* * *
The Morning
I thought, perhaps, that my employer had forgotten. Hoped, I should say. Jackaby’s enthusiasm, when it finds a direction, can be rather unsettling—and I would have given anything to see the day pass entirely unmarked. As I stepped down the spiral staircase to the now-familiar breakfast smells of burnt toast, burnt bacon, and burnt hair, I allowed myself to imagine that I might get my wish after all.
Jackaby didn’t seem to notice as I entered the room. He darted about in his usual manner, peeking into jars and sniffing their contents before adding them to a lumpy batter that might have been distantly related to pancakes. I would have felt better about Jackaby’s experimental cooking if his kitchen did not share the same space as his laboratory, which was stocked with an ample supply of acids, explosives, and dried or pickled things that had once been animals whose names I can’t pronounce.
I took a seat at the table across from my employer. “Morning, sir.”
“Obviously,” he replied without turning around. It wasn’t that Jackaby was rude, exactly. Tactless though he was, there was an earnestness to the man. “I should expect you to have long outgrown being impressed by the fact that the sun rises daily in the east, Miss Rook. Really. You can manage more impressive observations than that.”
Then again, Jackaby might have just been rude.
“Sleep well?” I asked, secretly happy for the condescension. At least Jackaby’s attitude signaled a normal morning—or as near to normal as mornings ever came in the company of a supernatural detective.
Then he turned, and I saw the bandolier.
Strung across his chest was a thick leather strap, with eight slots containing tubes larger than any ammunition I’d ever seen. Each tube was coated in shining paper, the ends poking out on either side in bright, primary colors. I might have preferred that they were bullets.
“Please tell me those aren’t”—I swallowed—“party crackers?”
“If you insist. These are not party crackers.” He smiled broadly. “Happy birthday!”
I sagged in my chair. “You realize you’re a grown man dressed in children’s novelties?” I avoided his eye and picked at the tray until I found a piece of bacon that was slightly less charred than the rest. “I distinctly remember telling you not to make a fuss.”
“No fuss,” he said, “and you’ll find these little poppers are much better than the standard trifle.” He stirred his batter around, poking down with a wooden spoon the bits that rose to the surface.
“Ah,” I said. “They’re not standard. Somehow that neither reassures nor surprises me. Is there anything in this house that is?”
“Of course. I allow Douglas to maintain the archives in a highly standard way,” he replied. “Chronologically, I think—or alphabetically, or something equally tedious. I do believe he even keeps some sort of card catalog. Downright banal.”
“Yes, but Douglas is also a duck, which rather evens the score, I think.”
“Well he wasn’t always,” Jackaby rebutted. “But you’re right, I don’t like to associate with too much normalcy. It’s good to keep one’s mind wide open and one’s horizons expansive. Particularly at times of liminal celebration, eh?”
He raised his eyebrows and grinned at me, stirring his mixing bowl until the concoction grew so stiff that the spoon refused to budge. His storm-gray eyes flashed, and his eyebrows waggled in my direction like hopeful puppy-dog tails.
“I have no idea what the word liminal means, and as I said, I’d rather not have any sort of celebration at all.”
Jackaby looked at me for a few moments, then shoved the bowl, batter and all, into the washbasin. “It’s high time we take a trip to the market.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “Just to the market?” I asked, not trusting the abrupt shift. “You’re suddenly in the mood to fetch groceries?”
“Certainly,” he said. “We can browse a few vendors as well, if you’re in the mood.” He had already pulled his ridiculous knit cap over his mess of dark hair and slung a mismatched scarf around his neck. He plucked his coat and satchel from the battered mannequin in the corner, slipping the long, bulky duster over his scrawny frame. At least the coat and scarf more or less covered his party-cracker bandolier.
“Are you going to wear those across your chest all day?” I asked, pulling on my own long wool coat.
He looked down as if he’d forgotten they were there for an instant. “Not all of them, no.” He plucked a bright-red tube from the top and presented it to me. “Come now, Miss Rook,” he coaxed with another grin. “It isn’t every day you celebrate a successful solar revolution.”
“And thank goodness for that,” I said. “Just one and then we’re off to the market? You promise?”
“That’s the plan. Now hold tight to your end, and I’ll hold mine.”
“I suppose one little party cracker won’t be the end of the world.” I slipped on my own wool hat and took hold of the party favor. “Three, two . . .”
We pulled on “one,” and with a weak crackle, the world came to an end.