“Oh, yes. I went back to where I’d first seen the amphorae. It was very hard as it was the same place beneath the priory where so much carnage had been wreaked during my time. But the jars had been broken already and it seemed something must have happened of which I could not guess. And then Mr. Purcell appeared in that place. The Red Brothers were very cruel to him and they taunted him horribly. About what I couldn’t understand. I never have figured it out. But from what they said, this I believe to be true: The creature that was in the amphorae was taken out and reassembled into. whatever it was, and it is still there, somewhere.”
That was startling. Sekhmet hadn’t mentioned anything in the jars except blood, magic, and corruption. “A creature?” I questioned. Maybe that had been the corruption. “What sort?”
“I have no idea, nor do I want one! Please, don’t ask it of me. It was chopped into pieces and reassembled from those horrible jars. When I saw what they were doing, their sorcerer making it whole again. I–I am not a brave man and I could not bear to look. ”
I nodded. “I understand.” But I didn’t understand it all. A sorcerer? What had it made from the parts? Did the vampires have a spellbinder working with them? Or was it one of the asetem? Of the vampires I knew, only Carlos had any magical powers. Edward had told me most of them didn’t, but maybe that wasn’t true for the Egyptians. Or maybe there was another player in the mix.
By his quivering and translucence, I knew I couldn’t press Smith any further on that. It was frustrating, but it would do me no good to let it show, so I changed tack and hoped I wouldn’t regret my noble ignorance later. “Which of the factions has Purcell?” I asked. “St. James or St. John?”
“St. James. I don’t know why they chose to store the jars beneath the priory of St. John—perhaps to work some magic against their enemies? I don’t know. I feel for Mr. Purcell—I knew him in my time. He. was like a. go-between. He did business for both parties and they agreed to let him alone. But now the Jameses do him great harm. He is. not a good man—he is not a man, indeed—but none deserve the tortures to which they put him, poor soulless thing.”
“What about William Novak? Do you know anything about him?”
“Who? I don’t know the name. ”
“He’s the missing man, this young man’s brother,” I clarified, waving my hand toward Michael, who was holding back with an anxious frown on his face. “He’s a young man, too, but he has white hair, like an old man. He’s very tall and thin. Have you seen—”
“Oh! That one! Oh. no.” His voice was freighted with dread.
I restrained an urge to lean forward, to grab for the dithering ghost and shake information out of him, but with Michael looking on, I didn’t dare make a move that might upset the boy. I didn’t know how much he was picking up but he was observant and smart, and if I acted distressed just after using Will’s name, he’d know something bad was in the works.
“Go on.”
“I have seen him. I have. But they move him about. And. they. they torment him most horribly. He cries—Oh, my soul. It’s too much to bear,” the ghost said, covering his face with his hand.
“Please,” I asked. “Could you tell me where he is right now?”
“I don’t know that. As I said, they move him.”
“Could you go look?”
“No! No. I. I couldn’t. I can’t. I—No. No, no, no,” Smith whispered, aghast.
Barnaby Smith stepped back from us, staring at each of us in turn as if we would leap on him and rend him to bits in a moment. He gasped, clasping his hands over his heart as he backed away. “I’m sorry. I cannot. I cannot. ” And he vanished back through the red crypt doors.
“What appalling manners,” Temperance muttered from above.
“I think he’s distraught,” said Prudence. “Poor fellow. He must have seen something truly nasty down there.”
“But don’t you think he’ll reconsider and come back?” Hope asked. “Really, it would be the right thing to do. ”
“Which is why he won’t,” Tempe said.
“Oh, Tempe. ”
“Do use what little brain Inwood gave you, my girl.”
“Tempe!” Prudence gasped.
“Oh, you’re just horrid!” Hope shouted, and vanished with the sound of a lightbulb exploding, leaving her statue blank and cold.
“Whatever is the matter with the chit?” Tempe grumbled. “It’s true. Mr. Inwood wasn’t overly generous in what he gave us. He even cut us short in the middle!”
“And you are not overly generous in anything,” Prudence retorted. “Now I shall have to go after her. Oh, dear.” Her statue also went dark.
“I hope you got what you were after, Peter. I doubt they’ll any of them come back.”
“It will do or we’ll make do,” Marsden replied.
“Yes. Well,” Temperance said. “I shall go and look after them. Mr. Smith is an upsetting presence. It’s quite a pity his wife, Rosemary, has left him on his own, but I suppose one can’t grumble about another’s passing on. Now I must go. Good luck to you, Peter—and your friends.”
Given the inflection she gave to “friends,” I was pretty sure she didn’t care for me and Michael. I wasn’t entirely sure she liked Marsden, either. Temperance’s caryatid also went dark, leaving us alone between the crypt and the iron fence.
We waited a few minutes in case Chastity returned, but didn’t get lucky. Marsden and I gave up. I stepped back from the Grey to what passes for normal to me and turned toward Michael. He looked everywhere but at me.
“Michael. Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied too quickly.
I hadn’t had a chance to prep him for what happened when I submerged into the Grey and got a bit see-through in the normal, and he’d said he saw and heard a little. Anyone would find such things disconcerting; for a kid who’d been through what he had in the past day, it must have been staggering.
“Michael—” I started, turning up one hand and reaching for him.
He waved me off. “No. I’m fine. Just. Fine.”
It was better than his brother’s reaction, but it still left me frustrated. Doing my job had always caused problems for someone, and it had gotten worse after I become a Greywalker. I didn’t have the luxury of making other people comfortable about what I did or how I did it most of the time. Usually, I didn’t have to worry about people seeing me do something strange; most people ignore the majority of what goes on around them, especially when it’s weird or upsetting. But Michael had had this dumped on him with no mitigation or preparation. I felt rotten about it, but what was I supposed to do? If I went at it with kid gloves, what was already bad would have turned worse—if it hadn’t already, and I feared it had.
“Time for tea and discussion,” Marsden stated. “Keep up, you two.”
He headed off through the church gates, cane out in front and confident that we were trailing him like ducklings.
I made a rueful face at Michael.
He gave a self-conscious shrug and took off after the blind Greywalker.
CHAPTER 38
“St. James’s,” Marsden said over tea. “Very odd, that.”
Marsden had led us to a grubby little shop on a side street near the British Museum, which turned out to serve good, cheap tea and sandwiches that had no resemblance to delicate bits of thin bread and water-cress. We’d spent a quarter of an hour bringing Michael up to speed, though he was thinking and watching more than talking while Marsden and I tried to make a plan. Michael seemed to getting his mind around it, though.
“What’s so odd? I mean, aside from ghosts and vampires and talking statues. ” he snarked, swallowing a mouthful of bread and meat.
“What’s odd, boy, is that the Red Brothers of St. James is the faction what Harper’s employer used to run with. Purcell was his man of business. But he doesn’t know what’s happened to Purcell, so the conclusion I draw is that either the rift is mended between the Brotherhoods—which I doubt—or someone’s suborned the whole lot. That would be a rather good trick. And if it’s done, it’s the asetem what have done it. That could be worse, but not a whole bloody lot.”