He couldn’t do it.
Very near to him, Jacob Marber ran a hand over his beard, smoothing it, careful with the long gash in his cheek. Then he clasped his hands in the small of his back and turned and looked out the ruined wall at the city and the gray mists beyond. Charlie shrank back, his heart pounding.
“I was trapped in this world for years,” Jacob Marber said quietly. “I learned to live here. I know it better than any living creature ever could, and yet I scarcely know it at all. You cannot imagine what it was like. I knew that there was a doorway—the orsine—but I could not use it. Henry Berghast kept it shut from me.”
“You betrayed him. It was your doing.”
“Mm.” His shoes clicked through the rubble. “I was young still when the drughr first came to me. She offered to bring me through, into this world, to look for … someone. To help them. She needed my help too, you see.”
Just then Charlie saw, at the edge of the balcony, an iron rod. Very slowly, very quietly, he leaned out and lifted it clear. It was long and thin but sharp on one end. He gripped it tight in one hand, the knife in the other.
“My brother died when we were children. We were twins. I was told by the drughr that I could see him again, that I could help him, here, in this world. If I grew powerful enough, I might even bring him back. But I was deceived. For years we wandered through this city, looking for my brother, trying to find any trace of him among the spirits. What do you see, London? For me, it is Vienna.” He frowned. “It was lonely, and I grew strange, having no other living soul to talk to. Only the drughr, who was with me often, and with whom I grew … close. And she came to confide in me, and that is when I learned how much she hated the world of the living, how hungry she was to devour the talents. It consumed her.”
“Did you find him? Did you find your brother?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t Bertolt. Not anymore.”
Marlowe was quiet.
Jacob continued. “My brother came to me three times, here in this world. I sat at the edge of the orsine, pleading that it be opened. All Berghast had to do was let us through. It would have changed everything. But he did not; and my brother’s memory of me faded. And then it was too late.”
“Is that why you hate him?”
“A person grows peculiar, in this world,” he said. “It’s not the loneliness but the solitude. One day, the drughr, too, left. And I was truly alone. Devastated. Afraid. I set off in search of her. I had no one else, you see. And after a long time I found her, hidden in a tunnel at the edge of the river. She had a baby with her—a human child, it seemed. But it wasn’t human. It was hers. Her own baby. And she looked magnificent. I could feel the power and fury in her. Somehow the baby was giving her strength, making her even more powerful. And I saw in that instant the horror she’d be capable of, and that the baby couldn’t be allowed to live.” He was breathing heavily now, and Charlie saw he had a hand pressed to his side. “It couldn’t be allowed to.…”
Charlie could feel his blood moving in his head. He knew, even before the man spoke next, what he was going to say.
“I stole the baby. I’d meant to kill it. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it. I knew the horror of that child’s life to come, how terrible its fate, and I couldn’t stand that either. So I fled with the child to the only place the drughr couldn’t follow—the orsine, which Berghast had closed to me—and I begged the glyphic to let us through. You were that baby, Marlowe. You were that child.”
“No,” the boy whispered.
“That is why you are different. And that is why the drughr is hunting you. She is your mother.”
“You’re a liar!” the boy shouted suddenly. “It’s a lie!”
Jacob Marber went on in his low, pained voice. “But that doesn’t mean you have to be like her. You can choose what you are, what you will be.”
Charlie risked a horrified glance. Marlowe was trembling. Charlie could see how desperately he wanted to run away. But he didn’t. And suddenly he understood why: he wouldn’t leave Charlie either.
“When Berghast took you from me,” said Jacob, “I was too weak, after years here in this world, to stop him. I came back for you, before I was strong enough. I wanted to take you away, to hide you away someplace where Berghast and the drughr could never find you. Someplace you could be happy and live a good life. But I failed you. I will not fail you now.”
There was in his voice a genuine regret, as if he did not wish to happen what was about to happen. All at once his eyes turned entirely black, as if a black ink had spread cloudily through his irises and the whites of his eyes until there was only blackness, seeping and smearing around his lids. Slowly he rolled up his sleeves. There was a darkness writhing and twisting under his skin.