Page 66 of Ashes and Amulets

Crickets.

A different tactic was required. “What is that over here by the door? Is that ajuicy mango?Mmm, oh boy, does it look delicious.”

No response.

Fernando had definitely left. If he were anyone else, I would be concerned. But Fernando was an indestructible force of nature with a penchant for wandering. Likely he’d remembered the sheep out back and gotten hungry enough to see how they tasted. I’d check there after I finished with this last pile.

The final boxes weren’t stacked like the rest. This pile appeared to be a toppled tower, with the contents having fallen, some spilling out from their boxes.

I started with one filled with crepe paper, then another filled with plastic crowns. I took a particularly sparkly plastic tiara,wiped off the dust, then set it on my head. The plastic gems were a perfect match to my purple dress.

Finally I reached the bottom box on the edge of the pile. It lay on its side, with tiny plastic sheep pouring out. I lifted the box and set it upright with the others I’d already checked.

On the dirt, sticking out of the pile where the box had been was a shoe, attached to what appeared to be a human leg. The rest of the body was still covered by boxes.

“Hello?” I said, giving the foot a tap with the toe of my shoe.

The person didn’t move. Likely he or she was unconscious, having been the victim of collapsing boxes.

I tore off the other boxes, uncovering more of the person beneath, until he was freed, and I got a good look at his deathly pale, unmoving face.

In the center was a seared footprint—my footprint.

The toe licker was dead.

CHAPTER 21

Death came in two distinct timeframes. One—the body had so recently passed that the person who discovered it felt obliged to attempt resuscitation. Two—the body was beyond that brink. Fortunately, the toe licker was in timeframe two. This was fortunate not because I wished ill will on him beyond the scarring burns I’d inflicted to his face, but because I had less than zero desire to put my mouth on his to fill his lungs with air. Finding him alive, of course, would have been preferable for all parties involved.

“Are you Noah Darie?” I asked the dead toe licker.

Of course he could not, and would not, respond.

I did know a lich. Wendy Ariti could potentially be used to reanimate the toe licker. But as a newly awakened witch, it was impossible to predict the results, not to mention the loss of time due to using a portal to retrieve her. Instead, I’d stick to good old fashioned, always reliable, library science.

I pushed the rest of the debris away from the body and pulled a toe tag from my bag. I knelt down and removed the left shoe from the body, along with the sock.

“You’d probably enjoy this, wouldn’t you?” I asked the toe licker.

Then I popped the toe tag on his foot, backed up, and waited. Due to the library’s time distortion, the toe tag system was a necessary process to deal with bodies as quickly as possible.

No more than five minutes passed before the undertaker arrived.

A small section of dirt floor quivered and shook. It rose into a tiny pile, then out popped a set of long white ears. The rest of the jackalope followed, from his pointed antlers to his twitchy button nose and cotton ball tail.

Without a word of introduction, the jackalope hopped straight into its work. He pulled back the toe licker’s eyelids, checked inside his mouth. It checked his hands and feet, rolled him over and checked his back, too.

“Hello. I’m Lily Fernsby, past and future senior librarian,” I said. “The body was covered in boxes when I found it. I believe a stack may have fallen on top of him. It’s also possible the boxes were knocked on top of him after he died. He was likely in possession of a valuable artifact at the time of his death, so perhaps we’re looking at a murder.”

The jackalope made no indication that he was listening to me. He kept about his work.

“There’s likely no shortage of suspects, as this man is a serial toe licker,” I said, assuming that it was in fact a regular offense for him. It was also possible I was his first victim, but at the very least he’d likely stolen someone’s socks before.

If the toe licker was in fact Noah Darie, he’d stolen quite a bit more than socks, possibly the entire barn’s worth of belongings. But it was important not to get too far ahead of the facts before determining what exactly the truth was.

The jackalope twitched his whiskers and hopped onto the dead man’s chest. This was how it was done, this was how the absolute truth was divined.

“Neee-ooo nenene-ooo,” the jackalope chanted. It was the sound of communion, the sound made when the bunny’s antlers pulled the memories from the dead.

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