Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
Your father?”
“Yeah.” Seymour nodded. “Thaddeus C. Carver. Clancy Carver. Clancy T. Carver.” He thumbed through the mail, reading off the many variations. “This is his place. It has to be.”
Sariel tilted his head. “Your father is the murdered witch?”
“I fuckin’ guess so!” Seymour looked over the apartment with a new level of scrutiny. “I don’t understand it. This is way too fucked up to be some kinda coincidence. Talos havin’ his will and him happenin’ to be the witch who was helpin’ him?”
Sariel frowned. “But you say that you never met, correct?”
“No. Maybe I met him when I was a baby or somethin’, but it’s not like I remember him. Didn’t even think he gave a single crap about me until I got the letter ’bout the will.”
Sariel scanned the apartment. “And nothing here looks familiar to you? Nothing strange or perhaps out of place?”
“How the hell would I know? Ain’t never met the man, remember?”
Sariel grabbed Seymour’s shoulders, turning him to face the living room. “Look again. Not with your eyes. With your heart.”
“That is corny as fuck—”
“Look.”
“Okay, okay! Damn, bossy.” Seymour took a deep breath and tried to relax, glancing around the space once more. He caught Sariel eyeballing him, and he grinned. “You know, for the record, I kinda like that.”
“What?”
“You gettin’ all bossy. Grabbin’ me and pushin’ me ’round—”
“Seymour!” Sariel hissed. “Focus!”
“Mm, yes, sir.” Seymour could practically taste Sariel blushing. He cleared his throat and tried to do as Sariel had suggested.
But look with his heart?
How did that even work? There wasn’t exactly an overflow of love pouring out of him for a man who wouldn’t accept responsibility for his own child. What sliver of grief Seymour had felt before had now morphed into resentment, eating at the pit of his stomach.
Right, because abandoning him hadn’t been bad enough, so now Seymour had to deal with monsters and magic and all sorts of other bullshit.
The three million dollars was a nice apology, but it wouldn’t do him any good if he was dead.
Shit.
Okay.
Time to focus.
Seymour stared at the wall, letting his eyes unfocus for a long moment. He couldn’t see a damn thing except what was already there. “This is stupid.”
Sariel gave him a gentle shake. “Anything?”
“No.”
“Should I shake you harder?”
“There’s nothing here!” Seymour groaned. “Just some stupid couch, a stupid table, stupid ass waterfalls…” He paused, giving the closest waterfall a second look. “Huh.”
“What is it?”
“The pictures.” Seymour stepped forward so he could examine them closer.
“Holy shit.” He pointed. “This is Looking Glass Falls. That one over there is Hooker Falls. They’re all waterfalls in North Carolina.
My mama and a bunch of her friends went out there when she was real young, spent a whole summer trying to hit up every waterfall in the state. ”
“Why?” Sariel blinked.
“Fuck if I know.” Seymour laughed. “Just somethin’ they wanted to do. I swear these are my mama’s pictures, but…” He zeroed in on the photograph above the couch. “That’s Niagara Falls.”
“Not in North Carolina?”
“Definitely not.” Seymour climbed up on the couch to remove the picture. The wall behind it was blank. “Well, shit.”
“Look at the back.” Sariel pointed.
Seymour turned the frame around and was startled to find a keyhole. “The fuck?”
“How curious.”
Seymour reached into his pocket to pull out his keys. “You know, this is a long shot… but maybe it ain’t. See this key here? I got it from Mr. Talos. My dad left it to me. I ain’t got no idea what it’s gonna do.”
“I suppose there is only one way to find out.” Sariel squeezed Seymour’s shoulder. “I will be right here no matter what.”
“Think a bunch of faeries are gonna pop out to suck my blood?”
“I will be right here no matter what,” Sariel repeated firmly.
“Was expecting a hard no, that can’t happen, Seymour. But okay! Fine!” Seymour took a deep breath and stuck the key in the hole.
The key fit perfectly.
It should have been stopped by the glass, but Seymour decided it was best not to question it. If he stopped to nitpick every weird magical thing he’d experienced today, he wasn’t going to get anything done. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and turned the key.
There was a click, and the paint peeled itself right off the walls in large rolls. The rolls stacked together to form a large four-legged structure, soon followed by the picture frames stacking themselves across the top to create a flat surface.
“A desk,” Seymour said flatly. “I made a desk.”
“Well.” Sariel hummed. “It’s a very nice desk.”
A giant stack of papers, scrolls, and books dropped onto the desk in a huge dusty heap. There was also a worn cardboard box, and it was packed full of odd gadgets and trinkets.
Seymour pulled the key out, waited to make sure nothing else was going to happen, and then stuck them back in his pocket. “What the hell is all that stuff?”
Sariel picked through some of the papers. “It appears to be research about the wizard.”
“Norbert?”
“Yes.” Sariel handed one of the papers to Seymour.
The handwriting was difficult to read, but there were small sketches of rings, a bracelet, a necklace, and a crown.
“I recognize that there Reliquary doodad, but I guess ol’ Norbert really did make other stuff. A bunch of it.” Seymour squinted at the scribbles around one of the rings. “The Jaded Ossuary? The fuck is that?”
“It must be one of Norbert’s other creations, as you suggested.” Sariel peered over Seymour’s shoulder. “There are so many more than I thought. Momento Mori. The Cameo.”
“Mal-le-dick-tus?” Seymour struggled to sound out a particularly illegible word.
Sariel leaned close enough for their breath to mingle. “Ah, Maledictus Anulus. I believe it is Latin.”
“Do you…” Seymour was aware now of how little distance there was between them, but he didn’t want to move away. Sariel’s eyes were even more blue than he’d realized, and he lost track of whatever it was he was going to ask.
Sariel smiled. “What is it?”
Shit.
Right.
Seymour cleared his throat. “Do you know what it means?”
“No.” Sariel glanced over Seymour’s face, and he smiled shyly. “You have freckles.”
“Yup. Ate up with them.” Seymour laughed, his heart pattering faster as he dared taunt, “Wanna play connect the dots with ’em? It’s pretty fun.”
“Oh!” Sariel blushed. “I do not think…! I mean to say—”
Something clattered down on the desk in front of them.
Seymour jumped. “Fuck! That scared the shit out of me.”
The item was a small square box with ornate geometric carvings. A closer look revealed the carvings were, in fact, separate pieces that could possibly be moved around.
“How interesting,” Sariel murmured as he peered at the box. “It appears to be a puzzle of some kind.”
“Oh, fuck no. I’ve seen this movie too!” Seymour snapped. “We mess with that, some dude with nails in his head is gonna pop out!”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Says the angel whose demon boss sent me to do the work of fuckin’ faeries.”
“Ah, fair point.” Sariel picked up the box.
“No! What are you doing?” Seymour groaned. “Don’t mess with it! This is how it all starts!”
“How what starts?”
“Chains and screaming. Have you seriously never seen Hellraiser?”
“No.” Sariel turned the box around a bit and then slowly set it down. “There. I hope you are happy now.”
Seymour rolled his eyes and glared at the box.
Huh.
Sariel had set it down on a different side, and now Seymour could see there was a keyhole. “What are the chances of that key workin’ twice?”
“Not high, but not impossible.” Sariel shrugged. “Go on.”
Seymour pulled his keys out. “Doesn’t even look like it should do nothin’. I can literally see this is a copy of a damn key made from Lowe’s.”
“Lowe’s?”
“Hardware place. They make copies of keys.”
“How curious.” Sariel hummed. “Leads one to wonder where the original is.”
“Who the fuck knows.” Seymour stuck the key into the puzzle box and turned it, cringing as he waited for whatever the hell was going to happen.
Something horrible probably.
Instead, there was only a soft click and the top of the puzzle box opened. Inside was a mesmerizing bundle of gears and painted porcelain fragments, and the sides of the box buzzed from the grinding machinations within.
Seymour set the box down on the desk. “Fuckin’ thing is vibrating.”
“Oh!” Sariel peeked at it curiously. “How strange.”
The sides of the box came apart and then several more pieces unfolded.
The porcelain segments came together to create a beautiful miniature landscape scene of a tall mountain and little trees.
Seymour didn’t know about art, so he couldn’t even take a guess as to the particular style, but there was a tiny sign by the base of the mountain.
観教法印
“What does that say?” Seymour squinted. “What is that? Chinese? Japanese?”
“I do not know.”
“You can’t, like, use magic to translate it?”
“I am an angel, not a linguist.”
“So, uh, guess that means you’re not a cunning linguist either?” Seymour teased.
“I did just state that I am not a linguist, so that would mean I am also not a—”
“Got it. Never mind. You ruined it.”
Sariel frowned, clearly distressed.
“I’m sorry. You didn’t ruin nothin’, I promise. Just a dumb joke.” Seymour pushed the box toward Sariel. “Here, have a possibly cursed fuckin’ puzzle box.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Sariel stared at it as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
Seymour didn’t know what to do with it either, and he sighed as he poked one of the little trees.
“Okay, so it’s pretty. It was definitely well hidden and all secret stashed away.
But what the fuck does it do?” He picked up some of the other papers on the desk.
“I don’t see anything about a puzzle box thing on Norbert’s list of bling. ”
“Perhaps it is this?” Sariel pointed at a sketch of a small, flat square box with a familiar landscape drawn across it. “Hisan Inro?”