The Crooked Castle by Sarah Jean Horwitz

Author:Sarah Jean Horwitz [Sarah Jean Horwitz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616206642
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2018-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

14.

A TRAITOR IN OUR MIDST

Carmer awoke to a world utterly transformed. The Driftside Metals graveyard was an unrecognizable landscape of lumpy white masses and frozen towers of scrap metal. It had been messy before, to be sure, but now . . . now it looked like someone had placed it in a snow globe and given the whole thing a good shake before they decided to glue the scenery to the bottom. Scraps of tarp flew about like strange birds in the wind. Frames that had been intact on arrival were now bent in impossible angles, or splayed open down the middle like gutted fish. Occasionally, a solitary tire would roll past, a rubber tumbleweed across the deserted landscape.

And deserted it seemed to be. Robert and Isla’s dogs came back with nothing, snow glittering off their shaggy backs, frothing at the mouths with exertion. They jumped around excitedly, yelping and leaping in the snow, until Robert had to kennel them to calm them down.

“They haven’t actually seen much snow,” Robert admitted rather sheepishly. “Must be excitin’.” He clapped Carmer on the shoulder, hard enough to nearly make Carmer’s knees buckle. “We’ll get you back into town as soon as we can. Maybe you’ll find your friend there. Don’t, uh, don’t stay out in the cold too long, all right?” Robert trudged back into the house.

Carmer absently flapped the arms of his borrowed jacket. It fell nearly to his ankles. “How much do you want to bet there’s nothing left of the Jasconius?” he asked. “Who will believe us when we tell them we found an engine full of mushrooms?”

“Blurgh.” Grit surfaced from his pocket, spitting out lint. “The Wonder Show faeries will, if they know what’s good for them.”

Robert Blythe offered to drive Carmer to the police station to start his search for Bell, but Carmer politely declined. Though no longer convinced of the Blythes’ involvement, he wanted them as far away from his investigation—and any further encounters with the Unseelie fae—as possible. Instead, he let the large man accompany him to the nearest airbus station. The skies, unlike the roads, were already clear, and the no-frills passenger ships that made regular trips from end to end of the city were packed with the few commuters daring (or desperate) enough to try to get to work that day.

Carmer was back in his own clothes, which had dried so stiffly they hung on his skinny frame like chunks of cardboard rather than fabric. The inside of his shirt was stuffed with letters between the Blythes and “Tinkerton” that Grit had stolen. He would make time to study them later.

He’d straightened out his top hat as best he could, wondering if the Blythes had been interested enough to see the squashed faerie balcony on the inside, but it looked more than a little worse for wear. Grit spent most of the trip inside it, sitting on top of Carmer’s head with her fingers wrapped in his hair to keep her balance and sighing loudly whenever Carmer took a particularly ungainly step.

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