Grip of the Shadow Plague (Fablehaven #3)

Kendra followed Warren into the hacienda, avoiding eye contact with Rosa and Mara. What must they think of them? Strangers who came to their preserve, dragged one of their friends onto a dangerous mesa to recover some artifact, and returned bearing news of his death, without so much as a body to bury.

"You okay?" Warren asked.

Kendra could not imagine that he actually wanted the truth. She nodded instead.

"You did great," Warren said. "That was a nightmare. Get some rest, all right? Let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks," Kendra said, entering her room and closing the door. After pulling off her boots and socks, she dove onto her bed, buried her face in the pillow, and cried. Her tears and muffled sobs helped purge the fear and sorrow of the previous night. Soon exhaustion overcame her, and Kendra sank into a dreamless sleep.

Rosy light glowed through her window when Kendra awoke. She wiped crust from her eyelids and smacked her lips. Her mouth tasted dry and stale. Sitting up, she felt woozy and had a slight headache. Irregular sleep patterns had never agreed with her.

Someone had left a glass of water on her nightstand. Kendra sipped from the glass, grateful to wash away the unpleasant taste in her mouth. She padded across the floor, went out into the hall, and walked to the kitchen. Mara looked up. She had been wiping the table.

"You must be hungry," Mara said in her husky voice.

"Sort of," Kendra replied. "I'm so sorry about Neil."

"He knew the risks," she said evenly. "Would you prefer something light? Soup and toast?"

"Don't fuss over me. I'll grab a bite later. Have you seen Warren?"

"He's in the courtyard."

Kendra hurried down a corridor, the tiles cool against her bare feet, and stepped out into the courtyard. Although the sun was setting, the pebbles of the gravel pathway remained warm, crunching underfoot and prickling her soles. Several fairies buzzed in the air. Warren stood on a tiled path beside a flowering cactus, hands clasped behind his back. He turned and smiled at Kendra. "You woke up."

"I'll probably be awake all night."

"Maybe not. I bet you're more fatigued than you realize. We have a flight booked tomorrow at eleven in the morning."

"Great."

He walked toward her. "I've been thinking. Without divulging all we know, I want to warn Dougan about the Sphinx, just tell him enough to get him paying attention." "Okay."

"We don't want to notify the Sphinx that we're onto him, but I think we can also err by keeping our suspicions too private. I was waiting for you. I want you there to corroborate the story. Don't tell him more than I do. Does that sound foolish?"

Kendra thought about it for a moment. "Telling anyone is a risk, but I think we need somebody like Dougan keeping an eye on him."

"I agree. As a Lieutenant of the Knights of the Dawn, Dougan is very well connected, and I can think of no other high-ranking Knight who strikes me as more trustworthy." He led her back inside the house. They walked to a closed door and knocked.

"Come in," Dougan invited.

They entered a tidy bedroom not unlike Kendra's. Dougan sat at a desk writing in a notebook.

"We need to talk," Warren said.

"Sure." Dougan gestured at his bed. He was sitting on the only chair. Kendra and Warren sat down on the mattress.

"These are uncertain times," Warren began. "I need to run something by you. Kendra is here to verify my words. You recall when I grilled you about the identity of the Captain."

"Right," Dougan said, his tone hinting not to ask again.

"We ended up discussing the Sphinx. Whatever his relation to the Knights of the Dawn, at the very least, he has long been one of our more trusted collaborators. As a Lieutenant, you're close to the Captain, so there is something I want you to know. You're aware that Fablehaven is one of the five secret preserves."

"Yes."

"Are you aware that the Sphinx removed the artifact hidden at Fablehaven earlier this summer?"

Dougan stared at him silently, lips slightly puckered. He shook his head almost imperceptibly.

"Then I doubt you heard he also took with him a prisoner who had been confined in the most secure cell on the property? A detainee who had been there ever since the preserve was founded? An anonymous captive with an infamous reputation."

Dougan cleared his throat. "I was unaware."

"There were some shifty circumstances surrounding the whole event," Warren said. "Nothing to prove the Sphinx is a traitor. But given the high stakes, together with the nature of our current mission, I want to be sure the Sphinx is not the only person aware that the Fablehaven artifact was removed, if you take my meaning."

Dougan nodded. "You saw the artifact?" he asked Kendra.

"I saw it in use," she said. "I recharged it myself. The Sphinx came to Fablehaven and took it personally."

"If what you told us before was true, and the Sphinx is not leading the Knights, you'll want to make sure the Captain knows about this," Warren said. "If you misled us, and the Sphinx is the Captain, make sure at least one of the other Lieutenants knows the details we're sharing. No one person should have control over multiple artifacts."

"I understand the implications," Dougan said, voice steady.

"Implications are all we have," Warren said. "This is merely precautionary. We have no desire to wrongly accuse an innocent ally. Still, in case the Sphinx really is working for the other side, please don't let our concerns get back to him. If he is a traitor, he has covered the secret well, and will stop at nothing to keep it from leaking."

"One way to protect yourselves against him would be to accuse him openly," Dougan said.

"Which we hesitate to do..." Warren began.

"Because if he is on our side, we desperately need him," Dougan finished. "Spreading false accusations about his disloyalty would provoke widespread distrust and dissension."

"And if as our true ally he is successfully concealing the artifacts, hopefully taking measures so no one person knows where multiple items are housed, we don't want to frustrate his efforts. Dougan, we hope our suspicion is wrong. But I can't ignore the smallest chance we may be right. The results would be devastating."

"Catastrophic," Dougan agreed. "Now I understand why you were asking about the Captain. I'll keep a lid on this, and I'll keep an eye open."

"That's all we ask," Warren said. "I felt we could rely on you. Sorry to trouble you with this."

"Don't apologize," Dougan said. "This is how the Knights police themselves. Nobody is above suspicion. Sharing your concerns with me was the correct choice. Anything else?" He studied both Warren and Kendra.

"Not that I can think of," Kendra said.

"For the record," Warren mentioned, "we know four of the five hidden preserves. This one, Fablehaven, Brazil, and Australia. We can't come up with the fifth."

"Honestly, neither can we," Dougan said soberly. "Which is why we're aggressively soliciting knowledge about the hidden preserves. For so long our policy was to leave those mysteries alone. Although the secret preserves were seldom discussed openly, most of us assumed that if we pooled our knowledge, all five would be known to the Knights collectively. Word is that you have been conducting some private research on the matter."

Standing up, Warren chuckled softly. "Apparently not as private as I supposed. The four preserves I named are all I've come up with, and I knew about them before I really started digging."

"I'll delve into this matter of the Sphinx, and I'll alert you of any significant findings. Let me know if you uncover any new information."

"Count on it," Warren said, leading Kendra out of the room.

Kendra awoke the following morning just after dawn. Beside her on the bed lay a Louis L'Amour hardcover borrowed from a bookshelf in the living room. She had ended up needing the companionship of the novel much less than she had expected. Before midnight, when she was only a third of the way through the western, her eyes had grown weary and she had rested her head on her pillow. That was the last thing she remembered.

Kendra placed the novel on her nightstand and switched off her reading light. She felt too perfectly rested to attempt any further sleep, so she put on her clothes. Would the others be up yet?

The hallway outside her room was quiet. She walked to the kitchen and found nobody. She had never been the first to awaken at the hacienda, and could not imagine that everyone had slept past dawn.

She opened the front door and found Gavin walking across the driveway. "Good morning," Kendra called.

"If you say so," he replied.

"What happened?"

"Javier is gone, along with the strongbox."

"What?"

"Check out the Jeep."

Kendra looked beyond Gavin at the Jeep parked in the driveway. Hal and Mara had used spare keys to retrieve the vehicle the previous evening. All four tires were flat. "He slashed the tires?"

"And they couldn't find the pickup," Gavin said. "They're all out searching for clues on motorcycles and horseback."

"So Javier was a spy?"

"L-l-l-looks that way. At least the artifact he took was a decoy. Still, Dougan acted really worried. Even though Javier had a questionable past back when he was selling his services to the highest bidder, he had proven himself extremely reliable in recent years. Dougan said if Javier was secretly working for the Society, anyone could be."

"What now?" Kendra wondered.

"We'll still leave as planned. I was coming to grab some breakfast."

"Why didn't anyone wake me up?" Kendra asked.

"Nobody specifically woke me up either," Gavin said. "They wanted to let us rest after yesterday. The revving motorcycles got me out of bed. M-m-my window looks out the front. Hungry?"

He walked into the hacienda and strode to the kitchen, taking milk from the fridge and cereal from the pantry. "I'll have a bowl," Kendra said. "Want some orange juice? Toast?"

"Please."

While Kendra poured the juice and put bread into the toaster, Gavin set the table, placing the milk between the bowls of cereal and locating boysenberry preserves. Kendra buttered the toast and set it on the table, splashed milk onto her cereal, and started eating.

They were rinsing their bowls in the sink when Dougan entered the hacienda with swift strides. Warren followed at his heels.

"Any luck?" Gavin asked.

"We found the truck abandoned near the entrance to the preserve," Dougan reported bitterly. "He mutilated the tires. He must have had an accomplice waiting on the far side of the fence." "Will we still make it to the airport?" Kendra asked.

"Hal has spare tires." Dougan poured himself a glass of water. "We should still get away on schedule." He took a long drink. "After all that's happened, it almost seems appropriate that we should end our stay here on another sour note. I won't be surprised if the Knights of the Dawn are never permitted on the premises again."

"We seem to be the opposite of jackalope feet," Warren agreed. "On the bright side, at least we're not about to confess to our evil employer that we ruined our legs and blew our cover in order to steal a phony artifact. I think old Javier might end up having the worst day of all of us." He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. "Time for some culinary therapy. What's for breakfast?"

On the floor beside his bed, Seth hunched over a musty journal, scanning page after page for words like Graulas and Kurisock. He glanced at the clock. Almost midnight. Kendra could show up at any minute. He did not want her to discover that he had started reading Patton's journals. She would never let him live that down.

His eyes found the word Kurisock, and he slowed down to study the passage:

Today I revisited the territory allotted to Kurisock. I still suspect that the demon played a central role in the tragedy that destroyed my uncle, the details of which I do not intend to relate in a volume as unguarded as this journal. In truth, if my grief over the calamity does not diminish, I may never impart the particulars.

Let it suffice to convey that I traversed the frontier into Kurisock's realm and spied on his smoldering pit, a malodorous venture that yielded no revelations. I dare not venture deeper into his territory, lest stripped of all protection I render myself defenseless and trade my life for naught. I reluctantly concede that investigating Kurisock in this manner is a fruitless enterprise, and intend at last to acquiesce to the advice that I refrain from further encroachments into his domain.

I hesitate to abandon my aunt to her fate, but the woman I knew no longer exists. I fear that her horrific condition may be irreversible.

Seth had found references to Kurisock and his tar pit before, although no passage revealed nearly as much about the nature of the demon as Graulas had shared. Seth had also encountered multiple mentions of a tragedy involving Patton's uncle. But this was the first entry where Patton had let slip that Kurisock might have been involved in his uncle's downfall. And until now, Seth had never read anything about a strange condition afflicting Patton's aunt.

Footsteps thumped up the attic stairs. Seth started, fumbling with the journal before sliding it under his bed. He tried to assume a casual pose as the door opened and Dale poked his head in. "They're back."

Seth got to his feet, grateful that the person on the stairs had been Dale and not Kendra. His sister had an uncanny ability to guess when he had been up to something, and he did not want her to know that he had broken down and turned into a bookworm while she was off having adventures.