Page 23 of Skullduggery
Offended, Duchess gave her answer without thinking. ‘I do! I do know! I ain’t stupid. You’re in wisp territory!’
Wisp? I blinked rapidly. Will-o’-the-wisp? Suddenly everything made perfect – albeit terrifying – sense.
‘Thanks, Duchess,’ I heard Mark mutter, and there was a brief scuffling sound as he wrestled the phone from her. ‘A will-o’-the-wisp,’ he breathed. ‘I should have thought of them sooner, but there are so few of them left these days.’
He was right. From what little I’d read when I’d been trying to teach myself about the world of magic, there was more chance you’d be struck by lightning than that you’d fall into a will-o’-the-wisp’s trap. The lightning would be preferable, though.
‘Rizwan is looking them up. Hang on, Daisy.’ Mark clicked his tongue. ‘Hugo should have known better than to allow this to happen. He’s been far too distracted lately.’
I stiffened. I was the one who’d been distracting him, and I felt the sting of guilt.
Within moments, Rizwan was speaking. ‘Duchess is right.The blue goop is excreted by the wisp in the same way that you or I might sweat.’
Ick.
‘If you follow the trail, it should lead you directly to the wisp’s lair. Be extra careful because a wisp can hypnotise unwary people into a trance – that’s probably what happened to Hugo and the others. You weren’t affected because you weren’t looking at it.’
‘Saved by the golden skull,’ I muttered. ‘What does the wisp want with them? What is it after?’ In other words, would it try and kill anyone? And worse, was there a chance they were already dead?
‘That depends,’ Rizwan replied. ‘Some will-o’-the-wisps are nothing more than mischief makers. They lead travellers astray for their own amusement.’
‘And others?’ I asked, suspecting something far more sinister.
‘Others are evil bastards that will viciously attack their prey without a second thought.’
Of course they were. I sighed. ‘Gotcha.’
‘The thing is, Daisy,’ Mark cautioned, ‘you stumbled into its territory. You know what the law says. You can’t harm it.’
I nodded and swore at the same time. Magical creatures living in the wild had legal protection, whether they were giant snakes, talking dragons or nasty will-o’-the-wisps. In some cases, you could fight back if the situation called for it – but not if you had wandered into their habitat and disturbed them.
If I hurt the will-o’-the-wisp, I’d be facing a jail sentence regardless of what it had done to me or the others because it had the right to defend itself in its own home. Until we’d shown up the wisp hadn’t been bothering anyone, so it was a law that I agreed with. That didn’t help me right now, of course.
‘There should have been some warning signs,’ I protested.
‘You can put in a written complaint to the authorities later,’ Mark said.
Yeah, yeah. I pushed back my hair and quashed the desperate urge to swallow yet more spider’s silk. ‘Any tips for dealing with it without harming it?’
‘Don’t look directly into its eyes. If you do, you’ll fall into the same trance as the others.’
‘Anything else?’ I crossed my fingers hopefully; even a scrap of an idea about what to do would be helpful.
There were several seconds of silence. ‘We’ll keep searching for anything in the books and let you know.’ Translation: he had nothing more to tell me and I was on my own.
I sniffed. No problem.
I hadto walk further than I’d expected, at least a mile, and the longer I kept going the boggier the ground became. At least that meant the footprints were easily visible so I didn’t have to worry that I was heading in the wrong direction. Given that the splodges of blue goop were few and far between, I could easily have gotten lost.
A little of my tension eased when I started to hear the usual rustling of nocturnal wildlife and the occasional hoot from an owl on the hunt; the curse leaking from the Fonaby stone obviously had a limited range and probably had little to do with the will-o’-the-wisp. That didn’t make the situation any less dire, but it did mean there was less to worry about. I was only equipped to deal with one disaster at a time.
The first indication that I was drawing close to the will-o’-the-wisp’s lair was the singing. The notes drifted across the landscape, curling around the leaves and trees and saturatingthe air like a mist. The wisp was female – and a damned good soprano, to boot.
I slowed my steps, placing each foot carefully on the ground so I didn’t alert her. As I inched closer, the will-o’-the-wisp’s song faded and I felt oddly bereft at the loss of the enchanting music.
I didn’t have long to mourn its disappearance because seconds later she spoke. ‘Which one will we eat first?’ I stiffened. She continued. ‘The small ones will be bony and unsatisfying, but they might be tasty.’ There was a smacking sound. ‘Yes, they will make an excellent snack. Chuchi will enjoy eating them.’
A carnivorous will-o’-the-wisp? Why couldn’t I stumble across one that was vegan? And who was Chuchi? Would I have to deal with two of these fuckers?
