Chương 40: Chapter 39 - Visions and Certainty

I woke up with a headache so bad that I had to wonder if Igor had used his ax on my skull. If he hadn't, I might have asked to borrow it to see if my head would feel any better if it was unattached to my body. Then I sat up. A fresh wave of pain made my head throb. My world was a drum that had been struck by a mallet that fell like an asteroid. I groaned. My groan caught the attention of Conrad and Iset. By the time I'd put my legs over the edge of the seat and was able to peel my eyes open, they'd both come over.

"You're awake," Iset said. I could hear the relief in her voice.

"Don't," I mumbled. I put a hand over my eyes.

"Don't ask me to look at anything." Even the dimensionally dimmed-out early morning sun that had snuck through the boarded-up windows was too much light. If I tried to focus on something, my eyes would explode. Or my head would explode and take my eyes with them. There was an uneasy silence. Oh. Right. Something about our lives depending on me looking at things.

"Conrad," I said, "can you get me some painkillers—like, a whole bottle?"

"I'll see what I can do." He put his hand on my shoulder for a second before he left. While he was gone, I tried to assess the rest of my health. I hurt, I was tired, and it tasted like some unfortunate and unbathed weasel had crawled into my mouth and died. I tried to push the taste out with my tongue.

"I didn't brush my teeth," I muttered.

"It's been a rough few days," Iset assured me.

"You mean, maybe the fact that I haven't showered will keep people far enough away that they won't notice how bad my breath is?"

"Something like that," the mummy said, sounding entirely too cheerful. A weak smile appeared on my face, and I opened my eyes to look at Iset. Seeing a friend like her nearby was worth the pain.

"How is everyone?" I asked.

"Mrs. Park went to sleep an hour ago. Igor is still working. Kappa is in his nest." She hesitated, then lowered her voice to add, "Igor says we should let him sleep as late as possible. There's no more protein for him, and he won't go hunting without Conrad."

"And we need Conrad around," I said with a sigh.

"The chill means that Kappa will probably sleep longer anyway, but it might be rough when he wakes up to a breakfast of nothing but vegetables."

"Did Conrad get any sleep?"

"No, but he's been sleeping better than you have recently. He says he can handle it." Iset's quiet, uneasy voice communicated everything she wasn't saying. She wasn't comfortable with what Conrad was doing, but she couldn't afford to turn away his help. We were running out of time.

"Do we know how much longer until the magic circle finishes closing?" I asked. Iset glanced at the antique wall clock that had, against all odds, survived the devastation.

"My best estimate is around an hour." She looked back at me.

"It could be less than that. Its constriction speed might increase as it passes into the last energy state." There needed to be a word or phrase—something close to "bittersweet"—that explained the emotional frappé you got by blending hope and dread together. In an hour or less, we wouldn't have to worry about any more zombies. It seemed too good to be true, and my inner-Igor (who'd had a million years of cultivation in the past few days) pointed out that, if it seemed too good to be true, it probably was.

Conrad returned with a mug and some pills. As he passed them to me, he said, "I added more coffee to your cocoa than normal. I thought it might help with your headache." Tears welled up in my eyes. I managed to stop myself from crying, but I'm sure I looked all drippy and glowy when I gazed up at him.

"You're the best, Conrad." The far edge of his black lips lifted by a millimeter, and he oh-so-gently laid his hand on the top of my head.

"Take your comfort wherever you can." A huff of laughter, that sounded exactly like a snort, escaped my nose. The small movement made my head pound. I tossed the pills to the back of my throat and swallowed them down with the coffee-spiked cocoa. Conrad was quoting one of my favorite pieces of advice. He didn't know its source, but I said it all the time, especially when I was patting Conrad's head or ruffling his ears without permission. I must have done it enough that he'd memorized it.

The advice had been given to me by Circe, a witch I'd met over in England. The full line was, "Take your comfort wherever you can, however you can, and don't be shy about it. You'll need all the comfort you can get." It was like the woman was a seer or something. And suddenly I knew. I understood. The realization finished the work my headache had started by splitting my skull wide open and allowing all the light and air to pour in. I could feel it filling my body with a bright, frantic energy.

"It's her pipe," I said.

"Oh geez —it's her pipe!" I stood up, ignoring the thunder of pain that rolled through my head.

"Get everyone together!"

"Emerra—" Iset started to say. I talked over her.

"Where's Igor? The kitchen? We'll go to him. Get Mrs. Park. Wake up Kappa! Call in the cavalry!"

"Mera," Conrad said while trying to put his hand on my shoulder. Too bad for him, I was moving around too much. He missed.

"I'm only going to explain this once!" I said." If I can explain it. We're in a hurry, aren't we?"

"You've figured something out," Iset said. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Yes!" I chugged my coffee-cocoa in three seconds flat, mildly scalding my throat in the process. I handed the mug off to Conrad and ran for the main hallway. After a dozen stumbling steps, I could run in a straight line. I went to the washroom to get Kappa, and I didn't feel bad about waking him up. The chance that he'd be able to help us was so small that I'd need a microscope to measure it, but I was not about to blow the best opportunity we had to save our lives because I'd neglected him.

I dropped to my knees in front of his wash table, hauled him out of his nest, and pulled him to my chest. His head and arms flopped over my shoulder as if he was a rag doll. By the time we reached the hallway, he'd woken up enough to pass for a grumpy rag doll. Igor, still splinted and bandaged from yesterday, was limping back in from the outside. For some reason, this caused me to panic. I guess that's what happens when you have energy but minimal awareness.

"Zombies?" I cried.

"No," he drawled, "it's me." My panic simmered down.

"I meant, why were you outside?"

"I was making use of our temporary facilities." Oh. Unimportant.

"Kitchen!" I ordered. Before Igor could ask me, "what about the kitchen," I marched down the hall with a grumbling Kappa still trying to raise his head. Igor followed, also grumbling. When we got to the kitchen, I put Kappa down on the dining table and went to help Igor settle into one of the chairs. He cursed at me the whole time, insisting that he didn't need my help. I figured it was part of the process. Iset, Mrs. Park, and Conrad came in as we finished.

Thanks to the two or three mystery shows I'd watched, I had some idea how this kind of thing was supposed to go. Step one: wait until the whole cast has artfully arranged themselves around the room. Step two: lead with a dramatic pause. Step three: logically build up your story and only raise your voice as you approach the exciting conclusion. But this was me. Sleep-deprived. Headache. Running on nothing but coffee, cocoa, and frenzied energy. I didn't even let them get to their chairs.

"The paper—that spell thing! —it's in the skull!" Everyone except Kappa stared at me. Kappa was using his feet to scoot across the table top, pushing his face and arms along its surface. Mrs. Park was the first to get over her surprise.

"What skull?"" The skull," I insisted.

"Are we talking about a zombie skull?" Igor asked while looking around at the others. He probably didn't think he could get any sense out of me.

"No!" I said.

"The staring skull!" There was a short silence. Mrs. Park said, "Don't all skulls stare?"

"You stare at it." I shook my hands up by my head.

"Mentos morty or something." Inexplicably, Mrs. Park, Iset, and Igor all looked at Conrad. When he saw them watching him, he raised both hands.

"I have no idea who this Morty guy is."

"No! That's not—" I cut off my own sentence with a frustrated grunt.

"Look! It doesn't matter! Have we found the skull yet?"

"Is it Morty's skull?" Mrs. Park ventured.

"Oh, come on!" I howled. Iset came over and put both hands on my shoulders.

"We're trying to understand, Emerra. I promise. Do you think you could slow down and start at the beginning?"

"And maybe strive for some coherence?" Igor added. I forced myself to take a breath. It was too short and shallow to do much good, so I took another one. I said, "Those visions I've been having of the pipe and the skull—they're real. I mean, they matter. I think that Circe is out there, sending them to me."

"Because it's her pipe," Conrad said.

"Circe," Mrs. Park repeated.

"Is she…a witch?"

"Yes!"

"But Circe is back in England," Iset pointed out.

"Is she?" I shot back.

"Darius and Jacky are out there, doing everything they can to help us. He could jet her over here in, what? Two or three hours?" Iset crossed her arms, and her head slowly rose, as if she was staring at a point in the air. I decided to give her some more to think about.

"She used the pipe because she knew that I'd recognize it, and she's showing me where the spell is hidden."

"You can't possibly know that," Igor said.

"I saw it in my dream," I insisted.

"There's a hole in the bottom of the skull—foreman magnum! That's where the spell is hidden!"

"Foramen magnum," Iset corrected me.

"Emerra, how do you know that term?" I threw my arms up in Yay-Mighty-Shrug. Kappa finally managed to sit up. He blinked and peered around the room with his bleary eyes. Conrad said to Iset, "Would it be possible for Circe to do something like that?"

"I'm not sure," she said.

"I can't even guess at what magic they'd have to invoke, but there are things about magic that I don't know."

"How could they know what's going on?" Igor asked.

"They'd know that the mansion had disappeared, yes, but how could they learn anything else about the situation? Never mind that they'd have to know that there's a spell holding us in place."

"That demon could've told them," Mrs. Park pointed out.

"Emerra started having her visions as Abraxas was leaving," Iset said.

"Even if he felt so inclined, he wouldn't have had enough time to relate the story." I could feel my certainty slipping away, siphoning off most of my energy as it went. I clung to it all the harder.

"Maybe they have a way of knowing what's going on that we don't know about!" I cried.

"Does that seem likely?" Igor asked.

"I think we have to assume it," Iset said.

"Emerra is having some kind of vision, and she did have a dream. If they aren't trying to tell us where the spell is, they must be trying to communicate something else they think is vital."

"Which might be a random guess they concocted in their ignorance."

"That's true, Igor," Iset said gently.

"What do you think we should do?" Igor looked down and grumbled under his breath for what felt like a year. Then he raised his voice so we could make out the words.

"I think there's not much point in having a seer if you don't listen to her." I grinned and clapped my fingertips. I would've whooped for joy, but I didn't want to spook any wild Igors in the area. He went on.

"We can try to find that skull first."

"Ingvar," Mrs. Park said. Her voice was quiet and hesitant.

"There's a problem." We all turned to her. Her shoulders were low, and her face looked glum, but she held her head upright.

"I assume you've gone over your part of the first floor?" she asked, still watching Igor.

"Yes," he said.

"And Iset knows that library, book by book, inside and out. I think it's safe to say that she would know if there was a skull."

"And?"

"That means that we've gone over the whole house. Top to bottom. We've found hundreds of old objects, but no skull." She hadn't raised her voice or added any emphasis to the words "no skull" but they fell into the silence like two monoliths. They landed on me, one after the other, squishing me dead, then deader. I searched Conrad's and Igor's faces, hoping to catch the moment one of them started to object—No, wait! A skull, you say? As a matter of fact, I think I saw one over here!

Can't imagine why I didn't mention it. Nothing. Their stern, thoughtful expressions softened into disappointment. My energy turned into desperation.

"We've checked everywhere?" My voice rose.

"The whole house, attic to basement?"

"The attics were empty," Mrs. Park said. She was frowning and wouldn't look at me as she spoke.

"We keep— kept —all the storage on the third floor."

"And we've never had a basement," Igor grumbled. I stared at him, willing Igor's words to make sense. It was like trying to jam a key into the wrong lock.

"Yes, we do," I said.

"We do what?" Igor said.

"We have a basement."

"That's the root cellar. It's not the same thing."

"I'm not talking about the root cellar!" I pointed toward the butler's pantry.

"The basement."

"I've already searched the wine vault. There's nothing but bottles, and none of them are old enough to matter."

"What about the other rooms?" I asked.

"You have to be more specific, Em—""The other rooms in the wine vault! Are they all filled with bottles?" Igor stared at me like I had completely lost my mind—and when two different-sized eyes stare at you like that, you start to wonder if maybe you have.

"There are no 'other' rooms in the wine vault," Igor insisted. My heart beat faster, making my headache thrum. This couldn't be happening. Even if recent events had driven me mad, I shouldn't have been mad back then! I lunged toward the kitchen table.

"Kappa!" Kappa squawked and jumped back from the unexpected assault, then he cautiously leaned toward me.

"Mera?"

"Do you remember the first time we played hide-and-seek in the house?" He scowled, then shook his head.

"You hid in the wine cellar!" I whirled toward Conrad.

"Do you remember?"

"I remember," Conrad said. I spun back to Kappa.

"No water, remember? No water. All wine." His eyes lit up.

"Eep!"

"Yes!" I laughed and bounced on the balls of my feet.

"Yes, eep is right! We went exploring—" Igor started to scoff, but Mrs. Park smacked his injured arm, and the scoff changed into an ah! of pain.

"Do you remember that?" I asked Kappa.

"Yes!" His butt wiggled from the sheer joy of being able to agree with me.

"Through the wall!" His bright grin slowly sank into a scowl as he moved his eyes from one face to another, trying to understand the sudden silence.

"Kappa," Iset said, "did you just say that Emerra took you through the wall?"

"Yes?" he meeped in his littlest voice.

"Oh, lord," Igor said.