“Good,” said Temperance. “They sound entirely unsavory.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Barnaby told me.”
I glanced at Marsden again. He hadn’t turned his face away and seemed to know I was looking at him. “Probably one of the dead in the crypt,” he said.
I turned my attention back to the caryatids. “How would Barnaby know anything about them? How do you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“How indeed!” Prudence declared, rippling a bit as if she were trying to glare at the other spirit sharing her statue.
“Barnaby Smith is a drunkard and a liar for all that he kept the church records at St. James’s,” Tempe stated. “You should consider his every word with suspicion.”
“I like him!” Chastity flared, turning the statue she shared with Prudence shocking red. “He’s not a prig like you!”
“Oh, Chassy, please!” Hope twittered.
“My dears, we’ve no time for this,” Marsden cut in. “There’s a fella gone missing and the longer he’s among their kind . . . Well, you know what might happen.”
The arguing statues fell silent.
Marsden waved at me to continue.
“Chastity, how did you know about the amphorae?” I asked.
“They passed this way in the Underground. I was just . . . I was bored. I just thought I’d take a look in the tunnel. . . . There’s so many funny little bits of tunnel and sometimes I can catch someone staring at me. It’s fun to see their faces! Oo! A haunt!” She giggled the same slightly unbalanced laugh I’d heard when we arrived. Time was not being easy on her.
“Who had them and what were they doing with them?”
“Oh. Some lot of Red Guard. But they didn’t notice me. Dull old duffers, the lot of them—no fun at all. They just wanted to carry their boxes off, never mind me. They were taking them toward Islington. I could smell that the jars had blood in them and it was so wonderfully gothic—just like a novel!—and I so wanted to know what they were going to do. Some kind of ritual or something, I thought. But no. They just carried them off and broke them, Barnaby said.” The disappointment of her ghoulish hopes was palpable as a settling green fog around the farthest caryatid.
I hid my disgust. “How did Barnaby know?” I inquired.
“Oh. I asked him and some of the others if they’d go a-haunting for me, keep an eye out and all. And Barnaby said he’d seen the jars down under the old priory and then they were all smashed up the next night. It was so disappointing.”
“Which priory was that?”
She sighed as if she thought me very stupid. “The priory of St. John, of course, in the parish of St. James Clerkenwell. Barnaby used to keep the parish records at St. James’s. And since St. James’s is near one of the Underground stops, I thought he might be able to watch for me. I asked some of the others, but they didn’t see anything.”
All roads lead to Clerkenwell, I thought. “Why didn’t you go yourself?”
“I can’t go far from the church here, can I?” she snapped. “I’m not a proper ghost at all. It’s so unfair!”
“There’s no need for that sort of histrionics, my girl,” Temperance chided. “Things could be quite a bit worse for you.”
“Worse! You haven’t got a bag over your head day and night!”
“Chastity, really. It’s just temporary,” said Prudence.
Hope chimed in. “And you’ll be the prettiest of us all when they’re done!”
Chastity made a dismissive noise. “Phooey.”
“Chastity,” I interrupted. “Could I talk to Barnaby for a few minutes?”
“No,” she replied in a petulant tone. “I would have to go fetch him and who knows what I’d miss?”
“I promise we won’t say anything while you’re gone. Would you please fetch Barnaby?”
“Don’t be contrary,” Prudence said.
“Well . . . I shall, but only if the handsome one asks me to.”
“Excuse me?”
“That lad you brought. He hasn’t even looked at me. I want him to ask me.”
“Chastity, don’t be such a goose. The lad doesn’t even know you’re here,” Prudence said.
“He is rather nice-looking, though,” Hope added.
“I shall be decidedly ill if this continues,” Temperance muttered.
Nothing like playing matchmaker to a ghost—or not-quite-ghost. I turned and tapped Michael on the shoulder.
“Hey, I need a favor.”
“What?”
“Have you been following any of this?”
“Only you and creepy-face.”
Marsden snorted.
“OK, a little, but not much,” Michael admitted. “Why?”
“This is nuts . . .” I said.
“Well, yeah. It’s all been pretty nuts for a while. What nutty thing are we doing now?”
“There’s this . . . spirit here in one of the caryatids. We need her to go get another ghost named Barnaby for us to talk to. But she says she wants you to ask her. She thinks you’re cute.”
“Me? What? She what? OK, that is absolutely the biggest chunk in the fruitcake so far. She wants me to ask her to get this Barnaby?”
“Because she thinks you’re handsome,” I added, nodding.
He raised his eyebrows and blew a silent whistle. “Well . . . all right . . .”
I pointed him toward the right statue. “Her name’s Chastity,” I whispered.
Michael turned pink and looked up at the statue. He tried to smile, but it was a nervous grimace. “Umm . . . Chastity . . . would you please—oh, man this is so freakin’ weird.” He cleared his throat and restarted. “Chastity, would you please get Barnaby for us? Umm . . . please?”
He looked at me, wrinkling his face into an unspoken question.
I put up a finger to tell him to wait while I listened for the caryatid’s response.
“He doesn’t seem very sincere,” Chastity complained.
“Give over, my girl! Surely you’re satisfied that the lad’s made the effort at all? Gad, he probably can’t even hear you! I say take what you’ve got and be happy with it, you silly little chit!”
“Tempe!” Hope gasped.
“Oh, dear . . .” sighed Prudence.
“Oh . . . all right! He is very pretty. And he did ask. Though I wish he’d cut his hair so I could see his eyes. . . .”
“What’s going on?” Michael murmured, looking uncomfortable.
“They’re arguing about how well you did. And if you should cut your hair,” I said.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Michael stared back up at the caryatids. “Please, you guys, just help us out! Harper says she needs to talk to Barnaby so we can find my brother. Please get Barnaby. Please? I just want my brother back. . . .”
Temperance sniffed, no doubt put off by Michael’s taking the Lord’s name in vain, but Prudence and Hope both glittered and smiled.
The changeable shadow of Chastity wavered. “Oh . . . all right,” she said. “I’ll fetch him.” She flickered away, drawing down into the crypt.
THIRTY-SIX
“She’s going,” I whispered to Michael as Chastity slipped away into the crypt.
He breathed a sigh of relief. “I hate this.”
“None of us are thrilled, believe me.”
“I wish I could hear them or see them or something. All I get is mumbling and flashes of light in the corners of my eyes. This is . . . I don’t know. It’s crazy. I mean, maybe they aren’t there at all and you and Marsden are just—”
“We’re not. I swear there are ghosts and vampires and we are doing what we can with one to stop the other and get Will back. I know you don’t have a good reason to trust me, but try. I do care what happens to your brother and I’m not messing with you.”
His shoulders slumped. “It’s just so crazy. . . .”
“I know.” I’d have said more, but a misty figure pushed its way out of the crypt through the red doors so it stood
on the grass with us.
He was a tall man who stooped horribly and had a small potbelly, so he looked like a numeral six. His hair had thinned into a monk’s tonsure and the bags under his eyes were heavier than those in an industrial laundry. Even pale in death, his nose, cheeks, and ears were reddened by the spiderweb veins of alcohol abuse. He shifted back and forth, as if constantly shuffling his feet.
He addressed himself to Marsden. “I am . . . I am Barnaby Smith. Of . . . umm . . . St. James’s in Clerkenwell. Miss Chastity said you wished to . . . talk to me?” His voice rose to a squeak at the end.
No wonder he’d been a drunk: The world scared him senseless.
Marsden pointed at me. “She’ll ask the questions.”
“Oh. I . . . well. All right. I’m at your service Miss . . . umm . . . Miss . . . ?”
“Blaine,” I said.
“Blaine? Are you by chance related to Anselm Blaine of Peartree Court?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” I replied.
“Oh. Pity. I always thought him a fine fellow. I . . . you must pardon me; I find it rather hard to hear you.”
I shifted a little closer to the Grey, watching the colors of the grid and the shapes of ghostly things grow brighter and more solid. Smith looked a bit more like a person in the mist-world, but not so much that I could forget he was long dead. “Is that better?”
“Oh, yes! Quite improved. Thank you.”
This was going to take forever at this rate. I kept my impatience under control and turned my gaze full on Barnaby Smith.
“Mr. Smith, Chastity said you’d seen some Greek amphorae under St. John’s priory. Can you tell me more about them and when you saw them last?”
“Oh. Those. Umm . . . well. Nasty business. They contained blood and body parts—gruesome, to say the least. I did see them in the old catacomb. That’s under the current crypt—very old, quite probably part of the original foundations from the twelfth century. Terrible condition. Terrible.”
I gave him a stern glance.
“Oh! I am sorry. I—Oh. Ha-ha,” he laughed nervously. “Yes, not to the point. I am sorry. Umm . . . I’m not sure what they were up to, but the Red Guard who brought them left them for a . . . ah . . . a sorcerer,” he whispered. “And some of the Red Brothers—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith. I don’t know who you mean. Could you fill me in?”
He blinked at me. “Oh! I just assumed. . . . You’re with . . . him. I thought you knew.”
“I don’t. I’m not from the area. I don’t know all the players.”
“ ‘ Players.’ Ah, that is a fine description. But, oh my . . . if you don’t know—”
“I assume they’re vampires, but what else?”
“Oh! Yes, you do know! What a relief. I found my life a nightmare when I realized—Oh, but that’s not what you want to know.”
“Yes. I need to know about the amphorae, who had them, what happened to them, and if you know anything about a man called William Novak. Or John Purcell.”
“Purcell!” He raised a silvery hand and pressed it to his chest. “My—my stars. Mr. Purcell. I believe he’s a prisoner! I can’t say I have much pity for them, but it’s cruel to see what they do to one another. They don’t die easily, you know. Would that I had been a stronger man in life—but no. I suppose it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
He noticed me crinkling my brow.
“Oh. I do apologize. Here, let me explain.”
“Go right ahead,” I invited. I knew he’d dither less if allowed to tell his tale his own way and I sat on my impatience as he did.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“I really had no idea,” Smith began, “when I came to St. James’s of what a horror was below the surface of our fine parish. It’s a very old parish, you know. The well and the baths I had been there a very long time and it had been quite the pastoral spa once—where the gentry would go to escape the city. There was always some friction between priory and parish. But I didn’t know that . . . among our parishioners there were so many . . . of them.”
“Them?” I asked.
“The . . . vampires,” Smith whispered, and it came out on a cold breath that chilled the warm summer morning. Even Michael shivered, though he plainly hadn’t heard a word. “Once I realized what they were, I was shocked! I was outraged. I—I told the vicar, the rector, the prior. . . . They all laughed at me. Well, in our modern age, who wouldn’t? But the word got out. They knew that I knew and they took delight in tormenting me with the powerlessness of my position. I was just a lay clerk; not a priest or even an assistant curate who could go to the bishop. Oh, my . . .”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Oh. I . . . I find it distressing still. I’m afraid . . . I took to drink. Weakness. Terrible weakness.” He shook his head for such a long time I thought he’d given up until he said, “I suppose, in its way, the drink saved me. I lost my position and was asked to leave the parish. I could have stayed in Clerkenwell—even a bishop can’t really force you to leave your home—but I ran from it. Oh, not far. This pleasant green here is not too far removed in miles, but a world away to me.
“I made a pleasant life for myself. I married a widow who had a small bit of money and we were not unhappy. But I could not forget what I saw. It haunted me. And . . . I suppose, that is why . . . I still feel drawn there.”
I looked expectantly at him, waiting for the rest of the story.
“The . . . uh . . . Red Brothers—that is what they termed themselves—had come from the priory originally. I don’t know how they came into being, they were just . . . there, but there was a falling-out among them. A bloody thing, played out beneath the streets in secret places carved out by the old rivers and the Romans long before the priory was raised there. The slaughter was immense among the servants of the Brothers. The Brothers themselves were too hard to kill, and most escaped unscathed. When they had done with their battle, they broke into two parties and mockingly named themselves after the houses of God below which they had rampaged. They still call themselves St. James and St. John—the Red Brotherhood of St. James or St. John, as they please. The others, the white creatures from the docks, they had no part of it—or none I could see.”
Marsden leaned close to my ear and murmured, “He means the asetem. The docks and south of the river is their haunt.”
“Then what happened recently?” I asked Smith.
“Oh. I . . . I didn’t see it all. It began a month ago or so . . . I think. Time . . . is so hard to tell now. The white ones started showing up and the strife between the Jameses and Johns increased—I feared there might be bloodletting again. But they quieted. Until the Greek jars arrived. I hadn’t paid them much attention at first—I didn’t want to know what they might contain. But I had to investigate when Miss Chastity asked it of me. I can hardly say no to a charming lady.”
He gave me a quick, nervous smile before lowering his head to watch his invisible feet a moment.
“So, you went to see what had happened. . . .” I prompted.
“Oh, yes. I went back to where I’d first seen the amphorae. It was very hard as it was the same place beneath the priory where so much carnage had been wreaked during my time. But the jars had been broken already and it seemed something must have happened of which I could not guess. And then Mr. Purcell appeared in that place. The Red Brothers were very cruel to him and they taunted him horribly. About what I couldn’t understand. I never have figured it out. . . . But from what they said, this I believe to be true: The creature that was in the amphorae was taken out and reassembled into . . . whatever it was, and it is still there, somewhere.”
That was startling. Sekhmet hadn’t mentioned anything in the jars except blood, magic, and corruption. “A creature?” I questioned. Maybe that had been the corruption. . . . “What sort?”
“I have no idea, nor do I want one! Please, don’t ask it of me. It was chopped into pieces and reassembled from those horrible jars. When I saw what t
hey were doing, their sorcerer making it whole again . . . I—I am not a brave man and I could not bear to look. . . .”
I nodded. “I understand.” But I didn’t understand it all. A sorcerer? What had it made from the parts? Did the vampires have a spellbinder working with them? Or was it one of the asetem? Of the vampires I knew, only Carlos had any magical powers. Edward had told me most of them didn’t, but maybe that wasn’t true for the Egyptians. Or maybe there was another player in the mix.
By his quivering and translucence, I knew I couldn’t press Smith any further on that. It was frustrating, but it would do me no good to let it show, so I changed tack and hoped I wouldn’t regret my noble ignorance later. “Which of the factions has Purcell?” I asked. “St. James or St. John?”
“St. James. I don’t know why they chose to store the jars beneath the priory of St. John—perhaps to work some magic against their enemies? I don’t know. I feel for Mr. Purcell—I knew him in my time. He . . . was like a . . . go-between. He did business for both parties and they agreed to let him alone. But now the Jameses do him great harm. He is . . . not a good man—he is not a man, indeed—but none deserve the tortures to which they put him, poor soulless thing.”
“What about William Novak? Do you know anything about him?”
“Who? I don’t know the name. . . .”
“He’s the missing man, this young man’s brother,” I clarified, waving my hand toward Michael, who was holding back with an anxious frown on his face. “He’s a young man, too, but he has white hair, like an old man. He’s very tall and thin. Have you seen—”
“Oh! That one! Oh . . . no.” His voice was freighted with dread.
I restrained an urge to lean forward, to grab for the dithering ghost and shake information out of him, but with Michael looking on, I didn’t dare make a move that might upset the boy. I didn’t know how much he was picking up but he was observant and smart, and if I acted distressed just after using Will’s name, he’d know something bad was in the works.
“Go on.”
“I have seen him. I have. But they move him about. And . . . they . . . they torment him most horribly. He cries—Oh, my soul. It’s too much to bear,” the ghost said, covering his face with his hand.
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