Free The Dragon Charmer by Jan Siegel Page B

Anyway, don’t let him trouble you. This is his house now and we’re his people: that means
he’s for
us.”
    “Have you ever seen him?” asked Gaynor, skepticism waning after her own experiences.
    “Of course. So will you, I expect when he’s ready.”
    “I don’t particularly
want
to see a goblin,” Gaynor protested, adding somberly: “I’ve seen enough. More than enough.”
    Will put his arms around her for the second time, and despite recent fear and present distress she was suddenly very conscious of his superior height and the coiled-wire strength of his young muscles. “We’ll have to tell Ragginbone about all this,” he said at last. “He’ll know what’s going on. At least, he might. I don’t like the sound of that business with the idol. We’ve been there before.” She glanced up, questioning. “There was a statue here when we came, some kind of ancient deity, only a couple of feet high but… Fortunately, it got smashed. It was being used as a receptor—like a transmitter—by a malignant spirit. Very old, very powerful, very dangerous.”
    “What spirit?” said Gaynor, abandoning disbelief altogether, at least for the present.
    “He had a good many names,” Will said. “He’d been worshiped as a god, reviled as a demon … The one I remember was Azmordis, but it’s best not to use it too freely. Demons have a tendency to come when they’re called. Ragginbone always referred to him simply as the Old Spirit. He is—or was—very strong, too strong for us to fight, but because of what Fern did he was weakened, and Ragginbone thought he might not return here. It seems he was wrong.”
    “I don’t like any of this,” said Gaynor. “I’ve never trusted the supernatural.”
    Will smiled ruefully. “Neither have I.”
    “I went to a séance once,” she continued. His arms were still around her and she found a peculiar comfort in conversing with his chest. “It was all nonsense: this dreadful old woman who looked like a caricature of a tea lady, pretending to go into a trance and faking these silly voices. If I were dead, and I wanted to communicate with somebody, I’m sure I could do it without all that rigmarole. But there was something coming through, something … unhealthy. Maybe it was in the subconscious minds of the participants. Anyway, whatever it was, it felt
wrong
. I don’t want to be mixed up in anything like that again.”
    “You could leave,” said Will, releasing her. “For some reason, you’re a target, but away from here you’d be safe. I’m sure of that.”
    She didn’t like the word “target,” but she retorted as hotly as she could: “Of course I won’t leave! For one thing, I can’tmiss the wedding, even if I’m not mad keen on the idea. Fern would never forgive me.”
    “You know, I’ve been wondering …” Will paused, caught on a hesitation.
    “Yes?”
    “It’s too much of a coincidence, everything blowing up again just
now
. There has to be a connection.”
    “With Fern’s
wedding?”
    “It sounds ridiculous, but… I think so.”
    They discussed this possibility for some time without arriving at any satisfactory conclusions. None of this is true, Gaynor told herself. Witchcraft, and malignant spirits, and a goblin in the house who plays the bagpipes at six o’clock in the morning … Of course it isn’t true. But although much of what had happened to her could be dismissed as dreams and fancy, her experience in front of the television with the reaching hand had been hideously real. And Will had not doubted her or laughed at her. As he had believed her, so she must believe him. Anyway, it was so much easier than agonizing about it. Yet even as the thought occurred, uncertainty crept in. “If you’re inventing this to make fun of me,” she said, suddenly shaky, “I’ll—I’ll probably kill you.”
    “I don’t need to invent,” he said, studying her with an air of gravity that reminded her of Fern. “You saw the hand. You