The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(46)
“But I was just inside the church,” Jenny said. “I searched every room. I didn’t see any secret passages or mysterious portals to another dimension.”
“That sounds embarrassing,” said Pavel. “I would be embarrassed. Are you embarrassed?”
Jenny glared daggers at him.
“There’s a trace of someone else,” said Jackaby. “A trace of someone who’s been through recently—within the past week at least. A trace of someone . . . fae.”
“That would probably be Tilde,” Pavel surmised. “He’s not a lot of fun, but he does his job. He’s not around right now, is he?” He glanced over his shoulder nervously.
“Tilde is a fairy?” said Jackaby. “But why would a fairy be sneaking through the rend when he could just use a veil-gate? Why is a fairy working with the Dire King at all? What I’m picking up is not monstrous; it’s a Seelie fae.”
Pavel shrugged. “I don’t do auras.”
“So how do we get up?” I asked, scanning the dusty planks above us for any sign of a trapdoor.
“We don’t. We go down,” smirked Pavel. “Obviously.”
“There,” said Jackaby, pointing at a small patch of absolutely nothing over in the corner. Pavel looked impressed.
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
“Neither do I,” said Jackaby. “I do see something everywhere else, though. The whole ceiling is imbued with a tincture of religious faith, the walls have been saturated in history, the air around us has a fine mist of the mystical, and even the dirt beneath us is covered in trails and wisps of paranormal auras. Except there. It’s as though there is a sinkhole right there, maybe ten feet wide.”
Pavel knelt and dug his fingernails into the dust. “Cigar for the clever fellow.” He pulled up a plank of wood the same color as the dirt and leaned it up against the wall. The earth below appeared to have been fractured like a broken mirror; crumbling fragments of dusty brown drifted around the edges, suspended as though floating in an invisible pond. The center of the cleft was a glowing pool of pale green light. “I do believe that’s vial number two to me?”
Jackaby reached into his coat and retrieved a second glass tube of crimson blood. He tossed it to Pavel. “Fair enough. You were true to your word.”
Pavel’s eyes fluttered shut as he sucked down the sticky liquid. His whole body shuddered and he tossed the vial aside, licking his teeth. It broke against the rocky foundation. His face was still a mess of scar tissue, but by the light of the green glow it looked smoother already than it had when he first turned up on our doorstep, and it was fading to a pale pink and less of an angry red.
“Hits the spot,” he said. “I’ll have one more for the road, if you don’t mind, Detective.” His eyes looked dilated.
“You’ll have one more when I am sure we’re not walking into an ambush,” Jackaby answered. “After you.”
Pavel cracked his neck and gave Jackaby a smile that had gone rotten several days ago and probably should have been tossed out of the bushel before it spoiled all of the other smiles. “Once more unto the breach,” he recited, and fell backward into the verdant glow.
Jackaby approached the rend.
“I don’t suppose you can see what’s waiting for us on the other side?” I asked.
“I see nothing beyond the point of crossing. I couldn’t see the veil-gate in Rosemary’s Green, either, although I knew it had to be right in front of me. I can register earthly auras just fine, and otherworldly auras are quite vivid—but I think the overlap of the two creates a sort of anomaly my sight doesn’t know how to process.”
“So, we’re just going across blind?” I said.
“Looks that way.” Jackaby nodded.
“Through a portal we know has been frequented by our worst enemies?”
“That’s it.”
“Because we’re trusting a psychopath who has repeatedly tried to murder us?”
“Yes.”
“Just so we’re clear.”
Jackaby stepped off the edge of the dirt floor and into the emerald light as though he had just walked off the end of a pier wearing lead shoes.
Jenny coasted in after him headfirst.
I screwed up my courage and took the crossing with a little jump, bending my knees as I dropped out of our world and into the next.
Chapter Nineteen The world turned upside down. One moment I was looking down at the emerald pool beneath my feet as I fell into it—and the next moment I was looking at the sky, as I fell away from it. I scrambled to right myself as a floor of stone tiles leapt toward my head. My arms crumpled under me, but I managed to roll out of the landing just enough to cushion the blow. I pushed myself up and looked around.
We had traveled so far beneath the streets of the city, deep under the buildings, and deeper still into the earth, only to emerge in the biting-cold fresh air high atop a towering citadel overlooking a strange and foreign land.
I had visited the Annwyn once before. The first time had been a smooth transition, like stepping from one room into another. This was something else. I was standing on the rooftop of a tower on the corner of a castle wall. As I peered timidly over the edge, I blanched. Had the rend dropped us ten feet from this spot, we would have fallen half a dozen stories before we hit the ground.