A Stranger in the Garden (2 page)

In the study with tea and a fire on, Darwin settled behind his desk. His hands moved restlessly across specimen jars and stacks of papers. Beneath the usual smell of fire on the little hearth, Charles caught the scents of formaldehyde and death—the comforting miasma of a museum.

“Well,” Darwin said. “Explain yourself.”

Charles opened his mouth, longing to tell the truth for once, but nothing came out. His upbringing hadn’t taught him what to do in the physical presence of a Saint. When he had been young and trying to understand his power, he would go to Darwin’s Cathedral and beg his namesake for help. He’d kneel and recite the Litany of Evolution before the rose window of the great Saint, begging him to bestow the wisdom and enduring adaptability of his Ape angels.

And now Charles sat across from him, and Darwin was nothing but an old, bent man drowning in paper and dead worms, huddling in a blanket by his fire.

He is and always was nothing more than a man,
the Grue whispered.
Your religion is laughable, the delusions of a man obsessed with his own might.

Charles had known this for a while—it was one of the first things the Grue taught him after he had let the creature in. Devout as he had been, even the new knowledge couldn’t change that Charles was filled with Unnatural sin.

Still, Charles had been born under this man’s sign. He had whispered his Litany as the Grue wormed his way into Charles’s body. He had kept whispering it as he’d healed. Until the Grue made him stop.

Darwin leaned forward, and his dark eyes under the white thunderclouds of his brows were startling. “I think I know what you are, though I do not know why you’ve come. I had believed there was only one like you, but apparently there are more.”

The Grue laughed, and Charles did his best to stifle it. “I am a man, sir, nothing more. And I came because I want to learn from you.”

“I’m a bit old for that sort of thing,” Darwin said. “Go up to Oxford or Cambridge if you want to learn something. You and yours have taken enough from me in the past.”

“What?” Charles asked.

“You think I don’t recognize you?” Darwin rose from his seat, the blanket falling from his shoulders. The fury on his ancient face would have made Charles cower in the past. His father had been like that, filled with towering rage. Darwin’s hands shook on the edge of his desk.

“Your people tricked me in the jungles of South America! You shan’t trick me again!”

Charles shook his head, but inside the Grue was giggling once more. “I hardly know what you mean,” the Grue made him say.

“You are the reason I am like this!” he nearly shouted. “You are the reason I lost . . .” He stopped and drew breath, unable to go on.

Charles recoiled. It was as though Darwin saw straight through to where the Grue curled inside him.

But it also made him deeply curious. As far as he knew, in his own world no one had ever united with an Unnatural in quite the way he had. Certainly, if it had happened before, no one had lived to tell the tale. Darwin seemed to be saying that something similar had happened to him in this world. If that was the case, was there more than one Grue?

The Grue’s glee and hunger was close to insatiable.
Let us feast on him now.

Charles gritted his teeth. That tiny place inside him didn’t want to do this. Exhaustion and hunger sought to swamp him. It almost felt as though his body was being pulled back through the vortex.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone—” he heard himself say before the Grue snapped his jaw shut.

Darwin’s thunderous gaze softened. “What did you say?”

Charles shook his head. He couldn’t speak. The Grue had sealed his mouth. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes from wanting to speak and being unable to.

He spidered his fingers across the desk to a pencil and a piece of scrap paper. With every bit of energy he could muster from the tiny black box of his will, he managed to write
Help me
before the room tilted away from him. White, veiny lines wormed through the walls. Charles blinked very hard. Darwin stared at him with a deep understanding that was almost more frightening than his rage.

The last thing he heard was Darwin whispering in his ear. “You think you’ve got him now, but I promise you, I will take him away from you. I will save this boy, as I could not save my sweet Annie.”

In the morning Turnbull brought Charles a tray. He slid it just inside the door with a fearful glance, and then Charles heard him locking him in again. The fact that he was a prisoner in Saint Darwin’s home was amusing more than anything else. The Grue would have his way with all of them when he was ready. Right now, he bided his time and gathered his strength.

The window at least was not shuttered, so Charles looked out over the broad estate, golden in the morning light. People were working the failing fields. Grazing cattle watched them, hay hanging from their mouths.

The old apple orchard meandered all the way to a stone wall, and the gravel walk Charles had seen moved beyond that, following a line of fences and hedges toward a distant hill. Through the trees and morning haze he could just make out a ring of mostly fallen stones that crowned the hill.

The Grue leaped up inside him at the sight.

We must go there.

Charles nodded. It seemed easy enough.

But first, we must find the proper accompaniment.

Charles glanced back at the tray. He had not eaten human food in a long while, except for the sake of appearances. It no longer sustained him.

The Grue required richer fare.

Charles considered their options. Best of all was unrefined
myth
. That had always strengthened him when their reserves were down. But it seemed that
myth
did not exist here, especially in this house of Science. In fact, the startling shock Charles had received when he’d tried to gather the magic made him wonder if there was any magic here at all.

There is magic here,
the Grue said.
But it is different. It cannot be summoned in the same ways.

Then how do I summon it?
Charles asked.

With blood.

Charles considered Turnbull. He could probably lure him in with some excuse, or pull him inside when he came to take the tray. But Turnbull would likely struggle, and Charles was unsure as to whether he would be able to overcome him quietly. Without magic easily at his disposal and in his weakened state, he doubted he could manage it.

The sound of a piano drifted up the stairs and under the door.

Gwen. Charles recalled the apples of her cheeks, the dark luster of her eyes, and sighed.

When Turnbull returned for the tray, he said, “Master Darwin would like to see you in the parlor now.”

Charles nodded.

As Turnbull ushered him into the parlor, the servant said, “We called the constable yesterday, and he arrived after you had your fit. Master Darwin decided to spare you the indignities of jail, but if you make trouble, be sure that I won’t do you the same courtesy. You’re very fortunate Mrs. Darwin is away. She would have had you hauled off before you could set foot in the door.”

Charles looked at Turnbull, and the Grue within snarled. “Rather outspoken for a servant, aren’t you?” Charles said.

“Master Darwin has suffered quite enough. I will not allow anyone to harm him, no matter what that requires,” Turnbull said.

This one is trouble,
the Grue said.
We will deal with him later.

“I understand,” Charles said to Turnbull. He moved past him and into the parlor.

Darwin was wrapped up by the fire again. The hearth here was bigger, and although it was relatively warm, Darwin shivered next to it. Gwen played piano nearby, the bright notes of the Archdemon Mozart tinkling on the air like little bells. Cozy chairs and books were scattered about. A tapestry hoop with half-finished embroidery on a stand by the window waited patiently for Mrs. Darwin to return.

It was the perfect portrait of family contentment, a thing Charles had never known. He hated them for it.

Gwen stopped in midphrase as he entered, and she tossed her head a little so that her dark locks slid to her back. She reminded Charles of someone, a distant memory he couldn’t seem to trace.

The Grue kept the memory from him. Charles had learned that he did this when it suited his mood. On occasion, he’d kept even the memory of Charles’s own name from him, just to prove who was in control. But Charles had learned something else—sometimes the things the Grue tried to hide were important. If he could just hold on to them, if the little black box in his mind could somehow hold on to those thoughts, he hoped he’d be able to put together the pieces.

And then, maybe someday he’d be free.

He had to admit that when the Grue had made him the offer, he hadn’t seen how he had much choice. He still didn’t. He had just begun working undercover at the Museum for the Architects. At first that had been fine, but he’d been unsure that their desire to continue hiding magic was right. The day he’d been sent by Vespa’s father to the storage cellar for the Saints knew what, he’d been feeling his resentment of the Architects keenly. And then he’d found himself trapped by a magic darker and more powerful than any he’d ever encountered. The Grue had nearly torn him apart before he sensed the magic in Charles. And then, surely the most wicked plan ever forged by any Unnatural had been hatched in that moment when Charles had bargained for his life and the Grue had lent him his power.

Now that plan had seemingly come to its fruition. But to what end?

You will understand soon enough.

“Hey, Mister Charles, do you like worms?” Gwen said to him, jarring him from his thoughts.

Charles saw that there was a pot on the piano with no plant in it.

“Earthworms,” Darwin said, following Charles’s gaze. “We are testing to see how they respond to vibrations.”

Charles nodded.

Gwen rose from the bench and peered down into the pot. She picked up a wriggling worm between thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think he likes it much, Granpapa,” she said, eyeing her victim. Charles was reminded of nothing so much as the Grue sizing up a human before he struck.

“That’s a good observation, dear. Put the little fellow back,” Darwin said. He sounded tired and sad.

It would be so easy,
the Grue said.

Charles tried hard to ignore him.

Ignore me at your peril. Without me, you are nothing!

Charles moved toward the piano. The worm wriggled on top of the dirt, seeking a way back to his subterranean dwelling.

“What do you like about them?” Gwen asked. She had black eyes that snapped much like Lucy Virulen’s. She tilted her head, and her little snub nose turned up charmingly, so like someone Charles had once known.

An image wavered before him, like a warped mirror. His mother snatching a tiny pert-nosed baby away from him, shouting, “Don’t bother the baby, Charles!”