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I lifted an eyebrow. “Why’s he buried in the Totten? Shouldn’t he be in that other city?”
The professor rubbed his chin in one hand. “I seem to recall a scene at the academy long ago where Gideon-that is, the son of Samuel and my classmate-had quite the row with his father on the campus. It was the talk of the dorms for a couple of weeks.”
“What happened between them?” Ben asked him.
Impara furrowed his brow. “Give me a moment. It’s been fifty-odd years. Ah yes, I remember now. Gideon had been caught using another student’s work as his own. The instructors were quite cross and were ready to expel him, but only a great deal of money from Samuel stopped that humiliation.” He lifted his chin and his eyes took on a faraway look. “I had the impression that father and son didn’t see eye to eye on a great many subjects, and one of them was their morals. Samuel was a self-made magician, having studied under no one and with little money until later in life. He did it through sheer force of will and a knack for finding rare magic books. Gideon, however, boasted about his wealth and talent.”
“So the Phantom takes after his great-grandfather?” I guessed.
“I would say more that that part of his branch was revitalized by his mother’s side, but the rot is still there in Josiah.”
Tully arrived with three more glasses, and Ben offered me the other filled glass. “And I would say we need a drink.”
I took the glass, but my curiosity still wasn’t satiated. “So if the baron revived his grandfather then where’s that skeleton?”
“Perhaps already destroyed,” Ben suggested as he folded his arms over his chest. “The grave was not freshly disturbed. Josiah could have removed the coffin to find something that was buried with him and disposed of the corpse.”
“And the women?” I reminded him. “They said they saw a corpse.”
“They may have merely seen Josiah or Elias roaming the cemetery,” he countered.
I wrinkled my nose but turned to Impara. “So what happened to the dad? This Samuel guy? The tombstone said something about illness.”
A dark shadow settled on Impara’s forehead. “Illness, indeed. Some of us suspected his son had done away with him, though he didn’t prosper from the deed quite as well as he had wished. The man was buried with his magic books and a spell was cast over him to prevent grave robbers from ‘doing business’ with him.”
I cast a worried look up at Ben. “I think someone managed to break the spell.”
He nodded. “That is likely.”
The professor’s ears perked up at our back and forth. “What’s this? What’s happened?”
“The grave from which we gathered the life sap was that of Samuel Hearth.”
“Damn him!” Impara shouted as he slammed a fisted hand on the arm of the chair. He shoved his empty glass in Ben’s direction. “Another, or I will die from this hot anger!”
Ben was in the middle of pouring another drink for our furious friend when Tully returned, and he wasn’t alone. Phil and Hearth, sans disguise, were with him. Phil dropped himself into the empty chair beside the fire and stretched out his legs. A dark expression marred his features as he glared into the fire.
“Well, that’s that.”
Ben lifted an eyebrow. “What happened?”
“The authorities have canceled the show,” Hearth explained. “Apparently a thorough examination of the archives has shown a rather large graveyard under much of Fox Hall, and they’ve shut all the Halls of Joy down until the culprit is caught.”
Phil clutched the fronts of the arms of the chair in his hands and let out a growl. “Those idiots don’t know how hard it is to return everyone’s coins, or they wouldn’t have canceled anything.”
“The first show was scheduled for tomorrow night?” Ben asked them.
Hearth nodded. “Yes, at sundown.”
“Is there any clue we might use to find your father? Any location he might have frequented?” Ben asked him.
“He would be smart enough not to go to those places,” Impara told us.
Hearth nodded. “That’s true. There is one defining feature he can’t hide, however.” He grasped a few strands of his hair. “This.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “His hair?”
“Hiswhitehair,” Hearth corrected me. “All the members of my family starting with my grandfather have this brilliant white hair. Even the most powerful magic cannot hide it, nor the strongest hair dye.”
