“Oh, wow,” Michael started, answering his own question, “it’s a ghost station.”
“A what?” I asked, startled.
“An abandoned station on the Underground. I’ve heard of them. How—?”
“You’re in the company of two people for whom the paranormal is the normal, and you can ask a cloth-eared question like that?” Marsden hooted.
“Back off him, Marsden,” I started, but Michael closed with the older man and glared at him.
“Step off, sunshine. I thought I saw my brother hacked to pieces today. Then I found out he was a golem. Then I got chased by creep azoids, and now you want to rag me for being a little freaked? Well, bugger you!”
Marsden gave him a feral grin. “You’ll do,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “Now, where can we go from here? I doubt there’s going to be another train stopping for us.”
CHAPTER 29
Michael had been looking around while Marsden and I talked and now said, “This says Down Street Station.” He pointed to a sign tiled into the wall. “The only M Down Street I know is near Green Park. But. that’s the Piccadilly line. We were on the Circle line. ”
“Weirder things have happened today than that,” I reminded him. “Do you think we can get out of here?”
“Yeah, I think so. There’s a sign for an emergency exit. We can try it.”
We headed for the steel mesh door Michael indicated at the end of the platform and pushed. It opened with a mild complaint of hinges onto a steep staircase that looked a lot newer than the station. We started up and kept climbing for what seemed a very long time. Finally we came to another door and had to push very hard. It creaked open reluctantly, and I poked my head out first, scanning for vampires and other things that might lie in wait.
Just the usual ghosts, Grey, and humans lay beyond the door, and we emerged onto Piccadilly with the door clanking locked behind us. Michael pointed to our right.
“That’s Hyde Park Corner! Hey, we’re close to my garage!”
“Garage?” I questioned. I knew most people didn’t have private cars in London, except for the collection I’d seen in Clerkenwell that the vampires shared.
“Yeah, where I keep the bikes—well, it’s Loren’s, really. It’s just an old horse stall, but he might have left the key to his boat there. We can borrow it—he won’t care.”
“A boat,” I said doubtfully.
“On Regent’s Canal. No one would look for us on a narrow boat!”
Marsden and I had to agree that it was unlikely anyone would stumble upon us in such a place—especially since it was on water, which vampires tend to dislike and ghosts rarely haunt unless they are on the shore or on a boat themselves.
Michael led the way north and a bit west.
Marsden turned his head toward him as we went, as if he were peering at the boy with his empty eyes. “Your mate has a horse stall in Mayfair?”
“It’s his sister’s place.” Michael blushed, keeping his eyes averted from the disconcerting face beside him. “Loren’s family has money—like the kind of money even rich people think is a lot of money.”
We went a few more blocks into a very nice, old residential neighborhood until Michael stopped in front of a long row of connected houses with tiny yards in front. Then he led the way up a short alley to a green-painted door in what looked more like a shed than a stable. The door certainly wasn’t wide enough for any sort of car. Michael dug his keys from his pocket and used one on the padlock attached to the door’s hasp and handle assembly. The door swung open to show a tiny space packed full of motorcycles and repair gear. There was barely room to step in and move the bikes.
“The Ducatis and the Enfield are his. Mine are the BSAs,” Michael said, rummaging through a rack of keys on the wall. “I meant to take the Comet to a rally in a couple of weeks, but I’m guessing that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?” I asked. “This should resolve in a day or two. It’s not the end of the world. At least not yet.”
Michael goggled at me. “If Will’s skipped work for a week, they can deport us both. I mean, they might not, but who’s to say? He’s on work contract and he has to show up for work at the job that brought him here or he has to leave. Keeps people from coming at an employer’s expense and then ducking out for some other job or just slacking around on the dole.” He found the key he wanted and held it up with a shout. “Got it!”
“Where’s the boat?” I asked.
“Last time he left it in St. Pancras Basin. It’ll have to be somewhere between there and Islington. That’s only a mile or so to walk on the towpath, and we can take the Tube to Pankers to start.”
“St. Pancras will do quite nicely,” Marsden said.
“Nicely for what?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ll see, girl. You’ll see.”
Michael looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Do we have to keep him around?”
“Safer to keep him where we can see him,” I replied. But it wasn’t just that.
Someone had wanted me here in London. There’d been no guarantee Edward would talk me into coming, so I was guessing that the bad dreams sent through the golem had been an additional goad to force my hand—was that Alice’s part? Whoever it was had tricked Purcell or gained some kind of hold over him so he’d stopped disputing the customs bill and used the charmed note Jakob took to Sotheby’s to help snatch Will. They had to have Will to control the golem, and they hadn’t wanted anyone but me to come looking for him, so they’d left the golem in Will’s place.
I wasn’t sure what connection there was to Edward’s problems, except that with Alice in the mix there had to be one. I knew she wouldn’t want to let that grudge go, but I was also certain she wasn’t the key player. I liked that part better for the asetem-ankh-astet, the Egyptian vampires Sekhmet had described. They were involved in this and in my father’s fate and my own. I still hadn’t figured that angle completely; I didn’t know what they wanted or how Wygan—who I was sure was also asetem—fit in, but so far, things were connecting and I thought they’d all come together when I could figure out what Alice was doing and what the asetem wanted with me.
Several things still bugged me. I didn’t know why they’d snatched Will instead of Quinton if they were trying to get a lever on me, unless it was simply that he was here and so were they. In addition, Marsden may have spilled the beans to the vampires about where I was, but then he’d shown up to detour me and Michael away from them. He didn’t seem to be their friend any more than they were mine. Greywalker or not, he wasn’t my friend either, but I didn’t know where he really stood or what he was up to. He did know something about my father, though, and I wanted that information, even if it meant playing with fire. I wasn’t going to let Marsden slip away—he had answers or he could lead me to them, of that I was sure. I thought about these problems as we made our way north and east toward the canal.
Another ride on the Underground got us up to St. Pancras Train Station. It was a massive, echoing pile of Victorian Gothic architecture—looking more like a red brick cathedral than a train station—that was being rehabilitated and partially renovated into expensive flats. We had to thread our way through leggy forests of scaffolding to get out of the building and around the back, up several industrial blocks to Regent’s Canal.
We passed a sign directing us to ST. PANCRAS OLD CHURCH as we detoured around some construction and the rail yards, looking for a way down to the canal. I noticed that the train rails cut right up against the churchyard walls before they crossed the canal on a low bridge. The rail yard was deep with ghosts and blurry with a mess of disrupted ley lines. The canal, being older than the rail yard and full of water, had bent the energy lines of the Grey gently into its own shape so the magical supply lines curved with its bends and crossed them without a hash and noise of magical strife. It was a relief to get down to the water’s edge and walk across a small park to find the towpath, away from the growl of furious magic.