“Who told you that, child?”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Harrogate. Sometimes family is what you choose.”
“Who told you that you had no family?”
Alice felt Marlowe’s hand reach for hers. It was clear he didn’t want to give her away, but he didn’t know how else to answer.
“I did,” said Alice.
Mrs. Harrogate frowned. A cold intensity seemed to rise off her, almost like a scent. “Miss Quicke is mistaken, child,” she said softly, dangerously. She gestured and the knife danced fluidly in the air. “It is true that you were adopted. But that changes nothing. I assure you, your father is perfectly real, and quite anxious to see you. You were taken from him by your nursemaid when you were just a baby. Stolen away in the night, from the Cairndale Institute.”
“My … father…” It sounded as if he were tasting the word on his tongue, trying it out, seeing how it felt.
“Yes. Until, as I say, you were taken.”
“Why would anyone take me away?”
“Because a man named Jacob Marber was coming to kill you,” replied Mrs. Harrogate matter-of-factly. “He had tried to do so once before. Oh, you were just a baby, child; it was none of your doing. You needn’t look so. Jacob Marber was raised at Cairndale, but he would not learn how to be careful with his ability. His younger brother had died, years ago, at the hands of a cruel master, in a city far away, and his loss consumed him. Grief and hate are close cousins, child. When he came for you that terrible night, your nursemaid did not believe anyone at Cairndale could protect you. It was wicked of her to take you. But she was right to fear Jacob Marber.”
Marlowe was listening, rapt.
“Something … happened. She died before she could return you. But you—you were found in a railway boxcar by a stranger, and spirited away, and might have been lost to us forever. We did not know what had become of you; but neither did Jacob Marber. When he could not find you, he vanished also. That is how it was, for your father. You were gone. His family was broken. Yet your father has borne it. Dr. Berghast has a great sense of purpose, a strength in him. As for Jacob, we have heard little of him for years. Now it seems he has returned. Your father, of course, fears for your safety; we must get you to Cairndale.”
Marlowe said quietly: “Jacob Marber is who tried to hurt us at the hotel, isn’t he? He’s the monster made out of smoke.”
Mrs. Harrogate’s face glowed in the soft light of the kitchen. “Monster is rather an extreme way of putting it. You understand that he still wishes to hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you understand why it is important that you are here, with us. And why we must take you north as soon as possible, to the institute. You will be safe there; Jacob Marber cannot enter there.”
“Why not?”
“It is … protected.”
The little boy gave a visible shudder.
“Mrs. Harrogate?” he said. “What is my father like?”
The woman’s eyes glittered. “He is as clever as the devil himself. You will meet him soon; then you will see for yourself. Now, I trust you will both eat a stew?”
After that, Alice didn’t like to leave Marlowe alone. There was too much space for so few in that big house. The bedroom Charlie and Marlowe were using, on the third floor, was large and uncomfortable, furnished with lace doilies on the ankles of the chair legs and even on the handle of the door, and there was an ornate divan at the foot of the bed, and heavy silk wallpaper. They shared the bed, curling up together in the four-poster like brothers, just as if they’d always had each other, and Alice started sitting up in the night watching them. She’d been given her own room, a strange room with stacks of odd wheeled contraptions leaned up against one wall—her late husband’s attempts at inventing a locution machine, Mrs. Harrogate explained—but the shapes were creepy in the dark and Alice was sleeping badly anyhow, waking often, feeling as if something was in the room with her, something watchful and hidden and filled with malice. So she sat up with the boys, wary. Harrogate herself slept at the end of the hall, her door permanently ajar, as if she was afraid of something passing in the night. On the fourth floor Alice had found, her first night at Nickel Street West, a stripped bed, and a wardrobe with a stained pallet stuffed inside, and knotted ropes, but no sign of whatever it had been used for.
Coulton, for his part, stayed gone.
* * *
The claw marks on Charlie Ovid’s arms were on fire. Or at least that’s how it felt, to him, as he lay in the half-light of the bedchamber, staring at the molded ceiling, trying not to think.