Inkcaster (Library Gate Series Book 4)

by H. Duke

  “Sorry. It was poorly timed.”

  “Again, I’m not going to the party,” she replied curtly. “But since I know Jekyll and Utterson will be going up to Jekyll’s study afterwards, it seems like the safest time to check his house for rot.”

  Rex whined at her heel, and she reached down and scratched his ear absentmindedly. Randall had insisted that she bring Rex with her, and he’d given the dog express instructions to protect her from any threats. His eyes had been on Thaddeus the whole time he’d said it. Randall had wanted to go with them, but April had insisted that he stay behind to keep an eye on Dorian.

  They approached Jekyll’s house. It was the first time she’d seen it where the windows were filled with light rather than darkness. She supposed it was as good a metaphor as any for the mental state of the wayward scientist. After all, it was at this point in the story that he believed he’d gotten rid of Mr. Hyde for good.

  Thaddeus picked the lock with a couple of bobby pins April had brought just for this purpose. Thaddeus was going to break the door down later, which meant it had to be intact.

  The walked in, closing the door behind them. Dust coated the equipment, and the rolling chalk board in the corner had been wiped clean.

  What if there was no serum? What if Dr. Jekyll hadn’t yet made it? What if they were too early? They’d have to spend more time finding another scene to go into… time the blackening books didn’t have. Maybe she should have thrown The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde through the gate after all.

  But Thaddeus strode over to the spot where the box of antidote had been, and lo and behold, it was there. He opened the lid, revealing several bottles that glinted with the light of her cell phone. She counted them—five.

  “How many should we take?” she asked.

  He frowned. “I don’t know. We can’t take all of them—there has to be something in the box for William the Bold to smash, doesn’t there?”

  “Maybe Jekyll will make more before then,” April said, biting her lip. Then she shook her head. “No. He would have mentioned it. He mentioned the first vial that went missing, the first one that Officer Powers took.”

  “You’re right,” Thaddeus said. “How about we take two? That leaves three behind.”

  Would two be enough? It seemed a pittance compared to the four vials of fortification serum that Officer Powers had consumed, and he would take more while they were gone… but it had to be enough. There had to be at least three vials in that case.

  “Two it is,” she said. “You said you had an idea to get him to take these?”

  Thaddeus grinned. “I do.” He walked over to a third case. This one was filled with vials, though all of them were empty. Some were labeled “reversal serum” and others had labels that read “fortification serum.” These must be the empties from what Dr. Jekyll had already consumed.

  Thaddeus pulled out two of the empty vials labelled fortification serum. He unstoppered the two bottles of reversal serum and poured their contents into the empty vials.

  “All we have to do is make him think this is the fortification serum,” Thaddeus said. “From how he was acting earlier, I think it’s safe to say that he’ll guzzle the stuff down.”

  April nodded, but she was still worried about not having enough of the reversal serum. She got an idea.

  “Are there any more vials marked fortification?”

  “Yeah,” Thaddeus said.

  “Give me three.”

  He handed them to her, and she poured the contents of three reversal serum vials into them. Then she walked over to a shelf filled with bottles of chemicals and chose one with a similar amber hue to the serum and refilled the vials she’d just emptied.

  “Dummy vials?” Thaddeus said, with one raised eyebrow.

  “No one will know the difference,” April said.

  Thaddeus nodded begrudgingly. “Good idea,” he said, “Why not switch the fortification serum, too? Then he wouldn’t take them in the first place.”

  “Because he already took them.” she turned back to the case that was supposed to contain the reversal serum but now held the dummy vials. “William the Bold is going to break these on the ground. No harm no foul.” She hoped she was right about this—there was a slight possibility that Jekyll would use these and that there had been that many vials in the case later on was that he’d simply made more—but she hoped that wasn’t the case.

  It was strange talking to Thaddeus so candidly. While they weren’t exactly friendly, they’d built up a rapport. She reminded herself she needed to be wary of him. He’d gotten onto her good side before, but he’d betrayed her—and then almost immediately turned around and betrayed the Collectors. He wasn’t trustworthy.

  It was so damn confusing. She had a case of whip-lash from just being around him.

  He raised his eyebrow, and she realized that she’d been staring. “Aren’t you going to do your thing?” he said. “There’s an awful lot of ink rot in here.”

  “Oh, right.” She walked over to the wall and touched the largest spore. It only managed to take hold of her fingers up to the first knuckle before turning into dust, along with ninety percent of the rot on the wall. She watched with satisfaction as almost all of it blew away. A month ago she would have collapsed after erasing such a large amount of the rot.

  She shook her head. She shouldn’t get cocky. This little bit of ink rot might have been easy, but she’d have to take care of so much more of it before the night was through… if she wasn’t worn out now, she would be later.

  Thaddeus frowned. “What would happen if I touched it like that?”

  She shrugged. “Give it a try.” When he looked at her skeptically, she said, “I won’t let anything happen to you. I need you to help me find that girl, after all.”

  Thaddeus considered this and nodded. He turned to one of the remaining spores, a tiny fraction of the amount she’d just erased, and touched it gingerly with the pad of his finger.

  Instantaneously, the rot began moving up his finger. It moved slowly because it was so small, but Thaddeus’ eyes widened. He tried to pull it off with his free hand, but the rot started spreading to that hand, too.

  “You’re making it worse,” April said, resisting the urge to laugh. She reached out and touched the spore on the wall. It was connected by long, tremulous threads of black to Thaddeus’ hands. All of the rot turned into dust.

  “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” Thaddeus asked, shaking away the dust.

  She smirked. “A little. You’ve caused me a lot of trouble.”

  She could see two or three other small spots of ink rot on the wall, and she was about to go over to them, but Thaddeus spoke again.

  “I’m sorry. About your trip with your grandmother. It’s unfair.”

  She shrugged, surprised by the sincerity in his voice. “It’s not your fault. Even without all this drama, I wouldn’t have made it—at least not without letting some books go black.”

  “But it is my fault,” Thaddeus said. “This happened because I consumed the threshold. It upset the balance you’d been maintaining.”

  “I mean, it’s not like you had much of a choice,” April said. “If you hadn’t done it, Randall and I would probably be locked up with Barty. Who knows what would’ve happened to Dorian.” She shivered. Probably he’d be sent back to his book, never to enter her world again. Whatever loophole was keeping his story from moving on would come to an end, and he’d be forced to face his fate.

  Why did this bother her so much? She shook her head. Of course it bothered her. Dorian was her friend, mentor, and co-worker, for lack of a better term. She wanted what was best for him.

  She turned her attention to Thaddeus. “What do you think would have happened to you?”

  “Oh, Mason would have found some way to weasel back into my good graces. He was a good talker… and Allen was right; he didn’t want me to find out about my mother.” He snorted. “Thinking about it now, I got the raw end of the deal.”
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  April didn’t know what to say to that—he had gotten the raw end of the deal… but he deserved it, didn’t he? Wanting the conversation to come to an end, she erased the last two spots of rot. They were so small that they disappeared when she touched them, not even a cloud of dust to hint at their existence.

  “What now?” Thaddeus asked when she was done.

  “That depends on if the party’s still going on,” she said. She walked over to the door that connected the lab to the house and pressed her ear against it. She heard laughter and the sound of a piano. “It’s still in full swing.”

  “And when it ends?”

  “When it ends, I’m going to go in and look for ink rot. Mr. Utterson and Dr. Jekyll go up to his study and talk for a while after all the guests leave. It should give me some time to walk around the house and take care of any rot.”

  She lowered herself onto a stool in front of one of the tables. They sat in silence. The party would go on for at least another hour.

  There was something she wanted to ask Thaddeus, but she wasn’t sure how to phrase the question. She also wasn’t sure if he would answer honestly, anyway.

  “Thaddeus?”

  “Yes?” he asked in that slightly pompous tone.

  “Why are you so adamant about saving this one girl? In the past you’ve always seemed like you didn’t care about the book characters that much, like you considered them less than human. And you always seemed pragmatic. You don’t like having casualties—I know that because you saved Gram—but you accept that it’s part of the process. So why are you risking everything for this one girl? Who isn’t actually in any danger, I might add.”

  “You don’t actually expect me to believe Corporal Washington’s farce that Sara would survive her encounter with Mr. Hyde, do you?”

  “It’s the truth,” April said, allowing the aggravation into her voice. “But even if it wasn’t… why?”

  For a long while, the only sound was that of laughter and clinking dinnerware from the other side of the door. Eventually she stopped waiting for him to answer, scolding herself internally for asking the question. It only made her seem weak, sentimental. She couldn’t afford him viewing her like that, not when their temporary truce ended the moment that they managed to revert William the Bold to his less threatening state…

  “She reminds me of someone,” Thaddeus said finally.

  “Oh. I thought you didn’t—I mean, you don’t have children, right?”

  Thaddeus shook his head. “No. I never cared for kids much, myself. But…”

  He trailed off, and there was again a long silence. April tried to think of something to fill it, but before she could, he spoke again. “Randall has told you about my episodes, right? It’s not that I’m crazy during them. Maybe I am, in a sense… it’s more like I’m somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere else?” April asked, trying to understand.

  “Yes. I don’t know what happened when I swallowed that threshold. I know the portal, or the gate, or whatever you call it, was inside me. And part of it has never really left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It shows me things. Almost every day. People on both sides, victims…”

  He was starting to sound slightly unhinged, and April worried that he was going to have another episode.

  “Hey, calm down,” she said. She stepped in front of him, and his eyes met hers. At first they were wild, but they cleared slightly as she held his gaze. “What do you mean, both sides?”

  “The Collectors and the wielders,” he said, and she realized that he’d referred to them as Collectors rather than the Agency. “They both did terrible things. I guess we’re both right. Or maybe we’re both wrong.” He paused, collecting himself. “the gate shows me people who were hurt by both sides. This morning it showed me a little girl, the daughter of a wielder. The Agency was coming for them. Her father hid her under the floorboards. He let the Agency—though I don’t know if it was called that then—take him so that they wouldn’t find her. When I left, she was still down there. Alone and frightened in the dark. I don’t know what became of her, but it couldn’t have been good.”

  April waited for him to speak again, but he remained silent. “So Sara reminded you of that girl?”

  He nodded. “I know that it doesn’t make sense. That I shouldn’t intervene, but… I don’t think I can let anything happen to her. I have to at least save this one.”

  “Oh.” April said. She couldn’t really fault him for that, could she? She’d done similar things not so long ago, and as much as she tried to pretend that she was on board for favoring the greater good over ending the suffering that she could see right before her eyes, she wasn’t. She felt a pang in her chest every time she had to choose. It always hurt. She didn’t want to have to choose—she wanted to save everyone.

  Finally, they heard the noise of guests leaving. Through the windows of the lab (which were covered in paper; they just had to peel back one corner of it), they saw carriages pull up in front of the house as their owners disembarked. The sound of voices from behind the door quieted.

  April pressed her ear against the door.

  “My dear Gabriel,” a voice said, using Utterson’s first name, “would you join me in my study for a night cap? I don’t wish to retire just yet.” April recognized the voice as Jekyll’s. It seemed more robust and carefree than the knowledge-hungry ghost of a man she’d encountered earlier.

  “It would be my pleasure, Henry.”

  Jekyll spoke again. “Mr. Poole—do you need help with the mess?”

  “Not at all, sir,” Mr. Poole’s clipped, slightly pompous voice responded. “The staff have retired for the night, but we will have the place as good as new first thing in the morning.”

  “Splendid. Considering how much wine I had, I shall wake up to find the place as shiny as though tonight were a dream.” He laughed. It was strange to hear him joking. He’d seemed so serious, almost haunted. April reminded herself that the Dr. Jekyll she’d met earlier was from a darker future where he’d begun to realize he’d never escape from his actions. He would never escape from Mr. Hyde, the physical embodiment of the darkness inside him.

  April waited for the men’s footsteps to recede into the distance, then nodded to Thaddeus. He picked the lock of the door to the house.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked.

  “No. If they catch me, I’ll just pretend to be someone’s maid-servant looking for her mistress’ lost purse. The ruse doesn’t work if I have a strange man with me.”

  He nodded. “Don’t take too long.”

  “I won’t.”

  April walked into the house, which was almost completely dark. She’d worried about running into Mr. Poole, as the book hadn’t specified where he’d be while Jekyll and Utterson talk in his study, but he appeared to have retired as soon as the men went upstairs.

  A lone lamp was set on the table, presumably to light Mr. Utterson’s way once he left for the night. April picked it up and used it to illuminate her path.

  There wasn’t much ink rot here, though she did find some spores of it along the walls. The majority was crowded around the door that led out to Jekyll’s laboratory. She dealt with that first, then walked as quietly as she could around the first floor. Except for a concentration of the rot around the head seat of the dining room table, there wasn’t much else.

  She made her way up the stairs. This was the riskiest part of the night. Since part of the narrative took place in Jekyll’s study, it was likely that ink rot had cropped up there as well.

  She crept up the stairs, feeling like the heroine in some Victorian ghost story skulking around the big house with nothing but a lamp to light her way. She winced every time the floorboards creaked under her feet. She hoped that if anyone heard them, they’d think they belonged to one of the house’s occupants.

  There were three doors on the second floor. Two were open, one leading to a master bedroom and the other to what
looked like a guest room. Both were dark. April glanced inside each, but no ink rot marred the walls inside. That left the one remaining room, which was directly across from the guest room. The door was closed, but light glittered underneath the door, bright against the surrounding darkness. The thick wooden door muffled the sound of male voices.

  Tendrils of dark rot snaked under the door. April reached down and touched the one closest to her foot. From the way it fought back, she could tell that it was quite extensive. Still, it was no match for her. It quickly dried out.

  But how could she be sure that there wasn’t more of the stuff inside the study? Maybe she could leave it, and come back later when the rest of the collection was more stable…

  The conversation ceased abruptly. She stopped moving and held her breath.

  “Jekyll, my good friend,” Utterson said. “Whatever is the matter?”

  “I could swear I heard footsteps in the hall,” Jekyll replied.

  “Perhaps it’s Mr. Poole.”

  “I don’t think so. He retires early.”

  Mr. Utterson seemed to think this all a marvelous fun. “I dare say that we should investigate. It’s like a murder-mystery!”

  April’s eyes widened as she heard the squeak of chair legs on hardwood. She extinguished the lamp, then scrambled into the guest room.

  She must have been louder than she intended, because Mr. Utterson whispered, “Shh.” April imagined him lifting a finger to quiet Jekyll.

  The movement on the other side of the door again grew still.

  “What is it?” Dr. Jekyll whispered.

  “I heard something, too.” Utterson no longer sounded as though he thought the situation was funny. He didn’t sound frightened or perturbed, but interested.

  The door opened, casting a strip of light onto the floor of the guest room. Two human shadows also appeared, stretched thin, their elongated heads bending against the far wall. April couldn’t see the men directly from behind the door. She hoped that meant they couldn’t see her, either.

  “Mr. Poole?” Dr. Jekyll asked into the darkness. When no answer came, his voice became more forceful. “I command whoever’s in this hallway to reveal himself at once!”