Once out of the maelstrom, I turned back toward Marsden, who was having a rougher time with his monster. He tore off its remaining hand and shoved it away, battering it to pieces with his cane until it fell to the ground in a pile of grave dust.
In the shriek of the vortex, even the chorus of the city was hard to hear, so I was sure Marsden wouldn’t hear me as I crept up and snatched his cane away again. Then I used it to poke him backward toward the hole as he’d done with me.
“What the hell were those things?” I demanded, watching him slip on the tiny hole and fight the edge of the Grey whirlpool’s grasp.
“Lych wights,” he panted. “Animated corpses.”
“What did they want?”
“How the bloody hell should I know?”
I poked him again and he stumbled a little, grabbing at a fence railing near the tree to keep himself from being sucked backward.
“They’re probably the advance guard!” he shouted over the scream of the vortex. “Now we’re out in the Grey, someone can feel us moving around. Whoever sent those Red Guard after you and the lad, most like. They’d have killed us both, no doubt.”
“I don’t think so,” I snapped. “They could have just let you push me in that thing and then tossed you in, too, but they attacked you. They only tried to hold on to me.”
“They must be working for the Pharaohn-ankh-astet, then. He’d want you alive—such as you are. I can’t believe it—the asetem working with the brotherhood. ”
“What are you talking about?” I screamed against the storm of noise at the vortex’s edge.
“Egyptian vampires,” Marsden panted. “The asetem are the commoners; the Pharaohn is the king—like the word ‘pharaoh,’ y’see? He’s the one what’s after you for his own. He’s the one what tormented your father till he killed himself. That’s why I have to get rid of you. So he can’t use you, like he’s been trying to use one of us for centuries.”
“You were going to kill me!”
“I can’t bloody well kill you, you stupid git! You have a limited number of deaths—it’s like a damned reset button for our sort.”
“What? You mean like a cat’s got nine lives? Are you insane?”
“It’s true! We bounce back from death—you’ve done it! For a while afterward, you’re malleable. If I killed you, they’d rush in and grab you in limbo and reshape you for whatever he’s got in mind! It’s only a few minutes but that’s all they need here—we’re in the middle of the biggest magical well in southern England and they’re looking for you. The moment your body was shut down, they’d be on you like jackals! I was just going to put you somewhere else for a while. Someplace safe.”
“Safe? Where does that. hole lead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you don’t know if I would have survived it!”
“I don’t care! I only care that they couldn’t have got at you. I don’t mean it’s safe for you! I mean safe for the rest of the world. You need to stay out of the Pharaohn’s clutches and you ain’t got a lot of choices, girl. I couldn’t do it on the Tube—there weren’t nowhere to put you. I had to get you here, to the tree. But you couldn’t just fall in. No! Now they’re looking for us again—for you.”
His hair whipped in the preternatural wind around the shrieking hole of the Hardy tree. His hands were locked on the protective fence around it like the claws of some dead white bird.
“My choices are not yours to make! Why doesn’t this Pharaohn come after you? You’re a Greywalker, too.”
“I’m damaged goods. He’s tried with me already and failed. He’s sent ghosts and monsters to kill me and shape me, but he made a mistake with me he can’t unmake. I’m at my limit. Next death’s for good and all.”
“What?”
“I told you: We got a limited number of deaths. It’s more than one, but it’s not infinite. I’m at my last.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do! You will, too. It’s like. gravity. You get close enough to final mortality and it grabs on. You can feel it holding you to the earth.”
“Then what happened to my dad?” I asked, poking him again. He was getting too comfortable and I didn’t trust him to keep on spilling his guts if he wasn’t afraid I’d topple him into the sucking hole in magic. I knew there wasn’t a lot of time, but I thought I was probably risking his life more than mine.
“He tricked ’em. A clever man was your father—though not half clever enough to save you. He diverted their attention to his nurse—”
“She was his receptionist, Christelle. She died. I think your asetem killed her.”
He shrugged it off, but he couldn’t hide his fear of the hungry void behind him. “As you like! I’m not sure what he did—and I’m not sure how she died neither—but he got them chasing after her, dividing their attention, and then he shot himself, made his brains into pudding. They didn’t see it coming, so they couldn’t stop him and they couldn’t put him back together. The Pharaohn punished him for that, but he couldn’t use him for his. whatever it is he means t’do. Whatever he’s been shaping you for since then. Whatever he put that. thing into your chest for.”
“What?” I was too shocked to keep pressure on him and dropped the cane. He’d confirmed my worst fear and the implication fell like a blow.
Marsden dropped to the ground and scrambled away from the Hardy tree and its aurora of shackled ghosts and blurring, shining energy. He whipped back around, but even shocked as I was, I wasn’t falling for his tricks. I dropped and swept his legs out from under him with a low, round kick.
He fell on his back and I knelt down next to him, furious, grabbing a handful of the velvety moleskin coat. I resisted the urge to beat him into the ground. Barely. “Don’t try it. I’m not as soft as you think I am and I won’t hesitate to throw you in there this time.”
“I tell you—”
“Save it. As you say, we’re out of time here.” I hauled him back to his feet. “There is one way they can’t follow us. I know you can manipulate the temporaclines, so shuffle up the right one and we’ll go back to the canal. Water’s a good barrier. We can take the boat out and they’ll have a heck of a time getting to us. Now, do it.”
“It’s not that easy, girl—”
“Bullshit. But I can leave you here if you prefer. ”
CHAPTER 32
The trip back to the boat basin was faster than the walk to the churchyard had been, but exhausting. We pushed our way through the Grey the whole time, and I at least hadn’t eaten for hours and felt wretched by the time we emerged into the normal on the canal side. It might have been less dreadful if I hadn’t kept thinking of Wygan and everything that spun out from that.
Wygan was the Pharaohn-ankh-astet. He had to be. He’d tied a bit of Grey into my chest. He’d pushed me. He’d. shaped me. He’d tried again and again to make me a bit more dead—I knew this, but I’d never thought there was a plan behind it all. That it had been going on since. forever. Since my dad died. Since before that. It hadn’t occurred to me. What a fool I’d been.
And now what was he up to? If the asetem had influenced Purcell and that had resulted in Jakob delivering the charmed note to Will, then it was the asetem—and Wygan—who were behind Purcell’s disappearance and the destabilization of Edward’s control in London as well as the kidnapping of Will. But why? How did any of that fit with Wygan’s plans for me? It seemed too elaborate just for a ruse to get me out of Seattle.