The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(33)
At the corner of the intersection in front of the station, Edwina took a moment to get her bearings, while Ian noted the grit in the air was thick enough to taste with each inhale. Her eyes scanned the skyline—the clock tower, the gilded eaves of the Rose & Crown pub across the street, and the row of striped awnings where the smell of slaughtered animals at the butcher’s shop rode on a wave from a block away.
“There,” she said at last, pointing straight down the street in front of them, where a man and two boys walked by with faces caked in coal dust. “Five minutes in that direction is the Wilshire Music Hall.” She then directed his attention to the right. “That way there are boardinghouses and hotels on each side of the street. No matter if you took the underground train here after your journey south or you rode an omnibus, you would have stood at this intersection four days ago. So where would your instincts tell you to go next in search of lodging?”
He’d already deduced what she was about. By having him stand in the same place he would have made his decision four days ago, they might track down where he’d stayed. Without a doubt he would have remained close to the one main clue he had about the man’s last known whereabouts. “This way,” he said as recognition slipped over his body like an overcoat. Memory in the form of déjà vu guided him, letting him feel out the lay of the street rather than truly remembering. He kept his eyes on the doorways of each business they passed—a hotel and tavern, a wine and spirit emporium, a sewing machine shop, another hotel that carried the whiff of a brothel—measuring each against his body’s reaction. He rejected them one by one until they came to a door flanked by weather-beaten pillars. The name above the entrance read THE THREE HARES INN.
He stopped. The image conjured up memories of his mother dancing on the rocky moors among the heather with the full moon shining above. His intuition spiked. “Here,” he said and charged up the front steps to the hotel. He took the skeleton key from his pocket. He was certain he’d found the place he’d been staying. He knew it at once. He also knew he wouldn’t have thought to find the hotel in such a manner without the help of this bewitching creature standing at his side.
“Go on, then,” Edwina said, smiling and sharing in his discovery.
His heart tapped out a steady beat of anticipation as he opened the door and approached the front desk. If he’d hoped for a friendly welcome of return, though, he was harshly rebuked. The clerk, a round man in tweed who bore a black mustache that curled up at the ends, recognized him straightaway. But instead of a nod and a smile to greet him, the man snapped his fingers at a hotel porter to get his attention. “Fetch that police officer who was just here,” he ordered, then grabbed a wrought-iron fire poker from behind the counter and waved it like a weapon at Ian, warning him to stay back. After a wide-eyed glance, the terrified porter ducked out the door behind them to chase down a constable.
Ian automatically shielded Edwina with one arm stretched out in front of her. With his other he tried to reason with the man with the poker and keep him from doing anything stupid. “Are you off your head, man? What’s happened? Why have you called in the police?”
“My maid discovered what you’re about, that’s what,” he answered, jabbing the poker as he spoke. “Went in to clean your room, she did, and learned what a perverted, twisted mind you’ve got.” The clerk’s face screwed up in a look of scorn reserved for the most degenerate of creatures. “You’ve frightened the poor woman out of her mind. To find such things after all that business in the streets a decade ago with Old Jack, and now again with that Brick Lane Slasher.”
Where had his investigation led to provoke this kind of response?
“I’ve no idea who this Brick Lane Slasher is. Sir, I’m a private investigator searching for a young man who’s been missing for weeks. If you discovered anything odd or disturbing in my room, it was likely to do with my case files. Now, I’m going to need those items back, so hand me my belongings and I’ll be on my way.”
“Detective, are you? You’d have ID to prove it, then, wouldn’t you?” The man gestured with his free hand for Ian to produce the evidence.
Ian let out a slow breath. “I haven’t . . . my wallet was stolen only yesterday. Never mind that. Just let me have my things and I’ll go. You’ll never see me again.”
“Hand them back?” The man huffed in disbelief. “No God-fearing man should want to be in possession of such shocking things.” The clerk gritted his teeth and whispered his next words as if to shield Edwina from hearing him. “Drawings of naked men with their throats cut. Their heads bashed in. And to be so blackhearted as to leave that sort of wickedness lying about where my poor Polly would find it.” He shook his head and warned, “Don’t you move. The police are on their way, and then they’ll fix you. It’ll be the gallows at Northgate for you.”
Edwina tugged at Ian’s sleeve. “What do we do now, recite another poem?”
He looked at her and shrugged. “Run,” he said, and together they skipped out the front door and down the steps, then fled through the crowded street as a police whistle blared at their backs.
Chapter Fourteen
Edwina raised her shawl over her head and caught her breath as she and Ian crouched behind a wagon sagging under the weight of a dozen beer barrels. The city’s myriad streets and landmarks flashed in her head. A living map laid out under the daylight stars. Coordinates that aligned with magnetic poles and the invisible ley lines that ran from castles and palaces to cathedrals and monuments. She’d internalized this map of the streets from dusky evenings spent wandering through the smog-and cinder-filled air. Once learned, it would never leave her.