The Late Great Wizard Read online

  I tilted my head back at him. “He is coming, isn’t he?”

  “It would appear so. If he gives us a chance, we’ll sound the alarm.” Morty waved me back into my room, and we prepared to wait.

  My room didn’t have a TV, or at least not a working one. It had a metal hanger that had been twisted arduously into a kind of antenna, but nothing helped the animated scramble focus. I turned it off, opting for silence over the tortured fizz of sound. A coffee pot sat on part of the bathroom counter, and it looked well stocked. I could have coffee, decaf, hot chocolate, and tea, but only one cup of tea unless I reused the bag. I also had a mountain of salt and pepper. For what, I couldn’t guess, but there the packets were, stored in with the others. No refrigerator in my room either. I stared at the salt. That might come in useful.

  I took some of my many packets and made a line parallel to the metal runner at the door, wondering if books and movies told any truth at all about the evil-fighting powers of plain salt. Paper bits littered the worn-out carpeting. I picked up as much as I could and it still looked like I’d had a ticker tape parade in there.

  I glanced out the door and up to the sky, seeing only a ragged thread of birds that had almost reached Old Alexandria. Could Malender be far behind?

  I closed my door carefully, lest I worry Brian and Morty next door that I’d gone wandering. One escapee tiptoeing about on the floor was enough. I prepared uneasily to wait.

  Patience is not my strong suit. Evelyn, like a cat, can sit and stare at things no one else can see for hours, without blinking her eyes once. Well, maybe once or twice. I can’t. I fidget. Twiddle my toes. Play with my pockets. Hum out of tune. See if I can teach myself Morse code by batting my eyelashes. And that’s in the first five minutes. If I can manage to sit still, I invariably fall asleep so my brain can at least dream and avoid the tedium.

  I can wait and stalk on the hockey field, though, so I knew I had it in me. Somewhere.

  I must have fallen asleep when suddenly I heard “Avaunt!” and realized Brian had loosed his perdition stick on something. Steptoe’s ammo came willingly into my hand the moment I dipped into my pocket. I had two left and decided they ought to deter the attacker, at least long enough for Morty and Brian to defend themselves.

  Opening my room door stealthily, I leaned out and saw—

  What I saw has no description. Maybe if the Invisible Man had gone and rolled in crude oil, so that he loomed large and dark, sticky and damp, outline blurred and drooling to the ground, that might be the image. Maybe not. Because when it turned to look at me directly—and yes, it caught me staring—I saw inside the cloud an image of the Perfect Man, a being so incredibly beautiful it made me want to weep and pull him free from the cloud of evil enveloping him. He wore leather and lace and looked like a cavalier from ancient days, with a carved and perfect face and brilliant jade green eyes, an oily darkness bubbling about him. Only, he was the cloud. I think.

  Brian’s avaunt had torn away a good chunk of the cloaking on his right flank. Even as I watched, it oozed to fill in, and with every drop that rushed downhill from his shoulder to replace the emptiness on his side I thought of a tiny black bird, pesky but innocent, now distorted into shadow. My stomach clenched.

  He made movements with his hands as if he could swim out of that dark cloud, his teeth bared in a ferocious grin, his body struggling with—what? I had no way of knowing.

  He thrust his head back and yelled, “I must be free!” The cloud around him parted for the faintest of openings and then clapped shut again, and he turned to face me, his handsomeness creased in anger and frustration, brows knotted together, knifelike creases along the sharp planes of his face.

  He billowed toward my direction, one hand with fingers curved in claws. I smiled, hauled out a handful of flash-bangs and threw them right at his feet. He howled in a voice both human and inhuman as they exploded. I heard the crackle of the perdition rod even as I spun away and slammed the door between us.

  He came after me. I could hear and feel the thrust of weight on the landing as he came to the door and pounded on it, trying the latch, twisting the electronic panel off it and bending the handle. He would get the door open. I knew it and stood, heart pounding, by the inner door on my side, torn between watching Malender come in and bolting to Morty and Brian.

  Inky darkness began to slide under the bottom of the door. My threshold didn’t hold it—hadn’t a chance. Malender was coming after me and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it but run. Sweat and fear trickled down my back and dotted my forehead. Even if I ran, I had no guarantee of safety. The other two might make it, they were magical, but I was just me, Tessa Andrews, as mortal as any starling. Like fingers probing the underside of the door panel, the shadow groped over the threshold. I fetched out my last flash-bang, balanced on the ball of my feet, ready to dart through the suite door when—

  The salt stopped it.

  The cloud halted abruptly, sizzling and evaporating as it touched my line of white crystals. I lunged for the coffee maker with its tray of condiments where a mound of salt packets still sat waiting, grabbed them, and tore through the door between our rooms. Whoever had brought them into the hotel had a real thing about hoarding salt packets, but that was to our advantage.

  Both Morty and Brian swung on me as if to attack.

  “Whoa!” I threw up a hand in air, clutching little white packets. “Salt. Salt stops him.” I ripped up a few and doctored the suite doorway before leaping to the main door and slathering its threshold with as much salt as I could manage. Torn paper dotted the carpet like snowflakes gone crazy. Brian joined me in assaulting the hoard of salt packets. The door had been wrestled open, as evidenced by the busted frame and the loose way it now hung, temporarily no longer under siege, but Malender would return to it. And, if the hissing and sizzling of his cloud was any indicator, he’d be madder than a boiled owl.

  “Get away from there! He’s already breached it.”

  “I can tell. But listen.” My hands shook, scattering salt everywhere but where it needed to be as I tore the envelopes open. “It stopped him at my door. It injured him. Just like Brian’s bolt got him.”

  “My rod got him?”

  “A big gash in his right flank. And my flash-bangs dazzled him and he went after me then.” I looked to Brian. “Can you manage another bolt? I think we’ve got him discouraged.”

  Morty grunted. “And that’s about the best we can hope to do at the moment. He’s weakened by the transit and his enemy is not what he thought it would be, so if we can put him into retreat, we might have a few weeks while he recovers to prepare a better offensive.” He muscled the door shut as best he could.

  My voice squeaked. “Weeks?”

  “Sorry, lass, but that’s about the best we can do—Look out!”

  The door catapulted open, knocking me on my keister. I scrambled backward, propelled by raging fear. Malender loomed in the doorway, the miasma about him boiling and crackling as it tried to flow over the doorway with its hastily laid dam of salt.

  He stood out, distinct from that oily fog, and I thought of his shout for freedom but had no more time than that before the attack.

  He shouted three words at Brian, none of which I could translate or grasp, leveling a finger at him. Morty roared back, shielding Brian’s body with his own as Malender shot a bolt barehanded, hitting the Iron Dwarf hard enough to rock him back on his heels. Brian stepped out from behind Morty with a shout of “Avaunt!” and the rod fired away.

  Malender made a noise like a teakettle on high flame, his cloaking shivering and dancing about him as it melted away, leaving him exposed in the flesh. His handsome visage twisted grotesquely as he faced us. He said a single word and disappeared.

  I stayed on the floor. Brian went to one knee, and Morty stood like a pile of bricks for a moment before shaking himself. I realized he must have turned to actual
stone a moment before Malender hit him with his best shot. If he’d been hurt, there seemed to be little actual damage.

  “Earth magic?”

  Morty nodded to me and stretched each and every limb carefully, like a cat. A big, blocky, thuggish-looking cat.

  Brian bent over his cane. His hands stroked it briefly and when he spoke, it was in mourning. “It’s done for.”

  “What?” I scooted near and reached for it. “The words are still here.”

  “Yes, but it’s . . . it’s emptied. It won’t recharge again.”

  I took it from him as he let it go reluctantly. It did feel incredibly light in my hold, as though it were made of air and not solid wood. “You don’t know that,” I protested.

  His face twisted in a sad smile. “I know it, and even you should be able to feel it.”

  “It’s different. But maybe it just needs a rest. A magical new battery or something.” Sort of like Brian himself, who swayed even as he argued with me.

  Morty reached down and pulled me to my feet. “It’s the way of things, Tessa. Nothing is permanent, not even stone, although it lasts far longer than most mortal things. The professor gathered a good many relics in his day that had been totally spent of their essence.”

  “But he kept them.”

  “Indeed, he did. Retired them to a loving home, he often said.”

  “As if they were people. But it’s not mortal, it’s magical. Right?” I looked from expression to expression as Brian got unsteadily to his feet, holding onto what was left of the metal door in its frame. “Right?”

  They both went silent and I looked down at the object in my hands. Its etching stared back at me.

  I refused to give up. Not after outgunning Malender. Not after tearing up a bazillion salt packets with paper cuts and salt stings in my wounded fingers. “We’re going to Cleopatra’s Needle. We have to. If this cane exists, it still has work to do.”

  Brian put a hand over mine. “You have a point. It exists, though barely. It has a mission to finish.”

  “Then so do we, in the morning.” Morty went out on the landing. “In the meantime, it looks as if I need to pay for a new room and a new door.”

  “Umm,” I said. “Make that two new doors. Annnnd salt. A lot more salt. A barrel of it!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TRUE TO HIS WORD, Sam showed up bright and early to drive, at just a yawn past dawn in the morning. He did not look happy as I opened the door to the main room. A recent shower matted down his black and gray curly hair, and bags sagged under his brown eyes, which didn’t quite want to meet mine, at first.

  “Morning, Sam.”

  He lowered an eyebrow at me, one eye narrowed, his fingers moving about the rim of his driving cap, around and around. “My brother-in-law says there was lots of commotion here yesterday. A lot of trouble.”

  “And it looks like he called you either very late or very early.”

  Sam nodded.

  Morty eased us all out the door, carrying a plastic bag full of leftover trail mix and Coke cans. “Indeed there was, but now your brother-in-law’s establishment has two brand-new security doors and a new LED TV in each room.”

  “You got him TVs, too?”

  Morty smiled. “It seemed the least we could do for the inconvenience.”

  “I didn’t see any new TV.” He peered over the freshly vacuumed room.

  “Because they’re being installed tomorrow.”

  I think I huffed. I know my lower lip stuck out a little as Brian laughed faintly and jostled my elbow.

  Sam considered Morty before giving a sharp nod. “All right then. My brother-in-law can be hard to please, but it sounds as if you gave a good compensation. Come on, before the traffic gets really bad.” He pulled his cap into place.

  Already warm, the sun gleamed down, threatening to bring on a truly hot day, with all the humidity it could also provide. I wasn’t unhappy to be leaving DC under those conditions, although I would have loved to have just strolled about, taking in the various sights. Maybe the zoo with its pandas. All the tiny but very good restaurants where people-watching was better than TV. According to my newly charged phone, as I rarely leave home without a charger, the weather in the city looked to be ten degrees cooler and much more respectable in dampness. As for people-watching, what could beat New York? Go Big Apple! I hopped in the car with anticipation that Malender, at least, would be left behind, and what more could happen?

  Brian solemnly gave me custody of his cane as we settled in the back seat. It rested across my knees with scarcely more weight than a handful of leaves. I ran my fingertip over the ornate carvings and the words etched yesterday, still holding a faint blue cast to my eyes. I wondered why I should have seen what happened while they did not. I told myself it was because both of them had been incredibly busy at the time.

  Sam evidently decided his time to be silent had passed, and kept up a running spiel as he negotiated the terrible traffic on the various connections. One or the other of us would speak up now and then to respond to something he asked or said, while the other two would relax. Except Morty snored when he was being tranquil, ruining the overall effect. Brian kept lapsing in and out of professor mode so that I never knew who I was talking to there, and I found it easier to keep up conversation with Sam than with the phoenix wizard sitting next to me. Some things were just odder than others. Not to mention that I tended to cringe whenever I saw a winged creature in the airspace about our moving vehicle while Sam regaled me with stories about near-miss collisions in both New York and Boston. The ones about Boston raised the hair on the back of my neck. No wonder their baseball fans were screwy.

  Finally Sam seemed to be talked out. He directed his attention to the highway and said, “You might as well nap too. Seems like you all had a busy night.”

  Morty was already grinding logs and Brian purring softly, so I put my head back and closed my eyes. I’d slept in my own room, with the door between half-open, and the night hadn’t been nearly long enough. Somewhere in my dreams I realized that Steptoe hadn’t joined us, because I was running around looking for him. I couldn’t decide if his absence was a good thing or a bad thing, and when I woke up, I was still undecided.

  The traffic noise rose around us. What would New York be without the sound of car congestion and horns blaring? And the people, moving quickly and with determination down the ranks of sidewalks, to and fro, colorful and different, suited and nonconformist, each and every one. Half expecting to see Steptoe’s dapper figure in the crowd, I stared out my window at the migration. The electronic billboards dazzled the eye, though not nearly so much as they would at night. Rolled-up windows kept the smell from hitting us, but it would the minute we stepped out at Central Park. We hit town at midmorning and I knew the skyscrapers around us would be full of people. Yet the sidewalks had not even begun to empty, everyone on a different and busy timetable.

  “Okay,” Sam told us. “We’re here and I’m heading to the museum. You can’t miss the needle, it’s tall. I’m going to let you off at the stop for the museum. I can’t wait there—”

  “Why not?” Brian asked.

  “It’s not legal. Don’t worry, I won’t get caught dropping youse guys off, but I can’t wait there. I’ll circle about. When you’re ready, head back to the museum and I’ll see you there. I’ll park there if I can, but not bettin’ on it.”

  “It’s a tuck and roll.”

  Sam grinned at me in the rearview mirror. “Not quite, but it would be nice if you all hurried out.”

  I picked up the cane and my backpack, ready to unlatch the seat belt and take off. Brian got his feet under him as Sam reached out and shook Morty’s shoulder. The snoring had stopped, so I knew the big guy had stopped sleeping a while ago, alert under the radar. He shrugged and sat up higher in his seat.

  “Everyone ready?” Without waiting for an
answer, Sam took a city corner at breakneck speed, pulled out and stopped with a screech, and we flung our doors open. He left us standing at the curb with the same alacrity.

  We watched him drive off with a wave.

  “I wonder if that was necessary.”

  “I think New York driving requires a certain authenticity and showmanship,” Morty told Brian.

  “You mean street cred.”

  Brian would have groaned if he’d understood the pun. I settled for an eyebrow waggle from Morty. We all turned about to scan the horizon of Central Park and indeed, the stone obelisk could be seen, at least its pointy top, very easily. It looked small from where we stood but I was certain that was a matter of distance and perspective. As I looked at it, I thought of what Morty had told me about stone and promises. I wondered if he was thinking the same as he cleared his throat twice. I knew that he helped us out of loyalty to the professor but also, no doubt, out of hope that the restoration of his friend would bring help to find Goldie, his missing wife. Time seemed of the essence for both people.

  “What are we looking for?”

  We hit the pathway into the park. It wound back and forth, determined to take people wandering even if they didn’t want to. But it was meant to preserve the greenery, so we stuck to it. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Another keystone maybe? It’s almost too much to hope the cane has the ability to dowse the location again.” I carried it lightly in one hand, the weight of it so frail that I didn’t even dare lean on it for fear that it would fall into little more than dust. It looked a little like Brian, as if it were becoming transparent and insubstantial. He strode beside me, though, with stronger steps than yesterday, but I had to blame his vigor on caffeine and sugar. Somebody had decimated the pack of cola overnight and seemed to be riding the wave into the daylight.

  Central Park is gorgeous. Someone presented a project at school once about how the older trees are dying out and it needed an aggressive replacement plan, but I couldn’t tell as we strolled into the forested area. Pebbles lay across the rough asphalt here and there, followed by scatterings of grass bits and green leaves. We could see the obelisk pointing to the spring sky, fading in and out of sight as we approached it and the trees alternately revealed and then hid it. Because the pathway didn’t go straight in, we had a chance to admire Cleopatra’s Needle from several views, and although I thought it was striking, most people walked past without a second look. How could they? Here was a bit of ancient Egypt, misplaced though it was, taken apart and transported here, only to be resurrected. It might have been the center of mysterious rites when it stood by the Nile. Heck, maybe even here a hundred years ago.