Hints of both gunpowder and camphor scented the air. And a fine white ash drifted down from the second floor, where the incinerated remains of what looked like an immense serpent spilled across three shattered display cases that had once housed jade and carnelian hairpins.
The afternoon light streaming in through the windows dulled to hazy gold shafts as it filtered through the drifting clouds of ash.
Jason found a silk kerchief and tied it over his nose and mouth. He offered another to Henry, who followed Jason’s example after only briefly smirking at the spray of silk pansies embroidered across the cloth.
“What do you think?” Falk asked through the kerchief. “Do I look like a proper robber now?”
“It does strike a nice balance between criminal menace and floral extravaganza.” Jason grinned from behind his own display of pink roses.
“Sure. We’ll set a new trend in criminal fashion. Pretty soon all the young thugs would be swaggering around with their grannies’ hankies over their faces.”
Together they scavenged and pilfered through gilded cabinets, pungent travelers’ trunks, and the dark little drawers of any number of dressers and desks.
Steadily, he and Falk amassed a treasury of arcane weapons, ancient necessities, and petty valuables. Strings of semiprecious stones, silver blades, tinderboxes, leather satchels, two pocket watches, and a variety of old and costly clothes heaped up on the silken divan where they gathered their loot.
Jason’s nerves tingled with both excitement and anxiety when he surveyed the assortment of odds and ends and realized that he would have to build a new life in another world with just these supplies. But it would be his own life.
He picked up one of the battered pocket watches and studied the constellation of symbols and additional hands that revealed themselves to him. According to Falk it was a compass for traveling between realms.
Jason wound the hands experimentally. A portal to Atlantis would be active in only twenty-three more hours.
“What about Atlantis?” Jason asked.
“Depends on how much you enjoy the damp. Very pretty, though. Red Ogre’s tower was built there. She swears that some quiet nights you can hear the mermaids singing in the lower floors,” Henry replied from the balcony above.
Jason remembered his ghostly visions of serene sea creatures drifting through the hallway.
“I’d like to at least see it,” Jason decided.
“Not a bad thought. There’s certainly wealth there and the inhabitants aren’t too keen on either the sidhe or NIAD. There’s plenty of glass here to trade with the mermaids and merrows, though crystal would be better…” Falk glanced up and then suddenly swung up onto the railing of the balcony and leaned out to catch one of the crystal chandeliers. He quickly plucked several shimmering baubles from their metal supports as if he were picking cherries. “They love how leaded crystal splinters light into rainbows. Pixies tend to go for prisms for the same reason.”
Jason nodded and tried to commit this to memory along with all the other odd and esoteric information Falk had offered him as the sun had sunk outside the windows and the streetlights had flickered into life.
Cold iron downs pixies, nixies, and faeries. Trolls are nuts for coconut sunscreen. Brownies only keep their word when swearing on a sewing needle. Griffins have canaries for brains and go after their own reflections nine times out of ten. Never travel by using Mexican calendars. Don’t eat goblin shashlik.
You must name the weapon you use to kill a unicorn so that the curse of its spilled blood will fall upon the weapon and not its bearer. The same held true with silver knives and werewolves…
Jason could hardly remember it all, but he still felt flushed with excitement at the prospect of seizing control of his own life. He wouldn’t wait for some government agency or a sidhe regent to decide his fate any more than he would willingly walk back into St. Mary’s.
And, despite his fears, the idea of traveling in disguise to new worlds appealed to him. He guessed that Falk was the one who made it appealing in the way he casually mentioned curses and enchanted fountains while neatly wielding his knife to pry the pearls from a Hindu statue. Someday Jason wanted to be that experienced and confident.
Jason ducked beneath the line of a window and crept up the stairs. Princess trailed him, swatting at the fluttering streamers of broken exorcism tape that littered the steps.
“What about this?” Jason held up a blanket embroidered with golden winged lions. When he’d worked at the shop he’d always thought it was a beautiful creation—faded with age and yet still whole and flashing with gold threads.
“Certainly looks like it could keep off the sun or the cold.” Henry swung down from the railing and landed with surprising quiet. “How’s it smell?”
Jason took a whiff of the thick cloth.
“Like fried chicken.” Jason’s stomach gave a demanding growl in response to the scent.
“Really?” Falk asked.
“No,” Jason admitted. “I think I’m smelling the restaurant down the street. They probably started dinner service.”
“Yeah, now that you mention it, I can smell it too.” Henry took in a deep breath and frowned at the nearest window. “It got dark quick enough, didn’t it?”
Jason shrugged. For the last twenty minutes or so he’d been using the light radiating off Falk to see his way around the shop. It struck him as almost ironic that Falk could shine so intensely and yet be utterly unable to perceive his own brilliance.
“Why don’t you pack the bags while I grab us some grub?” Falk suggested. Jason felt more than happy to agree.
Falk handed him a fistful of cut crystal gems. Then he pulled down his kerchief and took a long swig from the flask in his pocket. A moment later the light radiating from him dimmed and he sank back into a darkness that not even Jason’s vision could penetrate.
The entire shop darkened in his absence and Jason had to grip the handrail of the stairs to ensure his footing as he descen-ded toward the silken divans and ornate Indian beds on the first floor. He wondered if he could create some small illumination of his own; he remembered how he’d used a melody to close Falk’s wounds and decided to try. He let his thoughts fill with the low, warm tones of glowing embers and then the rushing whispers of flames as they burned the air. If anyone but Princess had been with him he would have felt too absurd to open his mouth and release this strange, primal song. But now as the raspy, growl of notes rushed out of him a ball of fire burst up before him.
Princess, who’d been trailing him with a strand of pearls dangling from her mouth, dropped her treasure and let out a startled yowl.
“It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you—or burn the building down…” Jason reassured her and himself. “It’s a tiny flame, just enough light to see where I’m going.”
Very cautiously Jason lifted his hand and the small ball of flames drifted to his outstretched fingers. It felt warm against his skin but didn’t burn. In fact, it hardly felt much hotter than a warm breath against his skin.
Once he reached the divan on the first floor, Jason placed the flame in an empty crystal chalice on a dresser and set to work sorting and packing everything he and Falk had gathered. Princess curled up on an upholstered footstool where she could watch the flame and chew on her string of pearls. Ever so slowly the flame dimmed until only the dull glow of a red ember fell across Jason.
He lowered the full leather packs to the floor and stretched out on the divan. It had been a long, exhausting day and he suspected that only hunger was keeping him awake at this point. In the chalice, the ember’s light pulsed and dimmed as if it too were fading into unconsciousness.