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gotten to it yet.” Mab leaned over and sniffed the scraps of paper and tape. Straightening, he pulled out his notebook and copied down the messages. “Apparently, your brother was sending someone Christmas presents.”
    Next to the closet sat a red trunk. Mab opened the lid and peered at the note attached to the inside.
    “Creepy,” he muttered, jerking back. I leaned closer. The note stuck to the open lid read: MEMENTOES OF DEAD FRIENDS.
    “What is it?” I pushed the lid back farther and looked in.
    The chest held hundreds of little wooden figurines with jeweled eyes, primarily animals. I reached in and lifted my hand: dogs, elephants, boars, birds, an alligator, and a cheetah spilled from my palm. They clinked, ringing like wood chimes, as they rained back upon their fellows, the multicolored gems of their eyes sparkling.
    “These were part of his staff once,” I guessed.
    “From the
Staff of Summoning
?” asked Mab. “How so?”
    “You’ve seen his staff, how it looks like a long narrow totem pole, with dozens of little figurines, one on top of another?”
    “Like the one he tried to make of me back on the boat? The one we were just talking about?”
    “Exactly.” I nodded. “Each figurine represents a different creature Mephisto can summon, a creature he has befriended or made a compact with. Most of them are supernatural, like the gryphon, the maenad, and the harpy, but some are ordinary animals Mephisto has trained, like that swallow and the falcon.
    “Only having a figurine in the
Staff of Summoning
does not make the creature immortal. Sooner or later, the mundane animals die, and Mephisto has to train new ones to take their places.” I gestured at the trunk of discarded figurines. “Apparently, this is his graveyard for figurines of beasts that once belonged to his staff.”
    Mab leaned over and sniffed the contents of the trunk. I sniffed, too, but could only pick up a faint odor of lemon-scented floor wax.
    Mab straightened and scowled. “Ma’am, the spell to summon a spirit is not for the fainthearted. But to summon a physical entity, like a bird or a mermaid, yanking it to you through time and space? That’s one whopper of a spell! No ordinary magician could perform it. To pull it off, you need some kind of extraordinary magical authority. I’m not even sure the Lords of the Elven High Council could do it. How does the Harebrain manage it?”
    “I don’t know, Mab.” I frowned. “In the old days, Father used to perform the actual spell for him—the part that made it so that when he tapped the figurine, the creature would be summoned. Father called upon the authority of the patron angel of the
Orbis Suleimani.
”
    “That would do it,” Mab muttered. “Maybe your brother does it the same way.”
    I shook my head. “Mephisto was thrown out of the Circle of Solomon after he lost his sanity. He does not have the authority to call upon that angel.”
    “Perhaps…” Mab scowled. “Or perhaps, he’s calling upon the authority of Prince Mephistopheles of H… whatever
H
stands for. And I tell you, Ma’am, there’s only two places starting with
H
where the inhabitants have enough authority to cast the spell we’re talkin’ about, and I’ve never heard of a Prince of Heaven.”
    I remembered the rambling story Mephisto had told us about how he lost his staff. “Maybe that’s what he uses Uriel for, when he’s not having the seraphim act as his valet.”
    Mab shivered and pulled up the collar of his trench coat. “Either way, I don’t like it, Ma’am. Even calling on angels is bad business for mortals.”
    “Enough, Mab.” I glanced about the nearly empty chamber and saw Mab with his nose pressed against a seemingly blank section of wall. “There’s nothing here.”
    “There’s got to be, Ma’am! Harebrain’s too harebrained to cover all his clues. There’s got to be something.”
    “No, Mab. He’s just a disorganized madman.”
    “Look, Ma’am. Here’s another