A gust of air made him shiver, despite the frantic heat of so many fleeing bodies. Then Dead Rick realized it wasn’t physical cold. Up ahead, the passage ended in a chamber scarcely large enough for two or three desperate fae, and above lay the mortal world.
Flapping wings shot overhead, some bird-shaped faerie bolting for safety. She didn’t quite make it. The bird flew into the chamber and up; then she fell again, screeching as the atmosphere outside forced her body into a woman’s form. Dead Rick, holding the boy almost on his shoulder to protect him, shuddered in sympathetic pain.
Then he was in the chamber at last, with dubious salvation above. He could feel the chill of nearby iron—tools, barrel hoops, all the metal humans could not seem to do without—but right now, it felt safer than the Hall behind him. The ladder that should lead into the cellar, though, was splintered and broken, only one cracked rung still holding the legs together.
Here, at least, something like help was to be had; the fae behind him, eager to take his place, were more than willing to shove him upward if that would speed his progress. With his free hand Dead Rick clawed for the hard-packed dirt of the cellar floor, bare feet twisting in someone’s grasp, trying not to crush the child he’d brought all this way. He ended up heaving the boy up and onto the floor, then dragging himself after, curving his back over the mortal to protect him when somebody else staggered and fell over them both.
Gasping, he crawled clear, flinching away from the iron all around them. It’s no worse than Blackfriars. You survived that, remember? But he didn’t know how long he would have lasted, if he hadn’t caught that tosher with food.
All at once his will gave out. Dead Rick collapsed against a wall, the rough brickwork scratching him where his waistcoat had torn, and watched fae escape the Onyx Hall. Already they packed the cellar; some must have gone upstairs, into the pub on the ground floor. What would the mortals think, with faeries flooding into their midst like that?
It might not even matter. For all Dead Rick knew, this was the end; whatever indomitable will held the Onyx Hall together had finally given out, just as his own had, and now that shadowy reflection would at last fray into nothingness. And the fae who called it home would scatter to the four winds: some going to Faerie, some finding refuge in what other courts remained, some dying under the oppressive weight of the mortal world’s hostility.
Dead Rick didn’t know which of those fates would be his. And lying against the wall, with a mortal child crying into his bruised ribs, he couldn’t much bring himself to care.
PART TWO
May–August 1884
If she had breath, she would be gasping for air. Exquisite agony still lances through her body, new knives to join the old. When they pierced her, all control vanished; there was no thought, no endurance, nothing but an endless, voiceless scream.
She claws it down, forces herself to think past the pain. Forces her body to stillness, accepting the fresh mutilation. Fighting it will only hurt her more, and so she bends herself around it, drawing back the bleeding edges of her flesh. The further she retreats, the less it hurts, but she knows this has consequences she cannot accept. What those consequences are, she cannot recall, but that much stays with her: that she must not retreat too far.
Pain has the power to startle her, to weaken her control, but it is not the real threat. Her own response is. Like a woman above a great drop, clinging to the edge of a blade, she must not loosen her grip—whatever it costs her in blood.
She remembers this, though she cannot remember why.
And so she will cling on, until memory fades, and oblivion claims her at last.
White Lion Street, Islington: May 16, 1884
The maid escorted Frederic Myers into the ground floor parlor, where Mrs. Chase sat with her mending. The old woman rose as he entered, despite his exhortations for her to remain seated; she moved remarkably well for a woman of her age. Or perhaps it is not so remarkable, he thought, remembering what he knew of her. There was more in Heaven and Earth than even the Society for Psychical Research dreamt of in their philosophy.
“They’re downstairs,” Mrs. Chase said, “but not yet started, I think. I must wait for a few more guests; you may go on down.”
She went to a patch of wall left oddly bare of any pictures or furniture, and brushed her hand over the roses that sprawled across the wallpaper. At her touch, they came to life. The blossoms acquired depth and scent; the vines twined themselves into a flowery arch; and then the wall within that arch was not there anymore, and a set of worn wooden steps led downward.
Myers’s breath quickened at the sight. He’d seen it only once before, and could no more catch the manner of its happening this time than he could the first. They would not let him study it, not yet; for now, he was only a guest in this home. Both of these homes: the one above, and the one below.
Hat in hand, and ducking his head to avoid scraping it against the low ceiling, Myers descended into the hidden realm of Rose House.
Voices trailed up the staircase toward him, one of the Goodemeades speaking. He could not yet tell them apart, not without seeing the embroidery on their aprons. “…loom-thing, whatever Wrain and Ch’ien Mu are calling it, ought to help—but the best it can do is to slow the problem.”
“It may cushion folk against more incidents like last week,” her sister said, and then Myers emerged into the sitting room below.
The second speaker proved to be Rosamund Goodemeade, who popped to her feet the moment she saw him. “Mr. Myers! Oh, I’m so glad you could join us again. Please, do be seated—”
She scarcely came to his belt, but somehow managed a presence much larger than her actual size. Aside from the height, she was almost precisely as she had been when he came to his first meeting of the London Fairy Society back in March: the same honey-colored curls, the same friendly demeanor. Just a foot shorter, and with an odd cast to her features that marked her not as human, but faerie.