The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(19)
How could he have thought these surroundings familiar? He’d never been on this street before in his life. Impossible. He’d never laid eyes on this part of the city. Confused by his own opposing thoughts, he ducked into a narrow passageway that cut between buildings. No wider than two men if they dipped their shoulders when they met, he somehow knew the alley connected the parallel-running main thoroughfares of Flint Street and Queen’s Road so that the walker didn’t have to circumnavigate the entire length of either to get to the other side. The deeper into the passage he traveled, the more the light dimmed, until the shadows grew so thick a man could barely see his own feet in the middle of the day.
Such a sense of dread pervaded Ian’s thoughts halfway through the passage that sweat dampened his skin until his shirt clung to his back. His heartbeat sped up to a gallop. He knew he ought to stop. Go back the way he’d come. Yet he could not turn back. Again, he knew this place by its smell—the cool fragrance of mold that rose off the walls, the tinge of urine soaked into the stone and straw underfoot, and something saltier that hung in the air. At night, he knew, there would be braziers lit to guide the way, but they only made the darkness of the narrow space more profound as soon as you stepped outside their glow. It ought not be a long walk from one street to the other, but there were nooks and corners and short steps up and down that had been added to accommodate the bones of a medieval city whose old walls jutted out like elbows against the new.
Ian’s hand instinctively reached out to feel the wall as he negotiated a blind corner. As he did, a man approached from the opposite end. There was nothing to suggest he was anything but a cobbler or leatherworker traveling from one end of the close to the other, same as him. Yet a sense of déjà vu struck Ian straight in the pocket where a man hides his most primal fear. His heart, already at a run, beat so hard he thought he might collapse where he stood. There’d been nothing about the man that threatened, not even the whiff of alcohol on his breath. But after they passed each other, Ian became so disoriented he had to hold on to the wall until he slid down on wobbly knees that could no longer hold him up.
Images swarmed in his mind like blackbirds—a man with a club in his hand; the crack of his head splitting open; his face hitting the paving stones; blades of straw poking into his cheek. Ian huddled in a corner of the passageway with his hands drawn over his head to protect himself from the scenes that would not cease. And yet they swooped at him without mercy. Memories of a razor-thin pain across his neck. The catch of breath in his windpipe. The choking reek of blood spluttering into his mouth. The life draining from his body as the blood spilled across the paving stones. A scream reduced to a drowning gurgle. And then nothing but a floating weightlessness and the absence of thought and light as his head hit the pavement, coming nose to tip with a pair of bloody brogues with stitching across the top. Then a flash of a beautiful girl with golden hair. A stranger to him, and yet he was sure she was his daughter, Molly. But he had no daughter.
Confusion caved in on Ian. He gripped his head with both hands, believing his mind was splitting in two. He had curled up on his side to ride out the wave of nausea when someone nudged his shoulder. He didn’t know if a week, a day, or only a few minutes had passed when he opened his eyes again.
“What’s happened to you, then?”
A boy carrying a bucket and broom stared down at him as if he were merely another grown man passed out in the alleyway. The strange images faded, taking the pain with them, but the trembling remained. He was wrung out, confused, and very afraid he was losing his mind. He pulled his hand away from his throat expecting to see it soaked in blood, but there was only the muck of the street. A final tremor ravaged his nerves. The boy, not hearing an answer, shrugged and turned to walk away.
“Wait,” Ian called out, wiping his nose and eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. “Help me.”
The boy was an honest-looking lad. Cautious too. He kept his distance in the passage while he waited for Ian to sit up. “What you want from me?”
What did he want? He needed help, but the police weren’t the answer. Nor the hospital, which was no better than a jail. A last dark vision flew across his thoughts. A black skirt and a blue light imposed against it. He saw the scene from above, as if he were floating in the sky. The boy asked again, and he shook himself free of the vision. He dug in his pocket for his money and handed the boy a shiny coin.
“Half now and the other half when you return.”
Ian explained what he wanted the boy to do, waited until he agreed, then leaned his head against the brick wall long enough to come out of the fog of a dead man’s memory of being murdered.
Chapter Ten
The hired hansom cab slowed to a stop in front of a coffeehouse. Edwina had plenty of time to consider why she’d been summoned on the mile-long journey through the congested streets. The boy had described the man as being in a terrible state and having some sort of fit. She imagined any number of things that might have gone wrong for Ian. He might have been robbed or beaten, or perhaps he’d made good on his promise of visiting a pub and discovered he didn’t like who he remembered himself to be when he drank. “Might be dead already,” the boy had warned when he’d shown up inside her shop, eyes wide with wonder at all the shiny objects for sale.
The boy looked much less sure of his prediction as he followed Edwina out of the cab and pointed. On the other side of the street, Ian sat inside a doorway, hunched over and holding his jacket tight around him as he pressed a white-knuckled fist against his lips. He made an attempt to stand by holding on to the wall when he noticed her cross the road, but Edwina told him to stay where he was and knelt beside him.