This Monstrous Thing(14)

I did a quick lap around the flat, checking for any of the provisions we kept ready in case we had to bolt. The roll of bills in a kettle above the fire was gone, along with a gold medallion Father had been given in the Scottish navy. Whoever had been here, they had taken anything that would have made running easier. I checked what was left of my things and found that my papers were missing as well. It had been bleeding stupid not taking them with me that morning, but I hadn’t thought I’d need them at the market. If the police had my name and description, it would be hard to get out of the city and into France undetected.

I slipped down the stairs and let myself into the shop, hoping for some money left in the cash box, but everything was smashed up and torn apart, same as upstairs. They had found the door to the workshop, forced it open and left it that way, like a gaping mouth stretched wide behind the counter. It bothered me almost more than the mess to see it like that, our secret so exposed, and I stood for a moment with one hand on the frame, looking down the passage.

Then, from deep in the darkness, I heard something move.

Hope flexed inside me, and I took a cautious step forward. “Mum?” I called. The shuffling movement stopped, followed by a cold silence. “Mum?” I called again, a little louder.

There was the scratch of a match, then a small flame appeared, illuminating the pale face I had seen on the omnibus the day before. Inspector Jiroux. The shadows intensified the contours of his face as our eyes met through the darkness. “Finch!” he bellowed.

I didn’t know if it was me he was after or if he thought I was Father, but I didn’t hang around to find out. I slammed the workshop door in his face. All the mechanisms that kept it from being opened from the inside had been gutted, but it would at least slow him down.

I scrambled out from behind the counter, stumbling on the ruins of windup toys that decorated the floor like spiked carpet, and burst out of the shop. The night air was sharp against my burning face as I turned down the first alley I came to and plunged deeper into the old town, not caring where I ran so long as I got away. The city here was a labyrinth, steep, decrepit passages without clockwork carriages or industrial torches. The moon was blotted out by icy laundry strung between windows, and most of the snow had been trampled into slick gray mud.

I sprinted past a rowdy pub where Oliver had once been arrested for brawling. Some men in the doorway shouted drunken nonsense at me, and one threw a glass of ale. I felt the spray on the back of my neck, but I didn’t stop. As I reached the end of the street, I heard them shout again, this time with screechy catcalls. Was Jiroux still following me? I sped up, though my legs ached.

Two streets farther, I turned down a dead end. I whipped around to go back the way I had come, but a silhouetted figure appeared at the mouth of the alley, blocking my path. I snatched up the nearest weapon I could find—a cheap coal shovel with all the weight of a sheet of paper—and held it before me like a sword, bracing for a fight I knew I’d lose.

But it wasn’t a policeman. It was a girl.

A young woman, I realized as she stepped into a chasm of moonlight, though it was only her long, plaited hair that made her look it. She was whip thin, her body a shapeless board like a boy’s, and she was dressed in rough trousers and a heavy gray workman’s coat, unbuttoned and lashed at the waist as though she had thrown on her father’s coat from beside the door as she rushed out.

I lowered the shovel. Perhaps she hadn’t been chasing me at all. It seemed more likely she had come out of one of the houses to see what the commotion was.

Then she called, “Alasdair Finch.”

The shovel shot back up. “What do you want?” I said, and in my panic, the words fell out in English. She took another step toward me, and I shouted, “Stay back!” and whipped the shovel around a few times for good measure.

She raised her hands, palms forward. “Consider me threatened.” She spoke English too, but with swallowed Parisian vowels that didn’t match her tattered clothes.

“Are you with the police?” Even as I asked it, the question felt stupid. I could tell she wasn’t just by looking at her.

She took another step forward, icy snow crunching under her boots. “I’ve come from Geisler.”

I almost dropped the shovel. “Dr. Geisler? Is he here?”

“No, but he asked me to find you. I’m to take you to Ingolstadt to see him. You are Alasdair, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” My panic retreated just long enough to allow me a moment of reckless hope. Geisler was a name I could trust, and I needed to trust someone if I was on my own. I didn’t lower the shovel, but I took a step toward her. “How do we get there?”

“I have a wagon waiting outside the city.”

“I won’t get through the checkpoints.”

“We can go along the river. I know a way.” A shout peaked from the men at the pub down the road, and the girl glanced over her shoulder, then back at me. “If we go, we go now.”

Father was in prison. Mum was gone. But Geisler could help us, and I wouldn’t have to run alone.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go.”

“Hurry, then.” The girl turned back to the street, and I abandoned my shovel and followed her. We’d only gone a few steps when she stopped so suddenly that I nearly smashed into her. A light was bobbing toward us from the end of the lane, moving fast and accompanied by heavy footfalls.