Spellbinder (13 page)

Belladonna rolled her eyes and made her way into
the back of the shop. Steve hesitated for a moment, shoved his hands into his pockets, and followed her.

The narrow doorway led to a small workroom with a stained table and a single wooden chair. The table was covered with a variety of scientific apparatus, some in use and some just lying where they had been left. Books and notebooks were stacked and strewn about, and small piles of colored powder and pools of spilled concoctions littered every surface. As if this weren’t enough to make the room seem the stuff of fevered dreams and midnight stories, on the far side a small furnace blazed, filling the room with an oppressive, damp heat. Slackett was crouching by the furnace, shoveling coal into its open maw and watching the newcomers carefully.

“Are you a chemist?” asked Belladonna.

“In a way,” said Dr. Ashe. “I am a scientist.”

“A scientist?”

“An alchemist,” he announced with great dignity.

“Alchemists aren’t scientists,” muttered Steve.

“What? I can’t hear you, boy, did you say something?” boomed Dr. Ashe.

Steve shrugged and looked at the floor.

“Dr. Ashe,” said Belladonna pleasantly, “what are you working on?”

Ashe continued to glare at Steve for a moment, then smiled and turned back to Belladonna.

“I’ve been trying to establish what has been causing the disappearances,” he said, “but it’s so difficult. I
don’t have all my reference books, the
Rosarium Philisophorum
, the
Coelum
, the
Atalanta Fugiens
. . . classics, classics all. I had lent them to a colleague before I . . . before I passed on, you understand, so they are not available to me here. And my tools are . . . well, as you see, wholly inadequate to the task. And then, of course, I’m missing certain elements.”

He sighed as if he was overwhelmed by the size of his task.

“Everyone just kept disappearing, and now . . . I don’t know . . . I suppose I’ll be next and that will be an end of it.”

Belladonna tried to look sympathetic.

“Ah, well,” said Ashe, pulling a leather-bound book toward him across the table and opening it at a well-thumbed page, “you can see here what the idea is.”

Belladonna peered at the yellowing pages of the massive tome. There was a great deal of incomprehensible text and an incredibly complex diagram, labeled down to the smallest crucible and pipette. But she felt no wiser.

“I’m afraid . . . um . . . we don’t start Latin until next year,” she said.

“Really?” Ashe’s eyes widened as though she was personally responsible for the dismal standards of the modern education system. “How are you expected to do anything worthwhile if you don’t have Latin and Greek by five?”

“I don’t think anyone has Latin or Greek that early,” said Belladonna, somewhat defensively.

“Except Greeks, of course,” volunteered Steve, grinning.

Dr. Ashe and Belladonna looked at him disdainfully, and Steve shoved his hands back into his pockets and drifted toward the furnace. He tried to ignore Slackett, but Belladonna couldn’t help but notice that as soon as he was close enough, the lanky assistant started whispering urgently.

“Well, what I’m attempting here,” said Dr. Ashe enthusiastically, “is basically a re-creation of something Paracelsus managed. Essentially, I suspect the disappearance of the inhabitants of the Land of the Dead can be laid squarely at the feet of a flux in the sanguineous elements. We corresponded at the time, Paracelsus and I, we were colleagues in life, you understand, and he was of the opinion that a balance of the elements was crucial to the existence of the nine worlds.”

“The nine worlds?” asked Belladonna.

This whole thing was getting more complicated by the second. She had known about the Other Side for a long time, of course, her parents had spoken of it often, but . . . seven other worlds as well?

“Yes, if you take something from one world and place it in another, then the balance of both is disturbed. Tell me, have you seen any creatures from this world in your own? Aside from actual ghosts, of course.”

“Yes!” said Belladonna. “Yes, we have! Haven’t we, Steve?”

Steve looked up, and Slackett quickly returned to shoveling coals into the already blazing furnace. As he did so, Steve seemed to notice something inside and turned to peer into the white-hot embers.

“Well, anyway,” said Belladonna, “we have. A big black dog and some huge birds.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Ashe, opening another book, “exactly as I thought.”

“Um . . .” Steve was backing slowly away from the furnace, “is this supposed to smell like this?”

Slackett sat back on his heels and cackled softly. “Come on, pretty-pretty,” he murmured.

“Um . . .” Steve bumped into the chair.

“Do you know what it is?” asked Belladonna, ignoring Steve. “My father said that all the doors were closing.”

“Did he now?” said Ashe.

“Yes, right before he disappeared.”

Dr. Ashe nodded as he rapidly turned the pages of the book. He cast it aside impatiently and reached up to a shelf to his left, where there was a neat row of five identically bound notebooks next to seven or eight leather- and vellum-bound books of varying sizes. He pulled an ancient-looking vellum text from the shelf and riffled through it for a few minutes before spinning the book around so that Belladonna could see. She pulled it slowly toward her; there was more Latin text
but this time instead of a complex laboratory diagram, there was a detailed woodcut of a dragon.

“A dragon?” she said. “Dr. Ashe, I think we would’ve noticed if a dragon—”

“Not the dragon,” said Ashe, snatching the book back irritably, “the jewel.”

Belladonna peered at the woodcut again. There was a dark triangle in the middle of the dragon’s forehead.

“It’s draconite,” explained Dr. Ashe.

“Dr. Ashe . . .” Steve’s voice sounded odd, but Ashe ignored him.

“Draconite is only found in the brows of dragons, so, as you can imagine, it’s very scarce.”

“Dragons?” Belladonna was beginning to have doubts about the alchemist.

“So far as I know, there is only one jewel remaining,” said Ashe, apparently oblivious to Belladonna’s tone. “It was mine. I had it made into an amulet.”

“Did you . . .” Belladonna hardly dared ask, “did you get it off the dragon yourself?”

“Of course not! I bought it. I’m a scientist, not a dragon-slayer. Anyway, the point is . . .”

Steve wasn’t hearing any of this; his attention was focused on the furnace and the two long legs that had extruded from its depths and were currently trying to get a secure footing on the floor.

“Dr. Ashe, something’s coming out of the—”

“Will you be quiet, you stupid boy! We’re trying to talk!”

Steve glanced up at Slackett, who was sniggering. He scowled and returned his attention to the legs as they felt about for the floor.

“Dr. Ashe, I don’t think you should talk to people like that,” said Belladonna reproachfully.

“Of course, of course. My dear, I do apologize. And to you too . . . uh . . . whoever you are—”

“Steve,” said Belladonna helpfully.

“Yes, Steve, I apologize,” Dr. Ashe nodded in the general direction of Steve, who didn’t hear him because he was too engrossed in the third and fourth legs.

“The thing is,” continued Dr. Ashe, who smiled briefly and was clearly remaining calm with some effort, “the thing is, I had it made into an amulet and someone stole it and hid it in the Land of the . . . in your town.”

“What does it do?”

“It goes here,” said Ashe, clearing away some of the debris on the table to reveal a magnifying glass clamped to a stand. “It’s held here by these fastenings and then the sunlight is focused through the magnifying glass . . . so.”

“Like a laser,” suggested Belladonna.

“A what?”

“Lasers focus light through rubies.”

“Do they, indeed? And what do they do then?”

“Cut things,” said Belladonna. “Heal people.”

“Hmph,” said Dr. Ashe, unimpressed. “Well, the Draconite Amulet will guide us to the element that is
causing the imbalance and restore nature to its true equilibrium, allowing us to open the doors and return the nine worlds to their intended state.”

“So there are doorways to all nine worlds?”

“Of course there are,” he snapped, then remembered himself. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. Yes, everything is connected to everything else. Didn’t you know that?”

Belladonna squirmed a little—it was a bit too much like being grilled by a teacher.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “Miss Hannity used to say things like that. She taught Art, but they let her go. I overheard Madame Huggins telling Mr. Watson that it was because she was wired to the moon.”

Dr. Ashe looked down his long nose at her and sniffed. “Well, I can see that things haven’t changed much in my absence. There will always be doubters, but now you have seen for yourself that the doors do exist.”

“
A
door,” said Belladonna.

“And you think your door is the only one, do you? That in all the nine worlds, in all the vastnesses in between, there is just one door. From the Land of the Dead to your dreary little town. Is that what you think?”

“Um . . . probably not.” Belladonna felt like she was failing some kind of exam.

“I should think not. Do you have any idea what would happen were all the doors to close?”

Belladonna shook her head.

“No,” said Dr. Ashe, softening a little, “of course not. The future of us all—of everything—depends on the free flow between the worlds.”

“And that’s why the ghosts have vanished?” she asked. “Because the doors between the Land of the Living and the Other Side have closed? But why? And what about the other worlds—are the doors there closed too?”

“Not all of them . . . yet,” said Ashe grimly.

Belladonna tucked her hair behind one ear and stared at him. She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up one bony hand to stop her.

“Look,” he said, “I can’t pretend to know all the whys and wherefores, I am but a simple alchemist.”

“But . . .” Belladonna took a deep breath; she had a feeling this question was going to make him even more irritated. “If you’re just a simple alchemist, why are you and your assistant the only ones left? Why didn’t whatever-it-is take you too?”

“I don’t know,” said Ashe. “When I saw my friends being picked off like ripe fruit from a tree, I cast a circle around this laboratory; perhaps that has kept us safe. I don’t really know. I just need the amulet. It’s the only thing I can think of that might help solve this puzzle.”

Belladonna looked at him. It all sounded plausible, in a way, but there was something about him that made her dubious. She was about to question him further
when there was a yelp from the far side of the room. She turned around just in time to see a cockroach the size of a vacuum cleaner climb out of the furnace. At least it looked sort of like a cockroach, only this creature had a long articulated neck at the end of which was an appendage that looked like the head of a hammerhead shark and concluded in two swiveling compound eyes.

Steve had flattened himself against the wall and was staring at the insect with an intensity that conveyed nothing so much as the wish that he was still sitting at the back of his parents’ electronics shop reading comics and waiting for his tea. The creature was craning its neck around, taking in the room and everyone in it.

“What is that?” whispered Belladonna.

Dr. Ashe glanced up without any particular interest.

“Oh, that’s just an ember beetle. I was trying to get a salamander, but only got those things. I threw them into the fire and they’ve been breeding in there ever since. They’re harmless.”

“H . . . harmless?!” stammered Steve. “Have you seen the size of this thing?”

“It’s just looking for a warm place. It’ll be gone in a minute. Heat rises. Slackett, encourage it.”

Slackett, who had been helpless with laughter up to this point, grabbed a broom and poked at the glistening beetle. Sure enough, the insect paused for a second,
then took off up the wall with a clackiting of exoskeletal legs. Steve and Belladonna looked at each other for a moment, then slowly raised their eyes . . . and wished they hadn’t.

The entire ceiling of the small room was covered with ember beetles, their long necks and eyepieces hanging down like so many chandeliers, the compound eyes following the movement of the strange creatures below, and their bronze carapaces glistening in the gloom.

Belladonna shuddered.

“So,” said Dr. Ashe cheerily, “do you think you can get it?”

“Get what?” asked Belladonna, without taking her eyes off the beetles.

“The Draconite Amulet, of course. Oh, do stop looking at those things, they’re of no importance whatsoever.”

“Why can’t you get it yourself?” said Belladonna, reluctantly lowering her gaze.

“Because I am dead,” said Dr. Ashe, barely able to conceal his fury at the endless questions. “I chose to haunt my laboratory, so naturally I can go nowhere else in your world. Why are you wasting time with these endless questions?”

“But we don’t know where it is.”

“No,” said Dr. Ashe, “neither do I. Happily, the Sibyl will know. You should ask her.”

He returned to his books as if the matter were
closed. Belladonna glanced at Steve, who was edging his way back along the wall and didn’t seem to be listening.

“Sibyl?” she asked. “Sibyl who?”

“Not Sibyl anyone,” he said, looking up with exasperation and barely concealed contempt. “You see? You see? This is what happens when people abandon classical education for their children. ‘Sibyl who,’ indeed!”

Belladonna looked at Steve, who shrugged. She looked back at Dr. Ashe, who rubbed his temples as if he was getting a really bad headache.

“Sibyls are oracles,” he explained. “They predict the future, give advice, that sort of thing. The most famous one was at Delphi in Greece.”

“Greece?” said Steve. “We can’t go to Greece!”

“I’m not suggesting that you go to Greece,” snapped Dr. Ashe. His temper was clearly on a very thin thread. “That was just an example. There were other Sibyls. The Cumean Sibyl, for example, who just happens to reside in your school.”