Whyborne and Griffin, Books 1-3

by Jordan L. Hawk

  “Damned right,” Christine muttered.

  I didn’t mean to say more, but Ruth still watched, and the words spilled out anyway. “We all have our talents in this world, and we shouldn’t be…be ashamed of them.” God, I sounded like a fool. “Whether it lies in archaeology, or languages, or harvesting the bounty of the land, or making a safe home for an orphan child. So. Er, yes.”

  “Well said,” Griffin declared, raising his glass of champagne. Ruth clinked hers rather enthusiastically, and Mr. and Mrs. Kerr did as well, if with slightly less enthusiasm.

  Lingering would only invite further awkwardness, so I gave the table a slight bow. “If you would excuse us, Dr. Putnam and I need to be on our way.”

  Griffin caught my eye and shot me a devilish grin. “Of course. I look forward to our next meeting.”

  Chapter 12

  “Blast Griffin,” Christine exclaimed. “I can’t believe he’s so selfish as to put you through this ordeal!”

  We had left the restaurant behind us and were well on our way to her boarding house. Christine strode determinedly along the sidewalk, scowling furiously at the fog which had crept in while we dined, turning the night murky and damp. Hansom cabs emerged from the gloom and faded back into it, the clop of horses’ hooves lingering long after I’d lost sight of them in the fog. A cloaked figure hurried past, hat drawn low over his face, and I politely looked away.

  One of the electric lights made a strange sound and went out. I recalled reading in the papers about how often they failed, to the bafflement of the manufacturer, who swore the bulbs lasted five times longer in every other city in which they were installed. Yet another sign the blasted things were wrong for Widdershins, as far as I was concerned.

  “You’re being unfair,” I told Christine.

  “What isn’t fair is how he uses you.” Christine ground her teeth together. “Or Ruth Kerr. His parents believe there is a chance of a match, and instead of doing the honorable thing and putting an end to the matter, he allows them to continue in their assumptions. And Ruth! Right now, the poor woman is probably imagining a wedding which will allow her to move to Widdershins and escape whatever farming hell she’s trapped in.”

  I stared down at the sidewalk, counting the cracks as we passed. “It’s different for him than for us. Or for me, anyway,” I added, since she’d spoken little of her own falling-out with her mother. Given Christine’s temper, it must have been spectacular. “My father never approved of me and never will. I had nothing to lose by walking out of Whyborne House and living my own life.”

  Christine snorted. “Nothing to lose, except for a share of one of the largest fortunes in America.”

  A chuckle escaped me. “I suppose. But it never brought me happiness in the first seventeen years of my life. Why expect it to bring any in the next seventeen, or in the years after? It’s different for Griffin. His family loves him and he them. You and I cannot imagine a normal life, but he can.”

  “Is he certain of his parents’ reaction?” she asked hesitantly. “He mentioned a small indiscretion…”

  “I don’t know the details, but in essence, the community ran him out of town.” I hated saying the words, but Christine deserved the truth. “His parents agreed it would be best if he left in haste. But later on they saved him from the asylum, so I can’t condemn them too harshly. As for Griffin, he feels he owes them his life twice over.”

  “Oh.” She knew little of Griffin’s confinement, other than it had been unwarranted, but she surely guessed it had not been pleasant. “You don’t believe there is anything to this absurd charade with Miss Kerr, do you? That he might actually go through with it and marry her?”

  We had come to her boarding house and paused on the sidewalk. “No, of course not.” I didn’t, did I? “They will all leave in a few days, and our lives will go back to normal. His parents will be reassured as to his happiness here in Widdershins, and will overcome any disappointment the match with Miss Kerr didn’t work out.”

  “Hmm. I hope you’re correct. And for Griffin’s sake, I hope he doesn’t have to choose between the life he wants and the life society wants for him.” She turned to the boarding house. “Good night, Whyborne. See you in church.”

  I turned my steps back in the direction of home. The streets had grown quiet. I quickened my pace. Another of the electric streetlights went out, just after I passed by. I glanced behind me. Even though no one had been there a moment before, someone now stood in the pool of darkness beneath the extinguished streetlight.

  I came to a halt, heart pounding. Was I being stalked, perhaps by armed cultists, or was it some innocent passer-by?

  An innocent passer-by who held perfectly still, nothing but a half-glimpsed silhouette in the blackness?

  “Hello?” I called; thank goodness my voice didn’t shake. “Who’s there?”

  The smell of seaweed and slime, of cold mud dredged from the bottom of the ocean floor, flooded from the figure. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I took an involuntary step back.

  Even as I did so, a sudden, overwhelming conviction swept over me. The person in the shadows was my mother. I had to go to her. I had to go to her right now.

  I swayed, but the rational part of my mind reasserted itself. It couldn’t really be Mother. She was far too ill to leave the house. And why would she be alone here, without even a maid to assist her?

  The shadowy figure whispered something to me, and I recognized Mother’s voice, even though I couldn’t make out the words.

  “I-I can’t hear you,” I said. “Who are you?”

  Another light went out. Then another. Darkness pooled around me, like black water, filling up the street. Something felt dreadfully wrong.

  I ran.

  Something hunted me, just as it had in my dream. My heart pounded—did I hear footfalls behind me, over the rasp of my breath? Shadows flickered on the brick walls of the buildings, as if ghosts raced me. The night air turned as cold and heavy against my skin as the sea.

  A horrible compulsion to look back over my shoulder seized me. Like the curse on Lot’s wife, except I doubted my fate would be half so benign should I succumb. I focused my gaze on the sidewalks and cobblestones, stretching my legs as far as they’d go, my lungs bursting with the need for air. Pain jagged down my side; I wasn’t used to such exercise.

  I paid no heed to where my feet took me, desperate only to put as much distance between myself and whatever followed. Did it follow?

  At last I stumbled to a halt, my legs trembling and my throat raw. Tight bands encircled my chest, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

  Where was I? The high walls of warehouses loomed against the night sky, and I realized with a little frisson of dread that I’d run straight toward the docks.

  Toward the ocean, and whatever lay beneath it.

  “No,” I whispered aloud. It was just a coincidence. Nothing more.

  “Talking to himself, is he?” asked a voice behind me.

  I spun, too winded to gasp in shock. Two men stood behind me, dressed in passable, if cheap, suits: one brown and one gray. Both carried unsheathed knives in their hands.

  “L-leave me alone,” I ordered, drawing myself up. Why hadn’t I paid more attention to where I fled, instead of letting blind panic take over?

  The man in the gray suit smiled greasily, as if taking pleasure in my predicament. “Oh, no, we can’t do that, Dr. Whyborne. You’ve led us on quite the little chase, you have. Not sure how you spotted us, but that don’t matter now.”

  “You were following me?” But it didn’t sound as if they’d been the ones under the blown-out streetlight. I felt certain in my bones whatever I’d glimpsed, it hadn’t been human at all. “Who sent you? What is this about?”

  They ignored my questions, instead exchanging a glance. “Don’t know why himself said to get the drop on this one,” said the man in the brown suit. “Doesn’t look like he’d stand up to a stiff breeze, let alone put up a fight.”

 
Swallowing back my fear, I forced my spine straight. “Walk away. Whoever sent you, just...just leave, and I’ll do the same.”

  “Would you listen to that!” brown suit exclaimed with a laugh. “You’ve made a bad mistake, friend.”

  What I wouldn’t give for Christine’s pistol or Griffin’s steady presence at the moment! But I’d faced down worse than these two, surely. I had resources. I just had to figure out what those resources might be. If we were only nearer the water, and I could sweep them away with a wave as I’d done their fellows.

  “Better not take any chances, though,” Gray suit said, and drew out a gun.

  Thank God.

  “You should have stayed with knives,” I said, and spoke the secret name of fire.

  The revolver exploded in his hand as the powder in the bullets ignited all at once. Something hot whizzed dangerously close to my face: no doubt the bullet he’d had chambered. While he screamed in surprise and agony, his partner stared at him in uncomprehending shock. I took the opportunity to kick the man as hard as I could in the knee.

  He went down, clutching at the wounded joint. I didn’t wait to find out what happened next. Instead, I ran as fast as my aching legs would carry me, away from the water and its whispered song.

  ~ * ~

  “And you’ve no idea who sent those fellows after you?” Christine asked the next evening.

  The three of us strolled along Slaughterhouse Road, pretending casualness on our way to breaking into Dr. Zeiler’s house.

  “It had to be Zeiler,” Griffin said. He’d been utterly aghast to arrive home later that night and discover I’d been set upon. For once, he hadn’t even commented on my use of sorcery.

  “Or the dweller itself,” I suggested, remembering the lights going out one at a time, the sense something terrible hunted me through the streets of Widdershins. I hadn’t mentioned my delusion to Griffin and Christine, though, because surely that was all it had been. A bout of paranoia—or perhaps, even more likely, I’d somehow sensed the two perfectly ordinary men watching me, and my weary mind had confused them with the dreams which had haunted me. “Supposedly it speaks to its followers in some fashion.”

  “And ordered them to attack you?” Christine asked skeptically. “Whatever for?”

  “Because it knows I’m helping Griffin, obviously.”

  She snorted. “That can’t be the reason. Am I not also involved with this? Although why, I have no idea, after last night.”

  “Because you would be furious if we left you out,” Griffin replied. “Really, Christine, do try to ask something harder.”

  “Very well. Why haven’t I buried your body in the back garden yet?”

  “Because you would never hurt Whyborne.”

  Christine huffed angrily. “Then you had best hope he doesn’t tire of you, because I have a large number of shovels and am quite adept at using them, no matter what certain men may think.”

  Her voice had grown dangerously loud. “Please, concentrate on what we’re doing, Christine,” I said. “Fighting off murderous cultists is all well and good, but getting caught by the police might cost us our jobs at the museum.”

  “You have a point,” she allowed.

  All of us wore dark clothing, with Christine in her bloomers. Griffin carried his carpetbag, containing police lanterns, lock picks, and other articles, which might be of use.

  We passed a drunken man staggering in the middle of the road; he had only one arm and one eye. Not old enough to have fought in the war between the states, and the injuries looked too well healed to have been incurred in the current strife with Spain. No doubt he had acquired them through injury or accident. He stared at the cobblestones as he wove back and forth, cursing and mumbling to himself.

  From the similarity of the houses and the proximity to the factory, I guessed the cannery owners had originally constructed the neighborhood to house workers. “This is a rather…odd part of town for Zeiler to own a house in,” I remarked. “One would expect him to have taken quarters somewhere a bit more in keeping with his status.”

  “Indeed, one would,” Griffin said grimly. His green eyes watched our surroundings with the intentness of an eagle on a fish, and I could all but feel the tension radiating from him.

  “I suppose it’s possible his salary isn’t such as to allow a house in a better part of the town, considering he’s expected to live in the asylum,” I suggested.

  Christine snorted. “And you believe that?”

  “I said it was only a possibility.”

  “Quiet,” Griffin ordered. “We’re here.”

  We fell silent. The house was larger than most of its neighbors and two stories rather than one; perhaps a foreman had initially lived here. Paint peeled from the boards, and a general air of decay hung about it, something as much sensed as seen. No lights showed from within, at least on the side facing the street.

  Griffin paused, glanced causally up and down the street then turned into the narrow carriageway between the house and its fellows. My shoes crunched on the crushed shell lane, and Christine cast me a disapproving look.

  Once we were away from the street, Griffin passed out the lanterns. “Keep yours dark for now,” he whispered. He lit his, adjusting the shield until only a narrow beam of light emerged, which hopefully wouldn’t be easily spotted by any passers-by.

  The back of the house looked onto the Cranch River. A dilapidated dock protruded out into the dark water, and the air reeked of fish and sewage. The bulk of the cannery blocked out the stars across the river, not far downstream. Another house sat directly on the other side of the water, dark and dingy.

  A flight of wooden steps led up to the back door of Zeiler’s house. Griffin climbed them; they creaked softly under his weight. Taking his lock picks from the carpetbag, he knelt in front of the door.

  I strained my ears for any sound while Griffin worked, but heard nothing save for the soft scratch of pick on lock, the barking of some distant dog, and the far-off whistle of a train. The lock gave way with a soft click. Griffin stood up, tucking his lock picks into his coat pocket. The carpetbag he concealed beneath a bush beside the steps. With a quick glance back to make certain we were ready, he eased open the door.

  It creaked, a horrid sound which made me wince. Griffin opened it only far enough to shimmy through. Christine slipped in after him, and I tried to follow their example, but managed to jostle the door. Its rusted hinges let out a loud shriek.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, my face burning. Christine scowled and motioned me to silence.

  The door opened onto the most deplorable kitchen I’d ever seen. The atmosphere was thick with rancid food and mold, and the dishes stacked in the sink looked to have been there for quite some time. Roaches scuttled away from the light of Griffin’s lantern. My skin crawled at the sight. “The house might be in his name, but I can’t imagine Zeiler consenting to spend much time in such a squalid place,” I said in a low voice.

  “Agreed,” Griffin murmured back. “So the question is: who is it really for?”

  The kitchen let onto a dusty hall, which showed tracks of mud and filth. Griffin motioned for us to remain behind, kneeling to examine the tracks. “The sort of boots one might expect laboring men to wear,” he said, half to himself. “But see here—there are at least one pair of smoother soles. Those must belong to Zeiler.”

  An empty room, no doubt meant to be a parlor, occupied the front of the house; dusty curtains blocked out all light from the street. As we stepped inside, something caught my eye. I crouched, careful to keep the knees of my trousers off the dirty floor, and touched it. “Wax. Someone burned a candle in here.”

  “Many of them, it would seem,” Griffin agreed.

  The wax blobs seemed to indicate a circle. In between, ghostly lines of smeared chalk still showed. A dark stain covered the bare boards of the center of the room. “Is that…blood?”

  Chapter 13

  Griffin didn’t share my reticence about the floor; he go
t down on all fours and cautiously sniffed at the stain. “Yes.”

  I swallowed against the sudden dryness of my throat. “Do you think it’s human?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Christine shuddered. “I don’t keep up with the papers—have there been any unsolved disappearances lately?”

  Griffin climbed to his feet. “This is Widdershins. People go missing all the time.”

  “Surely, that’s true in any city,” I objected.

  “Perhaps.” Griffin dusted off his knees. “Let’s see what lies upstairs.”

  The steps creaked under our feet. Another large room filled the front of the house, directly above the parlor. This one appeared to have been converted into some sort of flophouse. At any rate, a number of crude pallets lay about the room, covered with disheveled bedding. A few personal items such as a corncob pipe or a chipped mug lay about, but it didn’t appear as if anyone currently lived here.

  “Do you think this is a gathering place? For the cultists, I mean?” I asked.

  “Ready to admit Zeiler is involved with the Eyes, then?” Griffin returned.

  I winced at his tone. “I only wanted proof.”

  “He’s clearly involved in something,” Christine said. She poked at the bedding with her boot, uncovering a rather gnawed-looking bone. “The devil?”

  Griffin picked the bone up with a frown. “It looks like a dog’s been at it. A bone from the butcher’s, no doubt.”

  “Only if the butchers around here serve human flesh,” Christine replied. Taking it from him, she examined it critically. “It’s the end of an adult human femur. Probably a man’s given the size, but it’s impossible to say for certain.”

  My heart beat faster, fear flickering along my nerves. I already knew these men were willing to kill, but this seemed worse, somehow. “Perhaps the same poor fellow whose blood is downstairs,” I managed to say. My voice trembled only slightly.

  “Perhaps.” Christine carefully put the bone back on the bedding, then wiped her hands on her handkerchief “Let’s finish up and leave here quickly.”