Prospero in Hell (33 page)

“That’s the problem,” Mephisto hissed under his breath.

“What’s that, Harebrain?” asked Mab.

“Harebrain?” Erasmus’s laugh was followed by a sudden, “Hold on. Who’s that speaking?”

“Beware!” cried Cornelius. “That last voice was not a human one!”

“Geesh! And what else is new?” Mab asked grumpily. “Or did you mean Mr. Erasmus? Technically, he talked last.”

I chuckled. “Fear not, Cornelius. It’s just one of your employees. Mab’s an Aerie One.”

Cornelius replied, “I beg to differ, Sister, but I distinctly hear the wet breath of flesh when he speaks.”

“He’s an Aerie One in a body,” snapped Logistilla. “I should know. I made the body myself.”

“An Aerie One in a body? So, it works! How extraordinary!” breathed
Erasmus. “I’ve been hearing about this project for years, but somehow I’ve never gotten to actually see one with my own eyes.”

“I guess you sold your stock in the company too soon,” I replied briskly. “Otherwise, you would have seen many.”

“Perhaps I did,” Erasmus replied, speaking, for once, without rancor. “How extraordinary!”

It was difficult not to be amused at Mab’s expense. For all my dislike of Erasmus, his enthusiasm was refreshing. I would have expected his reaction to be more negative. On the other hand, Erasmus had always been ruled by insatiable curiosity. Sometimes, it served him well; it led him to become one of the first alchemists to abandon that art for scientific inquiry. Other times—well, he had more lives than a cat!

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, I emerged into a long stone hallway. The smell of dank mildew assailed me. I covered my nose with my hand. In my youth, this hall had been a cheerful, warm place lined with rich tapestries. The tapestries still hung here, but what was left of them was moldering and moth-eaten. Apparently, Father had not gotten around to renovating this hallway since his return to the island a few years back, when he retired from Prospero, Inc.—so as to be able to spend his full time pursuing the matter of how to save Gregor. I surveyed the dim corridor with a lump in my throat and hoped very much that we would find the rest of the house in better repair.

To my relief, the music room was in pristine condition. Many of the antiques were still as I remembered them: harps, flutes, lyres, and trumpets of gleaming brass hung against the basalt walls. Others had been replaced by shiny modern instruments, among the new pieces: a saxophone, a trombone, and a guitar. Of the larger instruments, the harpsichord stood just where it had in my youth, but a grand piano, a newer invention, now stood across the chamber from it, taking up much of the far corner.

The music room contained only two wooden armchairs and a Roman-styled couch. As we trooped in, the airy servants gathered chairs from other wings of the mansion. Overstuffed armchairs, stools, and recliners floated over our heads, zipping left and right in order not to collide with a family member or one another. Some of the chairs and stools were over five hundred years old. The armchairs and recliners had been added when Father returned here three years ago, of course. No such devices had existed in my youth!

The chamber opened, literally, onto a deep, forested ravine, visible only from the mansion or the heights of the island’s highest hill. No glass separated the chamber from the ravine beyond it, though a cushion of air pushed back anyone who approached the brink too closely. Beyond the barrier, a sheer wall of water fell from somewhere above, crashing over the rocks of the cliff toward the gorge, far below. The water flowed past the roof, which was made of quartz, smoky and clear in patches, causing dappled light to play across the chamber’s dark interior as the rays of the rising sun fell upon the water and the quartz. Along the outer wall, the passing breeze whistled across flutelike openings in the black basalt. The resulting music, much like the voices of a hundred oboes, clarinets, and flutes, varied with the velocity and direction of the wind.

Though the morning sun was rising, its rays had not yet fallen upon the depths of the gorge, so glints of feyling light still twinkled among the deep green of the foliage. Theo, Mephisto, and Calvin gazed admiringly at this vista, while Ulysses wandered about the music room examining the instruments and commenting, with much enthusiasm, upon how much they might be worth to a collector. Nobody, however, was as affected as Cornelius, who stood thunderstruck, his face contorted in mystified wonder, as he listened to the mingling sound of the roaring waterfall and the fluting of the walls.

“An Aerie One in a body,” repeated Erasmus, as we waited for the chairs to be arranged. “Let me see!” He took one look at Mab and burst out laughing. “He looks like Humphrey Bogart!”

“Not exactly like Bogart; I made a few changes,” objected a flustered Logistilla.

“Fleshly Aerie Ones,” Erasmus exclaimed again with evident delight. He circled around Mab, peering closely and poking here and there. “How utterly extraordinary! What a brilliant idea of Father’s!”

“Brilliant idea? This abomination?” Cornelius asked sharply without turning away from the wind flute and the falls. “Or have you forgotten that we seek to lessen the amount of magic befuddling Mankind?”

“Remember the great project,” Erasmus said softly, as if he hoped only Cornelius would hear.

“How could I forget…” Cornelius replied, frowning.

“How could you, of all people, not know about the fleshly Aerie Ones, Cornelius?” Logistilla asked. “Considering how you spend all your free time.”

“It is one thing to prepare for abominations, Sister, and another thing to meet one in the flesh,” Cornelius replied stiffly.

Addressing his attention to Mab again, Erasmus asked, “And you can live as a man and dress like one and everything?”

“Sure,” Mab growled, “just like anyone else. I eat, I drink, I drive, I vote…”

“You vote?” Theo asked surprised.

“Of course. I’m an American, aren’t I?”

“Quite astonishing,” Erasmus exclaimed with great delight.

“I’ve never quite adjusted to the custom of letting the proles vote,” Ulysses commented. “Bound to lead to bread and circuses, or some other sort of trouble.”

“ ‘Adjusted?’ ” I asked. “The rank and file in America were voting fifty years before you born.”

Ulysses shrugged. “Can I help that? Wish they’d kept their practices to themselves instead of importing them across the Great Puddle. The kingdom’s quite the worse for it, I dare say. All this socialistic claptrap.”

“But I thought you were a socialist,” said Erasmus.

“Saw the error of my ways,” Ulysses replied blithely. “If every man’s wealth is equal to his neighbors’, what is left worth stealing?”

Erasmus chuckled, and Cornelius murmured under his breath. “I thank God that Ulysses finally came to his senses.”

I nodded in agreement, only belatedly realizing that my gesture was lost on my blind brother. It was nice to see Ulysses put some of his more outlandish beliefs behind him, but I was not certain I approved of the morality of his reasoning.

“I’m hungry!” Mephisto interrupted, waving with his hat. The feather brushed across Cornelius’s nose, causing him to sneeze. “Do we have to just stand around goggling at the bodyguard? Or can we get something to eat?”

“Miranda, you travel with a bodyguard?” Erasmus asked, looking even more amused. He poked Mab again.

Mab slapped his hand out of the way. “Despite what your cotton-headed brother says, I am not a bodyguard, Professor Prospero. I happen to be Prospero, Inc.’s foremost detective. At the moment, my tireless investigating has turned up some very pertinent information, the details of which, no doubt, will fascinate you all. So, if you people will stop poking at me as if I were some kind of blue-ribbon pig, we can get down to the real meat of the matter.”

There was something extraordinarily pleasant about listening to my brothers banter together, about having so many of us together in one room.
It evoked a feeling of coming home, even more than these familiar old walls. Though it was strangely disorienting to recall that most of my family had never been here, having been born long after our return to Milan. Still, I liked seeing them here, as if we had all come back to where we were meant to be.

Finally, we were doing something all together again.

“My apologies,” Erasmus replied cheerfully, giving Mab’s shoulder one last poke. “I was overcome.”

“By what?” drawled Mab, rubbing his shoulder. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“I’d like to sit down now,” Titus said, his voice sounding patient but strained. Then, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he fainted, his great bulk falling slowly toward the floor.

Father’s Aerie Ones caught Titus before he struck the flagstones. They floated him to the couch, where Erasmus and I tended to him. I placed a single pearly drop of the Water of Life on his tongue, then let Erasmus, who had studied medicine many times through the ages, remove the bullet and bind his wounds. The servants brought a robe of Father’s that barely fit over Titus’s great biceps. Logistilla hovered like a worried mother hen, clucking and cooing over Titus’s unconscious body. However, she made no effort to help.

Rising from where he knelt beside the peacefully sleeping Titus, Erasmus crossed to where Cornelius stood, stupefied by the symphony of water and wind. He had to repeat whatever he said three times before Cornelius shook himself free of his trance enough to nod brusquely. Cornelius stood a while longer, then finally turned to make his way across the room, his white cane tapping before him.

Stopping beside Ulysses, Cornelius made some comment I could not hear and gestured toward the umbrella stand beside the door. The amber gem atop his cane sparkled in the light of the three oil lamps hanging amidst the instruments. Beside me, Mab stirred, sniffed, and began eyeing Cornelius suspiciously. Ulysses immediately walked over to the door, placed his staff in the umbrella stand, and returned to the center of the room. Then, he sat down in an overstuffed armchair recently deposited by the Aerie Ones.

Jerking his head, Ulysses glanced around with a start, commenting, “I say! Why did I put my staff over there?”

Cornelius, still standing nearby, leaned over Ulysses, the amber gem on
the top of his white cane still twinkling. I was close enough to hear his words, despite the loudness of the winds and the falls.

“We have a few questions to ask you,” he said kindly. “You’ll cooperate, won’t you, Brother?”

“Certainly, old chap. Wouldn’t think of doing otherwise,” Ulysses said vaguely.

“What are you doing?” Logistilla cried, brandishing her wand. The green globe glowed dangerously. “Stop that at once! I thought we agreed never to use our staffs on each other!”

“You’re one to talk,” Erasmus murmured, throwing a glance Titus-ward, though his efforts were wasted, as she could not hear his soft words over the roar of the falls.

Logistilla said, “I warn you, leave Ulysses alone, or you’ll spend the next year as a dog!”

Erasmus raised his own staff, which began to spin, the stark black and white lengths blurring into gray. His mocking grin widened. He raised his voice. “Care to tango, do you, Sister? Oh, do try me! By the time we’re done, I might be a dog, but you’ll be an old hag.”

“You’re both despicable,” hissed Logistilla. “It’s a wonder the rest of us put up with you.”

“The rest of you?” asked Erasmus. “I assume you mean yourself and Miranda?” This caused Logistilla to turn and glare at me.

I threw up my hands, indicating that I had nothing to do with this. Normally, my sympathies would have been with Logistilla. Using our staffs upon each other set a bad precedent. Under the circumstances, however, I grudgingly found myself in Erasmus’s camp. Our suspicions against Ulysses were severe enough to warrant more serious treatment. Besides, after Titus the Bear, Logistilla was hardly in a position to object.

Theo, who was still standing with his back to the rest of us, gazing out at the ravine below, grumbled, “Maybe we should all put our staffs aside. They do have
demons
in them, after all. Look what just happened, for Heaven’s sakes! What if Baelor had instructed our staffs to turn against us? Then, where would we have been?”

Erasmus leaned back and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “Why didn’t he, I wonder?”

“Begging your pardon, people,” Mab said, raising his voice to be heard over both the noise of the waterfall and the bickering family members, “but I have a piece of news you may want to hear. It concerns your dead brother
Gregor… or, more particularly, it concerns your might-not-be-so-dead brother Gregor.”

That got everyone’s attention.

“Whoa now!” cried Ulysses, coming to himself again and glancing about wildly. “How so?”

“Hold your horses,” Mab said dryly. “I’ll explain.”

“That was a slight against me, wasn’t it?” Logistilla snorted. “Hold your horses indeed!”

Mab ignored Logistilla and dived directly into his material. “Down at the Boston city library I found this.” He held up a copy of a newspaper article with a URL at the top. In one corner was a black-and-white photograph of a tall, stocky man seated on what appeared to be the stage of a talk show.

“God’s Head! It’s Gregor!” Logistilla gasped.

Erasmus, Theo, Mephisto, and Ulysses all rose and leaned forward to get a better view. Cornelius did not rise, but asked eagerly, “What are you seeing? Brothers? Sisters? Describe it to me.”