Heart's Blood(44)

       
           



       

Varus and Polonia were the oldest spirits who answered his call with a reasonable consistency. Varus had died a dozen years before Julius Caesar, and Polonia dated from a century or so later, in the reign of Diocletian. Both of them were far less what they'd been and more of what they were becoming. Not angels, but something else.

Not long after the clock chimed three, Harry knocked on the workroom door to report Elinor asleep downstairs. Grey had already moved Pearl to the cot under the eaves.

"Late as it is," Harry said, "I reckon if something was going to happen, it would've already happened. Pearl was followin' you down Whitechapel Road by this time, th' night Galloway was murdered."

Grey nodded, leaning against the doorjamb. A workroom was a man's private place. "We can only assume that we were wrong about the significance of the new moon. I'm afraid to hope that the man's given up."

"Maybe whatever 'e conjured last scared 'im into stoppin'. Never any 'arm in hoping." Harry ran a hand through his hair, then scrubbed his face. "Might as well finish out the night. I don't want to give up an' then discover we quit too soon."

"I'll send my older spirits out for a nose around to see if any unusual magic is stirring." Grey rubbed his eyes with finger and thumb. "We can sleep at sunrise."

"Aye." Harry sighed. "It's terrible to sit an' wait for a murder just because you can't catch the soddin' bastard till 'e's done it again." He turned to trudge down the stairs. "I'll 'ave McGregor send up another pot o' tea. The man's unnatural. 'E's still fresh as a daisy."

"I have often suspected he keeps duplicates of himself in a closet to bring out at times like this." Grey waved Harry off and retreated into his workroom to ask his Roman contingent to scour the city. Varus had a few contemporaries occasionally willing to help, but they didn't speak to Grey much. Walther went with them.

As the hours wore on, he fought boredom and sleep by setting Mary to wake him whenever he drifted off. Grey feared capture by another one of the murderer's wretched spells. The rain tapered off, but the night was so dark he couldn't tell whether the skies had cleared or not. He couldn't see stars. Fog hadn't settled in, at least. The windows remained wet, so perhaps a thin drizzle still fell.

The streets outside began to stir with the first evidence of the world coming awake. The sky was still dark, but the clocks had chimed six and the hooves of omnibus horses clattered on the paving. Grey had just closed his watch, which proclaimed 6:03, and was replacing it in his vest pocket, preparing to descend the stairs, call off the alert, and send everyone home, when magic burst into his brain.

Demon! it shrieked.





17




MARY FOLLOWED ON the heels of the alarm, blasting open Grey's doors and windows with the force of her arrival. Demon! she cried. Demon, demon, demon!

"Where?" Grey glanced at Pearl, who had been awakened by the explosion of breaking glass and sat groggily blinking. "Downstairs," he said, obeying his own order.

"Mary." He reached for her, trying to soothe her, calm her, as he skidded down the stairs, scarcely touching them. "Where is the demon? We need to know. I can't understand you."

Demon, she wailed. But she didn't need words to tell him.

Pictures opened in his mind, canted at crazy angles with unnatural colors that made him stumble on the stairs as he tried to interpret them. Pearl's shoulder under his arm steadied him. They descended the rest of the way with him leaning on her, trying to concentrate on the bizarre pictures Mary was sending him, rather than the soft, warm body pressed against his side.

In the drawing room, Meade stood with the fingers of his left hand pressed to his temple as he always did when communicating with his spirits. He'd apparently roused the others, for the alchemists and Elinor were on their feet.

Elinor was the first to notice Grey's entrance with Pearl. "What's happened?"

Pearl tried to ease herself away, but Grey held her in place. He liked knowing exactly where she was. "Demon," he said. "Meade, can you tell where it is? My spirit's confused."

"Park, I think. Lots of shrubberies and grass. Can't tell which one."

"Right." Grey set himself again to soothing Mary while he sent a summons winging out to his other spirits. "The demon can't touch you," he reminded her. "You have protections far greater than mine. Just tell me where it is."

It will hurt you, she cried. You have no protection.

He has us, Walther announced, making his return known. The demon is in St. James's Park.

"St. James's," Grey announced. "Make sure all the conjurers know, my spirits, and that they know to spread the word to the other magicians."

Your conjurers, they know, Walther said.

"Then have Sir William's secretary wake him and request that he call out the entire council." The secretary was always a conjurer for moments like this. "We'll need everyone we've got, whoever can cast the most basic spell, if we're taking on a demon."

"St. James's Park?" Harry questioned. "Right in front of Horse Guards?"

"It's a demon," Grey was taking hats and coats from a footman's laden arms and passing them to their owners. McGregor held umbrellas. "Demons do not care about human authority or human force of arms."

"Right." Harry grimaced. He set his bowler hat on his head for lack of anywhere else to put it while he pulled on his coat. "I was thinkin' of our murderer, not a demon."

Grey groaned, but didn't stop assisting Pearl with her coat. "That's right. If a demon's here, likely we've got another murder victim somewhere. Spirits?"

"Surely you do not intend to take the women with us to confront a demon." Archaios picked his hat up from a side table, his coat buttoned snugly to his neck.

"Surely you do not think we would actually stay behind," Elinor retorted.

A newer spirit popped up in answer to Grey's call. Good idea. Let the older spirits focus on the demon and the newer, weaker spirits carry messages and do the safer but still necessary tasks.

"Get a message to Commissioner Mayne requesting his regular police begin a search for the murder victim and the scene of the crime." Grey finally shrugged into his own coat.

"The women are magicians," he went on. "We need everyone who can possibly cast a spell. We'll have twelve-year-old boys from the school out there."

"But-" Archaios stood near the door, as if he thought of barring it.

"This is a demon, Archaios." Grey's fear and anger came snapping through his voice. "If guns and soldiers can't hurt it, what makes you think mere masculine strength will? It's magic we need, man. Even as apprentices, these two wield powerful magic. You think no innocent blood will be spilled this morning? Shouldn't we have access to that magic?"

"The danger-" Archaios was wavering.

"If we can't drive that demon back from whence it came, there will be no safety anywhere." Grey's voice was bleak. He caught the Greek's arm and pushed him out the parlor door, following him. The rest of the silent company came after.                       
       
           



       

Harry caught up with Grey, drizzle gathering in silvery beads on the rounded crown of his hat. He glanced at the two women behind them, trotting along beneath their umbrellas. "Think we can keep the ladies at the back o' the lines? Tendin' the wounded, like?"

"We can only try. And hope." The bleakness settling deep inside him would not help in the battle, Grey knew, but he did not know how to drive it out.

An omnibus, empty due to the early hour, rattled along Piccadilly at the end of the street. Grey shouted, and Meade ran ahead to appropriate it for the official use of the Briganti. They loaded everyone on and headed off to St. James's Park.

They were proceeding along Bird Cage Walk toward the parade grounds in front of Whitehall when Grey spotted men and lights gathering just inside the park. He tapped the conductor's shoulder and pointed, signaling him to have the driver stop, and Mary popped up from wherever she'd been.

It's gone, she cried. The demon's gone. It's left its toy and gone away. She flitted around the omnibus in a spiritish dance of joy.

"Gone where?" Grey asked, before sharing the news with the living persons on the bus.

Don't know, don't care. Mary whirled, doing pirouettes that spun off bits of vapor that hovered until they could rejoin the whole.

"Back to hell?"

Don't know, don't care, she sang again.

Grey sighed. Mary had been flighty in her life, but he'd hoped death, which had improved so many things about her, would have changed that as well. Apparently "carefree" was part of her character. Everyone clambered off the bus and Harry paid the conductor before releasing the vehicle to its regular route.

He put away his wallet. "What now? Since the demon's gone."

"We need to make sure it's gone." Grey led the way into the park, looking back to make sure the ladies were just behind them. Archaios and Meade provided a rear guard. "And find out where it's gone, if we can. If it's only exchanged the park for Stepney, or London for Edinburgh, that's no better. It needs to be gone away."