A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(46)

He swallowed hard, all his earlier exuberance gone. Time seemed to stand utterly still—but he was afraid to move. The pillar of darkness remained motionless, neither shrinking nor growing. The silence was absolute. Alexandre couldn’t even hear Alf moving around upstairs.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, the first girl stumbled out of the pillar and collapsed facedown on the basement floor.

Take her away, said the voice, and the pillar once again became a pool.

The silence vanished; in its place were the sounds of Alf shuffling around overhead and the girl breathing. The air warmed, and the scent of damp returned.

The girl was no longer tied and gagged, but she wasn’t moving except for breathing. Cautiously, Alexandre went to her, and turned her over.

Her eyes stared fixedly into nothingness, the pupils so dilated that he couldn’t see any iris at all. He touched her face; she was cold, almost corpse-cold, even though she was clearly still breathing. At the touch of her clammy, chill skin, all thoughts of enjoying her before turning her loose on the street vanished out of his mind.

Bloody hell . . . am I going to have to carry her? He decided to see if he could get her to her feet first, before trying to carry her. Taking one hand, he tugged on it, saying “Stand up.” She obeyed him like some sort of automaton, getting easily to her feet and standing on her own. Encouraged by this, he turned her so that she faced the stairs.

“Go over there, climb the stairs, open the door at the top, and go into the kitchen,” he ordered. And just like a clockwork toy, she lifted her feet, one after the other, and did as she had been told. He followed behind her, both of them surprising Alf as he laid out a cold supper on a tray in the kitchen.

“Bloody Jesus!” he choked, catching himself on the back of a chair. “The ’ell! Did—is—”

“Our guest got what it wanted,” Alexandre informed him. “This is what it left.”

Alf left his task and prowled around the girl like a nervous cat investigating something it was not at all sure of. The girl paid him no more attention than she had anything else.

“I can order her about, and she’ll do what I say,” Alexandre continued, as Alf peered into her black eyes and shook his head. “My thought was to take her to the street and set her on her way. I think she’ll just keep going until someone stops her.”

Alf pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and mopped his face with it; Alexandre saw he was sweating nervously. “Sooner ye do thet, guv, th’ better Oi’ll loik it. Thet thing . . . Oi dunno wut ’tis, but ’tain’t ’ooman no more.”

Alexandre blinked, a little surprised at Alf’s perceptivity. “I think you might be right,” he said. “But at least our guest left her with enough that we’ll have no trouble disposing of her—and there’s not a chance in the world she’ll betray us.”

After making sure there were no potential witnesses, he steered the girl-husk out the front door and down to the street. He pointed her in the direction he wanted her to go; she evidenced no more will nor personality than a giant wax doll. But she did manage to navigate all the hummocks and ruts in the snow, which solved the question of whether or not she was actually going to be able to walk far enough away to erase any connections between them and her.

“Walk forward, move quickly, keep on this street, and don’t stop until someone tells you to,” he ordered, and exactly as if he had wound up a clockwork toy and set it in motion, she began walking. She was able to maintain quite a good pace; he waited, shivering in the cold, until she was three blocks away before going back inside.

He an Alf looked at each other. Alf mopped his face again. “Oi’ve seen a lotta thin’s, guv,” he said finally. “But Oi hain’t never seen anythin’ thet give me th’ shivers loik—thet. There weren’t nobody in there, guv, Oi swear it.”

Alexandre thought that over. It was as good an explanation as anything. “How about a brandy?” he suggested.

“’Ow ’bout a bottle?” Alf countered.

Alexandre thought about the moment that pillar had erupted into grasping tentacles and engulfed both girls, hauling them into its blackness.

“I think that’s a capital idea,” he said fervently, and went to get the bottle himself.





9





THE flat was much quieter. Suki was back at school, and Roan had followed her there; Memsa’b said both had arrived and were settled safely. From what Durwin said, Roan was as happy as could be with a workshop full of broken and worn-out toys to repair. Durwin himself was a cheerful absence rather than a presence in the house. They seldom saw him, but his satisfaction at being here was palpable, and demonstrated in the way that the flat was always in spotless order—and they had fancied themselves to be good housekeepers! Not that they shirked—Nan, for one, was determined to give Durwin no chance to think they were taking him for granted—but no matter how clean and tidy things were before they went to bed, they were somehow cleaner and more tidy when they woke.

For their part, despite Amelia’s prescient dreams and their own forebodings, it appeared that life had elected to grant them a temporary holiday, for until three days after Suki left for school, nothing came up that required their talents and attention.

Which was just as well, really, since while Suki had been with them, they had not had a moment when the three of them weren’t doing something—generally a lesson disguised as an outing, like the entire day they spent at the British Museum. With Suki gone, and their time to themselves, they got the chance to put their spring and summer wardrobes in order, doing all the mending and retrimming they’d put off after cleaning the garments and putting them away. The trimming was the enjoyable part—making old gowns, waists and skirts look new with new lace, ribbons, and other trims. The mending part . . . not so much. They even got a chance to mend what needed mending in their winter clothing before a message came from Sherlock Holmes.