Chapter 9

The god Death has two types of servants that I've encountered during my travels. The first is the psychopomp, created with purpose, fashioned by Death's own hand. They carry a powerful lantern to guide the way through the darkness, and they have many eyes which enable them to see into several worlds all at once. Their lantern allows them to come and go between the dimensions, working like a key to a lock at every crossroads. It is the psychopomp whose job it is to save the lost children and to bring them to their eternal rest. Hamper their purpose at your own peril.

-Hecate's Guide to Arcane Philosophy

Quiet

I t was disorienting, watching my body shrink. My clothing swamped me. My witch hat had grown so large I had to fold it up and tuck it away in my pocket. Now in the small, flexible body of a seven-year-old child, I was able to slip out of the rest of the twine tangled around me more nimbly.

The foyer was dotted in shattered gum rubber and colorful paper confetti. I found the wick we needed on the stairs, and I inspected it. There was nothing unusual about it. I pulled on its ends and ran the cotton between my fingers. It felt perfectly ordinary. I tucked the wick away to examine further elsewhere. Then I hurried to check on Rorick.

He'd landed near the banister. Leaning against the railing, he rubbed his neck, his pale throat marred by a red band left by the noose. The angry balloon had disintegrated the moment Rorick slipped free.

"That was scary!" I said.

"Glad it's over," he said with a slight lisp. His fangs were a bit too big for his mouth in the form of an eleven-year-old. "What do you think that was about?"

"Maybe whoever made the trial thinks you cheated," I told him. "Plenty of gods really, really, really hate it when we cheat them."

"Gods? But specters aren't gods." Rorick shrugged. "I suppose I did cheat a little." He cocked his head, peering up at the painting of himself as a ged man. "Did you see him move earlier? In the picture with the clown, I mean. The face changed. It looked all mean and scary."

"I was only looking at the clown. I didn't notice anything else." I blinked up at it. The old oil portrait seemed the same to me, though it towered more from this perspective than it had before.

Rorick sniffed at the air, nostrils flaring. "Smells sickly-sweet," he murmured.

I had no idea what he meant by that. "We've got the candlewick. Can we get out of here now? This place gives me a terrible case of the willies."

Rorick pushed up his baggy sleeves and took my hand. We raced down the stairs. By the time we reached the bottom, we were both breathless and giggling.

"Is your coach still out front?" I asked. "I bet the driver will have questions about why we look like children. What should we tell them?"

Rorick shrugged. His waistcoat was so large, the movement was barely noticeable. "There's no driver here. I didn't take a carriage."

My brow puckered. "Then how'd you get here?"

"Prim brought me on her broomstick," he said, smiling toothily.

I swatted at him. "It's an enchanted traveling artifact ," I enunciated carefully. Pronunciation was a bit tricky with my younger tongue. "And you hate traveling by broom—I mean, traveling artifact."

"Oh, it was terrifying," he said with a lopsided smile. "Or it was then, but we needed to get here swiftly, so I risked it anyway because I like you bunches."

My cheeks warmed. "Aww."

"If one of those clowns tried to hurt you," Rorick said, "I was going to bonk them on the head so hard their big ole shoes popped right off their feet."

My face burned even hotter, and my heart filled to bursting. Distracting myself with my cloak, I shoved aside the draping fabric. I worked my own traveling artifact out of the void in my pocket. It caught in the wool. Rorick helped me untangle it. It was much bigger and unwieldy in my child hands.

"I'm sorry you're afraid of heights," I said. "I'll try to fly really, really, really slowly. But not so slowly that the sun comes up and knocks you off my broom—I mean traveling artifact. Drat!"

"But I'm not scared of heights now," Rorick said, smiling so broadly his tiny fangs glistened under the gaslights. "Fear of heights—that's grown-up stuff."

"Oh," I cooed. "This ought to be fun, then."

Outside on the steps to the refurbished front doors of Eckert Castle, I mounted the staff of my traveling artifact. Rorick climbed on behind me, sitting back on the bicycle seat I'd added near the feathered end. He held my shoulders tight. I flew us into the night, soaring high over the trees that formed the wilds. Werewolves howled up at us.

"Ow owwwwww," Rorick howled back, and I giggled. "Faster!" he shouted.

I leaned forward, pushing us faster. We sailed toward the city, the road and the trees growing smaller and smaller beneath us. Cold wind whipped through my braid and sent my cloak billowing around us. Rorick cheered.

"Look, no hands!" he bellowed, throwing his arms wide.

"You're mad," I told him, laughing so hard my tiny shoulders shook.

Our feet were undersized in this form. One at a time, we lost our boots.

"There goes the last one," he called to me, laughing uproariously.

My toes were practically icicles in my stockings by the time we reached the cobblestone street outside the reformed firehouse that was my home in the historic district.

"Oy," I said warningly as the broom wobbled beneath us. "I can't quite remember how to land . . ."

"Oh bother," Rorick said.

The ground rushed up toward us faster and faster. Just before we hit, Rorick wrapped me up in his arms, shielding me. We landed in a heap of limbs, the wind knocked out of us both. Rorick cushioned my fall with his body. As I climbed to my feet, struggling with my oversized skirts, he lay there amongst the frosted cobblestones, groaning.

"Well, that was silly," I said. "We could have just pulled my spelled cloak around us."

Rorick coughed at me. "Now you think of it?"

"Sorry." I grinned sheepishly. "I'm not as sharp as a seven-year-old. Can you move?"

He patted himself down and tested his legs. "Well enough, I think."

I tucked my traveling artifact away and gave him a hand up. He threw his arm around my shoulder, leaning his weight against me, and I aided him into my home.

"We're here!" I told my assistants. Led by Gilbert and Anita, swarms of lightning beetles, garlic moths, and scar-weaver spiders flew out of my pockets and skittered down my skirt. The ants and the blood bees went next, finding their homes amongst the rows of flower beds.

By the time we crossed the second threshold into my sitting room, Rorick was walking normally again, his vampire body already repaired by the magic in his blood. After fumbling the matches, I lit the lantern that sat on my desk and held it aloft for better light. Everything felt strange and too large in my small hands.

"The sun will rise in just over an hour," Rorick warned.

A knocking sound stole my attention before I could respond. The tap, tap, tap sent my heart racing in sync with the staccato beat against a hollow surface.

I jogged into my bedroom, and Rorick followed me.

Another knock came against the glass of my standing mirror, and I jumped, nearly dropping the lantern.

"Oh, it's you," I said to the massive clown that filled up the gilded frame. The trepidation he made me feel as an adult didn't come when I expected it to. In his presence as a child, I felt at ease.

The big brute of a specter with smudges of dark paint around his eyes, a mallet hanging at his side, stared back at me, only this time, he wasn't frowning. He wasn't exactly smiling either. Whatever it was his face was doing, it felt like a vast improvement overall. He tapped on the glass with one of his thick, gloved fingers.

Rorick rubbed a fist into his sleepy lavender eyes. "I remember this fella. What's it you want, mister?"

"Yeah," I said, folding my arms over my chest, "what's it you want?"

The big clown beckoned us closer. Glancing at one another, we stayed put, keeping our distance. Separated from us behind the reflective glass, the clown laid his gloved hand against the mirror coaxingly. A dead daisy drooped behind his ear.

"Aww," I cooed, feeling bad for him.

"You know what he needs?" Rorick said. "A name."

"That's a grand idea," I said, "unless of course you already have one, mister. Do you?"

Slowly, the clown nodded his big head.

"Well," I prodded, "what is it, then?"

The clown smeared the paint around his eyes with a finger, and then he began to write a word backwards across the glass.

I squinted at his work. "Do-min-ion," I read. "Dominion? That's a funny name."

"Wouldn't you rather be called Fritz or Funny Feet or something like that, Mr. Dominion?" Rorick suggested.

The clown's lips quirked.

"You're different than the others, Mr. Dominion. Aren't you?" I guessed.

He nodded slowly.

"Would you show us?" Child-like excitement churned in my belly. I had to resist the urge to clap my hands together. "What are you really? Why do you wear that funny clown illusion if you're not a specter like the other clowns are?"

Dominion considered me, his head cocked. He looked between Rorick and I, and then carefully he began wiping off his makeup with the sleeve of his too-tight shirt.

I didn't realize it immediately, but my body was starting to return to my adult size and shape, limbs elongating. The illusion cast over us by the purple-haired clown faded. Soon, the mirror wasn't quite so tall and Dominion—though still impressive in height and girth—didn't tower as much.

Back in his full adult form, Rorick moved in front of me protectively. His violet eyes were wide and fixed on the glass.

I peered over his shoulder.

Dominion had removed more of his paint, revealing slits in mottled skin. Before long, half the paint was gone. He had a face full of eyes. They opened all at once, bright and alert, all in multiple shades of vibrant color. The unpainted corner of his mouth stretched unnaturally far up his cheek. And then he began to unbutton his ethereal shirt.

Large gray wings sprouted from his back. Another set burst from his chest and his arms and his hips. He was covered in feathered wings . . .

"Stop," I breathed, struggling to fill my lungs. My heart was beating so fast it hurt. I pressed closer to Rorick and felt him reach for me, seeking his own comfort.

"No more, Dominion," he said, terror in his voice. "We understand."

"You dress like a clown so people . . . so little people," I amended, "won't find you so frightening." Through a child's eyes, I hadn't thought of him as worrisome at all. Now, I was genuinely concerned that if he showed me the rest of his person, I'd die of fright.

The unpainted side of Dominion's face blinked at me with all its unnerving eyes. He worked his shirt on again over the feathered wings, pinning them against his chest and back.

"What do you want?" Rorick demanded.

When he was finished, the sad clown used the paint on his gloved fingers to begin spelling words backward across the glass, just above his name.

"‘Save the children,'" I guessed as he formed more of the crooked letters. "We don't know how or even what children you mean. There are so many, Mr. Dominion. Where exactly? Who? Is it the four who were taken by the fae in a bargain with Alexander Harker? Is that who you mean? Are there more children at the circus? Are they amongst the bones in the aqueducts beneath it that you sent me after? We don't understand!"

Dominion didn't look at me. All of his eyes remained fixed on the movement of his finger as he continued to spell out his familiar message in the face paint, one slow backward letter at a time. And when he finished, he vanished from the mirror. For one split second, I saw the inside of the circus, the black- and red-striped tent, empty amphitheater seating, and at the center of a large ring, what looked like—if my eyes had served me correctly—one lonely tombstone beside an open grave dug in the earth.