Undertow (Whyborne & Griffin #8.5)(16)

The grand doors rattled in their frames. A moment later, there came the click of a latch, and one of them began to swing open.





Chapter 6





There was no time. I seized the arm of the foreign chieftess, gesturing wildly toward the coat check as I did so. She didn’t snap at me; perhaps she realized now I was trying to help. Persephone and I hauled her between us to the entrance of the coat check and ducked behind the counter.

The creak of hinges sounded, the door shutting again. Then slow, shuffling footsteps made their way across the lobby.

My heart thundered, and I had to fold my hands together to keep them from shaking. At least the steps weren’t drawing any nearer to our hiding place. Persephone shifted to her knees and cautiously peered over the top of the counter.

“Maggie,” she whispered. “Look.”

A man wearing a nightshirt, dressing gown, and slippers made his way toward the doors leading into the auditorium. His expression was slack, but his eyes were wide, as if he were trapped in a nightmare.

“A hybrid?” I whispered.

Persephone shrugged. “I do not know him, but it seems likely.”

The man entered the auditorium, leaving the door open behind him. Soft light, as of candles rather than stage lighting, spilled out, accompanied by the murmur of voices.

Beside me, Persephone looked torn. Her tendril hair thrashed, and her shark’s teeth flashed briefly. Then she seemed to come to a decision. “Stay here. This is my chance to see what they’re doing with the hybrids.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said.

Persephone nodded. “Yes.” Leaning close to the foreign chieftess, she murmured something in their own tongue. The chieftess had collapsed against the counter, but the lids of her eyes slid open in response to Persephone’s words. Whether she truly had enough awareness to understand them, I couldn’t tell.

This time Persephone led the way, moving in a low crouch across the darkened lobby, both hands clutched around the haft of her spear. I mimicked her stance as best I could, my hands knotted in my skirts to keep them from dragging across the floor. The moment we reached the uppermost seats of the auditorium, we ducked behind them, her to the right of the aisle and myself to the left. All but holding my breath, I peered out from my hiding spot and toward the stage.

The theater’s ghost light illuminated the center of the stage, where Ayers and Joanna waited. Stagehands lurked near the wings or in the first few rows, muscular arms folded over their chests. One man had rolled his sleeves back, exposing crude tattoos of the sort common to sailors. Two others held harpoons loosely in their hands. Were these men whalers, as Papa had been?

The hybrid had almost reached the stage. He stopped short of it, face slack as he stared in Joanna’s direction. Though she wore an ordinary dress as opposed to a costume, she held the bone mask from the play loosely in her hands.

“I have bad news,” Ayers said to the gathering. He clutched a sheet of paper in one hand, crumpling it.

Joanna cocked her head to the side. “Shouldn’t we wait for our sorcerous friend before sharing it?”

“This is too urgent.” Ayers looked out over the stagehands—though surely they were more than mere workers. “Our agent in Kansas has failed. The rust has been destroyed, and the harvest with it.”

Kansas. Dr. Whyborne had gone to Kansas. I cast a worried glance at Persephone across the aisle, but her attention remained fixed on the stage.

Some of the stagehands murmured in dismay. Joanna, on the other hand, seemed far more confident. “Then we’ll try something else. Once the ketoi are annihilated, we’ll be in a position to carry out whatever orders the Man in the Woods gives.”

A chill ran down my spine. The Man in the Woods. I didn’t know what he—it?—was, exactly, other than it had something to do with the rat thing that had tried to kill me last summer. And no doubt with the cult that had attacked Widdershins shortly thereafter. Fideles—that was the name I’d overheard, wasn’t it?

Oh no. Could these people be members of the same cult?

Ayers shook his head. “It’s worse than that. Mrs. Creigh sent her telegram as a warning, to leave town before Dr. Whyborne returns. He’s a monster—”

“So is she,” said one of the stagehands—cultists?—with a gesture at Joanna.

Her eyes widened in fury, and for a moment I half expected her to march down off the stage and strike him. Ayers put a hand to her shoulder and shot the cultist a dark look. “My grand-daughter’s blood may be corrupt, but her service to the masters will cleanse her. Recall that only one with ketoi blood can use the mask.”

The mask. They must have used it to cast the spell on the hybrids. No wonder it looked so different from the other masks in the play.

“But that is neither here nor there,” Ayers went on. “According to Mrs. Creigh, Dr. Whyborne is something worse than a mere hybrid. He has some connection with the maelstrom, and she suggests we flee before he returns.”

“After all this effort?” Joanna exclaimed. “Restoring the theater, making it into a base from which we could operate in the very heart of this abominable city, and now Creigh expects us to abandon it because of some—some hybrid sorcerer?”

“Aren’t you listening?” Ayers’s voice turned into an angry growl. “He isn’t just some sorcerer. He might not even be a someone but a something. Without knowing whatever crawled out of cracks in the world and into his semi-human skin, we would be foolish to challenge him.”