Jackie got results, though. She sang a complex series of phrases, twisting her hands first one way, then the other. A breeze sprang up, mild at first, but turning gusty. The air thickened the way it does before a thunderstorm strikes. Then the wind picked up, swirled around, and sucked up leaves and small branches, gobbling them up into a miniature tornado. I’d done something similar at Cassandra’s, but this was on a much larger scale. The tornado moved toward the house, growing stronger by the second. As it crossed in front of the house, it sucked up the sand in front like a giant vacuum cleaner.
I threw the packet of sticky energy I’d been holding back into the middle of the wind. Waves of sand blew across the house and the grains plastered themselves on the front wall like icing on a cake. I was taking a page out of the old
Invisible Man
movies, and it worked. The sand also stuck to everything else in the area of the house—including the invisible guardians, now invisible no longer.
The reason for the lack of footprints in the sand became clear. These guardians didn’t walk; they slithered. Two enormous snakelike creatures, thirty feet long, thick and sinewy, writhed away from the sandstorm. They looked like gigantic sandworms, except for a couple of rudimentary appendages front and back. Nothing like this had ever appeared in Grimm.
The sand coating didn’t allow for much detail, but their heads were blunt and massive, not snakelike at all. No apparent ears, but huge nostrils, now closed over with a flap of skin against the stinging sand. It took little effort to imagine rows of serrated teeth inside those bulging muscular jaws. Where there should have been eyes, nothing but smooth, sand-covered skin.
“How on earth do they see?” Jackie asked, staring. She was no longer so offhand about them.
“I don’t think they do see,” I said. “They can probably hear fairly well, or at least feel vibrations, but I think they mostly use smell—look at those nostrils on the front of the heads.”
As if on cue, both heads turned toward us as if hearing or scenting us through the blowing sand. We all drew instinctively closer to one another, barely realizing we’d done so.
Lou alone was unfazed. He’d already seen them, and although they were massive and powerful, he knew if he kept his distance, there was no way they could catch him. He was too small and too quick.
The whirlwind died as Jackie ran low on energy, but the sand remained on the snakes, keeping them visible.
“Now that we can see them, what next?” Malcolm said, dropping his voice to a whisper.
“Whatever we decide, we don’t have a whole lot of time,” Jackie said. “Look what they’re trying to do.”
Both snakes were wrapping themselves around tree trunks, rubbing over the rough bark as if they were trying to shed their skins. The sand was stuck to their skins pretty firmly, but they were making some headway. Already I could see several sections where the sand had worn away, leaving gaps where you could see right through them to the trees underneath. It gave them an unsettling segmented appearance. Malcolm bent close and whispered again.
“If they use smell, can you block that in some way?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Remember, talent won’t have much effect on them.”
“How about overloading their sense of smell, then?” Jackie said. “Would that work?” I looked at her approvingly.
“Excellent idea. All we need is something with a strong scent. You wouldn’t happen to have any perfume on you, would you?” Jackie looked at me in disbelief.
“You have got to be kidding. Jesus, Mason.”
“Sorry. Just a thought.”
I retreated along the path a ways looking for another type of plant. I’d learned quite a bit about herbal lore over the last couple of years from Campbell, my ex. I’m not sure what she’d learned from me, if anything. It took me longer than I would have liked, but I finally found something that looked right, sort of like a Copper Canyon daisy, but with broader leaves. I crumbled up a piece of a leaf and was instantly rewarded with an astringent odor, pungent and sharp.
“Hurry up,” Malcolm whispered as I came up to them. “They’re still trying to scrape off the sand.” I crumbled up the rest of the leaves, inhaling the strong odor.
“We need to amplify the scent,” I said. “Jackie, can you help?”
She nodded. “I can start with a simple melody and increase its complexity,” she said. “Can you weave that into the odor?”
I could and I did. Surprisingly, we worked well together. She started out with a very simple tune and built on it, like a jazz solo. I got so interested in what she was singing that I almost forgot my part. Lou nudged me, and I used my own talent just in time, sending the increasing complexity into the crushed leaves. The odor grew stronger, at first pleasant if overpowering, then cloying, and finally overwhelming, strong enough to make Lou sneeze and retch and the rest of us gag. Unable to sing anymore, Jackie cut off the melody abruptly.
The air was still unsettled by the whirlwind Jackie had set in motion, and the pungent odor spread quickly. Soon the entire area simply reeked. Both snakes reacted at once, recoiling as if struck by a physical blow. It was bad enough for us; it must have been overwhelming for them. Stifling the desire to cough, I waved Jackie and Malcolm forward. We scuttled over toward the house like mice running past momentarily distracted cats.
“We’d better be quick about it,” I whispered as we entered. I didn’t know how well the snakes could hear, but I wasn’t going to assume they couldn’t. “That masking odor won’t last forever.”
Inside, the house was much like the outside promised—a fairy-tale setting, with bare floor, stone fireplace, heavy wooden mantel, a rocking chair, and even a spinning wheel in one corner.
A bookcase stood against the back wall, with leather-bound volumes crowding the shelves. Jackie rushed over and pulled out a book at random, thumbing quickly through it before putting it aside and going on to the next. Then she stopped and looked at Malcolm with something like awe.
“It’s Richter’s library,” she said. “Everything. All his writings, things I’ve never even heard of. Incredible.” Her voice rose in excitement, and I made a hushing motion with my hand.
“Not so loud. And we don’t have much time, remember.”
She stood, irresolute, book in hand. Malcolm joined her and started on the top shelf, methodically going through the books, scanning each one briefly before setting it aside and going on to the next. He was too focused to be awestruck.
I didn’t think he was going to find it, though. It made no sense for the book to be there. If Richter had gone to all this trouble to hide that book, why would he then leave it out on the bookshelf for anyone to find, guardians or no?
But where could he have hidden it? The inside of the cottage was sparse, almost bare, without a lot of places to hide even something as small as a book. A practitioner has options, though, and if Richter had been the master of creating singularities, why not create another one? Something small, insignificant, folded into the larger one of the house and the world. Just large enough to contain a book, for example.
“Lou,” I said, calling him over. “Can you find that book?” He glanced over toward the bookcase. “No, not there. I think it’s hidden somewhere else—in the room, but not in the room.” He looked doubtful. This was a pretty sophisticated concept to get across to him, smart as he is. “Just find the book,” I repeated. “Not in the bookcase. Somewhere hidden. Somewhere special. Find the hiding place.”
While Jackie and Malcolm continued to pore through the books, Lou darted around the perimeter of the room, then again, this time in the opposite direction about five feet from the walls. Finally he crisscrossed diagonally, back and forth. I’d begun to think I’d been mistaken when he gave a muted bark of triumph and sat down next to the spinning wheel.
Jackie shot a quick glance over at the sound, but then went back to her book search, ignoring him. When I walked over to where Lou sat, I couldn’t see anything odd about the wheel or the area around it.
“Are you sure?” I asked. An annoyed bark was the answer.
I looked carefully all around and still saw nothing. I idly spun the wheel, and instantly Lou was on his feet, looking at me expectantly. Okay, I needed to spin the wheel for some reason. I gave it another whirl, slapping the top of it with my fingers to keep it going. Nothing. Lou sat back down, but continued to stare back up at me.
“What?” I said. “I’m spinning it, aren’t I?”
Maybe spinning wasn’t the answer. But it was a spinning wheel; what else could it do? Lou was looking more impatient by the second. He lifted one paw, then the other in succession, unable to sit still. Sometimes I get frustrated when I can’t make him understand me, but he gets almost frantic when I’m the one who’s clueless as to what he wants.
Then I saw the trick. It wasn’t the spinning that was the problem; it was the direction. I stopped the wheel and reversed it, quickly getting it moving at a good clip. Lou jumped up and circled the wheel, nose to the ground. I still couldn’t see anything, but he had no problem. He stopped dead, crouched down, and carefully extended his head out as if reaching for a treat offered by a stranger with unclear motivations. His head vanished, but the rest of his body remained visible. A second later he backed up and his head reappeared. Clutched in his jaws was a bound volume, so large it barely fit in his jaws and heavy enough so that he had to drag it across the floor.
Jackie and Malcolm hadn’t noticed what we were up to, focused as they were on the books in the bookcase. Jackie threw down the last of the books with something like a snarl.
“It’s not here,” she said.
I took the book from Lou’s mouth and held it up. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
Jackie stared at it, unbelieving. “Let me see,” she said, walking toward me with outstretched hand.
“Sorry,” I said. “Finders, keepers.”
She smiled at me, with the knowing smile of someone holding a straight flush over your four of a kind. She walked up right next to me and sang a little trill, almost like a birdsong. I felt a faint twinge on my lower back where she’d inscribed her runes of control.
“Mason,” she said with a lilt in her voice, almost as if she were singing her words. “Give me the book and sit down.”
I acted like I was struggling against my own will, moving slowly and reluctantly, holding out the book to her. At the last moment, as she reached for it, I snatched it away.
“Psych!” I said.
This was childish indeed, but I didn’t like being played, not to mention treated like a disposable tool. The look of pure bafflement on her face was satisfying, I must admit.
But I paid a price. When you indulge your pettiness, you almost always do. Malcolm took advantage of the byplay to bound across the room and snatch the book from my hand. He backpedaled, opened the book, and paged through it quickly.
“This is it,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” I held my hand out.
“Give,” I said.
Malcolm’s face changed subtly. His usual bland expression hardened, and I caught a flash of something.
“I think not,” he said.
“You might as well give it back,” I said, reasonably. “You can’t get back home without me and Lou, and I’m not going anywhere without the book. We can always discuss what to do with it once we get back.”
His face grew harder and he stepped back farther away. The pleasant, low-key demeanor he’d put on so far dropped away. He had the book and intended to hold on to it like grim death. Which might well be the ultimate outcome, since I wasn’t going to let him keep it. Lou started up with a low growl, and I would have growled myself if I could have. I was pissed.
“Take it easy,” Jackie said, moving up next to him. “This doesn’t have to get nasty.” But it did.
Malcolm relaxed for just a moment, and before he knew what hit him Jackie stepped back and punched him hard right above the kidneys, several times. The blows didn’t seem that hard, but Malcolm staggered anyway. She ripped the book out of his hand and without a pause bolted for the door and threw it open. In her left hand she was holding the same knife I’d borrowed to cut grooves in the pine tree. She hadn’t been just punching him; she’d been stabbing him. She stopped just long enough to direct a high-pitched shriek toward the snakes outside and then vanished through the doorway.
That shriek would be enough to alert the snakes to our presence in the house, even if they still couldn’t smell us. And the odor that had permeated everything was fading away. I’d thought I was just getting accustomed to it, but it was definitely weaker. Those monsters outside would soon have little trouble zeroing in on us. Very soon. What in God’s name had she done that for?
Malcolm staggered to the far wall and dropped heavily to the floor, propping his back up against the wall. His skin had gone gray and he didn’t look well at all. I squatted down next to him.
“You okay?” I asked. He mustered up a faint smile.
“What do you think?”
Outside I could hear a loud slithering sound, like a street sweeper passing outside my flat. We needed to get out of here, and quick.