“The shield is in a Bible?” said Jackaby. “What Bible? Whose? Are you the zealot?”
“Not much time. The shield. In the Bible. You must stop—stop—stopiwch y brenin.” Father Grafton crumpled to the floor, and with one last rattling breath, he was still.
Jackaby delicately turned him over. Grafton’s skin had gone as dry as parchment. The old man’s body looked as though he had been mummified. I put a hand over my mouth.
“Is he—” I whispered.
“Quite,” said Jackaby.
“How?” I gulped.
“It doesn’t make sense.” Jackaby scowled.
He stood and began to pace at Father Grafton’s head.
“He wasn’t charmed or hexed. There was a somewhat ethereal aura about him, but no more than I might expect from a man of the cloth. There’s nothing about him that should have caused this! It’s as though he was just taken by a sudden and inexplicable bout of old age. If I had not seen it happen—if I had only stumbled across him—I would say this was the corpse of a man who died decades ago of natural causes.”
“What about that was natural?” I asked.
Jackaby shook his head, vexed. “Did you catch everything he said?” he asked.
“Yes. I think so.”
“Jot it all down for our records, then. It seems we have been hired for another case, Miss Rook, and the good father has already paid us with his life.”
We managed to maneuver the body inside before it could draw attention from the neighbors. I would like to say it was the first body that Jackaby and I had ever deposited on the old wooden bench in our foyer, or that it would be the last, but neither would be true.
“What should we do with him now?” I asked.
“I have a decent coffin in the attic that should suit the gentleman well enough. I’ll just need to find somewhere else to store my encyclopedias.” Jackaby paced the threadbare carpet. “We should search his church immediately. It’s a smallish parish on the outskirts of the city. He said the shield was in a Bible. Whatever the shield is, I expect we’ll find it there—and if the devil really is after Father Grafton, then I’d rather find it before he does.”
“So much for meeting the fairy king at noon,” I said. “I guess Lord Arawn will have to wait.”
“Oh hell,” Jackaby said. “No, I can’t miss my rendezvous. The fair folk don’t take kindly to social improprieties, and I can’t afford to wait for another meeting.”
“Well then, I’ll go.”
“Absolutely not. Arawn’s emissaries expect me. They would never grant you the meeting without me.”
“I mean I’ll go to look for the Bible.”
“What? Out of the question,” Jackaby said. “The last assistant I sent into that church alone has been eating bugs and bread crumbs out of the grass ever since.”
“I won’t go alone; I’ll bring Charlie.” Officer Charlie Barker, formerly Charlie Cane, was the finest companion I could ask for on a job like this. In addition to being a top-notch and highly trained detective in his own right, Charlie was also—well—special. Descended from an ancient family of shape-shifters called the Om Caini, Charlie could transform at will into a powerful hound. He had saved my life and that of countless others, although he had been forced to live in hiding ever since his secret inhuman heritage had been revealed. A great affection had grown between Charlie and me—though his nature, the need to conceal it, and the pace of the unbelievable events unfolding around us made our situation . . . complicated.
“Charlie is on special assignment for Marlowe again,” said Jackaby. “Left Douglas in charge of his dog and took off just before dawn this morning. Lord knows when the commissioner will be done with him this time—he needs all the help he can get. The whole of New Fiddleham is a boiling mess. I think I preferred it when Mayor Spade just pretended the supernatural didn’t exist. Now he’s causing more trouble than he’s averting with his ludicrous witch hunt. Marlowe can barely keep up.”
I couldn’t entirely blame Mayor Spade. The nasty nixie in our cellar had spent the better part of the past ten years masquerading as Spade’s doting wife, manipulating and using him all the while. The truth of this had not come gently to the mayor. His world had turned upside down overnight, and in the weeks since, he had launched his own personal crusade to set it right, with little regard to how he might set it wrong in the process.
Charlie had been covertly helping Commissioner Marlowe smooth out the prickliest situations caused by Spade’s creature-catching campaign. It was thankless work, but Charlie was stubbornly noble, risking his hide for a city that would just as soon label him one of the monsters. His stalwart nature made him gallant—but it also made him absent, which did little to help me right at the moment.
“Why don’t you send me?” Jackaby and I both turned to see Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghost of Augur Lane, hovering in the doorway. She was translucent, her edges wavering ever so slightly, her silvery hair floating behind her. The loathsome Morwen Finstern had taken poor Jenny’s life over a decade ago, but Jenny had firmly taken back her afterlife. Around her neck now hung a pewter locket. Inside it was a simple inscription, From Howard with love, and a pinch of brick dust. Howard Carson had been Jenny’s past. The brick dust was her future. By carrying with her that small piece of her home and the place of her death, Jenny had made herself free to explore the world once again in her ghostly form.
“It’s too dangerous,” Jackaby said.
“Then it’s a good thing I can’t be killed again.”
At length Jackaby relented. “Grafton said the shield was in the Bible. Look for a Bible with a crest on the cover,” he said. “Or perhaps one with something tucked inside. Just”—Jackaby met Jenny’s eyes—“be careful.”
Jenny smiled softly at the detective. “And you.”
Chapter Three
Mother had always told me that it was prudent to be prepared—although I imagine she would have preferred that I equip myself with spare silk handkerchiefs and sun hats and leave the silver daggers and vials of holy water at home. By the time Jackaby swept into my room, I had finished loading the pockets of my skirts with supplies and safeguards: a sprig of wolfsbane, a small talisman, a silver coin. The weight of my knife and scabbard on one hip was balanced by that of my leather-bound notebook on the other.
My modest collection was nothing compared to the walking arsenal of artifacts that was my employer. The overstuffed pockets of his long duster clinked and jingled, and he smelled pleasantly of cloves. “Ready, Miss Rook?”
“Whenever you are, sir.”
“Then let’s be off. Our carriage is waiting out front.”
“You’ve chartered a driver for the trip?” Jackaby almost never summoned a cab if he could manage on foot.