At last, we came to a stop, in front of a narrow Victorian row house with a sign across the front announcing it was the Fu Long Junk Shop.
“This is it,” Madame said. She lit a cigarette in a long jade holder and waited for Fang to get out and open an umbrella. “Stay close to me,” she said. “This is the part of Chinatown the gwai lo don’t come to. Nobody likes you here.”
“Well, I’m not too fond of the smell, so I suppose we’re even,” Conrad muttered.
Madame regarded him with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve got a sharp tongue, boyo,” she said. “It’d be a shame if someone were to slice it out.”
In spite of the nerves I felt prickling all over my skin, into my mind, down to the deepest spots where my Weird lived, I smiled a little. I couldn’t help but like Madame. She might have been a charlatan and a gangster, but she clearly didn’t give a whit what anyone thought. I’d always wished I could be that straightforward, and let go of the residual fear of saying the wrong thing and inviting scrutiny from teachers or Proctors or whoever was listening.
I climbed out of the car after her and we crossed the street, mud squelching in my boots, and mounted the steps of the shop. Madame rang the bell, jabbing at the enamel button with one of her perfect nails.
After what seemed like hours, as the people in the shadows stared holes in our backs and I waited for one of them to try and follow it up with a knife, I heard clockwork grinding. The door opened, just a crack.
Madame stepped aside and gestured. “I don’t go any farther. A sign of respect—we don’t cross each other’s territories.”
She looked up and down the street, and back to where Fang stood glaring beside the Packard. “In my part of town, the tongs keep order, but around here it’s lawless. Triad country, bad men from Hong Kong and other places. And Doctor Death is the worst of them.” She regarded me, smoke catching raindrops and turning them silver around her head. “You sure you still want this, dear?”
I nodded, looking at the storefront as Conrad and Cal joined me. Cal gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I’m sure,” I said.
“Whoever this Dean is, I hope he’s worth it,” Madame said, and tripped back to the dry, warm cover of the Packard.
“He is,” I said, as I stepped over the threshold. I didn’t know much for sure, but I knew that.
Inside the shop, junk was piled to the ceiling, and shadows seemed to move and curl on their own.
I thought of Fae creatures like the strix owl that could shadow a person in darkness, appearing and disappearing at will. I thought of the clockwork ravens employed by the Proctors, with their glowing eyes that saw and transmitted everything they flew over back to their masters.
Neither thought helped me take a step forward.
Cal came to my shoulder and inhaled deeply. “Nobody in here,” he said.
I cast around, and saw a green light emanating from the back room. “This way,” I whispered. I didn’t know why I was being so quiet, but it seemed appropriate.
The shadows followed us, and I did my best to tell myself they weren’t really moving, weren’t really alive. Still, my heart skittered in my chest.
The green light was spilling out around the edges of a crooked door and its wavy glass window.
I raised a hand and knocked softly. “Hello?”
“Go away.” The voice that came from within, rather than a baritone or a spectral growl, didn’t sound all that much different from my brother’s.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but we need to speak with you, Doctor.”
I heard a sigh from inside, a long inhale and exhale. An odd, sweet smell tickled my nostrils. It was cloying, almost sticky, and Cal coughed again.
“I said go away,” the voice said again. “The doctor is out. He can’t help you.”
“I lost someone,” I said softly. “You’re the only one who can help me. I know it’s a terrible imposition, but I really do need to speak with you.”
Deciding I had nothing to lose, I put my hand on the knob and twisted. Instantly, I heard a sound like a hundred rats rushing through the piles of junk, the patter and chitter of tiny feet and teeth.
“I said,” the voice snarled, and now it sounded more like the mad scientist I’d imagined, “go away!”
Conrad let out a yelp, and at the same moment I felt cold rushing up my legs and arms, all over my bare skin.
The shadows flowed over me, into my mouth and nose, cutting off my air and my voice.
It hadn’t been my imagination. They were alive, these things that looked like patches of darkness. Two-dimensional and velvety, they hissed in my ear, chattered in voices too high to understand, and screamed as they wound skeletal fingers through my hair.
We all fell, and I knocked my head against one of the junk piles. The shadows laughed as they consumed the three of us, and just before my air ran out I heard the voice of one in my ear.
He who waits, he who watches, strips your skin, strings your teeth …
Another voice exploded in my ears, giving a loud command in a language I didn’t know, and the shadows gave a disappointed cry before they skittered back into the mountains of junk.
Hands sat me up, checked my bloody head, and shined a light in my eyes. I flinched and swatted at it.
“Well, you’re alive,” said the voice. It was young but rough, as if the owner had seen more in a short time than he had voice to tell. “But on the other hand, you’re here. What do you think you’re doing, silly girl?”
“I need the doctor,” I groaned. “I lost someone.…” My head was ringing, and my vision swam, but I picked out the face staring at me. I thought he was a vision for a moment, or a Fae, so perfect were his features.
Then he frowned, and the illusion broke. He was human. Delicate-featured and stunningly handsome, but human. The sort of face you expected to see glowing out at you from a lantern reel, not helping you up from a dirty floor in a bad part of town.
“Dr. Crawford’s not seeing anyone,” he said. He went over to a switch and aether hissed, illuminating two globes in a six-globe lamp overhead.
“He has to,” I said desperately. “I need him more than you can possibly know.”
The boy, who despite his authoritative tone didn’t look any older or wiser than me, hesitated as Cal and Conrad got up and brushed themselves off. “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry about all this—”
“After those things attacked us, the least you can do is let me talk to him,” I pleaded. I held his eyes, black and glowing as the rest of him. “Please.”
“Dammit,” he sighed. “All right, all right. I’m a sucker for a girl with a sad story.”
He went to the door and rapped hard. “Doc, it’s Chang. Your stupid ass almost let these nice people get devoured, so we’re coming in.”
“I’m in a bad way!” the doctor shouted. “Leave me alone!”
“And whose fault is that?” Chang snapped, pulling out a ring of keys and unlocking the door. “Go in,” he said to me. “But he won’t be able to help you. He can’t even help himself.”
The three of us filed in, and I almost choked. The cloying smoke was worse in here, and I could feel it land on my skin and hair, sticking to every bit of me.
At one point the room had been a warren of back offices, half walls of polished wood dividing it into four sections. Postboxes took up one wall, and green glass lamp globes hung from the ceiling like delicate sea creatures.
Two of the cubes were piled with the sort of junk that my father kept in his workshop, which was reassuring. The doctor and my father dabbled in the same sort of worlds after all, and dealt with the same sort of creatures.
One cube held an office awash in papers, crumpled, crushed, ink-stained and scattered everywhere.
The last held a lamp, a table, a cot and a man in a suit several sizes too large for him. He lay on the cot, his arm over his eyes. Empty brown bottles crowded the bedside table, and a long, carved pipe lay at his side like a loyal pet.
The smell go
t worse the closer I came to him, and I crouched because there was nowhere for me to sit.
“Doctor?”
“Well, I’m not President McCarthy,” he grumbled. He looked me over, and his bloodshot eyes and sunken cheeks reminded me of some of the patients at my mother’s last madhouse. Worn down, hopeless, just trying to escape into their own minds. It was a look I’d hoped never to see again.
“I need your help,” I said.
“Oh no,” said the doctor. “I’ve never heard that before. Not once, in all the time I’ve been conducting séances.”
He picked up a bottle and I caught the same bitter tang that had infused the tea Madame served us. The doctor took a swig of straight laudanum and didn’t even flinch before flopping back on the bed.
“Well, I can’t do it anymore. My Spiritualist hoodoo battery’s dead. Find someone else to commune with Great-Aunt Martha.”
He started to roll over, but I stopped him. “That’s not what I want,” I said desperately. “I know what you practice isn’t hoodoo. I need your science. I need to get to the Deadlands and bring my friend back. He’s not supposed to be dead. It wasn’t his time.”
The doctor looked at my hand, and then at me. Then he laughed, his bitter, acidic breath stinging my eyes. “The Deadlands?” he barked. “You think you’re going to just pick up your skirts and waltz in there?”
I bristled. How dare he make light of this, of what I’d lost? “Something like that,” I ground out.
“Then, girlie, you’re even dumber than you look,” he told me. “Now go away and let me sleep.” He jerked his jacket out of my grasp and rolled over. A moment later, a deep snore emanated from him.
I stood, my hands shaking. I fought the urge to grab one of the bottles and smash it across his skull. That wouldn’t help anyone, especially me.
Instead, I just left, kicking over a stack of papers as I went. They slid and slithered into the darkness that swallowed up the rest of the room.
Conrad and Cal waited for me, Conrad impatient and Cal worried. “Did he—” Cal started, but I shoved past him, through the junk and the dust, and out the door.
I collapsed on the stoop, letting the rain disguise my tears.
This was it. This was my only chance to save Dean, and it was a dead end. I should have known, given that it was information that came from my mother. Nobody else, not even my father, who I usually regarded as the smartest person I knew, could help me now.
I stayed there until I was thoroughly cold and soaked, and probably would have sat there even longer, watching the bums pick through the trash and the evening women call to one another from balconies, but the door opened and Chang came out.
He spread out an oilskin coat carefully before sitting next to me. “Told your friends you probably needed space,” he said. When I didn’t respond, he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he continued. “But I did tell you.”
“You did,” I agreed. I swiped at my cheeks and sniffed hard. No need to let complete strangers know I was a blubbering mess. “So is he always this friendly or did he really take a liking to me?”
Chang chuckled and stared out at the rain. “He had an accident about a year ago. Bad one. It knocked something loose in his mind and he’s been getting worse ever since. I try to care for him when I can. I used to be his lab assistant. Hired me right out of the university. I thought he was crazy, but there aren’t many laboratories willing to hire, you know”—he made quotes with his fingers—“ ‘one of those Chinamen.’ ”
“Is he a fraud, then?” I asked.
“No,” Chang said. “And that might be the craziest part of all. He talks to the dead. He’s not a medium, and he’s not a fake. He uses his machines to open a window to the Deadlands. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
That heartened me a bit. “I hope you know,” I told Chang, “that I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t desperate.”
“People never come here until they are,” he told me. “Mediums and Spiritualism are one thing, but really touching the dead? You’d have to be half mad with grief, but I guess death can make fools of us all.”
He stood and opened the door back into the shop. “Come on,” he said. “You can’t stay out here, and you can’t get out of Chinatown until morning. It’s not safe for anyone in this place.”
“There’s no point in my coming inside unless you’ll help me,” I said, folding my hands into the damp creases of my coat, which did little to warm them. “If you won’t, I have to be on to the next thing.” I pointed at the sky, obscured by fog. I could still sense the echo of the Old Ones’ Gate, ringing against my Weird like an ever-struck bell. “I’m running out of time. You work with shadowy practices—you must know that.”
Chang considered, also looking at the sky. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said at last. “You tell me how you know about that”—he pointed at the sky—“and I’ll listen to what you have to say about this friend of yours.”
Hope sprouted in my chest, just a small shoot. The sensation was one I’d almost forgotten. “Thank you,” I rushed. “I’ll try my best, but I don’t know how much I can—”
“Oh, I think you can tell me plenty, Aoife Grayson,” said Chang. He gestured me inside.
My heart jumped. He knew who I was—which wasn’t hard, I reminded myself. Before Draven had been taken to the Thorn Land, he’d plastered my picture as a wanted fugitive across every spot he could find.
But Chang’s serene smile bespoke some deeper interest. I hoped it wasn’t in harming me, but I didn’t have a choice right now. I needed him, and he had his price.
I hoped it wasn’t something I couldn’t pay.
We went back inside, and Chang showed us a small sleeping area on the second floor, which Cal and Conrad seemed grateful for. I was far too jittery to sleep after all that had happened.
Chang sat me on one end of a ratty sofa and made tea from a steam hob, offering me a cup. I sniffed it suspiciously.
“I’m not Lei Xiang,” he said. “I don’t drug people and rob them. Clearly, or I wouldn’t be living here.”
I drank then. The tea was bitter but good, and it did warm me up. Chang offered me a blanket. “This might help.”
I shivered against my will, feeling as if my skin were colder than the air. “I thought California was supposed to be warm.”
“Not here,” Chang said. “The fog makes sure of that.” He sipped his tea and smiled at me. “You don’t seem like the usual sort of person who comes to our doorstep, Aoife. Even knowing who you are.” He sipped his tea again. “You said you lost someone.”
“His name was Dean,” I said quietly. Steam drifted from our cups, turning Chang’s face into something even more beautiful and unearthly. He really was incredibly good-looking. If it wasn’t for his friendly demeanor and the silence of my shoggoth scar, I’d say he could be Fae or some other creature that used its beauty as predatory camouflage.
“This Dean must be very special if you’re willing to risk direct contact with the Deadlands,” said Chang. “It’s a strange place that does things to your mind. Reality has no role there.”
“It’s my fault he’s dead,” I said. Saying it out loud hadn’t gotten any easier, and I felt the weight of the moment all over again. Cradling Dean in the snow. Feeling his blood turn cold against my hands and cheek. I took a long swallow of too-hot tea and let the pain burn out the memory. “It wasn’t his time.”
“Time doesn’t have much sway in the Deadlands either,” Chang said. “It really is eternal.”
“Someone told me that everyone has a thread, a measure of time,” I said softly. “That if yours is cut short, it’s possible to get that time back.” Too bad Crow, the creature who oversaw people’s dreams, hadn’t told me exactly how you were supposed to do that.
“Sounds like magic to me.” Chang shrugged. “But I wouldn’t know about that. I just know how the machine works. And I know that a lot of people die before their time, especially around here.” He sipped his tea.
“I’m sorry for you. That’s never an easy fact to live with.” He refilled my teacup. “How did Dean die?”
“He was shot,” I said.
Chang lifted one eyebrow. “Not by you, I hope. Trying to contact a murder victim, even one that was an accident, is dangerous. And if you were the murderer …”
“No!” I cried. The very idea that I would hurt Dean horrified me, but then I realized that I hurt everyone I tried to keep safe. No matter how hard I tried to protect them, they all fell prey to the dangers of being my friend. Not to mention the thousands of people in Lovecraft who’d been hurt when I blew up the engine.
“Okay, okay. Calm down,” Chang said. “I just had to ask.” He took our empty cups and put them in a washbasin already overflowing with plates and silverware.
“Ask me anything but that,” I muttered, pulling my legs under me and curling into the smallest ball possible.
“All right,” Chang said. He sat back down and offered me a thick wool blanket that smelled like dry rot and mothballs. I wrapped up in it, trying to ward off the chill that had nothing to do with my wet clothes. I knew what was coming.
“Tell me about the hole in the sky,” Chang said. “And about everything that’s crawled up out of the ground to look at it.”
He regarded me with that penetrating black gaze, and I sighed and examined the pattern in the blanket. “The Great Old Ones have returned,” I said. I didn’t elaborate, and thankfully Chang didn’t ask me to.
“Makes sense,” he said. “The doctor did a lot of research on other places, other than the Deadlands. He talked about the Old Ones, in a space so far away the brain couldn’t even wrap around the idea of it.”
“And now they’re coming,” I said. “And everything that appeared from their last visit—the shoggoths and the leviathans and the other monsters—are paving the way.”
Chang grimaced. “Even the ghosts are acting up. Boneyard’s never been so busy.”
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