A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(101)
There was another change; an air of tense expectation. Something had changed, charging the very air with anticipation. Something new and different was about to happen. There were glimpses of more creatures in the distance, though what those creatures were, it was too dark and too distant to tell. Still there was more activity and more movement than Nan had ever seen in any of these visions before, and that suggested something had stirred the monsters of this world into activity.
Then, abruptly, Nan felt the two of them ejected from the vision, without warning, and so forcefully that when she came to herself again, she was sitting on the floor beside the bed, rather than on the edge of it, as if the shock had made her lose her balance and fall. Amelia stirred, and met her eyes.
“It has found the last victim it needed,” she said, softly, but with certainty. And she shivered with the cold that always overcame her after these episodes.
“You stay where you are, get warm, and rest. I’ll send the messages. Roan!” she called, and the little hob literally appeared in front of the fire, popping into existence as if he had materialized himself. Though, it was entirely possible he had just become visible. She’d had the feeling he was following her around, mounting a guard over her and Amelia at night—if he’d been human, that would have been unsettling, but given he was an Elemental, the thought was actually comforting.
“Tell the others at the hospital that we think the creature has gotten its seventh girl, please,” she said. Roan saluted without speaking, and vanished. Nan took a moment more to find her slippers and rewrap her dressing gown, and ran to the room Sahib and Memsa’b shared. She tapped urgently at the door.
“A moment,” came Sahib’s muffled voice, and it really wasn’t more than a moment before the door opened and Sahib poked his head around the edge of it. He looked as if he had already guessed what brought her, and his words confirmed it.
“It’s got the last girl?” he asked, although it sounded more like a statement than a question. She nodded, and he closed the door again, wasting no words. They all knew their parts in this. They must have gone over the plan a dozen times before they separated, with Nan and Sarah and the birds staying at the school with Memsa’b and Sahib, and the rest basing their excursions out of the hospital. What the doctor made of all of this, she couldn’t say, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. A Royal Command was a Royal Command.
She went back to her room to find Roan waiting on the hearth. “They’ve been told at the hospital. Yon big thinker was there, so he knows too. And I woke the Air and Water Masters and the Great Fire Master and told them.” He peered at her, anxiously. “There anything more I can do?”
“Not tonight,” she assured him. “When you see us leave for the hospital in the morning. . . .” she paused, and then went down on her knees beside him. “Roan, you are a hob, and your kind are not made for fighting. You and Durwin are free now. Unless the Oldest Old One has orders for you, I don’t see any reason why you must stay where the danger is.”
Roan drew himself up to his full height, such as it was. “And I see every reason, Daughter of Eve,” he replied, stoutly. “You lot be fighting to keep us safe from these beasties, as much as yourself. Unless the Oldest Old One sends us away or gives us a task, we’ll be there.” He clapped a hand on the hilt of a tiny sword he now wore at his waist. “You have my sword.”
A number of impulses moved through her; she picked the one that would allow him the most dignity. “Then I accept, on behalf of all of us. When we go to battle, I will be honored to have you at my side.”
He stood even straighter, gave her a salute he must have learned from the soldiers, and disappeared.
She stood up again, gathered her dressing gown around her, and went back to bed. There was nothing more any of them could do until daylight.
Holmes joined them at the hospital at about teatime. As expected, the police in Battersea had called him in, but it had been very shortly after Amelia had had her vision, rather than the first thing in the morning. Evidently they were so rattled at the Battersea constabulary that they chose to call in Holmes immediately rather than waiting. The new girl had been found by a cabby on his way to his home in Battersea; by now all the cabbies knew to be looking out for girls wandering the streets in a daze.
They had met in the large room where the girls were being kept in a row of beds installed for the circumstances. Holmes had been waiting there, in front of the fire at the opposite end of the chamber from the girls, when the contingent from the school arrived.
“This one is different, very different,” Holmes said, with what sounded oddly like satisfaction. “I believe our unknown foe has grown desperate. All the other girls were in their mid to late teens. This child is barely thirteen. The others were girls of middle or upper class. And we were meant to think this girl was the same; superficially, this girl was dressed in fine garments no working class girl would ever dream of owning, much less wear, and she was immaculately groomed.”
“But obviously, Holmes, you found something different,” Watson stated. Holmes grinned. “Let me guess. She was malnourished, her skin, hair and teeth showed the effects of an insufficient diet. And she had calluses no girl of good standing would ever display.”
Holmes tipped an imaginary hat to his partner. “Quite so. It was obvious on removing her shoes and stockings that fine, well-fitted shoes were something she didn’t wear at all; her feet showed the signs of being blistered and healed many times, as if by poor-fitting shoes or wooden clogs of the sort worn in workhouses, and she had chilblains. Her hands showed the distinctive calluses and cuts derived from oakum-picking, that is, unraveling old ropes into their fibers. I have never seen marks of this sort outside of a workhouse.”