Dead Rick followed, suspicion coiling into a hard knot in his gut. It was smoothly done—all very natural, as if it were only haste that made the fellow take so quick a glance—but Dead Rick saw with more than just his eyes, and knew his ally had been very deliberate in not letting him see inside the box.
He obediently followed the other into the workroom, and glanced over the carefully labeled bottles as if the words he saw there meant anything to him. Vitreous humor (hawk). Lunar caustic. Vitriol of alder. Most of his attention was on the small box tucked under Milord’s arm. Just as soon as ’e’s busy…
Milord bent forward to examine a camera. In that moment of distraction, Dead Rick snatched the box from his grasp.
Before the other could do more than cry out in protest, he’d torn the top free, uncovering what lay inside. Nestled in a bed of straw was something Dead Rick recognized all too well.
A plate of glass, held in a thin wooden frame.
Dead Rick glared at his supposed ally, furious. “You knowed. This whole bloody time.”
Milord straightened slowly, warily, hands stiff at his sides. “I suspected. I still suspect; I have no confirmation. But the pieces of glass that hold your memories do sound a good deal like photographic plates, yes.”
Before Chrennois stole ghosts, he stole pieces of faeries’ minds. The same technique, advanced over the last few years? Or different things entirely? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that his ally had lied. Promising all this time to get his memories back, but now that they were here, the deceitful bugger would have rushed him right back out again, with never a mention of what he needed to know.
As much as Dead Rick wanted to knock the smug bastard onto his arse, there was one thing he wanted more. He slammed the box down onto the table and ran back into the side room.
“We don’t have the time!” his ally called after him, real desperation in his voice. “I promise, I will help you, but not tonight—it would take too long to search—”
“Iron burn you,” Dead Rick snarled back. “If you think I’m bloody well leaving ’ere without my bloody mind…” Words failed him. His hands did not; they tore the lid off one crate after another, digging through the straw and other contents. Some things were photographic plates; others were not; he didn’t have to look to know none of those were his memories. He would know them when he found them.
“You can be valuable, Dead Rick, staying where you are—work from within Nadrett’s defenses, and it will be far easier to destroy him when the time comes!”
The time to destroy him was after Dead Rick had his memories back. Growling, he burrowed deeper into the room, following instinct deeper than any physical sense, until his hands settled on a particular crate, and he knew.
“Blood and Bone,” he whispered, the lid falling from his hands to thunk against the floor. So many. Instead of straw, this box was lined with notched strips of wood, holding the small plates in tidy rows. Dozens of them, stacked several rows deep—and yet, when he thought about it, that wasn’t so many at all. Not for a faerie’s eternal life. How much did each plate hold?
This had to be all of them. Nothing else in the room called to him.
Dead Rick jammed the lid back onto the crate. It was almost too large for one man to carry, but he would be damned before he asked Milord for any more help. He ended up lifting it atop another box, then turning around so he could tip the weight forward onto his back, with his hands on the bottom edge.
Milord had given up his protests; he was in the outer room, looking rapidly over the bottles and other containers, as if snatching everything he could into his mind. The plate holding Galen St. Clair was tucked securely under his arm. It wasn’t worth trying to grab, not when Dead Rick had his memories at last. The skriker passed without a word, walking carefully to the alcove and positioning himself beneath the fanlike arrangement of stone tendrils. Hands full, he resorted to tapping one with his nose, hoping that would wake it up.
It did. The tendrils came down, wrapped around his body, and lifted him toward the street.
The City of London: August 6, 1884
He stumbled leaving the entrance, and nearly dropped the box. Panic beat in his throat—visions of it falling, the memories tumbling free, every last one of them shattering—
By the time he had it steadied, his heart was racing. Dead Rick squeezed his eyes shut and thanked all the powers of Faerie for his good fortune. Now, to get them back safe in my ’ead.
Which meant going to the Academy, and hoping he could buy help there. Dead Rick opened his eyes and turned his steps toward the Onyx Hall—but not, for once, the Goblin Market. The thought lit a spark of joy in his soul.
A flare that died when he saw three men coming up the pavement toward him. No, not men: fae, under glamour. And the leader was recognizable as Nadrett.
He could have run—if he abandoned the crate. Dead Rick could have more easily abandoned his legs. Then they were there, and it was too late to flee. “Well,” Nadrett said, his voice soft and malevolent. He cocked a pistol, but didn’t point it at Dead Rick. Not yet. “So my dog’s got a backbone after all. You’ll regret finding that, you will.”
Dead Rick’s hands clenched on the box’s corners. “Iron burn you,” he spat. “I ain’t your fucking dog no more.”
A grinding sound, a whiff of new scent: the entrance had done its work once more, and his ally had emerged—at the worst possible moment. Nadrett looked past Dead Rick, and his eyebrows went up. “So that’s what you’ve been doing all this time, sneaking about. Thinking I wouldn’t notice. I notice everything, dog. Who’s your friend ’ere, then?” No answer from Milord, though Dead Rick heard the other faerie’s feet shift, as if he were settling himself to fight. Nadrett said, “I wonder what’s under that glamour, boys?”
Quick as a snake, he raised his pistol and fired.
It brought the entire street to a halt. The enchantments over the door protected against mortals noticing people coming and going from the Onyx Hall, but nothing more; seeing the gun, passersby began to flee. Dead Rick staggered, flinching instinctively away from the shot, and then one of Nadrett’s underlings seized him, unbalancing him still further. For one horrific moment, he was again on the verge of dropping his memories.
Iron. Not elfshot, or lead—the bastard’s shooting iron!
Bread protected against it, but not perfectly. Milord screamed and collapsed to the pavement, and the glamour covering him shattered.
Revealing Valentin Aspell.
The faerie was bleeding from the shoulder; Nadrett hadn’t aimed to kill. Aspell spat curses worthy of the lowest Goblin Market trash, and he sounded neither like his disguised voice nor his usual oily self; and Dead Rick kept staring. Aspell. All this time.
Nadrett was spitting curses of his own. “I thought you was up to something, sending your lackeys like that, not talking to me yourself. I’m going to enjoy—”