Baehrly Alive (6 page)

“Remind me to put Fred on a vegetarian diet,” I told Donovan.

Fred hissed and bunched up his feathers miserably.

Veggies were his nemesis.

“You don’t scare the crap out of the person who cares for you,” I told the rooster, dumping the glass shards from the dustpan into the trash and heading back to the cabinet for another glass. “What are you doing in there, anyway?”

I tried to reach past Fred and he growled at me. Like, seriously growled. He sounded like a very small dinosaur. Every feather puffed up and he snapped his beak warningly at me.

“What on earth?” I said. “What is wrong with you?”

“Maybe I can talk to him,” Donovan suggested, crossing over to the cupboard where Fred was still hunching, glaring at me with his evil little beady eyes.

Upon seeing Donovan, Fred let out a soft croon and warbled at the detective.

Warbled.

That chicken was some kind of weird bird.

I filled up my glass of milk and drained it, and another, before heading back to my soufflé.

“Uh, oh,” Donovan said.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I muttered. I was going to need an extra big bite of chocolate if there was going to be an ‘uh, oh’.

“What are these?” Donovan asked, holding up something small, vaguely oval, and sparkly.

I narrowed my eyes. “Eggs?”

My eyes widened as I looked at Fred, then Donovan, and back.

“Eggs?” we chorused together.

Chapter Five

Apparently, silkie chickens had a tendency to go broody—have strong mothering instincts. I’d already witnessed a little of this behavior when Fred had first met Gerti and immediately adopted the little dragon.

Now the silly thing was try to hatch out eggs. What kind of eggs, I had no idea.

“Maybe Fred’s a girl,” Donovan suggested. “Maybe those are her eggs.”

I wrinkled my nose at him doubtfully. “If Fred could lay eggs, why hasn’t he been laying them all these years that I’ve had him?”

“Maybe Fred didn’t want to,” Donovan suggested with a shrug. “Maybe Magical chickens are different.”

I groaned. “What should I do? I can’t leave Fred and his nest up there in the cupboard for the next twenty-one or whatever days, can I?”

Donovan quirked an eyebrow.

“Chicken eggs hatch in twenty-one days,” I explained. “We hatched chickens in my fourth grade class. I got kind of obsessed for a while there.”

Donovan chuckled. “You, obsess?”

“Doesn’t sound like me,” I said innocently. I frowned at Fred, who clacked his beak at me in warning. I sighed. “I’m too tired to deal with you right now. You can stay—for the night. We’re going to find another place to stick you and your—or whoever’s—eggs bright and early tomorrow.”

Never tell your plans to a zombie.

Especially if that zombie happens to be a chicken.

It almost became a game—moving Fred’s nest only to have it reappear in the cabinet again. Thomas, in particular, thought it was hilarious.

“The nest is back!” he shouted gleefully.

I groaned and rubbed my temples. “I’m being out-smarted by a road-kill chicken,” I muttered. “Why, oh, why did he have to cross that road?”

Gwyn giggled. “You know, I spent several years on a farm as a girl—Earth witches do quite often, you know.”

I nodded. I had spent a couple summers on farms, myself. They were particularly suited for Earth Magic.

“Well, the farmer I worked with used to say ‘it’s more common for hens to crow than roosters to lay eggs.’”

I blinked at her.

“I think Fred is Fredericka,” Gwyn explained.

I sighed. “That would be too easy. This is Fred we’re talking about. We’ll be lucky if they’re his and all we get are some really ugly chickens. If we’re not lucky, he’ll hatch out a crap-load of fire demons that will devour us in our sleep.”

Gwyn rolled her eyes. “Still not sleeping, eh?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Is it that obvious?”

Gwyn nodded. “I think you’re working late hours too much. You need to get enough sleep, or you’re going to collapse.”

Gwyn, unlike Kodi and Donovan, knew nothing of my interlude with the vampires. She didn’t know that my soul was in tatters—and I kept my shields up strong and tight around her, so there was no chance she would catch an accidental glimpse and realize how much trouble I really was in.

Let her believe that the shadowy eyes and paleness were all from a little too much work and not enough sleep.

I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her otherwise.

I’d been reading Hypatia’s book all day and hadn’t learned anything about the disease that I didn’t already know.

The book claimed that the first victim of the disease had been struck down only two days after the barrier between Earth and Faerie had been erected. The victim had been a healthy young man in his early twenties, with an impressive array of Magical talents. He had, apparently, been one of the rare beings to have more than one Elemental form of Magic—Earth, like me—and Fire.

The pattern was all-too familiar—tiredness, holes in the soul… transparency… Magic draining away—then, finally, vanishing altogether, leaving no body, no evidence that the person had ever existed.

Hypatia’s book also commented on the disappearance of other Magical beings in the same time frame, though they were only mentioned in passing.

No one thought dragons disappearing were anything unusual back then, I guess.

One thing was for sure—only Magical creatures were affected by the disease. No non-Magical creatures ever showed up with any of the symptoms—especially not the tears and holes in the soul that weakened the victims so much.

I couldn’t find any information—speculation or otherwise—about how a person caught this disease in the first place. It didn’t seem to be communicable. It cropped up in random areas—the Amazon basin one year, then Tibet the next.

No connections could be found between victims.

Except for the rare case—when the disease took whole families practically overnight.

It was scary stuff, especially since I was looking at it, right across the table from me.

“You don’t have to watch me like that, Goldie,” Gwyn said gently. “I’m not going to break.”

I gave her a wry smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I was just thinking.”

Gwyn smiled. She had one of those genuinely sweet smiles that could literally make a room look brighter. “You’re so much like your father. He never knew how to quit either.”

And he’d wound up dead. Murdered.

She hadn’t said the words, but she didn’t need to. I was reminded daily of the sacrifices my father had made—choices he had made that we had to pay for, as people who loved him.

If Gwyn’s comment was meant to make me back off and just accept that she was going to die, then she didn’t know me at all.

If anything I was more determined than ever to make sure I beat this thing—this disease.

I flipped to the back of the book and ran my fingers down the index.

“What are you looking for now?” Gwyn asked.

“Vaccinations against Magical Diseases,” I said. “I wonder if anyone has ever tried to make one.”

Gwyn’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Well, that’s a thought, isn’t it?”

I nodded and groaned. I closed the book and rubbed my eyes. “Nothing in these books. I need to go do chores and head to the office.” I nodded toward the front door, where I could see Thomas’s backpack hanging on the coatrack. “Is he skipping school again, today?”

Gwyn pursed her lips. “He’s feeling a little under the weather,” she said. “I think it’s just growing pains. I’m making him some tea to help soothe him.”

At barely five-feet tall, I had never really felt growing pains, but the majority of my sisters were tall—and they had been in agony.

Poor Thomas. And, if his tea was anything like the one my mother had shoved down the throats of my sister, he deserved all the sympathy he could get.

Or his just desserts, if he was faking illness so he wouldn’t have to go to school.

I needed to have a conversation with that little scamp, and soon.

I had a full day of work ahead of me, but I still couldn’t help flipping through the available volumes in my library.

As it turned out, people had attempted several times to create vaccines for Magic-borne diseases. No one had been truly successful—probably because the things that made us Magical or Ordinary were as elusive and delicate as our souls—not exactly something you could dissect and study.

One paper I read spoke of the undead as victims of Magical plagues—carried by saliva—which made me gag a little. Vampires, ghouls, zombies—they were all, according to this Percival Frank, Magical creatures whose Magic had been tainted and reformed through disease—turning them to mindless creatures who sought only souls and Magic.

I made a face.

I wondered what this Percival Frank would have thought of me and the condition of my soul.

Another paper claimed that it was the barrier that was causing the disease—nothing else. She claimed that access to Magic was like taking vitamins—some people could get what they needed from the world around them, but others could grow ill—like anemia.

Magic as soul vitamins made me grin a little.

I could picture my mother popping tiny little iridescent bubbles into our mouths saying, “Open up! It’s time for you take your Magic!”

“Enriched pasta,” I muttered to myself as I read through the rest of the essay, “fortified with iron, whole grains, and real Magic. Part of a nutritious meal.”

Of course, it couldn’t be that simple.

Gwyn had gone through several Magic transplants, Magic replacement therapy, and every procedure that the Healers could come up with to try to help her. None of them helped beyond the temporary.

They could make her live longer, but they couldn’t cure her.

I wanted to bang my fists on the table, but I didn’t want to startle Gwyn, who looked like she was about to doze off in her chair.

I needed a cure. I needed one fast. All I had to do was look at Gwyn and I knew that I was running out of time.

If only Paige Turner were still alive. If she had still been living I would have been able to save Gwyn by first infecting her as a vampire, then healing her with Paige’s blood—which held the antidote to the undead.

But Paige was dead. I had killed her myself, and it haunted me every day.

She’d been so very young.

And so very evil.

Well, the scientific approach wasn’t helping me anymore.

It was time to start looking at the myths and legends to see if any of those could help Gwyn.

“Fountain of youth,” I murmured as I opened a fat tome that had recently appeared in my library—apparently a gift from Hypatia. “Springs of Healing…”

“Are you all right?” Donovan’s voice startled me and I almost spilled a cup of deathly-hot tea right into my lap. I grimaced as I tried to rescue the priceless documents I was working with. ‘Irreplaceable’ was a word Hypatia had been using for them, and I didn’t want to discover the hard way if that was literally true.

“Sure,” I said, mopping up my mess. “Why wouldn’t I be—other than the fact that you just scared the crap out of me?”

“Maybe because Kodi just called and said that you never showed up for work today? Or the fact that none of the animals have been fed or let out for exercise?”

I blinked at him. “What?” I glanced at the clock on the wall. “Oh.”

He nodded, “Yes, ‘oh’. I take it you lost track of time?”

I rubbed my eyes. “You could say that.”

“Well, don’t worry about the animals—Thomas and I took care of them. Everyone is fed and happy.” Donovan tilted his head at me. “You look like death warmed-over.”

I groaned. “Thanks a lot—though I do feel an awful lot like death warmed-over. Thanks for taking care of the animals. I’ve been running in literary circles all day and I guess it sucked up more time than I had realized.”

“Are you sure that’s all that’s bothering you?” Donovan’s voice took on a sympathetic tone.

I sighed. “You mean that would ‘Kodi dumped me thing’? Well, I’m not all worked-up about it, if that’s what you’re trying to imply. Kodi just happens to think that I agreed to marry him for all the wrong reasons.”

“What kinds of reasons?” I glanced at Donovan, but he was studiously studying the bust of a very ugly old Greek—Minos should have focused on bathing more and worrying about gold less.

“Not really any of your business,” I said.

Donovan held up his hands defensively. “Fine. I’ll butt-out. It’s just—well, your engagement took us all by surprise and now it’s over. It just seems like—“

I glared at him. “What? Like it wasn’t meant to be? Like I’m not ready to get married? Like I’m too damaged to bind myself to someone else right now?”

Donovan raised an eyebrow. “I was going to say—it seems like you’ve had the rug yanked out from under you too many times in a short period of time. I mean, I know you haven’t gotten over what happened with Paige, even if you don’t say anything about it. Killing someone—“