Heaven's Bones (29 page)

She had yet to realize that she could never protect her patients against themselves.

He wondered when it would happen. Something lovely would be gone from his world when Sophia Huxley lost her shining faith in her ability to treat every broken lamb.

Sophie seemed to realize it was not much use to call him into a case only to prevent him from examining the evidence, and she moved to his side. Part of Artemis was very aware of the small warmth of her beside him.

He stepped closer to the mutilated woman and she looked up at him indifferently, showing no fear, no embarrassment at her nudity. Although, to be sure, she wasn't like a naked female at all—more like a sculpture, or a bird …

A bird without wings
.

Artemis stifled a soft exclamation. An image came to him suddenly, of a clever construction of paper, sailing on the breeze. A sheet that was folded and cut to resemble a bird.

Was it his own childhood memory, or that of another? He had learned that these sudden, vivid images often belonged to others—memories they might not remember themselves, but vivid enough to impress themselves on their minds.

More than once he'd seen the act of murder as the killer
remembered it: quick violent images full of black and scarlet. More than once was too many times, useful as it proved to be in his profession. Each time the homicide had looked surprised when he forced a confession from them, as if they'd only just recalled the crime, as if they'd forgotten to remember.

He glanced down. Sophie's sleeve was touching his arm—could the memory of the paper bird be hers?

“How can she live, without her insides?” he asked her, his voice low so as not to startle the woman.

Sophie's answer was in a half-whisper. “I think that certain vital organs have been—I can only say
rearranged
. I found a heartbeat in more or less the normal place. But the lung noise is … odd … and I think the intestines have been shortened, if such a thing is possible, and tucked behind the abdominal cavity.”

“Is she in pain?”

Sophie shook her head. “I don't believe so. In fact, I'm sure of it. And I don't understand how she could have undergone such a … transformation … and survived. There have been remarkable advances in anesthetics, and surgery in general, but this …”

“I was thinking,” said Artemis, as he moved closer yet to the woman, kneeling down carefully on the floor. Her gaze followed him incuriously. “I was thinking that
this
…” He passed a cautious hand before the exposed ribs. “That this reminds me of something.”

“What?” she said from behind him.

“Of the ribs of a boat that's been cast ashore—or before the siding goes on, in the shipyard,” he said. “There's an efficiency to it—everything excess has been stripped away. Like a bird—the hollow quills of the feathers, the lightness of its skeleton. There's no extra weight.”

“A woman's skin and internal organs could hardly be said to be ‘extra weight,' ” Sophie returned.

“No—not in the realm of sanity,” he said. “But here in this room
we're in a different place altogether.”

Before she could stop him he had reached out and gently traced the curve of a rib with his forefinger, barely touching the strangely rearranged skin. Sophie started forward instinctively to stop him, halting when she realized the woman had no reaction save to look down at the detective with almost a reflective look.

Artemis lowered his hand and considered a moment.

“It's as if she's something that's been constructed for flight,” he said.

Lydia blinked.

“If angels have incorporeal bodies, as well as incorruptible,” she said, in a sharp staccato voice, “then they are one with the air, and may transverse it as they choose, taking what form they may. But if they are creatures of flesh, or if entering the earthly sphere makes them so, then they must be physical constructs of great cunning, to take the form of a human and defy, as no human can, the bonds of gravity.”

Artemis and Sophie stared at her, dumbstruck.

Lydia Dare reached out her own hand in turn and touched Artemis on the brow.

Before Sophie's astonished eyes he grunted, turned pale, and slid to the floor, unconscious.

Artemis came to with his tie loosened and the taste of whiskey on his lips. Sophie was bending over him, and he felt her fingers at his neck. He stared at her face, so close above his own, uncomprehending.

“He's come round, then?”

It wasn't her voice but Lottie Barnes, who was standing behind the doctor, one arm akimbo, one holding the whiskey decanter. Janet stood beside her. They both had the disdainful expression of
courtesans contemplating a client who had indulged too much and made a fool of himself, and he winced, feeling himself blush.

He sat up, pushing Sophie aside as gently as he could. She sat back on her heels.

“Don't get up too quickly. You'll faint again.”

I didn't faint, he wanted to say, but was overcome by a sudden wave of dizziness. He leaned his head against his knees and the feeling started to pass.

“How long?” he said, not looking at her.

“A few minutes—perhaps five. Has this happened often?”

He couldn't help smiling at the professional tone of her voice. Somehow he'd become her patient.

“Not often.”

“But sometimes?”

“Once before.”

Once before he'd had a reaction like this. When he was a patrolman he had heard a child cry from a boarded-up house owned by a family that had forgone the London season, leaving their town residence sealed and bereft even of servants.

No one else could hear it, and he almost had to take an axe to the door himself before the sergeant on duty would agree to pull away the boards and investigate.

In an upper room they'd found a waif of indeterminate age or sex, who flinched away from its rescuers and had to be coaxed out of its foul den. Inside the room—one of the maid's quarters, it seemed—they found a few gnawed heels of bread and a bucket that had been used for daily functions. It was a puzzlement how the child got there, until they found a hole that had been made in the door that opened on the back alley.

It wasn't the work of the child. An adult had put it there.

The same adult who had made those marks across the half-feral creature's face.

An adult that had returned to the scene on a regular basis.

Artemis had lifted the child into the carriage that took it to St. Bethlehem's. When he touched the child's hand, a series of images flashed across his consciousness with the force of a blow.

He had watched the carriage and its pitiable burden recede down the street. And then he had crumpled to the sidewalk like a rag doll.

Afterward he had been subject to his fair share of joshing, which he took in good part, blaming his weakness on a bout of influenza. But the memory—the darkness, the face hovering over him, the light of a single candle branding it with monstrous shadows, the figure bending to its dreadful purpose—left its taint on him and he dreamed it nightly, not even free of it by day as he closed his eyes for a moment's respite. So, unsleeping, he roamed the alleys behind those fine houses, seeking other ominous doors or that face half-glimpsed through a child's terror. But he never did, and eventually they faded.

His head stopped spinning and he looked past Sophie at the bed where Lydia Dare had sat so quietly. With a start he realized she was gone.

He was on his feet in a second. “Where …”

“Gone,” said Sophie, rising in her turn and giving him a speculative, professional glance.

“What, just walked out?”

“Yes.” She reached out and took his wrist, considering his pulse with a grave expression.

He fought the urge to shake her off, looking down at her angrily instead.

“How could you let her go?”

“Hush,” said Sophie, and he bit his lip and waited for her to finish. After half a minute she released him.

“Your heart's strong enough, at any rate,” she said.

He tugged his cuff down over his wrist, still feeling the touch of her small, capable fingers warm on his skin.

“We've got to find her,” he said, looking over Sophie's head at Lottie, who snorted and hefted the whiskey bottle in both hands.

“That won't be easy,” she said. “Miss Lydia decided to take a walk when you took your tumble.”

Here Artemis flushed, and Lottie smiled crookedly.

“And the doctor and myself were too preoccupied with your handsome self to stop her.”

Artemis pushed past her and Janet to the bedroom door.

“She can't have gone far,” he said, heading for the stairs. Davy McPhee waited for him at the bottom, eyes wide as saucers.

“Why didn't you …” Artemis paused and considered the cripple's terrified expression. “Well, never mind. I don't particularly blame you, at that. But surely you saw which way she went?”

He strode to the entrance, reaching for the knob.

“No, Mr. Donovan,” said Davy sharply. “She didn't go anywhere. No—I tell a lie—she walked past me, and that shawl draped over her didn't hide that—
thing
—that had been done to her. She didn't even look at me, and I thank the Lord for that. She went out there.” Here he nodded past Artemis at the stout oak door with its locks and bolts all open and dangling useless. “She opened the door and went out and then I thought to myself, I did, that I had orter see when she went to, and …

“The steps out the door were clear enough. But down at the bottom—one of those great swirling masses of fog you only see in February or March, most ways. Something strange about it
too—it was yellow like they get, but a queer tint to it. She walked down right into it and, God's my witness, Mr. Donovan, she just vanished away.”

“Of course she did, man,” retorted Artemis, working loose the one lock Davy had managed to close against the terrors of the night. “She went into a fog, you say?”

“You don't understand.”

Artemis glanced up. Sophie, Janet, and Lottie were watching them from atop the stairway. Sophie was holding her bag, and Lottie had stowed the whiskey away somewhere. Janet was staring at Davy, her brow furrowed.

“I could see her when she went in it,” Davy continued. “It wasn't as thick as that, not so much one 'o these where you can't see the hand in front of your face. She walked in and kept walking and she hadn't gone more'n three, four steps when she just faded away, sir. I swear on my life to that. She was there one second and then … nothing.”

He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Never seen anything like it before … except oncet. I was a kid, and followin' a man—back when that man, the Gentleman, we called 'im, was grabbing those women, and I thought I had 'im.”

None saw Janet take a step back into the shadows of the upstairs passage, white as a bleached bone.