The Dire King Read online

  “Who am I bailing out?”

  “Everyone.”

  The carriage bumped along the paving stones for a silent stretch. “By everyone, you mean . . . ?”

  “It is a rather large jar of banknotes,” said Jackaby.

  “Right,” came Miss Lee’s voice at length. “You’re the boss.”

  “Sir,” I said. “Are we sure about that? I mean, obviously the mayor has been wildly reckless, but you said yourself that those cells were loaded with nonhuman species. This is why we were there to talk to Marlowe in the first place, isn’t it? Their world colliding with ours, and all the dangers that come with that? Wouldn’t it be wiser to at least take their release on a case-by-case basis?”

  “No,” Jackaby grunted. “I refuse to treat them all like suspects. That legitimizes everything Spade is doing. It is a greater travesty by far to see the innocent punished than to watch the guilty go free.”

  “It’s just a funny sort of situation, sir. The entire reason we were there today was to try to convince Marlowe that we need to be wary of the otherworld. It seems as though we left doing just the opposite. Are you at all worried? That some of them might be dangerous?”

  “Oh, some of them are certainly dangerous. That gnomish fellow, for instance. Snorri. He used to run an illegal cockatrice fight out behind Chandler’s Market. I’ve shut him down half a dozen times. He’s done more than enough by now to deserve a hundred nights in lockup. That doesn’t make it right. Not like this. We cannot make the world less awful by being more so ourselves.”

  “We do it by the book, then?”

  “Precisely. By the book. Yes. Except that there isn’t a book.”

  “Right. We do it by a vague but nevertheless tenacious commitment to the book that there isn’t.”

  “That’s why I like you, Miss Rook—you catch on to the subtle nuances so quickly.”

  Shortly afterward, with a tinkle of old liniment bottles, Miss Lee pulled the coach up to the curb in front of 926 Augur Lane. New Fiddleham was a much smaller city when one was in possession of a carriage.

  As we trod up the front walk, Jackaby let out a thoughtful “Huh.” I followed his gaze to the transom ahead of us. It read, in clean, frosty letters:

  r. f. jackaby:

  exquisite frustration

  “Are you feeling exquisitely frustrated of late, Miss Rook?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t put it as such, sir,” I said. “I don’t think that one’s for me.”

  Jenny materialized between Jackaby and the bright red door. “Ah,” said Jackaby. “Good afternoon, Miss Cavanaugh.”

  “I couldn’t find it,” Jenny said without preamble as we mounted the steps.

  “What? Right—the Bible. It’s fine. I’ll see to it myself. That church is a long way off. It was quite ambitious for you to even consider the trip. I shouldn’t reasonably have expected as much of you.”

  “I made it to the church just fine, thank you very much for your vote of confidence. Do you have any idea how many Bibles and psalm books and hymnals there are in a parish that size? You said to look for a shield, but none of them had anything obvious like that. If the shield is somehow inside one of them, it could be any of them.”

  “That’s all right, you did your—” Jackaby began.

  “. . . So I just brought all of them.”

  The door swung open to reveal a small hillside of books heaped on the front desk.

  “Hrm.” Jackaby grunted. He stepped inside and began to dig through the stack, picking up battered old books and dropping them back onto the heap.

  “Thank you, Miss Cavanaugh,” Jenny intoned behind him. “It was nothing, really,” she replied to herself. “I underestimated you, Miss Cavanaugh. Oh, I was just happy to help. You are special and precious to me, Miss Cavanaugh. Please now, Mr. Jackaby, you’re simply too much.”

  Jackaby paid her dialogue no mind, and appeared to have forgotten that anyone else was in the room at all.

  “I’ll just go fetch that bail money for Miss Lee, shall I?” I suggested, and excused myself.

  I nipped down the hall to the office, grabbed the jar, and brought it outside. It contained upward of three hundred dollars in bills of varying sizes and clinked merrily with the handful of coins thrown in for good measure. Miss Lee’s eyes widened as I passed it up to her. “How often does Mr. Jackaby need to make bail?”

  “It comes up more frequently than you’d think,” I said. “Thank you, by the way. I don’t imagine most drivers get asked to go bailing out crowds of almost-humans from lockup in their first week on the job.”

  Miss Lee tucked the jar into a little compartment in her seat and turned back to me. “You know our boss is crazy, right?” she said.

  “I picked up on that fairly quickly, too, yes.”

  “Well.” She shrugged. “If a crazy man is the only man in this town who wants to give me honest labor, does that say something about me, about the man, or about this town? Maybe all three? Whichever it is, I’m not about to turn my nose up at the job. Besides, even if it’s crazy, it’s good work.”

  I nodded. “He might not have both oars in the water, but his course is sound.”

  We said our good-byes. The Duke neighed in annoyance as Lydia Lee coaxed him into motion, but soon she was on her way.

  Jackaby was still engrossed in his examination when I came back inside. “Books. Books. Just books,” he was muttering. Jenny was hovering by the window. I joined her.

  “How did you manage it, by the way?” I asked. “All those Bibles, all across town? It is a remarkable feat.”

  “It looks more impressive than it is,” she said, still not meeting my eyes. “I borrowed Jackaby’s special satchel, the one that holds anything. The whole pile took just one trip. The real trick was keeping myself solid all the way home. That’s the bit I’m really proud of—” She turned to face me. “Oh, Abigail, it was amazing. People saw me!”

  “People saw you?”

  “I was in disguise, of course. I wore my long coat and gloves, and I had that floppy white hat on, so they didn’t see much, but still—people saw me and they didn’t gasp or make a scene. Someone even mumbled Good day to me as I was crossing the footbridge! It was exhilarating! I have never been so excited to have somebody see me—actually see me—and not care at all!” She glanced at Jackaby. “Although you would think I would be used to it by now.”

  “Jenny, that is absolutely amazing!” I said.

  “It is, isn’t it?” she said wistfully. “Just a little bit, at least? Oh, Abigail, I’m exhausted, I’m not ashamed to tell you. I had planned on setting my spoils out in nice triumphant rows when I got back, but it was all I could do to hold myself intact by then. Solidity is sort of like flexing a muscle, except the muscle is in your mind, and your mind is really just an abstract concept. I was basically flexing my entire body into existence the whole way home. But did it merit so much as a Good job, Jenny from that infuriating man?”

  Jackaby surfaced from his perusal and looked up at last. His cloud gray eyes found focus on Jenny. From his expression, I couldn’t tell if he had been following our conversation or not. “Completely unexceptional,” he said. “Nothing at all in this batch. We will need to scrutinize them more closely, of course, just to be sure. Oh, and Miss Cavanaugh . . .”

  She raised an eyebrow skeptically.

  “You performed . . . quite adequately,” he said, “despite expectations.”

  Jenny opened her mouth to reply, but then closed it again. Her face fluttered through a series of potential reactions. Finally she just threw up her hands and vanished from sight with a muffled whuph of air closing into the space where she suddenly wasn’t.

  “What in heaven’s name was all that?” said Jackaby.

  “Exquisite frustration, I believe, sir.”

  “Ah. Right.” He slumped into t
he desk chair and began to fidget absently with the spine of one of the Bibles. “Miss Cavanaugh is a singular and exceptional spirit, you know.”

  “Only a suggestion, sir, but that is precisely the sort of thing you might consider saying when she is still present and corporeal.”

  “I worry about her.”

  “Sir?”

  “I have studied ghosts, Miss Rook. I’ve studied ghasts and geists, spirits and spooks, and until recently I believed that I had begun to fathom the science of specters. I thought I understood how ghosts work.”

  “I think there may be a few things about this one you’re still missing.”

  “More than a few,” he admitted.

  “So, ghosting is a science?”

  “Everything is a science. Science is just paying attention and sorting out the rules already in place. There are rules governing the undead, to be certain. What worries me is that Miss Cavanaugh is no longer following them.”

  “She’s just”—I searched for the right word—“growing.”

  “She is, and that’s just it. Growth isn’t how ghosts work. Dead things tend to do the opposite.”

  “That’s good, though, isn’t it?”

  “It is good beyond anything I have ever dared wish for Miss Cavanaugh. Against all odds, she has a life, of a sort. A strange, impossible, beautiful, heartbreaking, terrifying life.”

  “What’s so terrifying about it?”

  “It is a life that should not be possible,” he said. “It is a fragile ornament hanging from a tenuous thread. She subsists on borrowed moments, and they might run out at any moment.”

  “Of course they will, in the end. For all of us. That’s what life is.”

  Jackaby eyed me. “I see my cheery disposition is rubbing off on you.”

  “Try to be happy for her, sir,” I said. “And, if I may be so bold, stop keeping her at arm’s length while you’re at it. She’s not a bauble you can wrap in silk and leave on the top shelf. She’s chosen life. You can choose it with her.”

  “I’m not keeping her at arm’s length!” Jackaby huffed.

  “You performed quite adequately, despite expectations,” I recited.

  “She did. That was a compliment.” Jackaby frowned. “It is possible that I do not know how to talk to Jenny.”

  “Possible?”

  “Probable.”

  “We’ll work on it, sir.”

  There came a firm rap at the door, and I glanced up to see the frosted window form the words:

  r. f. jackaby:

  consultant & colleague

  “It’s Charlie,” Jackaby said, his gaze penetrating the door. “Come in, Mr. Barker!” My heartbeat quickened. As the door swung open, I felt a flutter, and I privately admonished myself for being so childishly delighted just to see him. Emotions and foolish behavior are much easier to manage when they are someone else’s.

  Charlie was dressed in plainclothes; his recent assignments for Commissioner Marlowe had been strictly off the record. He wore a starched white shirt and a chestnut vest over pressed slacks and simple leather brogues.

  “Miss Rook!” His chocolate brown eyes brightened as he saw me, and he crossed the room at once to sweep me into a warm embrace. I felt his chest rise and fall. I could hear his heartbeat. He smelled like cedar.

  “That will suffice,” Jackaby grumbled loudly from behind me. “Yes, yes. You are young and your love is a hot biscuit and other abysmally romantic metaphors, I’m sure. You do recall that you saw each other yesterday?”

  Charlie pulled away but paused to brush a hand gently across my neck. His smile was tired but gratified. I straightened and tried to will the flush out of my cheeks. “Normal people do occasionally express fondness for one another.”

  “Yes, fine. I’m familiar with the concept,” he groused. “It’s the bubbly auras and fluttering eyelashes that really test one’s limits.”

  “My eyelashes do not flutter,” I said.

  “Who said I was talking about your eyelashes? Charlie has eyelashes.”

  “I apologize, Mr. Jackaby, for any undue fluttering on my part,” Charlie said diplomatically. “I could use a little fondness right now. My day has been, on the whole, a deeply unsavory experience.”

  “Life, as Miss Rook and I were just discussing, is an unsavory experience.”

  “It doesn’t always have to be,” I countered.

  “What are all these?” Charlie plucked a book of psalms from the unruly pile on the desk. “Have you two robbed a church since I left this morning?”

  “No,” said Jackaby. “Not personally. We had to delegate that task. Pilfering parish property has fallen to Miss Cavanaugh this week.”

  Charlie rubbed his neck as he dropped the book back on the stack. “Because if there’s one thing New Fiddleham needs right now, it’s a bit more paranormal petty crime.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” I submitted, “the pastor more or less asked us to. He was rather insistent that we should find something in one of his Bibles.”

  “You’re certain he won’t go storming into the station house tomorrow to tell the duty officer how he’s been robbed by a ghost?”

  I swallowed.

  “Not unless he is one himself,” said Jackaby. “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Quite dead. He’s up in the attic if you would like to check for yourself.”

  “Why do you have a dead preacher in your attic?”

  “Because we found it easier to carry him up to the coffin than to maneuver it down to him.”

  Charlie looked suddenly very tired.

  “Enough about our morning,” I said. “You had a difficult patch yourself?”

  “Yes. I have a new assignment,” Charlie said. “It is not pleasant.”

  Jackaby studied Charlie more closely and raised an eyebrow. “We had a tête-à-tête with Mayor Spade just this afternoon. What does he have you doing? Harassing little old ladies? Insulting short people?”

  “Examining a crime scene.”

  “Oh, yes? What merits a crime, then? Possession of pointy ears? Distribution of abnormally chewy dinner rolls? Eye color? Green really is gratuitously showy.”

  “Murder,” Charlie answered, “in a public space. Under very odd circumstances.”

  “Oh.” Jackaby swallowed. “Well, hrm. I suppose that might be worth a follow-up, then. Best of luck sorting it out.”

  “I was actually hoping I might enlist some help to that end,” said Charlie.

  Jackaby shook his head. “As it happens, I am busy saving our entire world and the next one over from colliding together and raining death and destruction upon us all. So, while I appreciate your consideration, and I do love odd, I’m afraid I am otherwise engaged.”

  “Understood, sir,” said Charlie. “But I was actually talking about Miss Rook.”

  Jackaby blinked. “You want my assistant?”

  I blinked. “You want my assistance?”

  Charlie nodded and looked at me a little nervously. He hesitated before elaborating, and when the words came, they came in a rush. “Time and time again, Miss Rook, I have discovered you to be a woman of superlative intellect and intuition. I have discovered myself to be better for your company. It is an imposition, I know—but I want you with me on this case. I always want you with me.”

  In the ensuing silence, I felt the flush of heat rising back to the tips of my ears. “That, Mr. Jackaby,” I managed when I had found my voice, “is how you should talk to Jenny.”

  “Out of the question,” said Jackaby, closing the office door behind him.

  “Honestly, sir,” I said, “I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss.” We had excused ourselves to speak privately for a moment, leaving poor Charlie politely rocking on his heels in the foyer. The office was warm and smelled of
sage and witch hazel, and the desk was littered with bits of twine and herbs where Jackaby had been preparing fresh wards. Douglas had burrowed into a nest of old receipts on the bookshelf behind us and was sound asleep with his bill tucked back into his wing. I had given up trying to get him to stop napping on the paperwork. “You’re the one who told me that I shouldn’t have to choose between profession and romance,” I said.

  “I’m not the one making a fuss. I don’t care the least bit about your little foray into . . . romance.” Jackaby pushed the word out of his mouth as though it had been reluctantly clinging to the back of his throat. “If anything, I am concerned that you are choosing to make precisely the choice that I told you you should not make!”

  “What? Wait a moment. Are you . . . jealous?”

  “Don’t be asinine! I am not jealous! I am merely . . . protective. And perhaps troubled by your lack of fidelity to your position.”

  “That is literally the definition of jealous, sir. Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’m not choosing Charlie over you! I’m not going to suddenly stop being your assistant just because I spend time working on another case!”

  “You might!” he blurted out. He sank down into the chair at his desk. “You just might.”

  “Why are you acting like this?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because things change. Because people change. Because . . . because Charlie Barker is going to propose,” he said. He let his hand drop and looked me in the eyes. “Marriage,” he added. “To you.”

  I blinked.

  “I miss a social cue or two from time to time, but even I’m not thick enough to believe all that was about analyzing bloodstains together. He has the ring. It’s in his breast pocket right now. He’s attached an absurd level of emotional investment to the thing—I’m surprised it hasn’t burned a hole right through the front of his jacket, the way its aura is glowing. He’s nervous about it. He’s going to propose. Soon, I would guess.”

  I blinked.

  The air in front of me wavered like a mirage, and in another moment Jenny had rematerialized. “And if he does,” she said softly, “it will be Abigail’s decision to face, not yours. There are worse fates than to receive a proposal from a handsome young suitor.” She added, turning to me with a grin, “Charlie is a good man.”