Such diverse skills . . .
Estelle didn’t need a wire rigger nearly as badly as she needed someone who could discover the identity of the man who stalked her, who could solve a crime that hadn’t yet been committed.
Someone with the power to know the future.
Lily had that power. It came and went as it pleased, with no discernible pattern other than some inexplicable whim.
But . . . what if that could change? What if it could answer to her whim?
That had been Ash’s promise. It was why he said he had founded The Refuge, as a place of both acceptance and mastery. Was it possible that there might be knowledge there that could empower Lily to take control of her ability, to learn to direct it to serve her purpose?
Her gut shied away from the idea. Acknowledging what she was, what she could do, risked the return of that dreadful responsibility—the burden of guilt for her failure to avert the tragedies she knew were coming. It meant the risk of engaging in a battle she was destined to lose, over and over again. She couldn’t bear that again. It was hell.
Yet there were lives on the line. Estelle’s life. Deveral’s life. Four women had already died and the one responsible still walked free while the law comfortably pinned at least one of the crimes on an innocent man.
It was wrong, all of it—terribly wrong. If there was even a chance that Lily could change that, that her power might make it possible for her to identify the true monster responsible for these crimes and bring him to justice . . . could she really walk away from that without even trying?
It was Strangford’s face that appeared in her mind in answer. She thought of how he had responded when she made the awful suggestion that he use the power in his hands to read the history of Sylvia Durst’s corpse.
And yet he had done it, knowing the pain and horror it would entail. He had done it because it was right, because it was worth putting himself on the line for the slim chance of saving a life or two. How could she refuse to take the same chance herself?
She couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she said, handing Estelle her tools. “I’m afraid I must run. I have a call to make.”
SEVENTEEN
LILY HESITATED AT THE door of The Refuge. Her gaze moved from the polished brass knocker to the doorknob. Ash’s words rang through her memory.
It will always be open to you.
A place of sanctuary for charismatics—for people who, like Lily, carried the burden of knowledge they shouldn’t have. Ash had invited her to consider herself a part of it after nothing more than a few minutes conversation. It was an exceptionally generous offer . . . one that Lily had no intention of accepting.
She knocked.
The door opened, revealing Sam Wu dressed in tweed coat and dark wool trousers.
“Oh. It’s you,” he said. It was a singularly unenthusiastic greeting. Lily refused to let it throw her off.
“Is Mr. Ash receiving?”
Instead of answering, Sam whistled.
A small brown sparrow fluttered down, settling onto the rail beside her. It cocked its head, hopping closer to the door, then flew up on to his shoulder.
Sam whispered to it. The bird took off, whizzing past Lily’s hat.
He opened the door, stepping back. It wasn’t much of an invitation, but Lily moved inside. She pulled off her gloves.
He was silent for an uncomfortable minute, then finally spoke, his tones bland.
“May I take your coat?”
“Thank you,” Lily replied coolly.
He came behind her, helping slide the jacket off her shoulders. He held out his hand for her gloves and hat, then disappeared, presumably to place them in the closet.
Lily waited beside the bust of Isaac Newton in the silence of the hall, refusing to appear awkward. She devoted herself to studying the intricate battle playing out on the antique shield mounted on the wall until Sam finally returned.
“This way, if you please,” he said, motioning her into the drawing room.
The space was elegant but comfortable, the couches and chairs showing just the right amount of wear. A fire burned in the hearth and another assortment of unique artifacts were scattered about the room. An ancient sword rested beside the iron poker and shovel for the fireplace. A glass-fronted case held an assortment of tiny turquoise figurines covered in hieroglyphs, along with what she was fairly certain was a mummified lizard.
Sam leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Where is Mr. Ash?” Lily asked.
“He’s meditating.”
A clock ticked on the wall, punctuating the silence.
“As soon as he’s finished, I’ll let him know that you’re waiting,” he finally added.
“How will you know that he’s finished, if you’re in here?”
He didn’t answer. Nor did he leave, or offer her tea, or do any of the things a servant might normally be expected to do.
It was a subtle but effective means of intimidation. Lily respected the audacity of it, even though she had no intention of letting it put her off her purpose. What she had come for was too important.
Important and terrifying. She was here to ask Robert Ash how she could provoke a vision, using her power to demand that the future reveal its secrets to her—not just any secrets, but the ones she needed to see.
If he provided her with that knowledge, she would be faced with a choice. Should she use it and open a door to a part of herself she had spent the last fourteen years trying to bury, or refuse, and do nothing while a man was hung for a crime he hadn’t committed and a murderer drained the life from innocent women in their beds?
It had been hard enough to walk through the door. She would not be driven out now by Sam Wu’s antagonism. And yet, could she entirely blame him? She was a stranger, an interloper in what was very obviously a realm he considered his own. He didn’t know her motives or her place, what she wanted or whether she posed a threat to the people he loved.
She strolled slowly around the room, examining the curios.
She stopped at a small painting. It was no bigger than a piece of writing paper, done in oils on a very old block of wood. It depicted a brown-robed saint, recognizable as such by the halo of delicate gold leaf crowning his head. He stood in a field against a dark blue sky, his hands held out as though gesturing in the middle of a sentence.
The audience he spoke to consisted of a flock of birds that hovered before him as though transfixed.
“St. Francis of Assisi,” Sam said. “They say he was so holy, God granted him the power to speak with animals.”
“You mean that he was like you.”
Lily felt the boldness of her words. To acknowledge what she had seen with the rats outside Abney Park aloud felt shocking, even dangerous.
“I’m not Catholic,” he replied.
The laugh slipped out before she could help herself. It was answered, to her surprise, by a quirk of Sam’s own mouth, one that had clearly been involuntary. It was rapidly drawn back into hiding.
Still, she had seen it, a little sign of a crack in his bristling armor.
Curiosity tugged at her.
“It’s the sparrow, isn’t it? You asked it to watch Mr. Ash for you.”
“Maybe I did,” he replied coolly.
“Does it work with every animal like that? Do they all do what you say?”
“You mean, can I command them like a lord? Not hardly.” Sam left his post by the door and dropped himself into a plump armchair as though he belonged there. It was another indicator of his ambiguous status in the house. Servants didn’t typically make themselves comfortable in the drawing room.
“So how does it work?”
He shrugged. “Some you can ask for a favor, and they might grant it. They’re usually not the clever ones, though. The clever ones you can do more with, but they’ll want something for it.”
“You mean like a payment.” She thought back to Abney Park. “Were the rats like that? Did you have to pay
them for what they did at the cemetery?”
“No. They ain’t very bright. Show up their king, they’ll follow you around for a while, do what you like, long as it’s not anything too complicated.”
She thought back to his confrontation with the monstrous rat that had emerged alone from the Stoke Newington sewers, how the whip-thin young man in front of her had bodily forced the animal into submission while it hissed and nipped at his fingers.
“What’s the cleverest animal, then?”
“Ravens,” he replied without hesitation.
“What do you have to pay them?”
“More than you’d want to give.”
Something in his voice gave her a chill. She returned her attention to the painted icon on the wall.
“When I was here before, Mr. Ash mentioned something about the stories of miracles and saints.”
“He thinks they were like us.”
She did not miss the significance of the slight emphasis he placed on “us”. With her questions about the birds and rats, she had called out her knowledge of his difference. He was returning the favor.
“That they could . . . do things that others can’t. Just naturally. Not as some kind of act of divine intervention,” she clarified.
“Don’t get him started on divine intervention or you’ll be here all night.”
He rose abruptly from the chair, as though catching himself and pulling back from the ease he’d let slip into his manner. His expression closed again and his tone sharpened.
“What are you here for, anyway?”
Lily knew the question wasn’t about the purpose of that afternoon’s visit. It was a demand to know why she had invaded his world, threatened to upset its balance with the introduction of some foreign element.
Her immediate instinct was to put him off . . . but this man had already been pulled into her affairs, whether or not either of them liked the idea. She remembered the sight of him standing stiff and still as the rats crawled over his body—something he had endured because of her, in the name of a cause he didn’t even know.
“I’m trying to prevent an injustice. And perhaps . . .” she stumbled over the words, her mouth feeling dry as she forced them out. “Perhaps to stop a threat to someone I care about.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Sam absorbed this.
“What about after?”
Lily didn’t know how to answer that. It should have been simple. She would go back to her life and forget any of this ever happened. Somehow, that promise wouldn’t quite come out.
Instead, she seized on something else, a line of inquiry that would almost certainly make Sam forget he’d ever asked that more difficult question.
“Were you a thief?”
Sam’s posture immediately turned defensive.
“What’s it any of your business?”
“I saw you pick that lock on the lodge at Abney Park.”
“So what if I did?”
“Could you get into a locked house and then make it look locked again after you’d left?” she pressed.
“I’ve got nothing to do with that anymore. And even if I did, what makes you think I’d do it for the likes of you?”
“I’m not asking you to do it. I’m asking if it would be possible.”
He crossed his arms, still wary. “A bloke might do it, if he knew what he was about. ‘Course, the best thing is not to break in at all. Just make sure you’re inside before everything is locked.”
Lily was suddenly very attentive.
“Before it’s locked?”
“It’s easy enough, if you know what you’re about. Then you find someplace to hole up till night. Make your way out through a door with a latch, not a bolt. A latch, you can set behind you. If you’re lucky, nobody notices anyone was there, or that anything was nicked, till it’s well out of your hands.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Well—not anybody can pull it off. Takes a dab hand. Why? You looking to pinch something?”
“The something has already been pinched.”
“What was it?”
“Blood.”
Sam considered this. His defenses had lowered, overcome by his curiosity.
“Odd thing to nab. Can’t sell it, save maybe to a butcher and he wouldn’t give you much for it.”
“I don’t think he intended to sell it.” Lily considered the problem, then realized the man in front of her might be able to offer a more informed answer. “What else would someone steal a thing for? Besides selling.”
“Could be he just likes it. Knew a bloke in Limehouse used to jack ladies’ hats. He’d pluck ‘em right off their skulls. Didn’t sell them. Just kept them all lined up in his room. That’s right rare, though. Most like, if it ain’t something you can turn into dosh, you’d take it because you needed it. Nippers lifting bread because they’re hungry or drunks pinching spirits.”
“But what could you possibly need another person’s blood for?”
Sam shrugged.
“Search me.”
A bird swept into the room. It was the sparrow, brown and delicate.
Lily had seen wild birds in a house before. They were generally panicked, careening about in circles and bouncing into the walls.
This bird looked as comfortable in the space as Cat was on her pillow. It made one easy circle of the room, then settled down on the mantle beside Sam. It chirped.
“Cheers, mate,” Sam replied.
The bird ruffled its feathers, then darted away.
He stood.
“The old man’s done meditating now.”
“He has been, ever since someone’s little helper pecked him in the ankle.”
Ash stepped into the doorway. He was dressed in a well-tailored suit, his feet clad in polished leather shoes, every inch the respectable English gentleman.
“You sit so still, she probably wanted to make sure you weren’t a topiary,” Sam replied easily.
Ash smiled, briefly, before his expression turned more sober.
“Your father is asking for you.”
Sam stiffened. Lily could see his posture grow formal, more what one expected of a chauffeur speaking to his employer.
“Shì, Lǎoshī,” he replied.
The strange sound of the words jarred her. She had become so accustomed to hearing that musical Cockney come out of him, she had ceased to wonder if Sam was a native of some other tongue.
“Miss Albright for you, sir,” he announced, his tone faultlessly proper.
“Thank you, Sam,” Ash replied.
He gave Ash a bow. To Lily’s deeper surprise, he followed it up with one to her as well. Then he left.
“His father?”
“He manages the gardens.”
“And Mrs. Wu?” She recalled the older Asian woman who had served her tea in the library, the maker of the divine lotus seed buns.
“His grandmother.”
Lily had a hundred questions. Where had the Wu family come from? Why were they in England? How long had they been here and how had they ended up working for Ash?
“Would you mind terribly if we stepped out?” Ash asked, preempting her questions. “I find I am rather in need of a walk.”
“Not at all,” Lily agreed.
They strolled along the square. The trees were bare, the web of their dark branches obscuring the view of the houses on the far side. In a few months, a thick cover of green leaves would conceal those brick facades entirely, giving the place the illusion of rural privacy.
Lily considered how to broach the subject that had brought her there. In the end, it seemed there was nothing for it but to dive in.
“Can you teach me how to make a vision come when I want it to?” Lily asked.
The question nearly stuck in her teeth. It acknowledged that she was what Ash had claimed she was—a charismatic. Then again, the time to deny that had passed the night of Annalise Boyden’s death, when she had turned up on
his doorstep demanding help to respond to a murder that hadn’t happened yet.
Ash didn’t ask any of the questions he had every right to ask. He merely answered her.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“There are several ways. The one I would prefer you learn is the long path. Study and practice, building a solid relationship with your power.”
Lily tried not to visibly frown. She didn’t have time for study and practice. She needed answers now.
“What about the others?”
“It depends on what you’re looking for.”
“I just need something that will let me see what I want to, when I want to see it.”
“That, I’m afraid, is impossible.”
She stopped walking. They were on one of the quiet residential streets that bordered Bedford Square.
“You just said there were ways.”
He looked not the least bit perturbed by her tone, something that only increased her own irritation.
“To provoke a vision when you wanted to, yes. What I can’t teach you is how to dictate what that vision will—or will not—show you.”
She felt that familiar frustration rise up in her again. What good was bringing on a vision if she couldn’t control it? She could end up seeing more disasters she couldn’t hope to prevent instead of the information she needed to deal with the one she already knew was coming.
“There must be some way.”
He turned, walking again. Lily was forced to move to keep up with him or give up the conversation and go home.
“You have met some of the others associated with The Refuge.”
“Yes,” she replied shortly, thinking of Sam casually thanking a little brown bird in the middle of Ash’s well-appointed drawing room.
“Your power differs from theirs. Can you tell me how?”
The question irritated her. She didn’t have time to be lead down some philosophical path. She needed answers, but clearly she was going to have to play along for a while in order to get them.
“Your driver talks to animals,” she answered bluntly. “Miss Deneuve communicates with the dead.” She didn’t mention Dr. Gardner, though she felt certain there was something going on with the big Ulsterman as well.
“And Lord Strangford?”
The Fire in the Glass Page 25
