Chapter 8

  After a bit more this and that about the town proper, the meeting broke up. Malcolm and Judy, of course, had refreshments ready to go, and it wasn't long before I found myself perched on one of the tall bar chairs in the corner under the dartboard, with a glass of ginger ale in hand.

  Malcolm had been very clever about this, because it allowed him to set me up with D.T. and Clark running interference for me. They collected reports about things that I ought to look into, while I was able to meet and greet people without worrying about remembering every little oddity that they wanted checked out.

  And a lot of them sounded like bunk to me. One very elderly gentleman complained to my minders at great length about the problems he'd been having with gremlins infesting his car and making it break down. When D.T. pried into the problem a little, she learned that the car in question was a 1950's vintage vehicle which sounded like it hadn't had much in the way of servicing done over the years.

  Meanwhile, Malcolm and Father Martin would bring over this person and that person to meet me. They were either very selective in their choices, or more than half of the town was distantly related to me by blood or marriage, based on the number of distant cousins I met over the next forty minutes.

  Finally though, as things were starting to wind down and people were starting to drift out the door, George Roberts approached and toasted me with his glass of beer. "Got a minute?"

  "Of course," I said, smiling. "You said you had something?"

  He nodded, dragging over another of the tall bar chairs and settling on it. "Aye, I do, and it's odd enough I didn't want the whole town listening in on it."

  I lowered my voice, leaning toward him a little. "I'm sure it's not as strange as some of what I've seen recently. And if I can help, I will."

  He smiled lopsidedly, leaning in a little as well and lowering his voice in turn. "It's bloody strange, it is…I grow a variety of crops on rotation, both for sale and as fodder for my cows. Grains, corn, alfalfa, hay of course, soybeans…" He waved his free hand dismissively. "Which doesn't really matter. What matters is, I put up scarecrows, you know."

  "I don't know much about farming," I said with a nod, "but that sounds pretty normal so far."

  George chuckled. "Yeah, that's all pretty normal. But my scarecrows have been going missing. I put one up, it disappears a day or two later. It's been happening for weeks now, and I'm down twelve bloody scarecrows."

  "Are you sure it's not just kids playing a prank?" D.T. asked, having drifted over.

  George shrugged. "No, I'm not sure. Except there's another pattern to it…the same day one of my scarecrows disappears, I see them all in one of my fields that night around midnight. Gathered up in a circle. Last time it happened was two nights ago, and I went out with a flashlight and my shotgun -"

  "You have a permit for that, yes?" D.T. asked carefully in her police-voice.

  He nodded. "Of course. I'll bring it 'round the station if you want."

  She shook her head. "Not necessary. Especially since it sounds like we'll be coming out to have a look soon anyway." Her lips curled into a small smile. "You can show it to me then."

  He looked relieved. "So I went out to have a look, and by the time I got out to where they'd been, they were all gone. Twelve scarecrows, there and gone in less than five minutes. If someone's playing a prank on me, they're awful good at it."

  "I'd say so," I agreed. "You're putting up another scarecrow?"

  George nodded. "Put it up this afternoon before the meeting."

  I exchanged a look with D.T., then returned my attention to George. "Which means that if the pattern continues, it should disappear within a couple of days. When it disappears, I want you to call Sergeant Burroughs here and let her know. She'll let me know, and the two of us will be out at your farm that evening regardless of the weather to see what we can see. Okay?"

  George took my free hand in his and squeezed it. "Thank you, Caley. And thank you, Sergeant. That's a weight off my mind, that is."

  "Whatever it is," D.T. said confidently, "we'll get it sorted out."

  He nodded again, rose, and went in search of a refill.

  D.T. sat down in the chair he'd vacated and shook her head. "This town is either full of crazy people, or it's a genuine hotbed of paranormal activity. Clark and I have built quite a list, but I'll check a bunch of them myself before getting you involved." She smiled a small, vaguely amused smile. "A lot of them just sound like the kind of hooliganry I've seen before. Doesn't matter where they are, kids will be kids, you know?"

  I grimaced. "Yeah, I guess I do. There were a few kids at the orphanage who were constantly sneaking out at night and making trouble. Stupid, petty little things."

  "Exactly."

  Moira Bradley approached and said, "I'm ready to head home, if you're still willing to come and look at that chest…"

  D.T. and I both rose. "Of course we are," I said.

  "It's just a short walk from here," Moira said.

  Clark stopped us on our way out the door. "I hate to impose, but…the social hall…"

  I smiled. "Will tomorrow afternoon work for you? We can take a look at it after lunch."

  He returned my smile. "Thank you very much, Caley. That would be great."

  So we followed Moira out into the pleasant evening and down the street. Which was how I found myself holding the rails of a fold-down ladder and staring up into the dark, rectangular opening of Moira's attic a half-hour later. We'd convinced Moira to stay downstairs while we had a look, which meant I could - and absolutely intended to - have Penny and Sparkle out and about to help. Moira had informed us that the box in question was at the far end of the attic from where the opening was.

  "I am suddenly extremely glad I wore pants instead of a skirt," I said.

  "Imagine how I feel," D.T. said, having just shed her uniform jacket and hung it on a nearby doorknob. She rolled up the sleeves of her white uniform shirt and loosened the knot of her black tie a little. "This uniform is not made for climbing. Or any kind of action, really. You sure you don't want me to go up first?"

  "Honestly?" I asked, amused. "I absolutely want you to. But this sounds like it's more my field than yours." I looked back up at the opening to the attic…and almost screamed in surprise. As it was, I managed to choke it off to a little squeak, which dissolved into relieved laughter. "Penny, don't do that!"

  The dusk fox was staring down at me from the opening, her snout pointed straight at me, muzzle curled into a distinct smirk. "Terribly sorry," she said, sounding anything but, "but you were taking forever and I was getting bored. I had a quick look 'round. There's nothing up here that's going to attack you, but there is definitely something odd here."

  "Sparkle," I said quietly, "go have a look too, please."

  Sparkle was off the Master Key and up into the attic in an instant, her purple radiance filling the space and making the dark hole above me less intimidating. Penny's head pulled back as I climbed up, and by the time I carefully crawled over the lip and into the attic, she was sitting beside the opening, ears cocked alertly forward. I heard the ladder creak below me and quickly got out of the way so D.T. could come up.

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  It was more of an oversized crawlspace than a full attic. Its ceiling wasn't quite tall enough for me to stand up in, but it still ran the length and width of the house. It looked like generations of Moira's family had used the space to store…pretty much everything. I spotted steamer trunks beside more modern suitcases, boxes that had been labeled but were now so faded that there was no way to know what was in them without opening them, several old wooden chairs and a trio of table lamps.

  It was a veritable flea market of old family goods.

  Penny padded forward a few steps and began sniffing the air as Sparkle, who had shot away toward the far end of the attic, began fluttering back towards us. They both looked perplexed.

  "What is it?" I asked them as D.T. clambered through the hole and knelt beside me.

  Sparkle zipped right up to my face, touched me, then shot away toward the other end of the attic. She slowed as she went, finally stopping about halfway to the far end and turned to look at us. I clearly saw her tip her head, then she shouted, "You're too far away! The attic isn't this big!"

  "And you're not far enough away to be shouting like that," I said calmly, startling her. "What's going on?"

  Penny trotted down to where Sparkle hovered in the air and turned to look at us. She blinked a few times, cocked her head to one side, and said, "Sparkle is correct. The…the attic is not this large. You look like you're much too far away. But I can still smell you quite clearly. Say something at a normal volume."

  "You look like you're maybe a dozen meters away," D.T. said. "Not far at all."

  Sparkle looked shocked, and Penny huffed. "Interesting. Come to where we are."

  D.T. and I exchanged looks and shrugs, then carefully shuffled down to where my companions were waiting for us.

  "Okay," I said, "now what?"

  "Look back," Sparkle said faintly.

  I did, then turned as shock rippled through me. The attic's opening looked like it was fifty or sixty meters away.

  "Well," D.T. said, "that's pretty damn weird."

  "Meh," I turned and started shuffling toward the end of the attic again. "If you think this is weird, I need to take you deeper into Oakwood Hall. You haven't lived until you've had to go down three staircases and up four to reach a room in a building that only appears to be three stories tall."

  "That does sound pretty cool," D.T. said.

  Sparkle giggled and fluttered down to stand on my shoulder as Penny preceded us and D.T. followed behind me.

  After five minutes of crawling, the end of the attic didn't seem to have gotten any closer, and we stopped again. When we looked back, the opening into the attic appeared to be about the same distance away as it had been before.

  I folded my legs under me and rested my hands on my knees. "Okay," I said. "This puts me in mind of the illusion magic Ken's been teaching me. Something's messing with our perception of distance and our own motion. Sparkle, can you shed a bit more light for us?"

  "Sure!" She bounced off my shoulder and hovered in the air in front of us. Slowly and steadily her purple glow brightened and spread, shadows vanishing in its wake.

  D.T. pulled out a penlight, flicked it on, and held it over her hand, which cast no shadow on the floor under Sparkle's radiance. "I don't understand it, and it doesn't get any less freaky each time I see it, but that is amazingly cool."

  Sparkle giggled and bobbed a curtsy in mid-air.

  Unfortunately, nothing about the attic changed. It still seemed a long crawl back the way we'd come or toward the far end. "Bah," I said. "Sparkle, why isn't your light dispelling this illusion?"

  She shook her head. "I can usually clear away most illusion magic. If I can't, it means whoever laid it down is a lot stronger than I am. Or that it's not a Sidhe glamour. Those are easier for me to wipe away."

  "Penny?" I asked.

  She sniffed. "I don't have Sparkle's gift for disrupting illusions. My gift is different. But I'm inclined to agree with her anyway." She sniffed again. "This makes my nose tingle the same way mortal magic does."

  And Ken hadn't taught me ways of dispelling illusions myself yet. Something else to add to the 'to do' list. So…how did we get around this?

  "Penny," D.T. said, "let's try something. Orient on the far end of the attic, and start walking. Caley, you and I are going to close our eyes and shuffle along with our hands on Penny's back."

  "Her other senses might be harder to trick than ours?" I asked.

  D.T. nodded.

  I shrugged. "It's a better idea than any I have," I said. "Sparkle? You're our illusion expert, I guess."

  Sparkle beamed at us. "It makes sense to me. Sight and hearing are the easiest senses to trick, followed by smell and taste. Touch is the hardest, because it's the most 'real.'" She landed on my shoulder. "Let's go for it!"

  Shifting back into a crouch, I laid my right hand on Penny's back. D.T. rested her left hand beside mine on the other side of Penny. We closed our eyes, and began shuffling forward.

  It seemed like less than a minute later when Penny suddenly stopped and said, "Oof! I just bumped into something."

  We all opened our eyes to find the far wall of the attic inches from our noses.

  "Well," D.T. said cheerfully, "that worked!"

  Penny rubbed her nose with one paw. "Yes," she grumped, "perfectly."

  And there, to our right, was what looked at first glance like a small, old-fashioned treasure chest about the size of a shoe box. It was made of strips of wood, darkly stained with a curved lid, banded in iron and closed with a heavy clasp. The wood was engraved with complicated Celtic knotwork, and the iron bands had esoteric engravings on them that looked very similar to the runic alphabet Ken had been teaching me for enchanting.

  The chest's clasp had a sturdy but very old padlock holding it shut, which was also covered in runes.

  I saw D.T. shift back away from it. "God, that thing makes my skin crawl."

  "Does it?" I asked curiously, shifting around to be closer to it. "It's not affecting me."

  "You've likely already built up some unconscious resistance to such magics," Penny said. "I heard the ICOA wizards talk about the innate resistance that apprentices build up over time."

  "That's useful," I said, and reached for the chest.

  It rattled violently, one corner of it bouncing off the floor and thumping back down. At the same time, a weird, muffled grinding, wheezing sound came from inside it.

  Automatically, I smacked one corner of the box with my hand. "Stop that. We're not intimidated."

  "Kinda am," D.T. said.

  "Just a little," Penny agreed.

  "It's radiating illusion magic," Sparkle said, zipping a couple of circles around the chest.

  I reached out toward it with my left hand, spreading my fingers…and felt what I thought she was. The chest's energies were secretive, which didn't surprise me, but I also got an impression of deception and misdirection, a sinister skin-crawling feeling, and heard a faint echo of the sounds we'd just heard it emit. Beyond that, I felt nothing. I smiled a little. "She's right. The rattling, the wheezing, the creepy feeling, it's all fake."

  I touched the chest again. The metal banding was a little cold, but that wasn't horribly unusual. Aside from that, nothing about it felt particularly out of the ordinary. I picked it up and shook it gently. Something inside it moved, but not much.

  D.T. hissed. "Caley!"

  I looked at her. "What?"

  "What if there was an explosive device inside it?" She asked, a look of horror on her face.

  I pursed my lips. That possibility honestly hadn't occurred to me. "Well…clearly, there wasn't, right?"

  She put a hand over her eyes for a moment. "Just…don't do that again. And promise me that the next time we do something like this you won't go shaking the strange, creepy, illusion-laden box. I'm not keen on any of us being blown to tiny bits. Or turned into toads, or something."

  I winced. She had a point. I hadn't thought it through at all. "Right, sorry. But…who'd put something like that in their own home?"

  "Maybe the owners of the home didn't put that up here," she said.

  I sat back on my heels. "I…clearly have a lot to learn about this sort of thing."

  "No kidding," she said dryly. "You and I need to talk basic investigation techniques."

  "Even so, I want to get this thing someplace safe to take a better look at it and figure out how to…remove the enchantments on it."

  "Are you sure it's safe to move?" D.T. asked.

  "Sparkle? Penny?" I looked at my experts.

  Penny shrugged. "I don't see why not, but I'm no wizard."

  Sparkle landed on the chest, knelt down on it, and pressed her hands to it. "I…I don't think there's anything alive inside of it, and the only magic I'm sensing are the illusions designed to keep people away from it."

  So much for my experts. "That's all I felt too," I agreed, then looked at D.T.. "Without more training, I think that's as close as I can come to saying it's safe to move."

  She put a hand over her eyes again for a moment. "I'm having flashbacks to the safety lecture we got from the bomb disposal unit last year. Fine, we clearly can't leave it here. And I'm prepared to assume that any magical explosives would either have gone off already, or would be set to go off when it's opened. I'll leave it up to Ken to lecture you about safe disposal of enchanted objects."

  With that, she threw her hands in the air and started crawling back the way we'd come, which no longer looked dozens of meters away, muttering under her breath.

  Sparkle zipped down and reconnected with the Master Key as Penny padded off after D.T.. Shaking my head a little, I picked up the box - which no longer seemed even vaguely creepy to me now that I'd learned about its enchantments, and followed them.

  Penny vanished back into my shadow as I climbed down the ladder, and a few minutes later we were back in Moira's sitting room, where she stared at the chest uneasily.

  "Don't worry," I said. "I'm going to take it with me and see what I can do about making it completely safe. I'll probably try to get it open, too. I'll let you know what I find inside it, and return it to you once it's safe. If it's something dangerous, I'll make sure it's taken care of appropriately."

  "Oh, don't worry about bringing anything back…I can't imagine what might be in it that I'd want…" She trailed off uncertainly. "I suppose I'd be curious to know, though."

  "Curiosity killed the cat," D.T. muttered under her breath, which fortunately Moira didn't seem to hear. Out loud, she added, "At least you'll sleep better without it in the house."

  "Oh, definitely," Moira said earnestly. "Thank you so much for doing this, both of you."

  As we stepped out into the deepening night, D.T. looked at me. "Want me to spin up the cruiser and give you a ride home?"

  I shook my head. "It's a lovely night, and the walk will do me good after that cramped attic."

  She smiled. "Just promise me you'll be careful with that thing, okay?"

  I returned her smile, warmed by her concern. "I promise."