Beastly Bones Page 2

  The big mountain of a man lumbered back toward the leather shop and popped inside, still clutching the struggling fish. My shirt dripped, and crystal shards tinkled under my feet as I turned to face my employer. “Mr. Jackaby, I—”

  He regarded me sternly.

  “I am so sorry,” I said.

  His eyes remained fixed on mine, and his eyebrows rose a fraction.

  “I am so, so, so sorry.”

  He sighed. “The number of sos in your apology is irrelevant. Miss Rook, what do you see when you look at these creatures?” He held the box toward me, and a little furry face peeped out, inquisitively.

  “I see . . . a kitten.”

  “Would you like to know what I see?”

  I nodded. Jackaby was not an ordinary detective. The cases he tracked were not the sort an ordinary investigator could unravel, but fantastic pursuits, delving ever beyond the pale. What made Jackaby so good at uncovering the perplexing and paranormal—more than his extensive library of the occult, more than his vast knowledge of the obscure—was that Jackaby was perplexing and paranormal himself. Where you or I could observe only the surface, Jackaby perceived a deeper reality. He said this made him “the Seer”—though not like any old tarot reader or charlatan with a crystal ball. Jackaby saw the truth behind every thing and every person.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  “I see untempered chaotic potential—they’re positively bubbling with it. It doesn’t rest above their skin like an ordinary aura. It pops and fizzes and rolls. They are adorable at present, and relatively docile for now, but with the capacity for untold destruction. Darwin discovered the little chameleomorphs for the first time on the island of Mauritius. You won’t find them in any grammar school textbook, but he did. There was a bird that used to live there as well—until something began to prey upon it. Dutch sailors dubbed them walghvogels, the ‘loathsome birds.’ According to a few very old accounts, including a secret dossier compiled by Darwin himself, they were witnessed devouring their own kind. Within half a century of their discovery, the birds had been eradicated. You may know them better by their more common name, the dodo.”

  “You think cats are going to go the way of the dodo if I accidentally let one of these chameleon-morph things escape?”

  “They appear as cats today, but as you have seen, they could be anything tomorrow. My point is simply that the introduction of a foreign predator, particularly one with such intense latent potential as this, could be devastating to the local ecosystem.”

  The big hairy man emerged from the leather shop, and our discussion came to an end. “Heyo, Jackaby! You owe that fella inside a new mop bucket. Don’t worry, I gave it a good rinse.” He held out a dented tin bucket, and I stepped up and accepted it graciously. The fish spun within it, cramped again, but safe and unharmed. “And who would you be, then, little lady?”

  “Abigail Rook, sir. I really can’t thank you enough.”

  “Whoo—a Brit! Watch out, Jackaby. You might accidentally pick up a little class workin’ with this one. The name’s Hank Hudson, Miss Rook.”

  He offered a hand and I shook it. Clad in a thick brown duster with wide lapels and boots that looked fit to cross the continent, the man was a mountain of worn leather, and he smelled like horses and firewood. He was like the rugged, American mountain men I had read about as a little girl, only Davy Crockett had never looked so massive in the pages of my magazines.

  “Mr. Hudson is a skilled trapper and a cherished associate of mine, Miss Rook. How long have you been back in New Fiddleham, my friend?” Jackaby braced the box of kittens on his hip and held out his own hand, but Hank Hudson pulled him into a quick hug, instead, giving Jackaby a hearty slap on the back while my employer awkwardly struggled not to drop the box.

  “Only here on a quick stop. Spent a year out in Oklahoma Territory, tradin’ with the Cherokee. There’s good huntin’ out there, but I got that cabin in Gad’s Valley to tend to. Once I’ve unloaded some goods an’ restocked, I’ll be headed back down that way. I’m glad I caught ya. I picked up some good herbs from the traders you might be interested in. Oh—hey, and I also got me a Cherokee medicine wheel you might take a shine to. You gonna be in this evening?”

  “Yes, indeed. I’m still up on Augur Lane. Do you remember the house?”

  “Sure enough—hard to forget a haunt like that.” Mr. Hudson gave Jackaby a wink, which made me wonder if he knew the full details of the odd house on Augur Lane. “See you folks later, then. A pleasure meetin’ ya, little lady.”

  He tipped his fur cap and tromped off down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Jackaby and I resumed our trek back to Augur Lane. I took great care to watch my step and keep the bucket level. I hoped Jackaby might explain how he had come to know the trapper, but my employer said nothing. I found it hard to read from his expression if he was still miffed at me for my bungling, or if this was just his usual lack of social tact.

  There was a lot about Jackaby I found difficult to read. He was so blunt and direct all the time that it became easy to lose sight of the fact that I knew almost nothing about my employer. I had noticed, for instance, that Mr. Hudson had referred to him by his initials, when virtually every other person we’d met called him only “Jackaby.”

  “What does ‘R. F.’ stand for?” I asked as we crossed through the business district, nearing Augur Lane.

  He turned his head and regarded me for a few seconds before responding. “In my line of work, investigating eldritch events and all manner of magical matters, it behooves one to maintain certain safeguards of a supernatural nature.”

  “You mean, like the garlic and lavender you put all around the property line?”

  “It isn’t lavender; it’s Irish white heather—but yes, like that,” he replied. “Names have power. To purveyors of certain very old, very dark arts, a name, willingly surrendered, is tantamount to strings on a marionette. I choose to keep my own name closely guarded.”

  “I promise not to turn you into an evil puppet,” I said. “I don’t know any dark arts, anyhow. I don’t even know any card tricks.”

  “Reassuring though that is, I think I’ll keep it to myself all the same. It isn’t you I’m worried about, Miss Rook,” he added, “but you will find my resolve on the matter absolute. I’ve not even shared my full name with Jenny, and she is not only exceptionally reliable but also dead.”

  Jenny Cavanaugh was one of those peculiar details about the house on Augur Lane. The property had once been hers—and she had stayed on even after her untimely and mysterious demise. My employer raised no complaint, and the ghostly Jenny had simply become a regular member of the household. In spite of her grim history, Jenny was the most pleasant specter a person could ever hope to meet. She had turned out to be a closer confidante and far less of a curiosity than my enigmatic employer.

  “May I guess?” I said.

  Jackaby rolled his eyes. “You may do whatever you like. It will have no bearing on my decision.”

  “Is it . . . Richard Frederic?”

  “No, and I am not going to—”

  “Russell Francis?”

  “No. You’re being—”

  “Rumpelstiltskin Finnegan?”

  Jackaby sighed. “Yes, Miss Rook. Rumpelstiltskin. You’ve found me out. I am the devious imp of the fairy tales.”

  “It wouldn’t be the strangest thing you’ve told me since I started working for you.”

  Chapter Three

  Upon our return to the house on Augur Lane, Jackaby sealed himself alone in his laboratory. I had offered to help him manage the furry little chameleomorphs, but he shooed me out with a waggle of his hand and kicked the door shut behind me. I shuffled down the crooked hallway and slumped to my desk in the foyer, resolving to throw myself back into my daily work. The piles of Jackaby’s wrinkled receipts and old case files were still in sore need of organizing, but as the afternoon stretched on, my mind refused to focus.

  I had only recently managed
to convince my employer that I was not some porcelain vase that needed to be protected. I was not inclined, now, to accept a role as the bull in his china shop, either. Admittedly, the fish fiasco was not my finest moment, but I could handle myself in the field. I could. I stuffed another long-forgotten receipt into the dusty filing cabinet behind me and scowled. Nothing set my skin to itching quite like feeling useless.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t understand my employer’s concern. My post as assistant to the foremost and perhaps only detective of the supernatural was wondrous in so many ways—but I couldn’t deny that it was also dangerous. Jackaby’s mad laboratory looked as though it might be equipped to raise Frankenstein’s creature, and the library housed menacing shadows that crept across the floor and reached for my heels if I trod too close to the Dangerous Documents section. All around me sat exotic animal skulls and angry statues of foreign gods. Even the innocuous-looking drab green frog in the terrarium beside me—Jackaby called him Ogden—had a habit of venting a noxious stench from his eyeballs when he felt threatened. Such was life with my employer, a medley of madness and menace, and all this within the walls of the house.

  During my very first foray into actual fieldwork, I had nearly gotten myself killed, facing off against a murderous villain. Like a careless damsel from one of my storybooks, I had failed to heed the warnings and bumbled directly into mortal danger. I hated to admit it, but if it hadn’t been for Jackaby’s intervention, I would almost certainly be dead, and I wouldn’t be the only one.

  “Does it still hurt?” came a gentle voice, startling me back to the present.

  Jenny Cavanaugh had drifted into the room, her silvery feet hovering just above the floorboards, and her translucent hair drifting gently behind her. My hand had risen unconsciously to brush the small scar on my chest, a memento of that nearly fatal night, and I quickly let it drop.

  “No, I’m fine. Just thinking.”

  “Good thoughts or bad?” she asked. Her movements were fluid and graceful as she came to rest, leaning on the corner of the desk. Since my arrival in New Fiddleham, Jenny had become my closest and dearest friend. Immaterial though she was, her counsel had always been solid and sound.

  “I botched an assignment today.”

  “Any casualties?”

  “Just a crystal punch bowl—and very nearly a fish that isn’t a fish.”

  She raised an opalescent eyebrow.

  “It was a Jackaby case,” I said, and slumped my head down on the cluttered desk.

  Jenny nodded. “Sounds about right, then. Don’t worry about Jackaby. He’ll come around. That man has botched plenty of assignments without your help.”

  “I know. It isn’t even really Jackaby—it’s just . . .” I pushed my hair out of my face and slumped back on the chair. “It’s everyone. It’s the ones who said I couldn’t or I shouldn’t. My parents. Myself, mostly. In a strange way, I’m glad that Jackaby is disappointed. Don’t tell him I said so, but it’s nice to have somebody actually expect something of you for once. Still, it makes it all the harder to let go of the regrets.”

  Jenny’s eyes drifted down to her translucent hand. “I do understand,” she said quietly. “It’s refreshing to be treated as an equal. It’s one of the reasons I said yes, all those years ago.” The ghost’s engagement ring was a slim band, a spectral hint of silver nearly lost in her own silvery complexion. I held my breath as she touched the metal delicately. Jenny so rarely spoke about the years before her death. “Hard as it may be to imagine,” she said, looking up, “I have a few regrets of my own.”

  I swallowed. “Jenny . . .”

  Her face lightened, and she smiled at me softly. “Let them go, Abigail. Leave the past to us ghosts and focus on where you’re going next. Besides, Jackaby is great with spotting paranormal stuff, but you know he’s positively lost when it comes to normal. If you want to impress him, don’t think about your weak spots—think about his. What did he miss?”

  I shrugged. “This was a pretty simple case—or as simple as his cases are. The whole thing only took a few minutes. He spotted the creature right away—and a whole brood of its kittens.”

  “I thought it was a fish.”

  “They’re fishy kittens. Long story. You know Jackaby’s not the sort to bring home an ordinary pet.” I paused. A timid thought peered from around a corner at the back of my mind. “But Mrs. Beaumont is precisely the sort,” I said. “And she seemed to think that she had.”

  “Why, Abigail, are you being clever right here in front of me?” Jenny teased.

  “Not clever—just wondering,” I said. “Jackaby said they’re rare and they’re not indigenous. So, where did Mrs. Wiggles come from?”

  “Oh, look at you, all inquisitive and focused.” She smiled affectionately. “I’m beginning to think you and Jackaby are cut from two ends of the same cloth.”

  Before I could respond, three loud knocks issued from the front door, and I found myself suddenly alone in the room. I said a quiet thank-you to the space where Jenny had been, and I rose to receive our visitor.

  Chapter Four

  I glanced out the window as I crossed the room. Parked on the street outside was a sturdy-looking coach with two muscular horses yoked at the front. Unlike the sleek black carriages and hansom cabs one normally saw about town, this wooden cart was somewhere between a modern mail coach and the sort of covered wagon the pioneers all rode in my magazines of the Wild West. It looked delightfully rugged and out of place against the gray buildings of the business district.

  It was no surprise, then, that Hank Hudson’s bushy beard and broad grin greeted me when I opened the door. “Mr. Hudson! How lovely to see you again.”

  “Aw, Hank will do just fine, little lady.”

  “Do come in. I’ll let Jackaby know you’ve arrived.”

  I hung Hudson’s coat beside the door, and tried not to notice the sharp hatchet hanging from one side of his belt or the long bowie knife strapped to the other. He had picked up a paper from a newsboy on the way over, and he waggled it as I escorted him down the winding hallway.

  “Electric streetlights, here in New Fiddleham! Can you believe it? Within the year—at least accordin’ to the papers. You can tell that mayor fella’s up for reelection. They’ve got ’em up in Seeley’s Square already. Hah! I can still remember when they were puttin’ in the gas lines!”

  I nodded. “Commissioner Marlowe’s got them talking about running telephone wires out to the surrounding cities as well.”

  Hank shook his head in astonishment and whistled. “It’s a helluva world. Still, I’ll take stars in the sky and the dirt beneath my feet any day. I’m glad Gad’s Valley’s a little behind the times. I’m a little behind the times, myself, I guess.”

  We reached the end of the hallway, and I knocked gently on the laboratory door. “Just to caution you,” I whispered. “Mr. Jackaby is in slightly bad humor—”

  The door burst open and my employer stood before us, holding a long rod with a half-molten nub of metal at the tip. A pair of brass goggles had been pushed up on his head, forcing his already unruly hair upward in uneven tufts. He smiled broadly and threw his hands in the air enthusiastically, catching the door frame with a glancing blow from the metal rod. “Hudson! Auspicious timing. Come in, come in!”

  The usual madness of the chamber was in full force, with racks of beakers and test tubes filled with liquids of various hues, a pinging copper boiler with its pipes reaching out like spider’s legs, and an odd, lingering aroma of strawberries and sulfur. Strewn across every available surface were panels of thick glass and strips of metal. Jackaby had popped one side off a stout terrarium and had extended the glass box by adding a few new walls. In a corner sat the dented bucket and the box from this morning, and a soft mewling told me the kittens were still inside.

  Jackaby crossed the room and flicked off the hot blue flame on a Bunsen burner, dropping the metal rod beside it. “You’ve put together more animal enclosures than I have,” he said.
“Do you think you could assist me in constructing a somewhat larger vivarium? I could certainly use another pair of hands on the soldering.”

  Mr. Hudson dropped his newspaper on the table and strode happily over to the project, inspecting the freshly tacked joints.

  “You could have called me in, sir,” I said. “I am here to assist—and I’m good for a lot more than sorting papers. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about an angle on our latest case.”

  “It isn’t personal, Miss Rook. Hudson and I have simply worked together on similar projects in the past. We all have our areas of expertise, and penning animals happens to be one of his. The beasts he hunts are generally still alive.”

  Mr. Hudson looked up from the glass box. “Not really sportin’ to hunt the dead ones, is it?”

  “I believe my employer is referring to hunting fossils—which is actually quite a challenge. The paleontologist’s prey might not be up and running, but they do have a tendency to scatter themselves about the landscape and lodge bits of themselves in solid rock.”

  “Dinosaurs, huh? Bet you’re just as excited as a badger in a beehive about that find down in the valley, then.”

  “What find? They’ve found fossils?” I asked.

  Hudson jabbed a finger at the newspaper on the table. “Yup. Gad’s Valley. Farmer dug ’em up when he was cuttin’ into the hillside. The place ain’t but a mile or two from my cabin. I’ve known Hugo Brisbee since way back. A decent rancher, but that place seems like it’s always one bad crop away from broke. He’s the one who found the bones. Apparently he’s got to keep a closer eye on ’em, though. Here, have a look fer yourself.”

  I leafed through the paper until I found the article. The story was just as the trapper said. Written by one Nellie Fuller, it read as follows: