chapter 23
The emergency hut on the Brough of Birsay was a government-maintained cabin attached to the lighthouse, and as Alex broke in, his body numb with cold, it seemed to him the most wonderful place he had ever seen. The hut was simple and unassuming, with cheap plastic furniture and linoleum tile, but it had a fireplace and kitchenette and even first aid supplies, rendering it perfect. It would make a good headquarters to begin their search for the remains of Allegra Byron. Somewhere on this island, John Polidori had secreted away a body. They had a day to find it.
Wearing one of the dirty pairs of overalls he had liberated for himself and for Astrid from a supply closet, he surveyed their tools. They had laid out the material from Astrid’s bag and Alex’s go package on a countertop in the small building adjacent to the lighthouse. A fire crackled in the fireplace now, where some of their clothes hung drying, and he hoped that the vampires surrounding the island did not have sentries out to see the smoke of the fire.
Astrid was chanting over a nearby table, rolling wax paper—also from the kitchenette—into small cartridges with each incantation. “How many can you make?” Alex asked.
“I can do about ten push-backs,” she said. “That will stagger someone back, knock them off balance. If we were facing humans I could make about three heart-stoppers; those are costly. But our foes don’t have beating hearts. I have my staff, which is silver, wood, and enchanted metal. I can do about four fireballs.”
“Those will help.” Alex stacked Polibow cartridges as he counted them. “I have four cartridges of sixteen bolts, eight glass balls.” Finally he set down the vial gun, which was open and empty, waiting for a vial of whatever agent he could place in it. Next to this were the two vials, each one half-full of holy water, still waiting for the active ingredient. “I should have raided the armory when I had the chance.”
She looked up, smiling at his disappointment. “When? When you were stealing the computer or when you were trying to talk them into opening up the door?”
He smiled back at her and nodded. “I suppose you’re right. Anyway, I don’t think having a machine gun is what will make a difference. Okay. We have our weapons. Any minute now we’ll have our clothes.” He padded over to the fire in his bare feet and felt at his jacket, shirt, and pants. They were still damp. Out the window, the Atlantic Ocean pounded against the rocky cliff beyond the lighthouse, and a thick fog lay over the land. “I don’t feel any static. I think they were watching for air traffic, but they’re lying in wait now.”
He sat down in the blanket on one of the plastic chairs, leaning his shoulder against the table. “Do you think I’m crazy?” he asked her.
Astrid looked up from rolling her spells, stopping the chant she had just started. “Why?”
A teakettle sounded, and Alex started, and realized he was still jumpy. What he needed was more sleep, but there wasn’t time for that. The nap on the chopper would have to do. He went over to the stove and poured himself and Astrid a cup of tea with a couple of the tea bags he had found in the cabinets. “The Polidorium is already prepared for the next step. They’ve given up completely. And I have to admit, I’m not sure how we’re going to find this body, either.”
Alex carried back the two cups of tea, placing them on the table. “So, am I? Crazy, I mean?”
“You know what you are?” Astrid joined him. “You’re a person who doesn’t give up. You can fight when it’s all done, but as long as there’s still a chance, you’re going to keep working on it. You’re Mad Meg.”
He nodded. “Okay, so now that we’ve established that it’s all okay because I’m a lot like your crazy Dutch aunt,” Alex said, “you tell me: How do we find this body? We don’t have a scanner, and I don’t think one would work, anyway. This island has a lot of old stone ruins, but none of the peasant huts that Mary Shelley described or that Polidori might have used. So what do we do?”
Astrid thought a moment. “If we had something of Allegra’s it would be easier.”
Alex shrugged. Then Astrid leaned forward, draping her blanketed arm over his shoulder. He felt her fingers behind his ear. “What’s this?”
Alex was laughing in spite of himself. “What are you doing, finding a quarter?”
She drew back, twisting a piece of black wood in her fingers, wrapped in a bit of yellow ribbon. “This is a piece of Allegra’s coffin,” she said. “And the ribbon is a piece of the ones that held the stones in place to weigh it down. I made a bet that the ribbon belonged to her. I guess we can find out.”
Astrid took Alex’s teacup, set it on the counter with her own, and turned back to the table. There was a salt and pepper set, and she grabbed the pepper and set it on the counter as well, leaving just the salt.
“What are you doing?”
“Working.” Satisfied with the saltshaker alone on the table, Astrid went to the kitchenette and rummaged around. She brought back a bowl and dropped the chunk of wood in it. She looked around, grabbed Alex’s teacup, tossed the tea into the bowl, and began grinding the moist wood.
“Is there anything I can—”
“You can check the dryer.” By which she meant the clothes in front of the fireplace.
Astrid was muttering to herself as she ground the wood and then she stopped, taking a knife from a drawer. Alex was about to protest when she cut herself on the finger, but he kept his mouth shut.
Astrid squeezed a few drops of blood into the bowl and then ground on, and he noticed she kept her cut finger splayed out a little, favoring it. “Nothing in magic is free,” she said. “It costs in soul or in blood.”
When she was done, she walked over to the table with the bowl, and daubed her fingers in the mash of wood and blood. She began to smear it on the table, creating a circle.
“Mother Gretel, your daughter calls out to you,” Astrid whispered, and then she slipped farther into words that Alex did not recognize.
The saltshaker began to quiver on the table.
“Show us the home of this spirit, show us her place.”
The saltshaker began to move, all on its own, traveling around the edge of the smear, which Alex presumed was an outline of the island. It stopped, shaking, quivering along the water, nearly tipping over as it began to spin. Alex thought it would explode right there, and then it shot into the smear, about a third of the way in.
Astrid indicated its position. “Check that against the map.”
“That’s incredible,” Alex said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” He picked up the Polidorium tablet and showed her the Google World map of the Brough of Birsay. “That’s near the old English church—ruins of stones that we saw from the air.”
He got up and rummaged around in the kitchen, continuing, “It’s a circle made up of granite stones. Maybe Polidori buried her near the stones. It would make it easier to find.”
Astrid seemed pleased. “What are you getting?”
“Something for your grievous wound.” Alex returned to the table and took her hand, looking at the cut. He tore open the Band-Aid he had retrieved and put it over the end of her finger.
Astrid’s eyes seemed to sparkle as she trilled her fingers. “Well, thank you.”
“So…” Alex took his hands away and started to drum his fingers on the table, stopping instantly. He got up. “So let’s go. We’ve got a body to find.”