It was a grimy dawn, yellow light beginning to seep through the cracks in the heavy gray clouds, when the man half tumbled out of the pub and into the square. He limped along toward Half Moon Street, past the hodgepodge of shops—greengrocers, butchers—that lined the central square. The neighborhood had its charms despite the close quarters and grime, but the man took no notice. He had not been the last patron in Ye Grapes, but the others had drunk themselves unconscious and would soon be treated to a complimentary trip out the back door, where they would be unceremoniously deposited on the pavement to await the coming day.
The killer slipped from one doorway to the next, trailing his prey more for sport than necessity. Stealth was hardly needed here. The man was staggering drunk, singing a tuneless little song, his breath puffing out in white clouds as it met the icy air. He did not seem to feel the cold in his battered coat.
The girl had been too ready, too quickly. She had turned the killer’s own blade on him, sinking it deep into his shoulder. Her death had been messy, fast and brutal; afterward he had been forced to slip away and hide, abandoning the bloody evidence in an empty factory in Limehouse. As he swiftly healed, he had heard the scrape and chitter of an Ourobas demon nearby, drawn by the scent of murder and blood. He did not fear it; demons knew him as kin now.
But he was angry. There would be no more such accidents.
The killer quickened his pace. One, two, three strides and he was upon the man. He grabbed his shoulder roughly and spun him around, shoving him up against a cold brick wall. The man blinked in anger, then confusion. His mouth opened, and a single word passed his lips just before the knife went into his chest:
“You?”
12 REQUIEM
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter, home from the hill.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, “Requiem”
The knife went in, grinding past bone, sinking into soft tissue, blood pulsing up and around the blade, the stench of it, hot and coppery, thickening the air.…
James sat up in bed, pain shooting through his chest. His heart was slamming against his ribs. He choked, memories flooding back—the empty streets, the shops and stalls of Shepherd Market. The man leaving the noisy, bright pub, heading for the narrower streets, perhaps hoping to find an unwatched mews house to sleep in.
The killer, the blade, the hate again, that hatred hot as fire.
I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.
He pushed himself upright, dread growing like a cancer in the pit of his stomach. He had thrashed about in the bed hard enough to tear his pajama top; his shoulder and arm were bare, freezing in the cold air coming from the open window.
It was cold, so cold; he gripped the man’s brown coat with one hand, driving the knife in with the other—
James was suddenly unable to breathe. “No,” he gasped, throwing off the bedcovers, sucking in lungfuls of air. He staggered to the window—he knew he hadn’t left it open; he had checked twice last night—and slammed it shut.
He could see the man on his back, staring up at the sky. He knew him. His brown coat, his face, his voice.
Elias.
He threw on his trousers, buttoned up his shirt with shaking hands. Let it have been a nightmare, a meaningless dream and not a vision. Maybe he had only had a dream because he and Elias had fought last night; maybe he’d dreamed of Elias only because he was angry with him. Such things happened.
A pounding started up downstairs, someone knocking over and over on the door. James raced out of his room, barefoot, and tore down the stairs. Cordelia was already in the entryway, her hair a loose red river, a dressing gown thrown on over her nightclothes. Risa was there with her; she tore open the door, and Sona Carstairs stumbled inside.
“Maman?” he heard Cordelia say, her voice rising with panic. “Maman?”
Sona gave a keening wail. Risa caught her in her arms, and Sona buried her face against her old nursemaid’s shoulder, weeping as if her heart would break.
“He’s dead, Layla,” she sobbed. “They found him this morning. Your father is dead.”
* * *
Though Cordelia had visited the Silent City before, she had never been inside the Ossuarium. She had been lucky, she realized numbly, as she, James, Alastair, and Sona filed along a narrow corridor, following the light of Brother Enoch’s witchlight torch. She had not encountered death so close to her before.
Alastair had come into the Curzon Street house after Sona and explained with surprising calm that Elias’s body had been discovered by a morning patrol and already brought to the Silent City. If the family wished to see him before the autopsy began, they would need to hurry to the Ossuarium.