Alice rubbed at her knuckles, trying to take it all in.
“No returning from it, that is,” Dr. Berghast went on, his voice darkening, “except for the drughr. Somehow it did return. It is here now, among us, in this world. And it is growing stronger.”
“What is it, exactly?”
“A soul that fears death, more than anything else. A soul that fears the obliteration death brings. According to the old stories, it was locked behind an iron gate, centuries ago, after a great war. It was hoped the drughr would eventually dissolve, as the dead do, and that its evil would cease. In the stories, it drifted on the other side, preying on lost souls. But on this side, it is subject to decay, as are all things. Here it must commit unspeakable acts, in order to sustain itself.”
“The children,” said Alice.
Dr. Berghast nodded. “Because it is still weak. When it is stronger, it will feed on all the talents. Where the drughr goes, slaughter follows. Human life is of no consequence to it. It is a predator, and we are its prey. And Jacob Marber is its … host. It is not yet powerful enough to be in our world, without his assistance.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I need your help,” said Dr. Berghast. “I would like you to find Jacob Marber.”
Alice gave a surprised laugh. “Me?”
Mrs. Harrogate, standing quite still at the end of the row, spoke up. “As long as he is out there, Miss Quicke, your Marlowe is not safe. Charlie is not safe.”
Dr. Berghast placed the seedling he’d been repotting back into place under the glass. “At present, it still must act through Jacob; he is its weakness. Without him, it will be as nothing again. Yet with each new feeding, with each new child it devours, its power increases. Soon enough it will come here. You’ve seen what Jacob is capable of; the drughr is worse.”
“My methods are for people,” Alice protested. “Jacob Marber could be anywhere. How does a thing like him even think? You’d have to think like him to find him.” She shook her head. “Neither of you could find him before; what makes you imagine I can find him now?”
“We know he’s in London,” said Mrs. Harrogate.
“London’s huge.”
“And,” added Dr. Berghast, wiping the black soil on his smock and looking up, “we now have something we didn’t before.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
Alice scoffed.
“Your injury, rather,” corrected Dr. Berghast. He bent over the little wood desk and poured out a jar of iron filings. He took a magnet from his pocket and held it between thumb and forefinger for Alice to see, and then he waved it over the filings. “See how the iron seeks the magnet. That is what Jacob’s dust does, with him. It is a part of him. And he left some of it inside you, when he attacked you.” Berghast’s voice was calm but his eyes were bright, too bright. “You doubt me, of course. But close your eyes, Miss Quicke. Reach out. Let yourself feel him. Can you feel him?”
Warily, she did as he asked. Standing there in the glasshouse, her lips dry, eyelids fluttering. She could feel something, a prickling that wasn’t there before. It felt like a fishhook in her ribs, tugging. She didn’t like it.
Berghast was watching her. “The two of you are connected.”
She was shaking her head, increasingly angry. She felt violated, disgusted. She let her gaze slide over to Mrs. Harrogate, waiting still in her traveling clothes, both hands clutching the little case in front of her. “If I do this, if I find him for you … what will you do with him?”
“I will kill him,” said Mrs. Harrogate.
“How do you kill a thing like that?” Alice looked at the doctor. “I assume you have a plan.”
“Not I,” said Dr. Berghast.
Mrs. Harrogate smiled thinly. “There is a way. If you will trust me, Miss Quicke.”
Alice looked at the clay pots, stacked in their rows. She looked at Dr. Berghast. His hard gray eyes, his mouth hidden by his beard, the power in his neck and shoulders. The sun came from behind a cloud and lit the glass around him so that suddenly she couldn’t see his face.
Fuck it, she thought. She turned to Mrs. Harrogate.
“I’m going to want my gun back,” she said.
20
THE DISAPPEARED ONES
Charlie had been at the institute almost two weeks, sleeping badly, when he first encountered the dark carriage.
It would prove his first glimpse of the other Cairndale, its invisible twin, identical down to the framed watercolors in the halls, the dust curling in its corners, but somehow sinister, as if filled with intention. And after that he started to wonder just what exactly was going on and how much he wasn’t being told.