The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (30 page)

It was an irrational desire brought on by an overwhelming day. He fought it off and settled for bringing a book into her room and reading by her bedside until the light grew too dim to see by. Instead of tapping one of the lamps and awakening the salamander bound within, he put the book aside and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

He stopped at the wide, western-facing window, watching what he could see of the sunset through the city that had sprung up around the Buckley estate like mushrooms after the rain. Once upon a time, their home had been, if not as grand, as private as the val Daren estate.
Progress,
Michael Buckley had said in his confident voice. But the Buckley family hadn’t sold off their land and let the city grow around them for
progress
, just as Fernand hadn’t sold most of their ventures to stimulate the economy. Progress felt a lot like decline.

A sudden madness overtook him as he stood there. Perhaps it was thinking of what the Buckley family had once been, or perhaps the imaginary door in his mind hadn’t been locked, after all. Whatever the reason, Chris found himself climbing staircases and drifting through halls until he opened the door to his old childhood bedroom. He stood at the threshold, gazing in at the hazy ghosts of his truncated childhood. The room was like a worldcaught painting, a moment frozen in time. Not a single thing had been touched since the day Fernand had gently suggested a young master would be better suited in the master bedroom.

But it wasn’t things he’d come for, not his old train set or his book of Tarlish folktales or the miniature pianoforte he’d quit practising when he realized his mother would never teach him another lesson. He walked past all of those things, and he opened the window on the far side of the room. He gazed for a long moment, feeling the breeze ruffle his hair, and then he reached up and gripped the sill in both hands.

That night, he’d needed to put one foot on his toy box and the other on the middle shelf of his bookcase, but six years later, he was tall enough and strong enough to get out of the window by himself. He pulled his body up onto the overhanging roof that the window opened to with minimal effort, and it was strange to imagine how gruelling an ordeal it had seemed when he was a boy.

The roof was littered with the skeletal remains of old leaves and covered in moss and dirt. He sat on the shingles and pulled his legs up against his chest, hugging them to him and resting his chin on his knees. The sky was red and purple and orange, and he could see clearly in all directions. The Buckley fortune and reputation may have dwindled, but their estate was as tall as it ever had been. Some legacies were harder to erode than others.

He didn’t know how long he sat there. The orange turned red, the red turned purple, the purple turned black. The black sprouted little tiny pinpricks of light, a hundred thousand alps bound up in the canopy of the sky. When the sun had fully disappeared below the horizon and proud Darrington lit up with all of its nocturnal plumage, Chris climbed to his feet.

With his right hand, he reached up and gripped one of the wrought-iron trimmings decorating the wall that rose beside him. He let his other hand fall to the side, and he gripped the iron hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

And if he breathed deeply enough, gripped tightly enough, he could go back.

Time drained away like the tide retreating to the sea, leaving the last six years scattered on his beach. Blood and murder. Viktor val Daren and Maris Dawson and Olivia Faraday. His year at Lowry refining his skill as a wordweaver. The scientists who had tortured him until the trauma awakened his gift, and no one had ever warned him that was what categorization really meant.

The tide pulled back further and then there was juggling finances he barely understood and his “friends” drifting away as they realized he was a social liability. Dressing like a pauper, eating like a priest, pulling Rosemary into the shadows of life and hiding there, praying no one would see them.

His prayers had all gone unanswered, in the end.

But the thought was gone as the tide pulled back further, and now it was revealing the ugliness of the depths, things not meant for the light of day. The sight of Fernand’s face above his bed, the crushing realization that it had all been real, the misery of understanding what was going to be expected of him. And back further, to the long night before, how he had wandered in a slew of crowded hospitals filled with screaming, dying victims, armed only with the knowledge that surely, surely his mother must be here somewhere, surely he’d see her at any moment and it would all be over. All those sterile white halls and appalling wounds and the tide retreated further still.

Scrambling back in through the window, his mouth tasting of vomit and his small body roiling with emotions he couldn’t understand.

Watching the Castle hit the ground not so far from where he stood with a shriek of crushing steel. Shattering glass. The way it had crumpled like it had been made of paper and wishes. And, worst of all, the way the sylphs had all joined together to form an exultant tornado, how he could hear their joyous song.

And the moment he’d seen the Castle shudder in the sky. And how he’d thought
I wish it would fall right now so he would just die
.

The tide was out, and for a moment he felt it all at once, all six years of relics on the beach, all the horror and all the pain.

And then it was all gone and he was just Chris, his mother’s pride and his father’s curse, his sister’s most and least favourite person, a boy who’d been too quick to cry, too slow to fight, and never good enough. He was just Chris, angry, dying for a sight of the famous and infamous Castle, crawling out without his nanny’s knowledge to stand on the roof and feel the night air ruffling his nightshirt against his skinny, boyish legs.

Even then, he hadn’t been happy, but he’d known what it was like to feel
peace
. To not live with a family of ghosts on his back and the constant, never-ending, ridiculous thought in his mind that somehow he’d
caused
the Castle to fall when it just might have righted itself and gone on Floating.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The night smelled like the city, but the only sound was the wind through the trees and the beating of his own heart. He was in the heart of Darrington, but if he couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see it, maybe it wasn’t real.

Waves lapped against him and he floated on the sea, and then he heard a loud, unmistakable
smash
.

His eyes flew open.

The moment vanished, and the last six years crashed into him like a tidal wave. He gasped, flexing his grip on the wrought iron pole. He stood in shock for a moment, trying to place what the sound had been, why it was so distressing to him…and then he remembered.

He thrust the ghosts into the imaginary room, locked the door behind them, and vaulted back through the window. He stumbled when he hit the ground, but caught his footing. He sprinted through his old room, throwing himself against the door, and shouting, “
Rosemary
!”

He heard a clamour a floor down, the sound of someone throwing themselves down a flight of stairs. “
Shit
,” he cursed under his breath and tore off down the hall. “
Rosemary
!” he cried again. Another explosion of sound as the intruder rushed down another flight of stairs, and Chris stood at the mouth of a hallway and the steep servants’ staircase. He could either go down the hall and see if his sister was all right, or hurry down this flight of stairs the intruder didn’t know existed, cutting him off at the door.

With a tortured, frustrated sound getting stuck in the back of his throat, Chris chose. “Rosemary!” he shouted again, turning away from the staircase and rushing down the hall to Rosemary’s room. As he reached it, he heard the sound of the front door slamming, and felt the intruder slip through his fingers. He let him go and pushed open the door to his sister’s room.

He’d feared the worst. He’d known she hadn’t been taken with the man he’d heard running—no one would be able to move that fast when holding a pudgy thirteen-year-old girl. But he’d prepared himself to see the room in shambles and Rosemary dead or dying. Instead, he was greeted with it being exactly the way he’d left it. Dark, quiet, and peaceful but for Rosemary’s beloved music box lying on the ground, open, playing its haunting melody into the stillness.

The light from the hallway fell over his sister’s face and pillow, and he saw her stir. She scrunched her features up and squinted at him. “Chris…?” she asked blearily, voice slurred with sleep. “Were you yelling my name…?”

He could have sobbed with relief. He would have, if not for how it would scare her. Breathing in and out steadily, he forced a smile and crossed the room to lean down and kiss her forehead. “I think you were dreaming,” he said softly.

She yawned. “Oh…” she said, and blinked. Her eyes took a long time opening again, and she seemed even less alert as she turned on her side and murmured, “Why is my music box playing?” Her eyes slid shut.

“It must have fallen over,” Chris replied, bending and closing it, silencing its song. Rosemary didn’t reply. When he straightened, holding the box in his hands, her face was once again locked in the embrace of deep, peaceful, healing sleep.

Gently, he set it back on her bedside table. He was grateful it was made of polished mahogany and not some other, more fragile material. Grateful, too, that it had been made by a gearsetter and not a spiritbinder, so there was no risk of a rogue elemental. He carefully put it back exactly where it had been, trying not to think about what had just happened. None of it seemed quite real, anymore, some mad fantasy brought on by his fears and the surreal moment on the rooftop.

He kissed his sister again, turned away, and his heart leaped into his throat. He fell to his knees, barely breathing.

A knife speared a piece of paper to the wall beside the door. In the dim light, he could barely make out the words scrawled there in angry block capitals.

VIKTOR VAL DAREN DESERVED TO DIE.

STOP ASKING QUESTIONS OR I WILL HURT HER.

e was pulled from sleep, clawing and dragging, by hands shaking him. “…ckley. Mister Buckley! Christopher!” a woman’s voice was saying in a harsh whisper. “Christopher Buckley, I am sorry, but you need to wake up!”

Chris blinked against the light, wanting nothing more than to turn and bury himself in his pillow. He shifted and groaned. Why was he so uncomfortable? Why was his bed so hard? Why did everything smell like flowers…?

He reluctantly opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the sparrowish face of Miss Rachel Albany. Throwing up an arm to ward off the dim grey light, he grunted with surprise when he realized he was in…in Rosemary’s room? On the floor? “What?” he asked blearily.

“Mister Buckley,” Miss Albany insisted, looking away from him with discomfort plain in her eyes. “Mister Buckley, your employer is on the mirror and she seems extremely distraught. She demands to speak to you immediately. Please, if you would. She refuses to go away.”

He was on the floor because he’d slept here. He’d dragged the covers off his own bed and hauled them down to Rosemary’s room so he could sleep at her door. Because he’d wanted to protect her. He’d wanted to be sure that if the intruder returned, he’d trip over him on his way in, and then Chris would be up and fighting. The intruder. The music box. The note. Chris swallowed his heart and felt it go all the way down to where his stomach languished in his knees. “Is Rosemary all right?” he asked pathetically.