Heart's Blood(26)

"Abomination." The word came hissing out of the late-afternoon shadows, slithering from somewhere beyond the colonel. It would have frightened Pearl, coming out of the rising fog as it did, except it was a physical sound. One she heard with her ears. Or did that make it more dangerous?

"Oh, shut up, Cranshaw." Grey rolled his eyes. "We've heard it all before and we're bloody sick of it. Frankly, the only one not delighted sorcery's come back is you."

Simmons harrumphed. "Now see here-"

"Admit it, Freddie." Grey poked Simmons in his barrel chest. "If it didn't mean we had to admit these terrifying females to our ranks, you'd be dancing in the streets because sorcery's back." He stabbed a finger toward the box wagon being slowly loaded with items from the warehouse. "It's why the Briganti van has always been black and white. Black for conjury. White for sorcery."

"Sorcery is evil. Corrupt and vile. Spawned of Satan." Cranshaw crept out of the fog, hissing at Pearl as he spoke.

She remembered him. This was the man who'd tried to bar her from the council library.

"Oh, for-" Grey flung his hand toward the gaping maw of the warehouse door. "That is vile, Nigel. Murder done for no other purpose than to produce magic. Magic for who knows what vile and corrupt, evil spell."

Cranshaw winced. At least Pearl thought she saw it. "Sorcery," he hissed. "Blood spilled to call magic. It's evil. You said it yourself."

Grey's fists clenched. Pearl could feel him quivering, as if he barely restrained himself from leaping on the man. "You were there, in Paris," he snarled. "You know sorcery depends on blood willingly given, or it turns against the one who shed it."

"Lies-" Cranshaw snarled back.

"This-" Grey gestured at the warehouse again. "This was conjury. Some blind fool thinking he could control a demon."

"He?" Cranshaw pounced on the word. "Are you so sure the killer wasn't a woman? Women are sorcerers. They draw magic from blood, use their subtle wiles to pervert what is good and true."

'T weren't a woman. That icy whisper returned to freeze her again. 'Twas a man. Cloaked and hooded, t'be sure, but only a man could ha' swung that hammer, the one that broke ma bones.

"The spirits say otherwise," Grey declared.

Grey heard the spirit this time? Must have. It made Pearl feel better to know that she wasn't the only one to hear him.

"Are you here for a reason, Cranshaw?" Grey asked. "Or did you come to cause trouble?"

"I came to prevent trouble. To stop the corruption of the minds of-"

"Then leave. If you have no legitimate purpose here, go away."

Cranshaw drew himself upright in outraged dignity. "I am magister of the wizard's guild-"

"But you're not Briganti." Grey interrupted him again as Pearl watched, fascinated. The dilettante was gone, replaced by the-the conjurer. The commander of the Investigations Branch. "And this is Briganti business. No one may interfere, not even the head of council. Not even the queen."

He spoke through clenched teeth, hands closing into fists, alarming Pearl a little. She'd never seen him in this guise.

"Do you understand me, Cranshaw?" Grey took a step toward the wizard. "If you do not leave now, of your own accord, I will have you . . . escorted from here. As is within my authority."

"You are bewitched!" Cranshaw's pale eyes widened in horror, then narrowed again with hate. "She has bewitched you."

"No, Cranshaw. You've shaped my opinion of you all on your own. You have annoyed me. You have disturbed me. You have disgusted me with your twisted ranting and your stirring up hatred and fear of the very thing we need most simply because you are, for some ungodly reason, terrified of women."

"Not ungodly. They are ungodly with their sly looks and slinking walk and-" Cranshaw noticed Simmons's expression of shock and disgust, and fell silent.

"Egad, man, listen to yourself," Simmons spluttered. "Females can be a nuisance, but they're still only females."

Pearl thought about protesting. She would have, except the same exact thing could be said about males. Though males were more of a nuisance.

Grey snapped his fingers, summoning two of his larger investigators. "Briganti, please escort Magister Cranshaw away from our crime investigation site. With whatever force necessary. Just be sure he departs. If he does not-" The expression on his face made Pearl shiver, just a bit. "Escort him again. More emphatically."                       
       
           



       

The two men, both conjurers, as were most of Grey's force, grinned and advanced on the scowling wizard.

Cranshaw aimed his scowl at Pearl, so filled with hate it made her edge behind Grey. How could he hate her so? He'd only just met her.

Grey moved, stepping between them, as if blocking the malevolence of that stare. The escorts reached Cranshaw, who ignored them until they grasped his arms. He threw off their hands, spun on his heel, and marched away.

When he turned the corner at the end of the street, Pearl took a deep breath. It came easier simply because the tension had faded. Wizards couldn't stifle someone through malicious intent alone. Could they?

"That man is a boil on the arse of all civilization," Grey muttered.

Pearl's laugh burst out of her before she could stop it, and Grey wheeled about to glare down at her. Unlike Cranshaw's scowl, his glare felt almost warm. "You did not hear that," he announced.

"Hear what?" She widened her eyes and tried to look utterly innocent and ignorant. Innocent was probably too much of a stretch, but ignorant was naught but truth. She was woefully ignorant about far too many things.

Grey nodded briskly, lips twitching in a tiny smile, then turned to shout at his men. "Once you've noted its location in the warehouse, clear it all out. We're taking the lot back to the workrooms."

"I'm drawing as fast as I can," someone shouted back in a working-class accent. "Need more bloody light."

"Duncan, where's our light? What's the use of having an alchemist on the field squad if you can't give us light when we need it?" Grey stomped to the open door and glowered in as a soft golden glow flickered and rose to shine out into the street.

"Sorry, sir. Didn't notice." Duncan had a northern accent, not Yorkshire. Manchester, maybe. Pearl wasn't an expert on accents.

"Stop gawping at the drama, do your jobs, and perhaps we can get out of here before midnight." He backed away from the open door so a group of men could wrestle an oversized cabinet out of the warehouse and onto the wagon.

"If you fill up the wagon before the place is empty," Grey said to one of the men in a more moderate tone, "take it back to the council hall and unload it, then come back for the rest."

"Yes, sir." The man stopped beside Grey and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. "It'll be late before we finish. You intend to keep your apprentice here the whole time?"

"Not that it's any of your business what my apprentice does, Investigator Meade, but yes. Parkin will stay until we're done." His words rode an edge in his voice that had Meade lifting an eyebrow.

Meade-Grey's second-in-command, wasn't he? Pearl watched him. Did he, too, think this snappishness was unusual?

Grey seemed to recognize his own out-of-character mood and rocked back on his heels, clasping his hands behind his back. When he spoke again, his voice was mild, relaxed. Pearl could sense the tension deep within him, but it was not coiled tight, ready to spring. "With Ferguson out of commission," he said, "we need someone sensitive to sorcery to go through the warehouse with us. Miss Parkin will be of assistance. Seems Ferguson is a touch too sensitive to sorcery. I hadn't realized he'd never attended the morgue before."

"Right, sir. Of course." Meade glanced skeptically at Pearl.

"If you're worried about my tender sensibilities, Mr. Meade," Pearl said. "Don't. I haven't got many, after living in Whitechapel the last pair of years."

"I think he's more concerned with your physical endurance, Parkin." Grey reached into his pockets and addressed Meade again. "Send one of the lads for food. We could all use it. And have him bring a carriage robe before he goes. The damp is rising off the river."

The damp was always rising off the river, but now that night was falling, it was getting colder. Pearl welcomed the heavy robe wrapped around her. Grey moved her peppercorn keg just inside the open warehouse doors, where the damp was less and the alchemist's light fell clearly. She opened her book again, but once more had trouble concentrating on the words it held. The activity around her was far more interesting.

It wasn't just the men cataloguing the things they found, sketching those things' location relative to everything else, and carrying them out to load into the wagon. Pearl could see magic.

She'd always been able to sense magic, as far back as she could remember, though she hadn't known what it was until much later. Magic was warm and coppery, a velvety brush against her skin. But she'd never seen it before now. The book had explained how to relax her vision and let that touch-taste-smell sense float up to her eyes.