Belle’s Quest (Fairytale Bureau #3)

Chapter 15

15

The Grimm Knight stood outside the window, peering in, hair wisping from her fat braid.

Elated that she’d found us, I rushed to put my hands on the glass and yelled, “Hannah, can you hear me?” I wasn’t sure if the magic keeping us in also blocked sound.

“Yeah, I hear you.”

“We’re trapped and need help to escape.”

“What’s the situation inside? What am I facing?” Hannah kept her tone low and brisk.

“Well, the paper golem is gone?—”

“The what?”

“Let’s just say we found the source behind the curse. It’s currently walking around in a person-sized paper puppet.” A truly nut-sized version of what had occurred .

Hannah blinked before drawling slowly, “A paper puppet. Jeezus. Not what I expected.”

“There’s much to explain, but we can do that once you get us out of here.”

Hannah peered past me and frowned. “Where’s the prince?”

“He and Gerome left with the paper puppet.”

“Gerome was here?” her sharp reply.

I nodded.

“Bloody hell. Guess that explains why I didn’t find him,” she muttered. “I assume there’s a reason you haven’t escaped via the window.”

“I can’t break the glass.”

Her brow arched. “Did you use a pillow to hit it?”

Oddly, her sarcasm reassured. “Smartass. It’s been magicked.”

“Or you didn’t put enough muscle into it with those tiny arms of yours. Stand back while I give it a shot,” Hannah ordered with a wave of her hand.

Taking a few paces from the window brought me to Godmother’s side. She stood, looking bedraggled in the fancy gown she’d worn to the ball what seemed like an eternity ago. As Hannah wound up for a swing, I murmured, “I never asked earlier, but given you’re stuck, I assume Methuselah took your power to do miracles? ”

Her nose wrinkled. “My gift is very narrow in scope. Transforming clothing, arranging transport, doing makeup, hair, those kinds of things.”

“Surely you can do more. Cinder said you used magic to get her in the academy.”

“Hardly magic. More like I pulled some strings with someone I knew. The agent who helped register her was a former Cinderella who escaped a prince who had a fetish for dressing as a dog and being walked. She had a soft spot for me, seeing as how I ensured her ballgown was etched in kittens and fringed in cat hair. Apparently, the prince was quite repulsed.”

“Wait, if you know someone in the bureau, then that must mean they’re aware of the alien rock.”

“Unfortunately, no. After my failed attempts to find a way to nullify the stone, Methuselah cast a spell on me to prevent me from speaking of it.”

“You’re talking now.”

“I assume he let the spell lapse. Now that he’s gotten strong enough, he no longer cares who knows.”

Wham . I glanced at the window to see Hannah staggering back from it, tree limb in hand. She gave it another go, running at the glass and swinging hard. The blow vibrated her head to toe and didn’t even leave so much as a scratch.

“I’m going to try shooting it,” she yelled .

Just in case it worked, we shifted out of the path the bullet might take.

Bam .

The glass didn’t even quiver.

“Fuck this,” Hannah hollered. “I’m coming through the front.”

I glanced at Godmother. “Should I worry it left behind a surprise?”

She shrugged. “Who knows with that sadistic alien.”

We couldn’t hear anything from the rear of the house, not at first. Then there was cursing. Some banging. A high-pitched squeal. Then silence.

Click .

We eyed the door as the knob turned and opened. A bedraggled Hannah stood in the doorway, scowling. “Agatha. I should have known you were in the middle of this mess.”

“Not by choice, I assure you.”

“Your furniture attacked me,” Hannah huffed.

“Oh, I hope you didn’t have to murder my sofa. They don’t make them like that anymore.” Agatha wrung her hands.

Hannah’s grimace deepened. “Afraid you’ll have to go shopping.”

“What yodeled?” I asked .

My question twisted Hannah’s lips. “Me when the broom spanked me between the legs.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip so as to not laugh.

“Not funny,” she groused. “It ain’t just boys who are sensitive down there.”

“I’m not surprised my house was trapped. Methuselah is very sly.”

“Meth-who?” Hannah queried.

“The alien spirit that’s causing all the curses. In a nutshell, a rock fell to Earth from space containing some kind of being who cast the fairytale curse. It’s currently in a papier-maché body, but it’s looking to upgrade by taking over Killian’s body.”

To her credit, Hannah didn’t burst out laughing at my outlandish recap. “Alrighty then. Magic-wielding body-snatching alien is our target. I knew this trip would be interesting. Where have they gone?”

I shrugged. “No idea and I doubt we’ll figure it out before the body switch.” Not with their head start.

“Giving up already?”

My lips turned down. “I don’t want to, but we have no idea where they went.”

“Yeah, we do.” Hannah held up a phone. “Gerome’s got a tracker in his spear. He had it installed when the airline folks lost it on a trip. He hunted it down and found it at a baggage unloader’s home, but it took him a few days. We had the spear chipped after that.”

“Assuming he has the spear with him,” I pointed out.

“Gerome loves that sharp pointy stick more than anything. He’ll have it,” Hannah stated with confidence.

“Except Gerome isn’t himself right now. Methuselah is controlling him.”

“Just one more thing I can mock him with once we track them down. Let’s go.” Hannah waved us out.

We exited the room to see the house in shambles. Furniture broken and the broom that dared molest Hannah snapped in two.

Outdoors, the sun shone, bright and cheery. The day should have been heavy and dark like my heart. Poor Killian. I fretted about his wellbeing. Worried we wouldn’t find him in time. Wondered when I’d fallen for the prince.

Hannah snapped her fingers. “Look sharp. We don’t know what we’ll encounter on our way back to the car.”

“Can we even find it?” I asked as we followed Hannah out of the yard. “The mist?—”

“Is gone.” She pointed to the road we’d not seen when we’d arrived, dappled with sunlight .

“The rock, or should I say Methuselah, is constricted in how far and how much he can expend his power,” Agatha declared. “The Grimm Effect curse is the only thing that doesn’t seem to require much from him, and I can only assume it is a self-feeding spell.”

“Why do you keep calling that alien jerk a he?”

“Because his arrogance and manners remind me very much of a man.” Agatha sniffed.

Fair enough. Although I might stick to using “it.” We followed the road, and as we walked, I asked Hannah what happened to her and Gerome.

“After that ash dragon spewed its cloud of fumes, Gerome went after it. No surprise there. Once it was gone, we realized we’d lost you and the prince, so we started looking, only a flock of geese came barreling through, hundreds of them, and we got separated. I tried looking for Gerome and even calling, but he didn’t reply.”

“Methuselah probably already had him bespelled by that point,” Agatha’s quiet addition.

“How come it never controlled you?” I asked, remembering how she’d claimed to have set it on fire.

“It tried.” Agatha’s look turned fierce. “But I’m a stubborn old lady. Guess it didn’t stick. In good news, it doesn’t last forever. From what I’ve observed with the townsfolk it used, the obeyance spell does eventually fade.”

“So this alien, it’s what? Trying to destroy the world by making us live out fairytales?” Hannah asked as we passed a pasture with some sheep. Sheep wearing remnants of clothes. Oh dear.

Agatha cleared her throat. “From what I’ve managed to glean, it thrives on chaotic emotion generated by the curses. So, for example, a Rapunzel, languishing for her prince, because the curse tells her she must have one, emits a force. That force feeds Methuselah, and as it grows, he can do things with it, like build forests overnight and transform people into beasts.”

“Conjure mists and constructs,” I muttered. “No wonder it called itself a god.”

“More like a sorcerer, a bad one. And we all know what happens to bad magic-users,” Hannah stated.

“They get houses dropped on them.” I’d recently read the entire Oz collection.

Agatha chuckled. “I already know water doesn’t work. I’d hoped he would be like those aliens in War of the Worlds when I dumped a bucket on it.”

“Think more epic.” Hannah spread her hands. “I’m talking like Voldemort and that dude from the Lord of the Rings movies. ”

“Um, they had wizards to fight them,” I reminded. “We’re not wizards.

“We’ll find a way,” Hannah assured.

I wished I had her confidence.

We encountered little resistance on our way to the car. Good sign or bad? Good in that we made good time, but bad because Methuselah obviously didn’t think we posed a threat.

How long would it take to prep Killian and steal his body?

The car remained parked on the outskirts of the razed hamlet. We piled in, Godmother stuffing her skirts to fit in the back seat, while I took the passenger front.

Before driving, Hannah pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. “Let’s see where my partner is,” she muttered, loading an app. A map lit up her screen and displayed a blinking dot. She pointed to it. “They’re moving fast.”

“They’re taking the A303,” murmured Agatha.

“Any idea where they’d be heading? And why did Methuselah have to go elsewhere? Why not conduct the ritual at the cottage?” I had questions. Asking them helped me not languish in worry for Killian.

Agatha appeared pensive. “This is just a guess, but given their direction, and the fact Methuselah chose to relocate, I think they might be heading to Stonehenge.”

“Why there?” I asked.

“Because it’s an ancient mystical place of power.” I glanced at Hannah in surprise, and she offered a defensive, “I like history, especially the stuff that might pertain to magic today.”

“Stonehenge was abandoned centuries ago. I doubt it has any kind of magic left.” Not to mention, I’d never heard of anything happening in or around it.

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Agatha piped in. “You know, I have to wonder if Methuselah spoke the truth about how the curse works.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because part of his explanation made no sense. How does deploying his magic create more magic?” Agatha exclaimed. “Expending magic should reduce, not increase, it.”

“You’re assuming magic follows scientific laws,” I argued.

Agatha remained frowning. “Or Methuselah lied. He claimed to be weak when he arrived. Starving. And yet, within months, things began to happen.”

“It called itself devourer of worlds. Most likely it began feeding upon arrival.”

“Feeding on what, though?” Agatha kept thinking out loud. “He claimed the curses created the emotional turmoil that fed him energy, but why bother expending his limited resources casting his fairytale spell when so many people are already emotional messes?”

“If he’s not eating their feelings, then it must be something else. Something it doesn’t want us to know about,” Hannah stated, her foot heavy on the pedal, making the poor little car put-put way faster than it was used to.

“Perhaps Methuselah can’t touch the energy he craves directly. Could be he needs humans to channel it,” I mused aloud.

“That would make sense, especially given he’s not from Earth. You know, there’s long been talk about ley lines running through the planet,” Agatha commented. “Ley lines being energy conduits.”

I snorted. “I know what ley lines are. Don’t tell me you believe in them.”

“I do, and if I’m right, it would make sense. You just said Methuselah might not be able to access magic without a conduit. AKA humans. If true, then perhaps he needs the curse to turn people into magnets for the Earth’s natural power.”

“If people became magic-magnets, then shouldn’t they be the ones with the power?” I couldn’t help my confusion.

“Unless the spell he casts draws in that energy but then turns around and funnels it back to him,” Agatha suggested.

“An interesting theory but let’s say, even if it’s true, how does that help? How are we supposed to cut him off?”

Agatha’s lips turned down. “I don’t know. But I do know he is very attached to his stone. I didn’t realize until he locked me in that room that it was gone from the books. I can only assume he moved it.”

“Or has it close by.” I thought of the golem and how I thought I’d seen a spark of light when I sliced its chest. It led to me saying, “If we got hold of that stone and destroyed it?—”

“That thing was living in outer space and crashed on Earth. You’re not going to be able to smash it with a hammer.” Hannah swerved around a slow-moving car, and I swear we lifted on two wheels as she passed.

“It might be indestructible. However, what about containment?” Agatha mused aloud. “If we could block the stone from emitting or receiving magic…”

“Then Methuselah would be powerless. But how are we supposed to A, get the rock from it, and B, contain it?”

Hannah ticked off possibilities. “Salt, salt water, lead, silver, iron.”

“All human elements that might not work against an alien object,” I pointed out .

“But might block the flow of Earthly magic,” Hannah countered.

Might. Maybe. All of this spit-balling, while interesting, could be completely off base. What if there was no way of stopping Methuselah?

Then Killian would be screwed.

I had to find a solution before it was too late.