Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,68
given up completely. And I have to admit, I’m not sure how we’re going to find this body, either.”
Alex carried back the two cups of tea, placing them on the table. “So, am I? Crazy, I mean?”
“You know what you are?” Astrid joined him. “You’re a person who doesn’t give up. You can fight when it’s all done, but as long as there’s still a chance, you’re going to keep working on it. You’re Mad Meg.”
He nodded. “Okay, so now that we’ve established that it’s all okay because I’m a lot like your crazy Dutch aunt,” Alex said, “you tell me: How do we find this body? We don’t have a scanner, and I don’t think one would work, anyway. This island has a lot of old stone ruins, but none of the peasant huts that Mary Shelley described or that Polidori might have used. So what do we do?”
Astrid thought a moment. “If we had something of Allegra’s it would be easier.”
Alex shrugged. Then Astrid leaned forward, draping her blanketed arm over his shoulder. He felt her fingers behind his ear. “What’s this?”
Alex was laughing in spite of himself. “What are you doing, finding a quarter?”
She drew back, twisting a piece of black wood in her fingers, wrapped in a bit of yellow ribbon. “This is a piece of Allegra’s coffin,” she said. “And the ribbon is a piece of the ones that held the stones in place to weigh it down. I made a bet that the ribbon belonged to her. I guess we can find out.”
Astrid took Alex’s teacup, set it on the counter with her own, and turned back to the table. There was a salt and pepper set, and she grabbed the pepper and set it on the counter as well, leaving just the salt.
“What are you doing?”
“Working.” Satisfied with the saltshaker alone on the table, Astrid went to the kitchenette and rummaged around. She brought back a bowl and dropped the chunk of wood in it. She looked around, grabbed Alex’s teacup, tossed the tea into the bowl, and began grinding the moist wood.
“Is there anything I can—”
“You can check the dryer.” By which she meant the clothes in front of the fireplace.
Astrid was muttering to herself as she ground the wood and then she stopped, taking a knife from a drawer. Alex was about to protest when she cut herself on the finger, but he kept his mouth shut.
Astrid squeezed a few drops of blood into the bowl and then ground on, and he noticed she kept her cut finger splayed out a little, favoring it. “Nothing in magic is free,” she said. “It costs in soul or in blood.”
When she was done, she walked over to the table with the bowl, and daubed her fingers in the mash of wood and blood. She began to smear it on the table, creating a circle.
“Mother Gretel, your daughter calls out to you,” Astrid whispered, and then she slipped farther into words that Alex did not recognize.
The saltshaker began to quiver on the table.
“Show us the home of this spirit, show us her place.”
The saltshaker began to move, all on its own, traveling around the edge of the smear, which Alex presumed was an outline of the island. It stopped, shaking, quivering along the water, nearly tipping over as it began to spin. Alex thought it would explode right there, and then it shot into the smear, about a third of the way in.
Astrid indicated its position. “Check that against the map.”
“That’s incredible,” Alex said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” He picked up the Polidorium tablet and showed her the Google World map of the Brough of Birsay. “That’s near the old English church—ruins of stones that we saw from the air.”
He got up and rummaged around in the kitchen, continuing, “It’s a circle made up of granite stones. Maybe Polidori buried her near the stones. It would make it easier to find.”
Astrid seemed pleased. “What are you getting?”
“Something for your grievous wound.” Alex returned to the table and took her hand, looking at the cut. He tore open the Band-Aid he had retrieved and put it over the end of her finger.
Astrid’s eyes seemed to sparkle as she trilled her fingers. “Well, thank you.”
“So…” Alex took his hands away and started to drum his fingers on the table, stopping instantly. He got up. “So let’s go. We’ve got a body to find.”
CHAPTER 24
The Pictish stones of the Brough of Birsay stood guard over