Chapter 17 #2
“Sister Agatha,” Katherine began, “we do want to tell you what we’ve been up to. We’ve made a fair bit of progress the past few days, but we’ve hit a snag, unfortunately…”
The old nun closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, then nodded her head. She drew up a chair in their circle and sat.
Mrs. Chrysler began to explain their exploits since they’d left her, with Katherine adding a thing or two here and there, glossing over some of the finer points, of course, such as the way they’d threatened Tucker Hoode, how they’d gotten past the receptionist at the physician’s office, the nature of the shop from where they’d surveilled the Splint office, and their ruse against Angelo Splint.
They also left out the manner in which they’d arranged a meeting with Ms. Angela.
After all, Sister Agatha didn’t need to know everything about their methods, given that she’d likely disapprove.
Tilly hopped up in Katherine’s lap, and Katherine found herself absently stroking the feline’s fur while they talked.
When they’d finished, Sister Agatha looked deeply into the eyes of the two women across from her, not blinking or even glancing at the paperwork that Mrs. Chrysler had laid out on a side table as she’d done in the booth at the Gilded Midden.
“So,” the nun said, “we’re right where we were. And my lawyer’s payment is still due tomorrow.”
“Well, we’re not quite where we were,” Katherine said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “We have all of these things—the forged contract, the pigeon messages, the inventory records from Merchants Lane and Eagle Heights.”
“But you haven’t the original contract I signed, and no leverage.”
“Er, not anymore.”
Sister Agatha massaged her temples as she sat back in her chair. “So, they have been mining the bog, then. Hence our sinking into it.” She nodded thoughtfully a few moments and folded her hands in her lap.
Mr. Scruffles gave her ankles an experimental sniff as he accompanied Ember and Mouser under the table near them.
What’s happening? he asked Tilly.
They’ve just brought her up to date, the small cat said.
What’s next, then? asked Ember.
“I think perhaps it might be time to let you off the hook,” the nun said. “I can provide all this”—she waved a hand vaguely over the paperwork on the table—“to my lawyer and see what he can do.”
“But you’ll have to pay him for that, won’t you?” asked Ruben. Mouser began to scale his leg in an effort to clamber back up onto his shoulders, and Ruben grimaced as he plucked the old cat from his skin and helped him up to his perch.
Ember patted down the old man’s scratches and licked them briefly before curling up at Katherine’s feet with Mr. Scruffles.
August wandered over too, leaving his attendant behind, and balled up as best he could next to the black cat, who edged away.
Stretching languidly, the dragon filled the space between them and presently nodded off, beginning to snore.
“What else do you propose?”
“Ms. Angela definitely is hiding something,” Katherine said, absently rubbing her knuckles against the particularly soft fur behind Tilly’s ears. “She got all twitchy when we confronted her.”
“There still is potential for leverage,” said Mrs. Chrysler. “It’s just finding the lever that’s the problem.”
“The… plop”—Sister Agatha puckered her mouth as if she found the slang distasteful—“doesn’t matter, though?”
“Not how we thought it might. And now that Ms. Angela knows we’ve been poking around, it seems there may be some angry trolls coming for us.”
“Let’s call that a ‘later’ problem,” Katherine said. “Right now, the question is: What more could she be hiding?”
“Something riled her, Katty,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “Made her feel she had to meet us.”
Ruben scoffed. “Couldn’t have been that denture ad we pasted the message over…”
“The ad!” Katherine sat bolt upright in her chair.
“That’s it! That’s got to be it. ‘Works like a charm,’ it said.
And she must have thought we knew.” She turned to Mrs. Chrysler with renewed excitement.
“Ms. Angela must be using illegal magic, a charm. But using a charm to do what?” Katherine’s memory shot back to the giant mobile of a chandelier she’d noticed in the common room at Eagle Heights, and the odd way it had thrummed.
At the time of their visit, she’d assumed that the stuffy air and sluggish vibe of the place had simply been natural. But now… “Oh, no. Oh, Imogene.”
“What, Katty? You think something in the mine—” Mrs. Chrysler stopped upon catching Katherine’s grave expression. “What?”
“The chandelier, Imogene.”
“What?”
Katherine nodded solemnly, not blaming Mrs. Chrysler for her disbelief. Magical objects were not all that common, in their experience, or cheap. But as they’d recently learned, neither was plop. Angela Splint could probably afford a high-end magical object, even one that flaunted the Accords…
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Chrysler said, clearly catching on now. “No, she wouldn’t do that.”
“I think she would. And it would explain why she got so tetchy on the bridge. She’s broken international law, and she believed we knew about it.”
That’s it, Ember told her feline companions from under the table. A charm would explain what I felt was wrong in that big room with all the older people. Magical mind-control.
Mr. Scruffles lifted his head sleepily from her back. What’s that, dearest?
“Do what?” Ruben asked, rounding on Katherine and going pale. “Which law? What are you talking about?”
“Shh,” Sister Agatha curtly shushed him. Ruben pursed his lips and gave Katherine a chastened look.
All the people there were so sluggish, Ember said, but when they petted me, they seemed to come alive again.
“Really,” Sister Agatha breathed quietly.
The word you used, Stop That, was “perky,” Tilly said from Katherine’s lap, recalling her companions’ earlier conversation in the rest home hallway.
“‘Really’… what, Sister Agatha?” Mrs. Chrysler asked, eyeing the hushed Ruben. “Um, Katty, can you get them to stop chittering like that? It’s spoiling my concentration.”
Katherine tried to smooth the rising hackles of Tilly’s fur, but the small purple cat instead slunk down from Katherine’s lap to join her friends under the table. August tried to lick her in his sleep, but she dodged out of the way of his massive blue tongue.
“Kitties, hush. I’m sorry, Sister Agatha, you wanted to say something?”
They were all sluggish, Tilly said, except for this one. She flicked her tail at Ruben.
But he was buried under a stack of blankets when they found him, Ember said.
“Remarkable,” Sister Agatha murmured. “Protection from the somnolent effect.”
Katherine gave Mrs. Chrysler another concerned look, wondering why Sister Agatha apparently seemed to be having a conversation with herself. But suddenly, the woman’s dark eyes refocused and locked on them.
“Tell him,” she said. “Tell him what that vile woman has done.”
Katherine shivered and began to select her words carefully.
“We believe there’s a reason, Ruben, that the Active Adult Living Community isn’t so…
‘active’… And”—she added, realization clicking into place—“it’s why your friends all stopped talking to you…
They’re not all mad at you, pretending you don’t exist. They don’t know you. They’re not themselves.”
Ruben stared at her, a picture of confusion.
“Ms. Angela is using an enchanted chandelier to charm them all into a stupor,” Mrs. Chrysler broke in, apparently in favor of a direct approach rather than trying to soften the blow.
“Oh my gods,” Ruben breathed, then passed from shock to shaking with rage. “But,” he protested, “if that’s true, why wasn’t I affected? If they’re all under a spell, why not me? I remember everything; I still know them.”
“Being under all those blankets must have had a dampening effect on the magic,” Katherine said slowly. “It might actually have been an advantage for you, Ruben, being cold all the time.”
The old man groaned and put his head in his hands. “The staffers’ new uniforms,” he murmured. “Heavy overcoats and hats, like suits of armor against the magic. Oh, no.” The color drained from Ruben’s face, and he collapsed back in his chair.
“What is it, Ruben?” Katherine eyed him with concern.
The old man took a few gulps of air, then breathed unsteadily, “It’s my fault.
That chandelier—she must have had it installed that month she locked us up in our rooms all day and all night.
It definitely wasn’t there before. My previous escape was the last straw for her, wasn’t it?
She found a way to make sure we’d never be trouble again… didn’t she?”
Mrs. Chrysler regarded him sidelong. “Oh, Ruben,” she said, patting his hand.
Mouser clung more tightly to the lapels of the bathrobe, mewing sympathetically.
“It is all my fault then,” Ruben said, his voice muffled by his bony fingers. “My poor friends. Poor Gary.” He dropped his hands away and his eyes were glistening. “If I hadn’t been so damn determined to get out of there, Ms. Angela wouldn’t have done what she did.”
“Now, now, Ruben,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “You mustn’t blame yourself. Something like that chandelier would have taken months to commission and construct. It just happened to be installed at the time it was. It’s not your fault. Isn’t that right, Katty?”
Katherine nodded. Special magical orders did take a while, she knew, and she suspected they took even longer when they were illegal.
But that didn’t necessarily mean the exploits of Ruben and his friends still hadn’t prompted Ms. Angela to make such a horrible decision.
It simply had been made a bit earlier than Ruben guessed.
“Installing an illegal magical object to mind-control people is not something that’s done lightly,” Mrs. Chrysler went on. “Ms. Angela knew what she was doing. You didn’t make her do it.”
“That much is certainly true,” Katherine said.
Ruben wiped an eye with the sleeve of his robe and nodded.
“It is an abomination,” said Sister Agatha.
“That’s all there is to say. I did not know they were using magical objects.
Healing magic is one thing, especially if it comes from an organic source.
” She waved a hand absently in August’s and Ember’s directions.
“But it’s never mind-altering. I don’t hold with magical objects, imbued with power from only the gods know where. ”
Now it was Katherine’s turn to squirm, thinking of her knitting needles and brooch. But, she reminded herself, they were sorcerer-sourced.
“So, that’s what Ms. Angela was afraid of,” Mrs. Chrysler said.
“That we’d spill that everyone’s old relations are being rendered catatonic with a charm.
It’s completely against the International Magical Accords, and, not to mention, just plain awful.
” Katherine nodded solemnly. “I bet even old Tuck wouldn’t want to learn that his uncle was being charmed into a stupor, would he?
” Ruben shrugged uncertainly. “Well, maybe he’s a bad example. ”
The group sat in silence a moment.
“We’ve got to help them,” Ruben said quietly. “I’ve got to help my friends. I thought they’d just given up.”
“So, what are we going to do?”
“It’s just her word against ours at this point.”
“I wonder…” Mrs. Chrysler looked pensive, then said, “Ruben, do you think there’s enough material here to copy Ms. Angela’s writing, her signature?”
The old man rubbed his chin, which was smooth now from shaving in the bath, and gave the documents a scrutinizing glance. “If you don’t rush me. And if I have extra parchment to practice on. Yes, I could.”
“Well, then. Sister Agatha, do you have any spare parchment? Ink? Pens? And a place with good lighting for Ruben to work?”
“What are you suggesting?” Sister Agatha asked with an arched brow.
“I’m suggesting we turn the tables on these dear Splints.
Fight forgery with forgery.” Mrs. Chrysler gave Katherine a reassuring nod, then turned to the nun again, leaning in conspiratorially.
“That Ms. Angela is a real piece of work, but she’s worried.
She wouldn’t have met us this morning if she wasn’t worried.
And her brother—well, he’s as excitable as a hamster on holiday. ”
Hamster! Where? Mr. Scruffles asked.
No, my love, said Ember.
“Let’s play them off each other. And if you help this time, Sister—and your lawyer too—I think it’d really put things back in your favor. No birth certificate, and no further payment, required.”
“How can I help? With what?”
Mrs. Chrysler leaned back again. “Well, for one, if you came with us the next time we see those Splint twins, I think it would add a bit more… gravitas.”
Katherine stifled a snort. Sister Agatha could add gravitas to a children’s birthday party.
“We’re also going to need your signature.”
The nun squinted thoughtfully but gave no answer.
She’s not going for it, Tilly said. I wish she would, so we could wrap up this whole thing and go home.
If there’s one thing you can say about the mistress and the yarn lady, Ember said, it’s that they don’t stay down long.
“I doubt very much anything will come of this new plan of yours, whatever it is,” Sister Agatha replied. “But come along, and I will get you whatever you need.”