The Dire King

  A Jackaby Novel

  William Ritter

  Algonquin 2017

  The Jackaby Series by William Ritter

  Jackaby

  Beastly Bones

  Ghostly Echoes

  The Dire King

  For Mira and Helena and Leah and Gailian and all the rest of the unready heroes growing up today, who will open new doors in the course of their lives that I did not even realize were locked in mine.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Supplemental Material

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  To say that the house at 926 Augur Lane was not yet back to normal would be to grossly misrepresent the nature of the house at 926 Augur Lane. At its best, the peculiar property was an abode of the abnormal and a sanctuary for the strange.

  The notion of premeditation did not appear to have been of any concern to the building’s architects, the result of which was an eclectic edifice constructed using all manner of materials and styles. Its columns and cornices, balconies and balustrades all came at one another from unruly angles to form what ought to have been a hideous mess but was somehow beautiful instead. Still a mess, certainly, but a beautiful one.

  From within, the house was more astonishing still. My employer, private investigator R. F. Jackaby, was no average detective, and the proof was packed in every corner of his property. Eldritch mementos from countless curious cases filled the shelves; strange smells swept from his kitchen laboratory, wove through the crooked hallway, spilled into his overstuffed office, and tickled the spines in his lavish library. As I slid past the spiral staircase, I could hear from above me the familiar splash of wings on water, the echoes bouncing down from the duck pond on the third floor, where Douglas, Jackaby’s prior assistant and current resident waterfowl, spent much of his time.

  Strange as it all might seem, I had come to think of this place as my home. And then my home had been violated.

  I stepped out the back door into the bright summer sunlight, past the pile of broken busts and shattered reliquaries Jackaby had pitched out of his office window as he had tidied up the wreckage during the past weeks. Our investigation had rattled a hornets’ nest, and the hornets had sent giant monsters to rattle ours. Their intrusion had done irreparable damage to our statuaries and plasterwork, but even more to our sense of safety. We had done what we could since the incident. We had swept up the pile of crimson splinters that had once been our cheery red front door, plastered over the worst of the battered masonry, and scooped up the sea of broken glassware in the ravaged laboratory. But the damage had been done.

  The house at 926 Augur Lane was not back to normal. It was not back to abnormal. It was wrong and it felt wrong.

  I came to a stop and fished a hefty iron key out of my pocket. My only consolation was that the culprit behind the destruction was now our captive, locked up securely in Jackaby’s supernaturally safeguarded cellar.

  Morwen Finstern did not look very intimidating as I swung open the door and climbed down the steps into her makeshift prison. She was of average appearance, with strawberry blond hair hanging in tangled waves around her slender face. Her eyes were wide and sad, and I might have felt sorry for her if I had not known she was a malicious nixie, a shape-shifting creature responsible for the brutal deaths of countless innocent victims over the centuries.

  “Shepherd’s pie,” I said, dropping the plate on the dusty table. “It’s not very warm.”

  “I smell onions,” Morwen said.

  “I used extra.”

  “I told you yesterday, I hate onions.”

  “That’s why I used extra.”

  Morwen’s fingers flexed as though she might like to take a swipe at me. The slender chain around her wrist clinked softly with the motion. Tibetan sky iron, Jackaby had called it, enchanted by some manner of sorcery. I did not fully understand the artifact, but I could not deny its effectiveness. So long as the binding held fast, the nixie could take no action against her captor’s will. This did nothing to improve her temperament, but it did render her more or less benign.

  “I’m thirsty,” she grumbled.

  “There are a couple of grapes on the side of the plate. You can suck on those.”

  “Just a small glass of—”

  “No.” I had seen what Morwen could do with a little water.

  “What’s the matter? Afraid of little old me?” she jeered.

  “Mortified,” I replied. “Imagine what the neighbors would think if they looked under our house and found you skittering about down here. It would be almost as shameful as finding mice in the walls or mold in the attic.”

  “It’s not your neighbors you should worry about finding me here,” she spat as I turned to go. “The council is coming for me. My father is coming for me!”

  “Well then.” I stepped back up into the daylight, hoping that I sounded as dauntless as I wasn’t. “I guess you had better finish up those onions before he arrives.” As I clicked shut the heavy iron padlock, I could hear her muffled curses through the door.

  Of course I was afraid. Morwen’s unsettling intrusion into our home had been nothing compared to her father’s trespasses. The self-proclaimed king of the earth and the otherworld had been inside my head. He had controlled me. It made my skin crawl to think of it—and it was far from over. “The age of man has ended,” he had promised. His specific intentions were inscrutable—but not a week passed during which we did not receive word of another unnatural episode or creepy creature emerging from the alleyways of New Fiddleham, and all of the threads led back to the Dire Council and their cryptic king.

  For all the signs and portents, the king and his council might as well have been whispers in the wind. I found myself obsessing fruitlessly, lying awake at night, staring at the cracking plaster of my ceiling until the morning light crept through my window.

  I took a deep breath and straightened my skirts as I crossed the garden. The king had trespassed in my mind, but I refused to let him take up permanent residence there. There was still work to be done. I trod around the side of the house, busying my mind with more productive tasks.

  Jackaby’s weathered wooden fence was inscribed all around with protective words and symbols, and the branches of his trees were hung with feathers and cords tied in intricate knots. The old willow’s foliage had faded from bright green to pale gold in the past week, and leaves spun around me as I untangled a few of the wards that hung from their branches. I dusted off s
tone totems and pulled stray twigs out of the ring of salt that ran along the foundation of the house. As I watered the fragrant rosemary and the budding yellow witch hazel, I gazed up at the brickwork, noting the myriad symbols hiding in the masonry like sly old friends. There, by the eaves, was the eye of Ra, there, the hammer of Thor, and there, the seal of Solomon. I brushed my palm over a faded shamrock relief as I rounded the front of the house.

  Hanging over the entry was the same wrought iron sign that had greeted me so many months ago when I first came trudging up the icy cobblestones of Augur Lane in that cold January of 1892.

  investigative services

  private detection & consultations:

  unexplained phenomena our specialty

  Beneath this stood the detective himself, hammering in the final nail to rehang his horseshoe door knocker. The new door was a bit wider and sturdier than its predecessor, but it was already painted the same brilliant red. Built into the frame above it was a new narrow window as well—a single pane of frosted glass, into which were etched the words:

  r. f. jackaby

  private detective

  “Good morning, Mr. Jackaby,” I said. “The new entryway looks lovely.”

  “Contextual relevancy,” he said, although the words had to wend their way through a mouthful of spare tacks.

  “Come again?”

  He spat the nails into his hand. “The transom. Here, come closer.”

  I stepped up to the landing, and the frosted glass clouded over momentarily, clearing just as quickly to reveal a revised set of words:

  r. f. jackaby

  mentor & employer

  “That’s incredible!” I said.

  “Bit of a special order. The limited clairvoyant effect is achieved through a psychic crystal suffusion in the glass. It senses the needs and expectations of each caller and generates a respective title. Come, see it from the inside.”

  I followed him in. The letters should have been reversed, but the transom read the same from within as it did from without.

  “The house now knows what our potential clients really think of my services before we even open the door,” he said. “I thought that might be a convenient forewarning, given a few of our most recent visitors.”

  “A wise precaution.”

  “Yes. I took the liberty of having them enchant it with a glamour-inhibitor charm, as well. I have no trouble telling who is what and what is who, but I thought you might appreciate knowing who you’re dealing with. Now then, speaking of visitors,” he said, depositing his hammer and spare nails casually into a drawer marked Receipts, “have you fed our unwilling guest this morning?”

  “Yes, sir. And I locked up tight behind myself.”

  “Good. Checked the exterior wards?”

  “Just now, sir.”

  “It’s Tuesday. Be sure you leave a saucer of honeyed milk out for the pixies.”

  “Wednesday, sir. And I already put out fresh strawberries for the sprites.”

  Jackaby gave a satisfied nod. “Excellent. Get yourself ready, then. We leave within the hour.”

  “Yes, sir. Where are we going today?”

  “Seeley’s Square, and from there through the veil to see a king about a council.”

  “The king of the Annwyn?” My breath caught in my throat. A pair of blood red eyes burned in my memory. “Sir, we aren’t remotely prepared yet!”

  “What?” Jackaby said. “Oh, not that king. There are as many kings in the otherworld as there are kings on earth. As many bad kings and as many good, but there has never been one king to rule them all, in spite of what that nasty nixie’s father says. No, no. It has taken some time, but I finally arranged a meeting with a king of a very different sort. If there is anyone in the Annwyn with a vested interest in protecting the barrier between that world and this one, it is the Fair King, Arawn. His emissaries will meet us at noon precisely to escort us through the veil-gate.”

  “I suppose at this point I shouldn’t be surprised to learn you’re friends with the magical king of the good fairies,” I said. I occasionally wondered if I would ever wake up from my bizarre life in New Fiddleham to find I had really just dozed off on a pile of storybooks and scientific journals, and that I was back home in Portchester, still in England, where life made sense and fairy tales were fiction.

  “Friends is not necessarily the term I would use,” said Jackaby. “I am in Lord Arawn’s debt. He presented me with the dossier of the Seer when I was a boy, just as he had presented it to the Seer before me. I would know nothing of the history of my gifts if it were not for—” Jackaby froze and looked up at the open door.

  I followed his gaze to see a white-haired old man stumbling up to the landing panting heavily, his skin wan. He reached out to steady himself on the door frame, but missed, collapsing to his knees on the threshold.

  Above him, the cloudy glass of the transom window was already clearing.

  R. F. Jackaby

  Desperate last resort

  Chapter Two

  The devil’s come for me,” the old man wheezed. “He’s come for me at last!”

  Jackaby knelt beside him, offering him a steady hand. “There are no devils here,” he said. “Catch your breath a moment. That’s it.” His eyes narrowed. “Hold on, now—you’re familiar.”

  “We have met, Detective,” the man croaked. “The church—” But he collapsed into a fit of dry coughs.

  Recognition dawned and Jackaby cocked his head, startled. “My word! It’s Gustaf, isn’t it? No, Grossman? Grafton!” The old man nodded weakly. “Father Grafton. Yes. Good God, you’ve grown old!”

  “Sir,” I chided.

  “Miss Rook, allow me to introduce Father Grafton. We last met—what was it—three years ago? When Douglas and I were investigating a rather grisly series of killings on the outskirts of town.”

  “Not my doing,” Grafton managed. “The killings.”

  “No,” confirmed Jackaby. “The pastor was doing everything in his power to prevent any further harm from befalling his parishioners. Made a good show of it, too. Of course, he was at least thirty years younger then.” He whipped back to the old man. “Three decades in just three years? Have you been meddling with the occult? You know firsthand how dangerous that is! I’ll have you know Douglas hasn’t been the same since he left that church of yours!”

  “Put the fear in him, did it?”

  “A bit. Mostly it turned him into an aquatic bird.”

  “D-dim hud.” The man’s eyes seemed to be having trouble focusing. He shook his head, blinking. “No magic. Not anymore.” A patch of wispy white hair fell from his head and drifted to the floorboards.

  Jackaby peered intensely at Father Grafton. “You’re getting older by the second!”

  Grafton nodded weakly.

  “I don’t understand.” Jackaby peered into Grafton’s ear and then took a sniff of his wispy hair. “I don’t see any sign of a curse, no traces of paranormal poisons, no visible enchantments. Who did this to you?”

  “Time,” Grafton rasped. “Not much time.” Wrinkles cut across the man’s face like scars and milky white cataracts formed in his eyes. His shoulders shook. “Harfau o Hafgan,” he breathed.

  “Harfau o Hafgan? What does that mean? Is that Welsh?”

  “Mae’r coron, waywffon, a darian,” Grafton mumbled, his head drooping with each word—and then he lurched up so suddenly it made me jump. He clutched Jackaby’s arm. “The crown, the spear, the shield. You cannot let him collect them. He has already taken the crown. The spear . . . it was destroyed, but I fear it has been remade. The shield . . . the shield . . .” He was gasping with each breath, his whole body shuddering. His eyes were wide and wild. “He trusted me. Now I have to trust you. The shield is in the Bible. The Bible of the zealot.”

  “The shield is in a Bible?�
�� said Jackaby. “What Bible? Whose? Are you the zealot?”

  “Not much time. The shield. In the Bible. You must stop—stop—stopiwch y brenin.” Father Grafton crumpled to the floor, and with one last rattling breath, he was still.

  Jackaby delicately turned him over. Grafton’s skin had gone as dry as parchment. The old man’s body looked as though he had been mummified. I put a hand over my mouth.

  “Is he—” I whispered.

  “Quite,” said Jackaby.

  “How?” I gulped.

  “It doesn’t make sense.” Jackaby scowled.

  He stood and began to pace at Father Grafton’s head.

  “He wasn’t charmed or hexed. There was a somewhat ethereal aura about him, but no more than I might expect from a man of the cloth. There’s nothing about him that should have caused this! It’s as though he was just taken by a sudden and inexplicable bout of old age. If I had not seen it happen—if I had only stumbled across him—I would say this was the corpse of a man who died decades ago of natural causes.”

  “What about that was natural?” I asked.

  Jackaby shook his head, vexed. “Did you catch everything he said?” he asked.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Jot it all down for our records, then. It seems we have been hired for another case, Miss Rook, and the good father has already paid us with his life.”

  We managed to maneuver the body inside before it could draw attention from the neighbors. I would like to say it was the first body that Jackaby and I had ever deposited on the old wooden bench in our foyer, or that it would be the last, but neither would be true.

  “What should we do with him now?” I asked.

  “I have a decent coffin in the attic that should suit the gentleman well enough. I’ll just need to find somewhere else to store my encyclopedias.” Jackaby paced the threadbare carpet. “We should search his church immediately. It’s a smallish parish on the outskirts of the city. He said the shield was in a Bible. Whatever the shield is, I expect we’ll find it there—and if the devil really is after Father Grafton, then I’d rather find it before he does.”