A Familiar Sense of Dead Read online

  The air had a familiar sweet smell to it that Hazel couldn’t immediately identify, and she could hear, almost feel, a faint nose—in that almost imperceptible way the electric fuzz of a muted television.

  “You could start your own pawnshop,” commented Cordelia.

  “Oddlump’s antiques are not for sale or trade,” growled the troll. “Wait here. Don’t touch anything.” He shuffled off into the next room.

  “Somehow I would have expected him to live under a bridge,” said Hazel as she inspected her surroundings.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “ ‘Three Billy Goat’s Gruff’?”

  Cordelia frowned and shook her head.

  Hazel sniffed at the air. What was it she was smelling? “Do you smell maple syrup?” asked Hazel.

  “Maplewhatnow?” asked Cordelia.

  She was almost positive now that’s what it was.

  Oddlump returned, delivering her from the awkward moment. He held the familiar-looking case in one massive hand. He set it down on the one table not completely covered with ornamentation. “See,” he spat. “Now you leave Oddlump alone?”

  Hazel flipped Oddlumps case open and inspected the bottles. According to the labels, it was the same medicines with the same ingredients in the same dosages as the other two cases.

  “Why did Silas tell you to buy this medicine, Oddlump?”

  “He came to see me,” Oddlump said. “He asked a lot of questions. When he heard Oddlump wasn’t feeling well, he’s been tired, and Silas said to get this.” He prodded the case with one long, spindly finger. “He said he’d come back to check on me and my legions, but he never came back.”

  “Legions?”

  Oddlump shrugged. “My redcaps? Maybe he wants to join them. We patrol Quark and keep it safe—from trespassers,” he said, glaring at Hazel.

  “You’re doing a real bang-up job,” mused Cordelia.

  “Do you think Silas meant lesions?” asked Hazel.

  The comment seemed to offend Oddlump, who pulled his bathrobe a little more tightly around himself. “Oddlump does not have lesion.”

  Hazel sniffed at the air again as another waft of maple syrup washed over her. “Oddlump, you aren’t by any chance boiling some maple syrup back there?” Hazel asked, craning her neck to see into the next room—where the boilers would have been in the Bennett Farms

  “Oddlump doesn’t have boils either!” he bellowed. He smashed the table with his fist, upsetting the medicine case, which tumbled to the floor. One of the bottles escaped and found a rugless section of the floor upon which to smash itself to pieces.

  “Those are about all the questions we have for you Oddlump!” Cordelia said, pushing Hazel toward the door. “We’ll let you know if the Council has further need of your services.”

  Oddlump just stood, his clenched fists trembling.

  “Good job back there with the silver tongue,” said Cordelia under her breath as they hurried away from the shack.

  Oddlump came to the door, shouting after them, “If you come back, authority of Quark or not, I’ll stomp you like a dog!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “This is the last address?” Hazel gawked. “Are you sure?”

  Cordelia checked the notebook again. “Address numero tres,” she confirmed. “The Silverwell Round.”

  They stood in a plaza of sorts, a wide circle of paving stones upon which several walkways converged. But no buildings were in sight, just a stone well sheltered by a small wooden roof at the round’s center.

  “So how does this make any sense?” Hazel asked. The question had a twofold meaning. The first was obvious. Why would anyone list this as their address when there was clearly nothing here. The second was more conceptual. Why would anyone drill a well so close to a standing body of water? She felt confident that this was a feature that was unique to Silverwell Academy. Her ancestors wouldn’t have been so stupid as to dig an unnecessary well. Then again, the school was named after it, so she supposed it must have held some significance.

  “Winkworth did say he had trouble with one of the deliveries,” said Cordelia, shrugging. “This must be the one that Silas did the pickup for.”

  “I suppose,” Hazel said. “Unless whoever ordered was hoping that Winkworth would be content to leave it and go.”

  “What for?”

  Hazel chewed her lower lip as she pondered. “Anonymity,” she said at last. “Or convenience. Maybe they live or work somewhere around here.”

  Cordelia motioned to the empty circle around them. “Maybe one of the squirrels heard about the doctor’s marvelous medicine show?” She looked at the address again and sighed. “Well, it looks like a dead-end for us. Have we ever considered that Winkworth is behind all of this? I mean the man makes strange concoctions from illegal ingredients and encourages people to ingest them. Maybe he poisoned Silas with whatever is in that box?”

  “Except that Silas told Oddlump to get the meds.”

  “Maybe Silas was in on it.”

  “That doesn’t explain how the werespider fits into this.”

  Cordelia looked at her, unblinking. “Winkworth is the werespider. He offed Silas to keep his secret safe.”

  “You’re just making this up as you go.”

  “Maybe. But it sounds good, right?”

  Hazel shook her head. “We know both Zelda and Oddlump were taking the same meds Silas used to treat riven. That makes them the most likely contenders for werespider status. Plus whoever this mysterious third patient is.”

  Cordelia held up a finger for silence, then leaned over the edge of the well and hocked a loogie into the darkness. “Did you hear it hit?”

  “No,” Hazel said, grimacing. “No I didn’t.”

  Cordelia nodded, satisfied. “That’s because it hasn’t. And won’t.”

  Hazel edged closer to the well and peered over the edge. The well drilled into a hauntingly thick darkness, though she thought she saw something shimmering there. Was it water?

  “It’s supposed to be bottomless,” said Cordelia.

  “A bottomless well? How does that make any sense?”

  Cordelia looked at her blankly. “How should I know? It’s part of the maaagic of Silverwell Academy.”

  Hazel let the topic go. She was exhausted, her head was buzzing with clues and details, and she had just about reached her limitations for comprehending mind-boggling magical realities for the day.

  “What if they’re all riven?” asked Hazel.

  Cordelia looked up from the well suddenly. “Come again?”

  “Everyone says that Silas was a kind person. He wouldn’t just have advised them to take some useless or harmful medicine.”

  Cordelia spat into the well again. “Sometimes people don’t behave in ways that make sense. Or maybe we just don’t have all the pieces yet.

  “That much is obvious,” said Hazel, scanning the round. “We might as well do some searching. If Winkworth had trouble with the delivery, maybe he missed something.”

  “Like an invisible house?”

  Hazel walked the perimeter one more time, kicking at paving stones and checking behind plants and bushes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Searching.”

  “Let me know when you’ve finished so we can get going again.” Cordelia snorted, conjuring another loogie and letting it fly down the well.

  “You don’t suppose,” said Hazel, hurrying over to the side of the well, “that the delivery was for the well?”

  “You’re making no sense,” said Cordelia.

  “Maybe Winkworth was supposed to just leave it here,” she said. “If the recipient was our werespider . . .” She flicked a ball of light into existence and tossed it down the hole. It gently sailed downward—and through a matrix of thick spiderwebs.

  “I’m pretty sure this is where our werespider has been crashing,” said Hazel.

  “Spiderwebs in a hole in the ground. Hardly news.”

  “Those
are some serious spiderwebs,” Hazel countered. “I think there’s something down there.” As the light sunk deeper, she could see something caught up in the webbing come into focus, a thing that didn’t just reflect the light but pooled it. “Is that a necklace?”

  Hazel had thought the necklace was lost in the scuffle at Once Upawn a Time. Had the werespider grabbed it when it had pinned her to the desk?

  Cordelia was silent. She leaned farther into the well, squinting. She and Hazel watched the ball of light sail into the darkness, growing smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared.

  “See,” said Cordelia. “Bottomless.”

  “God, I hope I’m right about this, otherwise this is just going to be stupid for no good reason.” Hazel took off her satchel and set it on the ground a few feet from the hole. She snapped another ball of light into existence and stuck it to the badge on her shirt. Hopefully, it would stay there.

  “What exactly are you going to do?” asked Cordelia.

  “I’m going to get it.”

  “What?!” exclaimed Cordelia. “Didn’t you hear me when I said bottomless well? Can’t you just grab it with some magic?”

  “Haven’t learned that one yet. Perhaps you’d care to try?”

  “Funny.”

  When Hazel and Clancy had their next practice session, and Hazel had finished summarily strangling him, she would have to ask him about such a spell. But for now, she didn’t have any focuses on her that would help her wing this one. The only option that remained was good old-fashioned climbing.

  She scooted onto the edge of the well, bracing herself on either side in the chinks and grooves of the stonework. “Wish me luck,” she said.

  She shimmied her way down, descending inch by inch, trying to ignore the little spiders and other crawlies that squirmed across her hands. She looked up occasionally to see Cordelia’s silhouette in the ever-shrinking mouth of the well.

  The climb was surprisingly easy going until she reached the webs. She had to fight to break through them, and the severed remnants clung to her. She had been naive to worry about falling. The strands were so thick and cloying that they would have caught her.

  Unfortunately, that safety net came with a serious drawback. She was having trouble progressing through the tangle of webs, and after breaking through a few thinner strands, she found herself in the thick of the nest, completely ensnared.

  “Are you okay down there?” called Cordelia.

  “Just peachy keen.”

  “Peachywhat?”

  Trying to maintain firm footing on the wall while also pulling the webbing free proved too awkward.

  “What’s going on down there? I can’t see you anymore.”

  “I’m stuck!” she yelled.

  “Stuck?”

  “These spiderwebs are really sticky.”

  “You don’t say . . .”

  “I’m going to need a little help.”

  “I’m not coming down there.”

  Maybe Hazel could cast a spell to free herself, but when she ran through her very limited repertoire in her head, the only one she could think of was the fire spell she’d been practicing with Clancy. Could she surgically burn away enough webbing to get loose?

  “You smoke!” Hazel called up. “Don’t you have a lighter?”

  “A lighter?” asked Cordelia. “Yeah, why?”

  “Drop it down to me!”

  “It’s a Strange-family heirloom!” complained Cordelia. “I’m not dropping it down a bottomless well.”

  “Do you have a cheap one?”

  “I do not,” said Cordelia, clearly offended.

  “I suppose you could climb down here after me.”

  “Or I could just leave you down there,” said Cordelia flatly.

  She wouldn’t. “You wouldn’t.”

  Cordelia didn’t respond. Her silhouette immediately disappeared from the coin of light above.

  “Cordelia!” Hazel implored. “Cordelia, don’t even! Do you think this is going to get you back in the Council’s good graces and get that dampener removed from your wrist?!”

  Hazel waited in silence, the sounds of her panicked panting echoing harshly in the well.

  A moment later, Cordelia reappeared, her unintelligible grumbling drifted down to Hazel, before she sulkily asked, “Can you catch?”

  “Can I catch?” In truth, Hazel was rubbish. She had played softball for the few years she’d gone to public school. She hadn’t met the grounder, line-drive, or pop-up that she couldn’t completely fumble. She’d been banned from playing catcher, shamed herself out of first-base, and finally been banished to right field. But she wasn’t about to admit any of that right now. “Of course I can catch!”

  “Fine. But if you don’t catch this, I’m leaving you down there. On three. One . . . two . . . three.” Cordelia dropped the lighter. It fell like a bullet, and Hazel let go of the wall, trusting the webbing would hold. For a moment, time seemed to slow and she saw with perfect clarity the lighter tumbling toward her. She had this. The lighter landed in her palms hard and, before she could grasp it, bounced right back out and tumbled into the darkness.

  “Oh god,” she whispered.

  “Did you catch it?” called Cordelia

  Hazel looked down, scanning the darkness for some sign of the lighter.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said slowly, “but I might have . . . not caught it.”

  “You’re kidding me!” Cordelia screeched. “You said you could catch!”

  “I’m really sorry. It was so tiny and it was moving so fast.”

  Hazel plucked the ball of light from her badge and scanned the darkness below. Then she spotted it—the lighter shimmering just near her left foot . . . and just a few inches from the necklace. “I see it!”

  Cordelia didn’t respond. Hazel looked up, but her partner was no longer peering over the edge of the well. Hazel heard a flurry of movement up above and an unnatural screech that made Hazel’s blood run cold.

  “Cordelia?” Hazel called up. “Cordelia? Are you okay?”

  Silence.

  Hazel strained to reach the lighter, but the webbing held her firmly. She heard another flurry of movement from above followed by an inhuman shriek that sent a shiver down her spine.

  She felt panic rising in her throat like bile, but she pushed it back down. She would not panic. Not here.

  Hazel braced herself between the walls. She might not have been able to break free of the strands, but she found she was able to twist them. She recalled the stunt training she’d done for one action movie and managed to flip herself upside Mission Impossible–style. She grabbed the lighter and wrested it free from the webbing. Now to reach the necklace . . .

  She planted her feet firmly on the stonework above her and pushed, stretching the webbing and lowering herself ever closer to the piece of jewelry. A tearing sound filled the well and Hazel dropped dramatically.

  But the web held.

  She grabbed the necklace and pulled it free.

  She tried to turn herself right-side-up, but found that the drop had just ensnared her in more strands. They pulled in every direction, keeping her right where she was, heels over head, suspended in the middle of the well. She carefully stuffed the necklace into her back pocket and buttoned the pocket shut.

  She turned her attention to the lighter now. It looked like something out of a medieval torture dungeon. But, despite all its trappings, the lighter operated just like a Bic. She twisted her arm so that she could hold the lighter at the proper angle and then sparked it to life—no glowing ball, just a good old-fashioned butane flame. She held the flame to the web to test what would happen. Almost instantly the web shriveled and recoiled. She tried to work out a strategic plan—how she would free herself without dropping to her doom, but another unearthly shriek from above told her she didn’t have time to puzzle this out.

  She grabbed hold of a particularly thick strand nearby. If she fell, at least she would have that
to hang on to—and it would hang on to her. She set to work burning away the thick strand, but even with the lighter, it was slow going.

  Cordelia needed her help and she needed it fast.

  Hazel held the lighter out in front of her, sparked it to life, and concentrated on it, channeling all of her raw emotions from the day into her casting. Her catastrophic failures with Clancy, the harm she and Tyler had done to the unicorn, and just about every single thing that had happened to her since stepping through the Postern.

  A torrent of flame erupted from the lighter, lashing like a whip as it whirled around her. She closed her eyes to the intense heat, a flicker of regret flashing through her. She hoped she hadn’t overdone it and that she still had hair when this was over. She let go of the trigger on the lighter but it was already too late. All at once she was falling, slowly tumbling head over heels. Instinctively she shot her legs and arms out to brace herself against the wall and was rewarded with intense pain as the rough stonework bit into the palms of her hands and the flesh of her forearms. It slowed her, but she continued to fall.

  Then she hit the bottom, a jarring thud that clacked her teeth together.

  She groaned and rolled over, pulling herself onto her hands and knees. She could feel metal grating beneath her fingers.

  A plaque was fixed to the wall there, reading, All’s well that ends well. You are well advised to stay well behaved, well grounded, and keep well away from bottomless wells. We wish you well—just not this one.

  Hazel laughed hysterically as she kissed the plaque. “Oh thank you, thank you.” She frantically patted herself down and was pleased to find she, somehow, was unburned, and, as a bonus, still had a full set of hair and both eyebrows.

  But this was no time for celebration. She still had to get to the top of the well and quickly. She ignored the screaming pain in her palms as she Spider-Girled her way upward. She passed with no trouble—her torrent of flame had cleared the nest. By the time she reached the top, her limbs were shaky and she was barely able to drag herself over the side. She flopped onto the paving stones of the round and took a moment to catch her breath.

  “Cordelia?” she called out as she forced herself back onto trembling legs. Cordelia lay on the stones not far from the well, seemingly unconscious.