Chapter Two
The Marvelous Mansion of Mephistopheles Prospero
“Let’s examine everything, ma’am; leaving no pile of laundry unturned.” Mab stuck his head through one of the archways leaving the foyer. “I want to see what else we can find out about your brother.”
My hand clutched the slim leather volume, still wrapped in its smooth green paper that lay deep within the pocket of my white cashmere cloak. “You go ahead. I’m going to find a warm place to sit and read my Christmas present.”
“It would be a whole lot more efficient for you to come with me, ma’am, being as Mephisto is your brother and all.” Mab’s voice sounded funny, as if he had a bad cold. When he turned, I saw that he was pinching his nostrils against the awful stink of the harpy dung. “You may recognize at a glance something I won’t be able to make head or tail of.”
“We have plenty of time,” I countered, inching toward the rightmost arch, where I had glimpsed an armchair.
“I thought you were in an ungodly hurry to rush back. The Three Shadowed Ones could be offing your siblings as we speak,” Mab countered.
“I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing we can do to speed things up,” I replied. “I sent an Aerie One to our offices in Vancouver with a message asking to have someone fly another Lear to Yellowknife. The Aerie One has to fly there, and a pilot has to fly the plane back. This will take hours.”
“Yellowknife?”
“As best as I can tell, we’re in the Canadian Northern Territories, somewhere between Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake. Yellowknife should be the nearest airport.”
“As best as you can tell?” Mab scrunched up his cheek and scratched at his eternal stubble.
“I’ve never been here before. I had no idea Mephisto had a house in Canada,” I said. “Heck, I didn’t know he had a house at all. Which is probably for the best, because if I had known, I would have just sent him a note telling him about Father’s letter, and we never would have gone looking for him.”
“Good point. If we had not located the Harebrain, we would never have found your brother, Mr. Theophrastus, or your sister.” Mab nodded. He added dubiously, “This Yellowknife airport. How are we going to get there?”
“We’ll have to borrow Pegasus, but since we have hours, we should give the beast a chance to rest first,” I concluded happily. “So, I’m off to read. Tootle-loo!”
“Whoa, ma’am. Maybe we don’t have to leave right away, but we only have while your brother is otherwise occupied to investigate his house,” Mab countered. “Can’t whatever you’re planning to read wait? You’ll have plenty of time to read on the flight back to Oregon.”
The trip home seemed a long way off. For five hundred years, I had searched for the Book of the Sibyl. Theoretically, another few hours should not make much of a difference, but right now, with the little leather volume burning a proverbial hole in my pocket, even these few seconds of delay seemed an eternity.
This little book that Lord Astreus had copied for me in his own hand held the secrets of the Order of the Sibyl, the only rank of my Lady’s servants I had not yet achieved. Conceivably, this slender tome might hold all the answers I so longed for. It was even possible that, by the time I finished reading it, I would be a Sibyl!
And then … ah, then!
The rank of Handmaiden, my rank, came with the authority to travel to the Well at the World’s End—a journey of a year and a day—and bring back the Water of Life that allowed my family to be effectively immortal. The rank of Sibyl, however, came with six Gifts. The Gift of Absolving Oaths would allow me to free my favorite brother, Theophrastus, from the foolish vow he had taken to eschew the Water of Life, the vow that would soon bring about his death through illness and old age.
The Gift of Visions would allow me to request information directly from my Lady, perhaps offering answers to the many questions that plagued my family. The Gift of Opening Locks … well, I did not know how powerful it was, but it was at least conceivable that, with my Lady’s help, I could unlock the very gates to hell itself, where my father was being held captive, and force them to yield him up.
And then there was the Gift that would allow me to create Water of Life, so that I would never again have to take off a year and a day, abandoning all my other duties, in order to bring back only as much Water as I could carry.
Nor was it just that I wanted new honors and prerogatives. For five centuries, I had hungrily devoured every arcane manual and ancient tome that came my way, eager to discover more of the nature of my Lady and Her Divine Purpose. Long nights I had spent bent over musty pages, seeking the secrets that evaded me. After all this time, all this searching, I yearned to learn the answers to my questions.
I skirted around the pool. “I’m sure you’ll do fine on your own.”
“Okay, no skin off my back.” Mab shrugged. “I’m just your head detective. If you’re not interested in why Harebrain can turn into Big, Black, and Bat-Winged, I don’t need to know, either.”
I froze.
He had a point.
In a warehouse in Maryland, my brother had transformed into a sapphire-eyed bat-winged entity that looked sickeningly like a demon. It was our family’s policy not to traffic with Hell. At least, it had been in years past—though now it was beginning to seem as if half the family had violated this creed. If a search of Mephisto’s house could reveal clues as to whether he really was Mephistopheles, Prince of Hell, I owed it to Father to investigate.
An eight-foot-tall primate with thick, curly white fur came shuffling into the foyer carrying a mop and pail. When it saw us, it flinched back, hunching bashfully behind its great shoulder. Then, gathering its courage, it lunged at us, swinging its mop and baring its big yellow fangs.
“We better get a move on, ma’am.” Mab retreated cautiously toward the nearest arch. “We’re making the help nervous.”
O O O
Mephisto’s mansion was like no house I had ever seen. Rooms spilled one into the next in no discernible order. Some overflowed with chairs that faced no particular direction. Others were nearly empty except for piles of junk. Still others could have been chambers in a museum, with priceless statues and artifacts arranged in an eye-catching manner, each with its own brass plaque.
Nearly every room on the first floor had a pool. Underwater tunnels, similar to the passage Morveren had taken to fetch the yeti, led from one to another giving the mermaid the run of the house. There were other passages as well, doors that opened into narrow hallways, or crawl spaces that led from one room to the next. And everything, everywhere, was plastered with Post-It notes.
“‘Remember to water the asphodel,’” Mab read aloud. He looked left and right but saw no sign of a plant. Looking up, he paused, squinting at the ceiling. “Guess he wasn’t kidding about uncovering the will-o-wisps. Do you think he really keeps a salamander in his furnace?”
I followed his gaze and saw that the illumination came from glass globes holding balls of brightly glowing flickers of light. “Very likely. How else would he heat this enormous place? He certainly could not afford to heat it with oil.”
O O O
Mab performed several thaumaturgic experiments involving sextants, brown rice, peony seeds, rose petals, and a slide rule. Eventually, however, he threw down his tools in disgust.
“It’s no good, ma’am.” He shook his head glumly. “The place stinks of so much magic, I can’t tell anything. The inhabitants are magical. Half the objects are enchanted. Heck, the place has probably even got dimensional gateways similar to those in Prospero’s Mansion, leading to only Setebos knows where.” He gestured off toward the distance. “Maybe if I had access to some of the specially calibrated equipment from Mr. Prospero’s study … but, as it is, this line of thaumaturgic investigation is useless. Might as well press on.”
The next chamber might have been a drawing room, had it not been so crowded with statuary and stacked furniture. Mab paused and scratched at his eternal stubble. “Have you noticed all the wooden surfaces have been carved?”
Throughout the house, cabinets, doors, wainscoting, tabletops, and even chair legs bore signs of my brother’s handiwork. Bas-reliefs of famous people, pastoral scenes of shepherdesses and their sheep, funny little faces that peered out from door lintels, carved doodles of ketchup bottles and Campbell’s soup ads: every place we looked, another wooden surface had been transformed into three-dimensional art.
“Does any of this mean anything? Or is it just artistic babble?” he muttered, adding under his breath, “By Setebos and Titania, I wish I’d thought to bring a camera!”
“Some of both, I suspect,” I replied. “Some of it probably has meaning—mnemonic images he still remembers from the period when he studied the Ancient Art of Memory with our brother Cornelius. Some of it is probably just the product of his madness.”
“You mean he just carves on things because he’s cuckoo?”
“He likes to carve. Sometimes he does it without thinking.”
Mab scowled. “Like on the boat, when he tried to carve a figurine that would force me to let him summon me? Sure, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Suuure.”
Mab examined the fairyscape at length, writing copious notes. Then, he peered at a cluttered table stuffed in between two china cabinets. A golf bag embroidered with the letters T.A.P. leaned against one leg, tilted at an extravagant angle, as if it were about to tumble to its doom. The yellow note stuck to its tan leather read: Never stop looking!!!
“This mean anything to you, ma’am?”
“No, though T.A.P. are our brother Titus’s initials,” I said. “He’s the golf fanatic in the family. Perhaps that’s his bag.”
“So, why is it here? And what’s this message mean? That Harebrain wants to beat his brother at golf? Is that why Mr. Titus disappeared? Your brother took him out to ax the golf competition?”
“I hardly think so,” I chuckled.
“Snicker if you like, ma’am,” growled Mab as he stalked over to a red trunk. “But I say something’s fishy about Mr. Titus’s disappearance.”
Mab turned back to the table and picked up a plastic pillbox that lay amid dozens of other knickknacks.
“‘Check on this once a week,’” Mab read the pink note on the plastic pillbox. After dutifully recording this message in his notebook, he opened the pillbox and peered inside. “Check on what? The thing is empty. And … oh, this is precious!”
He pointed at a faint blue Post-It that read: THIS IS A MNEMONIC. DO NOT MOVE. An arrow had been drawn next to the words. The place the arrow pointed to was empty.
“Pour sucker.” Mab chuckled, shaking his head. He moved along, reading other messages as he copied them down.
This is a ring from the high wire of the Greatest Show on Earth! I gave Barnum my tiger.
Stirrup from the Steppe. Check monthly.
This is to remind me to catch the Thunderbird.
Wind this bandana in January, May, and September.
This is a hairbrush. I use it to brush my hair.
Mab ran a hand over his face. “Boy, ma’am, your brother is a certified loony. We’re not going to get anything out of this.”
“You can say that again,” I murmured, my fingers drumming impatiently against the cover of the Book of the Sibyl. As Mab’s pencil still scratched away, recording my brother’s babblings, I added, “Mab, there’s no point in copying it all down.”
“A detective is nothing if he is not meticulous, ma’am. One never knows what’s going to turn out to be important.”
“Nothing here is important, Mab. It’s just nonsense, babble!” I gestured briskly, knocking over a silver flute that had been leaning against the wall. I propped it up again and pushed the attached note back onto the mouthpiece. It read: Bonehead, monthly.
Beneath the flute, a photograph lay on its face. Righting it, I discovered it was a silvery daguerreotype of my family, taken back in England before the days of proper photography. A pale green sticky note pasted to the glass read: This is my family, even the dorky ones.
The note made me smile. I looked at the picture and felt an unexpected fondness for my siblings. I could not help smirking at their muttonchop sideburns, which had been all the rage in that day. They made my brothers look so serious and so ridiculous at the same time.
Mab leaned over, peering at our faces. “I recognize most of them, ma’am. You, Harebrain, the Perp … er, Mr. Ulysses—hard to miss him. He’s the one wearing the domino mask around his eyes. That’s Mr. Theophrastus when he was a young man, isn’t it?” Mab tapped on the picture above Theo’s face. “Even back then, he looked like a decent fellow.”
“Yes. That’s him,” I said softly, blinking tears from my eyes.
“And Madam Logistilla,” Mab continued, unaware of my sudden sentimentality. “I recognize her. She looks exactly the same as she did when we met her a couple of weeks ago. This big one must be Mr. Titus. Oh, and that’s dead one, Mr. Gregor. Your father showed me a picture of him once. Who are the rest of these guys?”
“That’s Cornelius.” I pointed at one of the shorter figures. “This is actually a rare shot of Cornelius’s face. Usually, he covers his unseeing eyes with a blindfold.”
“So, that’s Mr. Cornelius.” Mab squinted at the picture and then picked up the blue and white bandana to which the note about winding in January was attached. He sniffed it carefully, frowning thoughtfully. “He’s the one your sister thinks put the whammy on Mr. Theophrastus, right?”
“Right.” I shivered, though the chamber was not particularly cold, and I was still wearing my cashmere cloak. “Logistilla claims she saw Cornelius use his staff, the Staff of Persuasion, to make Theo keep his vow to give up magic. Retiring from the family work was bad enough, but Theo had come to the bizarre conclusion that the Water of Life that keeps us young counts as magic.”
“Which is why he stopped taking it and began aging.” Mab patted his notebook. “I got that down.”
I nodded glumly and thought about Logistilla’s accusation. Ironically, the thought that someone had forced Theo to keep his vow cheered me. Then, his decline became someone else’s fault, someone who might be capable of fixing the problem. I just did not want the responsible party to turn out to be a family member. I hated the idea that any member of our family would do such a thing to another.
I glanced at the picture again. It was so nice to see us all together. What a team we used to make! Nothing could withstand us when we worked together.
How had it happened that we had grown so far apart? Why could we not always be the way we were in this portrait?
“And that fellow?” Mab pointed at my last brother, who smiled wryly through the long lank hair that fell over his eyes. He was the only one without sideburns.
“Oh. That”—I could not keep the disgust from my voice—“is Erasmus.”
Mab squatted down and examined him more closely. “The professor, right? He’s the one you don’t like. Got it.”
“‘Don’t like’ is putting it mildly,” I murmured. I glanced at my brother again and quickly looked away. Just seeing Erasmus’s face again brought to mind a thousand offenses he had committed against me. I fought off the wave of loathing that assailed me.
“And that, of course, is Mr. Prospero.” Mab pointed at the imposing figure of my father, with his gray flowing hair and beard. The print had captured the wise yet humorous gleam that lit his eyes.
I paused, struck by a sudden pain in my heart. Father! How I missed him. Until he retired three years ago, I had been his constant companion, helping him in everything he did. And now? If my Lady and our Ouija board séance were to be believed, he was a living prisoner in Hell, hardly a fate I would wish on an enemy, much less a loved one.
Behind me, Mab moved on. He prowled around on the far side of the cluttered chamber. Pausing, he peered at an elaborate scene of maidens playing Ring-Around-the-Rosy in a meadow near a pond that was surrounded by cattails.
Surreptitiously wiping my eyes, I joined him. The quality of the carving he was examining was exquisite. I trailed my finger along the curlicues of a complicated filigree.
Mab squinted at my hand, drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and ran it over the curves and narrow angles of the carving before us. Then he peered at his handkerchief and sniffed it.
“Weird. Everything’s spotless. You’d think a house kept by your loony brother and his menagerie would be dusty, if not filthy. Oh, and this is a door.”
“Huh?” I glanced around, confused.
Mab chuckled. “Look.”
He tapped the carving three times, then pushed hard on the nose of a laughing girl in a kerchief and dirndl. The whole panel opened, swinging away from us to reveal a descending spiral staircase. The wonderful aromas of pastry and bubbling stew wafted up to meet us.
Mab and I glanced at each other. Mab grinned. We headed down. The passageway led into a wide kitchen with shiny copper pots hanging from a rack overhead. The maenad stood before the stove, sautéing vegetables and stirring a big boiling pot. Nearby, in yet another pool, the mermaid peeled potatoes. She was wearing earphones and humming to herself, her tail tapping the water to the beat.
“Welcome to our humble kitchen,” the maenad purred in her husky voice.
“Thought you and Harebrain were off …” Mab’s voice trailed off, and his face became somewhat red.
The maenad snorted, rolling her eyes dramatically. “The master’s all smoke and no fire. He was just trying to flatter me, so I’d agree to cook dinner for his guests.”
“Probably wise that he abstains, considering what happened to your last son,” Mab muttered. Realizing she had heard him, he flushed more deeply. “Er, sorry … Your Majesty.”
The maenad gave him a withering look but restrained her comments to, “The master’s out in the barn, seeing to the comfort of the wounded gryphon.”
“Are you really that Agave?” I asked. “Queen Agave of Thebes?”
“Once of Thebes, long ago. Later of Illyria and of other places. Yes.”
“But, weren’t you … mortal?”
“I was born mortal. I lost my humanity when my son and I offended Bacchus.” She scratched the slate tiles with the pinecone on top of her thyrsos, and a fountain of wine sprang up, filling the kitchen with the sweet scent of crushed grapes. Deftly sticking a bowl under the fountain, she caught some of the deep purple liquid and, measuring it out, poured two cups into the stew. The newly sprung fountain slowed to a dribble and then dried up, leaving a dark stain like old blood upon the floor. “Or maybe I lost it when I twisted off my son’s head. Either way, I belong to the Vine God now.”
“What about your immortal soul?” asked Mab.
“Don’t know.” The maenad tasted the stew from a long wooden spoon, washed it, and continued to stir. “We didn’t know about such things back then. If you ask me, souls are a new invention.”
“Humans have always had souls,” Mab countered. “They can be good or evil, but they can’t be lost, in the sense that you mean. Once a human, always a human, at least at some level. Not like me and the mermaid here.”
“Hey, don’t drag me into this,” objected Morveren, who had removed her headphones. “I might have a soul. My father was a Cornishman named Matthew.” She pouted thoughtfully, her girlish chin tilted upward, a finger twirling her red tresses. “What does a soul do for you, again?”
“It’s the part of a human that allows him to remain who he is. Even if his situation changes, he can always find his way back to his original self,” Mab said. “Unlike us supernatural creatures. If we change, our very natures transform. We have no essential self to fight off external influences.”
A chill ran up my spine. Did Father know this? I thought of the stacks and stacks of naked Italian bodies, lying like corpses in the caverns beneath my sister Logistilla’s house. If I was right, Father intended them for the Aerie Ones, so they would all have bodies like Mab’s and could develop human judgment and feelings, as Mab had. But what would be the point if the Aerie Ones would automatically revert to their old ways the moment they returned to their original airy forms?
Surely Mab’s seeming humanity, his kindness, his gruff concern, was not just a side effect of his fleshy body?
Thinking of Father reminded me of another of his projects, his translation of Orpheus’s poetry in an attempt to decipher the Eleusinian Mysteries.
I turned to Agave. “You’re a maenad. Were you involved with the death of Orpheus?”
“I was there.”
“Why did the maenads kill him?”
“Why did he have to die?” She picked up the pan and gave her wrist a twist. The sautéing vegetables flew into the air and came down again. “He was a prude. He spoke out against our rites, always preaching temperance and moderation and other hogwash. Besides, he knew secrets the gods did not want men to know.”
“Like how to get reincarnated without losing one’s memories?” I asked.
“Yes, like that.” She gave me a sly, calculating look, and her hair began to rise up like a cat’s.
Mab quickly changed the subject. “These Post-It notes everywhere, what are they for?”
“To remind the master of things he may have forgotten.” Agave turned back to her cooking, her hair flattening.
“A bit of overkill, don’t you think? He’s goofy, I grant you, but his memory problems seem a bit exaggerated. Everyone talks about it, but I’ve seldom seen him actually forget something.”
“That’s because Miranda is here.”
“Huh?” Mab peered at me suspiciously. “How so?”
“Just seeing members of his family reminds our master of all sorts of things. He’s much worse when they’re not around, especially when he gets into one of his morose moods. Sometimes, he can’t remember a thing for days. Not even his name.” Under her breath, she murmured, “He could use a bit of Orpheus’s wisdom, if you asked me. One too many sips out of the Lethe.”
“What was that?” Mab snapped.
“Nothing.” She tossed the vegetables again.
Mab frowned thoughtfully but did not pursue the topic.
The mermaid tilted her head and sighed. “Phisty. He’s so dreamy! I’m so glad he’s home and has his staff back! I missed him!”
“Couldn’t he just have come back to this house and visited you?” Mab asked.
Morveren shook her head. “We don’t live here year round. We all have our own homes and haunts. We’re only here now because the master called us all together for a big party—to celebrate finding us again!” She sighed again. “I’m so envious of Chimie for saving him and helping him get back the staff. I wish I could have saved the master!”
“Tush, tush,” commented Queen Agave, as she slid chopped leeks from her cutting board into the stew. “We all have our purposes. No reason to covet someone else’s role.”
Glancing around the kitchen, Mab chuckled. “So, Harebrain was telling the truth. He really does have a maenad or harpy cook him breakfast.”
“Harpy!” Queen Agave snorted. “That mean old bird has no hands. All she does is terrorize the poor bwca into doing the work for her. Harpy cooking breakfast indeed!” She paused, reaching for a cutting board marred with deep scratches. “Speaking of the bwca …”
Agave scratched her nails across the board. Creamy milk ran from the scratches. She caught the milk in a bowl, then scratched the board once more. This time golden honey dripped down the marred wood. She let a few drops fall into the bowl and swirled the milk around.
“Put this by the fireplace in the big empty room upstairs, would you?”
Mab took the bowl carefully and started up the stairs. On the second step, he paused.
“Eh … either of you ladies know anything about a big, black, bat-winged guy with sapphire eyes and claws?”
“Who, us?” Agave’s expressive face was unnaturally blank. “No. I have never seen anything like that.”
“Me, neither.” The mermaid put on her headphones and began bopping to the music, the water rippling about her.
Mab turned and ascended the staircase without a comment. Once at the top and through the arch, he murmured, “She’s lying.”
“Obviously,” I agreed.
He growled, scrunching up his face. I could tell that he would have punched his palm, except his hands were full with bwca milk. “Bet I could pummel the truth out of her!”
O O O
The chamber with the great hearth contained only a few neat piles of gear and numerous pastel squares of paper. There was no pool, only a hardwood floor that creaked beneath our feet.
“Bwca, eh?” Mab put the bowl down beside the brick of the fireplace. “Welsh relative of the brownie. No wonder the place is spotless. Those fellows’ll clean anything for a little honey-laced milk.”
I slipped my hand into the pocket of my cashmere cloak, which I carried over one arm, my fingers seeking the supple leather of the little book. Several rooms back, I had spied a big comfortable chair, albeit one that was pushed up next to two smaller chairs. Still, it was beside a window with plenty of light. If I walked back there now, I might be able to read the entire book before dinner.
“Are we done?”
Mab shook his head. “If we’re going to get to the bottom of what is up with the Harebrain, we’ve got to unravel the clues he’s left all around us.” He glanced at the mostly empty hall. “I’m convinced there’s some method to this madness, and I intend to find it!”
“We’re wasting our time, Mab,” I snapped. “These messages are just notes my brother leaves to remind himself of things he’s forgotten.”
Mab stalked over to a pile of yellowed fencing gear leaning against the far side of the hearth. Following him, I saw jackets, helmets, two foils, and an epée. The note stuck to the wall above read: REMEMBER TO PRACTICE.
“Condemning evidence, that,” I mused. “It’s all clear now.”
Mab gave me a long, level look. “You want me to work or not, ma’am? It’s your call.”
I waved a hand. “Carry on.”
Beyond, two cardboard boxes holding ribbons, wrapping paper, and a few children’s toys stood to either side of an empty closet. Scraps of tape and brightly colored paper were scattered about the floor. The notes stuck to the wall above the two boxes read: FOR E.D. and FOR T.C.
“This must be recent. The bwca hasn’t gotten to it yet.” Mab leaned over and sniffed the scraps of paper and tape. Straightening, he pulled out his notebook and copied down the messages. “Apparently, your brother was sending someone Christmas presents.”
Next to the closet sat a red trunk. Mab opened the lid and peered at the note attached to the inside.
“Creepy,” he muttered, jerking back. I leaned closer. The note stuck to the open lid read: MEMENTOES OF DEAD FRIENDS.
“What is it?” I pushed the lid back farther and looked in.
The chest held hundreds of little wooden figurines with jeweled eyes, primarily animals. I reached in and lifted my hand: dogs, elephants, boars, birds, an alligator, and a cheetah spilled from my palm. They clinked, ringing like wood chimes, as they rained back upon their fellows, the multicolored gems of their eyes sparkling.
“These were part of his staff once,” I guessed.
“From the Staff of Summoning?” asked Mab. “How so?”
“You’ve seen his staff, how it looks like a long narrow totem pole, with dozens of little figurines, one on top of another?”
“Like the one he tried to make of me back on the boat? The one we were just talking about?”
“Exactly.” I nodded. “Each figurine represents a different creature Mephisto can summon, a creature he has befriended or made a compact with. Most of them are supernatural, like the gryphon, the maenad, and the harpy, but some are ordinary animals Mephisto has trained, like that swallow and the falcon.
“Only having a figurine in the Staff of Summoning does not make the creature immortal. Sooner or later, the mundane animals die, and Mephisto has to train new ones to take their places.” I gestured at the trunk of discarded figurines. “Apparently, this is his graveyard for figurines of beasts that once belonged to his staff.”
Mab leaned over and sniffed the contents of the trunk. I sniffed, too, but could only pick up a faint odor of lemon-scented floor wax.
Mab straightened and scowled. “Ma’am, the spell to summon a spirit is not for the fainthearted. But to summon a physical entity, like a bird or a mermaid, yanking it to you through time and space? That’s one whopper of a spell! No ordinary magician could perform it. To pull it off, you need some kind of extraordinary magical authority. I’m not even sure the Lords of the Elven High Council could do it. How does the Harebrain manage it?”
“I don’t know, Mab.” I frowned. “In the old days, Father used to perform the actual spell for him—the part that made it so that when he tapped the figurine, the creature would be summoned. Father called upon the authority of the patron angel of the Orbis Suleimani.”
“That would do it,” Mab muttered. “Maybe your brother does it the same way.”
I shook my head. “Mephisto was thrown out of the Circle of Solomon after he lost his sanity. He does not have the authority to call upon that angel.”
“Perhaps …” Mab scowled. “Or perhaps, he’s calling upon the authority of Prince Mephistopheles of H … whatever H stands for. And I tell you, ma’am, there’s only two places starting with H where the inhabitants have enough authority to cast the spell we’re talkin’ about, and I’ve never heard of a Prince of Heaven.”
I remembered the rambling story Mephisto had told us about how he lost his staff. “Maybe that’s what he uses Uriel for, when he’s not having the seraphim act as his valet.”
Mab shivered and pulled up the collar of his trench coat. “Either way, I don’t like it, ma’am. Even calling on angels is bad business for mortals.”
“Enough, Mab.” I glanced about the nearly empty chamber and saw Mab with his nose pressed against a seemingly blank section of wall. “There’s nothing here.”
“There’s got to be, ma’am! Harebrain’s too harebrained to cover all his clues. There’s got to be something.”
“No, Mab. He’s just a disorganized madman.”
“Look, ma’am. Here’s another hidden door. If this one doesn’t produce anything of worth, I’ll call it a day.”
The hidden door opened into a chamber decorated in jungle décor. A foot below the ceiling, water pipes, wrapped in vines and palm fronds, crisscrossed the room. Heat radiated from them, making this room warmer than the surrounding house. Rubber trees had been painted onto the walls, and the furniture was upholstered in leopard and zebra skins.
The pool here was kidney shaped and tiled with a rain-forest fresco. Incorporated into the scheme were the mouths of the underwater tunnels leading into other parts of the house, which seemed to pop up under giant tree roots or have odd-looking animals peering out of them, as if they were dens.
“What’s this room for?” Mab glanced around.
The windows were opaque with steam. Mab rubbed some of it away with his forearm, and we looked down upon a frozen lake. Pine trees bordered the shores and covered the surrounding hills. Beyond rose jagged snow-covered peaks, tall and majestic against the deep blue sky.
Nowhere were there any signs of mankind. A mammoth lumbered across the ice, however, and the chimera that had rescued us on St. Thomas’s charged to and fro in a snow-covered paddock, chasing a large boar. In the next paddock, a cockatrice strutted. Beyond that, the reindeer Donner nuzzled Pegasus beside a sturdy red barn. On top of the barn, the magnificent roc roosted.
Seeing Donner reminded me of the reindeer barn where Mephisto had kept Pegasus while we sojourned at the North Pole. An elf had given me a brief tour of it while Mephisto readied the winged horse for our departure. He had introduced me to all nine of the reindeer, each in his own stall with a brightly colored name plaque on his door. One of the deer had eaten a slice of apple from my hand.
From the ceiling above us came a slithering and a flash of bronze and brown. Mab drew his lead pipe. I whipped out my moon-silver war fan and silently slid it open. Above, gazing down at us with beady black eyes, was a giant hamadryad. The thick coils of its long body looped repeatedly about the warm pipes. As its serpentine head peeked out from between two fronds, the back of its neck flattened, forming a wide hood.
“Trussst in me,” the cobra sang, swaying hypnotically.
“Can it, Kaa.” I closed my fan. “You’ll get no supper here.”
“Handmaiden Miranda. How sssplendid.” The cobra curled around another heated pipe and fixed his beady eyes on Mab. A loop of his coils began lowering themselves just above Mab’s head. “What’sss thisss? Can I eat it?”
“Certainly not, you overgrown pipe cleaner!” Mab huffed. His eyes focused on something beyond the serpent. “Hey … what’s this?”
“Maybe, you should not go there …” the hamadryad began.
Mab ignored him. He pushed aside some silk vines and peered at a section of wall, tracing the bark of the rubber tree with his finger and tapping on the painted plaster in several places. Something clicked, and a narrow door swung open, revealing a closet filled with ponchos of every kind, color, and description: Mexican ponchos, Hopi Indian ponchos, multicolored knitted ponchos, a white velvet poncho with pom-poms, bright yellow rain ponchos, and a poncho made out of soda-pop bottle caps. Each hung from a hanger marked with a description of the garment. After pushing through them, Mab brought out a golden hanger and held it up so I could read the message embroidered onto its cloth covering.
This hanger is for my chameleon cloak, given to me by (see Mural Hall). Remember to hide it from my family. A second note, stuck to the hanger reads: Don’t forget the elephant’s trunk! Stuck atop this at an angle was a third note scrawled in angry red letters. That dopey Theo!
“The massster will be angry.” Kaa withdrew up into the greenery and slithered away over the pipes, murmuring, “I wasssn’t here. I had nothing to do with thisss, and I will deny everything if anyone sssaysss otherwissse.”
Mab and I stared at each other glumly, the condemning hanger in Mab’s hand. Water dripped. The window that we had wiped clean grew steamy again.
“Pretty much answers that question,” Mab muttered finally. He put the golden hanger back and shut the secret door. “Now, we know your brother wasn’t just babbling back at St. Thomas. That accursed Unicorn Hunter’s cloak Mr. Theophrastus destroyed back in Vermont, the one we found at the thrift store? It really was the Harebrain’s.”
Despite the heat of the room, I felt chilled, as if I were again staked down to a stone bier during a thunderstorm while the Unicorn Hunters hid beneath their camouflage cloaks, waiting to ambush my Lady, when She came to rescue me.
“What’s it mean?” I whispered hoarsely. “Why would he own such a thing?”
“It means I was right. The Harebrain’s up to no good,” Mab replied. Grabbing my arm, he backed us both rapidly toward the door. “Let’s go, ma’am. I just saw something bright fluttering near that flowering plant in the corner. Didn’t Harebrain say something about a poisonous butterfly?”
“Nicssse ssseeing you,” called the hamadryad as we retreated.
***