13

“I THINK we should go to the theater,” Sarah said suddenly, over breakfast.

“What, now? Today? Why?” Nan looked up from her eggs, and Neville took the opportunity to steal the bite off her fork. He flapped off with it, cackling. She sighed. She’d given him eggs . . . but evidently stolen food tasted better.

“Because we’ve been working our minds into a froth, trying to get even a glimmer of an idea about these abductions,” Sarah replied, giving Grey a piece of buttered toast before the parrot could follow Neville’s example and steal something. “We’ve been eating, drinking, breathing, and even dreaming about this problem, and we need to give our minds a rest. Hamlet is playing, and I’ve never seen it on the stage, I’ve only read it.”

Nan rubbed her temple as she considered the idea. It had merit. She’d been thinking in circles for at least two days. There was no news from Sherlock, none from John and Mary, and Memsa’b’s visit to the hospital had only led to the same conclusion that Nan had come to—that the two girls were completely soulless, which was absolutely of no use whatsoever. The only references to being unensouled any of them had found thus far were in folk and fairy tales and fanciful theatrical productions. None of these were in the least helpful, since people without souls in such things were perfectly able to think and act—they just did so with no morals whatsoever.

“Well, I hate to admit it, but we’re getting nowhere,” she said. “All we know for certain is where and when the girls were taken, and where and when they were found. The fact that they were found in Battersea suggests their abductor took them somewhere about there, but we can’t search five boroughs for a magician. It would be like asking a blind man to search for a red marble in a bowl full of white marbles.”

“I’m certain Sherlock is doing something clever about that,” Sarah replied. “Really, when it comes to searching the non-magical aspects of this case, it should be left up to him. He is the detective, he has the practice, the skills, and most of all the knowledge of what clues to look for. Robin is looking for the magician, and he and John and Mary are best suited to that. What we need to do is to figure out what we, and we alone, can do. We already know what we can’t. And for that, we need to give our minds a rest. And I think the theater is the best way to do that. If we try to read, we’ll just keep interrupting ourselves, fretting, and losing track of the story we’re reading. At least, I know I will. And if we listen to a concert, I am certain I won’t be able to concentrate on it. We need a complete distraction.”

“All right,” Nan agreed. “The theater it is.”

After no more visions from Amelia—and time for Amelia to get better acquainted with Memsa’b—they had returned to their flat for a few days. Amelia was feeling braver, and more confident, after that last foray into—wherever it was the visions had taken her. And she had agreed to let Memsa’b accompany her the next time it happened. Her room was already next to Memsa’b’s, and thus far, the visions had all occurred shortly after her usual bedtime. So, it had been decided that Memsa’b would simply stay up a little while longer, reading, and if nothing happened by midnight, go to bed. Sahib had agreed to let her sleep late and take over any of her morning duties.

Nan looked over her shoulder at Neville, who had finished his stolen beakful of egg and was now eating his own food. “Do you two have any objection to us going to the theater this afternoon?” she asked.

Neville looked up, and shook his head side to side. Grey swallowed what she had just picked out of her bowl and said, “Go play.”

“I believe we have permission,” Sarah said wryly, with one raised eyebrow.

It struck Nan then that before all this started, Sarah would have chuckled at that—and that neither of them had laughed since . . . well, since they’d seen the first victims. But how can we laugh when we know there is someone, something, out there that can rip the soul out of someone’s body? Knowing that . . . gets between me and everything else going on. It feels wrong doing anything except concentrating on the problem. It was probably just as well that Sarah’s choice of play was Hamlet, a tragedy. It wouldn’t have felt right, going to see Gilbert and Sullivan or something of the sort.

Feeling as if she needed to earn her brief respite from thinking about the problem, she applied herself grimly to it after breakfast and the usual chores, plowing through several desperately dreary tomes sent over by Lord Alderscroft from the White Lodge library; these were mostly dry and erudite treatises on obscure religions. They didn’t help either.

The two of them set off with a word to Mrs. Horace that they were going out and would be back by supper. Snow threatened, but so far was holding off. As they walked far enough to a ’bus stop and caught an omnibus, Nan found her spirits lifting a little at the prospect of getting away for a few hours. And immediately felt mingled relief and shame. Relief, that they were at least leaving the insoluble problem for one wretched afternoon . . . and shame that she was feeling relief.

Blast it, she thought, pulling her cloak tightly around her in the unheated ’bus. It’s not as if we’re going there with the intent to get pleasure out of it! We’re going to stop our heads from going in circles for a little while! There’s no shame in that!

She wished she had a mind like Sherlock’s in that moment—a mind that actually enjoyed teasing apart impossible things until he got to a solution, a mind that found the apparently insoluble to be stimulating. There didn’t seem to be any challenge so great that Holmes didn’t welcome it. But then . . . then my mind would be buzzing in aimless circles like his does when he doesn’t have a problem to solve, and his solution for that is cocaine . . . no, perhaps that is more of a curse than a blessing.

At matinee prices they could afford to splurge on good tickets, and so they did. They had arrived just as the box office opened, and so they were in good time to settle into very good seats in the dress circle before anyone else was in that row. The seats weren’t as plush as the ones in the boxes, of course, but they were a lot better than the ones in the balcony, and Nan felt a glimmer of pleasant anticipation. They both examined their programmes critically.

“Oh dear,” Sarah said, her brows creased as she encountered something in the programme.

“What?” Nan wanted to know. Surely there isn’t anything in an innocuous booklet to cause her to make that face.

“Well . . . we’ve got a very good Ophelia and Horatio, and quite sound actors for the other roles—but the Hamlet is an understudy. Not just that, but the third understudy.” Sarah’s mouth twisted wryly. “I fear the worst.”

“Well, he can’t be that bad, can he?” Nan replied, and clapped her hand to her mouth the moment the words came out of it. Because of course, now that she’d challenged Fate, fickle Fate would certainly take notice and prove her wrong. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Sarah sighed. “No. You shouldn’t.”

“Do you know anything about him?” Nan asked with trepidation. Perhaps Fate hadn’t noticed her blunder yet.

“No,” Sarah replied, a little grimly. “Well, the very worst that will happen is that either this will turn into a farce, or the producer will pull him and put the Ghost into his costume. I’d almost rather see a septuagenarian Hamlet than a terrible Hamlet.” Then her grim expression turned a little lighter. “If it turns into a farce, we can whisper rude things to each other and laugh at what are supposed to be the most serious parts. That should be ample punishment for him.”

It appeared, as the seats filled in around them, from the murmurings of their fellow audience members, that the rest of the audience, at least those down here in the dress circle, shared Sarah’s trepidations. And when the curtain came up—

—the Hamlet was every bit as dreadful as they’d feared.

Halfway through the first act, Nan decided that she had seen better acting at the Panto before Christmas than that man was producing in what was ostensibly a serious production. It was past belief. It was well past farce. In fact, Nan finally decided that since the tickets were paid for, she would just sit back and marvel at just how terrible it was—and, as Sarah had suggested, giggle at the places where he was overacting the worst. Perhaps she could get other audience members to share in her laughter. There was a certain sardonic pleasure in it—and it certainly was a distraction from their problem.

When the first interval came, and people began moving to the lobby for refreshment, she was about to ask Sarah about doing the same when—

She felt it. A familiar brush of cold, calculating evil. A flash of a cold, bleak London, where the trees were barren, but there were living things that ached with hatred, and behind it all was a savage, arrogant intelligence with a hunger great enough to devour a world. This was certainly the same ominous presence she had sensed in Amelia’s visions!

Her head snapped up like a hound that has caught a scent, but in the next moment, it was gone, leaving no trace of itself behind. As if the thing knew she had sensed it, and vanished out of her world and back into its own.

“What?” Sarah asked urgently, as Nan cursed under her breath and sent her mind skimming through all the others in the theater, hoping to find a glimmer of what had summoned the thing.

“I thought I felt that . . . intelligence behind Amelia’s visions,” she whispered back. “It’s gone now, but . . . I wonder if I felt it hunting?”

“The places it has hunted before were a mostly deserted decent street, a gallery . . . all places where a girl should feel perfectly safe. So a theater matinee would be another place a respectable young woman could go without a second thought,” Sarah replied, now sounding quite as concerned as Nan felt. “I don’t think you’re being alarmist. Did you get any sense of direction, where it was, or who it was looking at?”

Nan shook her head, regretfully. “No, nothing. But if it’s hunting, I might get another brush of it, if I keep my inner eye open. And I will,” she added grimly, and settled down in her seat, closing her eyes. So much for Hamlet.

Indeed, she was so intent on sniffing out the least little hint of that presence that she was scarcely aware of a word of the second or third act. If that thing was still lurking about, she didn’t want to leave her own mind open to it, so she had to skulk behind her shields. Which made her able to sense things only obliquely, and see nothing of the thoughts of those beyond her immediate area. Certainly she couldn’t read the thoughts of anyone in the first balcony, much less the second. But then, it was nothing human she was looking for; the icy alienness of it should shout out to her without her needing to be able to read thoughts.

The audience responded only tepidly when the curtain came down, so there was only one curtain call, during which Nan made a last scan for the cold aura of the hunter and found nothing. She was both frustrated and angry as they made their way to the street. Frustrated, because of her lack of success. Angry—well at herself. If that had been a hint of whatever had been preying on those girls, she had let it get away. I should have found a way to track it! Damn and blast it all!

They fetched their cloaks and shuffled out with the rest of the crowd into the late afternoon gloom—it was overcast, and the snow that had been threatening was coming down in earnest. If it kept up like this, there’d be several inches on the ground by morning.

Sarah hailed a cab, and Nan was not disposed to object, both because snow was coming down quite thickly, and because there would be no chance to talk in private in a ’bus. Despite the crush of other people wanting to get out of the snow as well, Sarah managed to catch the eye of a young fellow, who grinned at her and beckoned them over, waving off several other would-be riders.

When they were both tucked into the hansom and the doors were closed, Sarah turned to her with concern. “I know that look on your face, Nan, and you are not to blame yourself!”

“And why not?” she said, tightly. “I sensed the damn thing, and now we know it’s out there hunting, if it hasn’t already found a victim. I sensed it, and I wasn’t fast enough; I couldn’t keep track of it!” she snapped.

“Because it’s magic. I’m sure of it! And what do we know of magic, really?” Sarah countered forcefully. “Only what we’ve seen others doing! Frankly I think you’re lucky you sensed it at all. It probably wasn’t aware that you—or anyone—could. It either withdrew quickly, or hid itself in a way you couldn’t possibly hope to penetrate. Being angry at yourself for losing it makes as much sense as being angry that you can’t track a tiger like Karamjit can. We can’t do everything, Nan, no one can.”

For once, Sarah’s admonishments got to her. She nodded.

Seeing that her words were having an impact, Sarah’s tone softened. “Now what we can do is what we’re going to do. We’re going to stop at John and Mary’s and leave a message for them, then we’re going home and tell Durwin to tell Robin we think the thing was on the hunt today and may have already found a victim. Nan, be sensible! Would you try wrestling with a fire hose if you saw a house on fire and there were already firemen about? The smart thing, the only thing to do is make sure people who can do something are on the alert.”

Nan sighed, and some more of the anger at herself ran out. Though not the frustration. “When you put it that way . . . no.”

“Then see if you have a pencil in your purse. I know I have paper, but I didn’t bring a pencil with me,” Sarah said, with great practicality.

Nan hunted among the pennies and odd buttons and a peppermint or two at the bottom of her purse and did come up with the stub of a pencil. Armed with these, when the cab reached 221 Baker Street, Sarah popped out of the cab and ran in. She was gone longer than it would have taken to write a note, so Nan surmised she’d found one or both of the Elemental Masters in.

When she finally emerged, she paused long enough to give some instructions to the cabby and flung herself into the cab precipitously. She didn’t even have a chance to get the door shut before the cab lurched off. She and Nan both had to lean out together and pull the door shut with a slam.

“I told him there was a florin in it if he got us home as fast as the traffic and his horse could take us,” she told Nan, as they both settled back into the seat. “John is at his surgery, Mary was in. I explained what you had sensed to her. She agrees there is great cause for alarm. She’s going to get John and they are going straight to Lord Alderscroft. They are going to convene as many of the White Lodge tonight as they can, in hopes of finding something, or even stopping this thing.”

It was evident that this cabby knew every backstreet in London like the lines of his own hand. He didn’t send the horse into a careening gallop—that would be bad for the horse in these conditions, not to mention foolhardy with regards to pedestrians—but he kept the beast at a brisk trot and occasionally broke into a canter when he cut down a particularly quiet lane. It was an agony, every moment that passed in which she hadn’t been able to tell Robin or Memsa’b that the monster was abroad made her more frantic to get home. She kept reflexively checking the pendant watch around her neck. Florin or not, Nan hadn’t really had much hope for speed, but this young man pulled the cab up in front of their door in roughly half the time she had expected. Nan flung herself out of the cab and let Sarah pay the driver; she ran in the front door and up the stairs, pausing only to unlock the door and throwing herself through the door as soon as she got it open. “Durwin!” she cried as soon as she got inside. “It’s an emergency!”

Durwin darted out of the bird room, skidded to a halt at her feet, and saluted. “Yes, milady!” he replied. “I be ready! Gi’ me yer orders!”

“Get to Robin Goodfellow immediately. I felt that—that presence that Amelia and I felt in her visions—hunting in the real world when we were in the theater. It vanished as soon as I sensed it, and I think it felt me and knew I had identified it. But I am sure it didn’t stop hunting for a little thing like that; I’m positive it just went somewhere else to hunt. Once you’ve informed Robin, tell Memsa’b the same, and that I am sure Amelia will need her tonight and that she must glean whatever information she can when Amelia has a vision. Then come back, quickly, especially if you have any messages.” Nan paused for breath, and before she could say anything else, Durwin saluted again.

“Tell the Great One the monster is a-hunt in Londinium. Tell the Lady the same. Come back with messages,” he replied, as brisk as any Army messenger.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, and before she could say anything else, he vanished. She collapsed into a chair, feeling breathless and drained. A few moments later, Sarah came running up the stairs.

“Durwin?” she asked, looking around as if she expected to see him still there.

“Is gone. He’s . . .” Nan cast her hands in the air. “. . . amazing. One would think he’d been a messenger all his life. Now . . . I suppose we wait.”

“That’s the hardest part,” Sarah replied and motioned to her to get up. “We might as well get out of our things and hang them up to dry.”

Just as they’d done so, there was a tapping on the door, and Mrs. Horace called, “I’ve got your supper, if you’ve a mind to it. I ’eard you running up the stairs. Is everything all right?”

Nan opened the door, and their landlady bought in a tray laden with covered dishes. “We just wanted to get in out of that snow and into the warmth, Mrs. Horace,” she lied. “We practically perished of cold in the cab. The play was terrible,” she added, by way of a distraction.

“Oh, it’s no night fit for man nor beast,” Mrs. Horace agreed, setting the tray down. “I’ve more than half a mind to go to bed early where it’s warm and cozy, so I thought I’d bring up your supper as soon as I heard you come in.”

“That was lovely of you, thank you,” Sarah told her. Somehow—Nan was not sure how—Sarah managed to chitchat with their landlady in an absolutely natural manner until Mrs. Horace was quite sure they were all right. When she had satisfied herself, Mrs. Horace beamed at them and took herself briskly out. Nan closed the door behind her with relief.

“I don’t think I can eat a bite,” she fretted. “I—”

“Durwin, reporting with messages, milady!” said a voice coming from behind her at about the level of her knee.

She whirled. There he was, solemn-faced and earnest. She could have kissed him. To have him back—at least now she could be certain that anyone who could do anything about the situation was on alert.

“What have you got for us, Durwin?” Sarah asked, before Nan could gather her wits.

“The Great One’s been told, milady, and he’s rousing those who can bear Londinium to make search tonight. And the Lady of the Manor’s been told, and Roan as well. There’s more, that the Great One told me to tell ye. Just in case the thing might come a-calling, on account of the Seer being able to get a look into its realm and all, the Great One’s setting a guard on the Manor. All Four Elements are on the watch.” He peered up at Nan anxiously. “Do ye think it might come here? My sword’s yours, milady.” And to prove his point, he pulled a sword that was probably the size of a letter-opener out of a sheath at his belt.

Nan shook her head. “I think it was anxious to escape notice,” she replied. “It’s powerful in its own realm, I don’t think it’s all that strong in ours yet. And in any case, it would be looking for me where I sensed it—at the theater. We’re quite far from there.”

Durwin’s face wrinkled in an expression of deepest concern. “All the same, milady, if ye’ll take the word of a hob what’s seen a thing or two, ye shouldn’t attract its attention. It’s a magic thing, according to the Great One, and ye’ve got no magic. My sword’s yers, and I can call on more to help us at need.”

Sarah gave Nan a look, as if to say And what did I tell you? Nan thought about objecting that they could take care of themselves, given that she and Neville could invoke the Celtic Warrior and her Protector . . . then remembered the horrid creature in the long-abandoned house in Berkeley Square. If it hadn’t been for the fact that everyone, John and Mary, Memsa’b and Sahib, Karamjit and Agansing and Selim as well as she, Sarah, Neville, and Grey, had all been working together, they would never have trapped it. What’s more, they hadn’t actually defeated it, they had only trapped it, and sent the trap to the Water Elementals to be buried in the deepest part of the ocean.

The five of us have about as much chance of defeating this thing without the help of magicians as we have of flying to the moon and back. We’d better concentrate on making sure that if this thing decides to look for us, it can’t find us.

“You’re right, Durwin,” she sighed as the birds came flying into the room to take their places on their stands. She gestured helplessly. “I hate this, but you’re right. It’s maddening to know something horrible is going to happen to some poor girl tonight and not be able to do anything about it.”

Durwin sheathed his sword and took off his soft, pointed hat, scrunching it in his hands. “I know what you mean, milady. But this’s Londinium. There’s terrible things happening to girls all over this city tonight, there were terrible things happening last night, and there will be terrible things happening on the morrow. And to men, and little chillern, too. And ye can’t do anything about those, either. We can only do what’s in our strenth, don’t ye see? We just have to make sure we do what’s in our strenth.”

“He’s got you there,” Sarah pointed out. “Come and eat, you’re not going to do anyone any good if you’re weak and irritable from hunger.”

Her friend went over to the table and took the lid off the largest dish—a bowl, really—and the heavenly scent of Mrs. Horace’s Irish stew filled the room. Nan’s stomach growled involuntarily.

And Durwin licked his lips, and looked longingly in the direction of the table. He was too small to see what was on the table, but he could certainly smell it as well as either of them.

“Would it be against the rules for you to eat with us, Durwin?” Nan asked on impulse. “Just this once. Seeing as we have a sort of emergency and you might need to carry messages again, or help us in some other way.”

Durwin’s face screwed up with concern for a moment, but then he relaxed. “Seeing as ye might need me. And seeing as ye’re special to the Great One. Why, ye’re honorary Folk, ye are! Haven’t ye been given leave to come and go and look and know?”

“Yes we have,” Nan assured him. “Let me get some books for you to sit on.”

She piled those huge, dull tomes that had proven so useless onto the seat of the chair Suki usually used when she was home, making a second seat for him so he could reach the table. At least now they’re of some use, she thought. Mrs. Horace had, of course, only brought plates for two, but with a bit of juggling and some creative use of what they had, everyone had something to eat out of. And even though moments before Nan had been certain she couldn’t eat a bite, by the time supper was over, everything was gone, and Durwin was contentedly sopping up the last of the gravy with the last of Mrs. Horace’s good fresh bread.

Sarah went to the window while Nan gathered everything up on the tray and set it on the stand outside their door for the girl that helped Mrs. Horace to fetch in the morning. “The snow isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but it’s going to be no treat to be out in it tonight,” she observed.

“Maybe the snow will keep that thing from finding a victim,” she said, but without much hope. The first girl had been taken at around dusk, but the second had been taken in broad daylight. . . .

“. . . and was last seen with a man,” she said aloud, wanting to slap herself for being so stupid.

“What?” Sarah asked, as Durwin stared at her in bewilderment.

“The second victim was last seen with a man, a completely ordinary man,” Nan groaned. “What if this thing has a human partner? It would make sense. The thing picks out its victim, the human lures her away. Or the two overpower her in some way. I was hunting for a . . . a monster, when what I should have been looking for was the human that was working with it! I’m an idiot!”

“Granny, don’t yew stay up all night watchin’ at th’ winder agin,” the querulous voice of Granny Toscin’s granddaughter Jilly followed her to the room she shared with the “baby,” who was now old enough to sleep through the night, as well as the baby’s three-year-old sister. “I won’t hev yew fallin’ asleep whin yer s’pposed t’be watchin’ baby. What if she goes off and pulls somethin’ down on herself?”

Granny didn’t answer. Ungrateful chit. Didn’ I raise yew when my Caro died? Yew oughter be raisin’ yer own babbies, that’s what, an’ let me henjoy me old age. An’ if thet means I be lookin’ out winders at night, then thet’s none o’yer business.

She wrapped herself up in three shawls and a blanket and sat herself right down beside the window that overlooked the street. She’d never liked that feller across the way. Him with his airs and his hoors. Oh, she’d seen the hoors goin’ in and outa that house, she had! And hadn’t he tossed one of ’em on Christmas Eve, no less, comin’ in, and gettin’ tossed out inter the snow! And he’d let her back in again! At least, she thought he’d let her back in; she’d gone to beat on the door, and gone through it instead. A hoor! He was fornicatin’! On Christmas Eve!

She was watchin’ ’im, she was. ’E was up to no good, no good at all.

She hadn’t seen him nor his “man” since nuncheon—such airs! “His man,” indeed. Their flat had been dark when she’d gone to get the bit of warm milk with a little rum in it that Jilly begrudged her, but now it wasn’t. There was light showing through gaps in the curtains. Granny had a feeling. He was up to no good again. This was a night she had best watch.

Besides, it wasn’t that late. No more than an hour past full dark. The babbies wouldn’t be up till it was light anyways. Granny watched the flat, narrowing her eyes when the occasional shadow passed in front of a light, but as usual, unable to make anything out through the curtains. He had mortal thick curtains, he did. No one had curtains that thick unless they had something to hide.

Snow . . . oh, snow was coming down so thick now. And frost-flowers were creeping up the window, and she had to keep breathing on a spot to melt them, rubbing a clear spot with the corner of a shawl so she could continue to watch. And still, nothing.

She was about to give up and go to bed after all, when the front door opened, and out he came. And with a girl!

Another of his hoors, no doubt! She rubbed the spot in the frost clear again and watched avidly as he led her down to the street, and right into the middle of the street, turned her so she was facing up it, and gave her a little push.

Oooo, ’e’s gi’en ’er opium! I knewed it! I knewed it! She walked like a sleepwalker, paying no heed to anything around her, taking one plodding, mechanical step after another through the snow. ’E’s gi’en ’er opium, so’s ’e won’t haveta pay ’er! And, more likely than not, the poor hoor would fall down in the snow and die of the cold. And he knew that, and he was counting on it, and that was pure, cold-blooded murder! I knewed ’e weren’t up to no good!

Jilly did for two or three bachelors along this street, which was why Granny had to watch her babbies, and she always brought home the papers from two days before, faithful as faithful. Granny knew how to read and write, and proud she was of it, and never mind that Jilly and her foolish man saw no need of anything of the sort. She’d be watching the papers for a girl froze to death in Battersea, oh, she would, and as soon as she saw it, she’d go straight to the perlice, and give her evidence, and there he’d go, with his high and mighty ways, and his man, and his fornicatin’ on Christmas Eve!

She watched the girl until she was out of sight in the distance and the snow. He had gone back in almost immediately of course. When she could see nothing else, she got up—

—and squinted a little in surprise. Had Jilly left the wardrobe door open? There was a black rectangle where the pale painted wood of the door should have been. That door needed to be kept closed, or the older babby would pull all the clothes down and make a nest in them.

She detoured the three steps it took to get to the wardrobe and fumbled around, trying to find the edge of the door.

She was still trying when black tentacles seized her, wrapping around her face and smothering her screams, and pulled her into the black void where the wardrobe door should have been.