Murder by Magic (45 page)

Sarah stared at her in surprise for a moment, then laughed.

It was fully dark when they arrived, and the cabbie dropped them off right at the front door. “The lady sed t’ go on in, an’ up t’ the room up there as is lit,” he told them, pointing to an upper room. Light streamed from that window; very much more welcoming than the rest of the darkened house. Before either girl could ask anything further, he snapped the reins over the horse’s back and drove off, leaving them the choice of standing in the street or following his directions.

Nan frowned. “This don’t seem right. There oughter be servants about.”

Sarah, however, peered up at the window. “Memsah’b must be with someone who’s hurt or ill,” she said decisively. “Someone she doesn’t dare leave alone.” And before Nan could protest, she’d run up to the door and pushed it open, disappearing inside.

Bloody ’ell. Nan hurried after her, with Neville croaking his disapproval as his box swung beneath her hand. But she hadn’t a choice: Sarah was already charging up the staircases ahead of her. Something was very wrong here. Where were the servants? There hadn’t been any furniture or pictures in the front hall, either.

She raced up the stairs, her feet thudding on the dusty carpet covering the treads, aided only by the light from that single door at the top. She wasn’t in time to prevent Sarah from dashing headlong into the lit room, so she, perforce, had to follow, right in through that door left half-ajar invitingly. “Memsah’b!” she heard Sarah call. “We’re here, Mem—”

Only to stop dead in the middle of the room, as Sarah had, staring at the cluster of paraffin lamps on the floor near the window, lamps that had given the illusion that the otherwise empty room must be tenanted.

There was nothing in that room but those four lamps. Nothing. And more important—no one.

“It’s a filthy trick!” Nan shouted indignantly, and turned to run out—

Only to have the door slammed in her face.

Before she could get over her shock, there was the rattle of a key in the lock and a further sound as of bolts being thrown home. Then footsteps rapidly retreating down the stairs.

The two girls looked at each other, aghast.

Nan was the first to move, because the first thought in her mind was that the men she’d been sold to had decided to collect their property, and another girl as well for their troubles. Anyone else might have run at the door, to kick and pound on it, screaming at the top of her lungs. She put the hatbox down and freed Neville. Even more than Grey, the raven, with his murderous claws and beak, was a formidable defender in case of trouble.

And Neville knew it; she felt his anger and read it in his ruffled feathers and the glint in his eye.

Grey burst from the front of Sarah’s coat all by herself, growling in that high-pitched, grating voice that she used only when she was at her angriest. She stood on Sarah’s shoulder, every feather erect with aggression and wings half-spread.

Nan growled under her breath herself and cast her eyes about, looking for something in the empty room that she could use as a weapon. There was what was left of a bed in one corner, and Nan went straight to it.

“Sarah, get that winder open, if you can,” she said, wrenching loose a piece of wood that made a fairly satisfactory club. “Mebbe we can yell fer help.”

She swung the bit of wood, feeling the heft of her improvised club. With that in her hand, she felt a little better—and when whoever had locked them in here came back—

“Nan—”

At the hollow tone in Sarah’s voice, Nan whirled and saw that she was beside the window, as white as a sheet.

“Nan, I don’t think a stick is going to be much use now . . .” She faltered, pointing a trembling finger at the lamps.

And as Nan watched, the flames of the lamps all turned from yellow to an eerie blue. All Nan could think of was the old saying Flames burn blue when spirits walk.

Nan felt every hair on her body standing erect, and her stomach went cold, and not because of some old saying. No, oh no. There was danger, very near. Sarah might have sensed it first, but Nan felt it surrounding both of them and fought the instinct to look for a place to hide.

Neville cawed an alarm, and she turned again to see him scuttle backward, keeping his eyes fixed on the closed door. The lamp flames behind her dimmed, throwing the room into a strange, blue gloom. Neville turned his back on the door for a moment, but only long enough to leap into the air, wings flapping frantically, to land on her shoulder. He made no more noise, but Grey was making enough for two. His eyes were nothing but pupil, and she felt him shivering.

“There’s something outside that door,” Sarah said in a small frightened voice.

“And whatever ’tis, locks and wood ain’t goin’ t’ keep it out,” Nan said grimly. She did not say aloud what she felt deep inside.

Whatever it was, it was no mere ghost, not as she and Sarah knew the things. It hated the living; it existed to feed on terror, but that was not all that it was or did. It was old, old—so old that it made her head ache to try and wrap her understanding around it, and of all that lived, it hated people the most. That thing out there would destroy her as casually as she would swat a fly—but it wanted Sarah.

Grey’s growling rose to an ear-piercing screech; Sarah seemed frozen with fear, but Grey was not; Grey was ready to defend Sarah with her life. Grey was horribly afraid, but she was not going to let fear freeze her.

Neither was Neville.

And I ain’t, neither! Nan told herself defiantly, and though the hand clutching her club shook, she took one step—two—three—

And planted herself squarely between whatever was behind the door and Sarah. It would have to go through her, Neville, and Grey to reach what it wanted.

I tol’ Karamjit where we went—an’ when Memsah’b comes ’ome wit’out us . . .

She knew that was the only real hope: that help from the adults would come before that . . . Presence . . . decided to come through the door after them. Or if she could stall it, could somehow delay things, keep it from actually attacking—

Suddenly, Grey stopped growling.

The light from behind her continued to dim; the shadows lengthened, collected in the corners, and stretched toward them. There was no more light in here now than that cast by a shadowed moon. Nan sucked in a breath—

Something dark was seeping in under the door, like an evil pool of black water.

The temperature within the room plummeted; a wave of cold lapped over her, and her fingers and toes felt like ice. That wave was followed by one of absolute terror that seized her and shook her like a terrier would shake a rat.

“Ree—,” Grey barked into the icy silence. “Lax!”

The word spat so unexpectedly into her ear had precisely the effect Grey must have intended. It shocked Nan for a split second into a state of not-thinking, just being—

Suddenly, all in an instant she and Neville were one.

Knowledge poured into her; and fire blossomed inside her, a fire of anger that drove out the terror, a fierce fire of protectiveness and defiance that made her straighten, take a firmer grip on her club. She opened her mouth—

And words began pouring out of her—guttural words, angry words, words she didn’t in the least understand, that passed somehow from Neville to her, going straight to her lips without touching her mind at all. But she knew, she knew, they were old words, and they were powerful . . .

The light from the lamps strengthened, and with each word, she felt a warmth increasing inside her, a fierce strength pouring into her. Was it from her feathered companion, just as the words were? Or was it the words that brought this new power?

No, it wasn’t the light behind her that was increasing! It was the light around her!

Cor—

A golden halo of light surrounded her, increasing in brightness with every word that spilled from her lips. And now Grey joined in the chanting, for chanting it was. She caught the pattern now, a repetition of some forty-two syllables that sounded like no language fragments Nan had ever heard. She knew what Italian, Hebrew, and Chinese all sounded like, even if she couldn’t speak or understand them, for folk of all those nationalities thronged the slums where she lived. She knew what Latin, Greek, and French sounded like, too, since those were taught at the school. This language definitely wasn’t any of those. But when Grey took over the chant, Nan stopped; she didn’t need to speak anymore. Now it was Grey who wove an armor of words about her—and a moment later, Sarah’s voice, shaking, faltering, but each syllable clear, if faint.

Then she went all wobbly for a moment. As if something gave her a good cuff, she experienced a sort of internal lurch of vision and focus, a spirit earthquake. The room faded, thinned, became ghostly. The walls receded, or seemed to; everything became dim and grey, and a cold wind buffeted her, swirling around her.

On the other side of that door, now appallingly transparent, bulked an enormous shadow; that was what was oozing under the door, reaching for them, held at bay by the golden light around her. The shadow wasn’t what filled her with horror and fear, however—it was what lay at the heart of it, something that could not be seen, even in this half-world, but that sent out waves of terror to strike devastating blows on the heart. And images of exactly what it intended to do to those who opposed it—and the one it wanted.

Now the shadow was on their side of the door, and there was no getting past it. The shadow billowed and sent out fat, writhing tentacles toward her.

But Nan was not going to break; not for this thing, whatever it was, not when her friend needed protecting from this horror that was going to devour her and take her body for its own!

She brandished her club, and as the shining blade in her hand ripped through the thick grey tendrils of oily fog the thing sent toward her out of the shadow, she saw with a shock that she no longer held a crude wooden club. Not anymore—

Now she held a shining sword, with a blade polished to a mirror finish, bronze-gold as the heart of the sun. And the arm that swung the blade was clad in bronze armor.

She was taller, older, stronger; wearing a tunic of bright red wool that came to her knees, a belt of heavy leather, her long hair in a thick plait that fell over one shoulder. And Neville! Neville was no heavier than he had been, but now he was huge, surely the size of an eagle, and his outspread wings overshadowed her, as his eyes glowed the same bronze-gold as her sword and the golden aura that surrounded them both.

But the form within the shadow was not impressed.

The shadow drank in her light, swallowing it up, absorbing it completely. Then it began to grow . . .

Even as it loomed over her, cresting above her like a wave frozen in time, she refused to let the fear it wanted her to feel overwhelm her, though she felt the weight of it threatening to close in on her spirit and crush it. Defiantly, she brandished her sword at it. “No!” she shouted at it. “You don’t get by!”

It swelled again, and she thought she saw hints of something inside it . . . something with a smoldering eye, a suggestion of wings at the shoulders, and more limbs than any self-respecting creature ought to have.

She knew then that this was nothing one single opponent, however brave, however strong, could ever defeat. And behind her, she heard Sarah sob once, a sound full of fear and hopelessness.

Grey and Neville screamed—

And the ghost door burst open behind the horror.

In this strange half-world, what Nan saw was a trio of supernatural warriors. The first was a knight straight out of one of her beloved fairy books, broadsword in hand, clad head to toe in literally shining armor, visor closed—though a pair of fierce blue eyes burned in the darkness behind it. The second bore a scimitar and was wearing flowing, colorful silken garments and a turban centered with a diamond that burned like a fire, and could have stepped out of the pages of the
Arabian Nights,
an avenging jinn.

And the third carried not a sword, but a spear, and was attired like nothing Nan had ever seen—in the merest scrap of a chemise, a bit of draped fabric that scandalized even Nan, for inside that little wisp of cloth was—

Memsah’b?

The shadow collapsed in on itself—not completely, but enough for the knight to slam it aside with one armored shoulder, enough for the jinn and Memsah’b to rush past it, and past Nan, to snatch up Sarah and make a dash with her for the now open door, with Grey flapping over their heads in their wake.

Nan saw the shadow gather itself and knew it was going to strike them down.

“Bloody hell!” she screamed—or at least, that was what the words that came out of her mouth meant, for she certainly didn’t recognize the shape of the syllables. And, desperate to keep it from striking, she charged at the thing, Neville dove at it, and the knight slashed upward frantically.

Again it shrank back—not in defeat, oh no, but startled that they had dared to move against it.

And that was enough—just enough—for Memsah’b and the jinn to rush past bearing Sarah, for Nan and Neville and Grey to follow in their wake, and for the knight to slam the door shut and follow them down the stairs—

Stairs that, with every footstep, became more and more solid, more and more real, until all of them tumbled out the front door of number 10, Berkeley Square, into the lamplit darkness, the perfectly ordinary shadows and smoke and night sounds of a London street.

Sahib slammed the front door shut behind them and leaned against it, holding his side and panting. Gone were his armor, his sword—he was only ordinary Sahib again. Selim—and not the jinn—put Sarah down on the pavement, and Grey fluttered down to land on her shoulder. Neville looked up at Nan and quorked plaintively, while Memsah’b, clad in a proper suit, but with her skirt hiked up to scandalous shortness, did something that dropped her skirt from above her knees to street length again.

“Are you two all right?” she asked anxiously, taking Sarah by the shoulders and peering into her face, then doing the same with Nan.

“Yes’m,” Nan said, and Sarah nodded.