by E. G. Foley
She had looked at him and he had looked at her and both gasped. That was when he knew he must be truly losing his marbles, bats in the belfry, mad as a March hare.
She had had long, purplish hair and a fine-featured face with skin as pale as the inside of a cockleshell; she had been dressed in full battle regalia over a pale, floaty, toga sort of gown, like an ancient goddess.
A strange, faraway song had echoed in his head as Jake had stood there staring at her with his mouth hanging open, while the dirty Thames water slogged round his knees.
He had not known if he should try to save the creature from drowning, or if she might try to bite him like an eel.
Before he could decide, she had pointed at him, her dark-green fingernail just breaking the surface of the waves. “You!” she had uttered, her voice bubbling up to him in tones of shocked recognition. “Everton!”
“What?” he had burst out, astonished.
“’Hoy, Jakey! Find somethin’ good?” one of the other children had cried, noticing him staring down at the water in amazement. He had glanced over, still dazed by the impossible encounter.
The other kids were already hopping-running-splashing through the shallows to see if he had found a treasure, but when he looked down again, she was gone.
Everton? he had wondered all night long, tossing and turning in his hideaway. Why would she call him that? He had never heard that name before.
But it had eventually struck him there could be no lady living in the river. That didn’t make any sense.
A person had to breathe. Which meant he was either so hungry that he had been hallucinating, or he had finally gone nicky in the head and would be locked up in the horrid lunatic asylum if anyone found out.
Jake could not abide being locked up anywhere. Whatever misfortunes he’d suffered, at least he was as free as a bird. Intent on staying that way, he had coolly backed away from that spot in the river, leaving his comrades to help themselves to whatever hidden valuables remained.
Climbing back up onto the docks, he had wiped the mud off his feet as fast as he could, pulled his boots back on, and fled.
And now this wild warrior, appearing out of nowhere, dropping out of the blasted sky, had just called him the same name. Everton…
Jake suddenly understood. Of course! Idiots. He jumped off the garbage can with a scowl. “You’ve got the wrong person, all of you!” he shouted, gesturing angrily at them. “My name’s not Everton. I’m just Jake Reed!”
Nobody listened.
They kept on fighting, two against one now—until all of a sudden, the shrill, familiar notes of Constable Flanagan’s police whistle pierced the air.
The bald giant and the red-haired henchman exchanged a look of alarm. “The bobbies are comin’! Let’s get out of ‘ere!”
They fled the alley, but when the warrior started to run after them, Jake cried out, “Wait! Please!”
The intimidating fellow turned around, his chest heaving from exertion. “What are you still doing here?” he growled.
“Who are you?”
“Derek Stone is my name—but it doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is who you are. I was sent to protect you, Jacob. That’s all you need to know for now. No time.” He wiped off his blade. “Can you get yourself to the Strand from here?”
Jake scoffed at the question. “Of course!”
“Good. Go there, now. Find Beacon House, beside the river. The people there will help you. Just tell them I sent you and that you’re the little scoundrel everyone’s looking for.”
“Me? Who’s lookin’ for me? What are you talkin’ about?”
“Just do it!” he said in exasperation, turning to stare toward the approaching sound of the bobby’s whistle.
The police were on their way.
“Well, what are you going to do, then?” Jake demanded, though he barely knew where he got the nerve to question the tall, mean-eyed barbarian.
“I’m going to hunt those servitors down and finish this,” he said grimly, “or they’ll just keep coming after you. Now go! Lord, you’re as stubborn as your father.”
With that, Derek Stone ran out of the alley.
Jake stared after him, shocked yet again. He knew my father? His mind swirled with countless questions. Then he shook his head to himself. Servitors? he wondered. He must’ve meant to say servants. Then Jake snapped out of his daze, hearing the policemen around the corner.
Lord knew he could not afford to cross paths with the bobbies. Rushing back to the overturned garbage can, he used it to hoist himself over the wall.
He had just dropped out of sight on the other side when the bobbies arrived in a flurry of pounding footsteps.
From Constable Flanagan’s whistle, there came a piercing shrill. “You there!” the mustachioed sergeant shouted. “Halt, in the name of the law!”
Thankfully, they weren’t talking to him for once.
“Stop him! You there! Get that man surrounded!”
“Blimey, he’s climbin’ up the wall, sir!”
Running footsteps.
“Quickly! Pull his feet!”
“Oof!”
On the other side of the wall, Jake heard the sounds of large men diving into a heap, like in a rugby match, grunts and curses.
“Hold him, I say! We’ve got you now, you ruffian!”
“How’d ye run up the side of a bloody wall like that?” one of the bobbies cried.
Jake wished he could see what was happening. He listened for all he was worth.
“All right, all right. Let him up, men.” Flanagan’s stern, no-nonsense voice was familiar. “Let’s see what he has to say for himself. Where do you think you’re on about, you, climbin’ up the side of a wall like a blasted spider?”
“Easy, boys,” a deep baritone rumbled in response.
When Jake heard Derek Stone’s voice and realized the bobbies had indeed caught him, he could have kicked himself for delaying the warrior with his questions.
“Armed to the teeth, he is, sir!”
“So I see,” Constable Flanagan replied. “Drop your weapons, you! Put your hands up! Now!”
“Sir, look! He’s got blood on him!”
“Keep him surrounded, lads. How’d you get that blood on you, eh?”
“I, ah, cut myself,” Derek answered in a bored tone.
“Right. Mister, you better put them weapons down, nice and slow.”
“All right, all right, take it easy,” Derek soothed.
“Don’t you ‘take it easy’ me! I’m placing you under arrest!”
“For what?” Derek retorted.
“Disturbin’ the peace! Don’t know yet what you’ve done, but you’re up to no good, by the look o’ you. An innocent man don’t run when he’s told to halt!”
At that moment, thankfully, Jake discovered a chink in the mortar between two bricks. He leaned down, spying through it. A knot formed in his stomach as he watched the policemen encircling Derek Stone.
He bent down slowly, calmly, to place his weapons on the ground, as instructed.
Meanwhile, closer by, one of the bobbies came poking around in the alley where they had fought. He stopped with a gasp. “Constable Flanagan, sir, come quick! There’s a dead man here with a knife in his back!”
Flanagan pointed at Derek in fury. “Arrest him, now!”
The warrior let out a sigh as all the bobbies rushed him. Jake looked on, aghast, as the policemen piled atop the rude hero who had saved his life, while those who had attacked him were nowhere to be seen.
From under the pile of policemen, Derek cursed, but Jake noticed he did not lift a finger to fight off the bobbies the way he’d thrashed the other three. Dangerous as he was, at least he seemed to have a clear idea of who was good or bad.
“Jenkins, bring the handcuffs!” Flanagan ordered. “Shackle his ankles, too! Fletcher, comb the alley for any clues of what went on here.”
“Yes, sir!”
When the officers backed away, Derek was o
n his stomach on the ground, his wrists bound behind him, his dark mane hanging in his angry face.
Flanagan proudly dusted off his hands and gave Derek an insolent nudge with his toe. “You’re a murderer, aren’t you.” It was more of a statement than a question. “Why don’t you confess right now and save us the trouble? We both know you’re goin’ to hang for this.”
Jake paled.
“It’s not how it looks,” Derek said.
“If I had a penny for each time I heard that! Why’d you kill him, eh?”
“Didn’t.”
“I don’t see anyone else ‘round here that could’ve done it. Stabbed him right in the back, didn’t you?”
“Nah, not my style,” Derek growled.
Flanagan looked appalled at this. “What are you, some sort of monster?”
Derek laughed darkly. “Something like that,” he snarled back, which even Jake knew wasn’t smart.
Clunk. The sound of a skull getting a whack of the nightstick. The London police never did seem to appreciate sarcasm, as Jake himself had learned the hard way.
A few minutes later, they threw Derek into the police wagon that had been summoned, a heavy black carriage fortified with metal bars.
Through the chink in the brick wall, Jake watched, appalled, as they drove Derek Stone away. Oh, this is terrible! What am I going to do? He couldn’t remember the last time an adult had actually helped him.
He wasn’t fond of them as a species, but this Stone fellow had just risked his neck for him and got arrested for his pains, no doubt to be charged with murder and, with Jake’s luck, probably sent to the gallows.
And it’s all my fault.
More to the point, Jake realized, whatever information Derek might have about his father would be lost unless he could figure out a way to save the warrior’s neck.
Jake suddenly realized he was in danger of being arrested himself as the bobbies on the other side of the wall discussed spreading out to comb the area.
Besides that, his so-called uncle’s henchmen were still out there somewhere, looking for him. They could be lurking anywhere right now, he thought uneasily. Derek had warned him they would just keep coming after him until they had finished him off, and Jake believed him. Better hide.
Ducking back into the maze of alleys, he brushed off the thought of trying his luck at that mansion Derek had ordered him to go to—Beacon House. No boy of the streets who had lived by his wits for as long as Jake had was about to go and blindly trust himself to strangers. He had seen the place before, a great, hulking, old mansion on the river, but he wasn’t sure who owned it or what went on in there.
He prowled through the back alleys until he came to the Strand and spied on the place from across the street for about ten minutes. But he didn’t go in. No, he needed to think carefully about all this before deciding his next move.
Recalling Dani’s promise to meet him with the potpie at his hideaway, he picked up his pace to return to the only place he thought of as home. It wasn’t much, but his uncle’s minions wouldn’t find him there.
Nobody would.
It was a safe place. A hidden place.
Where freaks like him belonged.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dani O’Dell
Dani O’Dell headed home to the rookery, back to the rough, grimy world she hated. But she only stayed long enough to put her apple-cart away. As she angled it into the ground floor apartment in the tenement house where the O’Dells lived squashed into two small rooms, she dreamed of a day when she might be respectable and live in a nice home, where everything was pretty and clean, orderly and quiet. Where no one was drunk or crude-mannered, and a dirty word bellowed at the top of a person’s lungs would have been unthinkable.
In her neighborhood, such things passed for normal conversation. On the other hand, rookery life had made her tougher than she looked. The world saw a poor-but-decent girl, small for her age, but when provoked, Daniela Catherine O’Dell had all the Irish fight as her pack of brawling elder brothers.
Fortunately, they weren’t at home right now; otherwise, Jake would not have seen his mincemeat pie again. “Come on, Teddy.” She let her dog out of the sack, secured his leash, then retrieved the potpie off the lower shelf of her cart and concealed it under her dark woolen cloak. “Let’s get out of here before anyone comes,” she whispered to her dog.
With that, she left the apartment, locked and bolted the door, then set out with a businesslike stride for Jake’s hideaway. Teddy trotted along by her heels.
Though she was nervous about carrying Jake’s stolen contraband for him, it was her self-appointed role in life to manage that stubborn blockhead.
Somebody had to do it, and he didn’t have a mother. They had that in common, but at least Dani had known her sainted Ma before she died. She still had all the mementoes and the single precious photograph of her that Da had set up on the mantel as a sort of shrine. Poor Jake knew nothing of his parents and she knew he ached about it, though he’d never say so.
From the first time she had laid eyes on him three years ago, being pushed around and bullied by her brothers, Dani had realized she had found herself an ally in the harsh rookery world. Her brothers did that sort of thing to her all the time, shoving her this way and that like a football, having fun at her expense. She had shrieked at them like a banshee the day she had found them jovially beating the poor young stranger to a pulp—just to toughen him up, they said, as if they were doing him a favor.
When they had finally lost interest in their sport, she had gone over and scraped the boy called Jake Reed up off the cobblestones. Something about the way he pretended to be all right, though his eye was swollen and his chin trembled with his refusal to give way to angry tears, well, it had wrenched her heart—all the more so when he had told her he came from the orphanage.
Dani had made it her business since then to look after him, as much as he would let anyone do so. Now, as the world’s best expert on all things Jake, she was extremely worried about the weird things happening to him of late.
These days, it was one bizarre surprise after another. It was not so much his seeing ghosts that alarmed her. Her Irish granny, rest her soul, used to say the second sight was not uncommon. ‘Twas a gift the Good Lord gave to certain people, to let them give the news to those who grieved that their loved ones were in Heaven, or to deliver a message for them, like maybe some money they’d stashed somewhere in a shoebox.
What really worried Dani was the other bit, the way her friend could move things with his mind. It made her want to reach for her Rosary. Of course, Jake laughed at her for thinking that it might signify something evil, but that was why she had been so strict with him lately, making him promise not to steal or do anything bad. For if the devil had taken an interest in Jake, then her friend had better watch his step.
Teddy and she pressed on. After the usual trek across the bridge, they finally arrived at the once-grand, arched entrance to Elysian Springs Pleasure Gardens. The old, abandoned amusement park had once been one of London’s main attractions.
Now the paint was peeling on the weathered white pillars, the colorful letters on the curved sign fading into oblivion. She walked through the archway into the park’s green acreage and skipped up the winding drive with Teddy. She loved coming here to Jake’s hideaway. Elysian Springs was decades past its glory, but it was still a place that made the regular world and all its cares seem a thousand miles away.
The big pavilion with its fanciful pastel turrets had been closed for years, but once upon a time fashionable ladies and gentlemen had come here for dinners and concerts and dancing in the garden under the stars. She could just imagine them. There had been strolling musicians and all sorts of acts for entertainment: jugglers, acrobats, a tightrope walker, a fire-eater, daring trick-horse riders, a man with a dancing monkey, and clowns on giant stilts.
Back in the old days, there were fireworks shows and carnival games. You could stroll the flowery walkways i
n the moonlight, or hire a gondola shaped like a swan and go for a boat ride with your sweetheart. The park had many interconnecting canals and small, manmade lakes and ponds; the water flowed in from the river.
Across from the main pavilion was a smaller one where you could pay a penny to go in and see the freaks: the bearded lady; Mr. Lilbit, the world’s smallest man; Big Tess, the fattest woman; Lizard Boy; the Siamese twins; or the odd fellow who drove nails up his nose with a hammer.
They all still lived here, quietly minding their own business, still happy to let people come and gawk at them, which, to Dani, seemed very rude, but as they said, it was a living. The freaks were not ashamed of who and what they were, and so, as Jake put it, “Bully for them.”
But Dani did not stop to visit the carnival people today on account of delivering the potpie back to Jake.
With a tug on Teddy’s leash, she strode down the graveled walkway toward the lily pond. The fountains no longer ran, but frogs chirruped everywhere amongst the pussy willows. Dani scooped up Teddy and carefully stepped into one of the old, faded swan boats. Tail wagging, Teddy put his front paws up on the edge of the swan’s wing as Dani put down the oars. “Here we go, boy.”
She rowed toward the little overgrown island in the center of the manmade lake, where Jake had taken up residence in an old white gazebo. It was very peaceful gliding through the still waters. Her hard day at the market was forgotten. Soon she spotted Jake standing on a boulder near the water’s edge.
His back was to her, and with three rocks flying in circles above him, she thought he was trying to juggle, but then she saw that his hands were not moving, and she scowled. Boys! Why don’t they ever listen?
As soon as her swan boat bumped against Jake’s island, Teddy bounded over the side and dashed up onto the land to go and see him. The dog’s barking broke Jake’s concentration, and the three fist-sized rocks he had been levitating with his mind plunked to the ground.
Dani put the oars in their holders and carefully stood up. “I thought you weren’t going to do that anymore,” she said as she threw her sack over her shoulder and hopped off the boat.