Supernatural Devices (5 page)

“Cecilia,” she began, “it’s all… who are you?”

The woman in front of her wasn’t Cecilia, being at least ten years older than the girl, and dressed much more conservatively. She was carrying a package bound with brown paper under one arm. “Me? Who are you, leaping out on perfectly honest people like that? Why, I’ve a good mind to report you both to the police, doing things like that!”

She bustled off, and Scarlett let out a breath, looking around for any sign of Cecilia.

“If she was here,” Cruces said, obviously spotting the move, “she would have slipped away the moment you chose to leap out.”

“The moment
I
chose to leap out?” Scarlett echoed. “I was not the one who came up with that as a plan, as I recall.”

“I would not have had to, had you not insisted that we hang back,” Cruces pointed out.

“Oh, so this is my fault, is it? I’m not the reason the girl ran.” Scarlett paused to catch her breath. “I just hope that woman does not really report us to the police.”

“She won’t,” Cruces said. “Not if she is here for the night market.”

Scarlett looked around herself again, and cursed herself for being so stupid. Of course that was what the woman was there for. This was Covent Garden, after all. The night market was one of London’s stranger sights. By day, the area played host to all the usual kinds of stall holder, the costermongers and the greengrocers, the junk sellers and the peddlers of small nothings. By night… well, it had probably started as a way for some of London’s more criminal elements to sell their stolen wares, but quickly, the market had become the one place in the city where the supernatural and the ordinary interacted openly. Those supernatural creatures who can manifest themselves enough to appear human so that they could be seen by humans without Scarlett’s gift set up their stalls by night, and people would buy things that they hadn’t thought possible. Dangerous things, quite often.

“You think that Cecilia has gone into the market?” Scarlett asked. That Cruces would know about it was understandable enough. After all, he had to have acquired that ring of his
somewhere
.

“Even if she has, she will have gone from it,” Cruces replied.

Scarlett shook her head. “We should still look.”

“I think we would be better off finding a place that stocks more wine,” Cruces said, and Scarlett looked at him with mild disdain. Was that all he thought about. Bad enough that he had taken it instead of tea back at Holmes’ lodgings, but breaking off the search for the object of their investigation?

“We look,” Scarlett insisted, leading Cruces to the entrance to the market. There was a man on the door so swathed in old clothes that Scarlett could not make out anything of him beyond eyes that were slitted like a snake’s. He looked at them for a moment, but made no move to interfere as they entered the market and wandered between stalls lit almost solely by will o’ the wisps.

Scarlett had not been there many times. Her parents had gone there before, following rumors that some artifact or other from abroad had shown up on the stands, and they had allowed Scarlett to accompany them to sate her curiosity, but she had not gone without them. She had not really wanted to. To most Londoners, it must have seemed a tremendously exciting experience to wander among stalls that sold anything and everything, and which were staffed by creatures far more exotic than they could imagine. Yet for Scarlett, who saw such things everywhere, it had never seemed like something particularly different.

She realized now that she had been wrong. Yes, she saw the supernatural every day, but it was never like this. Ordinarily, it was a creature or a ghost or two standing out from the throng of humans. It was something and nothing, with which she was almost never expected to interact. Here, there were short, ugly, green-skinned creatures extolling the virtues of creams and unguents, slender, almost luminous sellers of jewelry and musical instruments, and more, far more. There were stalls for so many things, it was hard to see how they could all fit into the space.

It was also hard to see how they could possibly find one young woman in the chaos of the place. Despite the hour, the market thronged with people of every shape and size conceivable, plus a few that were not. Many of them wore clothes every bit as bright as those Cecilia had been wearing, while even those who did not were usually intriguing enough to briefly distract Scarlett, despite the years she had been seeing such things. It was, in short, the one place in London where Cecilia could easily lose them.

“Clever,” Scarlett said softly. “You never mentioned that Cecilia was clever, Cruces.”

The aristocrat yawned. “Is she? A hunted deer will run into a thicket to make it harder to follow. It is no particular feat.”

“Enough of one to lose you,” Scarlett pointed out, while beside her, a man dressed all in black exhorted her to buy candles apparently infused with the spirits of the dead. Scarlett, who could see the faint wisps of smoky spirit emanating from them, moved on hurriedly.

“Enough of one to lose
us,
Miss Seely, and I am not the one who claims to be a detective here.”

“Claims?” Scarlett bristled. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Cruces shook his head. s shookr It means that it is late, and that we will not find Cecilia again tonight. Now, if you wish to go home, you have already indicated your willingness to get a cab. I believe there are those that wait to serve the market goers. I, for one, am going to get a drink.”

He set out across the market, coming at last to the side of the street, where a public house spilled light and noise out into the darkness. So close to the market, Scarlett could see that it held more than the usual run of humanity, from the ghost occupying one stool near the bar to the short man in eastern silks playing cards at a table in the corner. Cruces stepped inside.

“I am going to get some wine, Miss Seely. Will you join me, or do you plan to stay out there in the hopes of catching a girl who is long gone?”

S
carlett did not leave immediately, even though Cruces was right and there were a few cabs waiting to take people home from the market. Instead, she followed him into the public house, taking a moment to take in more of the sights and sounds there. It was a lively place, with a fiddler playing in one corner, and people talking at a volume that made it hard to hear much else. It wasn’t exactly the cleanest of spots, though. Scarlett might just have come from the heat and dust of Egypt, but she had some standards.

She only stayed a moment or two longer because of the eclectic mix of people in the establishment. There were normal Londoners there, some from the slums in badly patched clothes while others had obviously come in from more affluent areas like Chelsea. There were also plenty of stranger things, figures with slightly pointed ears or odd colored eyes, a few insubstantial ghosts drifting through the mass. Off to one side, one of the short, ugly creatures from the market was arguing with a man over whether Grace was past his best on the cricket field. Even that oddity wasn’t enough to hold Scarlett’s attention for long. Not when there was a case to concentrate on.

She headed over to the bar, where Cruces was just paying for a glass of that red wine he loved so much. He gave Scarlett an inviting look as she approached.

“Are you sure you will not join me, Miss Seely?”

“You are really just abandoning the hunt for Cecilia?” Scarlett demanded.

Cruces shrugged. “You saw for yourself what it was like out there. What chance do you really think we have of finding her now? No, it is better just to enjoy what is left of the evening, and then try to find her tomorrow.”

That would have been the plan had Scarlett not spotted Cecilia earlier, certainly. She would have gone back to the townhouse where the one or two servants kept on by her parents to run the place would have been waiting for her, gotten some sleep, and only even thought about trying to locate the girl the next day. That was then, however. Now, with Cecilia having led them here, it seemed utterly wasteful to simply abandon the search.

“That might be how you see things,” Scarlett said, “but I do not give up so easily.”

“And I admire that,” Cruces said, raising his glass. “Young women who do not give up too easily make life so much more interesting.”

That wasn’t what Scarlett had meant, and she was sure Cruces knew it. She certainly was not going to dignify the comment with an answer.

“Join me, Scarlett,” Cruces said, gesturing to an empty table. “If we are going to be working together, then we really should get to know one another better, don’t you think?”

Scarlett tried not to react too strongly to that, but it was not easy. Cruces just got under her skin, somehow. And he had no right to use her given name like that. What would people think? “We are not working ‘together’, Lord Darthmoor. I am conducting investigations on your behalf. And it is Miss Seely.”

“Well then, Miss Seely,” Cruces said with one of those smiles of his. “That means that I am your employer, does it not? And
as
your employer, I insist that you join me and tell me more about yourself. The barman may even be able to come up with some of that tea of yours. Though it will probably be the least alcoholic thing ever drunk in this establishment.”

At letting herself be trapped like that, Scarlett used a number of words in her head that her parents almost certainly would not have approved of. She took the seat indicated by Cruces, and the barman did indeed manage to locate some tea somewhere in his premises. Scarlett did not see the need to make things easy for Cruces, however, so she sat as primly as she could and waited for him to speak rather than offering up any attempt at conversation herself.

“You know, Miss Seely,” Cruces began, “you are most lovely when you are annoyed with me. Anger becomes you really quite well.”

“Then I imagine that a few hours in your company will leave me fit to rival Aphrodite,” Scarlett snapped back.

“You are assuming that you do not already.” Cruces took a sip of his drink. “You must tell me of your adventures abroad.”

“You called me over to hear of my times following my parents around, when we could be out retrieving that ring of yours?”

“Oh, forget that for now. It is not going anywhere, and I have no doubt that you have more interesting things to say than most of the people I meet. Tell me about Egypt. It has been a long time since I have been there.”

Scarlett did her best, telling Cruces of the dig her parents were on, and the sweep of the Nile. With a little prompting, she went on to mention a few of the other places she had been: Burma, Java, even the colonies in South Africa, where the memories of the war with the Boer farmers were still fresh, and everyone seemed to be obsessed with diamond mining.

“I cannot imagine that would have suited you,” Cruces guessed, more perceptively than Scarlett would have given him credit for. “Politics and rocks do not strike me as interesting you too much.”

“There was little adventure in it,” Scarlett admitted. “Even the things my parents find… when I left, they were excited about a clock said to belong to the Egyptian sky goddess, Nut. Do you know the legend?”

Cruces nodded. “Tell me anyway. It will mean hearing more of that lovely voice of yours.”

Scarlett looked for signs that he was mocking her in some way, but it seemed that he was not. “They say that the year began as three hundred and sixty days until Nut, fell in love with the Egyptian god of knowledge, Thoth. The sun god Ra, who had claimed Nut as his, became angry, and cursed her never to have children on any day of the year. Thoth extended the year for her, adding five days that weren’t in any of the existing months. The clock is how he is said to have done it.”

“A lot to do for love,” Cruces said. “Though I suppose it would be worth it.”

“Really?” Scarlett asked, slightly surprised. “From your attitude to Cecilia, I would not have thought you were a man to believe in love.”

Cruces put his glass down carefully. “Just because I did not fall in love as a serving girl wished, that does not mean I am incapable of forming such an attachment.” He stared at Scarlett for a moment. “Quite the contrary, I assure you. Now, you have hardly touched your tea.”

Scarlett was grateful for the excuse to do something other than look at Cruces. The man seemed to have none of the boundaries that well brought up young men were meant to have. It gave him an intensity that was almost like standing in the Egyptian sun again.

“When this is over, you must give me the chance to paint you, Miss Seely,” Cruces said. There was a mischievous hint to his expression that probably should have warned Scarlett.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Perhaps something after the classical fashion? I am sure your form is most lovely.”

Scarlett stood up abruptly. He would really insinuate that she should sit for him unclothed? Of course he would. If she had not thought the man insufferable before, this alone would have been enough.

“You go too far, sir,” she said. “And I do not have to stay here to listen to it.”

Cruces’ eyes danced with amusement. “Are you really so easily offended, Scarlett? I thought that you were not one of the silly girls London produces.”