“My dear Dredmore.” Walsh’s face stretched into a broad smile. “The wardlings that hang about almost every neck and door in the city have hearts of dreamstone. I know because our Talian friends forged them. The Tillers won’t even know we’re here.”
I didn’t know what dreamstone was, nor did I think Dredmore could be duped by anyone, but from the look on his face Walsh had done the very thing.
“I take it you lot are Reapers?” I asked the Talian.
“For a stupid skirt, you know much.” Celestino didn’t sound as if he approved.
“Women in this country have always been vastly underrated.” My throat tightened as Walsh took a gleaming red stone from a white velvet pouch. “Lord Dredmore is insanely wealthy, you know. If I could convince you to intervene on his behalf, I can guarantee he would see to it that you would never have to dirty your hands again with this sort of nonsense.”
“Oh, miss.” He chuckled. “For this, Zarath will make me king of my country.”
I saw Walsh drop the stone in Dredmore’s hand before he took the pistol from his son.
I reached out to touch the surface of the two-way glass. “Lucien.”
As if he’d heard, Dredmore turned his head to look directly at me, put the stone in his mouth, and swallowed. At the exact same moment, Lord Walsh placed the pistol at his own temple and pulled the trigger.
Someone screamed—me, I think—and I gripped the knife at my throat with my fingers and wrenched it out of the Talian’s hand. The blade cut deep into my fingers as I ran out and into the room where Lord Walsh’s body lay on the floor, and his son gagged as he swiped at his father’s brains, which were all over the front of his fancy jacket as well as the wall behind him.
I switched the bloody blade to my left hand, ready to use it as I stepped between the men and Dredmore. I stepped back until I could reach him. “Lucien, we’re leaving.” I reached out and grabbed his sleeve, but he didn’t move. “Lucien.”
This time the red streaks of light came out of Lord Walsh’s body, first from his slack lips, and then in a burst out of the hole in his head. They flew past me, surrounding Dredmore, who had doubled over, choking and heaving. The red lights swirled, closing in on him until his entire body glowed. At last he stopped fighting it and slowly stood, and the lights were sucked into the darkness of his eyes, dwindling until they were two tiny red glints.
“Dredmore.” I told myself it had been a trick, one of his ridiculous illusions. “Say something.”
He said nothing, but held up one hand and turned it over, as if he’d never seen it before. Then he smiled, his face changing into something beautiful and terrible, his eyes taking on a horrid red glow. I didn’t even resist as the Talian took the knife from my hand and forced me down on my knees.
“Ecco, sovrano mio,” Celestino babbled as he dropped down beside me. “Sia benedetto il compagno oscuro.”
Dredmore looked round the room, and then spoke a single word. “Rieccomi.”
His voice rang out, clear as church bells, and the wrongness of it set my skin to crawling. But the man had just been forced to swallow a rock; couldn’t have been easy on his throat.
I was sure I could keep telling myself lies like that for as long as was necessary.
“Dove sono capitato?” Definitely not Dredmore’s voice, yet it came from Dredmore’s mouth.
“Il continente Victoriana, sovrano. La Cittá di Rumsen.”
“If he doesn’t speak English,” Montrose grumbled, “how are the rest of us supposed to understand him?”
“Chiudi il culo,” the Talian said, smacking the younger man in the back of the head.
Dredmore spared Monty a glance. “Who do you think gave you your tongue, boy?” He took a step, looked down at his legs, and then pressed a hand to his chest and arm. “Strong. Young. You chose well, umano.”
“My wife knew this body would please you, Master. Especially after you were forced to wait so long in . . .” The Talian gestured vaguely at Nolan Walsh’s corpse. “Our ships will be arriving at dawn with your army. We will meet them at the docks, and once you have marshaled them, we can move against the city.”
“Dad never said anything about blowing his brains out,” Montrose muttered. “And I still don’t see how one man can control armies and cities just by thinking it.”
“I am not a man.” The thing in Dredmore’s body eyed me. “I am Zarath, warlord of the Aramanthan Scourge.” He ran the tip of his tongue from one side of his mouth to the other.
That decided it for me. The thing had admitted what it was, and Dredmore would never lick his lips in such a repulsive fashion.
Celestino cleared his throat. “My lord, forgive the boy for speaking out of turn. Young Lord Walsh is much beloved by my wife, who in return for the sacrifice of his father’s flesh humbly asks that you heal him.”
“So I will. Later.” Dredmore ignored Montrose altogether as he reached down to take hold of my chin and lift my face. It was like being touched by a corpse. “And this flesh? It too serves me?”
Montrose snickered. “Not bloody likely.”
“Do you even know whose body you’ve stolen?” I asked Zarath. “Lucien Dredmore is a deathmage, and Grand Master of the dark arts. He can slice a man in half with one blow.” I shoved a finger into his chest. “Get out of him, this minute, or he will see to it that you suffer a long and ugly death.”
No one said anything, and then Celestino began laughing. “Oh, miss,” the Talian wheezed between guffaws. “The Aramanthan do not die as we do. They have lived for thousands of years here in our world as well as the netherside.”
Zarath peered down at me. “The spirit of this body, this Dredmore. He was your lover.”
“Is,” I insisted. “He is.”
“His spirit has fled from his flesh, woman. Even if it were somehow to return, it could not take this body from me.” His black eyes took on a scarlet sheen. “What your lover is, is dead.”
I could hardly hear him for the roaring in my ears, and then I heard nothing at all.
“Kit.”
Big, gentle hands cradled my face, brushed back my hair, and checked my pulse. I knew that touch as well as the voice, but I didn’t want to deal with Inspector Doyle just now. No, what I wanted was a nice room at Morehaven where I might sleep for a thousand years. That way I wouldn’t have to think about magic, which I knew now to be real, spirit stones, or the man I loved being possessed—his soul eaten—by an immortal monster. I had to face it: Dredmore was dead, and I might as well be.
“Should I send for a whitecart, then, ’Spector?” someone asked.
“No,” I answered for Doyle, my voice a rasping ruin. “I’m not injured.” I struggled upright and looked past the man holding me. Tommy’s beaters were searching through the wreck of an expensive-looking hotel room and coming up with nothing. I lay on the floor beside the bed, my arms and legs tightly bound with curtain cord. It was not the room where Lord Walsh had killed himself, either, for there were no brains on the wall.
“The concierge called the station,” Doyle told me. “Everyone on this floor heard a woman screaming for help.” He held up a bit of torn cloth, and his angry expression grew especially fierce. “You chewed through this.”
Small wonder my throat felt lined with cotton: it actually was. “I missed my dinner bucket.”
One of the beaters chuckled and earned a glare from the chief inspector.
“How can you joke about it? No, hold still.” Doyle took out a pocketknife and sheared through the cords binding my wrists together before he chafed my hands to restore the blood flow. “Who did this to you, Kit?”
I could tell him the entire sorry tale, most of which I still didn’t believe, and go quietly after. Not all the asylums in Rumsen were horrid. Wherever they sent me for treatment, Doyle would bribe one of the loon herders to look after me.
“Don’t you tell him the truth.” Harry materialized behind the inspector, and his mostly transparent eyes fixed on mine. “Say you hit your head, and that you can’t recall. Now, gel.”
“I can’t recall.” I looked at the glitter of white and blue stones scattered about the bed on the floor. “I hit my head.”
“Lucien Dredmore paid for this room,” Doyle said. “He told the concierge that you were newlyweds before he carried you up here.”
“Agree with him,” Harry said.
I nodded. “Yes, he did.”
One of the beaters made a scoffing sound, which he quickly turned into a fake cough as he moved to search the corner farthest from his boss.
Against his trouser seams Doyle’s fingers knotted into fists. “Dredmore was also seen abducting you earlier from a brothel called the Eagle’s Nest.”
“That was a ruse, to protect Carina and her gels from Walsh’s men.” I watched Harry throw up his hands in disgust and felt a dismal satisfaction. “I want to go home, Inspector.”
“You don’t have a home. Your property and monies have been seized by the Crown.” Doyle studied my face. “You’ve the clothes on your back, Kit. Now do you want to tell me what the bloody hell happened here?”
The door to the adjoining suite opened, and Lord Lucien Dredmore swept into the room. His cloak swirled with imperial elegance, and the points of his snowy neckcloth stood in stiff relief against his dark skin. In his eyes I saw a dreadful shadowy presence, as if the evil demon inside him were looking out of them like windows.
“I can tell you,” the thing pretending to be Dredmore said as he strode forward, his gleaming boots thumping on the floor as the beaters scattered from his path.
“Lord Dredmore.” Doyle’s features took on a decidedly bland cast as he inclined his head just enough to suit courtesy. “You witnessed something?”
“Yes.” He lifted his hand and pointed at my face. “This woman murdered Lord Walsh.”