The Nebulizer Potion and the Electric Compass (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 3) Read online

  Jessica -

  it has come to my attention that you are being called by a dreadful hag, of my acquaintance, some many years ago, and I regret to have to tell you that she must see you, in person. You are to go to her, at once, your schedule permitting, at your earliest convenience. One thing I cannot bear is the unsacred-ing of a sacred call. So, you must go, as all social upbringing has taught you and may tarnation’s hoof beats abide a swift and speedy return. I wish you the utmost in a safe and harmless journey and will do my part, on this side, as will Ickabod and his connections, to ensure your safety. This hag uses tricks unforeseen; so, be on your toes, and remember what I've taught you. Good manners and an undying belief in your status and prestige as a most feared and reputable Vampire! Off you go, now. Be at my house as soon as possible upon your safe return, as I, and Ickabod, must know the details of this witch's summons, her call to a vampire family she does indeed know the likes of. I trust Crucious has brought you this message in a timely manner, as instructed, for I am in hanging mode, now, and will remain so until your return, in order to channel all of my power, insight and cunning to you while you are away. Be not surprised of your own strength, for I have willed it to you today. Make me proud.

  Amore - Father.

  “Bub's sakes!” Jessica exclaims. She slaps shut the notice and stares, wide-eyed straight out in front of her, making a strange perse of her lips, perplexed at the notice and duty bestowed upon her. Drew enters the room, noticing that she is far away in thought.

  “Jessica? What is it? Where are you?”

  Slowly moving her head toward where he stands in the open doorway, a sweet light returns to her face at the sight of her husband. She remembers to cover the disturbing news, as per the request of the notice.

  “Nothing. Just thinking. Father has requested my,” she pauses, thinking how to phrase what she’s just read without actually lying, “involvement in a certain family matter,” she explains.

  Drew sets a plate down, “I've brought you some eggs.”

  Jessica smiles pertly, “Thanks.” Drew sits down on the corner of the bed.

  “I feel sad. It's like you're covering up; like there's a part of you not willing to tell me what this is all about,” he says.

  Jessica sighs, “Is Crucious gone?”

  “No. He's eating.”

  “Let's talk about this after he leaves. He makes me uncomfortable,” she says using him as an excuse.

  “Okay, darling,” Drew sighs, “and then you'll tell me the truth? The entire truth. Won’t you?”

  “I'll tell you as much as you want to know. I must be getting ready now,“ she says. He kisses her cheek.

  “I'll see Crucious out.“ He exits and Jessica grabs a towel, turns on the hot water of the shower and closes the bathroom door. As steam fills the room, Jessica busily loads a toothbrush with toothpaste and then looks up at the mirror. In the steam is drawn the shape of two hands where the thumbs and first fingers form a heart shape. Jessica smiles at it and puts the toothbrush in her mouth, she scrubs her teeth awhile and then bites down on the toothbrush and makes the shape with her own fingers back at the mirror.

  Chapter Four

  Nebulizer Potion for

  A Stone

  As Jessica leaves that day, Crucious Port steps out from a bushy area around the couple‘s home. He has been lurking there, once again, waiting for Jessica.

  “Ah!! Crucious! You nearly frightened me! What are you doing?! I thought you left. Didn't my husband tell you -“ Crucious interrupts and thrusts his hand out toward her hand.

  “Here! Take it!”

  “What is it?!“ Crucious hands Jessica a tiny vessel of metallic blues and purples with a small charm tied around the neck of the bottle and a cork in its top.

  “You'll need this,” Crucious says.

  Jessica, sounding more impatient with him than usual, and again with the lack of variety in vocabulation quite undeserving of her upbringing which should so obviously elevate her, as it doesn't - whenever she comes up against Crucious - insists again, “What is it?!”

  “Nebulizer Potion,” Crucious says, “O, and here, take this.”

  The irritation and abruptness in Jessica’s voice finally softens realizing he is actually trying to help her. Crucious fumbles from his pocket and hands over something that looks like a pocket watch.

  “You've got something else?” she asks.

  “Ah-hah!” Crucious proudly unveils, “The electric compass. Here. Your father asked me to give it to you. Almost wanted to keep it, but you'll see, there's a reason I didn't. It'll give you the charm of protection.”

  Jessica presses her lips firmly together, in a gesture that somehow coincides with releasing Crucious from fault and from her previous suspicions.

  “Thank you, Crucious,” she says sincerely, admitting to herself that his differences aren’t deserving of scorn. She puts the things he has given to her safely in her pocket. Satisfied that he has done his part in the summons, he starts to walk away.

  “Crucious?!” Jessica calls out, “Have you met her? The Witch?”

  “She was engaged to my brother,” he says.

  “And where is he now?” Jessica asks.

  “Dead,“ Crucious tells her, “He's dead.”

  “O, I'm sorry,” Jessica says, suddenly feeling bad about having been so sharp with him, “I'm very sorry.”

  “She killed him,” Crucious blurts out, “I know it; but, she's going to blame you.”

  “Me?! How? And, why me?” Jessica demands to know.

  “You were in the Underworld the day he was hit with a stone,” Crucious explains.

  “She hit him with a stone?”

  “No. You did. She thinks,” Crucious tells her.

  “But I didn't,” Jessica says and then thinks back, “Ah, right, trolls; but I didn’t even throw stones in the In Between - not like some of the others did,” Jessica urges an explanation of her innocence.

  “It was this,” he points to the little vessel in her hand. Jessica looks at the iridescent hue inside turn from indigo blue to electrified purple.

  “The potion?” she asks. Crucious nods his head in agreement.

  “That very one,” he says, “I was there, lurking -” he looks down at his feet, “and lobbing stones - in the gulch, that day. Helped drop him off. He was in a sorry state, like the misstep he was, laughed right in the face of a vampire, and o a blunder it was! Had thrown a stone at that vampire and got his rock back alright, right in the head - but he wasn't dead. No, he wasn't. By the time we’d dragged him home that afternoon... took us a day and a half just to struggle the lump back to that old hut. Left him there - he was going to be alright. Later that afternoon, though, I got the feeling something just wasn't right, with my brother. So, I haggered my haunches back to check on him, and sure enough... there he was, face down on the slats of the wooden floor, laying in the dirt upon the floor boards. That there's what killed him,” he points to the potion, “I inspected, the place, nobody was in there but my dead, brother, Tyrannomous. She was gone, that hag of the seventh sea’s bottom floor, and now I’ve got a plot planned for her – on its way, at last – right to her doorstep!” he says triumphantly.

  Jessica looks at the bottle in her hand. “You think she put this -”

  “Splash it on her!“ Crucious cries out - a bit of spit flies out his mouth on the s-p-l, he says it with such strength of feeling that he jumps, slightly, up and down. Jessica takes a step back wishing Crucious would not get quite so excited.

  “Do you think I will have to splash it on her? It could kill her, you’re saying?” Jessica thinks about her safety.

  “Do it anyway!” Crucious yells.

  Jessica squeezes her hand around the little vial, really wishing he would calm down, she says, “I'll try, Crucious. But, I can't promise anything,” she says. Crucious, does at once seem to simmer down and smiles at her as sweetly as he can muster, fidgeting with the sides of his hat.

  “We're all
with 'ya, Miss Jessica. That hag’s been bothering the Underworld for seventy five years! And that's in the In Between years - in other words, a long, long time.”

  “Curtains, Crucious! You can't be expecting me to take her out. I don't think that's what this is really about, is it? Father wouldn’t involve me – well, he did say – bats save, Crucious, I’m just little me. I think it's more of a meeting. Although I don't really know what it would be about, a meeting with me and a witch,” Jessica pauses to think about what Crucious is suggesting and the reality of the summons.

  Crucious hunches forward and blurts out the next words and then runs off, “She knew your godmother. Has her in a spell. You're the right one. You kill her!”

  Jessica steps back and rests a hand delicately to her chest, “Stakes and metal punishment! Surely he doesn't expect me - to kill - a witch?! Disrupted troll! Well, it doesn’t hurt to come prepared.”

  She fits the small, protective objects back into her pocket and contemplates, “Killing a witch? I'm hardly the type. No, it's just a meeting. I’m covered. Father wouldn't allow it - letting me walk into a crime scene as a suspect in violence like that? No…” She turns and looks back at her doorway, her perfect little doorway and sighs, thinking of Drew and their perfect (sort of), mortal (sort of) life they share together.

  Then, she gets an almost 'run-for-your-life' look on her face (and whatever she thinks in this one instant of time, I don't know, although I am the author I am was not in her head; but, whatever it is, it must either offer enough strength - or denial - to console her last urge to run from this call to ancient duty; because, in this very moment, she re-establishes her 'not-to-worry' attitude, takes a deep breath, and turns back around.) Putting one foot in front of the other, Jessica walks toward the salvation of the Underworld from the wrath of that dishonest Witch's determination to 'prove' the unproveable: the Witch’s loss was somehow linked to Jessica; and for that matter, she has been blamed – responsible.

  All due, Crucious thinks, to the fact that the wicked Witch does not want to take the blame, herself. She killed him. She did. Her Never Fail Potion just up and flat-out failed. Okay? It did. Naming a recipe 'Never Fail' is not my idea of a good plan. Sometimes, children, failure happens, no matter the pains you've taken to stake it - or at least, that's the way the vampire saying goes.

  You might think, Old Crucious Port ran home from there; all the way home. Alas, he did not. No, he ran off to meet - in his words - his other brother. Crucious’ other brother is not dead – it is his brother, Tyrannomous, who is. His living brother can’t believe that Crucious doesn’t seek the same, infernal justice he does, which is:

  Each and everybody dead along the way from the first ‘hit-Tyrannomous-with-the-rock’ Vampire to the last ‘dressed-the-wound’ Witch suspects; and:

  He is not in favor of investigating Crucious’ theory about how the wound-dresser might have killed him with her Never Fail Potion.

  He just wants everybody, about it, dead.

  Crucious, however, is a believer in Eye-for-an-Eye, as most trolls are - but only once – and, not everybody, who could have been at the scene of the crime that fateful day. Also, he likes Jessica; so, when the Witch first began hunting down the prestigious vampire’s darling daughter - who, to Crucious, seemed least likely to have been involved, especially during the time of his poor brother’s actual death. Well, Crucious began to do a little investigating himself, without the help of his eldest, and most vengeful, troll brother.

  It didn't hit all at once for Crucious, as rarely anything does enter his thick - even for a troll - mind quickly, like a bright idea to most of us, but he did 'stew' about the matter long enough to remember one simple - and almost life-endangering fact: Crucious had been called by the labor hotline earlier that day - the very same day when the crime which truly offed his brother, took place.

  "The Witch," the labor hotline guy said, "is looking for a replacement, and since your brother had been with her for many years, I, at once, thought of calling to refer you." Now, this somewhat undermines the defensive stance the Witch has taken, charging Jessica, with the loss of her dear friend, and possibly even her one and only true love. Love? Or, servant? Really, the Witch lost the underpaid worker she had hired and tricked into thinking he was in some kind of relationship with her, not to mention the fact that she’d been secretly planning to get rid of him. A ‘working relationship’ to the Witch, meant to Tyrannomous Slater, a lot of work and little else. In Crucious’ opinion, (the opinion which caused him to formulate his theory) making the Witch out to be the most likely suspect in the death of his brother, ‘getting rid of him’ went a lot further than most employers are willing to go. Thank your mother and my hovel on that one!

  Now back to Jessica, as she ventures to the Underworld, the only way she knows how – no, wait! – in Book ii she learned another way while getting out; but here she goes (as she's spent most of her life enacting her 'human' half) to the thing she knows best - that comfortable thing - the thing of habit which just might be the only reason she made it out from the Underworld alive; because, although she had nothing to do with the death of Old Tyrannomous, she clearly had, that day, everything to do with Theopolis who threw the stone that hit the troll, right upside his gnarly head.

  I almost want to yell, "Don't go, Jessica!" because she is dragging you down, here, involving you in the case of an old, dead troll whom you didn't even know!” But I can't. I'd need a conch shell, some candles, and I forget the words of the incantation: “Hear me now”, or something or other. So here she goes, on her own, not knowing that Crucious' other brother wants to clobber her (and everybody else) once she gets to the In Between - that point between the Above World and the Underworld Castle. And the Witch? If Jessica gets there? Wants to cook her in a pot. And, for what, you ask? Really nothing at all, except that she walked across the same plot of land on the very same day where, and when, Theopolis threw the rock that hit the troll who had first hit Theopolis, subjecting Jessica to a 'switch' of fate - a feigned involvement. Enough of my warnings, lamentings, or whatever they are... here she goes now to incite the help of Theopolis in her defense at the summons of the Witch.

  Jessica knocks on the door where Theopolis lives – or so she has been told, because she hasn’t kept in touch with him since leaving Thaddeus Preference’s.

  “Theopolis!“ Jessica calls out, knocking again, with a rather ornate, cast iron door knocker, that good girl!

  “You home? O, please hurry,” The door opens and even before she sees who has answered it, Jessica starts to blurt out her story.

  “Long story short, I’ve been summoned - to the Underworld. I've got to go there, today, and right away. I got this blasted note from Father and a peculiar assumption told to me by the oddest troll you could ever hope to meet, Crucious Port.”

  At last, Jessica looks up into the eyes of the mysterious door opener and sees Theopolis, “I…,” she stammers, “Wow!”

  Theopolis squints against the daylight, “What?” he demands.

  “It’s just, you look different... more gothic, more grown into, well, you know -” Jessica’s voice trails off so Theopolis attempts finishing her sentence for her.

  “Into being a vampire?” he asks.

  “Yeah. Kind of,” she says.

  “I always was more into it than you,” he says and then he puts a quick stop to her analyzing with a question of his own.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just told you. I have to go back,” she lowers her voice and looks around, “To the Underworld,” she tells him. Theopolis squints again his eyes adjusting to the light.

  He looks inconvenienced, “Today?”

  “Right now, actually. I've been summoned by the Witch,” Jessica explains.

  Theopolis sucks in a breath and says, “Ooo.” Hearing this sound, Jessica hurries to interject just how he might be involved - so he doesn’t simply say sorry and shut the door on her.

  “Is it possibl
e, during your stupid 'smash the cooch', um, activity, that you... hit a Witch? Or, killed a troll?” Theopolis rubs his eyes. Shakes his head no.

  “No. Hun-uh. Why?”

  “Well,” Jessica explains, “Crucious Port - who works for my father - his brother, actually, an Underworld troll - was an Underworld troll - is dead.”

  Theopolis rubs his chin, “Rough.”

  “Yeah, well, that's why I'm being summoned. The Witch thinks I killed him. Crucious thinks the Witch killed him; and, Crucious' other brother... thinks... you killed him.”

  “Me?!” Theopolis asks, rather loudly. Jessica hurries to extrapolate adding her thoughts about the accusation she’s just blurted out.

  “But he doesn't know it's you. Not technically. I don't think he knows of you.” Flustered, Jessica tries to explain her point, again.

  “He doesn't know that I know you. O, Uncle Nick’s ballroom! What I’m trying to say is that the troll who thinks you killed his brother, doesn't even know your name.” Theopolis’ voice sounds half an octave higher than the smooth, demure, and dark souled vampire who’d answered the door.

  He quickly asks, “You're not going to tell him, are you, J-ess?…”

  “Well, I'm not letting the Witch think I killed him.”

  Theopolis pauses a few moments waiting for Jessica to say (or swear) that she won’t tell the Witch anything about his whereabouts or his involvement; but, when Jessica doesn’t say anything at all in his defense, he nearly yells, “Unholy rapture! Jess. You can't tell them I killed him. I didn't kill any trolls. I simply smashed a coupl'a good ones, but hey, they smashed me first, or tried to. You can't do that!”

  Jessica insists, “No, no, what I am telling you is that you have to come with me, because-”

  Theopolis interrupts, his voice is high-pitched and sharp, “Devils! What's happened to you? Living with that perched up mortal hen's got you, what, pointing out vampires on falsely accused troll killings? What are you, now, some kind of overworld gestapo to the Underworld? What, if I hadn't opened my door you would have busted it in on some false charge of troll slaying, when daggers up, Jessica, trolls aren't my type, you know?“