The Wizard Of Dark Street Part 7

Oona sat stock-still, listening to every word, her mind grabbing at each of the inspector's points, searching for clues.

The inspector cleared his throat, then said: "Clearly it was someone in this room who stole the daggers." He pointed at the dagger in the floor as proof. "And then that same individual used one of them to murder the Wizard!"

Oona shook her head, realizing what the inspector had just said. "Did you say murder?"

"I did, indeed," the inspector replied, sounding peeved for even having to answer the question.

Oona turned to the faerie servant. "Didn't you tell him, Samuligan?"

Samuligan clucked his tongue ruefully. "I did try, but-"

"Tell me what?" the inspector demanded.

"My uncle may not have been murdered," Oona informed him. "It is quite possible that he is still alive."

The inspector crossed to the center of the room and picked up the Wizard's empty robes. He shook them at Oona. "Then where is he?" he asked.

"Well, if he is alive, then he would be in the Goblin Tower," Oona said.

"In the Goblin Tower?" the inspector said. "Don't be ridiculous. A roomful of people saw him get stabbed. Is that not the case?"

He turned his attention to Lamont. Startled to be so singled out, the boy was forced to confess, "Yes, it is true," and then he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began nervously cleaning his eyegla.s.ses.

"But Inspector," said Deacon. "While it is true that one of the daggers would have killed him, the other would have sent him to the Goblin Tower, as Miss Crate has just told you."

The inspector dropped the Wizard's robe back to the floor. "So, Mr. Bird, you admit to having knowledge of these weapons."

"Deacon has knowledge of the entire Encyclopedia Arcanna," Oona explained.

"How very convenient," the inspector replied.

Oona gaped at him. "Are you actually accusing Deacon?"

The inspector slowly shook his head and began to rub his thin, white hands together. "The museum has a registry at the front entrance. All persons entering the museum must sign their name. There is a museum security guard stationed at the entrance to make sure no one gets in without placing their name in the registry." The inspector abruptly turned his back to everyone and watched the pendulum swing from one end of the room to the other. "It would seem that very few people are interested in magical history these days ... or at least on Mondays anyway ... because there were only two names written on today's page in the registry. And do you know whose names they were?" The inspector suddenly spun around so that his gaze fell on the Iree twins. "It just so happens that they are both sitting in this very room. Isadora and Adler Iree!"

Isadora slapped a hand to her chest. "Yes, I did go to the museum this morning ... but only because Head Mistress Duvet at the Academy of Fine Young Ladies is very eager to have the next Wizard's apprentice be someone from her school. It's because of her that I ever even applied for the position in the first place, and it was at Head Mistress Duvet's explicit instructions that I went to the museum this morning so that I might refresh my knowledge of magical history before my interview with the Wizard. And I must say, I was completely bored out of my mind. Magical history is quite dull. There never is anyone in that huge building, and it's sort of ... well, it's creepy being in there all alone."

"But Miss Iree," the inspector said, flipping open his notepad, "you did not go to the museum alone, did you? You went with your brother."

Isadora shook her head. "No, I went by myself. I only knew that Adler had been there because I saw his name written in the registry. But I didn't see him. The place is so big I could have been in there with a hundred people and never seen a single soul."

The inspector studied her for a moment before asking: "And what did you do after you left the museum, Miss Iree?"

"I went next door to my mother's dress shop for tea. Remember, you saw me there. All of my mother's dresses were stolen." Isadora drew in her breath. "Do you think that the daggers and the dresses were stolen by the same person?"

"I think it very likely that you stole them both, and then came to Pendulum House to murder the Wizard!" the inspector said.

"Me? Why on earth would I want to hurt the Wizard?"

The inspector strode across the room toward Isadora, hands outstretched as if preparing to grab hold of her shoulders and shake a confession out of her. But as he moved, the inspector failed to remember the dagger sticking out of the carpet. His foot struck the narrow hilt, and he tumbled to the floor.

"Who did that?" he howled, pushing himself quickly back to his feet and shoving his stringy, black hair back from his face.

"I believe it was the dagger you tripped on, Inspector," Oona said.

The inspector turned on her. "I thought I told you to stay out of official police affairs, Miss Crate."

Oona raised her eyebrows in surprise, before reminding herself just whom she was dealing with. Truth be told, up until this point she had been quite impressed with all the information the inspector had compiled. Indeed, it was something of a shock to discover that the Iree twins had been at the museum that day. It was certainly possible that Isadora had it in her spiteful nature to attack the Wizard, but the thought of Adler being involved, or even being the attacker himself, was upsetting, to say the least.

She took a calming breath to steady her nerves before realizing that the inspector was still waiting for her to explain herself. She spoke calmly and clearly. "My uncle was attacked, and quite possibly murdered tonight, Inspector, to which I am a witness. Not only do I have every right to be here, I am required to be here. And also, if you need it to be pointed out to you, no one tripped you. You tripped yourself on the dagger." She pointed to the floor.

The inspector turned to the dagger, a look of surprise on his face. "Oh, of course."

Adler adjusted his top hat so that it rested upon the back of his head. "I was at the museum, 'tis true," he said. "I'm at the museum most days, when I'm not at the Magicians Legal Alliance, that is. The museum's library is quite amazing. I was doing research."

What sort of research? Oona wondered, but what she asked was: "Inspector, are you sure there is no way someone could have gotten past the security guard at the front of the museum without signing the registry?" She glanced sideways at Grimsbee, gauging his reaction. His face remained inscrutable beneath the bloodstained rag on his head.

The inspector frowned. "It is possible, but highly unlikely, I would think. The security guard would have to answer that question."

And Oona thought: Yes, I'll have to ask him that when I visit the museum tomorrow.

And then a second, crueler voice in her head asked: When are you going to do that? After you break into the Black Tower, defeat the goblins, and discover that your uncle is not in the tower cell after all, and that Inspector White is right ... that the Wizard is dead?

The thought angered her so much that she blurted out: "Mr. Grimsbee, how did you injure yourself? I saw you earlier today on the museum steps, and you did not have that bandage around your head."

The room fell markedly quiet. Someone cleared their throat. A mouse could be heard skittering through the walls. Grimsbee slid forward in his chair, and for the first time since they had been gathered together, his expression changed. He appeared to look right at Oona with his horrible white eyes, his lips pinched together in a mask of fury. His faced turned bright red, and his nostrils swelled to the size of walnuts. And then suddenly, horribly, his mouth drew out into an oily grin that was the very replica of his pointy, bullhorn mustache.

Through gritted teeth, he said: "I cut myself shaving."

Oona blinked several times, shaking her head. "Shaving your forehead?" she replied, her voice br.i.m.m.i.n.g with disbelief. She turned to the inspector. "Surely you do not believe him? Who shaves their forehead?"

The inspector appeared thoughtful, scratching at his white, white chin with the tip of one white, white finger.

"I do not know what to believe," he said. And then to Oona's further astonishment, he said: "You are all free to go."

"Go?" Oona cried. She was suddenly on her feet. "What do you mean, go? You're going to let my uncle's attacker just walk out of here?"

"We do not have sufficient evidence to hold any of them in custody," the inspector declared. He paused to consider something for a moment. "But I will see to it that police Constable Trout over there is posted at the Iron Gates, to make sure no one flees Dark Street until the killer is discovered."

Police Constable Trout stood near the doorway, his dreamy gaze lost in the pages of his novel, as if completely unaware of the murder investigation going on in the same room. Somehow the inspector's a.s.surance that the constable would be watching the Iron Gates gave Oona little comfort.

"That is all," the inspector said, and began marching toward the door.

"But Inspector," Oona tried one last time. "Don't you think you should place everyone under house arrest? Keep them here in Pendulum House? At least until we discover who-"

The inspector cut her short. "Miss Crate. When will you learn to leave grown-up work to ... uh ... well, to grown-ups? Now run along and play with your pet birdie, and leave this case to the professionals. We have everything under control, don't we, Constable Trout?"

The novel-reading constable turned the page of his book, giggling at something he'd read.

"You are all free to go," said the inspector again.

Oona looked at Hector Grimsbee, who grinned in her direction.

"I will inform the Dark Street Council of the Wizard's death," said the inspector, "and the council will decide what is to be done about the position."

"But he's not necessarily dead!" Oona shouted.

The inspector nodded sadly at her. "Denial is the first stage of grief," he said, and then turned to go.

Oona stared after him as he made his way toward the door, his highly polished shoes squeaking their way across the long, ornate carpet, and his white shirt glaring against the light. Frustration gripped at her insides. The man was a great big inkblot on the name of law and order. Oona chanced to look down at the floor, and thought: Look, he's even left the evidence there in the carpet.

She bent to retrieve the dagger.

"Don't forget the weapon, Inspector." Oona pulled it from the floor and held it out. At first she felt only a tingle: a slight warmth that slowly intensified in her hand so that soon it felt as if she had pulled the dagger not out of the floor but out of a pile of hot coals. By the time the inspector had made his way back across the room and put out his hand, the handle of the dagger had grown too hot for her to hold. Oona took in a sharp breath, letting the dagger fall from her fingers. The instant the weapon hit the floor, bouncing against the carpet with a soft thud, the pain disappeared. She looked at her hand in surprise. Her fingers did not begin to smoke, nor did her hand turn char-black as Samuligan's hand had done when he had touched the dagger. But the flesh about her fingers did appear slightly red. It had not been her imagination. The heat had been there.

"Well, that was very rude," said the inspector, bending to retrieve the dagger.

Oona hardly heard him. She turned to Samuligan, wide-eyed and wondering. "It burned me, Samuligan," she said in a tone of complete bewilderment. "I felt it. It ... It burned me."

Though tangled and overgrown, the garden in the inner courtyard of Pendulum House was Oona's favorite place to be alone and to think. Surrounded on all four sides by the lofty walls of the great manor house, it was as solitary a place as Oona could hope to find. After all of the distressful events of the evening, she'd needed to breathe its comforting air, and stroll through patches of sighing-lady gra.s.s, which sighed softly in the starlight like broken-hearted ladies, and stands of sallow flowers, whose bright petals changed colors and could be used to predict the weather. It was a secret place, known only to the occupants of the house, and Oona found it to be the best place in all the world to let her thoughts simply wander through the hills and valleys of the endless mysteries that occupied her mind.

Presently, she gazed at her hand, opening and closing her fingers, as if they were strange to her. She thought back to earlier that evening and remembered how completely uninterested the inspector had behaved toward her complaint that the dagger had burned her. Indeed, everyone in the room had been so eager to get away from the house that-with the exception of Adler Iree, who seemed to be watching Oona quite intensely, as if antic.i.p.ating some new marvel of magic to spring from her hands at any moment-no one had shown the slightest interest in what had just happened.

Once they'd all gone, however, and Oona had been left alone in the house with Deacon and Samuligan, she had at last asked the impending question: "Why did the dagger grow so hot in my hand? I thought it was enchanted to burn only faeries."

Samuligan didn't have an explanation for what had occurred. The dagger had not affected the inspector, nor had it burned Constable Trout when the inspector had handed him the evidence to take to the station. Only Oona and Samuligan had suffered the effects of the dagger's strange magic, though Oona's own hand had not been nearly as badly burned as Samuligan's had, despite the fact that Oona had held on to the dagger for far longer than the faerie servant.

"There is only one rational explanation that I can think of for why the dagger would burn you," Deacon had offered. "There is a theory, which I daresay you have heard before, that the reason that Natural Magicians, such as yourself, are able to invoke such strong magic is because they possess some small amount of active faerie blood in their veins. The idea is that, long ago, before the closing of the Gla.s.s Gates, a faerie man and a human woman had a child together, and that human-faerie child grew up and had a child with another human, and so on, and so on, until there was almost no trace of faerie left. The immortality that all pure-born faeries possess is washed away by the limited nature of the human body. But faerie blood is, above all else, the very essence of magic. It would not disappear completely, even after a hundred generations. Or perhaps even a thousand. No one knows for sure. It is, of course, only a theory."

Oona shook her head. "But if that is the case, and I do possess some trace of faerie blood, then why did my parents not have the powers that I have? Or my grandparents?"

Deacon shrugged. "Why do some children have an uncanny ability to play the piano, while their parents possess no musical skill whatsoever? What causes a brilliant ballet dancer to be born from simple country farmers, or a mighty warrior to be born amongst a horde of meek brothers and sisters? Again, no one knows. It is, perhaps, an unsolvable mystery."

Oona disliked the idea of an unsolvable mystery. Currently, as she stood alone in the starlit confines of the inner garden, she turned her mind to a more solvable mystery: the attack on her uncle. But somehow it was the two incidents with Isadora, just before she and her brother had taken their leave of Pendulum House, that popped into Oona's mind. Isadora was such an infuriatingly selfish girl, and troublesome to say the least. But Oona had not realized just how troublesome she truly was until the so-called fine young lady had smeared dirt across Oona's face and then, shortly after that, nearly knocked her out with the coatrack.

The inspector had departed the house some minutes before, along with Constable Trout, Lamont John-Michael Arlington Fitch III, Sanora Crone, and that horrible Hector Grimsbee. Isadora had needed to use the bathroom before leaving, and so Oona, Samuligan, and Deacon had patiently waited for her, along with Adler, in the house entryway. Several times Adler's and Oona's own eyes had met, and each time the awkwardness of the silence was palpable. She had wanted to grab hold of his shabby cloak and shake him, make him swear that he'd had nothing to do with what had happened to her uncle. But she could not do that. Adler had been at the museum that day, and it could very well have been he who stole the dagger and used it to kill the Wizard.

Uncle Alexander is not dead, she tried to convince herself. He is in that tower, and first thing tomorrow, we will find a way to get him out!

"Perhaps I should go and see what is taking Isadora so long," Oona had said, though truthfully she simply wanted to get away from the uncomfortable silence of the entryway. Thinking that she might use the bathroom herself after Isadora, Oona asked Deacon to wait in the entryway with Samuligan and Adler while she checked on Isadora. She crossed the circular antechamber and turned down the side hallway. When Oona got to the bathroom, however, she discovered that the door was open and the room was unoccupied.

"Isadora?" she called. Glancing up and down the hall, Oona noticed the doors to the inner courtyard standing wide open. She approached the doors slowly. "Isadora?" she called again. Again there was no answer. Her fists clinched.

She'd better not be out there in the garden, Oona thought, feeling quite angry at the idea. The inner garden was full of secret plants that only the Wizard and his apprentice were allowed to know existed. And Isadora most certainly was not yet the Wizard's apprentice.

Oona stepped through the doorway and into the open air of the courtyard. The stars were bright, the night crisp. Oona saw movement near the far end of the garden. Her feet moved silently beneath her as she stepped from the brick patio to the dirt path that led through the various plants and hedges. The shadowy leaves of a dancing fern slid silently out of her way with a graceful, dancerlike fluidity, and when her foot crunched upon a fallen leaf, the sighing-lady gra.s.s masked the sound with its beautiful sighing lament.

No surprise to Oona, the movement she'd seen turned out to be that of a dress. A red-and-gold-striped dress, to be precise, that glinted prettily in the starlight. Isadora was bending down over an empty patch of soil.

Oona cleared her throat. "Ahem."

Isadora jumped, nearly toppling forward and knocking over the low wooden sign sticking out of the dirt in front of her. She wheeled around, and Oona glanced down at the sign, which read: TURLOCK ROOT.

"Can I help you, Isadora?" Oona asked in what she hoped was her best patronizing voice.

Isadora looked around, blinking innocently, as if she were unsure of where she was or how she had gotten there. "Oh, I seem to have gotten lost on my way back to the entryway."

Oona folded her arms and began tapping her foot. "Lost your way, have you? Well, I think it's safe to a.s.sume that if you did not walk through the garden to get to the bathroom, then you would not need to walk through it to get back out."

Isadora straightened up. "Well, there's no need to get snippy. I simply took a wrong turn. Then I saw this sign here, and well, I thought I might ..."

Oona looked down at Isadora's hands and saw the dirt on them. "You thought you might dig up some turlock root?"

A memory floated to the surface of Oona's mind: Isadora's mother, Madame Iree, saying how much she would like to get her hands on a bit of turlock root so that she could make herself young enough to wear the glinting-cloth dress.

"Well, what if I was?" Isadora said defensively. "It was for Mother. She told me that this stuff grew only in Faerie, but look, here it is, right here." She pointed to the sign.

Oona opened her mouth to tell Isadora that the reason it grew there in the secret garden was because Pendulum House was built on Faerie soil-that Pendulum House was the only place this side of the Gla.s.s Gates built on such enchanted ground-but she stopped herself. Isadora didn't need to know such things, and probably wasn't interested.

"Well, you can't take any," Oona said.

"Who is going to stop me?" Isadora asked, raising her chin defiantly, and then her eyes suddenly went wide.

"I would enjoy that pleasure," said a voice from behind Oona. Oona turned to discover Samuligan standing behind her. He must have come to see what was taking so long. His toothy grin was a horror to behold in the starlight, and Oona found herself thankful that the grin was not directed at her.

Isadora pinched up her lips and said: "Fine. Mother wouldn't want this stinky stuff anyway. It smells horrible, like you. Here, have a whiff."

In three swift motions, Isadora reached out, wiped her filthy hand across Oona's face, and then sidestepped Samuligan as she stormed off toward the courtyard doors. Oona was simply too stunned to say a word. She stood for a moment, blinking in surprise, unsure as to whether she should run and tackle the other girl, or simply let her go. It was infuriating, not to mention highly embarra.s.sing. The dark soil ran from her cheek to her mouth like a hideous scar. Catching a whiff of the pungent soil, she spat on the ground, and wiped the sharp taste of dirt from her lips.

Samuligan had evidently decided to stay with Oona, rather than pursue Isadora, and for the moment she was glad for it, as the faerie servant handed her a handkerchief to wipe her face. Together, the two of them walked back across the courtyard, Oona hoping that by the time they made it to the front of the house the Iree twins would be gone. No such luck.

They found Deacon perched atop the entryway coatrack, with Isadora shouting at him. Adler was telling her to calm down, but she would have none of it. She whirled around, the red-and-gold stripes of her dress spiraling about her feet, and arrowed her finger at Oona.

"You stole my shawl!" Isadora announced.

Oona's eyebrows nearly came together. "I what?"

Isadora pointed at the coatrack beside the broom closet. "Don't play stupid with me. I hung my shawl on that rack when I came in this evening. It matches my dress perfectly. Now it's gone."

Oona looked at the coatrack. She remembered seeing the shawl earlier that evening, remembered placing it back on the rack herself after the rack had fallen on top of her when she'd tumbled from the closet. The only thing hanging on the rack now was a lone, black jacket. Where the shawl had gone, Oona had no idea.

Isadora fell into a fit. "Where's my shawl!" She lashed out, kicking over a nearby umbrella stand, and then shoved the heel of her shoe hard against a footstool near the closet. Oona jumped out of the way to avoid being hit by the stool, and the umbrella stand toppled over, spilling two lacy white parasols to the floor, along with one pointy red umbrella that nearly poked Adler in the leg.

"Now see here, young lady!" Deacon said from the top of the coatrack. "Calm down!"

But Isadora was not ready to calm down. "I left it right here!" she shouted, and then grabbed hold of the jacket on the coatrack and yanked. Suddenly, the entire rack toppled over. Deacon leaped into the air, shrieking and batting his wings as the rack slammed to the ground.

"Where's my shawl?" Isadora howled, kicking violently at the fallen rack.