The Hanged Man (14 page)

He shook his head at each question. “What he was working on required that he not be himself. You'd not have known him on the street—”

“Why didn't he tell me he was home?”
There, finally out, and in a louder voice than she'd intended.

“He wanted to, but it was impossible. You know how it was with him, duty over aught else.”

“Even me.”

“And fair broke his heart, too, but as soon as he got in and got the names he was going to take a sabbatical, perhaps even retire.”

Never to happen. “Got in where? What names?”

“Dangerous people, miss. He kept no papers on them, it was all in his head. You'll have heard of the Ætheric Society?”

“That's ridiculous. It can't be.”

“There must be something to it, why else was he killed?”

“You tell me!” People looked at her. She felt her face go red. “I'm sorry, but I
must
know what's going on. You must come in. I'll make sure only people I know hear what you have to say. If not to the Service, then to Scotland Yard. The inspector who ran things last night can be trusted. His name is Lennon.”

“No one can be trusted. His lordship must have found out something and they done for him.”

“The Ætheric Society?” It was too absurd.

“They're more dangerous than anyone suspects. That's all he shared with me, and it must be true. He went to one of their meetings earlier that night, I don't know where, but he said he'd made progress and would be returning again soon. There was a woman helping him, but he didn't write anything down or repeat names. You know how he is … was.… Oh, God, this is so wrong. How could it have happened? The house was locked, I swear it was locked!”

She tried her best calming tone, hoping it would work. “Fingate, if we are to catch who did it, then come with me.”

He was visibly torn between fear and loyalty. Having spent most of his life under the protection of another, content to follow orders, he was adrift and foundering on his own.

“If you don't, then what are we to do?” Alex felt his emotions engulfing her. His indecision flooded her, made her feel ill. She had to fight the urge to bolt. “I'll keep you safe. I promise.”

“I know how to do that for myself, it's you I'm worried for; if the wrong people know you talked to me, they'll come for you.” But he was teetering, just a little more weight in the right direction—

“Assume they do and have done so, Fingate. It's too late for warnings. We'll find a closed coach, make sure we're not followed, and I will get us to a safe place.”

“Where people can't walk through walls?”

“What? You think that's how they got to Father?”

“We've seen stranger things in our travels, miss.”

“This is London. People don't walk through walls, not even Ætherics.” But that did describe the “ghost.” He was solid enough, but to a Reader, he might well be incorporeal.

Fingate twitched, looking past her. “Those men, who are they?”

James and Teddy remained where she'd left them, though Teddy seemed ready to cross the distance. He looked eaten to the bone with curiosity, but James had somehow kept him in place.

“Cousins, one from each side of the family. The one on the left is James Fonteyn. He's annoying, but you can trust him. He lives at the other end of Baker Street from me at number—”

“You're on Baker Street?”

“Yes—and Father could have walked over any time he wanted. Did he not even look me up?”

Fingate was both shocked and ashamed, his emotions jumping to her like static electricity.

“Oh, never mind, we'll speak of it later. The other man is Teddy Pendlebury, Uncle Leo's son. I wouldn't bother with him, he's hidebound and unhelpful. Never learned how to listen.”

Fingate wasn't listening, either. His nervous attention shifted; looking back the way he'd come, he gave a start. “Bloody hell, they're here. Stay with your cousins. I'll lead them away. It's me they want. I'll get word to you when I'm clear.”

She glanced around him. Lieutenant Brook strode purposefully from the east side of the bridge. He fit Teddy's description of a “rum-looking savage” to perfection. He'd improved his disguise as a cabman. A shabby coat, beaten billycock hat, and chin blurred by emerging whiskers made for quite a transformation, too great of one to judge by Fingate's reaction.

“No, he's here to help.” She held on to Fingate's hand, but he shook free.

“This was your father's, take it.” He shoved the walking stick at her and darted away, slipping and stumbling.

Teddy and James ceased watching from afar and hurried forward. Teddy moved to intercept Fingate, and managed to lay hands on him. But Fingate executed a swift block and shift. Teddy gave a surprised whoop as he was deftly flipped forward in a full spin and landed flat on his back, to the startlement of passersby.

Alex had not been Master Shan's only pupil.

James shouted something and went to aid the fallen, but was more hindrance than help; Fingate did not look back and kept running. He made it off the bridge, cutting right to the path that led toward the Italian Gardens. There, even in winter, he could find cover in the dense growth of trees and bushes.

Brook charged in like a sight hound after flushed prey. He was much younger than Fingate and those long legs would eat up the ground, closing the valet's lead.

She'd promised to keep Fingate safe, and though Brook was Service and had been vetted by a Reader like herself, she did not know him. A remnant of Fingate's terror, of not knowing who to trust, clung to her, and though it was not her emotion, it raised the same physical reaction, the instinct to run or fight.

Alex chose to fight—or at least delay.

She put herself between and ordered Brook to stop.

“Sorry, Miss,” he said. He changed course just enough to avoid her.

As he passed, she bodily launched herself.

She was too small to stop him, but few men could ignore eight stone of anything hitting them from the side. Alex struck him hard, wrapping her arms around him. For once, it was her own emotions that dominated the contact: mostly shock at the solid muscle under the concealing clothes. It was like tackling a mountain.

Brook was thrown off stride, of course, and she intended to hang on for as long as she could to slow him.

She did
not
intend for him to slip on a patch of ice and tumble over the bridge rail, taking her along.

Alex let go, but too late. She gave a short cry, cut off when they struck the freezing water with a great splash. The stuff went straight up her nose, filled her mouth, and what breath she had was lost to overwhelming, paralyzing cold.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

In Which Family Demonstrates to Be Useful to the Case

She thrashed in blind panic, reaching for the surface. Her fingers brushed slimy mud.

She pushed against it, tried to still herself enough to let buoyancy take her up, but her coat and skirts dragged in the current. Her chest hurt from holding out the water. She willed herself to not breathe, just a few seconds, another few—she had to find light and swim toward it.

But the day, so dark, the murky water the same color—

Mud again.

She put both hands into it and shoved as hard as she could away.

Bubbles. Air slipping from her mouth, floating free.

Follow them.

She reached, kicking, and could not quite catch up to them.

But it was getting lighter.… Just a little farther.…

She slipped into a strange limbo where the desperate need for air ceased to drive her. Her lungs were empty; the next breath would be water, but her body desperately held off from that action. Instinct told her she had but a few counts of her laboring heart before that changed.

The bitter cold numbed her flesh, her mind. She'd perish from it, not drowning.

Then the water rushed in. She choked, gasped, more water painfully clotted her lungs. She ceased moving. A tiny ember of thought, that it was over and she'd see her father soon, winked and went out.

Something brutally strong seized her arm.

Such single-mindedness.

The emotions were simple and clean: worry, desperation, triumph. She didn't want them, but couldn't break the contact.

Triumph … relief …

Someone shouting in her ear. She was too listless to respond, just wanting sleep. If they'd only go and give her some peace.

*   *   *

Alex's nose, no, the whole front of her face ached, as though someone had struck her with … she didn't know what. So did her chest, constricted by a hard and heavy weight.

She rolled on her side, coughing. Water spewed, and again it hurt, hurt,
hurt
up inside the front of her head and deep in her chest. She gasped and gagged until more air went in than water came out. Her throat … an utterly revolting taste in her mouth.

Gradually, she became aware of being surrounded by people, and a man asked repeatedly how she felt. She waved him off, shivering uncontrollably.

She struggled through the shreds of emotions, fighting them as she'd fought the water. Which were hers, which were Fingate's, which belonged to others…?

“Still on this side of the veil,” pronounced a familiar voice.

A cheer went up, along with applause.

She rubbed her blurred eyes. Lieutenant Brook?

He knelt next to her and was the source of one set of emotions. She felt his gladness as a physical thing. Soaking wet and shivering, he had no mind for his discomfort, and was focused wholly on her. There was a warmth in his soul such as she'd sensed in Master Shan and a very few others: no pretension, he was as presented.

Which was greatly comforting. She'd trained to avoid embracing the feelings of others—too addictive—but this one time could do no harm.

“A blanket,” he bellowed, standing. “Quickly!”

Lying on muddy ground, surrounded by concerned onlookers, she lost sight of him. In a break in the forest of trouser-clad legs she glimpsed two excited youths pushing through with a long wicker basket. It looked just like the one the ambulance men used to carry her father.

She choked and tried to get up, but well-meaning rescuers held her down.

The man in the medals who had directed the swimming race was one of them; he and two others lifted Alex into the long basket with little effort and tucked a blanket over her. She bucked and would have screamed, but her voice had been stolen by fresh panic. She was weak and—it hardly seemed possible—colder than when still in the lake. Her teeth chattered, fit to snap.

The helpful man, part of the Royal Humane Society and thus trained in the saving and resuscitation of the drowned, put a calming hand on her forehead. “There now, missy, settle down. You're safe.”

Her armor was gone, but his warm reassurance flowed over her like balm on a raw wound. Her panic faded. After so many years of protecting herself from unwanted feelings, this was a day of revelation.

“Brook—where's Brook?” she demanded, her voice thin and raspy.

“That was no brook, my girl,” he said, “but a great big lake you went into.”

“The man who fell in with me.”

“Which one? No matter, they're seeing to them all.”

All?

They carried her, an odd floating sensation, to the Society's receiving house on the north side of the Serpentine.

A fit-looking matron took over her care and keeping, shooing the men away from the females-only area. She delivered Alex from the dreadful basket. In a remarkably short time Alex's soaked clothes were removed, and she was bundled into a long tub of unexpectedly hot water. Her skin puckered with painful gooseflesh, then abruptly smoothed as the heat took hold. It was better than any blanket. She'd never been so deliciously warm before. She tried not to moan, but one leaked out.

“There now, it's all right,” said the matron. “A doctor's been sent for. How do you feel?”

“Bloody awful.”

“No surprise in that, my dear. Such a nasty shock.”

Alex was not done coughing. She felt the wet bubbling in her throat and whooped and wheezed into a bucket. When it was all out, the woman gently washed her hair, reminding Alex of some of the kindlier nannies of her childhood.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Came that close, did you?”

A simple question and yet so much to it as Alex realized just how easily she'd given in to death, fighting one instant, ceasing the next, with no transition from one to the other. She'd wanted peace, rest, to be left alone—but not forever.

The matron smiled down at her, as though able to follow her thoughts.

Or my feelings
.

Not all the psychically gifted were in the Service.

“I almost—”

“But you didn't. The Lord spared you for another day, so there's a use for you yet. Never doubt that.”

Years ago, Master Shan had expressed a similar outlook. Alex had been in a low mood, desiring a cure for her ability to Read. She did not
want
to learn to live with it. He'd been gently adamant that she should. It had been a struggle; nevertheless, he managed to persuade her that she and it had a purpose.

Alex hiccupped and felt hot tears. “Oh, not this. Not now.”

“What better time?” The matron patted her hand. “It's perfectly normal, dear. Have it out now while there's no one about to tell you to stop. I won't mind.”

Alex couldn't hold off her reaction; sobs shook her small frame, even as part of her mind looked impartially on, analyzing.

Weeping for myself, but not for Father. I didn't die; he did. I'm mourning for the living.

Her analytical side decided she was indulging in self-pity because she was thinking too much. She shut that side down, recalling Inspector Lennon's comment about meeting herself coming around corners. His deep rough voice seemed to sound right between her ears. He'd show her budding self-pity to the door—or rather kick it through headfirst, a strangely comforting image.