“Thank you, Mr. Hexe,” Ashley sniffled.
“Thank me once the curse is lifted, not before.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to explain this when I get home,” Ashley groaned as I walked her to the front door.
“Just tell your mom and dad you’ve been cursed,” I said gently. “I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“No, not my parents,” she sighed. “I mean my boyfriend, Justin. I love him, and he says he loves me. But the last time he saw me I was me. What if he doesn’t love me anymore now that I’m like, you know—?” She hesitated, afraid to speak the word aloud.
I turned her by her shoulders so that we were facing each other. Despite the crow’s feet, her eyes were still those of a young girl. “Ashley, if your boyfriend doesn’t love you now, he didn’t love you then,” I said in a kind but firm voice. “Because you’re still the same person, no matter how different you appear to be. And if this Justin kid won’t stand by you, simply because of how you look—? Well, I may have only just met you, but I think you deserve something better than that.”
“You sound just like my mom,” Ashley said, smiling with her fifty-year-old mouth.
“Good. I need the practice.”
Once I had seen Ashley safely to the door, I returned to Hexe’s office to find him seated at his desk, peering intently at his gauntleted hand through one of his many scrying stones. He looked like a scientist trying to identify a particularly malignant strain of bacteria.
“Something’s wrong with the gauntlet,” he announced in a worried voice. “There was no ‘stinger’ on that child’s progeria curse. When I was in the middle of lifting it, the spell I was working began to reverse itself without me willing it. It was as if my Right Hand was being used to work Left Hand magic.”
“You mean you’re the one responsible for aging that poor girl even further?”
Hexe nodded his head, a heartsick look on his face. “I’m sorry I lied, Tate, but things are bad enough already without being sued by her parents!”
“Are you sure the problem is with the gauntlet?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” he replied, returning his attention to the scrying stone. “The spell-signature has mutated. There seems to be a second signature emerging from beneath the original—like a message written in invisible ink that’s finally becoming detectable.”
“You mean this isn’t the real Gauntlet of Nydd?”
“No, it’s authentic all right. But it appears that the original charm has been used as a Trojan horse for another spell—not unlike a computer virus.”
“What do we do?”
“The same thing you do whenever a microwave or television starts malfunctioning: take it back to the store it came from.”
The first thing I noticed as we approached Madam Erys’ shop was the FOR LEASE sign posted in the front window. Hexe rattled the door, but it was tightly locked. Although the interior of the shop was dim and dusty, there was still enough light to see that the pair of silk opera gloves still lay draped over the counter, apparently untouched since the last time I’d seen them, more than two weeks ago.
“Excuse me, sir,” Hexe said, addressing an older Kymeran with thinning, puce-colored hair, who was sweeping the stoop in front of the millinery next door. “Do you know when Madam Erys closed her shop?”
“I couldn’t give you an exact date, Serenity,” the hatter replied, pausing to lean on his broom. “It’s been at least a couple weeks since I last saw her. Not that she was one for ‘how-you-dos’. I thought it passing strange when I saw the FOR LET sign in the window, since she had just opened for business a day or two before.”
“How could I be such a fool?” Hexe groaned as we headed back down the street. “I was so desperate to reclaim my magic, I waltzed right into a trap!” He banged his gauntleted fist against his thigh in frustration. “I was stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said, placing a hand on his arm. “You had no way of knowing what she was up to.”
“Yes, but part of me knew it was all too good to be true, even for magic!” he replied bitterly. “But I was so desperate to make myself whole, I ignored my instincts! And that bitch Erys played me like a hurdy-gurdy.”
“What now?”
“We go find Moot,” Hexe said grimly. “It was obvious from the way they talked there’s plenty of history between those two. If anyone might know where to find Madam Erys, it’ll be the good doctor. And even if he doesn’t have a clue as to where she is, he’s the one who bonded the gauntlet to my hand. If he can put it on, the bastard can sure as hell take it off again.”
The Stagger Inn was little changed from the first time I saw it, except maybe even smokier and more vomit-drenched, if possible. The odor was sickening, and I had to clench my jaw in order to keep from adding to the establishment’s already impressive collection of puke puddles.
Dr. Moot was seated in the same booth as last time, although, like the rest of the Stagger Inn, considerably worse for wear, with his chin resting on his breastbone and his hands curled limply about a glass of absinthe.
“Where is she, Moot?” Hexe barked, causing the more alert patrons of the bar to turn and stare in his direction. “Where’s Erys?” When the disgraced psychic surgeon did not even twitch in reply, Hexe grabbed him by the shoulder and gave him a rough shake. “Wake up, you miserable old tosspot! Tell me where I can find Erys!”
As if in response, Dr. Moot toppled out of the booth and onto the sawdust-strewn floor, staring up at us with the cold, cloudy eyes of the dead.
Chapter 16
“Was he like that when you found him?” Lieutenant Viva asked, gesturing to the body, now hidden under a soiled tablecloth acting as a makeshift shroud.
“Yes. I mean, no,” Hexe replied with a shake of his head. “He was sitting upright when we arrived. He only fell onto the floor after I touched him. I just thought he was dead drunk not, you know, actually dead.”
“I see,” the PTU officer muttered as she jotted down notes, her badge dangling about her neck from a lanyard. Her long, vivid-red hair was worked into a French braid that hung all the way down to the base of her spine, and her scent—that of pink peppercorns and fresh cranberry—was a welcome respite from the sour reek of the Stagger Inn.
Once news that the PTU was on its way percolated through the tavern’s clientele, most of them had vacated the premises, leaving behind half-finished drinks and upended chairs, save for those too stupefied to either notice or care.
“Do you think it was murder?” I asked as I eyed a slightly built Kymeran with tangerine-colored hair inspecting what was left of Moot’s last drink.
“We’ll know for sure once our potion-master finishes his tests,” Viva replied. “Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out the old tosser simply rode the dragon one time too many—you know, mixing safflower oil capsules with absinthe,” she explained, upon seeing the look of confusion on my face. “Addicts claim it gives them the sensation of riding on the back of a battle-dragon—not that anyone really knows what that feels like anymore.”
“Lieutenant—? The absinthe tests positive for Green Death,” the potion-master announced grimly. “It’s a palytoxin made from a highly venomous form of coral. There was enough in his glass to kill him three times over.”
“Green Death was considered a relatively quick means of execution and an honorable death in ancient Kymera—there’s no known antidote,” Hexe explained. “The condemned were given a choice of either death in the arena or drinking it mixed with wine.”