The Wizard Of Dark Street Part 16

The odor of the beauty cream was faint against the smell of books and earth, but it was there.

"You, Sanora," Oona said. "Sit here. In this chair. Now explain to me how you did not attack my uncle, even though you were clearly involved in stealing the daggers."

Sanora rose to her feet and took her seat, her dress shimmering in the candlelight, mesmerizing to behold. She glanced nervously from Katona to Oona. "It was Red Martin," she said finally, her voice high and meek. "He forced us to do it ... to steal the daggers. We did not know that one of them was to be used on the Wizard, I swear it. I was just as surprised to see it happen as you was. We was just told that if we didn't get the daggers, and take them to the Nightshade Hotel, then we would no longer receive our supply of ... of ..."

"Of turlock root," Deacon finished for her.

Sanora looked up in surprise.

Oona twirled the candle in her fingers like a baton. "Yes, we know that you have been using turlock root in your so-called Witchwhistle Beauty Cream to make yourself young. But we did not know where you were getting it from."

Now the question is, where is Red Martin getting it from? Oona thought, but did not ask. She waited for Sanora to respond.

Finally, Sanora nodded, smoothing the shimmery skirt of her dress. "Red Martin's the only one who knows how to get hold of the root. And I promise, Miss Crate, that he wouldn't say what them daggers was for. Just that he had to have 'em, and that we was to do the getting ... or else. He gave us a drawing of the museum layout, and the buildings around it. It was very detailed. So, anyway, we started digging. We tried to dig directly into the curator's office, but the floor was solid stone. It would have taken too long to break through."

Oona nodded, circling around the back of Sanora's chair. "I'm guessing that's when you decided to tunnel beneath the dress shop next door."

Sanora nodded. "The showroom floor is made of wood. And that platform was hollow underneath."

"Of course," Oona said. "You could cut through the wood floor much easier than through solid stone. And from there you went into the museum through the common wall of the showroom."

Sanora began to fidget with the folds of her gleaming dress, and the light played eerily upon her face. "Once we got inside, we had to work by night, when the dress shop and the museum was both closed. It took longer than we thought it might to cut through into the museum, right? A whole week goes by, and we still wasn't in. And so, yesterday we get a message from Red Martin saying that we was taking too long, and that he needs the daggers that very day or we could kiss our beloved root good-bye. The message also says that he's gonna make sure that the curator is out of his office by one o'clock, and that he'll be gone for several hours. So, you see, we had no choice but to finish the job in the daytime. Thing is, Red Martin didn't know that we was going in through the dress shop next door. We just never told him."

"Lucky for you, Madame Iree was having a tea party at one o'clock, and the showroom was locked," Oona said.

"It's true," said Sanora. "And we was already almost through. We punched through the last bit of wall right behind that tapestry in about twenty minutes. We broke the gla.s.s case with a pick, took the daggers, cleaned up, and then ... then ..."

"And then you took the dresses," Oona finished for her.

Katona pointed her chin at Oona, her voice full of defiance. "We may spend most of our time down here in the hill, Miss Crate, but at least part of the reason for that is because people up there on the street treat us so rudely. They take one look at our pointy hats and scurry to the other side of the street. They point and whisper behind their hands. And that sn.o.bby dress shop owner was the worst of them. She never once let any of us witches so much as get three feet into her precious store before shouting at us to get out. Taking the dresses seemed only fair ... and convenient."

Oona remembered her own experience of walking into the store for the first time only the day before, and the treatment she had received. The looks of distain on the ladies' faces had almost made Oona turn right around and head back out the door.

"Convenient, I will agree," Oona said. "Fair? That will be a matter for the courts to decide." She turned to Sanora. "Please, continue."

Sanora swallowed uneasily. "I dropped the daggers off in an envelope at the front desk of the Nightshade Hotel, and that was that."

"Surely you would have known that the daggers were highly dangerous," Oona said. "Even their names speak of their treacherous possibilities. And yet you still stole them for a notorious criminal."

Sanora bit at her lip. "I swear, Miss Crate, none of us knew one of 'em was meant for the Wizard. If we had, then we would never have taken it."

"Really, Sanora?" Katona said, disbelieving. "You would have given up the beauty cream? I find that hard to believe. Look at you. Can't even act like an adult when you need to, in spite of being five hundred and seventy years old."

"Five hundred and seventy?" Oona said, hearing the astonishment in her own voice.

Katona shrugged. "Give or take a few years. When you're that old, it does not matter. Sanora, though she may appear to be the youngest among us, is by far the oldest ... and by all rights should be head of the coven. But over the years, as her body grew younger, so did her mind. Lately, she got it in her head that she wanted to become the Wizard's apprentice. A ludicrous idea, really. The rest of us warned her against it, but she wouldn't listen. She's grown so insufferably obstinate, yet as timid as a ... well, as a little girl."

Oona squinted at Sanora, trying to comprehend somehow that this was no girl, but a five-hundred-and-seventy-year-old woman. And then suddenly Oona thought that she understood what was really happening here. It came to her in a flash: the witches' real motivation. "If you are all truly so old, then that means that if you stop using the beauty cream ... you will all die. Is that correct?"

Katona hesitated, her finger twisting nervously at a lock of hair. At last she said: "It is true. Without Red Martin's supply of the root, we will be unable to make the cream, and we'll return to our true age within a month's time. No doubt, we would die of old age much sooner than that."

Oona brushed a stray hair from her face, considering what Katona had just revealed. Stranger things had happened on Dark Street, and yet she couldn't help but feel sorry for them all. These ... girls ... women ... old crones? What precisely were they?

"But I do wonder," said Deacon. "Where is Red Martin getting turlock root from?"

Sanora shared a look with the other girls. Katona began to shake her head, as if warning Sanora that this information was too precious to give away. After a long moment, however, Sanora said: "He gets it from Faerie."

Katona sprang to her feet. "Sanora, hold your tongue!"

"Faerie?" Oona said. "How can Red Martin be getting turlock root from Faerie? The Gla.s.s Gates bar the way."

"He smuggles it in, he does," Sanora said. "Only he knows how."

Katona moved forward as if to silence her, but Oona stepped between them. "Let her speak!"

Katona backed against the table, staring Oona down with eyes as cold as ice.

"Red Martin's found a flaw in the Gla.s.s Gates," Sanora continued. "He's been smuggling turlock root-and all sorts of other things, I'm sure-across the border for almost as long as the gates have been standing. The deal has always been that he provides us witches with the root, and we pay him with the various crystals and gold that we extract from deep within Witch Hill. We've been doing it for hundreds of years. Ever since Oswald closed the gates, and the magic began to fade. We used to be able to do magic, you know. All of us. But by the time we was a century old, the spells we once knew began to fade from our memories. Part of it was the closing of the gates, which softened all the magic. But mostly it was the turlock root. It somehow blocked our ability to remember the magic ... and by that time we had no choice but to keep applying the cream." She touched the brim of her pointy black hat with a sort of loving fondness. "That's why we always wear our hats. To remind us of what we once were. Real witches who done real magic." She paused a moment, sitting up straight. She squared her shoulders and looked at the girls on the table: "That's why I wanted to become the Wizard's apprentice. To feel what it was like to do magic again."

For a moment, Oona could only stare at Sanora, blinking foolishly. It was all so extraordinary. Finally, she said: "But if you've been getting the root from Red Martin the whole time, then that means that Red Martin must use the beauty cream as well. He's at least as old as you are, and all of those ridiculous rumors that he is hundreds of years old are actually true."

"Just figuring that out, are you?" asked a new voice. "I thought for sure that little fact would have been in your father's files on me. But then again, I suppose he was just as dim-witted as you."

The voice emanated low and amused from the mouth of the tunnel, and Oona did not like the sound of it one bit.

She whirled around, only to discover a very plain-looking man dressed in an even plainer-looking tan suit and bowler hat. The man stepped casually into the room. His face was ordinary-the kind of face one might pa.s.s a hundred times on the street and never take notice of. Quite frankly, there seemed nothing extraordinary about the man at all. He smiled a perfectly uninteresting smile, and the only remarkable thing about his expression was that the smile did nothing for his eyes ... eyes that, upon first and perhaps even second glance, seemed utterly unexceptional. And yet upon further examination, there was something altogether eerie about them. There was a kind of menacing glimmer in their gaze that caused a shiver to shoot up Oona's spine, and she realized all too quickly that these were the same eyes she'd seen peering down at her from the high window at the Nightshade Hotel.

Two enormous men dressed in red suits appeared behind the man. They stooped over in the tunnel, but once inside the room they straightened, rising to their full, ominous height. Oona recognized them as the twin hotel security guards, each carrying a thick wooden club.

"Red Martin!" said Katona.

"How do you do?" said the plain-looking man, keeping his eyes on Oona.

Oona's heart began to race. She had certainly not expected this. Red Martin himself. She did not know what to say. Here was the very man responsible for so many of the crimes on Dark Street, the man that Oona's father had been trying to bring down before he was killed ... killed by known a.s.sociates of Red Martin. Oona had often imagined this day, when she would finally come face-to-face with the man she believed to be responsible for her father's death. She had imagined just what she would say to him, sometimes going so far as to rehea.r.s.e her speech in her head as she fell asleep at night, but now that the moment had finally come, she was speechless.

Red Martin turned to Katona and said: "I just stopped by to personally thank you for the wonderful job you did in obtaining the daggers, Katona ... and to give you this." He snapped his fingers, and the twin with the mustache held up what looked like a bag of potatoes. "I thought you might be running low on the root. Yet what do I find when I arrive, but you telling this foolish girl all of our well-kept secrets? Too bad, really. I suppose I'll just have to keep this bag of turlock root for myself."

Katona looked horrified. "No. It was not me. It was Sanora. She's grown too young. She can't keep her big mouth shut."

Red Martin shrugged, as if it did not matter, and then turned to face Oona. "Let's deal with this little problem first, shall we? I'm sorry, Miss Crate, but I cannot allow you to leave the hill. Not now that you know our secret."

"Don't you touch her," said Deacon, puffing up his feathers to his full, menacing size.

Red Martin chuckled as he slid a shiny dagger from the inside of his jacket pocket. Oona recognized it at once as an exact replica of the one used on the Wizard. "Don't worry, Mr. Bird," said Red Martin. "I don't need to touch her." He looked admiringly at the dagger. "I believe this little beauty is thrown with the mind." He gripped the handle tight in his hand and grinned at Oona. "And believe me, Miss Crate, when I say that this one won't send you to the Black Tower. It won't even send you to meet your dear, dead parents. This one will wipe you clean out of existence ... which is almost too bad. Perhaps in the afterlife you could have told your father what an absolute delight it was for me when I had him killed. Oh, don't look at me like that. It was simply a necessity. He kept getting in my way, so he had to go." Red Martin giggled darkly. "Though he doesn't know it, it was I who influenced the Street Council to give your father's old position to that b.u.mbling idiot, Inspector White. The man is so stupid he doesn't even realize he got the job because of me. Life has been so much easier with him running the police force."

Oona's teeth clenched. Her suspicions were being proven right, yet it only made her feel angrier than ever. "You murdered my father!"

Red Martin shook his head, tossing the dagger from one hand to the other. "You should know by now that I never hurt anyone. I always get someone else to do it for me. In your father's case, it was a couple of thieves." His grin widened. "But in your case, I think I will make an exception. And how convenient that I won't even need to get my hands dirty."

Oona's heart was racing, her mind grasping for some way out. Anything. A thought occurred to her. "You wouldn't dare do it in front of all these witnesses," she said. But her voice betrayed her lack of certainty.

Red Martin appeared amused. "I am the only reason these ladies are alive today. They cannot survive longer than a few weeks without my supply of the root. They will keep their mouths shut. And besides, if they should decide to speak out against me, I can terminate the relationship and let them all wither away. It's quite true that they provide me with a minimal amount of crystals and gold, but I a.s.sure you, I do have other prospects for making up the lost income."

Oona's hands clenched into fists, her knuckles turning a bloodless white. "Other prospects?" she asked. "You mean like destroying Pendulum House and building your hideous hula-hut hotel and casino?"

Red Martin's eyes sparkled. "Just think of all those New York fools pouring through the gates to see the magical street. They'll need a luxurious place to stay, and of course a place to lose all of their money!"

"Horrible," was all Oona could think to say.

Red Martin gave a little bow.

"But what if it doesn't work?" Oona asked. "What if when you destroy Pendulum House, we no longer stay connected to New York, and Dark Street becomes isolated from New York completely? Or what if the Gla.s.s Gates should eventually fall? What then? The armies of Faerie could attack the World of Man as they please."

Red Martin shrugged. "A possibility, yes. But I really doubt that will happen."

"And yet you are willing to gamble with the lives of everyone?" Oona asked, but she already knew what his answer to that would be.

"I'm a gambling sort of man ... and I believe the odds are in my favor. They are always in my favor, Miss Crate."

Oona's eyes slitted to the size of paper cuts. "Which one of the applicants did you persuade into attacking my uncle?" she demanded.

Red Martin smiled faintly. "You will never know, will you? Good-bye, Miss Crate. So sorry I have to kill you now, but sometimes killing is necessary. I suppose you, of all people, should know that. Really, even I never stooped so low as to kill my own mother ... let alone a baby. Perhaps the world is better off without you."

Oona's throat constricted, the harshness of the words like a noose around her neck. Red Martin raised the dagger above his head, clearly meaning to make a show of it, and fixed her with his gaze.

Several of the girls took in a collective gasp.

"Stop!" shouted Sanora.

Deacon cried, "No!" as he leaped from Oona's shoulder and darted across the room. His great black wings fluttered in front of Red Martin's face, momentarily blocking Oona from view.

"Get away from me, bird!" he shouted, and then brought the blade swiftly down, meaning to cleave right into Deacon and knock him out of the way.

What happened next happened in the s.p.a.ce of half a heartbeat. First there was a memory: Samuligan standing near Oona's bedroom door with Deacon wriggling in the faerie servant's gangly grip. Samuligan had uttered a single word ... except that, in the memory, his voice seemed m.u.f.fled, like someone speaking through a mouth full of cloth. In the next instant Deacon was standing on the dressing table, looking bewildered, while Samuligan remained near the door with Oona's hairbrush in his hand. The bird and the brush had magically swapped places in the blink of an eye.

"I just made it up," Samuligan had said, again his voice strangely m.u.f.fled, like this was a very old memory that had lost some of its sharpness. And yet it was not an old memory, Oona knew. It was quite recent. The real event had taken place only the day before, and in that half a heartbeat, as Oona saw the dagger in Red Martin's hand swing down to knock Deacon out of the way, and quite possibly cut him in half, Oona made a decision to do what she had promised herself she would never do again on purpose.

The magic rose to her lips like a drink of water from a deep spring. It felt not only exhilarating, it also felt right.

"Switch!" she shouted, and in the same instant stomped her foot against the floor just as the blade slammed into Deacon's fluttering wing. Except that it was no longer the dagger that Red Martin swung; instead, it was the candle that Oona had been holding only a moment before. Deacon swatted at the candle with his wing before soaring toward the cave ceiling, shrieking like mad.

"What is this?" asked Red Martin, looking both startled and confused. He gazed uncomprehendingly at the white candle in his hand. "Where did it go?"

"Looking for this?" Oona asked. She held up the enchanted dagger. She could feel the fiery p.r.i.c.kle of it in her hand-the dagger's enchantment sensing her faerie blood-and the heat was already beginning to grow. But she held the dagger nonetheless, suffering the discomfort, refusing to let it fall from her hand.

Red Martin's eyes rounded like wagon wheels. He took in a sharp breath of air, and then threw the unlit candle at Oona. The candle went wide and hit the bookshelf containing the newspapers as Deacon returned to Oona's shoulder.

"Don't just stand there!" Red Martin shouted at the enormous twins. "Kill her!"

Red Martin then turned and ran abruptly out of the room, disappearing down the tunnel.

The two enormous thugs came at her, clubs raised, the expressions on their broad faces cold, and distant, and eager to pummel. In that instant the pain in her hand was finally too much to bear. The heat had grown too intense, and Oona let the dagger drop to the floor.

The twins descended on Oona like two hulking monsters.

Deacon launched from Oona's shoulder, attacked the twin with the mustache, batting at his head and clawing at his face. The second twin came straight at Oona, clearly intent on smashing her skull with his thick club. Oona dove out of the way and the club crashed against the floor, sending the dagger skittering across the ground.

The girls screamed as the first twin (the one Oona thought of as Mr. Mustache) began to swat at the open air, trying to whack Deacon with his club. But the bird was too fast. Deacon clamped hold of the man's mustache and soared upward. Mr. Mustache's scream was so high pitched, it might have belonged to one of the girls.

Oona jumped back as thug number two took another swipe at her. The swing missed her by mere inches, crashing instead against the side of the chair where Sanora had been cowering, and sending her flying across the room. A quavery wail escaped her lips as she slammed against the floor and then fell silent.

"You brute!" Oona shouted, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a broken chair leg. "You'd strike a helpless little girl?"

The giant man raised the club, and when Oona brought up the chair leg to protect herself, she stumbled over another bit of broken chair and toppled to the floor. She clamped her eyes shut, thinking that this was it, certain the club's blow would send the life rushing out of her-but the blow never came.

There was a loud thunk, and the man staggered forward. His ma.s.sive body spun around and collapsed against a carved-stone bookcase. It took Oona a couple of seconds to realize what had just happened. The thug's twin, Mr. Mustache, had accidentally clobbered his brother with his own flailing club.

Then came a sharp shriek of pain as Mr. Mustache caught hold of Deacon in one enormous hand and shoved the raven against the wall. He raised the club, clearly meaning to flatten the bird, even if it meant crushing his own hand in the process.

Oona knew instantly what she had to do. She sat up, aimed the chair leg at Mr. Mustache like a rifle, and the words escaped her mouth without her even having to remember them.

"Lux lucis admiratio!"

A blaze of sparkling lights erupted from the end of the broken chair leg, shooting across the room and knocking the club from Mr. Mustache's thick-fingered hand. His grip weakened, and Deacon fell to the floor with a thump. Mr. Mustache cried out in surprise as a second burst of lights picked him up and hurled him across the room. He slammed against a bookcase and collapsed to the floor, bringing an avalanche of books with him. The starry lights swirled around his head, lingering just long enough to singe the ends of his bushy mustache, and then they disappeared altogether. The man's eyelids fluttered briefly before sliding closed. He was out cold. Oona dropped the broken chair leg and hurriedly pushed herself to her feet.

"Deacon!" she called, and ran to him. "Deacon, are you all right?" Her voice cracked, and her eyes glistened wetly. She knelt to pick him up. Once he was in her hands, she could just make out his faint breath and the beating of his heart against her palm. His body shuddered, followed by a short cough. One eye opened, peering up at her.

"I've been better," he said, and winced as he moved his leg.

Oona felt all of the breath leave her body in a great sigh of relief. "Oh, Deacon. You had me frightened there for a moment. Are you badly hurt?"

Ruffling his feathers, he said: "I believe I may have injured my hip."

"Can you move it?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Then at least it's not broken."

"Can't be sure about that," he said.

"Oh, you'd know if your hip was broken," said Katona. "I broke mine once, almost a hundred years ago, and I can a.s.sure you, there's no worse-"

"That's quite enough!" Deacon shouted. He stretched out his wings before hopping to Oona's shoulder. She felt him wobble for a moment, but he managed to keep his balance. "I believe we should be more concerned about Miss Crone than my hip," he said.

Oona glanced across the room to where Sanora lay motionless. Filled with apprehension, Oona hurried to the girl's side, but even as she knelt, she could see that Sanora was beginning to stir. Oona placed her hand on the young witch's shoulder, helping her to sit up.

"Are you badly injured?" Oona asked.