I nodded. Sterling, nose now pressed up against a different display case, put up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“We have a theory about these doppelgangers of yours, Dustin.” Bastion gestured around the room. “The family vault is warded. Think of it like a recording studio. Sound doesn’t come out, the way that arcane energy doesn’t leak out of this place. Even the Eyes couldn’t find us here. There’s only one thing in this entire room that we can’t mask, and that’s because of its, well, unique properties.”
He beckoned us to the far end of the room, to a display case that looked like all the others. Inside was a nondescript blade, short, like a dagger, and without a hilt.
“This is the Null Dagger,” Luella said. “Shaped like a throwing knife, which is really the only effective way to use the thing. And the reason our spells cannot cloak it is because of its own unique enchantment. It dampens magic in a field around itself. A very small field, yes, but one strong enough that it cancels nearly all known magic.”
Sterling scratched his chin, making it look like he was in deep thought as he fingered his non-beard. “That hardly seems useful.”
“Well, normally, yes,” Luella said. “But if the right person knew how to wield this thing, they could disable a mage simply by poking them with it. Like I said, the dampening field is small, but stab someone with it, and make sure it hangs in there? Then even a wizard is only as good as a helpless child.”
I frowned as I stared at the thing, then frowned harder when I raised a hand over its display case. Something definitely felt off. It was as if the air was filled with static, and my hand was moving through a cloud of fuzzy, invisible fibers. My eyes met with Bastion’s, and something from months ago came flooding back to me. It seemed to come back to him, too.
“That reminds me,” he said, cocking his head. “Whatever happened to that pocketknife I lent you? The one you used to draw blood for Hecate’s summoning?”
“Oh. Yeah. Carver destroyed it, the same night I almost killed him with one of Herald’s lightning bottles.”
Bastion tutted, then shook his head. “You owe me a knife, Graves. That was a good one, too. About the same weight as the Null Dagger.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I always wondered about that. You can do miracles with your talent, yet you carried that knife around in your pocket. What gives?”
Luella watched us with interest, and Sterling wandered off again, with marked disinterest. The peaks of Bastion’s cheeks reddened.
“I guess it was practice, for when I can find a use for the Null Dagger. You know, lay it down somewhere, levitate it, then throw it at someone? If a mage doesn’t see it coming, that’s a quick, easy way to disable them.”
Luella patted the back of his hand. “It’s very sweet that you’re trying to find some use for this wasted trinket.” She looked at me, shaking her head. “We only keep it because his father won it in a duel. The point is, as strange as the dagger’s properties are, it maintains a magical energy signature that someone can still read, in spite of the wards we’ve placed here.”
I blinked at her, finally connecting the dots. “So you’re suggesting that my doppelganger was attracted to its signal? That’s why it came here?”
“That’s the theory,” Bastion said. “Look, one of them went after Prudence’s grandma. Her shop is loaded with magic. I don’t think these things are picky at all. They smell something in the air, they just go for it.”
Like bloodhounds. Even Diaz’s artifact, the one Connor and Salimah shook me down for. The Heartstopper? That thing had a very, very specific and debatably useful function that no one would risk the ire of an entire gang of vampires just to steal. It didn’t make sense until now. These doppelgangers were like magpies, drawn inexorably to arcane objects. The question was why?
A scrabbling from the wall behind us jolted me out of my thoughts. I looked to the Brandts, wondering if we’d triggered yet another secret passage in this already bizarre mystery mansion.
“She knows we’re here,” Luella said, her chest heaving with dismay.
“Mother,” Bastion hissed, his eyes darting between myself and Sterling. “She doesn’t know anything and you’re well aware of that. And do we really need to discuss this here? Now?”
“They already know about the vault, Sebastion. I don’t see what harm it would bring to introduce them.”
“But – ”
Luella ignored him as she headed for the side of the room farthest from the entrance. There was another relief of the family crest sculpted into the wall, but this one didn’t have the same series of rusted blotches over its surface. Luella passed her hand over the relief, her finger pressing into an area on the lion’s forehead. Something clicked, and the noise started up again, though this time the whirring and grinding wasn’t quite as loud, as if the button was driving a smaller mechanism.
From behind us, Sterling muttered a curse. I bit my tongue to hold everything back when I saw what was hidden behind the second passage. It was a small room, only slightly larger than a broom closet. Its corners were lit by magical fires, the kind that gave off no heat. In the center was a cushioned pedestal. On top of it was a bizarre, horrifying sculpture of a woman, naked, formed into a strange, almost conical shape.
It was all wrong. Its limbs were fused to its body in places they logically couldn’t, knees locked together, arms trapped against its torso with excess flaps of skin. And where its head might belong was a jumble of features, like an abstract painting rendered in three dimensions. The mouth was close to where the sculpture’s forehead should have been placed. Two depressions that were meant to represent its eyes were
placed on either side of its head, each set of eyelids without lashes, fused shut.
The eyelids flew open.
I staggered away in terror. The eyes on either side of the thing’s head flickered, rolling madly, staring at everything and nothing. The sculpture shuddered, rocking in place, the cushion underneath it twisting and shuffling against the stone, and the scrabbling noise started anew.
“Gentlemen,” Luella said. “I’d like you to meet my mother.”
Chapter 12