James Potter And The Morrigan Web (61 page)

Quinn almost said no, but (James saw) he had been raised to respect his elders. And besides, maybe the old guy did know a few things about cars. It would be nice not to have to pull over every forty miles amid a cloud of oily blue smoke. With a wry smile and a shake of his head, Quinn turned toward the front door.

Five minutes later, Quinn hunkered in front of the Toronado and popped the bonnet. It wrenched open with a screech and he held it up for the old man.

“Hmm,” the man muttered to himself, fiddling with a few wires and plugs. He leaned over the grill and peered into the depths of the engine compartment. To Quinn, he did not appear to be a man on the verge of fixing something. On the contrary, he seemed almost to be idly hunting around, prodding this and poking at that. He sniffed the hot air over the engine, and then stood up again with a shake of his head.

“Not in there,” he said, almost to himself.

“What?” Quinn asked, becoming seriously annoyed. “I thought you said you knew how to work on these?”

“Problem’s not with the engine,” the old man said with a brisk nod. “Has to be in the back. Open up the trunk. Let me take a look.”

“The trunk.” Quinn repeated sceptically, lowering the bonnet.

“That’s what I said. Pop it open.”

Quinn slammed the bonnet and shook his head. “Look, if it’s all the same to you--”

“You want to get this thing running again or not?” the old man said, straightening for the first time. He was, Quinn saw, rather taller than he had at first appeared. His hunched back seemed suddenly remarkably straight. His voice even sounded firmer, less wheezy, more commanding. “Open the trunk and I’ll make all your problems go away.”

Quinn glanced at the man with a mixture of bemusement and trepidation. Sighing, he shook out his keys.

“My stuff’s all back there,” he said, leading the man toward the rear of the car. “You won’t be able to see anything.”

“I’ll be able to see just fine,” the man said in a low, grating voice.

Quinn socked the key into the lock and twisted. With a pop the boot opened.

“Let me just--” he began, but the old man shouldered past him, bending low over the haphazard jumble of Quinn’s luggage and duffle bags. He began to shove them aside, patting and probing them one by one. Quinn watched this with increasing incredulity.

“Whatever the problem with the oil is,” he ventured loudly. “It isn’t in any of my bags.”

“So sure, are you?” the man growled, beginning to heave Quinn’s things out onto the street.

Quinn’s temper finally broke. “All right, that’s enough,” he said, grabbing a duffle bag with one hand and the man’s shoulder with the other. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re obviously not fixing my car. Why don’t you just--”

The back of Quinn’s head connected with the light pole before he knew what happened. He dropped the duffle bag, grabbed the back of his head and slid clumsily to the sidewalk, fifteen feet away from the car.

The old man-- who suddenly didn’t appear particularly old at all-- still stood near the open boot, but peered back at Quinn with a calmly warning look.

“You’ll not want to touch me again,” he said, all the wheeze gone out of his voice. “If you know what’s best for you.”

He resumed his ransacking of the trunk, becoming agitated, muttering angrily under his breath.

Quinn climbed to his feet woozily. There was a hot, damp spot on the back of his head. He touched it gingerly with his fingers and they came away grimed with blood. The old man had pushed him. That had to have been it. But fifteen feet? Was
anyone
capable of such strength?

And yet the answer was right in front of him. The wheezy, hunched old man was suddenly straight-spined and square-shouldered, his wispy grey hair now thick and threaded with black. He heaved Quinn’s guitar case out onto the street with a clatter, barely pausing.

Still feeling woozy, Quinn looked around the sunny street. People were passing, glancing idly at the man ransacking the car, but no one stopped. To the outside observer, the scene probably looked like a disgruntled father searching his son’s car for some mildly illegal contraband.

Quinn stumbled off the sidewalk and into the street, making a wide angle toward the Toronado’s passenger door. He reached it, thumbed the latch, and pulled the door open. A moment later, he fell inside.

“Where is it?” the man’s voice seethed from the depths of the trunk behind him. “It’s here! Same as before! I can
feel
it!”

Despite the morning heat, a sort of preternatural chill fell over Quinn where he sat. The man was looking for something; something he knew had to be there, something he recognized. But how could he? It was the mention of the Toronado that had done it. Not many people drove them, not anymore. That was when the old man had changed, become suddenly interested.

“Where are you,” he growled, shaking the car with his fervour as he tore things out of the boot, heaving them onto the street. “Where
are
you, Gods damn it!”

And then, suddenly, he stopped. Silence fell, punctuated only by the dim thrum of distant traffic and a nearby dog’s barking.

And Quinn realized that knew what the man was looking for.

He lurched in the passenger’s seat, leaned over, and rammed his hand under the driver’s seat, groping frantically. It wasn’t there. He twisted his body, shimmying further under the seat, scrabbling in the darkness. His fingers brushed something, a small, heavy object wrapped in oily rags. He fumbled it, and then gripped it.

“What are you at, then?” a voice exclaimed harshly in his ear, and a pair of strong, knuckly hands grabbed him, clamping onto his calf and shoulder, heaving him bodily out of the car. “Eh? Where is it? Give it over!”

Quinn flailed, scrabbled at the car door to no avail, and fell stumbling into the street. The man loomed over him, a grim shadow against the morning sun. He reached again, but Quinn scrambled backwards, still clutching the object he’d claimed from beneath the seat. The man followed, stalking resolutely, chasing Quinn into the shadows of the opposite sidewalk. A newspaper lorry sat idling against the curb, its exhaust making a plume of rich fumes in the still air. Quinn bumped against the lorry’s tire and tried to clamber to his feet.

The man kicked at him, knocking him back down.

“Give it over,” he commanded, raising his chin and reaching for his back pocket. “Give it over and perhaps this day may end with you still alive.”

Quinn shook his head. He groped for something to say, some pithy rebuttal that would end this incomprehensible confrontation. “O--” he stammered, clutching the wrapped object against his chest. “O-Over my dead body!”

The old man nodded firmly and sighed. “In that case…” He raised his fist from behind his back and a long, tapered stick was protruding from it. He pointed it at Quinn, sighted down it, and stepped back into the sunlight of the street, drawing his aim.

And in Quinn’s hand, the wrapped object
pulsed
, suddenly as cold as a January tombstone.

“Avada…!”

There was a screech, a blaring horn, a judder of grinding tires, and the man was bashed from view, replaced by a blur of grey-green metal. It was a garbage truck, slewing sideways as it braked. Quinn (and James as well) could hear the frantic cursing of the driver even over the noise of the squealing tires. A moment later-- and twenty feet away-- the garbage truck jerked to a stop, producing a rattling crash from its rubbish-choked guts.

Weak with disbelief and shock, Quinn finally clambered to his feet. He stumbled around the front of the newspaper lorry to where the garbage truck sat idling, angled crookedly toward the curb. The erstwhile old man lay in its shadow, broken and bleeding, road grime ground into his cheek and forehead. His wand was broken in his clenched fist.

“What the--” a man’s voice cried, and then, shrill with disbelief: “
Him
again!”

Quinn looked up, saw the garbage truck driver standing on the running board of his truck, clutching the open door. James was not exactly surprised to see that it was the same driver, only a decade older, his chin pouched and his cheeks grey with stubble.

“Go for help,” Quinn said mildly. “The cops, ambulance. Whatever.”

The driver looked from Quinn, to the body in the gutter, and then back again. “Whatever you say, kid,” he said, shaking his head in wonderment. “But I don’t think it’s gonna do anybody any good.” He looked back again at the dying man below and muttered, “Jeesh. Talk about what goes around comes around…”

Quinn approached the bleeding figure in the shadow of the garbage truck. As he did so, he felt the cloth fall off the object in his hand. The dying man saw it and his eyes sparkled strangely. He let out a harsh, barking laugh.

James looked. It was the ancient pistol. The one that had killed Magnussen in an alley in 1859. The one that had somehow travelled through time, passing from one hand to another, to end up here, at this moment. Quinn looked down at it in his hand.

“This is what you wanted,” he said blankly. “But… why?”

The man’s face contorted with pain and rage. “It’s… more power than a creature like you--” He coughed violently and spat blood. “Than a creature like you knows what to do with.”

Quinn took another step forward and stood over the man. He lowered the old, unloaded pistol to his side. “You murdered my mother,” he said, merely confirming what he already knew.

The man showed his bloody teeth and struggled for his last, ragged breath. “Killing Muggles,” he rasped, “isn’t… murder.”

He fell back against the curb, his strength spent. A moment later, his chest fell and didn’t rise again. He still stared up at Quinn, but the eyes were as empty as marbles.

Quinn stared down at him. It was over, but it wasn’t satisfying. James could see it on the young man’s face. Quinn didn’t have any more answers. Just more questions. It was as if he was willing the dead man to come back to life again, to ask him the questions that now, suddenly, seemed so important.

Why was the gun-- this ancient, useless old revolver-- worth killing for? What had he meant by it having more power than he, Quinn, would know what to do with? What had the stick in the man’s hand been? Was that how he had killed Quinn’s mother somehow, all those years earlier?

So many questions, and almost no answers.

Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime (but was really less then fifteen seconds) Quinn bent, retrieved the hank of oily cloth from the pavement, and wrapped the pistol in it. He returned to his Toronado, pushed the wrapped weapon back under the driver’s seat, and then went back to the body of his mother’s murderer. Calmly, he sat down on the curb and just stared at the dead man’s blank, marble-like eyes. There he waited for the police, whose sirens were even now echoing along the street.

And James sank away, leaving Quinn, watching the young man’s strange, inquiring calm, wishing he could answer the questions for him.

The pistol was powerful because it had ended the life of a great, dark wizard, and that had made it a sort of wand, absorbing the wizard’s power, converting it into strange, magical energy. It was inexplicable, but it was also undeniable.

Somehow, some way (James thought as darkness drifted over him, engulfing the scene) this was the answer. This strange, long story was the answer to his most pressing question.

And as James tumbled into the darkness of the dream’s closing oblivion, he realized: Quinn wasn’t the only one with more questions than answers.

12. MYSTERY AT THE WHITE TOMB

James ascended to wakefulness like a diver ascending from the depths of the ocean. It seemed to take an exceedingly long time, with consciousness blooming slowly above like a pale dawn. Eventually, blearily, he opened his eyes.

He was not on the Hogwarts Express. A blank, grey ceiling hung high over his head, dim with shadows. He turned, moaning, and pushed himself to a sitting position.

“Oh thank goodness,” a woman’s voice announced, her tone somewhere between relief and rebuke. “I was beginning to think you’d spend the rest of the term on that bed. Here, here, drink this. You must be hopelessly dehydrated.”