The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(44)
Chapter Seventeen
Think!
Ian had found evidence leading to George Elvanfoot once before; he could do so again. He must. Lives depended on it.
Standing in the alley outside the stage door, Ian dug in his breast pocket for the photo Lizzie had given him of George Fey, the actor. A slightly different pose, she’d pointed out, than the one she’d provided before. This one showed George in costume for the play he was starring in, and this picture she wanted returned in one piece, along with her fiancé. Her demands were made clear, as was her denial he knew any “floozy” by the name of Mary Blackwood.
Unfortunately, the first photo must have been confiscated along with his other belongings from the hotel room. The thought of all that investigative work already done and of absolutely no use to him any longer made him want to cast a spell to plunge the city into fog permanently.
And maybe that’s just what the moment called for, Ian thought, getting an idea.
He couldn’t go to the Metropolitan Police to make inquiries about one of the city’s missing citizens. They’d arrest him on the spot, thanks to the hotel clerk and his nosy maid. They likely didn’t give a toss about a missing actor anyway. But there was another place he could go for information. This was witch business, after all. The only problem was the whereabouts of the headquarters. The location was always changing.
“Hob, you there?”
The hearth elf popped his head out of the broken pane of the nearest streetlight. “Sir?”
“We need to get into a little mischief.” Before the elf got too excited, he cautioned, “Just enough to attract attention. I dinna have time to spend the night behind bars.”
Hob’s grin fell slightly, but he still rubbed his hairy hands together before shimmying down the lamppost. “We could snuff all the city lights out,” he suggested, eyeing the place he’d jumped from.
“Won’t be dark enough to cause a scene for a few more hours,” Ian said, conferring with the stars. “Afraid we haven’t got time to wait.”
Hob drummed his fingers against his chin, thinking. As he did, a rat wandered down the alley, twitching his nose as he sniffed a suspicious trail of black goo that oozed toward the street. Ian and Hob watched the rat waddle in front of them, then exchanged a mischievous glance.
“Aye, that’ll do.” Ian checked the stairwell quickly to see if the homeless man was still there sleeping, but he’d already stumbled off somewhere. “Give me a little space,” he said to Hob, who backed away from the rat. “Let’s hope he has a few friends nearby.”
Ian shook out his arms to warm up while he waited for a couple to pass by the opening to the alley. You couldn’t walk thirty seconds in the city without bumping into someone, but for the moment the alley was clear. Ian concentrated on the rat, who shuffled along unaware, or unimpressed, by the two other creatures he shared the space with. All the better. Ian cleared his throat.
“Carriers of plague, vain and vile, scourge of this industrial isle. Vermin gather single file, off you go for, er, the course of a mile.” Ian finished his incantation and pointed to the street as the gathering rats emptied out of gutters and crevices in the bricks to form a line. More scampered from farther down the alley to catch up to the others until there were a hundred or more walking nose to tail along the main road. The stunned hush from witnesses on the street was audible as the rats formed their march.
“Your wording was a little harsh,” Hob said as he watched the last rat’s tail slither around the corner.
“Never did learn to appreciate the little buggers.” Ian checked his pocket watch, then snapped it shut. “I’d say we’ve got twenty minutes before the proper authorities come to investigate. Fancy a meat pie? My treat.”
The pair remained in the alley while they ate their meal. Luckily the rats had vacated, so their crumbs didn’t attract any unwanted guests. A few of the singers who’d been auditioning exited the stage door but didn’t give a second look to a man sharing a pie crust with a hairy dummy.
“A glass of ale wouldn’t have gone amiss,” said Hob, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Aye, but you’ve got a full belly for the night, have ye not?” Ian brushed more crumbs off the front of his jacket as the clatter of well-shod horse hooves on the road attracted his attention. “Ah, here’s our man, and early too,” he said as a hansom cab pulled up in front of the alley entrance. “Time for you to go.”
A man of middling authority in a black frock coat and silk hat and carrying a walking stick stepped out of the cab. Ian didn’t recognize him, but he did note the lack of credentials pinned to his lapel. Dressed like a physician or a gentleman out on business, he drew little attention to himself other than from the mildly curious wishing to see why a hansom would stop in front of a narrow alleyway beside an East End music hall. They’d sent a rookie, right enough, pulling up to the spell’s epicenter. It was a boy’s magic trick he’d done, so they couldn’t have expected the constable would find anything more than a rowdy youth practicing magic in a public street as a prank. Which made the man’s mustachioed face appear all the more hilarious, once it scrunched up in realization that the culprit he’d come to chastise was actually a grown man in a tweed jacket.
“You there, what’s the meaning of this?”