“Oh yes, it’s a better plan to spread the shocks out so I can embarrass myself as an added bonus,” I spat back.
I sat down on the ground, after putting my coat underneath me to protect my good black trousers. The big dog lay down in front of me and rolled over, exposing his belly to me in a move of mock subservience. And I apparently spoke doggie, because it worked. I felt my anger dissipate and I started scratching. Anyan sighed happily and shut his gray eyes.
“I thought you were just a hellhound, but you’re obviously not. So what are you?”
“Barghest,” he rumbled, keeping his eyes closed. “Do you know what that is?”
My scratching stopped and I looked at him, horrified. I knew what a barghest was, all right. I’d been obsessed with Roald Dahl as a child and had read The Witches about a hundred times. In fact, I’d just read it about a month ago. I read Dahl the way other people snuggle up to their old baby blanket.
In The Witches, the narrator’s Norwegian grandmother explains to him that barghests are always male and that they are worse than witches. And the witches are bad because they make children disappear—
“Do you make children disappear?” I blurted out.
He opened one eye to stare at me curiously from upside down. “No,” was his only reply. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” I mumbled. I went back to scratching Anyan’s belly, but warily this time.
At that moment, Ryu was just closing the backseat door of the car when it fell off with a loud crack. He grinned at me as he went to open the trunk, but narrowed his eyes when he saw what I was doing.
Before he could say whatever he was about to say, his expression grew startled. He looked at the trunk like it had bit him.
“There’s a seal on this trunk,” he said.
Trill and Nell both snapped to attention. The two had looked like they were napping, but they were obviously just resting.
Trill raised her head so that Nell could stand up, and then the pony lurched to her feet. Anyan, too, got up to go toward the car, so I went ahead and followed.
I stood behind them while they all stared at the Toyota like it might transform into a dragon at any second. “Whoever placed that seal is strong,” Nell murmured, waving a chubby little hand like an antenna at the car. “I can barely feel it is there.
“This will take a minute,” she said, grimly. Bracing her small feet and raising her arms, a look of intense concentration crossed her face. The others backed away to join me behind her.
There was no doubt that this time the surge of power I felt was real. If Ryu’s glamouring had felt like a table fan blowing a waft of air past my skin, this felt like being caught up in a tempest. Power whipped around me, and I could see the others felt it as strongly as I did. I shivered, and Ryu took my hand while Anyan pressed himself against my leg reassuringly.
Nell was focused on the trunk, edging forward inch by inch until her hands were hovering right above the metal. She was fighting to close the last half-inch gap between her and the car, and the flux of power had become so powerful that it actually felt like a real wind. My hair whipped around my face and Ryu put his arm around my shoulder to help steady me as I nearly lost my balance. Even he looked strained by the effects of the energy unleashed around us.
Finally, just as the lashings of power were almost too much to bear, Nell cried out as she fell forward the slightest bit to breach the gap. She stood there, her hands against the trunk, gasping.
Trill went to her, nudging Nell with her slick little muzzle. Nell allowed the pony to support her as she went to collapse back under her tree.
Ryu let go of me and he and Anyan both stepped forward. Ryu put a hand on the trunk while Anyan crouched in readiness, hackles raised, a ferocious growl ripping through the grove. He was back to looking like a hellhound.
Ryu nodded at Anyan, and I saw that Ryu’s fangs were extended. They glittered in the cold light and I realized that, at this moment, he was as frightening and inhuman as the slavering beast beside him.
I backed away another step, just as Ryu threw open the door of the trunk and then sprang back.
We all waited. Nothing happened.
Unless you consider the smell to be something. As the trunk lid had gone up, a smell like roasting meat wafted from inside. Check that: It was the smell of meat that had already gone rotten being roasted. I gagged, covering my mouth and nose with my arm.
Ryu and Anyan again exchanged looks and then both moved forward to peer inside the trunk. Then they swore together as if on cue.
I knew it was a bad idea, but I was too curious not to look. So I moved forward to stand next to Ryu, my arm still over my nose and mouth.
Inside the trunk was what looked like the half-burned body of an enormous gremlin. The half of its body that had been closest to the inside of the car was pretty charred, but the rest was still intact. Not that either side of the body was better than the other. The part that was charred was pretty horrible, but the untouched part was equally terrifying. The thing had mottled moss-green skin stretched tight over its bony frame. Large clawed hands with extremely long fingers were crossed beneath its awful head, which had long, pointed ears and a sharp, short muzzle filled with row upon row of razor-sharp teeth, like those of a shark. It had a piglike nose and, I saw, a pirate earring glinted in its left ear.
And from right under that ear extended the slash that had nearly decapitated it.
I stumbled away from the car, knowing it was too late. I crashed into the underbrush, spewing my lunch all over the vegetation. Somebody was holding my hair and patting me on the back while I threw up what felt like the majority of my organs.
When I was done, Trill turned me around and wiped my mouth off with her hand, which, to my dismay, she then wiped through her hair. That was almost as gross as seeing the body, I thought blearily, my stomach still churning.
She adjusted my clothes and hair and then put an arm around me to help me back into the grove. She sat me down next to Nell, who looked about as good as I felt. After handing me a bottle of water that she pulled out of Nell’s bag, Trill went to help Ryu lift the body out of the car.
I turned my face away, toward Nell. I’d had enough nauseating sights for the evening. Nell patted my hand weakly and tried to smile at me. “What was that… thing?” I asked her. “Was it the murderer?”
“No,” she said, as her eyes closed. “That was a lawyer.” And she was asleep.
CHAPTER NINE
When we were back in the Porsche and reversing toward the main road, Ryu turned the heat on and angled the vents toward me. I wasn’t really cold, more in shock. But the warm air helped settle me, and after I’d rooted around in my bag to find a piece of gum I closed my eyes and leaned back to enjoy it.
We’d spent about another twenty minutes in the little glen while Ryu and Anyan examined the remains of the thing in the trunk and then did another sweep of the car and the area. Finally, Ryu and Anyan had a brief, but intense, conversation and Ryu walked off to make a phone call on his cell. Trill helped Nell to her feet, and they said their good-byes and ambled off into the forest. There was no fancy teleportation tonight, I noticed—Nell was still exhausted from breaking that seal on the trunk. Anyan followed them slowly, looking back at me as I waved good-bye. His big doggy face registered what looked like unhappiness, and I wondered if he had known the creature in Peter’s car.
When I felt Ryu turn the Boxster back onto the main road and stop, I opened my eyes to meet his. He turned down the heat and smiled at me, gently brushing my cheek with the tips of his fingers. “You okay?” he asked.
“Oh, just peachy.” I smiled at him. “What was that thing?”
“A goblin,” he answered, distractedly. He reached over and picked up my hand to kiss the palm, like he had the night before. I felt a sharp throbbing in my lady bits while I sang the chorus to Sade’s “Smooth Operator” to myself.
“Nell said it was a lawyer.” I tried to keep my voice from trembling. “Does she just enjoy making bad lawyer jokes?”
“No,” Ryu said, absently caressing my fingers with his own. Sma-ooooth op-er-ate-ooor… echoed through my head.
“His name was Martin Manx, and he was a lawyer, all right. Goblins often are. In fact, he was a very well-known lawyer. His firm works exclusively for the Alfar.”
“Alfar?” I asked, trying to concentrate on his words as he raised my hand to his lips to nibble on the tips of my fingers. The excitement of opening the trunk and finding the body had evidently had an entirely different effect on Ryu than it had on me.
“You might call them elves, but never, ever, let them hear you say it. They’re the most powerful beings in our world,” he explained, between nibbles.
“Oh,” I said, not understanding a word he was saying as he turned my hand over to stroke his tongue gently over the old scars marring my wrist.
Right then my empty stomach made a noise like a strangled bear cub. Ryu started, then laughed, and the moment was over. I didn’t know whether to curse my prodigious appetite or bless it.
“Hungry?” he asked, letting me pull my hand back to the safety of my lap.
“I shouldn’t be,” I said, “considering that I was just sick. But I am.” I rolled down my window and spat my gum out without thinking. Then I realized what I’d done and congratulated myself on my demonstration of refined elegance.