The Frostwoven Crown (Book 4) (51 page)

“I missed you,” he whispered.

“I missed you too,” she sighed.

Marla’s eyes fell. “I don’t want you going to the temple anymore,” she said.

Garrett laughed again. “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” he said, “at least not for a while.”

“What do you mean?” she asked as he ushered her inside and closed the door against the daylight.

“They kinda kicked me out,” he said, “at least until they sort out everything that happened and decide what to do about me.”

“Are you in trouble?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said, “I mean, they know that Matron Shelbie was the traitor now, not me.”

“Shelbie?” Marla gasped.

“Yeah,” Garrett said, “she made some sort of deal with the Chadiri, and the roach guy killed her when we found out.”

“
Roach guy?
” Marla said.

“Oh… yeah,” Garrett said, a little embarrassed, “I guess I never told you about the roach guy… that’s what Warren called him. He’s actually some sort of Neshite spy. I guess the Chadiri hired him to sneak in and bribe Shelbie.”

“A Neshite spy working with the Chadiri?” Marla said, shaking her head, “Garrett, that doesn’t make any sense!”

“Yeah,” Garrett admitted, “I guess maybe the Inquisitor is doing some stuff he shouldn’t be doing, so he’s using outside help so that he doesn’t get in trouble with the other Chadiri.”

Marla seemed unconvinced. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

Garrett shrugged. “I knew you were really busy,” he said, “I didn’t want to bother you about it.”

She gave him an exasperated look.

“Sorry,” he said, taking her hand, “I really did miss you…”

“I’m just glad you’re all right,” she sighed. She hugged him again for a very long time.

“You have the day off?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” Marla scoffed, “I’m supposed to be writing a poem.”

“About what?” he asked.

She stepped back, frowning at him. “It was supposed to be about Duty, but now I think it will be about a rather slow-witted boyfriend who regularly tries to have himself murdered and the poor girl who loves him.”

“Sorry,” Garrett said.

“No more secrets, Garrett,” she said.

“I promise,” he said.

“Is there anything else I should know?” she asked.

Garrett thought for a moment before answering. “Um… I was almost eaten alive by a bunch of worms… Annalien the ghost and Lady Ymowyn have decided that I should take over the world… that fairy that we set free in your shop has been following me around, and he thinks I’m gonna be like the fairy king or something… I, uh, kinda became the Songreaver for a minute and hurt Warren and Scupp, but they’re fine now, and I promised to never do it again… and I asked Mister Jannis about becoming a vampire, but he said I wasn’t ready yet.”

“What?” she demanded.

“What part?” he said.

She shook her head. “Garrett, why would you want to become a vampire?” she asked.

He paused before answering. “I want to be with you forever,” he said.

She pulled him to herself. “You don’t have to worry about that,” she said, “because I’m never letting you out of my sight again!”

“Well… you can’t take me back to the embassy. I kinda got banned from there for trying to kill Claude,” he chuckled, “or maybe it was because I’m the Songreaver… I’m not really sure anymore… We could run away together.” He pulled away enough to give her a crooked grin.

Marla looked as though she might strangle him, and then she kissed him again. “We’ll sort out the embassy problem later,” she sighed, “Right now… I just want…” she lifted her hand to her lips to try to cover a yawn.

“Hey,” Garrett said, “How long has it been since you had any sleep?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Yeah, it does,” he said, “Come here.” He guided her into the parlor and they sat down together on the sofa.

She looked as though she might argue with him, but Garrett stroked her dark hair gently until she laid her head upon his chest and relaxed. He held her close, feeling her warmth and breathing in the scent of her hair.

“I can’t stay…” she whispered.

“Just for a minute,” he said, “It’ll be all right.”

“I missed you, Garrett,” she said. She traced the curving horns of the skull medallion on his chest with her fingertips.

“I’m here now,” he whispered.

“I…” Marla started to speak, but she yawned again, and then she relaxed into a deep slumber.

Garrett held her as she slept, listening to the distant ticking of Uncle’s clock.

*******

Garrett thought about checking in on the Lethians while he was in Queensgarden, but it was getting late, and he didn’t want to impose on their hospitality again if he couldn’t make it home before Curfew. He headed up the steps to Cenick’s townhome and worked the key in the lock.

Garrett stepped inside and touched the gem set into the wall beside the doorframe. The house was suddenly filled with the glow of hundreds of tiny magical crystals set into the tiled floor like a meandering river of light.

Garrett closed the door behind him and then smiled to see movement in the large glass fish tank that Cenick kept in his front parlor. A huge deep-sea fish swam within, a hideous creature with countless teeth bristling from jaws nearly as large as its own body. Its lifeless eyes stared back at him, sunken deep in their sockets, and little tatters of flesh dangled from its zombified body.

“Hi, Shan,” Garrett said, calling the fish by name. Cenick had never bought into Uncle Tinjin’s policy of nameless zombies either. Likewise, he greeted Yzelle and Chassa the two slender zombies seated at the dinner table, each wearing the jewel encrusted wrappings and beaten golden death masks of ancient Zhadeen princesses.

Garrett walked through the house, checking on the tattooed necromancer’s belongings, but everything seemed to be in place. He patted Krute, the mummified parrot atop the head when he looked in on the birdhouse room, but he hurried past the shelves of shriveled monkey heads, shuddering at the way their eyes turned to follow him as he walked by.

The shelves that once held Cenick’s prized root collection now lay empty, save for a single twisted gray root in the rough shape of a man. Garrett wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw it move when he passed it. When he looked again, it lay motionless on the shelf.

Cenick’s knife room bore a few empty spaces on the wall, but that was not unusual. Cenick’s blade collection was a functional one, and the big man tried to keep the weapons in use, taking some with him every time he went out.

Garrett frowned at the cool, damp air in the room where Cenick slept when he was home. He couldn’t imagine how anyone would be able to sleep in there. A fountain of tumbled stone, surrounded by moss and ferns bubbled and splashed in the dim light of the skylight above. Cenick’s bed, a great four-posted sprawl of green blanket and white pillows, took up most of the rest of the room. A number of curved jungle knives and canisters of essence hung within easy reach on either side of the bed.

After a brief inspection of the rest of the house, Garrett concluded that everything seemed to be in order. He waved his goodbyes to the undead and headed out the door, locking it behind him.

He walked the short distance to Max’s townhouse as he fished out the skull-headed key to the door. Opening it, he was greeted by a foul, moldy scent from within. Garrett made a face, standing beside the open door for a moment, letting most of the bad air clear out before he headed inside.

The servants within still wore the red robes and white wooden masks that Max had given them and gave no indication that anything was amiss.

Garrett wrinkled his nose and made a quick search of the house, finding the source of the smell in Max’s library.

Garrett grimaced at the sight of a large patch of black mold that had spread across the spines of several of Max’s books on their shelves. One book, a large, leather-bound volume at the very center of the moldy patch seemed unaffected by it. Garrett stared at it a moment in confusion, it seemed as if the mold had not touched this book at all, even though the books to either side of it and the ones on the shelves directly above and below it were completely covered in the foul-smelling stuff.

Garrett decided that he couldn’t leave a mess like this for Max to find when he returned. Who knows how far it would spread by then. He decided to pull out the unaffected books first and then do his best to clean the stain from the rest. He reached up and pulled out the strange book at the center of the stain.

Garrett’s skin crawled as his gloved fingertips sank a little into the softly yielding leather of the book’s cover. It felt strangely warm and supple as though the thick leather were still attached to whatever beast had worn it in life. He glanced at the cover out of curiosity but saw no title there, only a single, spiky rune that looked as if it had been burned into the leather with a hot iron brand. Garrett stuck his tongue out in disgust and found a spot for the book to lie on a nearby lectern.

He next removed the books around the edge of the stain, stacking them on an adjacent table, until a sizeable buffer of empty space stood open all around the infected patch of books. He found water and a cloth in the kitchen and returned to start scrubbing the moldy books clean.

It took longer than he thought it would, and he was interrupted from his labors by the sound of the Evenchimes ringing out.

“Cramps!” Garrett sighed. He thought about making a run for it and coming back to finish tomorrow, but decided against it. He resigned himself to spending the night at Max’s house. The guest room was comfortable enough, and he had enough dry goods in the kitchen to muddle through a modest supper and breakfast. Max owed him that much, at least, for doing this.

It was well past midnight by the time he had scrubbed the last of the mold from Max’s books. Some of them still bore the indelible stain of their contact with the nasty stuff, but he had, at least, stopped the spread of it.

He took the bucket of filthy water to the kitchen and poured it down the drain before cleaning himself up. He lit Max’s stove and set a pot on to boil for a pudding before he headed back into the library to make certain he hadn’t missed anything.

The faint scent of mold still hung in the air, but nothing as bad as it had been when he arrived. His eyes went to the creepy leather book again, and he wondered if it was something about it that had caused the problem to begin with.

Garrett walked over and rotated the book on the lectern with one finger, grimacing at the way the corner of it sank in beneath the pressure of his fingertip. He felt a prickly feeling on the back of his neck as he lifted the cover and opened it to the title page.

Garrett drew back in revulsion at the monstrous, leering face, drawn in rust-colored ink, which stared back at him from the page within. He dropped the cover shut in alarm before he could get a good look at it. He laughed at himself then for being afraid of a book and pulled the cover open again.

Then he really was afraid, because the face was gone. Only a few lines of spidery black text, written in a language he did not recognize, filled the first page. He quickly flipped through the first twenty or so pages of the book, finding nothing but more cryptic text. He propped the cover open with one finger and tapped it with his other hand, hoping to dislodge any pages that had gotten stuck to the inner cover, but there were none.

Garrett let out an uneasy breath and let the book fall shut again. He wiped the fingertips of his gloves on his robe and backed away from the lectern. “Yeah… no,” he said, deciding to abandon his investigation of the strange book.

He retreated to the kitchen and had his pudding before closing himself up in the guest room. It took him a while to get to sleep that night. Every time he started to drift off, he thought he heard a voice whisper his name, and he would spring awake again. Finally he cried out loudly in frustration, “What?”

Just ignore it
, spoke the voice in the back of his mind.

“You shut up too!” Garrett growled. He buried his head under a pillow and hummed to himself until he finally fell asleep.

Garrett arose, weary-eyed and grumpy, with the chimes the following morning. He looked in on the library before he left, finding the creepy book still where he had left it. Its leather glistened wetly, and a small puddle of some foul-smelling liquid had begun to spread across the wood of the lectern.

Garrett shook his head and made a rude gesture at the book before walking out. He stopped by a small café for breakfast, which improved his mood a bit. By the time he turned down Vaaste Street toward home, he had forgotten all about evil books and black mold. Perhaps he would see if he could find Marla again, once he got cleaned up.

He turned the key in the front door and pushed it open, and then froze in alarm.

Cenick’s voice, muffled and broken, called out from the dining room.

Garrett dropped the key and his shoulder bag on the floor of the entryway and raced down the hall.

“Uncle Tinjin!” came the muffled voice of Cenick’s Proxylich from beneath the tarp in the corner.