A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(99)

As it was, he’d had his eye on Harcourt, who was in his then-current master’s circle of disreputable magicians, and who, in fact, had been one of his master’s chief protégés. So he had passed seamlessly from one good master to another who, like his first, rewarded loyalty very generously.

But generosity was far outweighed by the possibility of being eaten by some mystical monster. If that was where this was going . . . Alf decided, between the second and third brandy, that it might be time to pack up his things and find someone new. And possibly go straight to the White Lodge and let them know about the “rum goings-on.”

One hour passed. Then two. Then three. From time to time he went out to check on the horse, make sure it was still warm and comfortable under the blanket he’d thrown over it, make sure no one had noticed and meddled with the coach. And three hours were more than enough time to wait. Something should have happened by now. The last girls had been spit out by the monster within a quarter hour. And if something had gone wrong. . . .

Alf made his way back down the stairs to find Alexandre still sitting, waiting, just out of reach of the pillar of darkness. “Somethin’ th’ matter, guv?” he asked, cautiously. In his opinion, Alexandre couldn’t hold a candle to his last two masters when it came to magic. It seemed to him that most of what had been happening was all due to sheer accident on Alexandre’s part, an accidental success that whatever lived on the other side of that blackness was only too happy to take advantage of.

“I . . . don’t know,” Alexandre admitted. “It hasn’t rejected the girl, but it hasn’t sent her back, either.” Alexandre looked over his shoulder at Alf, and Alf could see that his face was pale and drawn with anxiety. He moved a step back up on the staircase.

“Mebbe they was both virgins, an’ th’ thin’s tryin ter make up its mind.” Alf was beginning to get a very uneasy feeling about this. The same sort of uneasy feeling he’d had when his previous employer began engaging in riskier and riskier behavior. The same sort of uneasy feeling he’d had . . . well, many, many times in the past, when he’d escaped danger by the skin of his teeth. He backed his way further up the stairs, quietly, to the point where he could just see the young man. If this thing couldn’t see him, maybe it wouldn’t realize he was there.

Then he heard it, and shuddered at the coldness of it. The voice in his head. Presumably Alexandre heard it too.

Are you prepared for your reward? Are you prepared to become a part of the Great Masters?

Alexandre bolted to his feet with excitement, while Alf’s nerves practically sizzled with the conviction that something was very, very wrong. Alexandre was about to make a terrible, terrible mistake. He wasn’t the one in control here. And Alf had the feeling that this was the culmination of a very carefully thought-out plan on the part of that—thing. “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes! I—”

Then you shall have what you desire.

And before Alf could move a muscle, the pillar erupted with those hideous, black, boneless tentacles, dozens of them. They seized Alexandre, and before he could even gasp, they dragged him into the pillar, quick as you could say “knife.”

And then there was nothing left in the basement but the pillar. Alf froze, hoping the monster couldn’t “see” him. For two long, breathless minutes, nothing happened. Alf knew it was two minutes, because he counted the ticks of the clock in the flat above.

And then the shape of the pillar changed a little. It bulged on Alf’s side. The girl staggered out of the bulge, and then dropped bonelessly to the floor.

The pillar collapsed, as he had seen it do before. But this time, not into a dark hole in the middle of the basement floor. It collapsed, and kept collapsing, growing smaller and smaller until finally, there was nothing left. Not the void. Not the painted diagrams on the floor. Not the stone altar that had been there. Nothing but a scoured flagstone floor, an overturned chair, an oil lamp, and the breathing body of the mindless girl. Whatever the thing was . . . it was gone. Presumably it had what it wanted, and there was no more reason for it to keep a foothold here.

Alf let out the breath he had been holding, and sat himself down on the staircase, thinking.

The thing was gone. He knew his magic, and it wasn’t going to come back through the basement anymore. The patterns that Alexandre—probably now his late master—had painted on the floor were what had anchored its portal here, and since it had erased them as it left, it had no more use for this basement. Whatever it had wanted, it had gotten, and now it had decamped to elsewhere, taking Alexandre with it. Which technically left Alf without an employer, and homeless. . . .

. . . except . . .

He wasn’t homeless, not really. And he didn’t actually need an employer now. He’d been able to forge Alexandre’s name for years; he’d been practicing doing so on the chance that one day he might have to, the life of a magician being uncertain and all. For instance, what if Alexandre had gone and blinded himself? Or what if his hands were set on fire? Or what if he was laid up in bed, unconscious, for a long time? Alf knew where the blank cheques were. He knew where the stash of banknotes and the stack of gold guineas were. Alexandre had no notion he knew all these things, of course, and had Alexandre remained the sane and generous employer he’d been, Alf would never have made any use of this talent for forgery or his knowledge of where the hidden money was.