Trouble with Gargoyles: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 3) (8 page)

Just as I took my first step backward, he lashed the chains tightly over the lid and snapped it shut. Three padlocks later, the awful chorus of wails stopped vibrating within my body.

"What the hell was that?" I demanded breathlessly as I massaged my chest. "It sounded like, well, I don't know what it sounded like. It was horrible!"

"Pray you never hear its voice with your ears," he murmured, and visibly shuddered.

"I heard more than one voice."

He ran a hand down his face. "Yes."

"Dammit, Orlaton, throw me a bone!"

He rose to his feet and by his hesitation I could tell he considered kicking the trunk. The fact that he thought better of it told me volumes. He hugged himself as he faced me, a picture of fragility. But steel was in his voice as he said, "I don't owe you anything, Miss Moody. Why are you trespassing on my property? You don't have an appointment."

"Be glad I forced my way in, Orlaton! What if I hadn't roused you? That thing was starting to open."

He waved off my irritation. "I would have recovered and locked the trunk eventually."

"Or you would have continued sitting in a stupor while whatever's inside that thing ate the place!"

"It wouldn't have—" He sighed impatiently, like he was dealing with a recalcitrant two year-old. "Why are you here?"

I mentally shook off the episode with the trunk.
One nightmare at a time
. "I need to talk to you. I need your opinion."

"Mmm," was all he said before he abruptly turned on his heel and strode down an aisle and out of view.

I wasn't about to be left behind in this spooky place. I followed him, ignoring the sigh of annoyance he emitted when he noticed me. There seriously had to be thousands of books here, and each was unique. I ran my fingers across brown leather, red leather, books bound in burlap and other rough cloth, bindings that were made of pressed leaves or bark, books covered in fur and hair and spikes and thorns. They could be as thick as four inches or as thin as a comic book. Some reeked of herbs or smoke and some appeared to be wet or oily. Some—

"Ow!" I wagged my finger before holding it up to the light. I saw tiny teeth marks in my skin. "One of these books just bit me!"

Orlaton glanced back, though his disinterest couldn't have been more obvious. "Did it draw blood?"

"No."

"Then congratulations.  You're not infected."

"Infected?" I glared at Orlaton's back as he continued down the aisle, perhaps a bit more cheerfully than before. "A warning would have been nice, you know."

"So would keeping your hands to yourself."

Grumbling and tucking my hands beneath my arms, I continued following him. The labyrinth seemed to go on forever and Orlaton showed no signs of stopping. Irritated and stressed, I breached the reason I had come.

"Did you know my uncle? Uncle James?"

"Tomes has been in operation for just over three years, Miss Moody."

"Wow, so your parents gave this to you to run when you were only fourteen?"

The sigh he heaved sounded like it weighed as much as an elephant.

"I made my request at that time, yes, and they wisely saw the value in acceding to my wishes."

Are your parents afraid of you? I longed to ask, but I knew that wouldn't get me on his good side. Also, the answer might alarm me.

"Uncle James was running Moonlight then," I said. "So that means you probably met him at some point."

"I met him. We interacted very little. A handful of occasions to inform me of book purchases which he believed would interest me."

Disappointment made my shoulders heavy. "Then he never shared with you anything concerning what he was up to when he wasn't running Moonlight?"

"No."

I wasn't especially surprised. It was a long shot that Uncle James would have told Orlaton anything. Why would he share important information with a teenager?

"He did visit me once for a reason other than to sell me something."

I perked. "Yeah, why?"

Orlaton glanced back at me from over one shoulder. "He wished to purchase a magicked journal. One that would translate whatever he wrote into poems by Emily Dickinson."

My jaw dropped so low a June bug could have landed comfortably on my tongue. "I have that journal. He gave it to me the day before he disappeared."

"You enjoy Emily Dickinson?"

"She's alright. I just thought it was sweet that he'd copied her poems by hand for me. That was the real value in it for me." But maybe there was much more value to be gleaned from that journal. My heart began to pound. "How do I translate the poems back into text?"

"A blood wash will do it. One part blood to twenty parts water."

Gross, but I'd slice a vein if it would tell me where he'd gone or what might have happened to him.

We finally exited the bookshelves and entered what looked like it might be a lab. Or a kitchen. With all those bottles full of bits and pieces of who knew what it could have been a laboratory as easily as it could have been where Orlaton prepared his meals. Rectangular windows sheeted with white cloth shades allowed plenty of natural light inside. A long stainless steel table, disconcertingly ridged (was it an autopsy table?) stood in the middle of the small room. Atop it sat six bowls of varying sizes, each holding something soft, wet, and lumpy, like porridge. Except this porridge was different shades of pink.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply for a moment, willing my gag reflex back under control.

"What. The hell. Is. That?" I demanded from between clenched teeth.

"A recipe for a conjuring which doesn't concern you."

I cracked my eyes open but I fixed them on Orlaton rather than on his creepy oatmeal. "Is it for conjuring something bad?"

Something in my voice caught his attention. He'd been about to dip a pipette into the bowl nearest to him but instead he turned to regard me steadily, the way a teacher does when he's trying to determine if you actually know the answer or simply made a lucky guess.

"It's for fertility," he said quietly. "Hence, why I don't share the details with anyone who asks. It's a private matter for a client."

The muscles in my neck slowly unclenched. "That's good. It's just—I had a pretty rough night. I guess I'm a little skittish. A little…squeamish." Orlaton was only seventeen, but suddenly I felt that he was older and would understand. "I saw someone destroyed in the most awful of ways."

He didn't turn pale and his mouth didn't thin, but his eyes ticked quickly to the windows and back. "The Oddsmakers?"

I nodded. "It was a lesson."

"It sounds as though it was a memorable one."

"It wasn't meant for me. Well, not entirely. But I-I didn't come here to talk about that. I need to know how people feel about me and my family. I get that they don't like dragon familiars in general, but I'm talking about disliking us personally. My mom and my uncle."

"They're both gone."

"Yes," I said with passion, "but why? Dearborn killed my parents for my mother's bones. But what of Uncle James? Are there people—shifters or other beings—that hated or feared him? Enough to get rid of him?"

A sigh that would have filled the sails of a clipper ship. "Miss Moody—"

"Can you
please
just call me Anne?"

He startled. I'd sort of yelled at him and I regretted it, but I was strung out. Hearing that other magickal beings believed that my relatives were henchmen for the Oddsmakers, and seeing with my own eyes what the Oddsmakers were capable of, had filled me with fury and frustration. No way had my family, at any time, willingly supported the horrors that the Oddsmakers were capable of committing. If other people believed that, I needed to know so I could spread the truth.

Orlaton stared hard at me, perhaps torn between wanting to tell me to get the hell out and humoring me by calling me by my first name. He avoided both.

"For many years there have been rumors about your family." He dropped his gaze to the pink stuff in the bowls. "I thought you knew. This is…awkward."

"So's being attacked by a bunch of shifters." I stabbed a hand through my hair and cursed beneath my breath. "How long? Since before I was born?"

He nodded. "It began with your mother."

My laugh was mirthless. "So all this time—the people I've dealt with—they've all believed I'm in cahoots with the Oddsmakers? Like I'm their muscle or something?"

"Not everyone believes this, of course. But there is a significant, notable faction that does."

"Among the shifters."

"They make up a large part, yes."

"And you?"

I already knew his answer, but I wanted to see what Orlaton looked like when he was genuinely offended. It would make me feel better to see proof that I had an ally.

But Orlaton wouldn't look at me.

"I see you as my neighbor, Miss Moody. You have yet to prove yourself a threat to me. If that changes, I will…reassess."

I could only stare. "Then you believe I work for them. You believe I've done things."

He frowned and threw the pipette on the table so hard it shattered the implement. It shocked us both. Orlaton's lips were white as he said to me, "The truth is, I believe one day you'll be pushed to do something horrible. It's my goal to not be anywhere near you when this occurs."

I was crushed. Goofy, nerdy Orlaton believed I was a bad guy. I'd stuck up for him with my friends, but all along he'd not harbored the same faith in me.

"Wow," I murmured. My face felt hot. Suddenly Tomes was too small and claustrophobic. I needed air.

"Miss Moody—"

"I have to go."

He lifted his arm, like maybe he was going to reach for me and offer some lame comfort, but I wasn't sticking around to find out. I spun on my heel and strode quickly back through the bookstore.

"You can't isolate yourself!" he called after me, his voice dogging me like a poltergeist. "You need allies, Miss Moody."

"I thought I had some," I snarled to myself.

"Miss Moo—Anne—don't become what they fear!"

But it was too late. I already was.

~~~~~

Once I was back in Moonlight, I headed straight through the bead curtain that separated my living space from the shop floor. The walls of my bathroom streamed blood and more dripped from the ceiling until I blinked my eyes hard to clear the curse. The mirror above the sink showed the reflection of a short, pale man who'd eaten his own lips. Disgusting.

These were curses I was familiar with, though, so they barely registered as I took my toothbrush out of the cup it sat in and filled the cup with water. I pricked my finger with a needle and streamed several drops of my blood into the cup of water. I didn't have a paint brush so I grabbed a cotton eye makeup remover pad.

In my bedroom I reached beneath the bed and pulled out the Tupperware storage container that held the few personal items I owned as well as winter sweaters and scarves. Beneath the Santa Clause outfit that I wore each year at the annual Santa Run, I found the journal full of Emily Dickinson poems that I thought my uncle had painstakingly copied out for me. It was even more valuable to me now that I knew what it actually was.

Sitting cross-legged on my bed, I dipped the pad into the blood wash and carefully brushed it down the first page of the journal, over the inscription that read,
To my favorite niece. Stay fierce and stay smart!
I liked that Uncle James had always referred to me as his 'smart niece' rather than his 'beautiful niece' when introducing me to people. It was a little thing, but it had shown me from a young age what was most important to him.

I set the cotton pad aside and waited, but nothing happened except that I'd made the page all soggy. I blotted the sheet dry with a corner of my bed sheet and turned to the first page of poems, which featured one of my favorites,
It Sounded as if the Streets Were Running.
As soon as I made the first pass with the pad, the letters on the page magickally rearranged to create new words. Excitedly I swiped the pad over the entire sheet and once all the letters had settled, began to read what was revealed to me.

But though I'd expected a secret missive, I was let down. The first page was a description of dragon familiars and ways that they could be used by a sorcerer or sorceress. It was elementary information that he had taught me when I was very young, with only a couple of tips that were new, though hardly game changers.

I washed the second page with the makeup pad and waited impatiently as the poem on the page dissolved and new words appeared.

This page featured descriptions of magickal beings, their physical attributes and magickal abilities and/or powers. It was a guide of sorts which I ran through cursorily, noting with interest that gargoyles weren't listed, either because Uncle James didn't know anything about them or hadn't anticipated that I would ever run into the apparently rare creatures.

The next washed page revealed a list of businesses in Las Vegas that Uncle James vouched for. I recognized about six of them as being run by magickal beings and figured this must be a community-friendly listing in case I needed to do business in-house, so to speak. Some he'd marked with asterisks, but with no explanation as to why. The Keyhole was one such entry. So was the art gallery across the street.