“Marlowe,” she whispered.
She shook him and he opened his eyes in alarm. She put a finger to her lips, looked at the door.
The rooming house was absolutely silent. Impossibly silent. There was no faint sound of snoring, of coughing, the low murmuring of other residents. It was this—the stillness of it—that had alerted her. Marlowe was already putting on his little shoes, wrongly, struggling into his coat. She went to the door, leaned her ear up against it.
Then they both heard it. Footsteps, clear, calm, unhurried, coming down the hall toward their room. Alice pressed a hand against the door, stepped back to arm’s length, and aimed her revolver at chest-height directly at the door. The footsteps stopped.
Nothing moved. No sound.
Something, someone, a man, cleared his throat in the darkness beyond. A creeping horror came over her then, a feeling of anxiety, of dread. And she blinked her eyes rapidly to clear them and saw, weirdly, a black smoke seeping through the crack under the door, and dissipating, and then seeping through all four sides of the door, growing denser, darker. The door rattled softly as it was tried. Alice felt a sudden cold terror.
Just, she thought.
Fucking.
Go.
Go! She grabbed Marlowe’s arm, dragged him across to the open window. “For God’s sake,” she hissed. “Hurry!”
She climbed up onto the sill and lifted their two small traveling cases onto the roof and then she picked up Marlowe under the arms and hoisted him out.
Whoever was outside their door must have heard. They started banging on it, kicking at it. The room was thick with a black smoke, it smelled of soot, of dust, and Alice held her handkerchief to her mouth and turned to go. Then she whirled back, ran across to the nightstand, took out from the drawer their tickets and documents for the passenger liner. She was making noise now, clattering across the room, not caring. The door thumped in its frame.
The roof was sloped and Marlowe was crouched on his heels clutching his knees to his chest and Alice grabbed him in one arm and their two cases in the other and she tottered and stumbled her way up to the crest of the house. She hurried along to the chimney, half slid down to the eaves on the far side, then threw their cases across the small gap to the building next door. Then she cradled Marlowe’s head against her shoulder.
“Close your eyes,” she whispered.
And she jumped.
She landed badly on her left knee and folded sideways and then got up quickly, looking back. She couldn’t see any sign of pursuit. It was madness. This roof was flat and there was a wrought iron fire ladder and Alice hurried the boy down it, into the street. She could see from there the dormer window of their rented room and she stared hard up at the darkness. There was no one there. And yet a faint smoke was seeping into the night; and then, against the darkness of the room, a greater darkness stepped forward, a black silhouette in the shape of a man, and it watched them go.
For she was already seizing Marlowe by the hand and limping on her bad knee, limping at a half run into the darkness, into the night, away.
* * *
Her knee wasn’t broken, there was that. But it was swollen, the skin mottled and purple and weirdly soft, like a monstrous eggplant, and it would take no weight.
She crept with Marlowe up to Washington Avenue and crossed limping between the sleek black carriages, theater traffic, but glancing back all the while, and in a small park behind a statue of some dead American Revolutionary she halted, slid down into the wet grass with her throbbing leg outstretched in front of her.
She was trying to catch her breath, looking off into the darkness, trying to think. She gave the boy a hard look. “Did you ever see anything like that before? Ever?”
He shook his head, his blue eyes wide.
She knew the kids they collected were different. Talents, Coulton called them. And she knew that person—that thing—back there was anything but normal.
“Don’t you lie to me, Marlowe,” she said tightly.
“I’m not,” he said. His voice was little more than a whisper.
All at once her leg erupted in a fire of pain. She cried out, holding her knee. Her voice banged off the walls, the echo dying away into the darkness.
“Is he coming after us?” Marlowe asked.
She said nothing, just looked quickly around.
The park was small, really just a square of grass around the statue, a solitary streetlight burning on the corner. There were buildings on three sides, rear walls, windowless, judging by the dark looming forms. An occasional cab clattered by in the street behind them. If the man found them, there would be nowhere to run.