Therefore, it was two Jacks that I saw, wielding two blades, piercing two monsters’ throats.
Even as I crawled out from beneath the Attic Thing’s outflung arm, the basement door crashed open, and in several quick bounds the Thing from the Circle was upon me.
“Now, hound, I eat you!” it said.
I shook my head, trying to clear it.
“Snuff! Get back!” Jack told me, turning toward it.
_Dzzp!_
The starlight danced upon the blade in his hand, and I needed no further persuasion. I crawled toward the farther end of the now slitherless hall, passing a corked bottle of port and spirits as I went. Pieces of mirror gave back green dogs with jagged edges.
I watched as Jack finished his business, ready in case he required assistance, grateful that he did not.
Plaster continued to rain down. Everything loose was on the floor. The thunder and the light and the house’s shuddering had almost become a part of the environment. I suppose that if you lived with it long enough, there might come a time when you stopped noticing. I didn’t really want to wait and see.
_Dzzp!_
As I watched the Thing from the Circle finally fall, following a masterful upstroke, I turned my stronger emotions toward the perpetrator of the onslaught which had caused their release. It was more than merely annoying, having had to put up with them all these weeks and then to lose them this way before they could fulfill their function. Under the proper constraints, they had been intended as the bodyguard for our retreat, should one be necessary, following the events of the final night, after which they would have had their freedom in some isolated locale, obtaining the opportunity to add to the world’s folklore of a darker nature. Now, ruined, the buffer plan. They weren’t essential, but they might have proved useful should we have to exit pursued by Furies.
When the business was done, Jack traced pentagrams with his blade, calling upon the powers that would cleanse the place. With the first one, the green glow faded; with the second, the house stopped its shuddering; with the third, the thunder and lightning went away; with the fourth, the rain ceased.
“Good show, Snuff,” he said then.
There came a knocking on the back door. We both headed in that direction, the blade vanishing and Jack’s hair and clothing getting rearranged along the way.
He opened the door. Jill and Graymalk stood before us.
“Are you all right?” Jill asked.
Jack smiled, nodded, and stepped aside.
“Won’t you come in?” he said.
They did, though not before I’d noted that it seemed perfectly dry outside.
“I’ll invite you into the parlor,” Jack said, “if you don’t mind stepping over a few dismembered ogres.”
“Never did before,” the lady answered, and he led her in that direction.
The parlor floor was full of what had been on the shelves, the tables, the mantelpiece, and everything was powdered with plaster. Jack raised the sofa cushions one by one, punching each and turning it upside-down before replacing it. She took the seat he offered her, which afforded a view of the broken mirror and slashed demonic carcasses sprawled in the hall.
The clock chimed 11:45.
“I’ll have to offer you sherry,” Jack said. “The port’s gone bad.”
“Sherry will be fine.”
He repaired to the cabinet, fetching back two glasses and a bottle. After he had poured a pair and given her one he raised the other and looked at her over it.
“What prompts your visit?” he asked.
“I hadn’t seen you in over an hour,” she replied, taking a small sip of sherry.
“That is true,” he answered, sipping his own. “But it is often that way with us. Every day, in fact. Still. . . .”
“I refer to your house as well as your person. I heard a small sound earlier, as of the tinkling of a crystal bell, from this direction. When I looked this way I saw nothing but a well of impenetrable darkness.”
“Ah, the old crystal bell effect,” he mused. “Haven’t seen that one since Alexandria. So you didn’t hear any thunder, see any lightning?”