The Vault of Destinies (James Potter #3) (73 page)

"What's that mean?" Ralph asked. "I didn't see any tracks."

"It means keep a sharp eye out, Ralphinator," Zane said grimly. "This area is seedy enough in our own day. I don't expect it's any better in this timeframe. Watch your back."

Fortunately, it was much easier for the boys to follow Magnussen here since the streets were very narrow and crowded with carts, uneven stacks of crates and barrels, and parked carriages. Figures moved in the dim recesses of doorways or skulked along the cobbled road, their feet splashing in the puddles that trickled downhill toward the river beyond. James realized that they had gotten close enough to Magnussen to hear his boot heels knocking hollowly on the cobbles.

"How far's he going to go?" Zane whispered, darting behind a row of empty carts. "We're nearly to the waterfront. Those're the wharves up ahead. After that, there's nothing but river."

Suddenly, Magnussen stopped and turned around. James ducked behind the nearest cart, his heart leaping up into his throat. Both Ralph and Zane hunkered down next to him. After a long, tense moment, the three dared to peek out from beneath the cart, their chins virtually touching the wet street.

Magnussen was fingering his cane as he peered around the cramped intersection, his eyes narrowed. Finally, apparently satisfied, he turned and stalked into an even narrower alley.

"That looks like a dead end," James whispered. "Doesn't it?"

Zane nodded. "Come on, we can get closer if we hide behind that pile of broken crates."

As quietly as possible, the three boys crept along the edge of the street into the shadow of the jagged pile. Bits of broken wood crunched underfoot as the three gathered against the corner of a brick warehouse.

"It
is
a dead end," Ralph whispered, peering cautiously around the corner. "There's a little stairway at the end, though, and a door. Looks like a cheap little flat or something."

Zane craned his head around the corner as well, squinting in the darkness. "Any sign of old Mags?"

"No," Ralph shook his head. "He must have gone inside. You think maybe it's
his
flat? Like, he rented it special just to have a place outside of school?"

James nodded. "He needed a place to hide the horseshoe, where nobody magical would sense its power. While it was up in the museum, it was probably lost in the background noise of all the other magical relics up there. Once he took it out, though, he'd need to keep it hidden. This is probably the perfect place."

"So," Ralph whispered, turning back around and leaning against the grimy bricks, "how are we going to get the horseshoe from him?"

Zane rubbed his hands together against the cold. "Right. What's the plan, James?"

"Me?" James rasped. "I thought you were in charge of that detail?"

"I got the verse to get us through the Warping Willow!" Zane frowned defensively.

Ralph glanced worriedly from Zane to James. "And, er, I'm the one what found old zombie Professor Straidthwait! Without him, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere at all!"

"Hold on," James said, poking a finger into the air. "We got this far and
none
of us has any plan for how to actually get the unicorn's horseshoe from Magnussen?"

"Well," Zane shrugged, "we could just send Ralph out there with his Godzilla wand. I'd put your wand up against that evil cane of his any day, Ralphinator."

"No way I'm dueling a bloke like that," Ralph replied, shaking his head vigorously. "Not after the way all those portraits talked about him. Let's not forget that the man's a bloody murderer!"

James nodded soberly. "That's true. We have to be dead careful."

"Or just plain dead," Zane gulped.

"Don't get spooked yet," James said reasonably. "We still need to follow him to the Nexus Curtain. We can figure something out along the way."

"Yeah," Zane nodded. "Figuring stuff out along the way, that's always worked out great for us in the past."

"Shh!" Ralph hissed, peering back around the corner. "Here he comes!"

A door thunked shut in the darkness and was followed by the tromp of boots on squeaky stairs. James peeked around the corner, followed by Zane. Together, the three boys watched the shadowy form of Professor Magnussen as he stalked along the alley, his feet splashing in the puddles and his cane glinting in the darkness.

"Hey," a man's voice called out suddenly. James startled, as did Zane and Ralph. Magnussen stopped in his tracks, wary as a jackal. After a few tense seconds, the voice spoke again, timidly, but with stubborn resolution.

"She knew you'd come back," it said, and there was a hint of a disbelieving laugh in it. "I told her she was crazy. You'd never come back here, not after what happened. But here you are, bold as brass, big as life."

Magnussen hadn't moved. His voice came out of the darkness silkily. "You have me at a disadvantage, friend," he said. "Come into the light so I can see you."

"What, so you can do to me what you did to her?" the voice scoffed nervously. In spite of its words, however, a figure moved into the mouth of the alley. He was a young man, barely twenty years old, very thin and wearing a bowler's hat. Braces were slung over his shoulders, holding up a pair of ill-fitting flannel pants. He was less than fifteen feet away from James, Zane, and Ralph where they hid in the shadow of the broken crates.

"Have we met, good sir?" Magnussen asked calmly, taking a step forward.

"Oh yes, we've met," the man spat. "Although I doubt you'd remember it. Fredericka even talked to you about me. She was worried that you might get the wrong ideas about her, a big fancy man like you from up in the Heights coming down here to engage the services of a common seamstress. I heard all about how you stared at her when she delivered your mended coats and capes, how you looked like you were measuring her up with your eyes, like she was just a piece of meat and you were a butcher. She told you she had a fiancé just so you knew where you stood with her. To me, she said not to worry, that she could handle herself and she needed the money you were payin' her. But turns out she was right about you, wasn't she? Poor little Fredericka who never would've hurt a fly. You were a butcher after all. You killed her,
mangled
her, and left her in the street for us to find. And now here you are, come right back to the very scene, just as bold as you please."

"This is a misunderstanding, my good man," Magnussen said soothingly, still stepping forward. To James, he looked like a cat slowly creeping up on its prey. Silently, James drew his wand from his pocket. Next to him, he sensed Ralph and Zane doing the same.

"Helen said you'd come back," the man said, and then he laughed a little hysterically. At his side, he held a length of iron, a crowbar. "Helen is Fredericka's little sister, you know. She has a sense about these things. I didn't believe her, at least not completely. But you know what? I believed her enough to keep a watch on this here alley. When I saw you come here tonight, saw you stand right here on this spot, looking around like you owned the place, I barely believed my own eyes. But Helen was right. You came back."

The man began to stride forward then, raising the crowbar. He looked like he barely knew what he meant to do with it.

Magnussen didn't move. "Now look here, my good man," he said with a smile in his voice.

Suddenly, the thin man flew up from the pavement, flailing wildly in the air and dropping the crowbar. It clattered loudly to the cobbles, spinning away into a puddle. A moment later, the man himself crashed into a stack of barrels at the rear of the alley. The barrels toppled and tumbled over each other, burying the man.

"So much ugliness," Magnussen sighed to himself, turning toward the rear of the alley. "When will these people ever learn…"

A barrel clattered sideways as the skinny man scrambled to his feet again, his face pale but determined in the dimness. "I don't know
who
or what you are, you demon," he breathed, "but you aren't leaving this alley. For Fredericka…"

"You know," Magnussen said magnanimously, "the young lady
did
speak of you, now that you mention it. Your name is William, isn't it? Yes. She screamed your name, in fact, near the end of her life. I wouldn't have thought that she'd been capable of something so strenuous at that point, but that just goes to show the difference between theory and reality. It was highly instructive, in fact. I'll tell you what. As thanks, I will grant you your greatest wish. I will send you to join your dear departed Fredericka. Perhaps you will scream
her
name as well."

The skinny man barely seemed to hear Magnussen. He lurched to his feet, limping pathetically, and began to lope toward the older man, his bare hands held before him, hooked into claws. In the darkness, Magnussen raised his cane, smiling malevolently.

"No!" James cried out, leaping out into the alley and brandishing his wand. His voice, however, was drowned out by a loud, echoing
crack
, nearly deafening in the confined space of the alley.

Too late! James thought hectically, still aiming his wand wildly at Magnussen's back.
He's
killed him!
The skinny man, William, did not fall, however. James blinked into the darkness of the alley, waiting for Magnussen's evil spell to take effect. Instead, Magnussen lowered his cane and then dropped it. It clattered to the alley. A moment later, Magnussen himself fell to his knees.

"How…," he asked, looking up at William. Slowly, almost ponderously, Magnussen fell forward, flat on his face in the center of the alley, dead.

"For Fredericka," a girl's voice said faintly. James looked to the side. A young woman, barely older than James himself, stood nearby. She stared at Magnussen's dead body, her face a mask of pale resignation. In her outstretched hand, smoking lazily, was a small pistol.

"For Fredericka," she repeated faintly, "from her fiancé, William. And from me, her sister. Helen."

The girl, Helen, had seen the three boys, but didn't seem particularly interested in them. Zane, being wise enough to opt for the truth when it was most appropriate, simply told her that the dead man in the alley had stolen something from their school, thus he and his friends had followed him in the hopes of getting it back.

William, still limping, had been surprised to see Helen and her pistol, but only a little. Kneeling over the body of Magnussen, he had retrieved the man's evil magical cane. With a swift, decisive movement, he broke the cane over his knee. The long end he tossed into the gutter, but the handle he peered at in his hand, studying the glint of moonlight on the leering metal face. He shuddered.

"Your stolen goods might not be the sort of thing that would fit in a velvet bag, would they?" he asked dourly, looking down at the body.

James nodded. "Could be," he answered, stepping gingerly forward. As he approached Magnussen's prone figure, he saw a drawstring sack lying next to the corpse, still hooked over the left wrist. Feeling a wave of revulsion, James tugged the loop of string from around the dead man's wrist. The hand thumped back to the street with a faint smack.

"You three…," William said faintly, looking at the boys. "You're like
him
, ain't you?"

James swallowed thickly and shook his head, but Ralph, surprisingly, was the one to speak up. "We're sorry for what happened to Fredericka," he said solemnly. "This man may have been a part of our world… but we aren't like him."

William stared at Ralph, his eyes wide and shining in the darkness. Slowly, he nodded. Helen moved next to him and put an arm around his shoulders, still staring down at Magnussen's body, as if mesmerized by it. Her face was very pale and James had a suspicion that the girl had been sick only moments earlier, probably behind the same broken crates where he, Zane, and Ralph had hidden.

"I don't know what's in that velvet bag," William said, shuddering, "and I'm sure I don't want to. This is over. You go your way. And me and Helen, we'll try to go ours. Fair enough?"

James nodded. He could feel the cold weight of the horseshoe through the velvet of the sack. Slowly, he backed away from the body of Magnussen. Zane and Ralph followed and a moment later, all three boys turned and ran out of the alley. They ran almost the entire way back to the Alma Aleron gate, where Flintlock was only just beginning to come out of the trance Magnussen had cast over him. The rock troll remembered them in that hazy reverse-time way that Zane had predicted and allowed them to approach the Warping Willow. Zane recited the incantation that would return them to the school and the Tree began to shiver all around them. The moon and stars started to roll forward again, taking them back to the school and their own time.

Throughout the journey home, James held the velvet bag, fingering the distinctive shape inside it. Neither he, Zane, nor Ralph said a word.

They didn't have to.