Greywalker - Vanished Part 22

She went still as she thought about my query, her eyes looking off to the side and I imagined-no, I was sure-I could hear the muted whirring of minuscule gears. "Just over three weeks ago, Mr. Purcell sent his a.s.sistant, Jakob, to place a few things in the vault. An unpleasant creature, that one. He also left a letter for me which asked that I open the vault for him later that week at half an hour before closing time. I did so. Mr. Purcell arrived exactly on time and replaced several objects as well as adding a box of papers and a letter that I believe is intended for you."

"Me?"

Mrs. Jabril nodded. "For whoever might come to open the vault after him, that is. He said that he might not return to open it again. And he forbade me to open it to Jakob without his presence." Purcell had been twisted to Alice's purposes, but he hadn't been entirely in the dark about the dangers. He had antic.i.p.ated trouble and done what he could. I hoped the letter would give some indication of why he hadn't spoken directly to Edward about it, though with the asetem in the picture, that may have been enough.

Mrs. Jabril cut short my mental wandering by opening the iron grille in front of the vault door. It looked too heavy for such a tiny woman to move, but I was becoming quite sure she wasn't at all a normal person. She pointed to one of two keyholes-there was one on the top and one on the bottom of the door, an uncomfortable span for anyone other than an ape-and told me to put my key into the one on top. She slid hers into the keyhole on the bottom and we turned them together. The door loosened in its frame and sighed a little as a gust of air cooler than the air in the cellar leaked out. Mrs. Jabril took hold of the door's handle and turned it with the sound of metal rolling on metal. The hinges made a whisper of protest as she opened the door.

Given the production of opening it, I expected the treasure of King Solomon's mines, but the interior of the small vault was packed with various crates and wooden cases with a pile of plastic file boxes near the front. A large envelope had been taped to the top of the nearest file box and an open carton sat beside it. "I shall return to the office above, if you like," Mrs. Jabril offered. "There is a bell near the lift which you can ring for me."

There was no way I had the time or temptation to go through the whole vault. I suspected that Purcell had left everything I needed in the box on top, and I was certain I could trust Mrs. Jabril. "I don't think that's necessary. If you don't mind waiting while I read the letter, I'm sure I won't be much longer than that," I said, looking into the vault.

Mrs. Jabril said nothing and stood silently by as I reached for the envelope, which was addressed, "Edward, or his Agent." A curious little symbol near the bottom of the address glowed red and then blue as I picked up the letter, and I thought it was probably some kind of ward. I wondered what would have happened to the letter if I wasn't in possession of Edward's power of attorney. Bursting into flames seemed likely. A gold wafer and two small blobs of blue wax held the flap closed. A little nervous, I broke them and opened the letter.

Dear Ned, I have fallen to the twin follies of complacency and arrogance which led me to betray your trust and lose our security to your enemies. I can only say I did not realize what I had done until it was too late, did not know there was a cuckoo in our nest. I cannot say who works for them-I don't know which of our friends and servants have taken their coin-but the asetem-ankh-astet are among us, and destruction already rules the day. I hope you will forgive me.

I have done what I can to mitigate your losses, converted as much as possible to negotiable forms, made transfers of deed and t.i.tle, and moved a.s.sets as swiftly as possible to those safe places of which we spoke long ago. I have collected copies of those papers into the boxes attached to this letter as well as certain articles which I know to be of great importance to you. I have left them to the care of the clockwork, she, of all things, being una.s.sailable. Once the proper forms are filed, your property will be restored, as much as it can be, but the power that held St. James's is gone, taken by that abomination that called herself Alice and that black monster, Simeon. Beware of them and even of your own shadow. There is a traitor among your close circle who comes from the Pharaohn himself and will be dangerous beyond description and subtle as a serpent. You must be most careful if you are to escape the Pharaohn's machinations. More so than I have been.

I regret that my foolishness has cost you so much and that I shall not see you again to say that I am sorry.

Your friend, as ever, John Purcell I refolded the letter, feeling a little sad once again for Purcell even if he was a vampire, and returned it to its envelope. Then I peeked into the box next to the file case. A clutter of objects had been thrown into it, including a handful of animal teeth, an oddly shaped knife with a missing point, a single ornate garnet earring, and a black silk scarf, lumpy with the masked shapes of other things below it. Something about the contents made me s.h.i.+ver and I set that aside to open the plastic file box.

The sheer volume of paper was staggering for such a small container. Packed into the box were records of stock transactions, transfers of t.i.tle to dozens of properties, records of deed and incor porations, bank account records, recordings of probate, and dozens of other legal doc.u.ments. From the dates, it appeared Purcell had done it all himself in a whirlwind of activity during the shortening spring twilight of the two weeks before he was taken by Alice's minions. No wonder he hadn't replied to Edward's messages; he'd spent all the available time trying to fix what had gone wrong and he didn't trust anyone to make replies for him-not once he'd realized that Jakob was tainted by the asetem, as he must have been. I put the letter into the front of the file case and picked up both that and the small carton of odds and ends. Then I carried them out of the vault and shut the door.

"I'm ready to go," I said to the patient Mrs. Jabril.

She hadn't moved or complained while I looked through the boxes. Now she stepped forward and helped me relock the door before closing the grille back over it.

I watched her through the deepest layer of the Grey as she finished her job. Her eyes really were emeralds and her teeth truly were pearls: she was "the clockwork" that Purcell had mentioned, a thing of metal and machinery beneath her sagging skin, animated by that pure golden magic I had observed in her corona and by a spark of something human tangled at the heart of her gears and pinions. But beyond that, the only sign of humanity was the lingering trace of the man who'd built her, though she faked it well. I surmised it was her job to care for the vault-maybe it always had been-and her charge to answer if asked the right questions. Jabril, the silversmith who'd wanted to be a clockmaker, must have built her. I'd never seen anything like her before, but she was a thing of laws and mechanisms, and one thing I knew was that creatures like her did not lie or deviate from their programming. She must have been nearly two hundred years old, but she would mind the shop and the vault and carry out her maker's intentions until she fell to bits, however long she lasted.

She turned and looked at me as she finished. "Is there anything else?"

"Only that you shouldn't allow anyone access to that vault except Edward Kammerling or his agent." "You?"

"G.o.ds, I hope not," I replied, shuddering at the thought.

"Shall I see Mr. Purcell again?"

"I don't know."

She nodded and started back to the lift. I caught up to her in a few strides.

"Mrs. Jabril," I started, a little reluctant to ask but compelled to the question and knowing she would be equally compelled to answer, "have you ever met a man called Simeon? A . . . wizard?" "A sorcerer," she corrected. "I met him once, when Mr. Jabril was still alive. An evil man. He had raised up an apprentice of great talent-a distant cousin of Mr. Jabril's named Ezra-nurtured his power, and used him to learn great things. Then he slew him and drank Ezra's soul. Only I knew, and I could say nothing against him. I do not care to see Simeon bin Salah again. Has he something to do with Mr. Purcell's going away?"

"Yes."

"I see." She said not another word until I was leaving the shop, and then she shook my hand with her cold, hard one in which I felt the cables and cogs moving under the skin. She said, "I shall look after the vault. As we always have." She had a significant gleam in her emerald eyes as she nodded to me. I pitied anyone or anything fool enough to try to get past Mrs. Jabril and her mechanical cousin below. On my way back down the arcade, Percy tried to trip me, giggling in a chorus of ghostly voices. I stumbled and caught myself, muttering, "d.a.m.n you. Don't make me come after you, you pain in the b.u.t.t."

The collective mean spirit of Percy whispered in my ear, "It wasn't at all what you thought, was it, little girl?"

"What?" I barked, turning in a circle to catch a glimpse of the poltergeist.

"It's not over," the chorus whispered.

One of the beadles strolled over and steadied me by the elbow. "Are you all right, madam?" "I'm fine. I slipped but I'm OK." It wasn't just what the poltergeist had said but how that flipped me out. "Little girl," it had called me-my father's pet term, again. I'd always supposed that he'd have continued to call me that, had he lived to see me at my current five foot ten, and I was shaken by the poltergeist's use of it. Had all these communications really been from my father? Was Dad somehow reaching through the wards around him? Why-or how-after so much time . . . unless he was making a desperate effort to help me before it was too late. . . . The thought added urgency to my plans and a terrible weight to the future.

"Do you require a.s.sistance?" the beadle asked.

I started to refuse but thought I'd be better off without another visit from Percy. "Yes, please. I seem to be managing poorly with these boxes." With a very good grace, he took the biggest box from me and escorted me to the nearest street door to hail a cab and wave me on my way. There were no other little tricks from the resident poltergeist.

I asked for the nearest place I could pack and s.h.i.+p the boxes, and the cabby obliged with alacrity while I worried at the question of what the poltergeist meant. It was obvious this was a continuation of the messages I'd been getting since this whole kerfuffle started, but they'd dropped off once I'd left the States and I'd been happy to be shut of them for a while. Now here was another message and much clearer than before. The question I'd started out with had been answered to a degree: I was a Greywalker because my father had dumped the job and Wygan, the Pharaohn of the asetem-ankh-astet, had a purpose for one, a special one, so he'd pushed us to be that tool. But, as the ghosts had warned, that answer wasn't the answer at all. The real question wasn't so much "why" as "what next?" and the answers seemed to be coming, in a way, from my dad, if the telltale endearment meant anything. Obviously, I had a lot of unfinished business back in Seattle, which included finding out what had become of my killer and what Wygan was doing with the ghost of my father. Yet another reason to get home as soon as possible. The job I'd come for was almost done and the one remaining loomed like a tidal wave.

FOURTY-FIVE.

Once the packages were on their way to my place in Seattle-I figured that even the collective powers of the Red Brotherhoods of St. James and St. John couldn't subvert FedEx-I called Quinton. It was about eight in the evening there, so it only took a few minutes for him to call me back as I was walking toward the nearest Underground station.

"Hey, beautiful," he said.

"Hey, yourself. You still at my place?"

"Yeah. It's still crazy under the streets. Crazier, even. And Edward is still missing or incognito." I made a face. "I hate to say that's what I was expecting."

"So, you're not coming back?"

"No, Iam coming back. Tomorrow in fact. So long as things go as planned. If not, well . . . send flowers."

"It can't be that bad."

"It is all of that bad. Do you remember Alice, the vampire who crashed our party at the museum two years ago?"

"I thought she was dead," Quinton answered slowly.

"Join the club. She fooled us all. She was hooked up with Wygan and he somehow kept her going long enough to s.h.i.+p her here and start pulling the rug out from under Edward. Once she was in control, she lured me here under his orders and tried to make me a little more dead so I'd be a better fit for whatever Wygan has in mind. That's what this has been about since I was a little kid, even before I was born. My dad was supposed to be the Greywalker, but he quit with a .38-caliber resignation." I was amazed how angry I felt as I recited it. I was furious at how I'd been used, how my father had been pushed until he broke, how our friends and family had been hurt and killed and used as levers against us. I continued, "Alice was Wygan's cat's-paw from the start. She got me killed the first time, too-or the second, I guess, but who's counting-so I could be the right kind of Greywalker for Wygan's purpose. Once I have Will back, I'm done here, because what's going on at home is apparently just the start of Wygan's endgame, and I'm going to stop him. At least now I know. I know what I am: I'm a tool to build some kind of gateway-but I'm not going to do it."

"You don't have to. Sweetheart, we could run-"

"No.You can run. Wygan will just keep coming after me until he gets what he wants or he gets stopped." "I'm not going anywhere without you, unless I'm running toward you."

I smiled and felt warm for the first time all day. "I'll be the one running toward you. Will you come get me from the airport?"

"Sure."

"I may have the Novaks with me, but I'm hoping they can travel alone and attract less attention. I'll page you with more info. Then I'll call the condo when the plane touches down. You should be able to get to the airport by the time I'm through customs. The car keys are on the-"

"Floor. Chaos has them."

I laughed. "She's such a little thief."

"She's not a very good thief. She never tries to fence anything that's worth a d.a.m.n. Just old squeaky toys and b.u.t.tons-which were mostly mine to begin with."

We both laughed a little more, but the next breath brought back our worries and Quinton said, "You are coming back. Right?"

"I am coming back. Yes. Because the alternative is not an option. And I love you." It was the hardest thing I'd ever said, especially after the casual blow Cary's ghost had delivered about those words, and I waited in torment during the silence that followed.

Very quietly, Quinton responded, "I love you, too. And I will see you soon. Once I get the keys back from the ferret."

I hung up, smiling, even though the prospect ahead was grim, and headed for my meeting with Marsden at Angel Station.

The platform was busy, and I looked through the Grey for Marsden's slippery aura of colorless shapes rather than try to sort the crowd by eye for him. It took a bit of walking and a ride up the nearly endless escalator to find him on a bench in the intermittent suns.h.i.+ne that was breaking through the clouds. A girl and her mother were sharing the bench with the blind man, who was keeping his head down, his long hair masking the disfigurement of his face, as he talked to them. The woman looked a bit wary, but the girl was smiling and holding something out to him. He took it and stroked the thing with remarkable gentleness. I got a little closer but stopped to watch, rather than interrupt the scene.

Marsden must have sensed my proximity; I saw him stiffen a bit and turn his head a little in my direction. He pa.s.sed his gnarled hands over the furry little thing. "Magic, he is," he murmured. "Just magic. I had a hob just like him once-n.o.ble fella and a fine mole catcher, too. Quick as thought, he was, and clever with it. He'll do well with you, I think."

Then he held the fluff ball out for the girl: It was a young sable ferret with a little bandit mask and bright eyes. The sight of it made tears sting in my eyes as I thought of Chaos living in Quinton's pockets, and I hoped she would stay safe. "I've got to move along now," Marsden continued. "Thank you, my dear, for introducing me to your Dexter. You'll take good care of him, eh?"

"Yes, sir," the girl replied, cuddling the little animal to her chest.

He nodded at her mother before tapping his way across the busy cement ap.r.o.n around the station's mouth to where I stood.

"You're late," he said.

"And you are a big fake, you grumpy old man. I didn't have you pegged for a ferret fancier." He snorted and began walking on, expecting me to follow. "Clever little beggars. Excellent at flus.h.i.+n' moles from holes. And ghosts from buildings-they can't resist chasing 'em. Not trying to kill 'em, mind you; they just like to rout 'em out. They'll dance and chatter like a mad thing and drive the haunts b.l.o.o.d.y bonkers. They'll zoom along a ley line and pounce on anything Grey as gets in their way. Fearless, they are. Charm the socks right off ya, too."

"Yes, they do," I replied, thinking of Chaos's wild behavior around anything ghostly, like the first time she'd dived headfirst into the Grey to take on the guardian beast on her own. She hadn't won that fight, but she hadn't lost it, either. "I have a ferret at home."

"Do you, now? P'raps your dad didn't father as big a fool as I thought."

I rolled my eyes. Back to the same old Marsden.

"So what are we looking for?" I asked.

"The right sort of sewer opening. Did you have any luck with the silversmith?"

"Did you know she's some kind of machine?"

"Is she indeed? I take it she was the one."

"She was. I found a lot of papers that should repair most of the financial damage. They might not give Edward any leverage back into St. James's, but they should give him some options. I s.h.i.+pped the important ones home."

"And what will happen to them if you do not return?"

"I have a friend who'll deal with it."

He nodded. "You've surprised me."

"Really? How?"

"You carried through. Y'didn't have to, y'know. Good chance this will go pear-shaped, and then what's in it for you, eh?"

"Integrity?"

"What's that matter to a dead woman? Which is what you had best be if this goes wrong." "It seems to matter to some of them. And who says I'm going to die?"

"If you misplay Alice, if you don't win, you'll have given them what they're after-a chance to shape you how the Pharaohn wants. You'd be better off down that hole in the Hardy tree or splattered across the landscape like your dad."

"You don't know what's best for me, Marsden. Even if we foul it up and he does make me the Greywalker he's after, tools don't always work they way you think they will. You can use a knife for a screwdriver, but that doesn't mean it can't cut you."

He chuckled and said nothing, continuing west and south until we came to the turning of Penton Rise away from Pentonville Road. I looked around, seeing the mismatched buildings from a century of construction and renewal; the neon sign of a Travelodge hotel poked out above a lion-guarded Victorian facade in one direction and a steel-fronted car repair shop lurked in the other. The road was loud with traffic and filthy even in the middle of the day.

"Can y'feel the river yet?" he asked. "Under all this muck and steel?"

"No. Which river are we after again?"

"The Fleet. What was the grandest tributary of London before the Great Stink. Still comes to the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge, but we daren't start there. Stretch for it. We can't just guess at this." "What about you?"

"Two heads are better than one, they say. . . ."

Putting our two heads together and quartering the area like hunting dogs on a scent, we finally found the cold, blue trace of the Fleet River buried beneath the streets and buildings south of King's Cross, just a few blocks south and west of where we'd started.

We walked south, sunk in the Grey, along the onetime banks of the Fleet until we reached Holborn Bridge, coming perilously close to the memory of the priory of St. John as it stood across the phantom stream, solitary stone among a scatter of wood-and-plaster buildings in a rolling meadow. Beyond the bridge, the river vanished in a haze of broken Grey and a sharp wall of shattered temporaclines. Reluctant to step into the normal in such a place, we retraced our steps until we could come back to the modern surface safely.

We slipped out of the Grey and stood on the street, looking around for our bearings and the nearest sewer cover. A large building rose behind a brick wall topped with razor wire just across the road from us. The other buildings nearby were a mix of very old and very new housing.

"This should be close enough for Michael's motorbikes. Are y'certain y'know how-" "For the last time, yes!" I snapped. They were Michael's bikes, yet he had been less worried about possible wrecks than Marsden, but then, he would be carrying his brother and didn't have much anxiety to spare for anything else. Marsden would be stuck with me and my riding skills, of which he was obviously in doubt.

Now we only needed to know where we were, and it would be up to Michael to bring the bikes to the right place. I walked up the road a bit, noting the utility access cover in the road near the intersection, until I found a sign screwed to the brick wall. It read PHOENIX PLACE. Another beside it identified the building as the Royal Mail sorting facility of Mount Pleasant. We were in luck; I couldn't imagine a better place to keep monsters at bay than the staid and secure environs of the Royal Mail.

I pulled my map book out of my bag and found the location and nearest major streets. So long as Michael didn't get picked up for loitering, it would be a pretty good spot. I called him and left the information on his voice mail-he didn't answer and I figured he was too busy with his own arrangements to bother with the phone. I didn't mind. He seemed to be holding up, and so long as he didn't stop to think too hard about what we were doing, he would be fine.

Marsden and I retraced the route of the river Fleet upstream through the Grey, pa.s.sing through the chilly film-flicker of its submerged history until we found a place we both recognized. We were back at St. Pancras Old Church, but this time it stood on a rise above the banks.

"Blast," he muttered. "The stream's subsided more than I remembered." He didn't turn his head to look at me. "I suppose you could make a boat. . . ."

"What? I don't know a thing about boats and we don't have time-"

"I meant a boat like Norrin's knife-a Grey construct."

"No."

"That's bald of you."

"That's not how I work. I can't make anything. I'm only any good at tearing things apart, and even if I had the ability, we don't have the time for me to learn. Nor would it be wise to make our approach through the Grey," I added.

"Oh, yeah?" he challenged me, turning toward me at last.

I noticed the gouging in his flesh then. Deep in the Grey as we were, the damage he'd taken from Norrin was plain. He stood more stooped than usual, hunching over the place he'd been stabbed in the gut, and the marks around his eyes seeped glimmering tears of uncanny blood. I knew he didn't want sympathy, so I didn't offer any, or any indication that I saw anything amiss. My objection would have been the same regardless.

"It's too exhausting. If we want to get in through the rivers that exist now, we need to start in them. And we'll need everything we've got to fight through to Will and get out again. Pus.h.i.+ng through the Grey the whole way and hoping the river hasn't changed course from the temporacline we picked is too risky." He grunted grudging a.s.sent.

A waft of blinking energy fragments drifted through us with a touch of frost and reminded me by my discomfort that I wanted out of the Grey as soon as possible. I climbed the hill toward the stubby square tower of St. Pancras Old Church as it had been when it was the only St. Pancras church. a.s.suming that Marsden would follow me into the ghost-thick graveyard, I s.h.i.+fted back to the normal. I looked back down the now-smaller hill as Marsden showed up beside me, scanning the road for another manhole cover.