‘Here,’ said August, prising the glass from her. He pressed his palms around the sides of the drink and exhaled abruptly. There was a sharp crack and a sudden film of condensation coated the glass. He passed the drink back. A layer of thick ice now sat at the bottom, poking up through the surface of her gin.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and then paused. ‘I thought your magic gave you power over water, not gin. I’m impressed.’
He grinned. ‘It’s because they water it down. Never trust a bar run by necromancers.’
‘You’re a necromancer,’ she pointed out, pressing the icy glass to her forehead.
‘Exactly.’
Across the room, a glass smashed and a lazy collective jeer went up around the clubhouse. A woman pushed back her chair to brush the fragments from her skirt with a sigh. On the table before her, a polished Ouija board was laid out. The woman drew another empty glass closer, tipped it upside down and began sliding it from letter to letter, her lips moving silently.
Alice’s gaze trailed around the clubhouse, taking in the oxblood leather sofas, the green velvet armchairs and the dozens of gas lamps and mismatched picture frames on the walls. Somehow, the trappings of a drinking den didn’t seem incongruous with the bar’s more unusual decor: the metre-wide clock, rusted metal signs and ticket booth. Stone arches, tiled walls and columns divided the space into neat sections. The Necropolis had once been a train station, which was why the rear of the building led to a crumbling platform and a defunct steam train, sitting on tracks that led nowhere.
At the end of the nineteenth century, when an overcrowded London had run out of space to bury its dead, the authorities had come up with a macabre solution: transport coffins and mourners to a cemetery far outside the city’s walls, on specially modified trains. The London Necropolis Railway was short-lived, however, thanks to a well-placed bomb during the Blitz. But in the Rookery, London’s darkly magical twin, the station at 121 Westminster Bridge Road and one remaining train had been repurposed in the most fitting way: there was no better location, surely, for a members’ club exclusively for necromancers. Considered too unnatural, their magic was banned across the city, but here they were among friends.
Three tables over, there was a sudden frenzy of murmuring and Alice turned towards the noise. A group of bearded men were taking it in turns to examine a handful of small objects they’d tossed onto the wooden floor. Alice assumed they were dice.
‘They’re allowed to gamble in here?’ she said.
‘No,’ said August with a wry smile. ‘They’re throwing oracle bones and trying to unpick the future. Funny, though, that none of them predicted the lovely Ouija woman over there was going to smash that glass.’
Even in a city like the Rookery, divination was treated with scepticism. Alice didn’t believe in fortune-telling. Then again, a year ago she hadn’t believed in magic either – and now, here she was, sitting in a bar accessed by an enchanted door that only opened once a week, and only to those who knew how to find it.
Alice sighed and pressed her fingers into her temples, where a small but persistent pain was beginning to throb. She reached for her glass and took another cooling mouthful. Maybe the gin would take the edge off her headache. Or, if not, maybe it would anaesthetize her to the problem that had brought her to the clubhouse. She rolled her shoulders and tried to sink more loosely into her chair. The incense wasn’t helping. It squeezed out the air in the room, filling it with sickly heat that exacerbated her discomfort. A knot of smoke drifted past. She squinted up, watching it thin out as it gained height, dissipating by the beaded lamps that dripped from the ceiling.
A throat cleared nearby – an exaggerated, phlegmatic sound – and Alice flinched, clutching her head, as an extra chair was slammed down opposite her. A woman dropped into it, tossed a battered fedora on the table and gave Alice an appraising stare. Eris Mawkin was the Rookery’s only legitimate necromancer – the only one legally allowed to practise her dark art, because she practised it on her employer’s behalf: the Bow Street Runners. They were happy to bend the law when it suited them. The Runners’ hypocrisy was only part of the reason Alice hated them.
‘You’re not how I’d pictured you,’ drawled Mawkin as she planted her whisky glass down next to the hat. She shook out her bobbed brown hair and leaned back, legs outstretched and dusty boots crossed at the ankle.
‘You’re . . . exactly how I’d pictured you,’ Alice murmured.
Mawkin’s eyes glinted with amusement. She turned to greet August and snorted when she saw him hunched over an absurd strawberry vodka. It was decorated with a paper umbrella, a spray of tinsel and a glacé cherry on a cocktail stick.
‘Don’t ever ask me why I won’t mentor you again,’ she said when he slid the cherry off the cocktail stick and grinned at her.
‘I know, I know,’ he said, popping the cherry into his mouth and shoving the paper umbrella into his hair at a jaunty angle. ‘With my wholesome good looks and sunny disposition, I don’t uphold the dark glamour of necromancy.’
‘Necromancy is a serious business, by serious people,’ said Mawkin, ‘and that is not a serious drink.’ She reached for her whisky, swirling the glass between two fingers. ‘But the blue umbrella does bring out your eyes.’
She turned to Alice.
‘Spit it out then,’ said Mawkin, getting straight to the point of their meeting. ‘You wanted some information from me, but you already have a necromancer friend. So what do you think I know that he doesn’t?’ She gestured at August.
Alice paused, considering her answer. ‘August . . . has a more localized knowledge of necromancy. He knows what he’s personally experienced, but anything outside that . . .’ She trailed away.
Mawkin raised a sardonic eyebrow and looked to the blond necromancer for his reaction.
August shrugged. ‘In my defence, I’m a man of action. Practical. Good with my hands.’ He winked, and Mawkin snorted. ‘I don’t do books and theory; I do whispering to the right people and pricking up my ears at doors.’
He was right. August always managed to find information by devious means; he preferred second-hand information to putting in the hours required to find it first-hand, with research and books and study. It was why Mawkin – twenty years older and the epitome of battle-scarred wisdom – had so far refused to mentor him. And yet, August could do things Mawkin couldn’t. He hadn’t, however, known the answer to Alice’s question. Maybe Mawkin wouldn’t either, but Alice had to try.
Alice leaned in closer, anticipation making her hands shake. This was it. This was the moment that could release her from her burden and fix everything. ‘I want to know . . . how to shut it off.’
Mawkin blinked. ‘You’ve lost me,’ she said at last. ‘Shut what off?’
‘I want to know how a necromancer can cut off their legacy,’ said Alice, a desperate edge to her voice. ‘Make it . . . make it dormant. Repel whatever death-related gifts they have.’
August threw her a sympathetic look. This was why he’d brought her here: he knew she wanted rid of her father’s biology. He’d seen her distress the night Jen died.
‘You want to know if a necromancer can neuter themselves?’ clarified Mawkin.
‘Yes,’ said Alice, relieved. ‘Exactly that.’
Mawkin’s gaze slid from Alice to August and back again. ‘And this is, what? Theory? You’re not a necromancer, Wyndham, so who are you asking for?’
There was a long pause. So few people knew the truth, and Mawkin couldn’t be added to the short list. As the daughter of the Grim Reaper himself, Alice wasn’t, technically, a necromancer, but it was close enough. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
‘I think she’s a late bloomer,’ said August. ‘You can sense there’s something there, can’t you? Some touch of the morbid about her?’
Alice flinched at his description but Mawkin didn’t respond.
‘She’s a necromancer with a repressed gift,’ August lied smoothly. ‘That’s why I brought her to you.’
‘And, let me get this straight, you don’t want me to mentor her to allow these gifts to blossom – you want me to tell her how to shut it off?’ said Mawkin, turning from him to Alice. ‘That’s what you want me to believe?’
Alice held Mawkin’s challenging gaze.
‘Supposing you are a necromancer,’ said Mawkin after a moment, ‘and until now you’ve repressed your gift, either by design or chance, then why not . . . explore it? Under the Runners’ radar?’
Alice shook her head impatiently. Mawkin was wasting time with the lie they’d sold her.
‘I don’t want it,’ Alice whispered, the look in her eye growing more haunted as she spoke. ‘I don’t want a death legacy. I can feel it, crawling under my skin, and I want it out.’
She stared at Mawkin, a silent plea in her eyes. She needed Mawkin to believe her. She needed to quash her father’s deadly legacy, to remove its influence.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being a necromancer,’ said Mawkin, and Alice held her breath. Did that mean that Mawkin had bought it? She didn’t dare look at August.
Mawkin gestured around the clubhouse. ‘Look. These people are happy enough. They know who they are; they’ve accepted what they’re capable of. There’s no shame in necromancy.’
‘But no one else has accepted it,’ said Alice with conviction. ‘They’re hiding in here, hoping the Runners don’t charge through the door and throw them into Newgate Prison. The Council hasn’t accepted it; their laws make necromancy illegal. And I don’t have to accept this either. I don’t want it.’
‘Necromancy is illegal,’ said Mawkin, taking a swig of her whisky. ‘Necromancers are not.’
Alice exhaled, trying to project an air of calm, and reached for her drink. She was shaking, and she couldn’t tell any more if it was the fever or her nerves. ‘Semantics.’
‘Not semantics,’ said Mawkin. ‘It’s the difference between freedom and persecution. We don’t pick the gifts we’re born with. It’s only exercising them that’s restricted.’
‘Not for you,’ said Alice. Mawkin, after all, was permitted to use them in her work for the Runners. It was a wonder she was welcome in The Necropolis at all; she worked for the people who harassed the other clientele. Mawkin played the game well, however, using the Runners to benefit her fellow necromancers when she could.
‘Point accepted,’ said Mawkin. She gave Alice a shrewd look. ‘You’re not a necromancer, Wyndham.’ Alice opened her mouth to protest, but Mawkin went on. ‘You’re not. You don’t smell like one of us. But there is something . . .’ Her eyes narrowed.
‘So you can’t help her?’ asked August, interrupting Mawkin’s train of thought with a quick glance at Alice.
She flashed him a grateful smile. She didn’t want Mawkin to study her too closely – an experienced necromancer who might somehow sense the impossible truth about her identity.
Mawkin dipped her finger into her drink and drew a whisky circle over the tabletop.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Sorry to disappoint.’
Alice tensed. August had thought there might be a chance, and she’d latched on to the possibility, but if Mawkin was telling the truth . . . Alice’s eyes dropped to Mawkin’s wrists, searching desperately, willing her aviarist sight to kick in . . . There. The glowing cord linking the necromancer to her nightjar suddenly flared across Alice’s vision. Her gaze swept up from the pulsing cord wrapped around Mawkin’s wrist – which no one but Alice could see – to the small nightjar nestled against Mawkin’s neck.
The bird’s mahogany feathers were a mixture of plain and tightly patterned, but they appeared frayed at the edges. Its beak was wickedly sharp and its shining black eyes were unblinking. It studied Alice carefully, like an army general watching the enemy from a distance. Alice scrutinized it in return with growing anguish. Mawkin was telling the truth.
‘Necromancers can choose not to use their legacy,’ said Mawkin, oblivious to Alice’s distress, ‘but despite what the Runners might want, we can’t amputate it.’
Alice inhaled sharply and looked away, frustration biting deep into her stomach. As the daughter of the Lord of Death, she didn’t have death magic; she was death. Simply not using the legacy wasn’t enough. It was a part of her she had to cut loose. There had to be a way.
‘I thought Crowley was keeping you leashed in the attic,’ Mawkin told August.
August threw her a lazy grin. ‘Day release for good behaviour.’
Alice had tensed at the mention of Crowley’s name. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten Mawkin was one of his only friends – or maybe friend was the wrong word. Confidante. Ally. Their paths occasionally crossed at Bow Street Station; Crowley was a thief-taker, skilled in finding stolen goods and employed by the Runners when they were desperate.
‘Haven’t seen much of him around lately,’ said Mawkin. ‘He okay?’
‘Same old, same old,’ said August with a shrug.
Mawkin nodded contemplatively and turned to Alice. After a moment, Mawkin’s eyes seemed to darken and her mouth thinned.
‘Make yourself useful, Rhone,’ she said to August. ‘Go get us another round of drinks.’
‘You haven’t finished your—’ he started.
‘The grown-ups want to talk,’ said Mawkin. She downed the whisky in one and shoved the glass at his chest. ‘Give us two minutes.’
August hesitated, but Alice nodded her agreement and he left.
‘I knew you smelled wrong,’ said Mawkin. ‘Does he know?’ She gestured at August, who was talking to the bartender. ‘Does anyone? Crowley?’
Alice shook her head. ‘No. And I don’t want it becoming common knowledge . . . please.’
Mawkin sighed and ran a hand through her hair. ‘Shit.’
They lapsed into a thick silence before Alice broke it. ‘You’re sure there’s no way to cut out—’
‘You can’t outrun death,’ said Mawkin.
Alice swallowed. ‘But maybe if—’
‘You can’t outrun death,’ she repeated. ‘I’m sorry. But I can’t help you. It’s not a necromancer you need, it’s a doctor.’ She paused, her face softening. ‘Are you afraid? There’s no need. I have a better idea than most about what comes next. If you want to talk about—’
‘I don’t,’ Alice said quickly.
Mawkin frowned. ‘Some people find it therapeutic to spend some time putting their affairs in order so that—’
Alice shoved herself to her feet. ‘I don’t have time,’ she said bitterly.
Mawkin graced her with a slow, thoughtful nod. ‘Then I’m sorry. Look, if my advice is worth anything to you . . .’ She sighed. ‘Tell them the truth. Let them take care of you.’
Alice’s mouth tightened and she shook her head. She didn’t want to hear any more. Platitudes and sympathy were no use to her at all. Mawkin couldn’t help her. Her options were now limited to just one.
‘Thank you,’ said Alice, snatching up her coat, ‘for your time.’
Her head was throbbing, making the room pulse around her. She threw Mawkin a meaningful nod and strode away, past a startled August.
You can’t outrun death.
What had begun in Ireland had crept up on her with increasing speed. A new tremor in her hands. A now-relentless shortness of breath. Her hold on gravity slipping as rooms spun around her like ballroom dancers, leaving her to slump suddenly into a chair, clutching her head until the world was right side up again. Sporadic episodes, spaced weeks apart to begin with but growing more frequent, spiralling into fevers and headaches and the nagging certainty that some part of her biology was faulty.
Her lifestyle was too busy, Doctor Burke had said on the second and third appointments. She needed to take yet more iron tablets and slow down. But she was slowing down – even her heartbeat had grown irregular, like an offbeat drummer who couldn’t keep pace with the lead singer. The worst of it was the days when everything seemed to require so much effort. When the tiredness was so bone-deep she wanted to giv
e up, to let it take her. She’d kept her parents in the dark about the extent of her symptoms, but they had been so concerned in the end that they’d pushed her to return to the Rookery, seeking a cure. And instead she’d found a definitive diagnosis.
This thing inside her – her biological father’s legacy, her DNA, or whatever it was – was corrupting her. Overwhelming her. He had loaded so much death on her shoulders it was killing her. And Mawkin had dashed her penultimate throw of the dice. She couldn’t sever his deathly legacy; she was sinking under the weight of it. Alice was dying.
You can’t outrun death?
Alice sighed as she stepped out into the night.
Just watch me.
‘Slow down!’
The city blurred past as Alice rushed along the pavement. To prevent the Runners from gaining a foothold on its true location, the entrance to The Necropolis was not fixed in place. In the Rookery, a door could lead not to another room but to thousands of possible rooms, depending on where you wished to go. Some of the publicly operated doorways opened to entirely different places dependent on the time or the day of the week – and travel was sometimes like waiting for the right bus.
So it was that Alice found herself in a different neighbourhood to the one she’d travelled through to reach the secretive clubhouse. Here, there were fewer houses and more shuttered shops. One of the Rookery’s more well-known pubs occupied the corner of a tight road, and she paused at the junction. The raucous laughter spilling out from The Rook’s Nest was in stark contrast to the secrecy of The Necropolis; no one in this drinking den was concerned about being discovered by the Runners.
A woman smoking outside the pub, glass of wine in hand, was peering irritably at a lantern on the pub’s wall. The light inside was sputtering uselessly. With a roll of her eyes, she downed her drink and put her hand over the empty wine glass. The air above rippled with heat, and in the next moment, flames began to lick at her palms. She removed her hand and placed the glass of fire on the windowsill, where it cast a warm glow over the white paintwork. She noticed Alice staring, and nodded with drunken satisfaction at her makeshift new lantern.
The Rookery Page 3