Mercy's Chase

by Jess Lourey

  “We’ve got to see what’s on that,” the lipstick woman said.

  Salem popped the stopper off the tube. She drew out the paper. Unrolled it.

  It was blank.

  The room was quiet, charged.

  “Well that’s a bucket of shite,” the woman finally said.

  Salem let the scroll snap closed. Rosalind Franklin had been a brilliant woman, a hunted woman. She would not have gone through all this trouble to conceal a blank sheet of paper. Either the Grimalkin had come ahead and was playing with her yet again—unlikely, given the timing and the state of the wall before she’d doused it with acid—or Franklin had used invisible ink to throw off anyone who accidentally stumbled across the clue.

  Regardless, Salem had to get out of there.

  “Thank you for your trouble,” she said to the woman, and then directed it at everyone she could see. “Sorry to all of you for damaging the inside of your tower.”

  “Best time we had in a while,” the woman said. “And we can see you’d like to go. Can’t say as I blame you. We’ll clean up here. Be off with you.”

  The adrenaline drained away, leaving Salem soggy-brained, like she was part of a massive prank being filmed, maybe playing across screens right now. Her leg was hot and tight, and fresh blood had begun to soak her sweatpants. She didn’t need to make sense of this; she needed to leave.

  She tucked the paper inside the glass. She closed the B&C and hoisted its strap over her shoulder. “Thank you.”

  People made way for her. She limped down the steep stairs. Someone handed her parka back to her and kept moving. Once outside, she sucked in the fresh air, clearing her head. The grounds of St. Brigid were still crowded, all but the people at the entrance oblivious to the drama that had gone on inside.

  Salem melted gratefully into the crowd, walking as naturally as a woman in bloody sweatpants could, toward the hole in the wall where Charlie had disappeared. Traveling musicians played a jig down the road to her left. The smell of burgers had been replaced by the scent of frying fish. A performer must be preparing to her right because a clot of people seemed to be forming a circle around something.

  She intended to circumvent the throng, but she caught a glimpse of someone lying on the ground in their center. Her heart slid sideways. Was it Charlie? Had she sacrificed him to find the clue?

  She walked slowly toward the body, getting jostled and pushed. She didn’t want to see who it was, but she had to. The way the crowd was responding—no urgency, no action—the person on the ground must be beyond help.

  Her hand was up to push aside the only person left standing in her way when someone grabbed her and pulled her back. Salem struck out to defend herself, but her B&C twisted in front of her, throwing her off balance.

  “It’s me,” Alafair said. “You don’t want to see the body.”

  Salem’s heartbeat thundered at her neck. “Who is it?”

  “Some guy’s been knifed.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Ach. No. He’s at the car, waiting for us, though he’s not looking good. I went to round up a remedy for him and you both, and then to find you. Did you break the code?”

  The far-off wail of an ambulance cut through the jangly notes of the folk music and the somber murmurings of the people gathered around the body. Salem wanted to run, to follow Alafair away from the crowds and the noise, but something in the Romani woman’s demeanor was unsettling. “You made Charlie walk all the way to the car?”

  Alafair’s eyes grew veiled. “It’s not that far. Come on.” She grabbed Salem’s arm, pulling her away from the body.

  Salem strained to see who was on the ground. She could not. The crowd closed behind her.

  The ambulance was growing closer, its siren piercing.

  Whoever was hurt would be cared for, if they were alive.

  “You didn’t answer me,” Alafair said. “Did you find the next clue?”

  “Yes.” Salem touched the glass vial through her parka. “But how do you know it’s not the last clue?”

  Alafair tossed a disturbed glance back at Salem, not losing speed as she cut a swathe through the inebriated and celebratory. “I don’t. Car’s up here.”

  Salem nodded. Her feet were heavy, her arms were cement, her eyes were sandpaper. Everything felt feverish and swollen. She’d slept four hours in as many days. She was cut and bruised and traumatized, and she’d just about had enough.

  The car peeked through the crowd. Charlie sat in the front seat, his head dangling to the side. Her relief was solid. She’d been sure he was the one back in the square, dead, killed by Jason.

  Or Alafair.

  Paranoia itched at her. She ignored the look Alafair tossed her, her hungry expression as Salem slid into the car’s backseat. If she could simply be still for a moment, she could center herself.

  She would decide what the next move was.

  Everything would become clear.

  Her last thought was of the saffron outline of the sunlight in the shape of St. Brigid’s Cross.

  Saturday

  September 23

  47

  Heathrow Airport, London

  The seismic shift of going from air to ground lurched Salem awake. She sat up, the movement triggering a searing headache. She blinked back the pain, her eyes watering.

  “Here’s some water.”

  She pushed away the pressure at her mouth, swiping at her face. “Charlie?”

  “Yeah.”

  His blurry image came into focus. They were on Alafair’s plane. Alafair was sitting across from Salem, her face sharp. Charlie was kneeling in front of Salem. He appeared peaked, but better.

  “I thought you were dead,” Salem said.

  Charlie smiled his crooked grin. “I felt dead. And you were on your way to joining me. I don’t know what was in those remedies Alafair gave us, but it brought us back from the brink.”

  Salem was wearing different clothes. Her windpipe squeezed. “My parka.”

  Alafair tossed her chin toward the pull-down table. “All your clothes are over there. I’ve not removed anything from your pockets.”

  Salem glanced from Charlie to Alafair. “How long have I been out?”

  “It took us three hours to receive clearance to fly out of Dublin. We were in the air a little shy of two hours.”

  “I came to about an hour ago,” Charlie offered. “We’d both been put in new clothes.”

  “You’d pissed yourself,” Alafair told Charlie. “Your fever had returned. I cleaned and dressed both your wounds and put you in new clothes. I also injected you both with antibiotics my pilot obtained while we were in Kildare.”

  Salem stretched her leg in front of her. It was stiff but no longer felt hot. She rubbed her hand along the front of the soft pants Alafair had dressed her in. The wound was well-bandaged, tender but contained. She drew in several deep breaths, her headache receding. “Thank you.”

  “She wouldn’t let me look at the clue,” Charlie complained, but it sounded good-natured. “Said we had to wait until you woke up.”

  Salem shoved open the window covering. Except for the landing lights, it was dark outside. “Where are we? What time is it?”

  “Heathrow, this side of six AM,” Alafair said. “A body was discovered at the Gloup in Kirkwall. The ID was for Bode Janus, an American. It’s only a matter of time until they connect you to him and then track our plane to Dublin. We needed to get out, and London was the closest. The question is, where to next?”

  Salem waited until the plane came to a full stop before testing her leg. It was weak but held her. She walked to the table, rifled through her parka pockets, and tugged out the stoppered glass test tube. “Charlie,” she said, the time at Kildare coming back to her in fits and bursts. “I saw you get taken by a guy in a long coat. You were leaning against the church wall
, and then you weren’t.”

  He grew pale. “Yeah. I think it was the Order’s number-two assassin. A man who can supposedly change the shape of his face. I don’t know what he intended to do with me. But then the Grimalkin jumped him, same guy as from the Gloup. Slid a knife right into his throat. I fell back, did my best to blend into the crowd. That’s when Alafair found me and shooed me back to the car.”

  Alafair’s eyes glittered like sharp ice. “I needed to get us away from the body on the ground.” She turned her attention to Salem. “And I found you shortly after.”

  Salem nodded. Something was nagging at her. She needed to be alone with her thoughts to sort it out. She returned to her seat, removing the stopper and the scroll of paper. She palmed it flat against her tray table, noting that neither Alafair nor Charlie seemed surprised by its blankness. “I need the B&C. And—”

  “Research on sympathetic ink?” Alafair asked.

  Salem frowned.

  Alafair shrugged. “You’re not the only one who knows her way around codes. It’s a blank sheet of paper, isn’t it? Must be an invisible ink, and not an organic fluid, like lemon juice or artichoke dye. Wouldn’t stand the test of time. That leaves sympathetic inks, which would make more sense anyways given Franklin’s scientific background.”

  “Your pilot picked up iodine with the first-aid supplies?”

  “I think so.” Alafair reached for a bag and dug around, producing a plastic bottle of brown-purple skin disinfectant. Her expression said she was curious but was going to watch and learn rather than interrupt with questions.

  Not so Charlie. “Don’t you have to know what sort of ink was used to decide what will reveal it?”

  Salem shook her head. “In World War I, both the Germans and the Americans used invisible ink. Because most organic inks could be revealed by exposing them to heat, they weren’t considered reliable. Sympathetic inks made from copper sulfate, iron sulfate, and cobalt salts were harder to decrypt. The Allies discovered that exposing paper to iodine vapor will turn any of the paper’s altered fibers brown. So, anything that was wet will change color.”

  Alafair strode to a cupboard. “You’ll need to heat the iodine.” She dug around and came up with a one-cup electric tea pot. “This should do the trick.”

  Salem plugged the pot in before filling it with iodine. “Cover your nose and mouth,” she said. “You’re not going to want to breathe this in.”

  Her eyes started watering immediately. When the purply surface rippled, the hot, inky smell scalded her mucous membranes even through her sleeve. “You two don’t have to stay so close.”

  “You couldn’t pay me to leave,” Charlie said, the collar of his t-shirt hooked over his nose and ears.

  Alafair didn’t even bother to respond.

  A bubble burped through the surface, followed by another. Soon, the iodine was at a rolling boil, its violet vapors floating up, turning the teapot into a witch’s cauldron. Salem held the unrolled scroll above, close enough to feel the heat on her knuckles. The paper sucked up the vapor. She allowed some doubt to seep in. This might not work. The scroll may be truly blank. Or, if someone had discovered it before Salem and already heated the ink, the clue would not be recoverable.

  A new thought struck her: some inks revealed their code only briefly, and then it was gone forever.

  “Charlie, take out your phone. I need you to snap a photo of anything that appears.”

  He dug in his pocket with his good hand.

  A kiss of color appeared on the corner of the paper.

  The softest moan of pleasure escaped Alafair.

  The spot of brown expanded as if a ghost was writing in front of them. The shapes appeared slowly, then faster, a furious staccato of brown flowing from the left to the right as the iodine vapor breathed life into the paper.

  And then it was done.

  The clue revealed.

  “Another code,” Charlie said, snapping a photo, his disappointment heavy in his voice.

  Alafair’s stare drew Salem’s like a magnet. They both understood. It wasn’t a code, it was the original code: written language, breakable only by those who knew the alphabet.

  Or in this case, the aleph-bet.

  “It’s Hebrew,” Alafair said. “Rosalind Franklin’s second language.”

  Salem unplugged the pot of iodine and put the lid over the top to make room for the B&C Alafair was handing her. “Send me that photo,” she ordered Charlie.

  It arrived in her email simultaneous to her getting online.

  Gaea scooped up the image Charlie sent and immediately translated it into English.

  No justice without mercy.

  Salem swallowed past the poisonous tang in her throat.

  Justice. Mercy.

  She knew exactly where Rosalind Franklin wanted them to go.

  48

  Heathrow Airport, London

  Private planes at Heathrow taxied to and parked at a dedicated section of the airport. Still, their passengers needed to pass through Customs before being allowed to leave the airport. Alafair had assured them that the plane was registered under her family business, a legal corporation. If the law had questions about who was transported from Kirkwall to Dublin and then to Heathrow, they would first question the pilot, who had been instructed to say she’d transported only Alafair.

  By the time they were done questioning the pilot, if they even did, Charlie and Salem would already be through security.

  Salem told herself all this, but it didn’t stop her pulse from fluttering as the uniformed agent glanced from her to her passport and back to her, his lined face impassive. “Your business in London?”

  Salem considered lying and discarded the idea almost immediately. She was in the system. “I’m here on a work visa.”

  “Where were you traveling from?”

  “Dublin.”

  “I see you were just there. A return visit?”

  Was he asking more questions than usual? Detaining her until the Order arrived to take her clue, kill her? “Yes.”

  The agent held her gaze, his eyes inscrutable. The line behind Salem shifted. Two lanes over, Charlie passed through quickly. Alafair had cleared security moments earlier.

  “Lovely country, Ireland.”

  “Yes.” Salem’s voice cracked on the one-syllable word. “I’d like to go back. Someday.”

  The Customs agent nodded, snapped her passport shut, and handed it back to her. “Welcome back to London, then.” He looked toward the head of the line. “Next.”

  Salem carried the B&C and her overnight bag. She stuffed the passport back into the duffel feeling all kinds of conspicuous. She walked, head down, toward Terminal 2’s WHSmith shop. The plan was to meet up with Alafair and Charlie. They would share a cab to Parliament, the home of justice, and figure out some way to access the robing room.

  There, Salem would examine William Bryce’s mercy painting. If her hunch was correct, inside the painting they would find the final code, the one that would direct them to the treasure at the end of the Stonehenge train.

  Rosalind Franklin’s DNA work, a secret history, incalculable wealth.

  No justice without mercy.

  Except Salem was uneasy. Something had happened back at St. Brigid’s, something between Charlie and Alafair. One had a reason to be suspicious of the other, Salem could sense it in how they paced each other, waiting for a misstep so they could pounce. Their stories also didn’t add up, both featuring an ambiguity that Salem could not puncture.

  She’d seen the assailant grab Charlie and recognized him as Jason, the assassin who had kidnapped her mother. Alafair had located her soon after, offering to rescue Charlie. Salem had then gone to the tower, spending fewer than twenty minutes there. Alafair had almost been waiting for her when she exited, deliberately leading Salem around a body, one dressed
in the same color and style of clothes she remembered Jason wearing. Charlie had been in the car when they reached it, just as Alafair had said he would be.

  The timeline matched up, but there was something not right in the details.

  Salem spotted them both ahead, Charlie leaning against the cobalt blue wall of the WHSmith, glancing at his phone, Alafair pretending to look at a rack of crisps. They appeared to be together, but not together, the same road weariness to their shoulders, wariness to how they moved. The airport crowds murmured past, pulling roller bags, hoisting purses, unfolding maps, but Alafair and Charlie seemed to move separate from that sea.

  They hadn’t spotted her yet.

  Instincts convinced Salem to take a sharp left into the women’s bathroom, beelining to an open stall. The mirrors were crowded with teenagers all wearing the same blue jacket emblazoned with the name of a South American soccer team. Salem locked the door behind her and hung her B&C and then her duffel over the hook. She fished her phone out of her bag.

  Bel’s folder was pulsing. Salem imagined it was packed with rage.

  Salem’s texts to Agent Lucan Stone had gone unanswered.

  He may not even be receiving them. If he was, he could be choosing not to respond for security reasons or something else entirely. Maybe it had been stupid of her to reach out to him, to send him these messages in a bottle and hope that he was getting them, using them, building a case on his end.

  But she had to communicate with someone, now more than ever. She wrote him the last message she’d send on this mission. The final clue is in the Robing Room at Parliament. Going there now. Will need access.

  She was returning her phone to the duffel when it buzzed.

  Her mouth grew dry.

  She flipped over the phone.

  It was a response from Stone. You’ve been compromised. The Grimalkin is with you. Come alone.

  Her veins filled with ice. She tucked the phone away, hoisted both bags over her shoulders, and slid into the exiting herd of soccer players, walking away from the WHSmith, her eyes on the ground.