“You can let me go. I won’t run after them,” I said flatly. The absence of my minders left me in despair. What if they never returned? The cool of the huge hall dimpled my flesh and I shivered.
“We’ll find a way to fix what’s wrong, Winnie. I promise.” Smithy’s grip relaxed and I squirmed free, pivoting angrily to confront him.
“You’d better find that way fast, or it’ll be too late for Bea and Fortescue and Mrs Paget.” My voice hitched. “You should have agreed with me, Vegas.” I prodded the hardness of his chest. He didn’t raise a hand to stop me, taking small rearward steps on each shove. “We could have argued together against their going out on this mad mission to find Hugo. They’re sick and elderly! What chance do they have in a confrontation?” Had Anathema come to collect their wayward assassin? Or did my guardians face some other ill-defined threat?
Smith visibly wilted. “Bea says my task above any other is to protect you and keep you from harm—”
The warehouse proximity alert burst awake to drown him out. We both stood transfixed by the door’s shiny facade, as if live cobras might writhe from the exterior at any moment. Metal seemed too puny against shadowy supernatural forces. I shuddered to think of tiny Mrs Paget on the opposite side, totally exposed and helpless.
“Come on.” Smith snatched my wrist, before I could act on instinct and dive for the door. He dragged me bodily behind him through the collection.
“You’re overreacting, Smith,” I yelled above the bleat of the siren, striving to believe my own fib. It was that or panic, which was obviously a sub-par option. “Vagrants sometimes shelter in the entranceway.” I jogged to keep from tripping. “Or mistake it for a urinal.”
He grunted sceptically and kept us barrelling through the obstacle course at a rapid pace. We reached the stairs.
“Where are we going?”
“Surveillance suite. To check for vagrants.”
“I know where it is, Smith. I can walk on my own.”
“Fine,” he said, thin-lipped.
He pressed himself to the wall at the base of the stairs, indicating I go on up ahead so he could block any attempt at escape. We would need to work on those trust issues.
The small surveillance suite was on the same floor as the apartments, furthest from the kitchen and in the corner of the balcony opposite the entrance. I stomped inside, pursued by an even grumpier Smith. We seated ourselves in front of a bank of monitors, which showed both the exterior and interior of the warehouse from different perspectives.
I flicked the alert off and blissful silence ensued. Resetting the alarm from the console desk, Smith remotely panned the camera that covered a small section of street surrounding the porch and recessed doorway.
“See,” I said with a tone of satisfaction. “Empty.”
He ignored me and leaned in close to the screens, rewinding and slowly forwarding the footage from a few minutes earlier. We watched my guardians’ progress a short distance along the alleyway, the cats streaking ahead, before their images simply faded. I blinked in confusion. Rain pelted down, whipped in gusts funnelled by the buildings. Maybe the summer storm had tricked my senses.
“Did you see that?” I asked Smith. “They just sort of vanished.”
My qualms returned. Maybe Mrs Paget had actually tricked me with some type of optical illusion? It was a desperate grab at a last splinter of reason. I was unable to submit entirely to the truth Hugo had told me to seek in my heart. Yet now my hyper-aware perceptions: sight, and hearing, and navigating easily in a pitch-black warren of hallways made sense.
Hugo had known what I was. The … Keeper. That fact had probably put him in terrible danger when he’d gone searching for me. I could not deal with the consequences – whatever foul thing happened to him was my fault. Even worse, my reckless disobedience had compelled my guardians to follow him out onto the forbidding streets.
Smithy nodded in reply without breaking focus, irritably pushing blond strands from his eyes. I yearned to be more like him, sitting there assessing the situation, ready for action without obsessing over matters he could not change. Shadows seethed in the falling gloom. The relief my guardians had at least made it safely from whoever had triggered the alert was short-lived. The more I squinted, the more alive the abnormal blackness became. It was as though a fist unfurled and flexed at the extremity of my vision.
Smith stiffened. “That’s the silhouette of a person.”
He pointed, tracing an outline on the screen. The smoky blob was tricky to make out in the grey drear, but could have been a hooded individual hovering at the edge of the camera’s range.
“It’s a tad warm for winter sweats at this time of year. We’re stressed out and imagining things,” I reasoned, frantic in my opposition.
Smithy swivelled to me in his chair. This was not the carefree boy I’d come to know, whose characteristic response used to be an indifferent shrug.
“Why are you making this so hard, Bear? Whoever’s out there, they aren’t known to us and shouldn’t be loitering around your front door. Do you really believe the timing is a coincidence? I think we’re in deep trouble.”
I agreed with him, but said instead. “You don’t want to know what I believe.” I didn’t want to believe it, either.
As soon as Smithy’s attention left the blurred image, it immediately clarified. A face stared up at me from the display, more distinct in this instant than the first time I’d seen him crashing to a halt on the floor of Raphaela’s study. In the actual flesh, he was even more rapturously beautiful. Time stretched again, suspending the second until it seemed like minutes.
“Seth,” I breathed.
“I am coming for you, Keeper,” he sneered. A yell of shock strangled in my throat. How could he possibly know where we lived?
His arctic blue eyes entranced. His gaze probed my deepest secrets until a blush crept the length of my body. With it came goosebumps, most obvious through my stretched t-shirt. I reflexively crossed my arms over my incriminating chest. Slithery fingers fondled and taunted, a furnace inside blazing against my will. If Smith was sensuous lay-me-down-in-a-big-brass-feather-bed, Seth was brute passion take-me-against-the-wall-of-an-alley. And then he was gone as suddenly as he appeared, his image replaced by true static. Time snapped back like elastic.
Grabbing me by the shoulders, Smithy loomed close. “Him?” I nodded weakly. “How does he know where you are?” He echoed my silent question, his jaw clenched. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted that bastard Hugo. We need weapons.”
“Seth sided with Raphaela. Finesse tortured him. Surely he’s not a threat to us?”
“Maybe not us.” Smith looked at me with loaded urgency. “You. Where do your guardians sleep?”
He yanked me from my seat and carted me physically out the door, one arm wrapping my waist. I was rapidly tiring of this mode of transport. But Smith’s concern also triggered deep shame, weakening any resistance I could muster.
Seth touched me in ways he shouldn’t, yet how was I to blame? How could I fight him when he hadn’t even been in the room? His weapon was lust from a distance and he wielded it with perfect precision. The occasion to read that diary had long since passed. I needed to get hold of it and find out exactly who or what we were dealing with.
The passage we negotiated housed Fortescue and Mrs Paget’s rooms, jutting towards the front of our building at a right angle from the entrance below. “Straight ahead, the third and fourth doors along.”
While we trundled past two storage rooms, sealed doors keeping the worst of Bea’s gruesome collection safely hidden, Smithy fumbled through the Velcro pocket of his board shorts, wrenching out my mobile phone.
“Is that where they keep their guns?”
“What?” I yelped. “Before today, I didn’t even know my guardians had any. And do you know how to use one without accidentally shooting a kneecap?”
A thought nagged just beyond my awareness. Something to do with weapons, but what? He propelled me along, waving the phone up high like the Statue of Liberty.
“I’m calling Aunt Bea. She has to know he’s here.” He banged the mobile against his thigh, waving it angrily about some more. “No signal,” he muttered. “The same as last time at the studio.” Smithy shoved the phone back in his pocket. “We’re on our own.”
“It could be the storm?” I said with slim hope.
“Have you ever been in your minders’ rooms?” We stopped outside Fortescue’s thick wooden door, shut fast, and he peered down at me.
“Uh-uh. When I was seven years old, I accidentally got locked in the portable sensory deprivation chamber and almost suffocated. It’s why I’m claustrophobic. So ever since we’ve had rooms that I’m restricted from because they contain dangerous items.” And other rooms I refused to visit because of my fear of enclosed spaces beneath tonnes of crushing earth.
Smithy nodded triumphantly. “That’s exactly where they keep their guns.”
Thoughts scrambled in my head, a single desperate hope popping to the forefront. “Seth can’t get in here. We’re okay if we stay inside.”
“I’m not taking any chances. And there’s definitely one place Fortescue told me to go to if we were ever threatened. But I’m not hiding you down there unarmed.” Down? My tummy constricted. He smiled grimly and flourished his hand like a game show host. “Lead the way, sulky-pants.”
I turned the knob, reefing open the door with false bravado. “I’ll show you sulky-pants.”
“Not your best outfit. I prefer the pink lacy version.”
“Funny,” I said.
“Not trying to be funny, just honest.”
I offered a disparaging “Hmph.” to cover my blush. We stepped through into the gloom, delaying in the doorway as our vision adjusted. My curiosity ignited, temporarily overriding any worries about wolves on my porch, or loved ones at risk, or descents below ground.
Fortescue’s apartment made a lie of every opinion I’d ever formed about him. Instead of monk-like austerity, my butler favoured visual overload. His rooms were decorated with intricately embroidered tapestries lining three walls; utterly astounding copies of famous paintings, finely wrought in richly coloured thread.
Smithy gaped as he circled the hangings, barely pausing long enough in his search to check off their titles. I knew the artist in him was craving a chance to linger. The fact he didn’t was a more telling sign of our dire situation than anything else.
“Rubens, The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. Titian, Sacred and Profane Love. Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam. Delacroix, Algerian Women. Others I don’t recognise. Who could have done these? They’re masterpieces.”
Encased manuscripts of unknown origin adorned the fourth wall, in languages and scripts I’d never seen. University testamurs lined one side. Two were post-doctoral degrees from Oxford – Ancient Languages and Medieval History – and one from MIT in Metallurgy.
“Smart,” Smith said. “Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the best in the world. I have a couple of friends on scholarship there.”
The furniture was old, of dark cherry wood, the cushions and covers in maroon velvet. Smith pulled out drawers, rifling the contents. Ancient books lay open on the floor and scattered across bedside tables. A violin rested on a stand with notations for a complex composition I could not identify next to it. A sitting room and bathroom led off from the main living area.
“Winnie, behind the walls.”
Smith pressed his face against a narrow strip of plaster next to an ornate armoire. The tapestries hung out from the wall on brackets, making a cavity at the rear of Fortescue’s bedhead. I tentatively peeked behind an arras. The beauty shielded the viciousness hidden at their backs. Double-edged axes, barbed spears, razored discuses, swords, daggers and blades of infinite description competed for the prize of most barbaric.
“Will one of these do?” I asked.
Smith lifted an eyebrow, moving to rummage hastily through the wardrobe. “You expect me to hack Seth to death with an axe?”
“No!” Of course it was a spectacularly stupid question. “I don’t know what to expect. I’m new at this.” And that thought about weaponry tried to resurface again, stubbornly just out of mental reach.
“Ditto. His cupboard is full of old military uniforms in vacuum wrapping.”
I joined Smith. Some were so antique, they looked as though they’d collapse on contact. “They can’t be Fortescue’s, surely? I mean, I know he’s old, but … Why has he got all these gross weapons?”
He looked over at me with a grimace. “Maybe he likes collecting torture stuff too?”
The sitting room was far less fancy than the outer bedroom, with a well-worn leather recliner occupying a corner, a remote control on the armrest. There was an expensive high-tech stereo built into one wall devoted to an extensive collection of jazz and classical. I used the remote to click on the stereo and a song called ‘Danse Macabre’ by Camille Saint-Saëns lit the digital display.
“Moving on.” Smith began to steer me from the room to the sounds of playful flute and lilting deep-throated cello.
“Wait.” A lavishly carved buffet sat along a wall just inside the door leading to the outer area. Decanters cluttered its top, next to a silver tray and three delicate short-stemmed glasses. I popped the cork on one bottle and sniffed in the heady aroma of cinnamon and berries. It was strong stuff, my eyes watered. “I didn’t even know he drank.”
“I could do with a stiff one right now.”
We headed out towards Mrs Paget’s suite, and I grew more disappointed at myself with every step. “Smithy, how could I be so blind?” I said bitterly. “How could I live with people I love and have no clue about who they really are? I don’t feel like I know them at all.”
He glanced at me with sympathy as we arrived at her entrance. “It’s usually a fairly standard modern attitude. We’re all so wrapped up in our own deals, we forget to really see anything else.” Smithy stepped closer and draped an arm across my shoulder to give me an affectionate squeeze. “Or pay attention to anyone except ourselves. But in your case?” He shook his head, reaching to push open the door. “Who’d ever believe you live in a den of aging assassins? Let alone the other stuff. Don’t blame yourself for trying to hang on as tight as possible to normal, Bear. Shall we?”
I sighed. The adrenalin of Seth’s appearance had faded and I began to question if it had really happened at all. All this rushing about seemed silly when the real issue was how to help Bea and Fortescue and Mrs Paget. Surely, there was some way to fix their condition.
“Do we have to, Smith? Seth’s assault on the warehouse seems fairly sluggish. I need to read that diary and see if there’s a way to stop my guardians’ accelerated aging.”
“Reading can wait until we’re in the safe room.” His sympathy evaporated. “That douche is lulling you into a false sense of security before he pounces. Now, stop procrastinating and help me find a gun.”
Douche? Smith’s vehemence seemed out of proportion to what we knew of Seth. Did he somehow understand what Seth could do to me from afar? The shame amplified. And we were back to guns.
“Silly,” I mumbled. “Can you even kill … whatever he is with a gun?”
“No idea. I’m improvising,” he said in a strange tone that immediately grabbed my attention. I followed his gaze over the room from the threshold.
The refined, flowery decor of Laura Ashley celebrated Mrs Paget’s green thumb: wallpaper, bedspread, cushions, curtains, all dotted with tiny pastel blooms in rainbow colours. The room was jammed with beautiful orchids, a hothouse of perfume and vibrancy. But that was not what had him stunned.
I cautiously pushed further inside, following his gaze. Lining the walls or propped on shelves were glass-fronted, fat frames containing dried plants, seeds and beans, all neatly labelled in tiny handwriting.
“Mrs Paget favours poisons,” he said.
“Poisons?” I frowned. “How do you know they’re not exotic food ingredients? Mrs Paget loves to cook.”
“Oh, they’re exotic all right. But it would be better to go hungry if she made you something with this lot. Take that one.” He pointed to the picture-box over my right shoulder where globes of tiny, white stellate flowers were pressed on black paper.
“Pretty. Looks innocent enough.”
He made his ‘oh really’ face, which meant I was about to seem very dumb. “Hemlock. Coniine extracted from that species was used to execute Socrates.”
“Ahh,” I nodded for want of a better response. “Well, it’s still pretty. I suppose death by toxin’s not worse than Fortescue’s preference for dismemberment.”
Smithy made a funny little choking sound. Recipes of a far more lethal type than I was used to cooking with Mrs Paget were scrawled in white crayon next to their preserved source. I listed them out loud, moving from one to the next along the wall over her dresser.
“Oxalic acid from boiled rhubarb leaves. Five kilograms of leaves yields twenty-five grams to cause death. Remind me to steer clear of her rhubarb pie. Atropine from belladonna, colchicine from the meadow saffron.”
Tucked next to the macabre display, she had degrees in Biochemistry, Computer Engineering and Medicine. Like Fortescue, she had a lounge off her main bedroom. It was set up as a study with a state-of-the-art network of computer towers.
“They have their own internet hub,” Smithy said. On the other side of the room now, he inspected shelves of powders, crystals and colourful liquids in catalogued jars or stoppered bottles, no doubt waiting patiently until the release of their deadly secrets.
“It would be easy to conceal their digital signal across the web,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “Do you know, if you combine nitric and sulphuric acids with glycerine, it makes nitro-glycerine? A very unstable explosive.” Smithy perused labels. “And that nitre, sulphur and naphtha were used to make Greek fire in the seventh century? It’s so flammable, anything it touches goes up nearly instantly.”
“No. More to the point, how do you know?”
He squatted to search under Mrs Paget’s bed, his reply slightly muffled by the thick quilt. “I’m useless at chemistry, except for bronze casting. In senior Science I was responsible for two explosions and the Hazmat boys had to evacuate the building so many times when I attended we were on a first-name basis.” His head popped up over the side and then the rest of him. “A call-out to my high school became known as a Code Vegas. I can also name Bea’s gun and the calibre bullets it uses.”
I stared at him. “They don’t teach that at art school.”
“Billie,” he said. “Everything she ever learned about combat or weapons filtered into my brain as soon as she died. Like a Matrix download. Poisons too.”
Smithy had acquired unpractised talents, similar to my own sudden aptitude with ancient languages. Mrs Paget’s genius on the other hand, was well evolved.
Our gaze held across her pretty, killer room. “Anything else I don’t want to know, but should?”
“Just that I have a very bad feeling, one that’s getting worse every minute. It looks as if Bea’s the boss of weapons invented after the Dark Ages. Come on. I need to get you to safety.”
A snide voice in my brain asked safety from whom? My minders were as dangerous, if not more so, than any of the strangers they’d warned me about when I was a little girl.
