‘Try to work your way back through everything you did,’ Leaf suggested. ‘Did you drop your inhaler on the oval? Maybe they picked that up? Or did you have something at school when they burned the library?’
Arthur shook his head. ‘I don’t think so … Hey, wait a second!’
He turned to look at Monday’s Dusk. He was slightly shorter than he had been as Noon and looked rather less severe, though no less handsome. He wore the night-black, undertaker-like costume of Dusk, though he’d taken off his top hat with the long black silk scarf wound around its crown.
‘You sent the Fetchers when you were Noon. Did one of them bring something back, or were they banished straight into Nothing?’
‘They did not return to me,’ said Dusk, his once-silver tongue now a shiny ebony, and his voice much softer. ‘But then I did not raise them in the first place. Mister Monday assigned them to me. I presume he bought them from Grim Tuesday, for he would not have been energetic enough to create them himself. You may recall that I was forced to return to the House when the Fetchers and I cornered you at your school.’
‘At the school,’ Arthur said slowly, revisiting that scene in his memory. ‘They took the Atlas! I’d forgotten, because the Atlas came back here and I just picked it up again. A Fetcher ripped the pocket off my shirt, and it got the Atlas with it –’
‘A pocket!’ interrupted Scamandros, scattering the things he’d put on the table with an excited wave of his arms, and the tower tattoos on his cheeks grew sturdier and sprouted fancy battlements. ‘That must be it. That will be the source of this Spirit-eater. A scrap of material that has lain next to your heart, overlaid with charms and planted in Nothing to grow a Cocigrue! Find that and we might be able to do something about the Spirit-eater!’
‘Right,’ said Leaf. ‘That sounds really easy.’
‘You don’t have to try,’ said Arthur. ‘I … I understand if you want to stay out of all this.’
‘I don’t think there’s much choice,’ said Leaf. ‘I can’t just let an evil clone of you go around taking over people’s minds, can I?’
‘You could,’ said Arthur. Though Leaf was trying to make light of the situation, he could tell she was afraid. ‘I know people who wouldn’t do anything unless it directly affected them.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t want to be one of those people. And if Ed’s out of quarantine, he can help … though I guess if it’s still Wednesday when I get back he’ll be stuck in the hospital …’
Leaf made a face at the thought of her brother, Ed, still being stuck in the hospital. Her parents, aunt, and brother had all suffered from the Sleepy Plague and been quarantined.
‘Anyway, Doc, is there anything particular that I can do to this Spirit-eater, you know, like how salt gets rid of Fetchers and silver dissolved that Scoucher?’
Dr Scamandros pursed his lips, and wooden scaffolding appeared around the tower tattoos on his cheeks, propping them up.
‘I don’t know. A silver spear or sword would annoy it, I suspect, and like all Nithlings it would not eat salt voluntarily, but only the lesser Nithlings suffer much from silver or may be banished with salt.’
‘Does it sleep?’ Leaf asked. ‘And will it have Arthur’s pocket on it or will it keep that somewhere else?’
‘Good questions, excellent questions,’ muttered Scamandros. ‘I’m afraid my sources don’t say anything about it sleeping, but it is quite possible that it does. I suspect it will hide the pocket somewhere near its lair – but again, my information is sadly lacking.’
‘And do you have any idea where its lair will be?’ Leaf continued to question. ‘Arthur’s house?’
Two small clouds of dust on Scamandros’s cheeks whirled up into miniature tornadoes that threatened a house tattooed across the bridge of his nose.
‘My sources are incomplete. One of the references refers to the “Spirit-eater’s Lair” but is not more forthcoming.’
‘I guess if it’s imitating Arthur, it will leave the house sometime,’ Leaf pointed out. ‘I can sneak in the back door or something. Is there a back door?’
‘The best way would be through the garage,’ Arthur volunteered. ‘There’s a remote switch for it under a blue rock in the driveway. I suppose it would probably sleep in my bedroom, up on the top floor, if it’s being me. But I think we’d better get more information about it before we say for sure.’
He picked up the Third Key again and laid his other hand on the Atlas. Its green leather binding quivered under his hand.