London Macabre
Page 42
”So sad,” the chamberlain said, still so far away. ”She was so very, very sad.”
”It’s hard to be the one left behind,” Dorian said.
They were the only words that passed between them all the way home. They walked arm in arm, Mason leaning on him for support, out of the mausoleum, to join the others.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Emily stood beside the hearth.
She was dressed in one of Mister Mason’s spare suit trousers and a starched white shirt with the cuffs turned up. The trousers were two sizes too big for her and held up only by the black leather belt cinched tight at the waist. She was barefoot and her hair was pinned up. She had caught sight of herself in the mirror twice and mistaken herself for a boy, she looked so unlike herself, or how she had always imagined herself to look through other people’s eyes.
She was full of nervous energy.
She didn’t want to pace.
She braced her hands on the old fireplace, reading the words carved into the stone: Honi soit qui mal y pense. She didn’t know what they meant but she liked the way the soot had gathered in the letters, turning them black.
She had nowhere else to go. She didn’t want to return to Bedlam. She would have rather put her own eyes out with the hot poker she had just stoked the coals with than that. If they couldn’t find a place for her below stairs she didn’t know what she would do.
They were in the Reading Room now, debating her fate.
Mercifully, she couldn’t hear them through the heavy oak door, and no matter how much she wanted to, she wasn’t going to creep up and put her ear to it.
She couldn’t believe they would just toss her out into the rain. They were good people these most peculiar gentlemen. Over and over for the last hour she had told herself the same thing. They were good people. She didn’t know who she was trying to convince, herself or whoever might be eavesdropping on her thoughts. Given the nature of the men living in this place that could have been just about any of them, she thought, walking across to the window. She was itchy inside her own skin. She didn’t know why she was still here. They wouldn’t let her stay. The lodging house wasn’t a home for waifs and strays.
After what seemed like forever, the door opened.
Mason emerged, stony faced.
She knew what he was going to say before he said it.
”I am sorry, Miss Emily, there is no place for you below stairs, the gentlemen were adamant,” he held the door open for her. ”They would like you to go through.”
”I should get my things. I’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes.”
”You should go through, Miss.”
Emily stuffed her hands in her borrowed pockets and scuffed her feet as she wandered through to the Reading Room. She couldn’t mask her disappointment. She had dared to hope … but her mother had always said hope was for the hopeless, and she could not have felt more hopeless than she felt at that moment. She looked up to see them all looking at her.
She couldn’t hold their stares and the scrutiny made her uncomfortable. She wiped the back of her hand across her face. She felt suddenly stupid standing there in her borrowed clothes, as if dressing like a man could make her anything other than a little lost girl in their eyes.
”Emily, please,” it was Master Millington who spoke. He made a gesture toward one of the seats at the table. She didn’t want to sit. ”Please,” he said again, smiling softly. Why did they have to make it so difficult? Why couldn’t they just say they were sorry and be done with it?
She sat down despite herself.
Master Carruthers rolled a thruppenny bit across his knuckles and vanished it with a flourish of his delicate fingers. He showed her there was nothing in his hands, nor up his sleeves, and yet a heartbeat later the coin was back balancing on his palm.
This time she smiled despite herself. ”Just put me out of my misery, please. I know there’s no place for me here.”
”Nonsense, girl. Of course there’s a place for you here,” McCreedy said gruffly. His smile belied his tone. ”You’re sitting in it. It was my friend’s seat, and now I think—we all think—it should be yours.”
”I don’t understand,” she said.
”We lost some good friends over the last few days, but just because we brought down the Iron Man doesn’t mean the fighting’s over. There are still weaknesses, places where the veil between worlds is so thin things slip through. Someone has to take care of them, tidy up the mess.”
”But Mister Mason said there was no place for me downstairs.”
”And he was telling you the truth,” Brannigan Locke said. He looked ghostly pale and was sat in a different chair to the others. She realised it was a high-backed bamboo wheelchair.
”But—”
”We don’t want you to serve us, Emily. We want you to serve with us,” Millington said.
”There’s a reason you came to our door,” Locke said. ”This is where you belong.”
”You’re one of us,” McCreedy rumbled. ”That’s what my ever so erudite friend is trying to say. We all saw that thing you did with the coal dust, not to mention Queenie. We’re all freaks here, so you’ll fit right in. Dorian here talks to the dead, Bran does things with his mind I don’t even want to talk about, you’ll see soon enough, and Ant, well Ant’s the Pied Piper of rats, dogs, cats, birds, you name it, if it barks, squawks, squeaks or purrs, he knows its language and can chat along happily. Me, I’m just an old dog who’s too tired to learn new tricks. We aren’t much, but we’re all you’ve got, lass.”
”If you’ll have us,” Millington said.
She didn’t know what to say.
So she just nodded.
She felt Mason hovering at her shoulder.
She turned to look up at him.
”Would you care for anything, Mistress Sheridan?”
”I think we’ll take drinks in the Smoking Room, Mason, and pour one for yourself while you’re about it, there’s a good man,” Locke said.
They gathered around the fireplace. The big man showed her to a leather armchair, ”This one’s yours, lass. It’s a good seat.” She sank into Fabian Stark’s chair. She had never felt more at home.
”What does that mean?” she asked, pointing at the black words in the fireplace.
”Evil to him who evil thinks,” Millington said. He stood up, raising his glass. ”I should like to propose a toast, to the Gentleman—”
”And lady,” McCreedy interrupted.
”—and Lady Knights of London, long may they stand in harm’s way.”
”I’m not sure I like the sound of that, old boy,” Dorian said, grinning. ”How about something, oh, I don’t know, a less end-of-the-world, just this once? You know, like: to Emily, welcome to the club?”
”To Emily,” the others echoed, raising their glasses. ”Welcome home.”
Chapter Ninety-Eight
Down below, in that other place beneath the molten sky, a single drop of blood seeped through from the world above. It dripped on the red-hot stone as the infernal machines ground on, and sizzled. And then another drop came. And another. Each sizzling on the scorched rock as they hit.
The daemon crept forward, drawn to the steady drip drip drip of the blood.
It reached out, catching a single drop on the palm of its outstretched hand. It had been so long since it had tasted blood. So long. It raised its hand to its nose and simply breathed it in. There was still so much vitality in it. The daemon licked its lips and then licked the blood off its palm.
It closed its eyes to savour the unmistakable flavour of humanity.
It was the last thing it ever tasted.
It breathed in slowly, out, and in, as the memories, the angers and the hungers flooded from the blood into its blood.
All around him the fires of hell crackled, welcoming him home.
The daemon Cain opened his new eyes and screamed.
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