Cogling (35 page)

“No!” Rachel flung herself against the wood as a key grated in the lock. She wiggled the doorknob, but the door refused to budge. “Aunt Kate,
no
. Let me out.” Tears stung her eyes. “How can you do this to me? How can you believe them over me?”

“Mary will return soon with the authorities. I cannot let you go ‘till then.”

Rachel ran to the window, but it would only open a few inches. Even if she broke the glass, the drop appeared too large to jump down without hurting herself. She tried the door again, but her aunt hadn’t relented.

Voices drifted down the apartment hallway. Rachel glanced at the clock on the parlor shelf and nibbled her lower lip. She’d only been locked inside for ten minutes.

“Aunt Kate!” She knocked against the door. “Please, you have to help me.”

“She’s in there?” a male voice asked.

“Yes,” Aunt Kate replied.

Rachel stumbled backward as the door opened, revealing two police officers in blue uniforms. She gaped. Her beloved aunt was really turning her over to the authorities.

One of them seized her arm. “Lady Rachel?”

“Y-yes,” she stammered. The room spun. Edna would’ve fought, but Rachel’s mind turned into a blank sheet when she tried to think of how to attack them.

The other officer looked at sniffling Aunt Kate, who patted her cheeks with a lacey handkerchief. “We’ll take her to Demeter. Mother Sambucus believes her mind will clear the best there.”

Demeter, the city’s asylum for the mentally insane.
“No!” Rachel tried to yank free, but her captor pulled a green vial from his pocket. He pulled the cork stopper out with his teeth and pressed the nozzle over her mouth. The scent of chloroform filled her senses, just like the time as a child when the dentist had given it to her before pulling a bad tooth.

Rachel turned her head away, but the other officer grabbed her chin, holding her in place. The cold liquid burned her mouth. She spit, but some scalded down her throat. A roar began in her ears.

“Your niece will be safe there,” Rachel dimly heard the officer say. “Thank you for helping us locate her.”

“She can no longer be my niece,” Aunt Kate replied.

Rachel’s world blackened.

Rachel awoke to a strange jostling and the grind of wheels against stone. Her head throbbed and her tongue felt swollen as if someone had stuffed cotton in her mouth.

She turned her head and blinked. A lamp wobbled on the ceiling, casting strange shapes against the walls of a coach. A police officer sat in front of her and another sat beside her on the hard bench.

“We’re here.” The one beside her pointed out the window. She grabbed the edge of the door, waiting until a wave of stomach churning passed, and pulled herself up to see. The coach followed a cast iron fence with spikes at the top. Beyond it, a lawn stretched to a six-story brick building with bars on the windows. In the dark, Rachel couldn’t make out much else.

“Demeter?” she mumbled.

The officer beside her lifted her back onto the seat. “Home.”

The enemy is close, I fear.

dna huddled on the stone floor of her cell. Moisture dripped off the walls and ceiling, adding to the puddles on the ground. Heaps of moldy straw rotted beneath the sliver of window, covered by thick iron bars identical to those in the cell’s door. Her stomach rumbled with hunger, matching the parched inside of her mouth. It had been a night since they’d been thrown into the cell without sustenance.

Harrison sat beside her with his chin on his knees. “D’you think they’ll let us out soon?”

She swallowed the “no” from her tongue. “Of course.” She pulled him closer. His skinny body shivered against her. He was frail and malnourished already. It wouldn’t be long before… Edna shook the worry aside. As long as he stayed beside her, the evil kept away.

“Why didn’t Mum listen?” Harrison sniffled.

She used a corner of her skirt to wipe his nose. “Because the hags convinced her we’re evil.”

“She’s Mum, though.”

Edna couldn’t look at him, scared he’d see the tears in her eyes. “They hypnotized her. She’ll come out of it and help us.” If they hadn’t, and their mother thought for herself instead of listening to the police and Mother Sambucus… Edna gulped down a sob.

“And Father?” Harrison rested his head against her shoulder. “Father’s gonna come, ain’t he?”

“Of course.” If their father left the train yard and stopped laying tracks, they would fire him. He needed the job. Mum probably wouldn’t have told him what had happened.

“And Ike?”

“He’s our hope. We’ll get out of here. Mum and Father will get us a lawyer.”

Harrison shifted away from her. “Can’t afford that. Our kind don’t get lawyers.”

Our kind
. He’d never spoken like that before the hags kidnapped him. He never acted as though people belonged to different classes. She bit back her helplessness.

“We’ll get out.” She smiled for his benefit. “I doubt we’ll be here longer than today. If no one comes for us, we’ll get out of here ourselves. I still have the cameo.”
And the evil.
“I’m with you. I’ll protect you.”

Someone moaned from further down in the prison’s dungeon. Since throwing them in, the officers hadn’t returned. Edna considered calling, but she didn’t want to hear who answered.

“Who d’you know who left prison?” Harrison asked.

“Lots of people.” Edna couldn’t think of a single soul. People who were sent there visited the gallows after, or rotted in their cell.

“When d’you reckon we’ll eat?”

“Soon. They got to feed us.” Her voice rose too loudly. Someone in another cell hooted.

“Food,” a man screamed. “Food in the pockets, food in the gullets. Blood on the floor, blood on the floor.”

Edna pressed her hands over Harrison’s ears. She wanted him to pull away, like old times, but instead, he groaned. She sang, hoping it would comfort him.

“Bloody rats all in a hat,

Upon which Victor Viper sat.

Little feet with little shoes,

Little people with little hues.

Flames and smoke all leaping high,

Upon which we all might die.”

A dark shape scurried through the bars into their cell.

“That a rat?” Harrison asked. “Can we eat it, you reckon?”

Edna wondered why the thought of chewing into raw rat didn’t turn her stomach. “We can grab it by the tail and fling it against the wall until it dies. It might bite us, though, and rats carry diseases. If only we had something to throw at it. A quick bop on the head would do it.” She cringed, a sourness coating her tongue. “Never before have I entertained the idea of eating a rat.”

The creature splashed through a puddle, edging closer. It stepped into a patch of moonlight.

Its hindquarters were covered by bristly, brown hair, but its torso was similar to a man’s. The head contained thick hair and pointed ears. It snapped its fangs at them, flicking its skinny tail.

“Soot demon.” Edna gulped. Nastier than rats, for they could use their front paws as hands. She shrank against the slimy wall, tugging Harrison with her. The soot demon squinted at them, drew back its lips, and hissed.

“Is it gonna bite us?” Harrison’s chest heaved against her side.

Soot demons kept to the poorer neighborhoods. There had only been five invasions at their tenement in the past. Edna recalled a child being bitten. A few days later, the little boy had died.

“We have to kill it.” Her voice wavered. “What can we use?”

“A rock?” Harrison looked around the cell.

“There ain’t any rocks. The moldy straw won’t help. Neither will the puddles.”

The soot demon leapt toward them. Edna screamed as it landed on her boot. Fear constricted her throat, making her cough, and the evil pumped through her veins.

“Get it away,” Harrison shouted.

Edna kicked the soot demon off her foot. The creature sailed through the air, shrieking and hissing. It struck the bars and fell into the hallway.

“Did it bite you?” Harrison grabbed her arm.

“Not yet.” Edna hurried to her feet and ran to the bars. She kicked the soot demon again as it tried to reenter. “Git! Scat, you filthy wretch.”

“Tell ‘em, trollop,” someone called.

The soot demon reared on its hind legs and flicked its forked tongue at her. Then a dark hand swept down and grabbed the creature. The soot demon sank its fangs into the fist, but shrieked when it couldn’t pierce the leathery gray skin.

Edna lifted her gaze. A creature as tall as she, but thrice as wide, stood just beyond the bars. The hairs on her arms stood up in fright. He was naked except for a loincloth and skull necklace. She recognized them as soot demon skulls. Sometimes hags sold them in the street, meant to ward away evil.

“Odds bobs,” Harrison gasped. “What’s that?”

The creature shook its wide head and stirred its long greasy hair. Tufts stood up straight and others hung over its large ears. It lifted the soot demon and bit off the little head. Blood sprayed over the stones underfoot. The creature spit the head into its other hand and gobbled the rest of the soot demon.

“Troll,” a hoarse male voice said from across the hall. A shape shifted in the cell. “They was dug out o’ the ground when the city was built. Now they’re warders. Watch the dungeon. Only the dungeon.” The villain cracked a laugh. “Git in the sunshine an’ their skin burns. Make sure we don’t get out.”