waited while she took in the destructive mayhem that was once our dig site.

Her team of houseboys were so well trained that they all halted an instant before she did. Her hands were, of course, free of any baggage so they easily slipped onto her hips as she looked around.

I gave her credit for not screaming and throwing things. The only reason I hadn’t was because it was very hard to scream when all the air has left your lungs.

But she was silent.

She walked over to the closest hole and peered in. Then she waved Joie over. His bundle looked the lightest of all of the houseboys and appeared to be a bunch of sticks and fabric. Flags? Qianru studied a small scroll for a few moments, glanced around the clearing, then peered through the collection of flags before selecting one. Each flag was one of three different colors, red, yellow, and green along with some odd numbers in each corner. When she found the one she apparently was looking for, one of the green ones, she handed it to Joie who stuck it into the ground near the hole she’d been standing next to.

Out of all of the possible reactions I could have predicted from her, this was possibly the last. Actually, I wouldn’t have guessed this one in a million years.

“Taryn, darling, there you are.” She’d finally seen me sprawled on the ground. “Isn’t this marvelous?” Clearly, the look of terror/anger/fear that I was sure was flashing across my face was missed by her. And we had two radically different versions of marvelous.

A brief thought that I really should be standing flashed through my brain, but I ignored it. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing? They have destroyed the dig, everything. All of your tents and furniture. Anything of value that might have been in the ruins below us. Gone.” I took a few deep breaths—my voice was getting that high-pitched sound that could only be heard by dogs, faeries, and watcher birds.

Qianru wasn’t even paying attention. With a few nods and waves of her hands all six houseboys carefully laid down their supplies and began cleaning up the remains of the tents, tables, and chairs that had been mangled. Moments later new ones were up and ready along with massive pitchers of lemonade and piles of sandwiches.

“What? Oh no, dear, a proper lady never collapses on the ground.” She had finally noticed my sitting position and sent a houseboy to correct it. He helped me up like I was a frail old lady and deposited me in a nice comfy camp chair. “Now, isn’t this exciting? I told you there would be surprises.”

I looked around at the large pits all over our dig site and tried to catch the eye of any of the houseboys. Even Joie managed to dodge every attempt. Good. Maybe they knew she was crazy too. “Qianru, they’ve ruined your dig site.” In my mind, this was my site. I was the one who had been digging in it the last two and a half months. But I knew patrons believed everything was theirs.

The sound coming from her was as loud as it was terrifying. There was no way I would ever get used to that laugh.

“No, no, child. They didn’t ruin it.” She looked over at the pile of refuse the houseboys had made. “Perhaps a few bits of fabric and wood, but nothing irreplaceable. They came out.”

The houseboys were good. I had a glass of lemonade in my hand and coming up to my lips in an instant. She put enough emphasis in those last three words that I knew they were not what they sounded like. But even huge gulps of lemon, sugar, and water couldn’t get my brain to figure out what they could possibly mean.

“They? Who are they?” I could try and act like I knew, but I seriously had nothing.

Qianru ignored me for a few minutes as she and Joie, armed with his flags, planted the small flags at each hole. She scowled and shook her head at the ones she had to put red on. And at each hole, she referred to her scroll before she selected the flag. The numbers must have meant something to her, but there wasn’t a pattern to them that I could tell.

“I forget who knows what these days. I had meant to include you in the information about the codex, but with our exciting work yesterday, I simply had it nudged out of my mind. And I do love leaving some surprises.” She came to where I was sitting with Joie trailing behind her. He managed to put down the rest of the flags, dust off her chair, pull it out for her, and hand her a drink all within a few seconds. I wanted to be rich enough to hire someone that good someday.

She spread out a small heavy scroll. The thing was extremely old and my fingers were itching to touch it. Which must have shown on my face as she smiled and nodded for me to go ahead and do so.

The feel was unlike any scroll I’d ever touched. It was almost wooden yet soft and silky. The writing was what I now recognized as Ancient. I still didn’t know what it said, but between this and Harlan’s metal pieces I was beginning to recognize certain symbols.

I was just about to ask how she’d been able to read this when I spotted some familiar writing toward the bottom of the scroll. I couldn’t really read elvish. I was sure Alric had spelled me a few times previously so I thought I could but I really couldn’t. However, being around Covey so many times when she’d gone into scroll rapture, I could pick out a few words.

It looked as if an elvish scribe had translated the codex. But instead of doing it as a separate document, he or she had written the translation directly on the scroll. Which, from a practical stand point, was smart—documents could be separated. But from an artifact standpoint it was horrific.

Squinting at the elvish words, I tried to see what I could pick out. Sadly, words like doom, end of the world, and apocalypse were the ones I recognized after the whole glass gargoyle incident. I only saw doom on this one, which had to be an improvement. Then a word I wasn’t sure of, but it accompanied a small picture.

“A chimera?” The face was that of a lion, but the body was definitely a hooved animal, in myth it was a goat. Then a very detailed tail like that of a long snake. Great. Just what she was looking for. I had no idea how an artifact tied into a bunch of things coming out of the ground, but I was afraid I was going to find out soon enough.

“Excellent! I knew you would be just the girl for this job. Yes, chimeras, that’s what came out of the ground.” She chortled at the look on my face, which, from my end was feeling pretty shocked and a little concerned. “Yes, yes. No one dug these holes—they came out of them! Isn’t it marvelous?” She tapped one line near the bottom of the codex. “I can’t read all of it, but my partner assures me this line indicates where they would be found, and when the time was right the ground would change and let them come forth. Judging by the number of holes, I’d say at least twenty chimeras are out in the world now.”

I rocked back in my chair. She could just be crazy. But this scroll was definitely Ancient in origin and these were the same mad people who made the glass gargoyle. And when I could pull my eyes away from her and the scroll long enough, a closer look at the holes did support that they weren’t dug, but exploded upwards.

“Wait, so these aren’t artifacts, but real, live chimeras?” Yup, my voice was heading into dogs-only registers again. World-destroying artifacts were one thing; living creatures of myth who had been buried for thousands of years and were now coming back to haunt the world were another.

Qianru had drifted off toward one of the holes with a red flag and was muttering to herself. Standing seemed like a dangerous proposition at that point, given the way the morning had been going. But if I wanted answers I was going to have to follow her.

“Yes, yes. They will lead us to the artifact.” She gave a brief scowl. “My partner isn’t certain exactly how, but their coming into the world heralds the finding of the obsidian chimera and all of its powers. I am most vexed he hasn’t been more specific on how they will do it however.” She shook her head to chase off the thought. “This is what worries me.” She pointed at the rubble lining a red-flagged hole. “According to the codex, we should have been able to predict exactly where they would appear.” She turned to me with a smile. “Those were the areas we had you dig yesterday, you see. But there are some holes where there should not have been any chimeras.” She tapped her foot as if scowling at the offending dirt pile would be enough to get it to admit it was lying to her.

I noticed this hole, and the other red-flagged ones, were bigger than the rest. And the ground was more violently moved. I bent down to study it and an odor of rotting sea monsters hit me in the face. I fell back on my butt and scrambled away.

“Get back, everyone. Get back!” I had no idea what was causing that smell, but I knew it wasn’t something any of us wanted to meet. And it was getting stronger.

The ground rumbled, mostly focused on that hole, but I noticed the other red-flagged holes were doing it, too. And smoking.

Qianru and her fleet of houseboys were huddled on the edge of the clearing. She carefully arranged them to protect her from all sides, but none of them looked too happy about being the only thing between her and whatever was in those holes.

I figured if there was something coming out of them, the group in front of it all might be the first target, so I scrambled under one of the tables. A few more rumbles, and all five of the red-flagged holes exploded.