Part 29 (1/2)
Mary bustled down the hallway to take Garrett's coat, clucking over the mess.
The bruise on Garrett's thigh ached, and more than anything she wanted to be left alone. She wove unsteadily on her feet. ”So you came to check on me when darkness fell. Thoughtful.”
Sebastien ignored the dig. ”We need to talk in private.”
Garrett bit her lip and nodded acquiescence, leading him up the stairs. ”I'd bet a guinea the Mayor's somehow behind this,” she said. ”He's got a sorcerer dancing attendance-black mark, not red, so he could have graduated from any little backwater college of magics and I have no way of knowing what his ethics are. Furthermore, I've learned that the man who vanished yesterday was working for the Duke on the sly.”
”Interesting. Was there another dismemberment, or merely the disappearance?”
Mike ran at their heels, determined not to be left behind. Abruptly, Garrett stopped and crouched, offering her hand to the patchwork dog. ”I'm sorry, boy. I should have said h.e.l.lo when I came in.” He wriggled adoringly, and she tousled his head before she straightened. Don Sebastien caught her arm to keep her afoot. ”Disappearances. A whole household again, which sent me to the library for the balance of the day. I can think of only one reason for attacking entire households.”
”And what is that?” They attained the landing; Sebastien opened her chamber door. Mike gamboled past him, having decided that wampyr made acceptable houseguests after all.
”Fear,” she said. ”To engender rear.”
”I keep asking myself,” Sebastien commented, ”what was different about the boy? Why did he need to die so terribly, when the others just ... softly and silently, vanished away.”
Garrett staggered again. ”I need to lie down.”
”Of course you do. A sleepless night, and the blood you gave to me ... on top of the work of the past two days. Forgive me.” He scooped her into his arms like a child-like a doll-and carried her to bed. Mary had made it, tidied the counterpane, placed a new candle on the bedside table to replace the one burned out the night before.
Blackness like an undertow, Garrett tried to remember the last thing. She yawned jawcrackingly. ”Sebastien. You said....”
”Ah, yes,” he answered. ”The missing maidservant. I haven't found her yet, but I have her name. Forester. Maeve Forester.”
Sleep sucking her under, Garrett knew to a certainty that there was something enormously important about that name, but she was d.a.m.ned if she could remember what it was.
A chill awakened her in the small hours of the morning. Sebastien lay curled beside her, but his body offered no warmth, and her heart hammered in her chest as if she awakened from nightmare. Mike whined by her feet, huddling into the covers.
”Sebastien?”
”I feel it,” he said. ”Like last night.”
But it wasn't. Similar. But colder and stronger, and it froze her to the bone. The curtains on the cas.e.m.e.nt windows fluttered- odd, she thought, those should be tight shut. And she could see that they were, see the gla.s.s reflecting the gaslights from the city below. Where is the draft coming from? Teeth chattering, Garrett reached for her wand and struck a light.
The temperature dropped sharply. Garrett clutched her wand to her chest. Mike growled his terrier's growl, voice of a much larger dog in a little dog's throat. Meanwhile, Sebastien swung his long legs out of the four poster and stood. When he spoke, even his cool breath frosted in the icy air. ”Ghost?” he asked.
”Sebastien!”
Garrett threw herself across the bed, away from the nightstand, jumping up with her back against the far wall, the coverlet dimpling under her feet. Mike scrabbled toward her, crowded her ankles growling, all sharp teeth and powderpuff defiance. Slowly, Sebastien turned....
The candle on the nightstand ascended into the air and was joined and circled by others that materialized out of the darkness. A vast, lumpy darkness, clawing with enormous hands like annealed black clots of wax, a ring of candles blazing on the gnarled stump that might have been its head.
Garrett screamed as the thing reached for her. She leveled her wand at it and spoke a word. A spark flashed between them, did nothing. Mike snarled and would have lunged after the threat, and Garrett swept her leg aside, knocking her indomitable companion from the bed. He yelped, and she flinched, but for a second he was safe from the squelching abomination that examined her face with familiar pale eyes.
It grabbed for her and she twisted away, falling half into the crevice between bed and wall. In a moment, those slick, sucking hands would touch her flesh. ”Sebastien! The candles!”
Sebastien hesitated, hands half outreached as if to grab the monstrosity and haul it away. Candlewax dripped from its crown, spattering the tile floor; droplets that touched its black hide vanished without a trace.
”What do you mean?”
”Don't touch it! The candles! Put them out!”
Mike growled low in his throat as he found his feet again, eyes gleaming in the flickering brilliance. Something moved through the blackness, flaring light.
Candlewax dripped, spattered, ran.
The thing lurched closer, stepping onto the bed. Sebastien glanced about wildly, caught up a rug from the floor, and swung just as Garrett, half-pinned, shouted a word of magic and hurled her wand like a throwing knife.
The rug came down on the dark thing's crown, das.h.i.+ng candles out. Garrett's wand vanished into its breast, silver tip first. The thing wailed, spinning wildly, reaching for Sebastien with groping, malformed paws. He skittered aside like a toreador, swinging the rug again, smas.h.i.+ng the thing in the face. A final candle fluttered out as it fell forward, keening, clutching Sebastien's s.h.i.+rtfront, and Garrett saw the horror in his eyes as it started to enfold him in devouring blackness.
And then it sagged to its knees, slid downward, cloth tearing in the grasp of its suddenly human hands. It fell, curled inwards, and buried its face in its knees, dappled moonlight shaking in short red curls.
Duke Richard waited for her in her parlor, flanked by city Guards. The early afternoon light crept in through white eyelet lace, gilding his hair. He had his hat in his hand, as if he did not intend to linger, but Mike sat on his shoes, tongue lolling.
When she entered, he dismissed the Guards.
”Richard,” she said, when the door was closed.
”Investigator Garrett.”
She came a few steps closer, and did not let her hurt show in her face. ”I'm glad to see you, your Highness.”
His jaw worked, and the hat tumbled from his hands as he came to her, pulling her close, all but crus.h.i.+ng her in his arms. ”Abby Irene.” His voice broke.
She leaned into the embrace for a long, quiet moment, listening to the pounding of his heart. When he finally let her step back, she did. ”I'm safe.”
”But barely. And I wasn't there to protect you.”
”Sebastien was,” she said, and regretted it immediately. ”What's to become of Officer Forester?” He'd been taken away in chains before sunup.
”He's cooperated. Named his accomplice. Or his handler, more like-the Lord Mayor's pet sorcerer.”
”Neither one implicated the Mayor?”
”Stayed silent as the grave. To hear Forester tell it, LaMarque-the sorcerer-offered him revenge against the lad who ruined Forester's sister. Forester took him up on it, not knowing the price. And then LaMarque-and Peter Eliot, of course, but neither one of them has or will admit that-used that consent, once granted, to enslave him. From what he said, he killed the Carlson family first, consumed them ... and then chased the lad out into the street to deal with him more messily.”
Garrett shuddered. ”What about the splintered door?”
”Misdirection. A smart lad. He'll hang, of course.”
”Of course.” The door was shut; the curtains were drawn. She laid a hand on his shoulder, leaned her face against his sleeve. ”They must have thought I was close.”
”You were.” He put his arm around her shoulder. ”I would have been next, no doubt.”
She nodded. This is wrong. And yet... what else can we do? ”It is a pity that we cannot arrange a search of the Lord Mayor's domicile. I feel certain that we would find a rifle which I could match to the bullet fired at me.”
He let the silence hang for a moment before he continued. ”What I don't understand is how Forester got admittance to the houses. I know there are rules of consent and so forth, for these dark things to do their will.” He looked away. And he's not mentioning Sebastien, although it's costing him something not to.
”Each of the houses invaded had apparently received a surprising bargain on candles recently. And an action can provide consent as easily as a word.”