The crystal miraculously withstood the jarring drop and bumpy ride for the better part of a block, bouncing down the cobbled road like a runaway sled. New Fiddleham streets are never empty, and half a dozen passersby stood watching until the road bent off to the right and the bowl slammed into the curb. Pedestrians jumped aside as the container exploded at their feet, spraying the storefront of a small leather shop with expensive shrapnel. The last glittering shards had not yet spun to a stop before I was back on my feet and after it.
The startled mackerel flopped and waggled across the damp cobbles, and from half a block away I could see it balancing on the edge of the storm drain. I cursed under my breath and willed the fish to just hold still. Was it too much to ask that, just once, one of my failures be a simple little thing, instead of compounding itself into a big ordeal? Time slowed as the scaly little rascal flipped itself up in a clean arc directly over the grate.
The very moment it seemed that my failure was absolute, my salvation arrived in the form of a broad bear of a man. His thick fingers swept down with remarkable skill, snatching the fish up by its tail in midhop. He palmed the mackerel in one hand and helped steady me to a stop with the other. When my feet were firmly beneath me, the man laughed a deep, throaty laugh and patted me firmly on the shoulder.
“Hah! Gotcha!” His wide smile sat nestled in a thick, bristly, auburn beard.
“Catch of the day, Hudson,” came my employer’s voice from directly behind me.
“Bah. The mackerel’s not bad—but I don’t think this one’s fully grown. I’ll have to toss her back! Hah!” The man laughed again, loudly, and slapped me on the back so enthusiastically, I nearly toppled. “Figures that the fish start flying and yer the one behind it! Good to see ya, R. F. Oh, hey—speaking of which, let’s get this fella a drink. Hold on.”
The big mountain of a man lumbered back toward the leather shop and popped inside, still clutching the struggling fish. My shirt dripped, and crystal shards tinkled under my feet as I turned to face my employer. “Mr. Jackaby, I—”
He regarded me sternly.
“I am so sorry,” I said.
His eyes remained fixed on mine, and his eyebrows rose a fraction.
“I am so, so, so sorry.”
He sighed. “The number of sos in your apology is irrelevant. Miss Rook, what do you see when you look at these creatures?” He held the box toward me, and a little furry face peeped out, inquisitively.
“I see . . . a kitten.”
“Would you like to know what I see?”
I nodded. Jackaby was not an ordinary detective. The cases he tracked were not the sort an ordinary investigator could unravel, but fantastic pursuits, delving ever beyond the pale. What made Jackaby so good at uncovering the perplexing and paranormal—more than his extensive library of the occult, more than his vast knowledge of the obscure—was that Jackaby was perplexing and paranormal himself. Where you or I could observe only the surface, Jackaby perceived a deeper reality. He said this made him “the Seer”—though not like any old tarot reader or charlatan with a crystal ball. Jackaby saw the truth behind every thing and every person.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“I see untempered chaotic potential—they’re positively bubbling with it. It doesn’t rest above their skin like an ordinary aura. It pops and fizzes and rolls. They are adorable at present, and relatively docile for now, but with the capacity for untold destruction. Darwin discovered the little chameleomorphs for the first time on the island of Mauritius. You won’t find them in any grammar school textbook, but he did. There was a bird that used to live there as well—until something began to prey upon it. Dutch sailors dubbed them walghvogels, the ‘loathsome birds.’ According to a few very old accounts, including a secret dossier compiled by Darwin himself, they were witnessed devouring their own kind. Within half a century of their discovery, the birds had been eradicated. You may know them better by their more common name, the dodo.”
“You think cats are going to go the way of the dodo if I accidentally let one of these chameleon-morph things escape?”