13 Curses (37 page)

“But the Heart,” said Tanya. “Nothing happened when we found that—it was just sitting with the other charms.”

“Sitting in a tray in a shop,” Red pointed out. “Looking for an owner. Waiting for someone to buy it—and wear it.” She looked at Tanya. “That’s why I pushed Morag for answers—not just because of James, but because of the damage the rest of the
charms could do if we don’t get to them first. We need to find them as soon as we can. Because I think the Cup of divination is just a suggestion of how dangerous they could be.”

“But the bracelet must have had dozens of owners,” Tanya said dismally.

“I was thinking the same thing myself,” said Fabian. “Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I sneaked back into Florence’s study and found some old papers tracing the bracelet back through the family. And what I found was that it was buried with Elizabeth.”

“Then how was it passed down through the family?” Red asked.

“It reappeared in the family after a hundred years. Which means that someone must have dug it up.”

“Someone dug the grave up?” Tanya asked in disbelief. “Just to get the bracelet out? Who would do such a horrible thing?”

“Someone who wanted to make money,” Fabian answered. “Florence opened the house to visitors a few years ago to make some extra money, but she wasn’t the first. When times were hard, it was opened once before to the public. The Elvesdens’ room was, of course, the most popular. And the more original objects and artifacts there were, the more people flocked to see them. Elizabeth’s bracelet was displayed in a glass cabinet in the room, along with other things of hers.”

“So during that time, it never really belonged to anyone?” Tanya asked.

Fabian nodded. “Which means that the bracelet has only ever had three real owners—Elizabeth, Florence, and you.”

“That should make things easier,” said Red. “It means that the bracelet has hardly ever been out of this house.” She glanced at Tanya. “You didn’t take it to your home, did you?”

Tanya shook her head. “I only wore it here.”

“It may make finding the charms easier, but it doesn’t make it any less dangerous,” said Fabian. “We should all search together whenever possible.”

“It makes sense to search my room first,” Tanya said. “The only place I ever kept it when I wasn’t wearing it was here.” She knelt down and pulled back the carpet, lifting out the loose floorboard.

She took the shoebox out and removed the lid, then the contents one by one.

“No charms,” Fabian said grimly. “Oh, well. We might as well search the rest of the room, but it’s probably a waste of time. You haven’t owned the bracelet long enough for anything significant to have happened to it.”

“Wait,” Tanya said suddenly. “Something significant
did
happen. The drain-dweller died because of the bracelet. It became obsessed with it after I gave it one of the charms!”

“The Cauldron,” said Red.

Tanya got up and went into the little adjoining bathroom. “Warwick pulled it out of the sink when he was going to fix it.” She leaned over the basin and
peered into the plughole. “I can’t see anything, but it’s dark in there. Do you think there’s a chance…?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Fabian. “Back in a minute.”

He ducked out of the room and returned a few minutes later armed with a wrench and an empty bucket.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Red asked doubtfully.

“Of course I do,” he answered. “I’ve seen Warwick do it.” He bent down and began dismantling the pipe under the sink, holding the bucket beneath. As he pulled a section of the pipe away, gray water dribbled into the bucket and a faintly eggy smell arose. “That’s odd,” he said, holding the section of pipe up to his eye. “There seems to be something clogging it, some kind of sludge….” He gave the pipe a tap.

“What is it?” Tanya asked. “Soap, or hair or something?”

“I can’t really tell what it is,” he said. “But it doesn’t look pleasant.”

He gave the pipe a vigorous shake—and let out a yell of alarm as, with a gurgle, a wave of glistening, gray-green slime slithered from the tube. It splattered wetly against the base of the bucket, some droplets bouncing up and hitting Fabian’s T-shirt and glasses. A revolting stench hit the air—the rotten egg smell of a few moments ago magnified by a hundred.

“Ugh!” Red exclaimed, backing away. “What
is
that stuff?”

“I don’t know,” Fabian said, taking off his glasses to clean them. Unlike Red, he was leaning forward in obvious fascination to peer at the slime. “It reminds me of frog spawn, but the cells are bigger. And definitely smellier. But they seem to be empty.” He tilted the bucket to show Tanya.

“Just get rid of it. Throw it down the toilet.”

“Don’t you want to find out what it is?”

“No!”

Fabian put his glasses back on and swirled the contents of the bucket. Suddenly, Red heard his sharp intake of breath.

“You’re not going to believe this.”

The tone of his voice sent her hurrying to the bucket. Holding her breath, she looked in.

As Fabian had described, the bucket contained a frog-spawn-like substance. Each cell was about the size of a grape, and at the center of every one a gray-green tadpole was suspended in a clear jelly.

“I thought you said the cells were empty?” she said.

Fabian frowned. “They are—except that one.” He pointed to one of the cells on the outer corner. “That’s why I called you over.”

The cell he was pointing to did not contain a tadpole. Instead, the jelly held a small, familiar object—the silver Cauldron charm.

“How the hell did it get in there?” Red said.

“I don’t care,” said Tanya. “At least we’ve found it. Now the question is how do we get it out without getting covered in tadpoles and slime?”

“Tadpoles?” Fabian asked.

In the bucket, the tadpoles began to wriggle.

“They’re moving,” said Tanya. “And if you can’t see them, that can only mean one thing—they’re drain-dwellers!”

“But it’s been dead for months!” Fabian protested. “How can there suddenly be spawn in your sink?”

“The Cauldron,” said Tanya. “Its power restores the dead to life, remember? This was the drain-dweller’s home. And now it’s been brought back by the power of the charm—with dozens more!”

One of the tadpoles burst free from its gooey cell and began flapping about in the bucket.

“Quick, water!” said Tanya. “They’re starting to break out.”

Fabian hoisted the bucket into the bath and filled it from the taps.

“We’ll need to transfer them into pond water,” he said. “Tap water’s no good for them.”

“We’ll take them down to the brook,” said Tanya. “Can you imagine the destruction they’d cause if they were all hatched? The house would be overrun!”

As she spoke, more of the tadpoles were breaking free and wriggling in the water.

As Red looked on in horror, she spotted something.

“Oh, no…”

“What?”

“One of the first to hatch—it’s got legs!”

“That’s impossible—it takes weeks before that happens,” Fabian snorted.

“They
are
legs! They’re changing fast—it must be the magic of the charm. We need to get them out of here now, and we need to get that charm out of their grasp, otherwise we’ll never see it again!” Steeling herself, Red plunged her hand into the slimy contents of the bucket and tried to grab the Cauldron. The spawn was slippery and surprisingly difficult to handle. It slid out of her fingers and splashed back into the bucket, bursting more of the tadpoles’ cells as it landed. By now, some of them had four legs. She shuddered as they half swam, half crawled over her hands.

“Let me try,” said Tanya, plunging her hand into the bucket. She wrestled with the spawn.

“Quickly,” said Red. “They’re changing fast!”

“I can’t get it—and we need to get them out of the house before they hatch!”

“I’ll take them,” said Fabian.

“No—you can’t do it if you can’t see them.” A glance in the bucket revealed that the creatures had grown and were starting to lose their tails. Suddenly one of them leapt free of the bucket. Already it had the huge, bulging eyes and greenish-brown amphibian skin. In a flash it had slid into the plughole and vanished.

“We need to cover the bucket!” Tanya gasped, looking around the room desperately. Her eyes settled on a book, but it was not wide enough to cover the brim. In the end she ran and snatched a cardigan from her wardrobe and arranged it over the opening,
tying the arms together around the sides. Then she ran from the room, trying to keep the bucket and its contents steady.

Tanya hurried downstairs and through the kitchen. She was just about to go through the back door when she heard Oberon gobbling in his food bowl yet again. Placing the bucket down on the floor for a moment, she went to investigate and saw that, once more, his bowl was full.

“Who keeps feeding you?” she murmured, exasperated.

Oberon wagged his tail at her voice and hiccupped.

“I think you’ve had enough,” she said, lifting the bowl away from him and placing it on the counter. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

She picked up the bucket and opened the back door. There was a lot of splashing inside it now, along with low, unintelligible muttering. Suddenly, a hole appeared at the center of her cardigan and a slimy, grabbing hand came through. One of the drain-dwellers had bitten a hole in the fabric. Before Tanya could react, its head was through, followed by its body, then it leapt from the bucket in a smooth arc, landing neatly in the drain outside the back door. It was swiftly followed by more.

Groaning, Tanya spied a saucepan lid on the draining board. Grabbing it, she launched herself off the doorstep and tore through the garden, out of the gate, and toward the sparkling water near the forest. With one hand, she held the bucket in front of her. With the other, she clamped the saucepan lid over the bucket.
The splashing in the bucket was frenzied now, and her cardigan was soaked with slimy water. Her arms ached with the weight of it. Oberon ran along beside her, jumping up at the bucket. He could clearly smell that there was something inside.

She reached the brook, breathless and with legs as jellylike as the contents of the bucket. Quickly, she threw the saucepan lid onto the grass and fumbled with the sleeves of the cardigan, unknotting them and pulling it away. Inside, the bucket was a writhing mass of drain-dwellers, clambering over one another and hopping in their bids for freedom.

Only as she sank to the ground did she hear the thud of an approach. Red was in her fox form, the charm bracelet clamped in her jaws. Oberon growled as she approached, and she stopped and stiffened warily. Then he caught her scent, calming and wagging his tail.

Holding the bracelet firmly between her teeth, Red dipped it into the slimy bucket. There was a popping noise as the cell burst open, and when she withdrew the bracelet, the Cauldron was attached. Tanya seized the bracelet, hooking it out of reach of the grabbing drain-dwellers, which were already clamoring for the shining object.

Oberon thrust his nose inside the bucket with interest, then took a step back and sneezed. Gripping the sides of the bucket, Tanya tipped it toward the flowing water. A tide of full-fledged drain-dwellers spewed into the water with squeaks of pleasure. Then
they vanished beneath its surface and, as Tanya and Red watched, were carried away downstream.

“Some escaped,” Tanya said. “At least two went into the drains.”

“They’ll end up in the house, no doubt,” said Red. “But a few are manageable. A whole bucketful
isn’t
.”

They walked back to the house. Before entering the kitchen, Tanya checked the coast was clear for Red. Oberon immediately ran to his bowl, and Tanya stopped to watch.

“Who keeps feeding him?” she said in exasperation. “Every time I look at him he’s eating, and I just took his bowl away from him.”

“Perhaps it’s Nell,” Red said in a low voice. She was sitting under the kitchen table with only her forepaws visible.

“Well, it’s not me,” Tanya said bad-temperedly. “But the bowl isn’t filling itself now, is it?”

“Or maybe it is,” Red said, as a horrible thought occurred. “Tip the biscuits out.”

“What?”

“Do it—anywhere, just tip them on the floor.”

Tanya upended the bowl. Brown dog biscuits showered the floor like hailstones. She placed it on the floor, empty—then, before their eyes, it refilled with biscuits once more, stopping at the brim.

“The Platter,” Red said. “Whoever receives its power will never go hungry. I think we’ve found another charm.”

“You think
Oberon
has the charm?” said Tanya.

“Only one way to find out,” Red answered. “Where is he?”

Tanya stuck her head out the back door. The dog had slipped off after she had taken his bowl away.

“Oberon?” she called into the garden. He was nowhere to be seen. “Where is he?” she muttered, stepping back inside. “Oberon!”

A long brown nose came into view from around the side of the door. A moment later, the rest of Oberon appeared, skulking toward her guiltily. A length of potato peel was caught up around his ear. He scuttled past her with his tail between his legs and ran over to his bowl.