Beneath the Mall of Madness (A Jaspar Windisle Mystery Book 1) (19 page)

In between efforts to quell the goldfish uprising I sorted Mr. Fry’s worldly possessions. While I was there, I tried to ignore the sounds Cassandra was making in the basement. It sounded like she was forging her own robot army. We’d carried her machine to the hotel in pieces, and I’d never seen it fully assembled. Maybe it needed to be welded. At least that would explain why she couldn’t work on it at the hotel.

I was often joined by Cecilia or Zebulon. They had both decided that I was like a helpless baby bird, unable to spend any time alone without getting into trouble. I appreciated Zebulon visiting because he’d help me carry things to the garbage. Cecilia just found a convenient pile of junk to lean on and made small talk.

“You know, if you swallowed your pride you could probably get one of those shows about hoarders to come help you with this,” Cecilia said one day. “Steve could pretend to be the angry landlord who’s about to throw you out unless you clean, and we could be your relatives who are supportive but on the verge of giving up. Then they’d haul this stuff away for free.”

“Pretend?” I said. “If I did this to his house Steve would do a lot more than evict me. And I can’t believe you want to get on a reality show that badly.”

“It could be heartwarming,” she said. “On the last day you could experience a major breakthrough, and we’d all cry!”

“And I’d be humiliated on national television. No thanks.”

“They’re always careful to say that the hoarder is mad as a hatter and not responsible for their bad behavior,” she argued.

“That’s not much better,” I retorted. “How about, instead of trying to volunteer me for television, you tell me if there’s anyone nearby who’d be interested in buying some of this stuff.”

“It’s not my kind of thing,” she admitted. “The churches might take the sheets and other linens off your hands for free, but I don’t know what they’d do with them.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I was going to toss most of those. The sheets that were at the bottom of the stack are falling apart. It’s all his unopened cleaning supplies and those magazines that I think can be sold.”

“What is it with old people and magazines?” Cecilia asked.

“In ancient times, before the internet, those magazines might have been the only chance to read those articles,” I told her. “I doubt every issue of
Fantasy Cowboy
had a story worth treasuring forever, but I can understand why he saved them. I’ve got three decades of
National Geographic
in storage myself.”

“
Fantasy Cowboy
?” Cecilia repeated. “Do you mind if I read those?” I looked at her expression.

“Sure. You’re probably in for a disappointment,” I told her. “I can’t overemphasize how bad some of the pulp stories were.”

“I’m hoping it will be bad,” she told me. “And what’s this?
Rugged Metropolis? Spaceship Ecstasy
?
Boxing Fever
? Is this old-timey porn?” I tried to smother a laugh.

“I don’t know about
Spaceship Ecstasy
, but those titles evoked an entirely different kind of excitement in the 1930’s.”

“If they hold up to the promise of their titles, you may have found yourself a customer.”

“For two rooms full of pulp magazines? I thought you wanted me to star on Hoarders.”

“I’ll just pick out the good ones later,” she said. She already had
Fantasy Cowboy
open. “Oh, there are cowboys in Antarctica already. Nevermind, I guess this is part of a serial.” She started looking through the magazines for the previous installment.

“By the way, Fiona wants to know if you’d like to come over on Sunday after church. She wants company while she bakes for the reenactment.”

“I doubt I’ll have anything else to do,” I said.

“You should keep the fish around,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll get a kick out of them.”

“That won’t be a problem,” I said. Sparks appeared to be reading over Cecilia’s shoulder while Barry took his usual place above my head. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get rid of them at this rate.”

“Good.”

I didn’t think it was good at all. I’d taken more shit over these stupid fish than anything else I’d done in three hundred years of poor decision-making. Cecilia definitely had a different worldview than I did. Maybe it was because she’d grown up in Towenridge. Maybe it was because she was a witch. Speaking of which-

“Could you tell me something?” I asked.

“What?”

“What does being a witch entail?”

She looked up at me.

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve never needed to. You’re the first real witch I’ve met.”

“Oh, cool,” she said, putting the magazine aside. “For starters, I’m not psychic like you are. All witches spells are the result of studying.”

“Fiona said the same thing about wizardry. She didn’t say much else, though.”

Cecilia smiled.

“No, she doesn’t talk about her work much. That’s okay. I can explain them both to you.”

“Wizards are heavier hitters than witches, for starters. You won’t catch me battling interdimensional monstrosities, and not just because it would ruin my nails. You probably guessed that already.”

I had. Fiona wasn’t defeating eldritch horrors from beyond with kung fu or her charming personality. I wasn’t buying her claim that she got them all with a shotgun either.

“Apart from that, witches tend to use natural ingredients, preferably edible ones. Wizards channel power from the environment, sometimes by building or carving stuff, and sometimes by using vital essences, which-

“You mean blood, right?”

“Yep. Some schools of wizardry are big on blood. Body fluids are a bit of a gray area, to be honest. Blood is used almost entirely by wizards, spells that call for spit or pee tend to be witchcraft.”

“Pee?” I repeated.

“Mostly pregnancy spells,” she explained. “When it comes to killing stuff as part of a spell, human sacrifice is strictly wizards, and chickens are strictly witchcraft.”

“Another big difference,” she continued, “is that wizards have more attack spells, and witches are all about defense. Wizards can set people on fire from across the state if they have enough power. If I want to hurt someone from a distance I have to get my hands on something that belongs to them, perform a ritual, get them to take it back, and then never know for sure if any bad thing that happens to them is the result of my curse or just bad luck. On the other hand, you don’t want to mess with me in my home or my store.”

“Wizards also tend to be more preoccupied with money than witches because wizardry is expensive. They need exotic ingredients and special metals to do the most basic spells, and for really big stuff they need a stone circle or a power center, or a portal like the one we saw earlier, and for that they need land. Whereas I could replace all of my favorite spell components for less than a hundred dollars at the supermarket.”

“So Fiona is wealthy?”

Cecilia shrugged.

“The Whateleys are one of those families that always seems to have money. If you ask me it’s more than countered by being stuck in the same house her whole life.”

“Is she really stuck?”

“More by a sense of responsibility than anything else,” she said. “And maybe guilt.”

“What does she have to feel guilty about?”

“Well, her parents died within a year of each other. She might feel responsible.”

“Tetanus is an odd thing to have an epidemic of,” I said, “but she did say they didn’t get their shots.”

“That’s true.”

“Maybe that’s why she’s such a good housekeeper,” I continued.

“You’re no slouch yourself,” Cecilia said. “You’ve got the whole living room cleared out already.”

“I’ve got motivation,” I said. “Steve said all this could be mine, but he won’t want it in his new house forever.”

“So you think he’s going to keep it?”

“This house? I don’t see why not. He’s going to be here for another year at least. Probably longer now that most of the construction crew he hired is dead.”

“Hmm.” Cecilia looked thoughtful. “I’ve been meaning to ask you; how long have the two of you known each other?”

Cassandra entered the living room, interrupting us. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her clothes were coated with grease.

“Are you going to be here much longer?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m going to have dinner with the Whateleys in about an hour.”

“Oh.” She stared at the living room. “You’ve made a lot of progress.”

“Yes,” I said. “How is your project going?”

“Better than I expected,” she said. “I’ve hit a few snags here and there, but for the most part I’m ahead of schedule.”

“That’s good and all,” Cecilia said as she stood up, “but you need a break dear. You look awful.” The corners of Cassandra’s mouth turned up.

“I’ll take a break later,” she said. “I still have work to do. Maybe I’ll do some of those logic puzzles.” Her eyes moved, tracking the goldfish. “Is this the invasion Agent Starr was warning me about?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How pretty.” She held out her hand to touch Barry. This close up she looked like a ghost herself. “I didn’t think ghosts would be pretty.” Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed. Fortunately, she was surrounded by laundry, so it didn’t do her any harm. Cecilia shrieked and batted at the nearest goldfish.

“It wasn’t them,” I told her. “I think she’s just tired. I got the impression that she’s been here since yesterday morning.”

“Wow,” Cecilia said. “Then she really does need to rest. Should we put her in one of the bedrooms?”

“No, we’d better take her to the hotel. This house isn’t exactly safe.”

We were able to wake Cassandra up enough to walk to my car. She held my arm for support the whole way. It was already dark, so we had to go slow. The wind was up this evening, and the trees around the house were creaking. I’d have to mention it to Steve. I knew he wouldn’t want his new house to get crushed even if he never intended to live in it.

I was looking around, trying to see if any trees were leaning towards the house when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I tried to get Cassandra to hurry without letting her know something was wrong. Just when I’d convinced myself that the rustling was just the wind, I heard it again.

“Cecilia?” I said.

“I heard it too,” she whispered. “Is it a ghost?”

“No,” I said. “Shades don’t hide from me.” They couldn’t bear to leave me alone, more’s the pity. I was very aware that the glowing goldfish circling my head were giving away my position.

“Let’s ignore it,” Cecilia suggested. “Act like you didn’t hear a thing, and we’ll get into our cars and drive away.”

“Do you think that’s safe?”

“It’s worked for me before,” she said. “If you start saying ‘who’s there?’ or ‘what’s that?’ that’s the alien’s cue to attack.”

The rustling was coming from more than one direction now. It was also closer.

We were at my passenger door. With no other plan coming to mind I put Cassandra in the car and got her buckled in.

“Now what?” I asked Cecilia. “This door won’t close unless I slam it.” Cecilia rifled through her pockets. The rustling was definitely headed towards us.

“I have some salt,” she said. “I can make a quick circle of protection. It’ll only help if whatever’s out there is magical. If it’s a bear, we’re screwed.” I felt like a weight had been lifted.

“Of course,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be cultists or monsters does it?” Cecilia started scattering salt on the ground around us.

“This is the wrong tactic to take,” I said as she chanted something and reached around me to pour more salt. “If it’s an animal we just need to be assertive.”

“And if it’s a chupacabra we should have run for it already,” she whispered. “Get a grip. Okay, we’re farther from the house than from either car and Dr. Cassidy is in no shape to run anyway. If I run to my van, anything could get me before I unlocked the door, so let me into the back of your car. I’ll unlock the driver’s side, so when you slam her door you can run around the car and get right in. Then you can drive to the police station and make Earl investigate.”

“We are going to feel so stupid if it’s a raccoon,” I said. I was sure it wasn’t. And just as I said it out loud my school of fish bunched together and darted back in to the house. Wordlessly I unlocked the door for Cecilia. She climbed in and nodded. I slammed Cassandra’s door, and there was an earsplitting howl from the woods, and a chorus of eldritch voices screaming in a way that made my skin crawl. I ran around to the front of the car and reached the driver’s side door just as Cecilia pushed it open. I slammed and locked the door, put the key in the ignition, and turned on the headlights. They illuminated a creature out of a nightmare.