“Cursed with it. No sort of bloody gift. All me life. When it began to get worse—when it all started coming clear rather than hintin’ and dreamin’ and disappearin’ when I reached for it—that’s when the worst started.”
“That’s a function of time, though, isn’t it? Premonition? A glimpse forward.”
“Perhaps.”
“And you have a way with the temporaclines that I certainly don’t. Maybe it’s the same thing. Maybe your. curse isn’t premonition, but something to do with time in the Grey. That’s why you look. seventy or so, not however old you really are.”
He grunted and walked on. Michael shot a curious glance at me and started to say something. I put a finger over my lips, shook my head, and caught up to Marsden again.
“I take it back,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“You might actually be clever enough to trip up that white-scaled bastard.”
“Who?” I wasn’t on board the same train of thought, apparently.
“Wygan. You might do very well after all.”
“So you’re glad you didn’t shove me into that tree?”
“We’ll have to see. You’re still too naive by half. Still. ” he added, but said no more, shrugging one shoulder and continuing in silence.
Now I got it: Marsden was as bad at saying he was sorry as I was. The food and this odd admission were as close to an apology as I was likely to get. I wasn’t sure what to think of it. I still wasn’t sure how much I trusted him, though it might have been a bit more than I had the night before.
I could tell Michael wanted to ask what was going on, what we’d been talking about, but he took a good look at my face and kept his mouth shut. He was dealing with these inflections of strangeness much better than his brother ever had. I hoped Will was all right, wherever he was. And Quinton, too. My sense of impending crisis was growing.
We crossed a road and passed by a large terra-cotta-colored building that turned out to be part of the British Library, according to the sign. It wasn’t what I’d have expected, except for a glimpse of a much older building through the straight angles of the gate and the big red building. A little farther on, we crossed the large street we’d been following that ran from King’s Cross past Euston Station. I could see the big war memorials and remains of the first train station’s driveway just across the road as Marsden came to a stop in front of a wrought iron fence that stretched the whole block. A discreet sign mounted on the fence noted that the building’s architectural details were under renovation, and thanked some public trust and a list of donors in the name of the St. Pancras parish for their generosity. I guessed this must be the new St. Pancras church, though it certainly wasn’t less than two hundred years old to my eyes.
“Here they are.” Marsden waved at the soot-streaked building on the other side of the fence. A long, tall wall of once-white stone pushed up from the lawn around the building. Greek revival and very Georgian in design. A couple of bright red doors punctuated the wall. The nearest was just in front of us in a jutting corner under a sort of porch roof that was held up by three Grecian-style statues and one lump swathed in white Tyvek instead of pillars.
“The caryatids?” Michael squeaked.
Marsden humphed. “My Greek sisters. Or at least they look it. Very popular, the Greek look, when they was installed. Bit too short, mind—cut ’em off in the middle so they’d fit. Just mouthpieces, though. Not a decent thought in any of their own heads. They mostly let the dead speak through them, but they do have some personality of their own. You’d best be nice to ’em or they won’t say nowt.”
“But they’re statues!”
“Empty iron pillars, actually. The statue part’s just clay. But y’see, the pillars reach down into the crypt. What the dead know, they know.”
It sounded as likely as anything I’d encountered in the Grey, though it had to sound crazy to most people. I wasn’t going to recount my conversation with Sekhmet to Michael, who was still staring in frustration at the rank of caryatids, so I only said, “Things are often more than they seem. Especially old things that have been hanging around a while.”
“Most especially old things what have been hanging about over a crypt and across the road from a train station. We should go inside the fence so we don’t have to yell at ’em,” Marsden suggested.
Bewildered, Michael followed us around the corner and into the church’s entryway. We started up the stairs so we could jump down into the small side yard but got no farther as a woman emerged from the church and called out to us.
We all turned.
She was a round, middle-aged woman with muddy red hair, dressed in a bland, conservative dress and low-heeled shoes. “Hullo! Come to see the church?”
Michael was the quickest of us. He turned to face the woman, nodding. “Hi! I’m at university down the street,” he said, pointing south. “We wanted to take a look at the caryatids.”
“Oh. The one’s under renovation, I’m afraid. Would you prefer the south porch? They’re all four there.”
Michael cast a querying glance at us, and Marsden shook his head. “No. It’s the renovations we’re interested in.”
“Can’t see much with the shroud on her,” the woman said in doubtful tones. “Should be much more interesting once they’ve got the work further along.”
“That’s all right—we want to see the contrast. Y’know. Track the progress over time. Is it all right if we go look at them a little closer? Take some sketches and photos, make some notes about the progress?”
“Oh. Well. Of course. Yes. You can’t get up to the porch at the moment to take a really good look—ladder’s away for the weekend to discourage children from climbing about—but if you’re satisfied looking from the ground. ”
“That’ll be fine. Thanks!” Michael added, waving the woman away with a smile. It was the same sort of reassuring blather his brother used with nervous customers, and hearing Michael do it made me sad and roused my worry over Will anew.
We hopped down and hurried around the building out of the woman’s sight.
“Nice work,” I said.
Michael grinned and took the lead to the crypt. Once in front of its red door, Marsden resumed command.
“That was cleverly done, boy. Care to be the lookout while we see who’s home?”
“Lookout for what?”
“Anyone as might think it odd that we’re talking to statues.”
Michael nodded and agreed to keep his eyes peeled. Marsden told me to lean back against the fence so I could keep an eye on the three uncovered statues while he tried to get their attention.
I put my weight on the fence and looked up. The three statues were identical except that one was the mirror image of the other two. They were all long-haired women wearing some kind of Grecian dress—not a toga, since I knew only men wore those—and each had an extinguished torch of reeds resting on the ground in one hand and a jug dangling from the other hand. They looked rather odd from my angle; like their legs were too long and heavy for their bodies. And the faces and hair didn’t seem like the ones I’d seen in museums; they were somehow more Western and smooth than I remembered.
Marsden spoke quietly. “Good morning. Anyone care to talk? We’re in need of some help.” I wouldn’t have expected such a deferential tone from him, but I suppose when you’re dealing with a potential cryptful of ghosts, you don’t start out by pissing them off.
Nothing happened for a while. The air around the crypt seemed a bit brighter than the air farther away, but it didn’t seem particularly energized and there was no sign of specific ghosts, only a single hot line of blue energy that struck through the crypt from the east side. Then something pale white seeped up from the dirty stones and wreathed around the three statues. The plastic sheeting billowed in opposition to the prevailing wind of passing traffic. A second flush of colored mist and spiderweb light crept up the figures and played over their faces, casting shadows that made them seem alive.
“Go away,” one of the statues moaned.