The Collectors' Society 01 (15 page)

The baronet pales. “Edmund took the ladies away, thought it not best to see . . .” He wipes a hand across his face. “I didn’t . . . I knew Fanny said, but I didn’t truly believe . . .”

He isn’t the only one. I suppose I hadn’t believed it all, either. I mean, I’d heard what they’d said, saw photographs and videos and what not, but it’d been an intangible threat.

The bruises on my hands now tell me differently.

“Will you be taking the fiend with you?”

But before either of us can answer the baronet, the sound of glass shattering fills the room behind us. Finn and I race back in to find one of the windows broken and no body left upon the floor. Somewhere outside, somebody yelps in terror.

“Bloody hell,” I murmur. “And I was positive he was out for at least a good two hours.” Am I losing my touch?

The baronet is off and running, shouting for men to begin a search outside as he heads down the hallway. But Finn and I know it’s done in vain, because when we reach the window, an all-too-familiar light flashes in the dark, illuminating a doorway for two figures to run through before winking away just seconds later.

Finn slams his fist down against the blood-stained dresser. “Well, if that isn’t the fucking worst news possible. Whoever these people are, they’re capable of editing
.
”

I peer out of the demolished window. Men with lanterns swarm the courtyard. “Wasn’t that assumed, considering you all claimed the villains were going into Timelines and getting hold of catalysts before you could?”

“We knew they were getting into Timelines, but this is now proof they’re editing.” He’s furious. “What if they’ve somehow gotten ahold of one of our pens?”

“Wendy claimed they’re coded specifically to each person assigned one.”

“Exactly!”

I retrieve the other switchblade from the floor. “And to think your father insisted this would be an easy assignment for me to start out on.”

Finn stares intently at me for a long moment. “You really kicked his ass, didn’t you?”

I shrug.

“‘Oh, I’m familiar with weapons, Finn.’
Ladies and gentlemen,” he sweeps a hand out, “may I present Alice, the master of understatement.”

Unwelcome amusement fights to be released. “Your falsetto is terrible.”

He steps into my space, our bodies just mere inches apart as he examines me further. “You need to see Victor, just in case some of those need stitches.”

“I told you before, I do not break easily. Tonight was nothing. It was a mere skirmish.”

He lifts up my hand, his attention fixated on my now-darkening knuckles. “Still.”

I’m unnerved by this gentle touch. Furious with myself for even letting it register within me. “We ought to go. Our presence here, and that of the catalyst, can only be a dangerous temptation to our guests.”

He lets go of my hand, and although it’s what I needed him to do, it isn’t lost on me that it felt sublimely good to have concern and attention from just such a man.

The guilt within me is corrosive.

T
HE BASEMENT OF THE Society’s Institute looks much like what a normal basement looks like: there are plain walls, old bits of furniture and boxes, and dark corners filled with items once loved and now forgotten. It feels vast, though, as Finn leads me through what can barely be referred to as a path.

When we arrived in New York, nobody was there to greet us, which made sense as we weren’t expected until well after brunch. It was the dead of night, and other than security guards stationed on each floor, the building felt like it had fallen into a tremulous stasis.

Honestly, all I’d wanted to do was sleep, but no amount of arguing swayed Finn from his insistences I visit Victor first. The poor doctor was rumpled when he answered his door, sleep clinging to his eyes and muscles. A yawn preceded, “You’re early,” but once a few good blinks passed, he became alert.

“What in the bloody hell happened?” he’d barked at Finn while practically shoving me into his home office. “I thought this was one of Emma’s set-ups, not a fight!” He leaned closer to one of my arms. “And an ugly one, too. Christ, Alice. You need stitches.”

A meaningful look passed between Finn and myself.

“I really don’t,” I began to say, but Finn told Victor he better get at it.

After that, my partner didn’t say much, which troubled me. As I perched on a leather exam table, he hovered nearby with arms crossed, his bottom lip tugged between his teeth. At various points, I could have sworn he was angry, but other times an unfamiliar sting accompanied what I could only describe as disappointment.

But as he wasn’t talking much, it was up to me to fill Victor in about the night’s events, and of the would-be thief. Once my tale is done, the doctor whistled. “I’ll admit to not seeing that one coming.”

“You mean that somebody would be willing to steal something from beneath your noses?”

He shook his head, and I winced as he tugged the needle and thread through my skin.
“Our
noses, and yes. Not to mention I would have never guessed that the Demon Barber of Fleet Street was the one trying to break into the Institute. Bloody hell. Finn, this isn’t good. Not good at all.”

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street . . . Well, if that isn’t a dramatic name, then I don’t know what is.

“So, you know of this man?” I pressed. “This S. Todd?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the muscles in Finn’s body tense even more so than just a minute before. Victor leaned in closer to examine his handiwork. “Sweeney Todd is his name, and he’s an infamous serial killer who, if I’m not mistaken, was apprehended by the police. Tended to cut his victims across their necks with straight razors.” A quick slash across his neck with a finger preceded a glanced to his friend. “Was Lovett there?”

A slight shrug was all Finn allowed outside of, “Somebody went through the door with the bastard. They were in the shadows, though—and the door they went through was dark, too.”

“Who is Lovett?” I asked.

“She goes by Mrs. Lovett and was his henchman. Or lover.” Victor’s voice echoed in the room. “The stories say she’d cook Todd’s victims into pies. She might be dead, though. Some stories have him poisoning her. I guess even villains have trouble sticking together, eh?”

I could honestly admit I had absolutely nothing to say in return to that, which was all right, as the rest of my stitches were sewn in moody silence. It gave me an opportunity to think about the puzzle pieces I’d been handed over the last few days. Todd and Lovett have been seen around the Institute on several occasions. Timelines are disappearing, catalysts are being destroyed. Todd tried to steal the catalyst from 1814AUS-MP right out from underneath us, in the guest bedroom I was to stay in and not in the family library. And that left a question a question most unwelcome, because . . . how did he know where it was? Normally, the family kept the catalyst in their library, but Todd wasn’t searching there.

He was searching in
my
room.

The obvious answer is simple, but a conclusion I’m reluctant to embrace. And, as I weave through bits of furniture and dusty boxes, I’m not too sure whether or not Finn, his father, or any other member of the Society is willing to hear it, even if it’s what they suspect, too. Could somebody in this building have tipped Todd off?

Afterward, Finn had wanted to bring the catalyst to the Librarian by himself, claiming I needed to rest, but I insisted on tagging along. “This is growing wearisome,” I’d told him.

When his eyebrows formed a V, I added, “You telling me to stay behind. Do you not think me capable?”

Finn surprised me by directing us to a small alcove, out of the way of a group of people walking down the hall. “God, no. That’s not it at all, especially as you proved you’re more than capable in a fight. It’s just . . . you were hurt. I mean, you just got six rows of stitches. Nobody would blame you for wanting to crash.”

I really need that vocabulary primer. “And nobody could blame me for wishing to see where the Librarian keeps all the catalysts, either.”

He ran a hand through his short hair, staring at me so intently my toes curled within my boots.

I wished he wasn’t so beautiful. I wished he didn’t look at me, our acquaintance so new still, with that slight shine of caring in his eyes. I wished he wasn’t so kind.

“I told you. I’m not fragile. I’ve faced worse, and here I am, standing with you now, all in one piece. All I ask is that, if we are to truly be partners, you don’t shut me out.”

That frustrated him. “I’m not trying to shut you out.”

“And yet, every time something comes up, you tell me to stay behind. Did you do that with Sara?”

My question wasn’t met with favor, that’s for sure.

“Mary says Sara was too nice,” I continued. “That some people aren’t cut out for this work because their temperaments don’t allow it.”

Anger flashed in his blue-gray eyes. “Mary should keep her mouth shut.”

“I’m not always so nice, Finn. And I’m not one to sit by, idling twiddling my thumbs while strong men go out and fix all the problems. So, whether or not you mind, I’m going with you to drop off the catalyst. You might as well stop trying to urge me to stay behind from now on, too, because it’ll only leave you frustrated when I tell you to bugger off.”

That was a quarter of an hour ago. I ask him now, as I trace a path in the dust covering an old piano, “Have you spoken to your father yet?”

“No. I figured we’d do this first, and then we can go talk to him.”

Good man. He’s learning quickly.

“I would think a basement is an obvious place for thieves to look for hidden treasures.”

I catch his profile in the dim light from overhead. “None of the catalysts are on this level. Just hang on a sec, and you’ll see where we’re really going.”

A minute later, he’s shoving aside a dust-covered bookshelf against the far wall to reveal an elevator door. A small door roughly at eye level is flipped open to reveal a glass screen and a slot. He pulls a white card out of his pocket and runs it through the slot. Once a red light flashes, he leans in. Green crisscrossing lights scan across his face, zeroing in on his eye, before a disembodied voice says, “Welcome, Finn Van Brunt. You may proceed.”

The elevator door slides open as he closes the small door. “Ladies first.”

I step into the mirrored elevator; he follows, making sure he slides the bookcase into place with a hidden lever on the backside. Another button is pushed, and the elevator door shuts just as peppy music fills the space.

I lift my eyebrows up, and he shrugs. “The Librarian likes her Muzak. What can I say?”

The compartment lurches and then moves downward. Finn takes a deep breath and says, “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

“For not being there with you when Todd attacked.”

I’m a bit stunned at the heat in his voice, and of the anger in his words. “Well,” I say carefully, “it’s not as if you knew he was waiting or anything.”

He sighs, the fingers of one hand curling momentarily into a fist by his side. “Still. What’s the point of a partner, if they’re not there to protect you?”

“If I’m not mistaken, I held my own quite adeptly.”

His disappointment last night suddenly makes sense. He wasn’t disappointed in me—he was upset at
himself
.

It’s such a bittersweet, familiar sentiment that my heart clenches.

“If this is really Sweeney Todd, he’s a brutal killer. Nobody should have to go up against him alone.”

“And here I was thinking he was a barber,” I murmur. “A demonic one, no less. How ghastly. Do you know this scoundrel?”

“In the sense that he was a character in books and movies, yes. But the Society rarely interacts with Timelines associated with villains.”

“Meaning?”

He looks away from me, but in the mirrors surrounding us, I see the hardness in his face. “Meaning, when there are only so many of us to go around, collecting catalysts from Timelines whose claim to fame comes from horror isn’t exactly at the top of the list.”

“There are innocents in those Timelines, ones whose actions have nothing to do with a character in a book. Can you really tell me that every person’s existence in Todd’s Timeline is less worthy of life or protection than any other?”

He isn’t amused, though. “Aren’t you the little philosopher?”

“There are villains in my Timeline.” It’s my turn to look away. “Ones whose deeds are often unspeakable. I cannot imagine that any other Timeline is different. Along with good, there is always evil. It’s just the way it is.”

The elevator slows to a stop, but the doors do not open. Finn flips open another panel, one I hadn’t noticed before, and presses his left thumb against the glass. “Identity verified, Finn Van Brunt. Enter code for entry.”

Numbers fill the screen, from zero to nine. He types in an eleven-digit code, and the same disembodied voice announces, “Code verified,” seconds before the doors finally slide open.

“We’ll have to get you inputted into the system,” Finn says as we step out into a wood-paneled hallway.

“Will it require my firstborn?”

It annoys me how much I like his laugh, even as soft and brief as it is right now. “Oh, most definitely.”