Obsidian Mirror (28 page)

“Do you know Janus?” she said.

“What do you mean, he’s with you?” Baffled, Wharton lowered the shotgun.

Rebecca eyed the slim glass weapon. “I’m sorry. It was me that let him into the house.”

He stared. Even her voice was different. “He and I are friends. It’s a long story. But I know about the mirror, and well, Maskelyne’s not dangerous. He just wants what’s his.”

“Don’t we all.” Wharton took a step closer. He looked closely at the man. “I remember you. You were on the plane. You followed us here.”

“I did.”

“Are you really the one in the journal? All that time ago?”

Maskelyne shrugged. He looked wary.

“Well, then you can operate this thing! Get Jake back?”

“Maybe. At a price.”

They exchanged a long glance. Wharton said, “I have no idea what to do here. They’re all gone, even Piers seems to have vanished. There’s only me left to guard this thing, and I don’t know the first thing about it. I need help.”

Maskelyne faced him. His eyes were dark and troubled. “If I get them back, I take the mirror. It will be best—for Jake, and Venn.”

“They won’t think so.” Wharton frowned, blew out his cheeks, glanced at Rebecca. “I must be mad to trust you two, but do it. Do what you can.”

Rebecca laughed in relief. Maskelyne said, “I’ll try.”

Wharton turned.

“Where are you going?” Rebecca said, alarmed.

“To get Sarah. I think we need to be all together.”

Venn walked into the drawing room and saw a stout man in a red dressing gown standing before the fire in a hastily adopted pose. His mustache was bushy, his face florid.

He held the visiting card in his hand.

Venn said, “Mr. John Harcourt Symmes?”

“Who on earth are you?” The voice was peevish and suspicious. Symmes held up the card. “What is the meaning of this? This is the card of a fellow member of the Royal Society; I know him well, and you, sir, are an imposter.”

“My name’s Oberon Venn. We’re not acquainted. I’m an explorer and some say, a man of science.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of you, so…”

“I’ve come about David Wilde.”

Symmes stopped in mid-bluster. He stared at Venn and then, as if in a sudden weakness, groped for the chair behind and lowered himself slowly into it. “Bless my soul,” he whispered. “Are you from…that is, have you
journeyed?
”

Venn nodded. “I also have two companions with me and by now they’re probably causing havoc in your servants’ hall. Could you have them sent for, please.”

It was a command.

Symmes seemed helpless with surprise. He rang the bell, and even as the butler entered, Venn caught Jake’s voice from far off in the house.

“You have some…people down there,” Venn snapped. “Bring them.”

The man looked at his master. “Sir? These are an urchin from the streets and a young man in the most
bizarre clothes. The girl at first pretended to be ill, and so…”

“Fetch them,” Symmes growled. “Do it.”

While they waited, he said, “I would appreciate…just a few words of description. Your time…how has London changed? Are there flying machines? Do women have the vote?”

Venn said quietly, “David never spoke of it, then?”

“He said it would be best if he did not.”

Venn smiled. That was David. As the door opened and Jake strode in with a small ragged girl trotting at his heels, he suddenly saw the resemblance again between the boy and David, that sharp awareness. That rapid taking in of everything around them.

Moll’s eyes were wide. She went straight to the fire and crouched there, almost purring. Jake faced Venn. “What’s going on?”

“This is Harcourt Symmes. He met your father.”

Jake said,
“What?”
He turned fast. “When?”

Symmes’s answer devastated him. “Three months ago.”

Venn sat on one of the armchairs and nodded to Jake to do the same. “I knew David would come here. He must have realized that if we managed to
journey
after him, you’d be the one we’d search out.”

“So he said.” Symmes seemed a little more at ease. He settled comfortably in the chair, and began to talk,
and Jake caught the self-satisfied tone of the man that he had read in the journal. “I, er, obtained the mirror and worked on it for two years with limited success. It was obviously a portal to some other existence; I sent inanimate objects through, and then a rat and even a dog, but I dared not use it on a human, least of all on myself. A scientist should perhaps be bolder, but…”

Jake couldn’t wait. “Dad came through the mirror?”

“Oh no. Not at all. In fact, like you, he simply knocked on my door.”

Moll’s fingers slid over the table and took an apple from the bowl. She began, quietly, to crunch it.

“It was last May. I saw a thin, rather worn man of premature age.”

“
Age!
My father was forty-five!” Jake stared at Venn. “How could…”

“I don’t know!” Venn’s impatience was savage. “We don’t know how long he’d already been living here. Let him talk.”

Anguished, Jake sat back. His father was young, lively, always laughing. A joker. The thought of him growing old and alone in this squalid, noxious city, desperate and lost, was terrifying.

“He told me he was a traveler from the future, from the twenty-first century, which I scoffed at, until he showed me a small object which he called a mobile telephone, and which, quite frankly, I found amazing.
It did nothing, but he said that in your time he could speak to distant people upon it, and certainly I had seen nothing like it. Still, he might have been a Bolshevist or a Prussian spy, so I was about to hand him over to the police, when he described my mirror. My mirror, in my study upstairs, my greatest secret. That convinced me.”

Venn nodded, bitter. “David can be convincing.”

“He explained his plight. He wanted to get home, as he put it. He promised me access to untold secrets if I would help him do it. He said his son would be worried about him.” Symmes glanced at Jake. “I assure you, you were all he thought about.”

Jake couldn’t speak. Moll whispered, “Told you.”

“What happened?” Venn’s voice was dark, as if he guessed.

“We worked together for two months. He did many things I didn’t understand. Finally he said the mirror was ready. He gave me a sealed paper and made me swear not to look at its revelations until he had gone. Then, we activated the device. I shook his hand—we were quite friends by then—and he strode into the black vacuum of the mirror.”

Into the silence he said, “He has not come home?”

“No.” Venn sat still a moment, then lifted his head. “The paper?”

“Ah yes, the paper. I had fondly imagined it a list
of the secrets of the future. It was nothing of the sort.” Symmes got up and limped goutily to the sideboard and opened a drawer. He brought the paper, but instead of giving it to Venn, he handed it to Jake, who snatched it and read it avidly and then was silent so long, Venn’s patience ran out.

“What is it?”

Jake looked up. His face was lit with a bitter happiness. “A letter. To me.”

S
UMMER SHOWED NO
surprise on her pert pretty face, but Sarah knew the word
Janus
had hit home.

She said quickly, “You remember him? The god who looks both forward and back. The two-faced one.”

“I know of him.”

All at once, without a sign or a shiver, the Shee were there. They were sitting in the trees, on the garden chairs, on the grass, leaned in the crazily angled rooms. Their silver beauty was a mask; their eyes examined her incuriously. Sarah felt alone among them. Gideon, sprawled at Summer’s feet, lay silent, gazing up at the featureless blue sky.

“Then you know how dangerous Janus is,” she said. “Well, he’s here. At least a copy of him. A Replicant. Venn is missing and in danger. All of them are, if you don’t help.”

Summer laughed. “We don’t
help
. We take, we give, we sing, we feast. What can you even offer me?”

“This.” Sarah put her hand in her pocket and brought out the diamond brooch. As she held it up, it caught the sunlight and the flash of the gems was brilliant; all the bird-sharp eyes of the Shee fastened on it, and she felt their instant greed. In fact, she was banking on it. They were lethal, but they were childish. Bright jewels, gold. What else would interest them?

Summer had not moved, but her gaze was on the brooch. “You would give me that?”

Sarah shrugged. “It’s a great price. But you must…”

Summer stood. “Don’t tell me what I
must
do, human.” Her eyes slanted to slyness. “I don’t want your trinket.”

“Then what? I’ll give you anything.”

Gideon sat up, his whole lean body a warning.

“
Anything!
What a foolish thing to offer.” Summer turned, a small graceful pirouette on the grass.

“What power you give me, Sarah! Think what I might demand.”

She was still with dismay. Stupid, she thought fiercely. Stupid!

“Don’t worry! I won’t ask for the world. I’ll just have that.” Summer reached out and indicated the half coin on its chain. “Give me that, and I’ll consider.” She held out a slender hand.

Sarah didn’t move. “Afterward.”

“Are you mad? I can destroy you with one murmur.”

That was probably true. Sarah didn’t let herself flinch. She closed her hand over the brooch and put it hastily away. “Afterward. After you’ve dealt with the Replicant.”

“Where is it?”

“In the Dwelling,” Gideon said. “And a wolf.”

Summer looked annoyed. “Too much work.”

“Venn will be grateful. Think of that.”

The woman shrugged. But the idea seemed to appeal to her, because suddenly she smiled archly and said, “Very well. Call me, when you need me, and I’ll come. If I’m not too busy.”

It would have to do, though Sarah knew full well that the promises of the Shee were worthless. But if she didn’t get back soon, she would be trapped here in this endless realm like Gideon. He was shaking his head at her; she looked back at him while she answered Summer. “Keep your promise. I’ll keep mine.”

And then, enjoying their complete astonishment, she made herself invisible.

Wharton stared at the empty scullery in utter dismay. Who on earth could have let her out? The boy from the Wood? But why?

He turned. Down the dark corridor an icy wind whispered. He had a sudden vision of wide-open doors and windows, the Abbey undefended, the enemy deep inside the house.

He had to use army tactics now. Get back to the Monk’s Walk. Barricade themselves in. Ring of steel around the mirror. Without it Jake would never get back. And after all, he thought with wild hope, maybe Maskelyne had done it. Maybe Jake was back already, with Venn, even with David Wilde. Then he, Wharton, could go and spend a late Christmas in Shepton Mallet and pretend all this madness had never happened.