To any regular bystander, Cordelia and Eleanor Walker must have looked completely insane. After all, it’s hard to imagine why a fifteen- and eight-year-old would be standing near the shore of the San Francisco Bay at two thirty a.m. throwing pounds and pounds of raw meat into a huge pile. They had created a meat tower of steaks, ground hamburger, pork shoulders, chicken thighs and cheap fish fillets. The pile was almost as big as the two of them put together.
It had taken nearly all of the three Walker children’s saved-up allowances and birthday and holiday money to amass such an impressive supply of meat. But Eleanor was still worried it wouldn’t be enough. After all, even though the pile could feed a whole army of human beings, to Fat Jagger it was only the equivalent of a small chunk of beef jerky.
They’d all snuck out of the apartment and taken a late-night bus to a twenty-four-hour Safeway to get their stockpile. Brendan had helped them haul it out to Torpedo Wharf and then departed for Fernwood Cemetery, where Denver Kristoff was buried under a fake name.
It was three in the morning, cold, damp and nearly pitch-black by the time the Walker sisters arrived at Torpedo Wharf, cut open all of the packages of meat, and dumped them into a massive pile at the edge of the concrete pier. They shivered miserably while they stood and waited.
“Now what?” Cordelia asked her little sister. “We’ve been here almost twenty minutes.”
“I don’t know,” Eleanor said. “This was the end of my plan. I guess I just thought he’d be hungry enough to smell the meat.”
It definitely smelled. Cordelia held a hand over her nose to fight off the stench. But maybe the odour simply wasn’t enough? The wind was blowing in from the bay, after all, carrying the shoreline scents away from where Fat Jagger lurked. And it would certainly be even more difficult, if not impossible, for him to smell anything underwater. There had to be something they could do to intensify the smell.
Cordelia was torn from her thoughts by a shrill squawk. A white seagull plopped down on top of their four-hundred-dollar pile of meat and greedily gobbled up several chunks into its gullet.
“Shoo!” Cordelia yelled, swatting at the bird with her hand.
The seagull flapped its wings a few times and hovered above the meat for several seconds, before settling down again on the other side of the pile. Several other pilfering white birds descended out of nowhere, squawking greedily.
“Nell, I need your help here,” Cordelia said desperately as she removed her jacket.
She swung it in wide circles near the growing group of seagulls feasting on the pile of meat. As the jacket neared them, they quickly hopped away or took flight. But each time it passed them by, they dived back in for another helping.
“Go away!” Eleanor yelled, charging in at the birds. “This is Fat Jagger’s!”
The birds must have sensed her frantic energy, because they fled for cover as she neared. But then, one after another, they circled back hungrily.
Cordelia looked at Eleanor desperately.
“We need to do something fast,” Cordelia said to her little sister. “Or else pretty soon there’s not going to be anything left!”
Meanwhile, seven miles away, across the Golden Gate Bridge, Brendan paid the cab driver and stepped out of the car into the dark night. He had no idea how he was going to get home. The number forty bus stopped running at eight p.m., and he’d had to spend all of his remaining money on the cab ride there. Thankfully, his driver didn’t speak English very well, and didn’t even bother asking why a twelve-year-old kid was taking a cab to a cemetery at two thirty in the morning on a school night. Brendan supposed this was a benefit of living in a big city like San Francisco. Nothing seemed weird there.
He was surprised to see that Fernwood Cemetery did not have a perimeter fence. He’d been fairly certain he was going to have to climb a ten-foot-tall iron fence with impaling spikes at the top. But the huge cemetery, surrounded by woods and built on a gently sloping hill, seemed almost welcoming to late-night trespassers.
It was dark; the only light was from several streetlights nearby and a few faded stars in the black sky.
Brendan braced himself with several deep breaths as he stared into the blackness of the cemetery, trying to tell himself that facing savage warriors, bloodthirsty pirates, Roman gladiators, hungry lions and a vicious wolf the size of a horse had all been way more terrifying than this. There was no reason for him to be afraid.
His mind drifted towards the time when he was nine and snuck into the living room late at night to watch Night of the Living Dead On Demand. He might as well have been a delicious brain sitting on a dinner platter. Brendan would have laughed at the image of his brain sitting neatly on a silver platter flanked by sides of braised kale and mashed potatoes if he were less petrified.
He tried to ignore his fear and instead focus on what he was there to do. First things first: he had to somehow find Denver Kristoff’s tomb.
Brendan switched on his phone’s flashlight and made his way into the cemetery, weaving past most of the headstones. It actually took far less time to find it than he’d suspected, given the cemetery’s size. But his gut instinct to start by checking the larger, more expensive mausoleums paid off. After jogging to four or five of the newer-looking mausoleums, Brendan found the one labelled Marlton Houston, the false name reported by the news in the days following Denver Kristoff and Aldrich Hayes being killed by a city bus downtown.
Kristoff’s mausoleum was a grand affair. It was roughly the size of a large tool shed, but all similarities ended there. It was constructed of white marble and had three steps leading up to a set of bronze double doors covered in intricate carvings of hooded figures and mythical beasts. Two marble columns flanked the doors beneath a peaked roof containing a large carved symbol Brendan didn’t recognise.
He stood in front of the steps and took a few deep breaths, cleared his throat, and thought back to the horrifying experience of watching Denver and Aldrich summon the spirits of past Lorekeepers inside the Bohemian Club with a simple spell.
“Diablo tan-tun-ka,” Brendan said, softly at first. “Diablo tan-tun-ka.” His voice grew louder as he chanted the spell several more times. “Diablo TAN-tun-ka! Diablo tan-tun-KA!”
Nothing seemed to be happening. Brendan continued anyway, recalling words the two Lorekeepers had spoken, but not quite remembering the inflections.
“Diablo TAN-tun-ka, spirit of my … uh, great-great-great-grandfather, um, I think,” Brendan said. “I summon you! I wish to speak to the one departed called Denver Kristoff!”
Brendan raised his arms towards the sky, as if he were literally trying to lift up the dead spirit of the Storm King from his resting place. He stopped and waited, his arms still raised into the air like he was signalling a touchdown.
Only
