She glanced through the papers. “There’s an identifying mark?”
“A birthmark. Aye.”
“That’s unusual.”
He nodded.
“How much of this is true?”
“Some. Enough.”
“But he’s just another orphan?”
“Aye.”
“As long as I don’t get there and find him pulling things out of his fucking arms.”
Coulton smiled.
She took another bite, chewed. “Why am I doing this one alone?”
Coulton looked at her. She was surprised by the emotion in his face. “There’ve been … inquiries,” he said, reluctant. “I heard about it right before we left Liverpool. A man, asking questions. About Mississippi, about US currencies. He’s got an interest, you might say, in the children we been collecting. Certainly in the Ovid boy. I half feared we’d see him here in Natchez. I’ll be watching for him on the way back.”
She studied Coulton’s face in the quiet. “He’s a detective?”
Coulton shook his head. “Used to be associated with the institute. His name is Marber. Jacob Marber.”
“Jacob … Marber.”
“Aye.”
There was something in the way Coulton spoke that made her pause. She adjusted the knife and fork on her plate, thinking about it. “You knew him,” she said.
“I knew of him. He had a … reputation.” Coulton picked at his hands. “Jacob Marber is a dangerous man, Miss Quicke. If he’s hunting Charlie Ovid, it’s best the lad is taken off to London quick. You should be all right with this Marlowe boy, out in Illinois.” Coulton grimaced, as if deciding whether to say more. “Marber blamed the institute for something, something that happened. I don’t know what it was. Someone died, I think. It doesn’t matter. We lost track of him years ago, haven’t heard from him since. There are those who still think he’s dead. I don’t. He was too good at what he did, one of the best.”
“Which was?”
Coulton met her eye. “Same as what we do. Except his methods were bloodier.”
Alice thought it over. “How will I know him? If I see him?”
“You’ll know him. He’ll be the one what scares you.”
“I don’t scare.”
Coulton sighed. “You do. You just don’t know it yet.”
Alice folded her hands in her lap, suddenly chilled. She watched their reflections in the warped glass of the riverboat window, the great wide currents of the Mississippi all around them out there in the darkness, the waiter where he stood with his wrists crossed at his back. The plush green armchairs and the dying ferns. All of it in the hazy glow of the gaslights in their sconces.
“He’ll be disappointed then, your Mr. Marber,” she said. “If he goes to Remington.”
Coulton smiled tiredly at her toughness, and his smile faded as he pushed his plate aside and got to his feet. He wiped his greasy fingers in the napkin.
“It would be best you were far from there, if he does,” he said quietly.
3
THE KID AT THE END OF THE WORLD
It’d been thirteen months since Brynt had last had the Dream. But it was back, bad as ever, and it frightened her so much that every night now she tried not to sleep, tried to sit up until morning with a strong coffee in their dark wagon, watching Marlowe’s little face breathing in the bunk, telling herself in the moonlight that nothing was the matter, nothing was wrong, they were safe.
But every night, in the end, her eyes would get heavy, her chin would nod, and the Dream would take over.
Always it started the same. She was crouched in her childhood wardrobe, trying to hide. The acrid reek of mothballs, the rustle of hanging clothes. Somehow she was little again, a girl, though she had never been little, not really. It was her uncle’s rooming house in San Francisco, it was night, and when she opened the wardrobe a crack with her finger, she could see moonlight streaming in. Though she was a little girl she was also somehow herself too, old Brynt, careworn, tired, and little Marlowe was with her, crying softly with fear. Slowly she climbed out of the wardrobe, took Marlowe by the hand, slowly she held a finger to her lips for quiet.
There was something in the apartment house with them.
They made their way to the hall. Steep narrow stairs, silver light from the moon on the landing. All the doors to the rooms standing open in shadow. And Brynt and the child’s slow, impossibly slow descent, step by creaking step, Brynt straining to hear with all her concentrated intensity for the sounds of that other in the house, that thing, wherever it might be.