Reckless (Free Preview) (4 page)

“Get rid of them!
”
Jacob whispered
across the counter.
 
“I have to talk to
you.”

Then he went up to the room that had for years now been the
only place in either this world or the other that he could call home.

A wishing table, a glass slipper, the golden ball of a
princess
—
Jacob had found many things in this world, and he had sold
them for a lot of money to noblemen and rich merchants.
 
But it was the chest behind the door of his
simple room that held the treasures Jacob had kept for himself.
 
These were the tools of his trade, though he
had never thought they’d one day have to help him save his own brother.

The first item he took out of the chest was a handkerchief
made of simple linen, but when it was rubbed between two fingers, it reliably
produced one or two gold sovereigns.
 
Jacob had received it years earlier from a
Witch in exchange for a kiss that had burned his lips for weeks.
 
The other items he packed into his knapsack
looked just as innocuous:
 
a silver
snuffbox, a brass key, a tin plate, and a small bottle made of green glass.
 
Each of these items had saved his life on more
than one occasion.

When Jacob came back down the stairs, he found the taproom
empty.
 
Chanute was sitting at one of the
tables.
 
He pushed a mug of wine toward
him as Jacob joined him.

“So?
 
What kind of
trouble are you in this time?”
 
Chanute
looked longingly at Jacob’s wine; he only had a glass of water in front of him.
 
In the past, he’d often been so drunk
that Jacob had started hiding the bottles, though Chanute would always beat him
for it.
 
The old treasure hunter had
often beaten Jacob, even when he was sober
—
until Jacob had one
day pointed his own pistol at him.
 
Chanute
had also been drunk in the Ogre’s cave.
 
He
would have probably kept his arm had he been able to see straight, but after
that he had quit drinking.
 
The treasure
hunter had been a miserable replacement father, and Jacob was always on his
guard with him, but if anyone knew what could save Will, then Albert Chanute
most definitely did.

“What would you do if a friend of yours had been clawed by
the Goyl?”

Chanute choked on his water and eyed him closely, as if to
make sure Jacob was not talking about himself.

“I have no friends,” he grunted.
 
“And you don’t, either.
 
You have to trust friends, and neither of us
is very good at that.
 
So, who is it?”

Jacob shook his head.

“Of course
.
Jacob Reckless likes it
mysterious.
 
How could I forget?”
 
Chanute’s voice sounded bitter.
 
Despite everything, he thought of Jacob as the
son he had never had.
 
“When did they get
him?”

“Four days ago.”

The Goyl had attacked them not far from a village where Jacob
had been looking for the hourglass.
 
He
had underestimated how far their patrols were already venturing into imperial
territory, and after Will had been clawed, he’d been in such pain that the
journey back took
them
days.
 
Back where?
 
There was no “back” anymore, but Jacob had not
had the courage yet to tell Will.

Chanute brushed his hand through his spiky hair.
 
“Four days?
 
Forget it.
 
He’s already half one of them.
 
You remember the time when the Empress was
collecting all their colors?
 
And that
farmer tried to peddle us a dead moonstone he had covered in lamp soot as an
onyx Goyl?”

Yes, Jacob remembered.
 
The stone faces.
 
That’s what they were still called back then,
and children were told stories about them to teach them to fear the night.
 
When Chanute and he were still traveling
together, the Goyl had only just begun to populate the caves aboveground, and
every village used to organize Goyl hunts.
 
But now they had a King, and he had turned the
hunted into hunters.

There was a rustling near the back door, and Chanute drew his
knife.
 
He threw it so quickly that it
nailed the rat in mid-jump against the wall.

“This world is going down the toilet,” he growled, pushing
back his chair.
 
“Rats as big as dogs.
 
The air on the street stinks like a Troll’s
cave from all the
factories,
and the Goyl are standing
just a couple of miles from here.”

He picked up the dead rat and threw it onto the table.

“There’s nothing that helps against the petrified flesh.
 
But if they’d gotten me, I’d ride to one of
them Witches’ houses and look in the garden for a bush with black berries.”
 
Chanute wiped the bloody knife on his sleeve.
 
“It’s got to be the garden of a child-eater,
though.”

“I thought the child-eating Witches all moved to Lotharaine
since the other Witches started hunting them.”

“But their houses are still there.
 
The bush grows where they buried their
leftovers.
 
Those berries are the
strongest antidote to curses I know of.”

Witch-berries.
 
Jacob looked
at the oven door on the wall.
 
“The Witch
in the
Hungry
Forest
was a child-eater, wasn’t she?”

“One of the worst.
 
I once looked in her house for one of them
combs that you put into your hair and they turn you into a crow.”

“I know.
 
You sent me
in there first.”

“Really?”
 
Chanute
rubbed his fleshy nose.
 
He’d convinced
Jacob that the Witch had flown out.

“You poured liquor on my wounds.”
 
The imprints of her fingers were still visible
on his throat.
 
It had taken weeks for
the burns to heal.

Jacob threw the knapsack over his shoulder.
 
“I need a packhorse, some provisions, two
rifles, and ammunition.”

Chanute didn’t seem to have heard Jacob.
 
He was staring at his trophies.
 
“Good old times,” he mumbled.
 
“The Empress received me personally three
times.
 
How many audiences have you
clocked up?”

Jacob closed his hand around the handkerchief in his pocket
until he felt two gold sovereigns between his fingers.

“Two,” he said, tossing the coins onto the table.
 
He’d had six audiences with the Empress, but
the lie made Chanute very happy.

“Put that gold away!” he growled.
 
“I don’t take
no
money from you.”
 
Then he held out his
knife to Jacob.

“Here,” he said.
 
“There’s nothing this blade won’t cut.
 
I have a feeling you’ll need it more than I
will.”

6

Lovesick Fool

Will was gone.
 
Jacob
saw it immediately as he led the packhorse through the collapsed gate of the
ruin.
 
It lay as deserted as if his
brother had never followed him through the mirror and all was fine and this
world was still his, all his.
 
For one
moment he caught himself feeling relieved
.
Let him
go, Jacob.
 
Why not just forget he
ever had a brother?

“He said he’d come back.”
 
Fox was sitting between the columns.
 
The night turned her fur black.
 
“I tried to stop him, but he’s just as
pigheaded as you.”

Another mistake,
Jacob.
 
He should
have taken Will with him to Schwanstein instead of hiding him here at the ruin.
 
Will wanted to go home.
 
Just go home.
 
But he’d take the stone with him.

Jacob led the packhorse to the other two horses already
grazing behind the ruin.
 
He walked
toward the tower.
 
Its long shadow wrote
a single word on the shattered flagstones:
 
Back.

A threat for you, Jacob, but a promise for Will.

Ivy grew up the scorched walls so densely that its evergreen
vines hung like a curtain over the doorway.
 
The tower was the only part of the castle that
had survived the fire nearly unscathed.
 
The
inside was swarming with bats, and the rope ladder Jacob had installed years
earlier shimmered through the darkness.
 
The
Elves always left their dust on it as if to remind him that he had once come
down here from another world.

Fox looked at him apprehensively as he reached for the ropes.

“We leave as soon as I get back with Will,” Jacob said.

“Leave?
 
For where?”

But Jacob was already climbing up the swaying ladder.

The tower room was bright with the light of the two moons,
and his brother was standing next to the mirror.
 
He was not alone.

The girl stepped out of his embrace as soon as she heard
Jacob behind her.
 
She was prettier than
in the photos Will had shown him.
 
Lovesick fool.

“What’s she doing here?”
 
Jacob felt his own rage like frost on his
skin.
 
“Have you lost your mind?”

Jacob brushed the elven dust from his hands.
 
It worked like a sleeping potion if you
weren’t careful.

“Clara.”
 
Will took her
hand.
 
“This is my brother.
 
Jacob.”

He said her name as if he had pearls on his tongue.
 
Will had always taken love too seriously.

“What else has to happen before you realize what kind of a
place this is?
”
Jacob barked at him.
 
“Send her back.
 
Now.”

She was afraid, though she tried hard to hide it.
 
Afraid of the place that could not be, the red
moon above her
—
and of you, Jacob
.
 
She seemed
surprised he actually existed.
 
Will’s
older brother, as unreal as the place she found herself in.

She took Will’s blemished hand.
 
“What is that?” she asked in a halting voice
as she stroked the stone.
 
“I have never
seen a skin condition like this.”

Of course.
 
A medical student — Look at her, Jacob!
 
She’s just as lovesick as your brother.
 
So lovesick that she even followed him into a
whole other world.

From the rafters above came a scraping sound, and a scrawny
face peered down at them.
 
The Stilt who
had bitten Jacob on his first trip behind the mirror could not be driven from
the tower, but its ugly face quickly disappeared behind the cobwebs as Jacob
drew his pistol.
 
For a while Jacob had
borrowed guns from his father’s collection, but at some point he’d had a
gunsmith in
New York
put the workings of a modern pistol inside one of the old-fashioned shells.

Clara stared, dumbfounded, at the glinting muzzle.

“Send her back, Will.”
 
Jacob tucked the pistol back into his belt.
 
“I won’t tell you again.”

Will had by now encountered things that were more frightening
than a big brother, but finally he did turn around.
 
He brushed the fair hair from Clara’s
forehead.

“He’s right,” Jacob heard Will whisper.
 
“I’ll come after you soon.
 
It will heal.
 
You’ll see; my brother will find a way.”

Jacob had never understood where all that trust came from.
 
Nothing had ever been able to shake it, not
even all the years during which Will had barely seen him.

“Let’s go.”
 
Jacob
turned around and went toward the hatch.

“Go back, Clara
.
Please,” he heard
Will say.