The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (44 page)

They came to a tree-shaded avenue
with a row of buildings that all looked exactly the same in the front. Violet,
who had been pushing Othella’s wheelchair, stopped in her tracks and stared in
disappointment at the apartments.

“How will we know which one?”

Chloe spotted a girl entering one
of the buildings. She let out a shrill whistle and shouted, “Hey, you there!”

The girl paused and stared in surprise.
“Yes?” she asked.

Chloe approached the girl. “Do you
know where we might find Mr. Tobin Leboux?”

The girl relaxed a little, but she
seemed confused by Chloe’s appearance. She kept staring at her purple hair and
at her impossibly green eyes. “Um, you aren’t with the police, are you?”

“Certainly not,” Chloe said.
“However, it is important that we speak to Mr. Leboux immediately.” She tried
to think of a way to make it sound more important. Then she remembered a phrase
she’d heard on the vision box. “It’s a matter of national security.”

The student smirked. “National
security, huh? What, did you see him on TV and want his number or something?”

“His number?” Chloe asked,
befuddled.

The girl rolled her eyes.
“Whatever. He’s probably studying in the library. Mid-terms are next week.”

“Where is the library?” Chloe
asked.

The girl pointed to a block of
older buildings made of red brick. “Over there.”

Chloe gave the girl a begrudging
nod of approval. “Thank you, kind citizen.”

Tobin Leboux sat dozing in an
overstuffed chair surrounded by books and papers. Chloe spotted him from across
the room. There was something that stood out about Fay descendants among the humans.
It was like looking at a clear mirror image of somebody next to a rippling
reflection in a stream. To Chloe, Tobin looked more in focus than everyone
else.

Chloe, Othella and Violet had
already drawn suspicious stares from the woman and at the library’s front desk.
Trying to be as quiet and nonchalant as possible, Chloe strode over to the
sleeping young man and tapped his shoulder.

Tobin stirred. A fat spiral
notebook slipped off his lap and fell to the floor. “Wha—huh? Who are you?”

“Shhh,” Chloe said, placing a
finger to her lips. “We are sorry to bother you, but we may have news about
your mother.”

Wide awake now, Tobin sat up and
stared at them. Though he was in his twenties he looked younger. He had smooth,
dark skin, but his eyes were a lighter color with flecks of greenish gold.

“You’re not from around here, are
you?” he asked as his gaze settled on Othella.

“No,” Othella said. “Smart boy. Did
your mother ever speak of home?”

“Not very often. Who are you?”

“My name is Othella de Lolanthe.
These are my daughters, Chloe and Violet. I knew your mother a long time ago,
back when she was called Kiros Rubedo.”

Tobin stiffened. His nostrils
flared as he took a deep breath. “Nobody here knows about that,”

“Then it proves that we are who we say
we are,” Chloe said.

He nodded. “Yeah…yeah, I was afraid
of this.” He leaned forward with his knees on his elbows and rested his
forehead against his hands. “That’s why they can’t find any clues, right?
That’s why nobody has seen a trace of her. It’s because she’s not
here
,
is she?”

“We’re not sure,” Othella said
quietly. “We were hoping you’d take us to her apartment so we could examine it
for ourselves.”

Tobin glanced up at her
suspiciously. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t know,” Violet said.
“Wouldn’t you rather give us a chance, though? We may be the only ones who can
help. Like you said, nobody here has found anything.”

“Please,” Chloe added in her
sweetest voice.

Tobin sighed. “What do I have to
lose, right? I mean, one woman in a wheelchair and two skinny girls…” He stood
up and began collecting his books from the floor. He was quite tall. Chloe
noticed that he was thin, too. He looked like he hadn’t been eating well. She
wondered if his mother used to cook for him.

“How far is it to her apartment?”
Chloe asked while Tobin shouldered his backpack.

“Not far. I’m not really supposed
to go there, but I have a spare key.”

They followed him out into the
cooling evening air. Even the sound of nearby traffic couldn’t drown out the
hum of insects in the trees. The humidity quickly sapped Chloe’s energy again,
making her drag her feet. Tobin seemed used to it. He took long strides with
his heavy backpack as though it weighed nothing at all.

Chloe tried hard to match his pace.
Violet was almost jogging as she pushed Othella.

“Have you lived here all your
life?” Chloe asked.

“No,” Tobin said. “Just the last
twelve years. When I was little we moved around a lot. Dad is in the military.”

Chloe didn’t entirely grasp what
this meant. “Oh. Where is your dad now?”

“Hawaii, I think. We don’t talk
much. Him and Mom divorced a long time ago. She was tired of moving from place
to place and he was tired of her…weirdness.”

 “I’m sorry,” Chloe said in total
sincerity. “So your dad doesn’t know anything about her disappearance, either?”

“He probably doesn’t even know that
she’s missing,” Tobin said.

They came to the apartment building
that Chloe recognized from the vision box. Yellow tape was still stretched over
the front door.

“Wait,” Tobin said, pausing on the
doorstep. He looked down at the three of them. “Before we go in, I need to know
for sure. You’re not just pulling my leg, right?”

Chloe wasn’t familiar with the
expression. It sounded funny. “Pulling your leg?”

Tobin’s face was stony serious.
“Yeah. This had better not be a prank. I’ve dealt with a lot of scumbags from
the media. My mom had a lot of critics. She was…eccentric. People in her field
gave her a lot of flak for studies that she published. They’ll look for any
reason to make her look bad. So I’m going to ask one more time: Are you really
here to help her?”

Taken aback, Chloe wasn’t sure what
to say. She was used to being direct, but she seldom saw the trait in other
people. Tobin was more upfront than anyone else she’d met.

Tobin stood with the key in his
hand, waiting for a response.

Then Chloe thought of something.
She glanced around to make sure nobody nearby was watching. She reached for her
hat.

“Chloe, no!” Violet squeaked.

Chloe didn’t listen. Gaining
Tobin’s trust was more important. She pulled off her hat, letting her purple
curls tumble to her shoulders. She felt cool, fresh air on the pointed tips of
her ears. It was such a nice sensation that she couldn’t resist wiggling them a
bit.

Tobin’s gold-flecked eyes widened
in astonishment. “Just like Mom’s. Nobody else ever saw her without her head
wrap. They thought she was just representing her culture.”

“But she was actually hiding her
real
culture,” Chloe said as she put her much-hated hat back on. “Now do you believe
us?”

Without another word, Tobin turned
the key in the lock.

Except for a layer of dust, the
apartment looked like it was still in use, just waiting for its owner to come
back from a trip to the store. Open assignment books lay on the kitchen table.
Unsorted mail was waiting by the coat rack. The place didn’t even smell abandoned.
Exotic potpourri was sitting in decorative bowls. There was no evidence to
suggest something was awry until they entered the den.

“They think it happened in here,”
Tobin said, indicating an overturned chair and scorched marks on the old
hardwood floors.

Violet got to her knees and peered
closely at the blackened wood. “Looks like the work of a fledgling Master
Caster, wouldn’t you say, Chloe?”

As a fledgling Master Caster
herself, Chloe knew a fire spell when she saw it. She placed herself in the position
of the attacker. It looked like a weak effort. Whoever had cast the spell was
trying to intimidate, not kill.

“They wanted her alive,” Othella
said, voicing Chloe’s thought.

“What was your mother’s gift?”
Chloe asked.

Tobin was thrown by the question.
He looked terribly uncomfortable at being in the room where his mother was
abducted. “What do you mean?”

“Her magic.”

He shook his head. “She never did
any of that stuff around me. I didn’t even know if it was for real or not. She
wrote all these theories about magic existing here, though—lots of stuff about
physics and physiology. Her peers laughed at her for it.”

Othella rubbed her source crystal
thoughtfully between her fingers. “If I recall correctly, she was a Guardian.”

Chloe took a sharp breath. “You
mean like Emma?”

“Yes,” Othella said. “Much like the
Wrens, the Rubedo family had something to protect. They spawned many Guardians.”

 “What are you talking about?”
Tobin asked. “She didn’t have anything to protect. When she came here
from…wherever, she didn’t have
anything
.”

“Perhaps not,” Othella said. “But
did she ever mention a tablet?”

“No,” Tobin said.

Chloe halfway paid attention to the
exchange. She’d just noticed something odd about the scorch marks. She had seen
the imprint of Emma’s barrier spells before. They left behind a bubble shape
against the marks of whatever spell they were trying to hold back. The scorch
marks on the apartment floor were unbroken, signifying that the spell had
completed its trajectory.

“That’s weird,” she said. “Kiros
didn’t try to defend herself with a barrier. Barriers leave marks, too, and I
don’t see any.”

“You’re right,” Violet said. “I
don’t either. I wonder…”

They both looked up at the same
time. On the ceiling were more scorch marks, but this time there was a telltale
rounded imprint interrupting them.

“She tried to fly away!” Chloe said.

“WHAT?” Tobin said. “My mom can’t
fly! There’s a lot I don’t know about her, but I’d know if she had wings,
okay?”

Chloe smiled and made her own
vaporous purple wings appear.

Violet watched her nervously. “Cut
that out, Chloe, somebody might see the glow through the window and get
suspicious.”

Ignoring her, Chloe floated up to
the ceiling. Tobin stared, wide-eyed.

“She was right here,” Chloe said,
flying to a high corner where the scorch marks stopped. She looked down at the
room. It was a good vantage point but there was no way out. Kiros had been
cornered.

“Are you sure your mother never
mentioned a tablet?” Othella asked Tobin again. “It is the only reason I can
think of why somebody would come after her. It’s been in her family for ages.”

“I don’t know!” Tobin insisted,
clenching his fists. “She never talked about the days before I was born.”

“But did you ever overhear her
talking about strange things?” Chloe asked.

“Oh, sure, all the time—just
nothing about a tablet. What is this tablet, anyways?”

“The Rubedo Tablet,” Othella said.
She rolled herself close to Tobin. Her wheelchair left tracks on the dusty
floor. She leaned forward and drew a rectangular shape the size of a serving
tray in the dust. “It’s about this size, and made of jade. It contains all the
rules of alchemy. Anyone who possesses it is said to have a power at their
hands greater even than magic.”

“Just a set of rules?” Tobin said,
sounding unimpressed. “Why doesn’t somebody just memorize them?”

Othella gave him a patient smile.
“Alchemy is as much about symbols as it is about materials. The written symbols
are what give it its power. There are subtleties within them and ways to
combine them that can only be seen using the tablet.”

Weary from using her wings, Chloe landed
next to her mother. Her wings vanished, making the room dim. She knelt over the
little rectangle Othella had drawn in the dust. “What do the symbols look like?
Do you know any of them?”

“A few,” Othella said. She traced a
finger through the dust again and drew a triangle with a line across it. Next
to it she drew a sideways figure eight with two lines intersecting in the
middle.

It was gibberish to Chloe. She was
already thinking of something else. “That tablet wasn’t like Emma’s flute, was
it? I mean, it could be destroyed, right? There weren’t any monsters bound by
it or any curses on it?”

Othella shook her head. “Nothing
like that.”

“Well then who’s to say Kiros
didn’t destroy it long ago?” Chloe asked. “I know if Emma could destroy the
flute, she’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“But why would Kiros destroy it?”
Othella asked. “On its own it is harmless. You have to be a skilled Alchemist
to use it.”

“The flute is harmless on its own,
too,” Chloe pointed out. She turned to ask Tobin something, but he was staring
entranced at the symbols that Othella had drawn in the dust.

“I know these,” he said. “I’ve seen
them before.”

“Where?” Othella and Chloe asked at
the same time.

“Mom has some tattoos on the
insides of her forearms. I always thought they were tribal or Egyptian or
something.”

Chloe grew excited again. “That’s it!
Kiros doesn’t
have
the Rubedo Tablet. She
is
the Rubedo Tablet!”

Violet spoke up. “But where would
they have taken her?
Who
would have taken her, for that matter?”

“Back to scouring this place for
clues,” Chloe said with a sigh.

Tobin picked up a picture of his
mother from a desk and blew the dust from it. It was the same photo they’d used
on the news report. Kiros stared out of the frame looking secretive and majestic.
Tobin gazed warmly at the photo. Then his face fell and he suddenly looked
very, very tired.

 “I’ve been all through this
place,” he said. “I checked all her research notes, her day
planners…everything. There was nothing out of the ordinary. I came over for
breakfast on the day she disappeared. Everything was normal. She was happy. She
made me pancakes.”