Chapter 22. Jenny
Jenny
Annette had texted and filled me in before leaving Alex’s pirate-themed lair, so I wasn’t surprised when she walked in the door with a hearth devil in tow. The two gaping wounds in the hearth devil’s chest were unexpected, though.
“His name’s Hob,” said Annette. “Alex stabbed him with cheap steel to shut him up. He’ll be fine.”
I wondered if she’d brought Hob along as a shield, knowing that shoving a patient at me was the one guaranteed way to quash my anger.
Hob’s breathing was steady. Both stab wounds were partly scabbed over.
He didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger.
I pointed at him and said, “Kitchen. Sit, wait, and don’t touch anything. ”
I heard Ronnie coming up the hall behind me. Without looking, I said, “Get the first aid kit and keep an eye on Hob.”
Hob snorted. “I guess we know who wears the strap-on in this house.”
“In a minute, I’m going to come in there to clean and close those holes in your torso,” I said. “I can flush them with saline or I can flush them with holy water. Your choice.”
“Damn, lady.” He held up both hands and retreated toward Ronnie. “I’ll just hang with the kid until you’re ready.”
As soon as they were gone, I turned to Annette.
“Before you say anything—”
“Shut up.” All the fear and anger and helplessness of the past hour burned through my veins like steam. I looked her over. She’d been moving gingerly, but I didn’t see much blood. “Is anything broken?”
“I don’t think so. Look, I know—”
I raised a hand. Her jaw snapped shut. I took a long, slow breath, until I was certain I could listen without losing my temper. “Go ahead.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I fucked up. I know what you’re thinking. If I hadn’t been so stupid and reckless and impatient, we could have stopped Alex together. It’s my fault he got away.”
“You think that’s why I’m angry?” I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tight.
She tensed, then relaxed and returned the hug.
“My friend from almost forty years ago is working through his apocalyptic To-Do List. Temple is growing visibly weaker with each day. I don’t . . . I can’t lose you, too.”
She pulled back, pursed her lips, and nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said again, this time without the bitterness.
“You’re right, though,” I said. “Stupid, reckless, impatient . . . Why didn’t you wait for me?”
She turned away. “You saw what he did to Morgan.”
“That doesn’t excuse— Oh.” The realization knotted my heart. In her own messed-up way, she’d been trying to protect me. “You went there to kill him.”
“I went to do what needed to be done,” she said quietly.
“Listen to me, Annette Thorne. You have people who love and depend on you. People who need you. I need you to start protecting yourself as fiercely as you protect them.”
“You know that’s not how our jobs work,” she said.
“Maybe that’s not how it worked when we were young,” I corrected. “It’s how things are going to work from this moment onward, or else I will personally break both your legs and keep you confined in your bedroom until this is over.”
She raised her hands in surrender. “You win.”
“How bad is the pain?” I asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Liar. How close was it?”
“When he hit me with his tentacle, I thought it was over,” she admitted.
My mind locked, momentarily overcome by a series of disturbing images. “Please tell me you’re talking about a literal tentacle and not some weird succubus sex metaphor.”
“He grew a tentacle to replace his missing arm. It’s strong as hell, stretches at least ten feet, and it’s the only part of him that seemed to register any serious pain. It also hits like a truck.” She rubbed the back of her neck.
The hearth devil peeked out from the kitchen. “It was an arm, not a tentacle, dumbass. They’re two different things. Tentacles are mostly smooth, with the suckers on the flat part at the end. Arms are lined with suckers, like on an octopus. That’s what Alex had.”
Annette and I both stared at him.
“You think hearth devils can’t watch the fucking Discovery Channel?”
“Ronnie,” I yelled.
“Sorry.” Ronnie hauled Hob back into the kitchen.
“We are not keeping the hearth devil,” Annette said to me.
I smiled. “Agreed.”
She brushed off her jacket and combed her fingers through her hair the way she always did when she was unsettled. “How’s Morgan?”
“Sleeping, just like Sage and Squidward.” I headed for the stairs. “Come on. I know you want to check on him.”
“Squidward?”
“The cat you left on our back step. Temple was studying him.”
Both boys—and the cat—had their own rooms. We passed Squidward’s first. The house had grown him a space the size of a walk-in closet. An old, folded blanket sat untouched on the wood floor. A small window gave a view of the front yard.
“Nice wainscoting,” said Annette.
Vertical cedar boards covered the lower half of the walls.
The upper trim was a wider board with black characters burned into the wood.
“Temple’s work. He inverted the containment ring from the pills.
It goes up and around the doorway to form a complete circle.
Well, a complete rectangle. It should block out Ringo and Alex. ”
“Why didn’t he shield the whole house?”
I’d asked the same thing. “This way, it also prevents Sage and Morgan from communicating with each other. And binding the whole house could affect Temple’s magic. If he left the house, the circle would shut him out and cut him off from most of his power.”
Squidward made a wet chirping sound and crept toward the window, watching a sparrow on one of the power lines outside. His tails and tentacles all lashed back and forth.
“Why are there toothpicks sticking out of the cat?” asked Annette.
“The mice are not happy about him being here. They’ve snuck down from the attic three times so far to shoot Squidward with their little bows and arrows.” I shrugged. “I guess the wainscoting spell doesn’t keep out mundane toothpicks.”
The next room was Sage’s. He was sleeping on a small futon.
He’d kicked down the covers and peeled off his T-shirt, and even from here I could see more blisters had formed since I’d been through an hour before.
The wainscoting in his room was fancier, with white textured panels and a similarly enchanted top trim piece.
I quietly closed the door. “Are you ready?”
“I want to see him.”
I opened the door to Morgan’s room.
Annette’s breath caught. Morgan was curled in a ball on the floor in the corner. The sheets from his house were still partly wrapped around his legs. His skin was black and rubbery, and tendrils had begun to grow from his arms. My necklace rested on his chest.
Annette grabbed my hand. “You put your amulet on him?”
“He needed it even more than Sage.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
It wasn’t enough. I’d measured the tendrils twice. They’d grown close to a centimeter since Morgan got here. “Did you find anything at Alex’s . . . lair . . . that might help?”
“I brought everything I could find. It’s in my car.”
“Get it all and meet me downstairs. I’m going to tend to Hob, then we’ll figure out how to stop Alex.”
· · ·
“You can quit your fussing. These little pinpricks won’t kill me.” Hob’s voice was muffled as he licked the last of the rocky road ice cream from his bowl. I didn’t ask how he’d talked Ronnie into feeding him ice cream.
“You’ll still heal faster if you don’t have foreign dirt and germs getting into the wound.” I flushed the largest wound with saline, then pulled the stapler from the first aid kit.
Hob gritted his teeth as the staples snapped into his flesh. “You’re a Hunter. I recognize the stink of Artemis’s power.”
“I always thought Artemis’s magic had a woodsy smell.”
“If you mean wood that rotted after being shoved up a goddess’s ass, then sure.” He looked me up and down. “Why are you here playing doctor instead of putting an arrow through that motherfucker’s face?”
I reminded myself that Hob couldn’t help being obnoxious. Hearth devils existed to provoke. Dogs barked, mosquitoes bit, and hearth devils spewed toxic insults. “If I did that, who would be here to help people like you?”
I moved to the second hole in Hob’s chest. He gasped and jerked back. “That hurts, you rancid shit blossom.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Ronnie snapped.
Hob laughed. “Aw . . . does someone have a boner for the old Hunter?”
“Don’t let him get to you,” I said. “It’s their nature. They have to commit a certain number of evil acts to stay among humans. As hearth devils go, this one’s on the mild side.”
“I know,” said Ronnie. “I read all about them. Including how to kill them.”
“Big man, threatening a devil half his size,” said Hob.
Ronnie smirked. “You wish you were that tall.”
I raised my voice, speaking over them both. “Annette, did Alex give you any hint where he might have gone when he left the”—I tried to remember what she’d said in the call when she left the place—“the Real Pirates Museum?”
“The Salem Pirate Experience. It’s the new one over on the east side.
And no, I’m not sure where he went.” Annette had piled the counter with all the notes and books and trinkets she’d brought back, and was now sorting them into neater piles on the table.
She picked up a worn comb-bound notebook and opened the pages.
“I’m no expert, but this looks Aramaic to me. ”
I leaned over for a better look at the badly-photocopied pages. The plastic cover was scratched and damaged, and the paper was yellowed. “He Xeroxed Nabu-rihtu-usur’s spellbook.”
Alex must have snuck off with the book before we turned it over to Felipe and the Guardians Council. Had he been planning all of this since high school? I couldn’t believe that. For one thing, the Alex I’d known wasn’t patient enough for thirty-plus-year schemes.
Only, I hadn’t known him. Not like I’d thought. If I had, maybe I would have seen this coming early enough to stop it. Or if I’d stayed in touch . . .