The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (2 page)

“Stay with me, Jewels,” he ordered. “Stay with me.”

Her face was streaked with tears, cosmetics running everywhere, but she nodded.

They reached the door and Michael braced himself to push the ice sculpture aside. It was heavier than expected, and so cold his fingers stuck to its surface. Pain burned through his fingertips and he panicked.

He shoved the damn thing.

It hit the ground with a
crack
and frozen shards scattered across the marble floor. Michael watched in horror as its silver glow flickered and then went out. A tiny figure, sheer and ghostly white, appeared with a puff of crystal snow and a sound like shattering ice. Michael held Julia close, but the fiaran had no interest in her dubious saviours. She streaked off into the crowd, a white trail following her like misted breath on a winter morning, and her cruel laughter sounded like tinkling icicles. She sent a blast of freezing air after a fleeing man, who didn’t even have time to scream before he hit the floor and shattered like glass.

Julia shrieked and gagged, averting her eyes. Michael only wished he could. He’d caused that. If he hadn’t lost control of himself―

The Castle gave a sick lurch. One of the bannisters on the great staircase cracked. He snapped out of his horror. The Floating Castle was falling, and they had to get out.

He turned away from the ruins of the shattered man and tore open the door, yanking the stupefied Julia after him. Five sets of stairs to get down to the base level, and then a mechanical staircase that could be lowered to the ground. He started down the white, stark service stairwell, pulling Julia behind him.

The Castle careened sharply to one side and they tumbled down the steep staircase like toys, balls of limbs and hair.

Everything went black.

Michael came back to himself at the landing. His head pounded and when he raised a shaking hand to it, it came away bloody. He stared at the dark smear on his fingers. What had happened? Where was he?

“Michael!” Julia stared down at him, framed by sterile white walls.

It all rushed back. The Castle. The Castle was falling. He sat up straight, fully alert, and she pulled him to his feet, sobbing all the while.

The floor quaked and pitched as they clung to bannisters and flew down the stairs. One flight. Two. Three. Michael allowed himself to hope. The salvation of that simple mechanical ladder hovered before him like a holy symbol. They could make it out. They could walk away from this. They were so close.

“Julia,” Michael panted. “We’re going to make it. I swear to you, we are going to go home and hold Chris and Rosemary in our arms.”

“Michael,” Julia said, but whatever words she’d prepared would never fall on living ears.

The Floating Castle shuddered then, trembling like a terrified child. He heard the singing of the sylphs even through the walls, the glorious scream of the wind in a tornado, wild and beautiful.

They broke free of their prison, swirled into the starry sky, and the Castle fell.

The last thing Michael Buckley knew before they hit the ground was the exultant, echoing song of the bound undine in the back of his mind.
Free
, she sang,
free.

hristopher Buckley heard the song when he reached the last stair, and his heart stopped.

Somewhere nearby, water was bubbling, ceramic and silverware were clattering, and loudest of all, two female voices were joined together in song. One of the voices was girlish and innocent, the other, experienced and throaty. They curled together like braided locks of hair. It was an ancient song, a binding song, and none of its words were recognizable as any more than an arcane incantation.

“Dammit,” Chris breathed. He pushed the door to the dining room open with a trembling hand, breaking into a run as he headed towards the kitchen. “
Rosemary?
” he cried, throwing open the door to the kitchen.

Rosemary stood by the washtub scrubbing at a pot, face lowered close to the turquoise undine sitting on the edge of the tub. Chris’s petrified rebuke died on his lips, his hand went limp on the latch of the door, and he found he could only watch, caught up in the spell of the song as though he were an elemental himself.

The undine’s indigo hair moved as though she were still underwater, curling up into the air and waving in time with the music. Her azure skin glowed and it shone wetly in the light. Her dainty feet dangled over the side of the bin and her arms cradled the small jar she held in her hands―the tiny, eternal source her water sprang from. She smiled: a warm, kind, seductive sort of smile, and that observation was enough for Chris to shake his head and snap out of his trance.

“Rosemary!”

He regretted speaking at once. Rosemary jumped and whirled to face him, but so did the undine. Rosemary was more capable than he gave her credit for, however. She never missed a single note. She held up a finger, flashing him a pointed glare before turning back to her little blue captive. Her song changed and the undine shrank away, her face growing sullen and angry. Rosemary’s voice swirled upwards and upwards and the undine’s expression grew darker and darker. When the song hit a crescendo, the spirit burst into a shower of raindrops. The wash bin pulsed and then blinked into a glow the same turquoise of the undine’s skin, and the water within it bubbled merrily.

“Rosemary,” he repeated, only this time it was a sigh of relief.

“I was fine,” Rosemary pronounced. Even after all these years, he was amazed she hadn’t even put down the plate she washed. She set it aside and a jet of warm air erupted from the spinning crystal above the drying rack, blasting away the water.

“Is she secure?” Chris asked, shooting a nervous glance at the glowing wash bin.

“Of course she’s secure!” Rosemary sniffed, her brows pulling down over her nose. “I’m not stupid!”

He managed a weak smile. “Of course not. If you were stupid, you wouldn’t be able to unbind an elemental just to have a little visit.
Reckless
, though…” He tried to make himself relax. His heart hammered in his throat, but at least they were no longer at risk of drowning in their own kitchen.

She sighed, reaching down into the bubbling bin for another soiled dish. “I had it under control, Chris.” Her expression went distant, a sad curve touching the line of her mouth. “They just get so tired of being chained to sinks and pipes and tubs, you know. Sometimes…they just want to come out and sing for a minute. Wouldn’t you?”

“And when one gets loose and sets half of the city on fire?”

“It was an undine. They don’t
burn
anything,” she retorted.

He took in her flashing blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and wet forearms, her hands still scrubbing away. Her long, jet-black ringlets were all pulled stylishly up away from her pretty doll’s face, but her blue dress was twice as threadbare as his own clothes, and almost as desperately out of fashion. He walked over to lay a hand on her shoulder and felt her melt beneath his touch.

He reached up to touch her hair. “Remember what Father used to say?”

Her shrug was only halfhearted, but he knew she did, and after a moment she answered him.

“No matter how smart you are, the rules still apply to you.”

“Just be careful.”

“I’m always careful!”

If you’re doing it in the first place, you’re not being careful enough.
There was no point saying it out loud. What could he do? He was her brother, not her father. It wouldn’t solve anything to make himself the enemy.

She pulled away from him eventually, setting yet another dish into the bin where the chained sylph hit it with another blast of air. She shot him a look over her shoulder. “You look nice,” she said, sizing him up with a quick glance and a shy smile.

He didn’t. It had been five years since he’d had something new tailored. Considering he had been fourteen at the time, it might as well have been twice that long. It would take a perhaps impolitely intent eye to notice his coat was a little threadbare around the elbows, or that the weathered seams of his trousers had been mended by an inexperienced hand in a mismatched thread, but the flaws were there. Even so, the part of him that used to have four wardrobes full of the latest fashions couldn’t help but bask in the empty compliment. He grinned, bashful.

“Well,” he murmured. “I did my best with what I had.”

“Oh, he’s going to be
so
impressed with you, Chris! You’re going to do so well. I’m
sure
he’ll request your services permanently.”

She was lying for his sake again. How could she possibly know what the mysterious
O. Faraday, Deathsniffer
wanted from an employee? But his jangled nerves eased. Rather silly, how the uninformed comments of a thirteen-year-old could make him feel better about anything, much less something so serious as an interview for employment after a long string of rejections.

“We’ll see.” He patted her on the shoulders. “I thought, perhaps―” He heard a door close from a few rooms over, and the bell in the hall begin to chime. “Oh. That must be her,” Chris said. He leaned down to press a kiss into Rosemary’s hair.

His sister twisted her head around to catch his eyes with her own before he could go to greet their guest.

“Don’t you think I’m too
old
for a nanny?” she asked plaintively.

He half-smiled and touched her nose. “You’re thirteen and I just caught you singing down an undine in the sink.”

Even she had to smile, though she turned back to the sink to try to hide it from him. “Well,” she said, voice dripping with feigned indignation. “Good luck, I suppose.”

“I’ll be home before you know it.” He left her at the tub.

The tutor in question was a tall, slender woman with a prim brown bun pulled up behind her head. He noticed she was dressed respectably―if unspectacularly―in a simple grey gown. It had not been tailored to her dimensions and it was twenty years out of fashion. She was poor or oblivious to her image, then. She was also considerably younger than he had expected. This was hardly an experienced matron, well-versed in the many pitfalls of child-rearing.

Chris fought down a wince. The agency he’d contacted to employ her services was a meager one. Fernand had insisted Chris couldn’t afford to give Rosemary the best available, and, after being shown a report of the Buckley family finances, he’d reluctantly been forced to agree. He tried to smile.

She gave a tight nod and did not smile back. “Good morning. Mister Buckley, I’d assume?”

“Yes. A very good morning to you, as well.” Chris widened his smile, but it felt very silly in the face of her cold composure, and so he wiped it off his.

“And where is
Miss
Buckley this morning?”

Chris turned and pointed in the direction of the bubbling water and clattering plates. “She’s in the kitchen. You’ll find she’s a good girl, and I think…I need to go.” The last part came out ruder than he’d intended, but he’d glanced up at the twisted hands of the grandfather clock halfway through the statement and had to swallow a moan at the time. He turned back to the governess, trying to hide his distress. He tried to be minutes early for every appointment, but would be lucky to arrive ten minutes
late
for Mister Faraday.