The Magician's Dream (Oona Crate Mystery: book 3) (22 page)

“What’s that?’ Adler asked curiously, pointing at the feather in Oona’s hand.

“Oh, this?” Oona said. She held the feather up by the tip and spun it between her fingers. “It’s a key.”

She did not know why she said it, but the instant she did, she knew it was the truth. It felt right.

“A key to what?” Adler asked.

She nearly replied: “To my heart.” But instead, she simply said: “That is a mystery for another day.”

Feather of Crow

They met in secret. In the cemetery. Unchaperoned.

The boy waited for her just inside the arched stone entrance. He was reading the newspaper, and when Oona saw him, she smiled.

“Hello, Adler.”

“Hello, Oona.”

Adler folded the newspaper, picked up the picnic basket, and placed the paper on top.

The fact that he had used her first name did not escape her. She took his hand, and the two of them began to make their way across the hilly grounds of the graveyard. The sun was bright overhead, yet the morning mist still hovered stubbornly several inches thick above the ground.

“No Deacon?” Adler asked, glancing toward Oona’s shoulder.

“I left him at home,” Oona said. “Samuligan drove me here, but he’s waiting at the curb. He thinks I’m alone.”

“I’ll bet he’s not fooled,” Adler said.

Oona shrugged and looked at the paper on the basket. “I see you have the
Tribune
. I take it you read about Molly Morgana Moon’s victory over Tobias Fink.”

“I did,” he said. “It was a close race, and they counted the votes five times, but in the end, she won.”

Oona shook her head, and Adler raised an eyebrow.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Adler said. “She’s the first female Dark Street Council member ever.”

“Oh, I’m happy about that. It’s just the
way
that she won that I don’t like. If it wasn’t for Mrs. Carlyle and her husband’s riot, Molly Morgana Moon might never have gotten elected.”

Adler nodded. “Aye. Things have a funny way of working out, so they do.”

“What do you mean?” Oona asked.

“Well, it’s just that Mrs. Carlyle was so concerned about getting a woman elected, she didn’t think about the fact that one of Molly Morgana Moon’s main promises was to cut crime on the street. That would never have worked in Mrs. Carlyle’s favor, being that she was a criminal herself.”

Oona frowned. “But that’s just the thing. It was from Mrs. Carlyle that I learned the value of women’s rights. I had never even considered such matters before she came to work at Pendulum House. And now it turns out she was a horrible person. She and her husband killed my father.”

Adler suddenly stopped walking and stared at the ground, apparently thinking hard. Finally, he looked up at her and asked: “Do you think it’s possible that people are not completely good or bad? I mean, you just said it yourself that this despicable woman showed you something that you believe is good.”

“That’s what makes it so confusing,” Oona said. “She’s a thief and a killer, and yet . . .” Oona did not want to finish the sentence. She felt guilty and wrong for thinking it.

“And yet she taught you something important,” Adler finished for her, and shrugged. “Like I said, things have a funny way of working out.”

Oona sighed, and the two of them started walking again, moving toward the far end of the cemetery, where Oona had some business to attend to. To their right, the enormous seven-hundred-foot-tall Black Tower jutted out of the graveyard like an enormous tombstone. Inside those solid black walls lived a group of card-playing goblins. Oona recalled how she had ridden to the top of that dark tower in a rowboat fastened to a hot-air balloon. What an adventure that had been. But it was not the goblins she was planning on visiting today, and she could feel her nerves beginning to flutter like hummingbird wings in her stomach.

“Of course, you made the paper, too,” Adler said. “That’s what I was reading when you got here.”

“Yes, Samuligan told me,” Oona said. “I haven’t read it.”

Adler looked surprised. “Why not?”

Oona shrugged. “Because I lived it. I remember what happened quite well.”

“Oh, I see,” Adler said.

Oona blushed slightly. “I was going to read it . . . but before I turned to the review page, Deacon quoted a famous theater director to me—a man named Robert Gristle Wistlesnap—who said that if you believe the good reviews, then you must believe the bad ones as well. So . . . I decided to leave it be.”

Adler cocked an eyebrow. “You believe that, about the good ones and the bad ones?”

Again Oona shrugged, unsure what she believed. She looked curiously at the newspaper folded on the picnic basket.

Adler grinned at her and wriggled his eyebrows. “You sure you don’t want to know?”

Oona half grinned back. “I suppose I am curious, but . . .”

Adler picked the paper up, waving it playfully in front of her. “She was actually quite flattering toward you, Mary Shusher was.”

“Was she?” Oona said, surprised.

“Oh, aye,” Adler said. “She wrote something about magic becoming fashionable again because of you.”

“Because of me?” Oona said, and snatched the newspaper from Adler’s hand. “Let me see.”

Adler laughed. “What happened to: ‘If you believed the good ones, then you need to believe the bad?’”

Oona shook her head. “Oh, rubbish! Let’s see. Ah, here it is. ‘Wizard’s Apprentice Wows Crowd in Vivacious Show of Magic.’” She frowned.

“What’s the matter?” Adler asked.

Oona folded the paper and handed it back without reading any further. She sighed. “It’s nice, yes. But the thing is, I wasn’t putting on a show. I was fighting for my life.”

Adler nodded thoughtfully. “Aye. I suppose that’s true, so it is.”

He once again took Oona’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Oona squeezed back and tried to put the newspaper article out of her mind. She had business to attend to.

At last, the two of them crested a hill, and below them, spread out in a square patch of earth, was what they had walked all this way to see. It was the Crate family plot, the place where her mother and sister and father all lay in their final resting places. Oona had not been here in more than three years. She took in an extra deep breath to steady her nerves.

“Will you give me a moment?” she asked.

“Of course,” Adler said, and released her hand.

Oona started forward, but paused and looked back. “I’m glad you came with me.”

Adler gave her a tip of his hat, and then his eyes moved to the cemetery plot beyond. Oona turned, and soon her feet led her to the three headstones farthest along the plot. She read the familiar names. Her eyes were dry, despite the whirlwind of emotions that filled her. Her instincts told her what to do.

Slowly, Oona touched her fingers to her lips, and then one by one placed the kiss upon the three tombstones. As she did so, she felt a strange kind of awareness come over her: an awareness of someone watching her. She knew Adler was watching, but he was at a distance. This feeling was of someone very near.

Slowly, she pulled the black feather from her pocket and held it up before the third tombstone: the one with her father’s name upon it.

“Thank you, Father,” she said. “I miss you.” She looked toward her mother’s tombstone, and her sister Flora’s. “I miss all of you.”

For the briefest of moments, Oona felt a hand touch her own. It was a familiar touch, the same hand she had felt when it had handed her the feather in the dream cemetery, one she had known her entire life. Oona gasped as she turned her attention back to her father’s tombstone, only to discover that her hand was empty. The feather was gone.

Oona stared at her empty hand for a long time. She had somehow known that this is what would happen, and yet it was a surprise all the same.

When at last she turned to go, she looked up the hill at Adler, who was watching her curiously.

“What’s that?” he asked, gesturing toward the ground.

Oona looked down to see what he was pointing at, and that’s when she saw it, lying in the misty grass upon her father’s grave: Oswald’s wand! It would have been impossible to mistake.

Oona picked it up out of the thinning mist, her face filled with astonishment.

“But wasn’t that destroyed?” Adler asked.

Oona nodded. She had seen it disintegrate before her eyes. And then she remembered. “Its power went into the feather. Into my father’s feather.”

Adler walked to join her. “What does it mean?”

“It means,” Oona said with a shiver, “that the key to the Glass Gates still exists. Everyone else thinks it’s been destroyed, and now we’re the only ones who know about it.”

“Oh,” Adler said thoughtfully, and then put out his hand. “Well, put it away then.” He held up the basket. “I’m getting hungry, and I’d like to have a picnic with my girlfriend, if she doesn’t mind.”

Oona smiled and tucked the wand into her dress pocket. “You know . . . she doesn’t mind at all.”

She took his hand and the two of them ventured over the hill and beyond. The day was full of possibilities and mysteries to discover.

Behind them, like vigilant guardians in the dispersing mist, the three tombstones stood silent and watchful, reflecting sunlight off their polished surfaces as an afternoon breeze blew through the Dark Street Cemetery, whirling and dancing like a whisper of song and illusion, and a promise of dreams to come.

About The Author

Shawn Thomas Odyssey
is the Edgar- and Agatha-Award nominated author of the
Oona Crate Mysteries
, which include
The Wizard of Dark Street
and
The Magician’s Tower
.  When he isn’t writing novels, he is a professional music composer of films and TV, with works including HBO’s
Deadwood
.

For more Dark Street fun visit
www.shawnthomasodyssey.com
.

Don’t miss these other exciting Oona Crate mysteries!

The Wizard of Dark Street (book 1)

The Magician’s Tower (book 2)

—

Also by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

The Monster Society

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All books available as audiobooks from

audible.com