I almost choked on my beer. “You two-faced rat bastard,” I muttered.
He made a little shrugging motion on one side. “All right. I admit I don’t give a tinker’s about this missin’ brother, but the lady here says she ain’t leaving without ’im. The sooner she’s gone and out of reach of certain people, the safer we all are. So. I’m for finding that brother quick and gettin’ shut of the lot of you.”
“Yeah? Well, isn’t that lovely of you?” Michael sneered.
“Michael,” I started, “he’s a lying, manipulative, sneaky—”
“Rat bastard,” Michael reminded me.
“Yes. But he knows the lay of the land and I don’t. I don’t know where to start looking for Will.”
Michael glowered at Marsden. “He does?”
“Probably.”
“Of course I do. Mind, I don’t say I know where he is or who’s got ’im, so don’t get shirty ’bout that. But I have an idea where to start lookin’. ”
I hated having to cooperate with Marsden. I knew I couldn’t trust him; he had an agenda and I wasn’t sure it had changed since we’d left St. Pancras churchyard. But he was the only resource I had left.
“Where should we start?” I asked.
“The Greek sisters,” Marsden said.
CHAPTER 35
Michael had, of course, wanted to go see these mysterious sisters at once but as it was growing later—and deeper into the most active part of any vampire’s evening—both Marsden and I quashed that idea. The sisters, Marsden assured us, would be as easy to find and interrogate in daylight as night and far safer. Michael found a place along the canal to moor the boat after dinner and the two of us readied for bed. Marsden slipped away during our inexperienced scrambling about in the dark, but much as I didn’t trust him, he’d had ample opportunity to rat us out to the vampires and hadn’t. So whether he was telling the truth about Wygan or not, he was at least not working against me at the moment.
I slept worse than I had in years. Quinton never did return my call, and that along with the exertions and revelations of the previous days made me miserable and woke me in a foul mood at an ungodly hour. I went up on deck to get a break from the tiny, shared space of the boat.
A couple of hours later, as I’d hoped, Marsden turned up at the canal side, alone. Unexpectedly, he was carrying a canvas sack that clanked. He stopped at the edge of the towpath and tapped on the side of the boat with his cane. “Here,” he called to me as I sat on the stern rail, watching him. “I need a hand with this.”
“What is it?”
“Hospitality, my girl. As we’re likely to be keeping to this. floating cigar tin for a while, it occurred to me we might be in need of food.”
“And you brought some?” I asked, surprised. Unalloyed generosity didn’t strike me as a Marsden trait. So far, when he’d offered anything, it had been for his own reasons and advantage. Even keeping me and Michael out of the hands of the demi-vamps had been in service to his plan to bottle me up somewhere until whenever he felt it was safe for me to rejoin the world of the living—or semi-living—whether I’d liked it or not.
“Yes, I did, Miss Skeptic. Now come take it or I’ll toss it in the canal and you can do for yourself.”
I swung over the rail and stepped onto the towpath to take the bag from him. He didn’t look any better in the daylight than he had in the dimness of the Underground or the screaming ghost-light of the graveyard. His pallor was more obvious with the morning sun on him—the color of someone who’s been very ill for a long time—and the scars around his eye sockets were livid and sickening, stretching into his hair and down his cheek on one side as if made with filthy claws. I couldn’t look at his face without considering the state of mind that would allow him to deal himself such damage. I felt queasy at the thought. I wondered for a moment why it hadn’t happened to me. Even in the best light, my dad had been a bit over the edge, and Marsden had apparently gone several miles into insanity before he’d come back out. If he had.
With the sack in my arms, I climbed back onto the narrow boat. Marsden followed, wary of every step. I couldn’t decide if it was the motion or the mere fact that it was a boat that upset him.
Michael stuck his tousled head out of the hatch. “What’s going on? Oh. You’re back,” he added in a cold voice when he saw Marsden.
“And bearing gifts,” Marsden replied. “So shut it if you want brekkie.”
Michael drew his head back in, muttering, “You’re a cranky old bastard in the morning. ”
“I am a cranky old bastard all the time, boy. As would you be were you a hundred and fifty,” Marsden added.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you a day over a hundred and twelve,” Michael snarked back.
I followed them down into the cabin and through to the kitchen—galley, whatever—to unpack the bag on the counter. Among the assorted largesse I found coffee and bacon, though I couldn’t say it looked like any bacon I’d ever had—more like a thinly sliced section of a large, boneless pork chop. But it tasted delicious once Michael had cooked it up with a half dozen eggs.
Michael withheld Marsden’s plate. “A hundred and fifty, huh?”
“Give or take a few decades.”
“Don’t look it.”
Marsden turned his head without raising his face toward the younger man. “Time moves very slowly when you’re spendin’ it in the comp’ny of the livin’ dead.”
“You mean vampires?”
“I mean all of ’em. Ghosts, vampires, lyches, banshees, wights, zombies, darkwalkers—things what ain’t quite dead but ought to be.”
Michael sent a skittish glance at me, and while he looked away, Marsden snatched the plate from his hands and cackled in horrible glee.
“Hey!”
“It’s unwise to get between a cunning man and his breakfast, boy.”
“A cunning man? Isn’t that another word for warlock?” Michael shot back.
“Hardly,” Marsden replied around a mouthful of food. “Warlock means ‘oath breaker.’ That I am not. Nor any sort of mage—which is what the cunning folk are. Mind your terminology or you’re likely to bollocks up our job today. The sisters are empty heads, but if you give offense they’re as like as any to trap up and turn a cold shoulder. So guard your mouth.”
“Just who are these sisters?” Michael demanded.
“Oh, you shall see. ”
“How do we know this isn’t some trap or game of yours?” the boy snapped.
I rolled my eyes. “How ’bout you both shut up and eat? I want to get this over with as quickly as possible. I assume you guys do, too.”
Michael looked abashed while Marsden just kept his face down over his food. I didn’t think the other Greywalker was embarrassed; he just didn’t care. I wondered if he really was as old as he claimed.
Once we were done eating and had started walking under his directions, I asked him.
“I’ve given up countin’,” he answered. “I meant what I told the lad, though—time’s different when you walk in the Grey. When you’re in the thick, y’don’t age like normal. After a while, people start to notice you ain’t as old as y’ought to be. Had to leave me village and come here to the Smoke when they noticed. Hadn’t given it any heed till then—couldn’t see me own face anyhow.” He made a dismissive hacking sound in the back of his throat and went on. “You’d ha’ thought they’d take more umbrage at my going mad and tearing me eyes out, but that they took in stride. That I wasn’t as old as what I ought to be frightened ’em more than all the raving I’d ever done about the things in the fen and the battalions of dead tommies. There’s more ghosts and creatures of the Grey here, but at least they ain’t no one I knew.” His face had gone hard, the expression rigid as a wall to hide behind.
I broke his mood by scoffing. “You’re saying we’re immortal?” “Not a bit. We age and we die, but time does what it pleases round us and we’ve very little say in it. More I don’t know, but I know that bloody well.”
I thought a moment. “You said you were gifted with premonition—”