Vanished

by Kat Richardson

  Of course, if Purcell was there, he wasn’t likely to be awake for hours, but he’d have to have some kind of daylight assistant I could track down. And if not, I’d look for records.

  “Oh,” I started, “where would I find records of titles and deeds and things like that?”

  “For Clerkenwell? Parish records to start, maybe at Clerkenwell Heritage Centre if it’s something old. They’d tell you where to go after that.”

  I thanked her and headed out toward Fleet Street and Clerkenwell.

  I’d read a lot of British mystery novels in my time, but I didn’t expect to see much that recalled the worlds of Christie or Sayers or Conan Doyle. But between the occasional high-rises, the roads were lined with buildings that hadn’t changed in hundreds of years, and the routes blazed with a millennium of coming and going worn deep into the ground but still shining upward. And the city sang.

  The Grey makes a noise composed of the murmuring of ghosts and the vibration of power. Each city sounds different: Seattle mutters and rattles; Mexico City hums like feedback. London raised a mighty chorus over the bass drone of the river Thames. The power lines of the Grey were not laid in a neat grid, like Seattle’s wire-frame world, but in wild-hare directions and labyrinthine meanders that came together in knots of brilliant colored light. I couldn’t see them all, but I knew there were layers of history as thick and striated as sandstone beneath my feet, just as they were at the street level. The ghosts of buildings glistened over the surfaces of present structures, and phantom traffic choked the streets with oxcarts, horses, trams, and pedestrians. Most of the visions were from the eighteenth century onward, after the city had recovered from its own Great Fire, but promontories of older times and buildings long gone thrust up from below or floated slightly displaced by the actions of history and nature. Glimpses of fire caught my eye again and again. I shied the first time I heard the whistle of a falling bomb from the city’s memory of World War II.

  I did not, in fact, dawdle through Hatton Garden, but took the more direct and higher-traffic way along Charterhouse to St. John, passing Smithfield Market’s painted iron arcades where meat and poultry were still sold fresh in huge loads. From the outside it reminded me a bit of the cliffside buildings at Pike Place Market, though Seattle’s famous produce markets didn’t hold a candle to the meat markets of Smithfield’s imposing quarter mile of whitewashed iron, brick, and glass, gleaming in the early summer sunshine. I turned up St. John, dodging cars, trucks, pedestrians apparently bent on suicide, and phantom herds of cattle swarming toward their historical demise. As I diverged from the hectic intersection into the upper part of St. John’s Lane, the noise and traffic dropped to a distant babble.

  Looking around as I walked, I thought Clerkenwell must have been a much quieter town before it was eaten by London. It was tall and narrow and had the feeling of age, layered as it was with phantom monks and people in rich, ancient clothes, struggling against a tide of newer ghosts from the rise of the Victorian middle class and the bombings during the Second World War, all threading through the busy spectral streets. If I’d thought the area I’d walked through earlier had a lot of pubs, lower Clerkenwell had it beat hollow, and the ghostly crowds of muscular men that gathered around the present pub doors were thick and well-worn into the neighborhood’s history. As I walked up the road, getting closer to the dark squares on my map marked ST. JOHN’S PRIORY, the shades of history grew more pastoral and the dominance of the church felt like the chill of an open crypt.

  The old priory gate at the top of St. John’s Lane was a yellow brick and stone structure of arches and squat, square towers that cut across the road as if it might have once held massive turnstiles to control the traffic of people and beasts coming down from the fields to the north. The uprights and plaza stones of the gate glowed with a soft, red energy that rose from the ground like fog—vampires must have been in the neighborhood for a long time but without raising much notice, judging by the unusual form of the magical residue. That was interesting.

  I passed a tall, narrow arch neatly wedged between two tall, thin buildings nearby. The words PASSING ALLEY were carved into the white plaster, and from the corner of my eye I caught the same colorless glitter I’d spotted near Temple Underground Station. I turned my head away, as if checking the address on the nearest building. Then I looked back, peering down the alley as my gaze passed over it. A bit of white floated back into the distant murk of the covered alleyway, but the shadows were persistent and the Grey remained a smear of silvery mist curiously impenetrable. Not a vampire, but there was something there—or more to the point, something pretending not to be there.

  I turned and went on as if I’d noticed nothing. Whatever it was would have to come out into the sun and follow me through the open squares on each side of the priory gate if it wanted to keep up.

  As I went through the arch of the old church, I pulled out my cell phone and held down the button that activated the camera in video mode. Keeping my hand down, I pointed the tiny lens behind me and kept walking through the narrowest part of the gate and across the square. I crossed Clerkenwell Road and stopped in a sunny plaza paved in bright white stone—some kind of marble maybe—with a dark circle laid around the edge as if there used to be some small building there that had long since vanished and left only its footprint in the road. A tall, dim hole in the old brick wall on the north of the open area was identified as JERUSALEM PASSAGE by a neat, tin sign. I brought the phone up to my face and took a quick look at the video capture.

  The figure was difficult to see, not because of the low quality of the video but because it wasn’t entirely present in the normal realm. It was also black and white where everything else was color and very vague around the edges. But there wasn’t any doubt that the eerie thing was following me. I wasn’t sure if anyone aside from myself could see it and I wondered what it would do once I entered the narrow confines of the walkway ahead. I didn’t want to turn and confront it just yet. This was far too open and public a place for that to be wise if the thing wasn’t corporeal.

  Tense with anticipation, I entered Jerusalem Passage. But even turning back when I came to an unlighted corner, I saw and felt nothing behind me. I walked on, uphill through the twisted route. Occasional slashes of light came down through breaks between the overhanging roofs, spotlighting the low-ceilinged shops and tiny cafés tucked into the buildings along the narrow route.

  Just at the bottom of a flight of stone steps, I found the address I was looking for. A bronze bellpull on a chain hung from a bracket beside the small, dark green door, which was adorned with a complementary knocker in the shape of a swan. The light was dim enough that looking round for trouble wouldn’t seem strange, so I did. Still no sign of the glittering thing.

  I used the knocker on the tarnished bronze plate attached to the door. Something rustled on the other side and the upper part of a phantom face pushed through the surface. It was unthreatening to me, just taking a look, and I took it for some kind of ghost-powered alarm or majordomo. Then it sank back, leaving a tiny ripple on the door’s lingering Grey surface.

  Clanking and scraping sounds came from inside, and in a moment, the door creaked open. I had to stoop to see into the low, dark opening. An odor like old gym socks and unwashed dishes wafted out. I clamped my teeth over an urge to gag and tried to smile.

  A thin man with his back and shoulders permanently bent into a crouch peered out at me. His face was unlined, yet he seemed old, and the energy colors around him were scarlet and muddy blue-green.

  “Whatcher want?” he demanded, his voice like the shrieking of unoiled iron hinges.

  “I’m looking for John Purcell.”

  “Master Purcell’s gone out.” He pronounced the name “PURSE-el.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Then, when did he leave?”

  “What business is it of yourn?” he snapped, narrowing his eyes and showing sharp, yellow teeth. />
  “I have some business with Mr. Purcell on behalf of a friend in the US.”

  “We’re not in trade with colonials,” he declared, and moved to slam the door.

  I ducked and put my shoulder into the opening, levering my weight against the carved planks and feeling the alarm-ghost imprisoned in the wood writhe away from the contact. The crooked man on the other side pushed back with considerable strength, but I dug in and shoved, forcing my body through the gap and bulling my way inside. The thin man plunged against my absence, unable to correct his drive to close the door, and ended up slamming it shut behind me. The bolts and latches clanked into place, locking me in the room with him.

  The building must have dated from a time when anyone my height was a giant, and I could feel cobwebs from the ceiling snatching at my hair. The room was dark as the inside of Jonah’s whale. But I had no time to study it before the man leapt at me, snarling.

  TWENTY

  “I ’lldevouryou, witch!” the twisted man shrieked.

  I had no idea what he was, but I wasn’t stopping to ask. He sprang forward, his hands extended into black hooked talons. His eyes had gone huge and luminously pale, and the breath that gusted from his widened, sharklike mouth stank of rotting fish. He had way too many teeth and they wanted to meet in my flesh.

  I didn’t want him getting those claws or teeth into my hands or face. I sidled quickly and put my left shoulder against the wall, bracing while I drew up my right leg and kicked out sideways at his chest level. My foot met the triangular delta of his pecs with a wet thump and he spat sticky ivory phlegm as his breath was jarred from his lungs. His arms flew forward and those ebony claws pierced the denim of my pants legs, nicking the flesh below as they dragged back down toward my ankle.

  The—whatever he was—collapsed backward, flipping onto his back and then up again, hissing. He whirled, his hands outflung, trying to flay me as he spun closer, herding me into a corner.

  It was hard to see the material obstacles in the dim room, so I dropped out of the normal and threw myself down, rolling forward through the mist and light of the Grey. The room was still there and still cluttered, but at least I could see it. And the thing pursuing me.

  Grey walls are thin, but they’re solid enough for me when I’m deep in that world. I planted my foot against the nearest one as I ran toward it and took two long, driving steps up the wall, putting myself over the monster’s head. I flipped and dropped back down behind him as gravity grabbed hold, landing on my feet. The misty floor bounced and groaned as I hit it. I pulled back to normal.

  The creature turned, gaping, and I punched my left elbow into one of his staring fog-lamp eyes. He fell back again, but this time he rolled onto his belly and tried to squirm away. I dove on him, pinning his wriggling, slimy body to the ground facedown. I snatched for his flailing arms and yanked them behind him, feeling one pop from the shoulder socket. He gave a gurgling scream and thrashed before going limp under me.

  I didn’t trust him, so I didn’t move off, in spite of the smell that came from him. “Where is John Purcell?” I demanded, pulling on his arms a little more.

  He yowled, “Don’t know!”

  “Did you kill him, drive him away?”

  “No! Master Purcell left me. He gone away and not come back,” the creature panted. I could see the hint of gill slits under his jaw.

  “How long ago?” I asked, letting the pressure on his arms ease.

  The creature sighed in relief. “I don’t know. Without the tide I can’t tell.”

  “You’re a river creature, then? From the Thames?”

  “Yeah. Master Purcell caught me and kept me for his slave,” he spat. “He paid a witch to give me this physog.”

  I caught myself frowning at the term. “Physog?”

  “Face! She made me look like one of you, damn her.”

  I thought about that a moment. It had the pathetic ring of truth in anger. “What does Purcell call you?” I demanded, putting a little pressure on him through the Grey.

  The thing fought against telling me, and I pushed harder on the magical compunction to answer until he made a bubbling sound and muttered, “Jakob.”

  “All right, Jakob. If I let you up, will you swear not to attack me again?”

  “I protect my master and what’s his.”

  “I’m not looking for your master to do him harm. We have a friend in common who’s worried about him.”

  Jakob wiggled, testing my hold, but I didn’t let go and he did himself pain wrenching at my grip on his arms. He gave up and flopped limp against the floor. “I swear. I won’t attack you . . . this time.”

  I didn’t let on that I’d noticed the situational clause of his promise. I’d just have to stay out of this thing’s way if there was a next meeting—I had the strong impression he held grudges and didn’t like being beaten.

  I let go and moved off him, getting distance between myself and the creepy aquatic creature.

  He rolled onto his back as I backed up to a chair and sat to watch him. One eye was shut and swollen purple, misshaping his face even as he morphed back to the seeming of human. He cupped one hand over the injured eye and glanced at me from the good one, showing his needle teeth as they slithered back into his human mouth. Looking at him in the Grey, there was nothing human about the mutant froglike monstrosity with its shark maw and spine-clawed, webbed hands. I preferred to look at it in a more normal plane—which also held the smell a bit at bay.

  He crouched on the floor with his knees drawn up and his chin resting on them. His arms circled loosely around his shins, the one a little lower than the other due to the dislocated shoulder. He glowered at me.

  “Who sent you for Master Purcell?”

  “An old friend whose business he tends.”

  Jakob sniffed. “That’s nothing.”

  “And that’s all you need to know. I need to know what’s become of Purcell and the business he was taking care of.”

  The creature shrugged. “Some of them blood drinkers came in the night—late, as the river sang of the rising tide—and took him.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I can’t count your time—s’meaningless.”

  Before I tried again, I considered: He was a creature from the tidal river. Sunrise and sunset meant little to him. But tides and moon phases would.

  “How many high tides since Purcell was taken?”

  He almost smiled. “Thirty-seven.”

  Unless the Thames was a freak of nature, it had two high and two low tides per day. . . . So Purcell had been missing for eighteen and a half days, give or take a bit. Financial investments and power rarely fall apart from a mere fortnight’s absence, so someone had done something beyond just grabbing Edward’s British comptroller. “Blood drinkers” Jakob had called them, so vampires were responsible; and since I’d rarely heard of the sanguinary brotherhood cooperating with humans willingly, it looked increasingly like the vampires of Clerkenwell had moved against Edward personally. “At whose instigation and why?” would be the next questions to answer, but that was going to be a lot tougher without tipping Edward’s hand.

  If it wasn’t tipped already. There was still the matter of someone or something following me.

  “Who sent them?” I asked, knowing vampires rarely acted on their own unless they were planning a coup, and even then they tended to gather cronies and work as a pack. I hoped Jakob would be able to tell me who was behind Edward’s problem so I could get back to worrying about my own.

  “I dunno! Their king or queen, the little one—or whatever they call it, I s’pose.”

  “Did the vampires take anything besides Purcell?” I asked.

  “Papers.” Jakob flung his good arm toward a doorway behind him. “From the table in there.”

  “What sort of papers?”

  He giggled. “No idea. I can’t read your scratchings.”

  “So you never did any paperwork for him, didn’t carry any of those things to anyone e
lse?”

  Jakob nodded. “I’ve done, but only to fetch and carry and pay.”

  “To whom recently?”

  He giggled again; it sounded like bubbles in an aquarium. “Y’think I know, or could say? One small-eyed, ugly face is very like another. Only the smell of your blood tells you apart.” He leaned forward, showing his teeth again. “Can you smell living blood? Would y’know the scent of one or another of you if I told you? The blood drinkers, they smell of their meals and their death. And you, you smell of . . .” He took a deep breath through slitted nostrils. Then he pulled a face. “You smell . . . of water and gun smoke, death in steel, blood . . . and too much magic.” Jakob scooted backward. “I don’t care for your stink.”

  “I could do without yours, too, frog-boy.”

  He flashed his teeth but said nothing. A lot of magical bindings cease at death, but Purcell had been dead to begin with, so I wasn’t sure how the magic would hold up if Purcell was dead in a more permanent way. Would Jakob keep on thinking he had a master long after Purcell was nothing but an empty coffin and a forgotten name? I wasn’t sure.

  I changed tack. “May I see the desk?”

  Jakob shrugged. “Can’t do more harm.”

  I took that for sufficient invitation and stood up to cross into the far room. Jakob took a desultory swipe at me as I passed and I kicked at him with equal interest.

  The room must have started as a dining room. The tall narrow windows peered out at the next building with only the thinnest view of the sky above, but light still managed to find its way down the gap between the buildings and lend a wan illumination to the place. It was a clever security system for a vampire in its way, the daylight being a natural barrier to others and ensuring that the owner would always be awake when the room was habitable. Purcell had clearly not been having any dinner parties; the room was strewn with detritus, ripped paper, upended boxes and furniture, torn curtains, and general upheaval—and not all of it was recent. The table that must have served as a desk had been toppled onto one side, upsetting an old-fashioned ink bottle so it had stained the thick old Oriental rug below. A small pile of recent correspondence was neatly stacked on the one remaining intact chair—Jakob’s concession to duty—but other than that, there wasn’t much chance of finding anything useful in the heap.