Tempt the Stars

Chapter Nine

The drizzle condensed into a driving rain on the way to the house, so conversation was kept to a minimum. Although I did protest when the massive red creature slung an unconscious Pritkin over one shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. And then again when Pritkin’s head, now soaking wet and dripping, was allowed to bang against the creature’s backside when it stood up.

“That thing will kill him!” I said, struggling to my feet.

But the man—our captor, Roger—didn’t seem to care. I decided to go with Roger, since no way was I calling him Dad. And I had to call him something.

“He’s a war mage. They’re almost impossible to kill.” He scowled. “Even on purpose.”

He took off into the underbrush. And since Big Red followed, I had no choice but to go, too. Thankfully, we must have gone most of the distance on our crazy ride, because a few minutes later, our host shoved open a side door on a pretty, pale blue cottage.

And Big Red slammed Pritkin down on a table, hard enough to rattle the surrounding shelves.

“I thought you said you weren’t trying to kill him!” I glared at Roger, who was shrugging out of his wet coat.

He shot me a disgruntled look. “Didn’t look like you needed the help.” And then he disappeared up a flight of stairs.

I bent over Pritkin, my heart in my throat. One day, that famous hard head of his wasn’t going to be hard enough. Maybe today, since it was oozing something all over the tabletop.

I couldn’t tell what, because Roger hadn’t turned on a light, and the room was mostly in shadow. A vague haze was filtering down the stairs, but it wasn’t enough to see by. Until my fumbling hand finally found a light switch on the wall, and a small fixture over the table sprang to life.

And showed me a puddle of dirty water, not blood.

I sat down abruptly, feeling faint.

A quick check showed me a lot of cuts and scrapes on the too-still body, but nothing that looked life-threatening. I took off the hoodie and wrapped it around him to preserve whatever modesty either of us had left, and noticed that my hands were shaking. A moment later, the trembling had spread throughout my body, making even sitting up difficult.

I wasn’t sure whether that was from worry about Pritkin, or from getting hit with a dozen or so little “toys” all at the same time, or from having an entire forest attack me. But my head suddenly seemed to think that it would feel better on my knees.

Like right now.

I flopped over, and then just stayed there, my body continuing its long-running demonstration on why I was not cut out for this crap.

For a few minutes, the only noise was my labored breathing and a clock ticking somewhere, annoyingly loud. And rain lashing the windows, because apparently I only visited Tony’s in lousy weather. And something making a tiny scrape, scrape, scrape sound.

Something close.

My head jerked up, and my heart leapt back to what was starting to feel like its new home, just behind my tonsils. But all I saw was dark. Maybe because the main source of light was almost on top of me.

But nothing lunged at me out of the gloom, and my eyes slowly adjusted. And sent back images of a typical kitchen, circa the 1960s, which I guess was the last time anybody had bothered to update this place. Across a rectangular space was a lime trifecta of stove, fridge, and sink, a square window framed by white curtains, and a door leading into an adjacent room.

And a robot slumped on a chair, poking itself in the eye.

I froze.

It was the one with acid green potion bombs poking out of its chest like buboes on a plague victim. And while I wasn’t clear on much right now, I was very, very clear on one thing: I did not want to find out what those bombs did. I was suddenly afraid to move, not knowing what it might view as a threat.

Minutes passed. The clock, a big wooden cuckoo by the door, continued to tick. The rain continued to beat against the windows. And the robot continued to scratch at its eye, only I couldn’t figure out what it was—

Oh.

Like the Tin Man with his floppy garden sack, and Big Red, whose shoulders terminated in nothing but a small knob, this one didn’t have a proper head. As if whoever had designed them had just lost interest above the collar. But somebody else had decided that wouldn’t do, and had stuffed a white plastic bucket partly down the neck hole.

That might not have been so bad, since at least it had been formed into vaguely the right shape. And its cheerful, prosaic surface was less Children of the Corn than Tin Man’s. But then somebody had had to go and ruin it.

By gluing a pair of false eyelashes to the front.

For a moment, I just stared.

They were thick and black and droopy, like two dispirited spiders, and one had slid halfway down what I guess you’d have to call the cheek, maybe because eyelash glue was designed to stick to other eyelashes, not to shiny plastic. This seemed to bother the . . . whatever it was . . . which kept poking at it, trying to slide it back into place. But despite having nice, robotic-looking hands instead of gardening shears, it didn’t appear to be making much progress.

I watched it for a while, blankly, a not-unpleasant white noise buzzing in my ears. And then I decided that maybe I just wouldn’t think at all for a while. My brain obviously wasn’t up to it, and zoning out was sounding really good right about—

But of course not.

There was a heavy tread on the stairs, and then Roger burst back into the kitchen, with his usual frenetic energy and a basin of water. “Dropping in like this,” he was grumbling, as if he’d been talking to himself. “Could have gotten your damned fool self killed!”

“You’re not exactly easy to find,” I said, my voice sounding a little strange and a little breathy, like I was doing a bad Marilyn impression. I put my head down on the table.

That left me looking at him sideways, but it didn’t help. He was scowling from this angle, too. “You might have called!”

“Called?”

“We’re in the phone book!” he said, and slammed one down on the wood in front of me.

I blinked at it, cross-eyed. “Under what? Gods and demons?”

“The only demon is the one you brought with you,” he said, transferring the scowl to Pritkin.

And okay, I thought. It looked like Mom was home. Because I didn’t think her . . . lover? friend? pet? . . . was likely to have figured out what Pritkin was that fast. He’d barely laid eyes on the guy, and Pritkin looked like a human.

Well, usually. At the moment he looked more like a corpse. I got up with the vague idea of doing something, only my legs vetoed that plan halfway through the motion, which left me stumbling awkwardly into the table.

It hurt. A lot. My knee came into painful contact with one of the table’s sturdy legs, and the table won. I backed off, to the accompaniment of Roger cursing a string worthy of a war mage I knew.

“Sit down before you fall down!”

“Too late,” I mumbled, but my butt somehow found the chair again anyway. He slammed the basin down on the tabletop and muttered some more, while cleaning off Pritkin like he was going to die of dirt or something. I kind of thought if that was the case, we’d both be goners, since we’d passed filthy a while ago. But on the plus side, I didn’t look so improper anymore, being decently covered in mud.

Silver lining, I thought, and sprawled there, watching the robot try to fix its wonky eyelash.

It kind of looked like it had had a hard night.

I could relate.

“What is that?” I asked, after a few minutes.

Roger looked up from checking Pritkin for damage. “Is that what you came here to ask?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t need to know, do you?” he snapped, and slammed out.

I stared after him for a moment. And then I managed to get up and check on Pritkin, too, who was a good deal cleaner but no more conscious than he’d ever been. I felt my stomach fall, since my first-aid training hadn’t included what to do for magical pranks or man-eating forests or attacks by supernatural robots.

I put a hand on his cheek, and his skin felt clammy. Or maybe it was just that it was chilly in here, too. His face turned into my palm, his breath warm on my skin, a gentle, reassuring caress.

Until it suddenly stopped.

I grabbed and shook him, which didn’t make much of a difference because I didn’t have much strength. And then, about the time the room was starting to collapse in on me, and the light was graying out and I was contemplating a heart attack to go with my stroke, he gave a loud snort. Followed by what, even charitably, could only be called a snore.

I sat down abruptly, trying to decide between bursting into tears and passing out. But neither sounded all that great. So I finally settled for just listening to him breathe for a while.

And the man upstairs knock about angrily.

“I don’t think he’s happy to see me,” I told Pritkin, who failed to have an opinion on the matter.

But somebody else did.

“Oh no, it’s not like—” someone said, and then cut off with a little “eep.”

I frowned. I was exhausted and freaked out and possibly edging up on crazy, but I wasn’t quite there yet. And I was pretty sure that had come from the robot thing. And since it didn’t have a mouth, that was . .

Well, that was interesting.

I got up again.

The poking had suspiciously stopped, with the creature’s hands lying demurely in its lap. A lap that I only just noticed was covered by a frilly half apron. It was green, too, with white gingham checks and an eyelet ruffle.

Nothing like color coordination, I thought, and edged closer.

The creature didn’t move.

I stopped in front of it.

It just sat there.

I bent over and reached out a hand, which I admit was trembling a little. But that was probably a result of the evening’s entertainment. Because whether due to the apron or the eyelashes or the fact that I was high as hell, I wasn’t . . . actually . .

“Oh, thank you!” someone said brightly as the eyelash slid back into place, and I snatched my hand back.

Someone else cursed, “Damn it, woman!”

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” the first voice asked. It was female, and she sounded peevish. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She can obviously hear us.”

“Yes, of course she can!” the man said. “That’s the point!”

“Well, I wasn’t going to be rude, what with her hurt and scared and nobody even getting the dear any dry clothes. . . . She could catch her death.”

“Then she’d fit in here just fine,” the male voice grumbled.

And okay. I might not be the world’s greatest warrior. Or, you know, anywhere on the list. But there was one thing I did know. One thing I knew very . . . damned . . . well . .

I bent closer. And in the shiny white surface of the bucket I saw the reflection of the light over the table, a blurry impression of an old pie safe, and the long rectangle serving as the stairwell. And a pair of big blue eyes, beaming back at me—from inside the plastic.

“Caught me,” the woman said cheerily. “Look at you!”

I stood up, swaying a little, but managed to point a finger. “You. You’re not a homun—humunk—whatever,” I said accusingly. “You’re a ghost.”

A pleasant, lined face with a mop of gray hair popped up over top of the bucket, letting off a bit of green steam into the dark room. “Right in one,” she said, apparently thrilled.

“No, she isn’t!” the other voice crabbed. And an old gent in a blue uniform with swaying gold epaulettes poked partway out of the clock. “We’re both. And the word is homunculus,” he told me, officiously.

“It means ‘little man’ in Latin,” the woman added. “Although I always thought that was awfully sexist. After all, I’m better at it than him.” And she jerked a metal thumb at the male ghost.

“You are not!” His great gray sideburns quivered indignantly.

“Am, too,” she said complaisantly. “That’s why I get the good hands.” She flexed one ostentatiously. And smiled at me. “He can’t handle them.”

“You can’t even get an eyelash back on, woman!”

“I can so. I was trying to be subtle.”

“Subtle? You’re five hundred pounds and built like a tank!”

She rolled her eyes. “I bet you used to get all the girls.”

I sat down again.

“What are you?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “If you’re ghosts, why are you in . . . that?” I gestured at her metal hulk of a body.

She looked down. “It’s not very pretty, is it?”

“It gets the job done,” the old man told her severely.

“Well, yes, but . . ” She looked back up at me. “I wanted bosoms, you know.”

“All right, that’s enough,” my host’s irritated voice came from behind me.

I turned around slowly, because too-fast movements weren’t working so well for me lately, and found him holding another pan of water. Or maybe the same one, only it had been washed out and a towel was draped over his arm. He thrust them at me, along with a bar of rose-scented soap.

“In case you want to clean up,” he said stiffly.

I felt like pointing out that it would take more than a pan of water for that, like maybe a river. But I didn’t. Because he hadn’t had to bring it, and just getting my face clean would be nice.

Of course, I could have done that at the sink, just like he could have emptied the pan there. Maybe he was fastidious, and didn’t want to wash off forest gunk in the same sink he prepared food over. But I was betting on another reason.

I deliberately didn’t look at the stairs. “Thank you,” I said, and sat at the table again.

“Your friend will be fine,” he said, after a minute, without mentioning how he knew. “And once he is, you . . . well, you need to be going.”

I ignored that, because I wasn’t up to a fight right now. And because I wasn’t going anywhere. I settled for washing my face while he stood around awkwardly.

I decided it was kind of nice not to be the one doing that, for a change.

There was a shiny silver kettle on the stove. I saw it when I was washing the back of my filthy neck. “I’d like some tea,” I told him, because I would. And because it would stall for a while.

He looked like he was debating telling me he was out, or possibly to go to hell, but then the woman ghost spoke up. “Some of the peppermint, dear. It’s wonderful for nerves.”

“Don’t help me,” he snapped. But he went to make it.

My stomach rumbled, having never gotten dinner, however many hours ago that had been. “And there’s some shortbread,” she added. “I think it’s in the—”

“I know where it is!”

“He’s not usually like this,” she confided as a bread box was opened and then slammed shut. “Just when he’s nervous. I’m Daisy, by the way.”

“Daisy.” Daisy the ghost. Okay.

“Well, my real name was Gertrude, but I always hated it. Named after my grandmother, and I could never stand the woman. My husband called me Daisy, ’cause I loved them so.” She smiled, a bit teary-eyed.

I looked from her to the . . . lieutenant? Colonel? Whatever. “Is . . . is he—”

“Good Lord, no,” he said, mustache fluffing up in indignation.

“He should be so fortunate.” She sniffed. “Ralph was my husband. He died in, oh, 1942, it was.”

“Under enemy fire?” I guessed, considering the date.

“No.” She looked surprised. “Under the six a.m. to Hoboken. He got drunk and went to sleep on the railroad tracks.” She sighed. “He was not a bright man.”

“All right, I mean it,” Roger said, coming over with a tin of cookies. “Cut it out.”

She rolled her eyes at him, too.

I took a cookie.

“Who are they?” I asked, gesturing at the robots again.

“Daisy has already introduced herself, I believe,” he said sourly. “That’s Sam.”

“Servant, ma’am,” the old gent muttered, and emerged the rest of the way out of the clock. He had a portly body covered by a starched blue uniform. “I left it outside,” he told the man, I guess talking about Big Red. “Do y’want me to go back, see if I can salvage anything?”

“I don’t know.” My host looked at me. “Is there anything left?”

“Of the other one?” I guessed.

He nodded.

I thought about it. “The hat?”

He scowled. “No,” he told the colonel, who muttered something and went over to give Pritkin the hairy eyeball.

“What did we destroy?” I asked, in between stuffing my face. The cookies were homemade. God, so good.

“Do they not feed you in your time?” my host demanded.

“Not often,” I said honestly.

He joined the colonel in scowling at Pritkin.

“What was that thing?” I asked again as the kettle went off.

“My gardener,” he told me, getting up to attend to it. “Your—my wife,” he amended, glancing at Pritkin, “is fond of the woods. But there was not much left when we arrived. The former owners had cleared some land for farming and more to build the main house. And then Tony burnt a bunch of the rest in order to have an open field of fire, in case any of his enemies tried to sneak up on him.”

That sounded like Tony.

“We managed to reverse much of the damage, but it requires upkeep to maintain. And more now,” he said dryly, pulling down a couple of brightly colored pottery mugs.

“Then the potions . . ”

“Were fertilizer, yes.”

“Some fertilizer!”

He frowned and slopped water in a teapot that matched the mugs. “It functions perfectly well in the correct amount. Maybe next time you should take a moment to find out what you’re attacking!”

“We didn’t attack anything,” I said, remembered fear sharpening my voice. “Why did you tell it to target us? You had to have recognized me!”

“I wasn’t there,” he said, setting the teapot down on a tray, harder than necessary.

“Then you’re telling me that creature did all that on its own?”

“That’s the point of a homunculus—it has a will of its own. Too much sometimes.” He shot a look at Daisy.

“I was just trying to trap you,” she told me, looking sheepish.

“That was . . . wait.” I took the mug I was offered, because my throat was full of cookie crumbs, and I could barely talk. But as soon as I gulped down some truly scalding tea, I put it down. “That was you?”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” the colonel said. “A good soldier knows when to act, and when to ask for instructions!”

“Too bad I’m not a soldier,” Daisy huffed.

“As you continually demonstrate.”

“And I wasn’t expecting you,” she told me, ignoring him. “I was just doing a little pruning, tidying up and such, and then the alarms went off and practically scared me to—well, not death, but you know what I—”

“You lost your head!” the colonel accused.

“I don’t have a head, old man, and neither do you!” she said snippily. “And I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, just to hold them until I could find out who they were. But then those horrid vampires arrived and blew me up. And by the time I came back here and got my other body and got back out there—”

“We were there, remember?” the colonel demanded.

“Then stop blaming me,” she huffed.

“But you’re a ghost,” I said, stating the obvious. “And ghosts can’t move things. Well, maybe a piece of paper, or a paper clip. But nothing like . . ” I gestured at the metal suit she was wearing, which was more intricate than the Tin Man outfit, almost like an old-fashioned diving suit. “No way you’re lifting that.”

“Well, no, of course not,” she agreed. “I’m only directing it, dear.”

“Then how—”

“Can we discuss why you’re here?” Roger broke in.

“No,” I said, and not just because I needed to stall until my mother joined the party. I’d thought I knew everything about ghosts, but this was a new one. “Are you telling me you just . . . made them new bodies?”

“I like to think of it as a whole body prosthesis,” the colonel said.

I looked from him to Roger. “You—how does that work? Because I don’t—”

He made an irritated sound. “Does it matter? It was an experiment, one that never quite panned out. But that’s not—”

“What kind of experiment?” I looked around at the ungainly creatures. I could see a bit of Big Red outside, through a window by the door. Maybe because it was even larger than the green one and took up too much room, so had to be left in the drive like the family car. Only there was no such thing as a car for a ghost. “Who does this?”

“The Black Circle,” Pritkin said harshly, from behind us.