Chapter 13 #2
“No problem,” Mrs Clement replies. “The weather’s bloody awful, isn’t it? Still, I’m sure the Goddess knows what she’s doing. Well, blessed be,” she says by way of farewell.
“Uh…and also with you…” He waves awkwardly as Mrs Clement pulls up her hood and steps through the door, closing it behind her.
“Tristan?” I greet as he turns around and pulls his hood back.
“Harrison, I need–”
“I’m here! Don’t panic, boo! Dusty’s got you!” Dusty’s voice rings out loudly, cutting off Tristan’s sentence as she appears beside him.
“Dusty?” He frowns. “I thought you were with Bruce. What are you doing here?”
“You sent up a bat signal.” She fists her hand on her hip and flips her hair.
“I…what?”
“I’m your spirit guide, remember?” she states with an implied Duh!
“I can feel when there’s something wrong with you, and a short while ago, you went into a panic the likes of which I’ve only ever seen when Ruby ate some bad sushi and almost couldn’t get her taping off in time.
Then you got really mad about something, and that’s not like you.
You’re one of the most placid little twinks I’ve ever known. ”
“I’m not a twink,” he says flatly.
“Sure, you’re not.” She smirks.
I sigh loudly, interrupting them. “Is there a reason I’m being subjected to the two of you cluttering up my shop with your inane bickering?”
“Yes. I–” Once again Tristan is cut off as the door opens behind him and bangs into his back. My mouth falls open as he spins around and grabs the door handle, stopping the man from entering. “Sorry, we’re closed for a staff meeting. Please come back in an hour.”
The man blinks and then mutters an irritated, “Well, I never!” and walks away.
Thankfully, it was not an appointment, but still. “Tristan!” I scowl at him. “What the hell are you doing? I have a business to run, you know!”
He breathes heavily, his eyes full of apology. “I’m sorry, I really am, but this is an emergency.”
“What is so important you felt the need to turn up with your sidekick and scare all my customers away?”
“Because there’s a chaos monster trying to get my dad,” he blurts out, and I stare at him in confusion.
A what? “Pardon?”
“Death’s evil twin is a chaos monster with tentacles–”
“Tentacles?” Dusty interrupts, surprised, but he ignores her.
“He’s trying to cross through the magic doorway in the bookshop during a super weird eclipse, and he’s sucking up all the ghosts’ energy so he can make it rain, and he’s trying to scare my dad, plus I think he dropped a tree on my boyfriend.”
I blink slowly as my brain tries to process that spectacular word vomit. Eventually, I edge out from behind the counter and head to the door. Flipping the sign to Closed, I lock the door and lower the blinds.
I really wonder what on earth happened in the short time since I last saw him.
“I think you’d better start from the beginning.”
Tristan draws in a breath. “Okay, so Death has an evil twin, which means that apparently Death is the good guy.”
“I wouldn’t say good exactly,” I muse, “but he is necessary. Everything has its cycle—the seasons, all forms of life, whether it’s plant, animal, or human.
You’re born, you live, you die, your soul moves on, it evolves.
It’s a delicate balance. Death takes souls whose time it is to move on, so he maintains the balance.
It’s his entire purpose. So it stands to reason he’d have an opposite, a counterpart whose purpose is to disrupt that balance. ”
“Exactly.” Tristan nods. “Death’s opposite—we call him Chaos—is trapped on the other side of the portal in the bookshop. Bruce once told me the portal opens in shifts due to some sort of alignment.”
“Alignment,” I muse. “Which is what this upcoming eclipse is. Like you said, it’s rare, only occurring a few times a century, and it causes powerful shifts in psychic energy. No wonder Chaos wants to use it to open the portal enough to come through into our world.”
“You’ve been to the bookshop before so you know that–”
“I haven’t,” I interrupt. “Been to the bookshop, I mean.”
“But I thought…” He frowns. “That’s where I first ran into you, the day you dropped your business card.”
“I was just passing by,” I reply carefully, not in any way ready to explain my complicated family connection to Vivienne and her shop.
“Okay. Well, the inside of the bookshop is usually full of spirits, absolutely packed to the rafters.”
“I imagine a congregation of spirits on that scale would cause a huge build-up of psychic energy,” I reply.
“Right,” Tristan agrees. “Anyway, the last two times we’ve been there, all the ghosts had disappeared, and the atmosphere felt really off. The air was heavy but at the same time empty, if you know what I mean.”
“The psychic energy had been drained?” I guess. “That would certainly give Chaos the ability to affect things physically in our world to a certain extent, even if he’s trapped on the other side.”
“That’s what I think he’s doing,”
“Wait a minute.” Dusty holds up a hand. “Back up, boo. What’s this got to do with your dad? Is he okay?”
Tristan blows out a deep breath. “He’s okay.
I was at the care home with him an hour ago, and Danny’s still with him now.
Lois, one of his carers, said he’s been acting up, seemingly scared for no reason, and not sleeping.
We were in his room and I saw this kind of rip in the air.
It was black beyond the tear, but there were these tentacle things coming out from it, and the air in the room felt exactly like the bookshop did, kind of dead and empty.
” He rubs his forehead and even though his emotions are more muted than most, I can feel waves of worry and frustration rolling off him.
“Danny and I think he’s going after anyone who might be able to interfere with him coming through the portal.
Keeping me occupied with my dad, forcing Bruce to deal with his death now his remains have been unearthed, and maybe being behind Danny’s accident. ”
“That motherfu–”
“Okay.” I cut off Dusty as she looks as if she’s about to launch into an outraged rant. “What’s your plan?”
“Plan?” Tristan repeats.
“Really, Red?” Dusty glares. “Does any of this”—she flips her hand back and forth between her and Tristan—“scream, we have a plan?”
I sigh. “I think you’d better come with me.” As I move past them, Tristan reaches out and grasps my sleeve.
“Harrison, I need your help. I need to make sure my dad is safe. He’s so scared and he doesn’t understand what’s happening. He has advanced dementia, so I can’t take him away from his home, but I can’t leave him there.”
My heart softens. I know how I’d feel if it was either of my dads. “Trust me, I know what to do. We’ll protect him, I promise you.”
He lets out a small, relieved breath.
“Come with me,” I tell him again, and this time he follows me through the door into the back room.
I watch as he looks around curiously. A desk on one side holds a laptop and stacks of organised paperwork.
Racks and shelving line the walls, all containing ruthlessly ordered jars and bottles, each neatly labelled.
Across the other side of the room is a huge wooden workbench stacked with more items, neatly folded squares of hessian and muslin, and balls of string.
“Whoa.” Dusty eyes all the jars of various powders, liquids, and other items. “Are you sure you’re not a serial killer, Prickles?”
“Keep calling me Prickles and you’ll find out,” I mutter, then turn to Tristan. “I’m going to start putting together something for your dad, but while I’m doing that, I have something you should have a look at.”
“Sounds dirty.” Dusty grins. “Just what exactly did you lure my boo into your back room for?”
I head over to the desk. “I’ve been researching the bookshop.”
“Oh, you’ve been helping?”
I frown at his question. “I said I would.”
“Yeah, but I thought you only said yes because Chan kinda steamrolled you into it.”
“She did. I still have the marks from the heels of her stilettos up my back,” I reply dryly, and Dusty gives a loud snort.
“So, what did you find?”
“Take a look.” I show him the chart laid out on the desk.
“At first I tried to research portals and gateways to other dimensions or anything that mentioned passages to the spirit worlds and afterlife, but there’s unsurprisingly very little in the way of hard evidence and documentation, then I started researching Bruce Reyes himself. ”
“What?” Dusty clips over and looks down at the masses of paperwork. “What did you find?”
“Well, Death said it was all about bloodlines, so I figured Bruce’s family tree was as good a place to start as any. Sam came over and gave me a copy of Bruce’s missing person’s report. Once I had his date of birth and the names of his parents, I had my starting point.”
“Sam was here?” Tristan tilts his head to study my face, although what he’s looking for I don’t know.
“That man is infuriating,” I murmur.
“Infuriatingly hot.” Dusty smirks.
I try not to think about how attractive I find him. So instead, I clear my throat and continue talking.
“I ran into a bit of a wall with his Mexican heritage because anything past his father’s generation would be international records and much harder to get hold of.
But I figured out pretty early that it was his mother’s side that we wanted anyway.
She’s British and her family all come from London, so they were pretty easy to find.
” I pick up a piece of paper with a roughly sketched-out family tree on it and hand it to Tristan.
“If you follow the matrilineal line from Bruce’s mother, look where you end up. ”
“C-Cordelia…Crawshanks. Oh my god.” His eyes widen and he glances at Dusty who’s now peering over his shoulder. “He’s directly descended from Cordelia Crawshanks?”
“Yes,” I nod. “She was the sister of a rather famous Victorian medium.”
“I think you mean infamous,” Dusty mutters as she studies the piece of paper Tristan is holding.