“What’d you see?”
The little boy’s voice was just a whisper. “Nothing about what we went for. The disappeared kids, I mean. I tried to ask about it, but…” He paused. “I saw Alice, Charlie. She was dead. Jacob Marber’d killed her. I saw you, too, but you had that symbol, the one from your ring, and it was glowing in your hand. In your palm. Like the glove we saw but you weren’t wearing the glove, and like it was on fire. And I saw Mr. Coulton, but he was like that other man, Walter, from Mrs. Harrogate’s. The one who attacked you. All white and his hair all gone and his teeth sharp—”
Charlie swallowed. A flash in his mind of scrabbling claws, of that creature looming out of the darkness. He shook his head. “Mr. Coulton’s dead, Mar,” he said.
But the little boy was looking at him with haunted eyes in the gloom. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know that he is, Charlie.”
Sometimes Charlie just didn’t know what to make of the kid, he didn’t. Like on the roof of the train. Or in the glyphic’s lair. This was one of those times. He nodded as if he understood but his heart was full mostly of pity and what he was thinking was that the kid had been through a lot of crazy and there was no knowing what was true, not really, no matter what he’d seen.
He wet his lips. “So what do you want to do? What is it you want?”
The boy breathed quietly in the dark.
“Mar?”
“I want Brynt back,” he said, his lip quivering. “I want Alice back. I want everything the way it used to be.”
Charlie, who wouldn’t have gone back to his old life for anything, didn’t know what to say to that.
He closed his eyes.
But if he’d got up instead and gone to the window, he’d have seen in the moonlight three figures—silhouettes that were almost familiar—running silently across the grass in long coats and ill-fitting hats, a fourth figure lumpen and strange shambling just behind, all of them racing over the clay fields to the wall and its wards and the road south to Edinburgh.
27
HUNTING MARBER
Alice Quicke landed squelching in something soft. Mud. Just mud. They were in a dark warehousing yard beside the river. The keywrasse was crouched on a coil of rope, listening to the night.
Coulton was gone.
She lifted the lantern cautiously, shining a thin beam at the wall, the crates, the ropes and cranes in the fog. She could see the impress of Coulton’s feet in the muck, the smeared grime where he’d clambered up onto the planking and padded into the warehouse.
In the distance they could hear the shouts of laborers on the docks. The fog hung thick and unmoving and Alice had little fear of being seen but still she crept warily up to the open door of the building, her oilskin coat shushing at her knees. She held the bull’s-eye lantern in one hand, her heavy Colt Peacemaker in the other. The keywrasse purred against her ankle.
“Go on,” hissed Mrs. Harrogate. “Hurry. We’ll lose him.”
Alice glared back at the older woman. But when she kicked the door open with her boot there was only darkness, the thick scent of oiled metal and lumber and wet ropes.
The air inside the building felt cold, and vast, as if it went on for miles. The light of the lantern shone barely ten paces. Coulton could be lurking anywhere.
“You go on,” muttered Alice.
But she didn’t really mean it; and when the keywrasse poured forward into the stillness Alice followed quickly, all of her senses alert, expecting a blur of white to leap at her at any moment, remembering in flashes the horror of that other litch. Whether Walter had died on the train or waited with Coulton up ahead, she didn’t know.
The keywrasse padded swiftly along the rows of crates and barrels, the floor slick in places where brine had spilled, the boards creaking underfoot. Alice’s side began to ache. She made no noise as she went.
If Coulton had sensed their presence, he’d be lying in wait somewhere. But if not, chances were good he’d lead them directly to Jacob Marber.
At last the keywrasse stood with its back arched in front of a closed door. It had the number twenty-one in white paint. Inside was a storage room, the lantern illuminating open wooden boxes of nails and screws and fasteners. The keywrasse went at once to a trapdoor in the corner.
“Fuck that,” whispered Alice. “We go down there?”
The keywrasse flicked its tail.
Mrs. Harrogate slipped past in her black skirts and lifted the iron ring and pulled. A gust of foul air came out. “He does not know we are hunting him,” she said softly. “They are the ones who should be afraid, Miss Quicke. Hand me that lantern.”