A Study in Darkness (23 page)

That made her shiver. She’d seen such a thing once, up close. A servant girl named Grace Child had died under Lord Bancroft’s roof, her murder never solved. Reflexively, she skimmed through the pie crumbs again, finding out what she could about this new tragedy. Another prostitute.
Another woman whose choices ran out—and if I don’t find what Keating wants in time, my own options are going to be precious few
.

Then she realized she’d stopped halfway up the staircase, the draft from the broken windows above eddying around her ankles. Feeling suddenly sick from the heavy meal, she mounted the rest of the steps to Lacey’s room. Gareth had found a rickety chair from somewhere and sat beside the bed. He barely looked up when she walked in, his long, soft hair shadowing his face.

“I brought medicine,” she said.

That made him look up, eyes wary. “You did?”

“I said I would.” She handed him the pie, and he took it automatically.

“That’s not for her,” he said doubtfully.

“It’s for you.”

He tore open the paper and took an enormous bite, closing his eyes in bliss. In another time and place it wouldn’t be right to eat with a loved one at death’s door, but here one never turned down food. She took the medicine out of her carpetbag and pulled out the stopper.

“Let me,” he said, finishing his meal in two huge bites.

She didn’t argue, just gave him the directions Mistress Skinner had given her. The effect of the medicine was almost instant. Lacey grew quiet, her breathing shallower, but the restless movements and whimpering stopped.

“She didn’t wake up,” he said softly. He sat on the edge of the bed, one hand on his mother’s hair. “She always looked out for me. I wish she knew I tried to do the same.”

Evelina just took his free hand. There was nothing she could say that he didn’t already know.

Gareth looked at their joined hands, but didn’t pull away. Instead, a thoughtful look crossed his fine features. “Did you ever have someone who always looked out for you, no matter what?”

It was a more personal question than she liked. She didn’t know the boy at all, and yet somehow they’d landed in a relationship that did away with formality. But when she went to answer, words failed.

“Once.” That was all she could manage.

“We had our fights, but she was the one I could always count on when I needed her.” He bit his lip.

“Keep that memory.”

Something in her voice made him glance at her, but then all his attention was back on Lacey, where it had to be. That was fine with Evelina.

Once upon a time, there had been someone who was always there, no matter what. And now there wasn’t. She
never let herself think about Nick, because that heartbreak outstripped anything that Tobias Roth could ever do to her. And that one was her fault, too.

Lacey died a few minutes after the church bells struck midnight.

The police inspector entered the yard and found the victim, Annie Chapman, lying on her back. Her body was about two feet from the wall, parallel to the fence. Her face was turned to the right and her legs drawn up. On closer inspection, it could be seen that the throat had been deeply cut. The victim had been eviscerated, one bystander noted, as if someone had been searching for a lost shilling deep inside her gut. And yet there was precision enough to suggest an experienced butcher’s hand.

—The London Prattler

EVELINA DIDN
’
T BOTHER GOING TO THE FRONT OF THE PUPPETEER
’
S
theater during the day. She’d been around such places often enough to know that if there was no matinee, one might as well be knocking at an empty building. No one would be in the front, unless they were sweeping up last night’s playbills. Instead, she asked the flower seller on the corner for directions to the back door.

“You want the Magnetorium?” the old woman asked, gumming the words through a toothless face all but collapsed inward. Bent and bandy-legged, she looked barely able to stand, but she could count coppers faster than any bank clerk. Evelina had already been informed of the age, sex, and history of the old dame’s six children and all their
progeny, not to mention the career of her unlamented and thankfully late spouse. “What would a young thing like you want with a place like that?”

“I want to speak to the puppeteer,” Evelina replied, admiring the pinks in the woman’s basket. They made a bright, brave splash in the gray street. Their spicy scent tickled the nose, unaccountably conjuring thoughts of secrets and blushes.

“Are you sure, girl? He’s a rum one, for all his fair words. And machines weren’t meant to walk the earth with a human face. It’s not proper.” The old woman looked in her basket, knotted fingers fumbling at the blooms. “If I had some rowan I’d give it to you.”

The words tugged at Evelina’s heart, reminding her of Gran Cooper and her herb lore. Any country girl knew the devas of rowan were powerful protectors against dark magic. Where had the old lady come from? And where were all her children and grandchildren, that she still had to stand long hours on the street every day, in spite of the rain and the heat?

Evelina touched the woman’s shoulder, feeling the bones beneath her shawl and putting a confidence into her words that she did not feel. “Don’t you worry, I’ll keep my eyes sharp and my ears pricked.”

The flower seller studied her from beneath wispy brows. “You do that, girl. And remember what you’re after once you get there. The man deals in illusions.” And, reluctantly, the old woman gave her directions.

Evelina found the back entrance open and paused there, half in and half out the iron-studded door. It had the hushed presence of a crypt shortly after the local revenant had left for its night out. A shaft of afternoon sunlight spilled across the wide wooden floor, showing just how vast and deserted the back of the theater was.

The emptiness of it, and of the narrow alleyway behind it, sent gooseflesh crawling over her skin. She was growing to rapidly despise deserted places. Her conversation with the flower seller had strayed to the fate of poor Annie Chapman who had died just down the way only a week ago. That made
a third victim in the area in the space of five weeks—and not just ordinary deaths. They were extravagantly gruesome to the point of sheer madness.

Every trick of the light, every bit of refuse tumbling in the breeze made Evelina skittish. She might be tempted to scamper home with her tail between her legs, except that she was running out of time to find the name of the Blue King’s maker. And steady work with machines would usher her into the community of builders and makers more quickly than anything else she could think of. Whoever ran this forsaken place would simply
have
to give her employment.

“Hello?” she called into the vaulted space. The sound of her voice dissipated, no more than a puff of steam. “Is anyone here?”

Evelina creaked the door open another notch, letting in a bit more light. The sound of the rust-eaten hinges seemed enormously loud, but she welcomed the noise. It was the sign of something concrete in the land of the living. Something that needed fixing, and something she could effect with an oilcan and steel wool.

And she was ready for an easy success. She’d spent the morning helping Gareth deal with his mother’s remains. It was Sunday, so Evelina had walked to Christ Church to fetch someone. Then the body was removed and questions answered, a pauper’s grave arranged. Earls had put in an appearance to complain about the state of the mattress, but his protests had been halfhearted. In death, Lacey Cardew had been, if not beautiful, at least serene, and Evelina saw that had touched the caretaker. After everyone else had left, Evelina had helped Gareth take away Lacey’s few possessions. Now the boy was sleeping off his grief, and she had to get back to business.

“Hello?” she said again, listening hard for movement anywhere in the building.

Like a hunter setting her snares, Evelina surveyed the terrain for clues that might help her get a permanent job in this place. The sunlight showed props and pieces of sets stacked against the far wall, a rack of ballet costumes and a workbench littered with clamps and a large drill hooked up to a
treadle. That caught her interest enough to draw her all the way inside.

Trespassing? Perhaps, but Evelina wasn’t getting anywhere lingering on the threshold. She took one step, then another, her gaze swiveling from side to side. The door swung closed, shutting out the sunlight. A warning niggled at the edge of her consciousness, as if a faint, bad smell hung in the air. She’d come to count on Mouse and Bird to cross-check her instincts, but they weren’t there to give advice. So she put the dark feeling to one side, not ignoring it but not letting it hold her back.

Now that she was farther into the room, she could see that there were more tables around the perimeter draped in white sheets. They gave the place the appearance of a morgue. Cautiously, she approached the nearest one and lifted a corner of the sheet.

Then she jumped back as a silky lock of hair brushed her hand. Revulsion skittered up her spine, but she made herself twitch the sheet fully aside. A porcelain face slept there, so lifelike that Evelina blinked to make sure she wasn’t seeing flesh. Red hair cascaded over the doll’s shoulders and down onto a body sewn of velvety, flesh-colored silk. The eyelids were closed and edged in tufts of perfect lashes. Even the lips were astonishing in their detail, every angle sculpted to give the impression of youthful softness.
Sleeping Beauty
, she thought. Did her prince know she was nothing but a fake?

So this must be one of the theater’s puppets
. Then the other tables must hold more of the same.
Automatons, probably
. Ploughman’s had never used such things and she had no experience fixing them, but she’d read plenty about the topic when Lord Bancroft’s had been stolen. From what she could tell, they were a finicky, complicated, and generally useless breed of machine.
But good for me, if they need someone to keep them running
.

“Do you like her?” came a horribly familiar voice. “Her name is Serafina.”

Evelina spun around, dropping her carpetbag to the floor. It clattered as it struck the wood, the noise echoing in the
high rafters.
Where is he?
She looked about frantically, wishing the door hadn’t blocked out that scrap of comforting sun. Shadows were everywhere, hiding the enemy from view. The smell was stronger now, the oily scent of a sorcerer’s magic. A rum one, the flower seller had said. The old lady had no idea.

“My, my, if it isn’t Miss Cooper. What are you doing in my lair?”

“Magnus!” she growled, pulling out the knife she kept in her boot. Nick had taught her a few things to do with a blade. She couldn’t have lost all her skill. “You’re dead.”

But she was wrong and knew it. There had been a letter that had come just before she left London for her grandmother’s house. The words welled up in her memory, turning her cold.
As I suspected, your natural talents are unsurpassed. There will come a time when you want answers, when the mysteries shall be mysteries no more. Then I shall find you and teach you the vast universe of what there is to do and know and imagine, my luminous Evelina
.

“Dead? I think not,” the voice said dryly. “I’ve never been a beauty, but I do compare favorably to a walking corpse.”

And then there he was, a dozen feet in front of her. Terror clawed up her throat, threatening to turn into a scream. She stumbled backward, her hands shaking too hard to do more than hang onto the knife.

“Good gracious, what
do
you think I’m going to do to you?” he mused, shifting his weight to one hip. The look in his eyes was a mix of surprise, concern, and something greedy. “Didn’t you receive the letter I sent to you last April?”

“I hoped it was a hoax.”

“But you knew it wasn’t.”

“No,” she said weakly. It came out as little more than a croak.

“But I apologize for leaving things the way I did. I would have come to call sooner but I was indisposed for some time after my, um, accident.”

“You threatened me,” she retorted, but it came out in a strangled whisper. “You hurt Nick.”

Magnus was tall and thin, his saturnine features from a country far from English shores. His eyes were dark and deep-set, his black hair swept back from a high forehead. A fine mustache and goatee framed a sensual mouth. It wasn’t a pretty face, but it was strikingly male. He was a man one felt compelled to look at.

“Come now, Miss Cooper. I
threatened
to teach you to use your magic properly.” His smile turned wry. “I can see how that horrifies you.”

“Dark magic. Sorcery. Death spells.”

He jerked his chin in, as if offended. “Magic has a full range of capabilities. You are free to choose where you specialize. I encourage you to explore it all before you limit your sights to sleep aids and recipes for superior scones.”