The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(3)

Above him, the cloudy glass of the transom window was already clearing.

R. F. Jackaby

Desperate last resort





Chapter Two

The devil’s come for me,” the old man wheezed. “He’s come for me at last!”

Jackaby knelt beside him, offering him a steady hand. “There are no devils here,” he said. “Catch your breath a moment. That’s it.” His eyes narrowed. “Hold on, now—you’re familiar.”

“We have met, Detective,” the man croaked. “The church—” But he collapsed into a fit of dry coughs.

Recognition dawned and Jackaby cocked his head, startled. “My word! It’s Gustaf, isn’t it? No, Grossman? Grafton!” The old man nodded weakly. “Father Grafton. Yes. Good God, you’ve grown old!”

“Sir,” I chided.

“Miss Rook, allow me to introduce Father Grafton. We last met—what was it—three years ago? When Douglas and I were investigating a rather grisly series of killings on the outskirts of town.”

“Not my doing,” Grafton managed. “The killings.”

“No,” confirmed Jackaby. “The pastor was doing everything in his power to prevent any further harm from befalling his parishioners. Made a good show of it, too. Of course, he was at least thirty years younger then.” He whipped back to the old man. “Three decades in just three years? Have you been meddling with the occult? You know firsthand how dangerous that is! I’ll have you know Douglas hasn’t been the same since he left that church of yours!”

“Put the fear in him, did it?”

“A bit. Mostly it turned him into an aquatic bird.”

“D-dim hud.” The man’s eyes seemed to be having trouble focusing. He shook his head, blinking. “No magic. Not anymore.” A patch of wispy white hair fell from his head and drifted to the floorboards.

Jackaby peered intensely at Father Grafton. “You’re getting older by the second!”

Grafton nodded weakly.

“I don’t understand.” Jackaby peered into Grafton’s ear and then took a sniff of his wispy hair. “I don’t see any sign of a curse, no traces of paranormal poisons, no visible enchantments. Who did this to you?”

“Time,” Grafton rasped. “Not much time.” Wrinkles cut across the man’s face like scars and milky white cataracts formed in his eyes. His shoulders shook. “Harfau o Hafgan,” he breathed.

“Harfau o Hafgan? What does that mean? Is that Welsh?”

“Mae’r coron, waywffon, a darian,” Grafton mumbled, his head drooping with each word—and then he lurched up so suddenly it made me jump. He clutched Jackaby’s arm. “The crown, the spear, the shield. You cannot let him collect them. He has already taken the crown. The spear . . . it was destroyed, but I fear it has been remade. The shield . . . the shield . . .” He was gasping with each breath, his whole body shuddering. His eyes were wide and wild. “He trusted me. Now I have to trust you. The shield is in the Bible. The Bible of the zealot.”

“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.”