The Peculiar (19 page)

“Troutbelly? Are you here? Little girl, did that degenerate gnome come in?”

Hettie gave no answer, and the faery butler didn't wait for one. He strode across the room, looking into the wardrobe, opening drawers, kicking at the plump silk pillows.

“Jack Box?
Selenyo pekkal!
This is no time for games!”

The faery butler was directly in front of the drapes. Mr. Jelliby could hear his wheezing breaths, feel his presence like a weight on the other side of the velvet. The faery butler's green eye narrowed. He reached forward, ready to throw open the drapes. Mr. Jelliby had his hands in fists. One second more and he would leap out, swinging like a maniac. But then a speaking machine rang from the wall, shrilling and rattling like an angry bird.

The faery turned abruptly and picked up the mouthpiece.

“Mi Sathir?”

 

The rat faery was very quiet as it herded Bartholomew down the corridor. No taunting, no threats. Bartholomew had expected it to begin the moment they were out of earshot of the study, but Jack Box's mouth remained clamped shut.

They walked down the curving staircase, toward the hall of the airship. The rat faery moved behind Bartholomew, claws scuttling, pinning his arm to his back.

“Mr. Lickerish isn't going to help you, you know.” Bartholomew's voice was sharp. “I don't know why you think he will. I don't know what's wrong with the lady in plum, but Mr. Lickerish doesn't care. He just keeps you to do things for him.”

“Shut up,” the rat faery spat, and yellow teeth pinched into Bartholomew's back, his wrists, and shoulders. “Shut up, boy, you don't know—”

Bartholomew wanted to cry with the pain, but he didn't. “He's not going to help you, can't you see? You're going to die when that door opens. You're going to die just like everyone else. Mr. Lickerish doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about anyone but himself.”

All at once the rat faery threw Bartholomew against the banister and collapsed, rolling and tumbling down the steps. Bartholomew watched it come to rest at the foot of the stairs, a wretched trembling mass.

He glanced back up the stairs.
Should I run?
Someone might be watching. Some little pisky peeking down from the chandeliers, or a wooden face inside the wainscoting.
And where would I run to?

Bartholomew approached the rat faery slowly.

“What is wrong with Melusine?” he asked. He tried to make his voice gentle. “If we stop Mr. Lickerish you can help her. That's the
only
way you can help her.”

The rat faery looked up at Bartholomew. Its face twisted in surprise, then suspicion, then confusion. Bartholomew thought it would say something, but its mouth just opened and closed over its uneven teeth.

“Who is she?” Bartholomew asked, stooping down next to him. “Who is Melusine?”

There was an instant when some of the rat faery's hardness came back into its face. Bartholomew flinched, sure it was going to get up again and drag him on. But the hardness was gone again as quickly as it had come, replaced by something Bartholomew had never seen in a face so inhuman. A wistful look, sad and faraway.

“I met her in Dublin,” it said, and its voice was a rasp in its throat. “She was shopping for ribbons on Nassau Street, and she was so fair. So fair. And I so ugly, watching from the shadows. I cast a spell on myself, a powerful glamour that in a wink made me the most handsome creature in all the world. I strolled up beside her and told her how pretty the purple ribbons would look with her hair. We began to talk. She introduced me to her parents and I was invited to dine with them. . . .

“We were going to be married in May. But the stupid maid . . . Silly superstitious thing with an iron ring on her finger night and day. Or perhaps not so silly. She saw through my magic from the start. She saw me for what I was, a horrid knot of rats slinking at her mistress's side. For a while she thought she was mad. Then she confided in the footman. The footman told the cook, the cook told the housekeeper, and eventually the tale reached the ears of Melusine's father. He was always such a kind man, even to me, and he loved his daughter very much. The rumor disturbed him. A faery hunter was sent for from Arklow, to divine whether there was magical deception at work in the house, and Melusine's father called her to him, told her of his fear. But I had spoken to her first. I turned her mind against him. She called him a liar and a heartless monster, and we fled together into a gathering storm, taking the ponies across the hill.”

There was a pause, and the airship went very still. The flames in the gas lamps flared and dimmed silently. Only the hum of the engines made any sound at all.

Bartholomew's mind was racing.
I don't have time for this. I need to find Mr. Jelliby, find Hettie before she is turned into some horrible door.
He wondered how strong the rat faery still was, what it would do if he tried to run. His fingers wrapped around a spindle in the banister. He could wrench it out, he thought, and beat the rats with it.

But then the faery was looking at him again, and its eyes were wet and deep and unbearably sad.

“We went to London,” it said, not really to Bartholomew. Not really to anyone. “We sold her jewels for wine, and danced until our feet were sore. I thought everything was going grandly, but not Melusine. Not my fair, fair Melusine. She missed her parents. She missed Ireland, and the high green hills. She is such a young thing, after all.” Bartholomew let his hand slip from the spindle. “And I knew then that she would never really be mine while the deception lasted. She didn't love me. The thing she loved was an illusion and a lie, and so one day I shed my glamour. I showed her what I was.”

The rat faery looked away. When it spoke again its voice was choked. “And she hated me. She hated me for my ugliness. She ran. Ran to the door, crying and screaming, but I couldn't let her go. I
couldn't.
I knew it would kill her. I knew the rats would eat into her and she would never be the same again, but how else was I to keep her with me?
I couldn't let her leave me!
” The rat faery jerked on the floor, as if all its many legs were hurtling in different directions. Then it curled around itself like a snail, hiding its head. “I met Mr. Lickerish then,” it whispered. “In the street in the night. He told me of his plan, how he needed someone to fetch him changelings. If the faery door were opened, he said, all would be well again. Magic would be strong in England and I would be able to keep Melusine from dying. I would be able to cast a glamour so strong and deep that not even the maid's iron ring could help her see through it. And all this . . .” He raised a rat-tail hand, and waved it blindly. “All this would seem like an evil dream. And so I did it all. Everything he asked of me.”

Bartholomew said nothing. He didn't like what he had heard. He wanted to find Hettie and he wanted to hate Jack Box. He wanted to think him a monster for all the pain he had caused. But a nasty voice had crept into Bartholomew's head and was saying,
A monster?
But he's just like you.
Just as ugly, just as selfish. You're no different from him. Wouldn't you kill a
million
people to save Hettie?

Bartholomew closed his eyes. “But Melusine,” he said, trying to sound calm. “She'll live now that you've left her. Bath is so far away. She'll be safe now.”

“Safe.” The faery's voice was a bare, rattling whisper. “Safe from me. Safe forever.”

Bartholomew stared at him.

“No one helped her. Not the police, or Mr. Lickerish, even though I begged him and did everything he asked of me. One day, she lasted, perhaps two. And then she died, all alone on that chair, in that white room under the earth.”

 

Mr. Lickerish spoke quickly into the brass speaking apparatus, excitement glimmering at the edge of his voice. “The greenwitch's elixir has arrived at last. Take Child Number Eleven down to the warehouse and give it to her. Make certain she drinks every drop. And then hurry. The sylphs will come quickly. You will have only minutes before the door begins to destroy the city. Hurry back to the
Moon
, and do not delay. I will need you in the world of tomorrow.” He set down the mouthpiece, nibbling thoughtfully at the end of his silk watch ribbon.

“Sathir?”
the faery butler's voice crackled through the device. “
Sathir,
are you there? Is there anything more you wish to say?”

Mr. Lickerish picked up the mouthpiece again. “Yes. Yes, I believe there is. Jack Box has become . . . unstable. He is on his way down to the warehouse as we speak. Make sure he stays there.” And without waiting for a reply he slammed the mouthpiece into its cradle.

 

The faery butler replaced the speaking apparatus slowly.

“Very well,” he said to no one at all, and shooting one last suspicious look about the room, he took Hettie by the hand and pulled her toward the door.

“Come along, half-blood. Are you thirsty? I imagine you must be parched.”

 

“I'm sorry she's dead,” Bartholomew said softly. In an odd way he really was sorry. She had always seemed a phantom and a witch, a symbol of all the evil that had intruded into his life. She had started it, walking into the alley and whisking away the Buddelbinster boy. But it hadn't really been her at all. When he had edged up to her under the eaves of the house on Old Crow Alley, that was when he had met the true Melusine. He had heard her soft voice and silly notions of valets and peaches and cream. He would never forget the shining pain in her eyes when she had seen the rat faery, racing across the cobbles toward her.
Tell Daddy I'm sorry,
she had said.
Tell Daddy I'm sorry.

If Bartholomew lived long enough, he would tell her father. He would find him and tell him how much Melusine had loved him in her last days, how much she had wanted to be home again.

Bartholomew knelt down next to Jack Box. He almost reached out and touched him. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He knotted his fist, and said, “You don't have to listen to Mr. Lickerish anymore. You don't have to hurt people. Do you know where my sister is? Could you take me to her? Please, sir. Please help me save her?”

For a moment Jack Box said nothing. His face was lost in the seething mass of hides and tails. The rats seemed to sense something was wrong. They were crawling over each other, eyes rolling back in their heads, yellow teeth chattering. For a moment Jack Box said nothing. Then, his voice muffled, “Why should I help you? Why should I help anyone now?”

Bartholomew dug his nails into his palms. “Because . . .” he stammered, but he didn't have an answer. Not then. All he could think of was Hettie, and her hand in his, and her stupid, unsnippable branches. “Just please help me? Please, please won't you help?”

A clank sounded in the hall and the hatch in the floor began to open, tearing a gaping hole in the warmth. Wind flew into the room, whistling around Bartholomew's ears. Then a door opened and closed in the corridor above. Footsteps beat the carpet.

Someone is coming.
Bartholomew half rose, ready to run.
We have to leave.
We have to leave
now.

But the rat faery only sat up a little and stared at Bartholomew, his black eyes pleading.

“You have to help me!” Bartholomew repeated desperately. “I don't know why, you just
have to
! My sister is going to die! Please won't you help?
”

Jack Box looked away. The rats were stirring into a frenzy, but the faery's face had gone very still, almost calm.

“No,” he said. The little word dropped like stone from his mouth. And then, dragging himself to the edge of the hatch, he slipped over it into the night. Bartholomew did not watch him fall. He stopped his ears against the cries of the rats and turned his face to the wall.

 

Mr. Lickerish had finished his apple. He set the core down and began picking out the seeds, placing them in a neat row on top of his desk. When he had completed the task to his satisfaction, he rang a servant's bell and ordered a glass of milk from the hunchbacked gnome. The milk arrived in due time, but instead of drinking it, Mr. Lickerish swept the apple seeds into his palm and dropped them into the glass. Then he went to the window and looked out, black satin cuffs crossed behind his back.

A faint tinkling made him turn. The room was empty. A clockwork bird stared out at nothing with its beady eyes. In the cup, a film had formed on top of the milk the way it always does when milk is mildly fresh. As Mr. Lickerish watched, the film turned into a skin. The skin grew thicker. And all of a sudden the glass tipped over and a blue-white gobbet of milk plopped out onto the smooth top of the desk. It jiggled toward the edge. Mr. Lickerish caught it in his hand and held it up to his face. His mouth stretched across his sharp teeth in a gleaming smile. Faintly he could see the apple seeds in the center of the milk, little veins and lungs and a heart all sprouting out from them. Then two seeds popped forward as its eyes, and it tottered up on a pair of stemlike legs. It had a huge mouth that hung open, wide and bare and empty.

“Charming,” Mr. Lickerish said, still smiling. “You will be my eyes for a little while, imp. Hurry down to the warehouse and keep watch. Whatever you see, I will see, and whatever I say, you are to say. Do you understand that?”

The gobbet of milk stared at Mr. Lickerish, its apple-seed eyes somewhat mournful. It nodded slowly. Then it hopped down from the faery's hand and wobbled off across the floorboards toward the door.

 

Mr. Jelliby found Bartholomew in the airship's hall, trying to hide himself under the carpets. The hatch was open. It was a clear, cold night, and the city spread away forever. The streets made a glowing spider's web, Mayfair and High Holborn bright with the fierce lights of flame faeries, while the poorer streets were only gaslit threads, dim and flickering, or not lit at all. The river cut it all in half, sluggish and black, broken only by the occasional lantern of a corpse boat.