Beneath the Mall of Madness (A Jaspar Windisle Mystery Book 1) (21 page)

The next morning I woke up early. The hotel lobby was crowded with people.

“When does this thing start?” I asked Jeremiah.

“Eleven,” he said. “We’re having unusually good weather for it, too.”

He might say that, but I was glad I’d bought a pirate coat and a turtleneck. I could see my breath and I wasn’t even outside yet. I found the FBI agents in the dining room. Agent Starr was cradling his head in his hands.

“It’s stalking me,” he was saying. “And what’s going on today?”

“The Battle of Jericho,” I told him.

“There it is!” He said, pointing at me. “It was there again last night, too!” I realized he was pointing at Barry. “Your fishy minions are stalking me!”

“They’re not my minions,” I said. “They won’t do a thing I want them to.” I got extra coffee and made myself some toast. Mrs. Whateley wasn’t making breakfast this morning. She was too busy with the reenactment.

The agents left eventually, Agent Starr staring at the fish as he went. He seemed afraid to turn his back on them. Perhaps he’d taken some of Mordecai’s interview to heart. After breakfast, I moved down to the library. I wasn’t concerned with a good seat nearly as much as I was with not freezing.

Thanks to it housing the central heating unit the basement was warmer than the lobby. The library wasn’t much to write home about. There was a selection of books about Washington State and a bunch of thrillers and romance novels. There was an encyclopedia set, and the dictionary I’d been looking for earlier. I opened it and looked up interstitial. The first definition was the usual non-definition; pertaining to, situated in, or forming interstices. Talk about unhelpful. The next definition was something about cell membranes. The most likely definition seemed to be the last one; an imperfection in a crystal caused by an extra atom. I didn’t know what significance that had when it came to cryptogeology, and I still didn’t know what cryptogeology was. Maybe they’d picked it because it sounded impressive.

The dictionary had taken me as far as I cared to go, so I turned my attention to the local interest books. The ones covering geography concentrated on the active volcanoes in the area. The repeated references to the Cascades as a volcanic mountain range reinforced my feeling that a limestone cavern was not only unusual, but unlikely. Perhaps interdimensional portals could change the composition of rock? If so, alchemy might be worth looking into as well.

Steve found me while I was still reading. It was the first time I’d seen him in a week. He looked tired.

“I see you’ve made progress on the house,” he said after we’d greeted each other. “I stopped by on my way here.” Fiona must have done a bang-up job cleaning up after herself if that was all he had to say.

“It might even be clean in a decade or so,” I told him. “What have you been up to?”

“Jesticorps is going to undergo some organizational changes,” he said, “and they’ll have to be complete before the company can go forward with the mall.” It was news to me that it was back on. I said as much.

“It’s the view of the people in charge that the problems we’ve encountered are not insurmountable,” he said, frowning. “They’ve gone for an angle I think you’ll appreciate; since chupacabras are not native to the United States they should be viewed as an invasive species. In other words, not only can we kill them in order to build the mall, we’re obligated to.”

“Wow,” I said. “Do you work for an enormous set of brass balls?” Steve laughed.

“It seems that way, doesn’t it?” He said. “I’m sure there will be several more rounds of investigations and arguments. It shouldn’t be that hard to find a biologist who’s willing to officially name our hostile natives chupacabras in exchange for a pile of money.” I shook my head at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

“And the fact that chupacabras don’t really exist isn’t going to interfere with this plan in any way?”

“I don’t know where the logic is,” he said, “so don’t ask me. I’m the one who said we should give up on the location because of the monsters in the first place, remember.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Did you find out who was behind the cover-ups?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “The entire legal team was embroiled in a cult. None of them are wizards themselves. Sadly for the value of our stock, they were more than open to taking suggestions from one.”

“Were they open to a suggestion from you that they cut it out?”

“Of course not, but I believe I can get them to see the light.” He took a seat next to me. “I’ve taken care of all the cultists I could identify. There’s not much I can do about the office politics, so for now I’m going to relax and watch the wrath of God descend on Jericho.” I decided to bring up something I’d been wondering about for a while.

“You’ve been so caught up in the mall, have you thought about the portal at all? I heard it might be something you can use.” He smiled and ruffled my hair.

“Nope. How could I travel the world if I was tied to a fixed power source? You can’t just drain the power into a bucket and carry it with you. Nor can you hook yourself up to multiple sources. If you could, every nation on Earth would be ruled by a wizard masquerading as a God Emperor. Once you drain energy away from a source, your life force is tied to that power source and won’t come untied without a great deal of tedious work on your part. The tying also ties you to the location, which is probably the real reason why Fiona rarely leaves her house. It is, literally, draining. My power source isn’t as strong as hers, or the portal under the mall, but I can carry it around with me like Iron Man carries around the battery for his robot suit.” I stared at him.

“That is the dorkiest thing I have ever heard you say.”

He laughed.

“Anyway, it’s fine to say something is powerful, but that power appears to be summoning chupacabras. Not terribly useful to a land developer. What about you? You could do something with all the ghosts at the site.”

“What?” I asked. “Sure my ghost animal army would be frightening until someone realized it was impotent. Then I’d be locked up to rot somewhere the ghosts wouldn’t bother anyone.”

“It seems like necromancy should be more useful,” he said. “By the way, why are you surrounded by dead goldfish?” I looked at my watch.

“Oh look, the reenactment will start soon. We’d better go get seats.” Steve chuckled and let it go.

***

As far as I could tell the entire town came to the reenactment. I couldn’t see the field of battle from where I was sitting. It didn’t matter; the wall towered over the crowd. Plywood or not, I was impressed by how big it was. It stretched all the way across the marsh and curved slightly to give the illusion that it was surrounding a city. Torches guttered along the top. They must have been gas powered or electric because real torches could never have stood up to the wind that was sweeping across the field. There were even guards. I knew from watching it be assembled that most of the guards were dummies, but it was an impressive effect. There were two sturdier platforms behind the wall where actors could stand, and a raised stage in front of our seats where the rest of the acting part of the event took place.

The first part of the reenactment consisted of Joshua and the defenders trading insults and arguing about who had which God on their side. In the scenes where Joshua received instructions from God, God was played by a pillar of smoke and light rising from behind a fake tree. The chariots driving around the city were paper mache carried by the jogging chariot drivers. The trumpets were indeed deafening. So deafening part of me wasn’t surprised when the wall collapsed like an accordion and burst into flames. The cheers of the conquering army were matched by the applause of the crowd, which only increased when the dust settled to reveal the fallen city of Jericho, represented by tables of food. The actors used poles to clear away some of the debris, and we made our way to lunch.

“That was fantastic,” Steve said. He’d picked up an entire turkey leg and was gnawing on it. “It sure beat seeing the Passion for the hundredth time.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Cecilia said. “We’re already planning for next year. We’re going to do something more low-key, like Elijah versus the priests of Baal.”

“So fire is the major theme?”

“We do like to fit in explosions wherever we can. Besides, Elisha versus the annoying children is too gruesome for a festive occasion, and where would we get that many bears?” I agreed that she had a point then asked her about Dr. Cassidy.

“She said she was just tired,” she said. “I got her to promise to rest but who knows if she will? I doubt she’s here.”

I left them alone and concentrated on trying some of everything. It wasn’t easy, but since I’d had a few pieces of pie the day before I had a head start. For the most part the food was Thanksgiving fare; roasted, baked, or steamed meat, pies and cakes and tarts, over a dozen versions of stuffing, and any kind of casserole you could think of. There were some items I wasn’t used to. The profusion of Jell-O themed side dishes told me that more than a few of the town’s residents could trace their roots to somewhere significantly less demon-haunted.

As I walked out of the wreckage to sit down and eat, I saw Dr. Finch in the crowd. I walked in a different direction.

Earl sat down next to me.

“Did you like the show?” he asked.

“It was really something,” I said. I now regretted getting a fruit and Jell-O salad; it was bleeding into my mashed potatoes and making them sweet.

“You’re putting on a show yourself,” he said. He waved a hand at the goldfish.

“I’m working on it,” I told him.

“You might want to work harder,” he said. “Even around here there’s a limit to how openly weird you can be before people start to talk.”

“I will.” He fiddled with a piece of pie for a moment.

“To that end, how would you feel about going back into that cave with Fiona?”

“Why?

“Those agents are getting more preoccupied with the phantom fish than they are the murders. I want them, and you, out of sight for a while.” He leaned closer to me. “Besides which, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Mordecai and Zebulon have got no common sense at all.”

“I had,” I admitted. “I heard about what Mordecai did yesterday.” Earl grimaced.

“That was unnecessary,” he said. “If he’d just spoken to me in private we could have avoided that whole scene.”

“So you know why he did it?” I asked.

“I have my suspicions.” He went on with his original topic.

“Fiona’s practical enough for ten people, but she can barely walk at the best of times. I think Zeb tends to forget that.”

“I get you,” I said. “I don’t have anything better to do anyway.”

“That’s the spirit. I appreciate it.” He got up and moved off into the crowd.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Finch moved into the vacant seat. Ah, the real reason I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of the day in a tunnel.

“These villagers sure can put on a good show, can’t they?” He said. Even if I wasn’t convinced he was evil, I wouldn’t have liked Dr. Finch. Who calls people villagers? Unless they come from a village, it’s ridiculous.

“Yes, they can. I was very impressed.” He didn’t look impressed. He looked like he had been forced to stand in a cold, smoky field and eat turkey at gunpoint.

“It was almost as good as a real battle.”

“It was better,” I said, “since no one got killed.”

“Oh, the day is still young,” Dr. Finch said. “Those fires aren’t out yet and I don’t see the fire department out here.” I wondered if he was trying to make a sick joke, or if he thought this was a normal conversation.

“Everything’s soaking wet,” I told him. “I don’t see a fire getting bigger in the middle of a mud pit.”

“You never know. There could be hidden pockets of methane or the structure could collapse in an unexpected way.” As he talked about all the terrible things that could happen, I stared over the embers at the partiers and wondered if he and his cultist friends had done something to the wall. I put my hand in my pocket to touch Sparks. He’d been napping, and it took him a moment to start squirming around. I received a sleepy reassurance that the swamp was just a swamp. All along the edges strange and disturbing things abounded, but here there was just an annual spectacle and frogs.

“Why did you come here today?” I asked Dr. Finch. He looked surprised at being interrupted.

“I thought I’d take in some local color before I left.”

“I thought you despised the locals.” He gave me an insincere smile.

“I don’t want the whole college to know how I spend my vacations. I like to visit one or two local attractions, so I have something innocuous to talk about.”

“I see.” I was glad Cassandra was working on her machine again today. I was trying to resist punching this smug jerk. God only knows what she would have done.

“Speaking of local attractions,” he said, “you seem to be attracting some attention yourself.” I stared at him blankly until I remembered the goldfish.

The fish were an unusual challenge, but this wasn’t the first time I’d had to deal with someone seeing shades when I didn’t want them to. I wasn’t about to screw around with the FBI, but with Dr. Finch I was willing to be mean.