The Mime Order (26 page)

Then
again, Warden wasn’t exactly an easy target. He was nearly seven feet tall and muscled to match; he would have been difficult to catch and restrain. His captors must have gone prepared, which meant they’d been watching him. Someone out there knew about the Rephaim.

That night, I sat high on the rooftops of Seven Dials, watching the sun set. This was the most beautiful time of the day, when the light shone through the gaps between the buildings and turned the skyscrapers to blades of gold.

Jaxon and the others were all in the den, having spent the night feasting on real wine and smoked cheese to celebrate his application, but I couldn’t bring myself to join them. It would be too obvious that my mind was elsewhere. I’d dislocated my spirit, searching within my radius for any hint of Warden’s dreamscape, but he was nowhere to be found.

In the distance, I could just see a transmission screen. It cycled through the list of fugitives three times before switching back to the Scion anchor. I pulled my knees up to my chin.

I might just see him again. Arcturus Mesarthim, the mystery I’d never solved.

Nick’s head appeared as he climbed on to the roof. “Paige?” he called out.

“Here.”

A smile lit his face when he saw me. “Party food for you.” He tossed me a package, wrapped in a cloth napkin, and sat down beside me. “He notices when you’re not there, you know.”

I did know. All too well. “Nick, I need you to cover for me tonight.” I turned the package over in my hands. “Just for a few hours.”

“Now?” He made a sound that was something between a sigh and a groan. “Paige, you’re a fugitive. The most wanted person in this citadel. You can’t keep going out at night.”

Scion had taken many things, but they wouldn’t take the night from me. “It needs to be now,” was all I said.

“
At least let me know where you’re going.”

“I’m not sure yet. Just keep an ear out for the phone booth.”

Nick reclined against the chimney. My stomach was alive with nerves, but I unfolded the serviette and picked at the crystalized ginger inside.

In the distance, Big Ben began to chime out five o’clock. The SVD would be returning to their barracks for their twelve hours’ rest by now. All across the citadel, their sighted, clairvoyant counterparts would be taking up their posts. Determination settled over me. It was dark enough to begin the search.

“Paige,” Nick said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you, but with all that’s happened . . . it never seemed to be the right time.” The contours of his face grew deeper. “I told Zeke. When Warden took you away. I was distraught, and he was with me for a long time, and—” He coughed. “Well, it just came out.”

His right hand was shaking. I covered it with mine.

“And?”

The corners of his mouth turned up, just a little. “He said he felt the same.”

Behind my ribs, there was the briefest falter in my heartbeat. Nick watched me with a deep groove between his eyebrows. I leaned across the space between us and kissed his cold cheek.

“You deserve it,” I said softly. “More than anyone, Nick Nygård.”

A wide smile answered mine. He wrapped both arms around me and held me close, and a rich laugh rang through his whole body. The sound glowed like an ember in my chest.

“I’m happy,
sötnos
,” he said. “For the first time in years, I feel like it could be all right. Everything.” He rested his chin on the top of my head. “That’s delusional, isn’t it?”

“Definitely. But if you’re both delusional together, you’ll be fine.”

His heart was beating fast against my ear, as if he’d run for years
to
reach this state of mind. “We can’t tell Jaxon,” he said, very quietly. “You’ll keep it secret, won’t you?”

“You know I will.” Jaxon had always forbidden us from having
relationships
—said with a suitable measure of disgust—lasting more than a night. He’d blow a gasket at the thought of a relationship within his own gang. Given how unpredictable he’d been of late, he might even turf them both out.

We stole back through the garret window and stepped over Eliza’s scattered paint palettes. The outline of a horse had been sketched out on the canvas. “Jax got her a new muse,” Nick said. “George Frederick Watts, the Victorian painter.”

“There’s something wrong. She’s not herself.”

“I asked her about it, and she said she had a friend who was ill.”

“‘The Seven Seals do not have friends. Only those who would break us, and those who can’t,’” I said, quoting Jaxon.

“Exactly. I think she’s seeing someone.”

“Maybe.” Eliza was often approached by other voyants, usually from gangs that didn’t have Jaxon’s stringent rules on commitment. “But who? She never has any time to herself.”

“Good point.”

Nick and I parted ways on the second-floor landing. As he headed down the stairs, I noticed that the way he held himself had changed. His shoulders were relaxed, his face free of tension. He almost had a spring in his step.

Had I given the impression that I wanted him to be alone? He must have felt so guilty all this time, thinking I’d be hurt, that I might still love him in some deep vault of my heart. I knew what he was like, for ever trying to lift people’s happiness on to his shoulders. There was no need for it this time. I would always adore him, but what we had was more than enough.

The others were still talking and laughing on the other side of the door, but I’d never felt less like joining them. It hurt that Nick had
to
hide this one source of comfort from Jaxon. Danica wouldn’t be there, either, but she generally got away with it. I, on the other hand, was expected to be at Jaxon’s side whenever he desired my presence. To soothe his wounds, to boost his ego, to follow his orders to the letter.

Frankly, I had better things to do.

I crouched beside the bed, where my backpack was hidden behind my trunk of market trinkets. All my possessions were still tucked into the side pocket. I searched until my fingers closed around two tiny vials, each smaller than my little finger. A scroll dangled from the red ribbon that bound them together. I unraveled it to find a note, written in a familiar hand.

Until next time, Paige Mahoney.

One of the vials was brimful with a lambent, yellow-green liquid. Ectoplasm, the blood of Rephaim.

When the other vial caught the light, kindling its coy glow, I knew exactly what it was. Relief welled up inside me, so pure and strong I laughed out loud. I sank on to the carpet, bared my arm, and tipped the precious vial of amaranth on to the poltergeist’s mark.

Warmth flowered underneath the stone-cold skin. The twisted wound cracked open, like old paint. As I circled my finger over it, it washed away, leaving my skin smooth as buttermilk.

And just like that, Jaxon could no longer blacken my name before the Unnatural Assembly.

But Warden needed this vial. Wherever he was, he would suffer for his sacrifice.

Until next time, Paige Mahoney.

Next time would be now.

12

Fool’s Errand

London—beautiful, immortal London—has never been a “city” in the simplest sense of the word. It was, and is, a living, breathing thing, a stone leviathan that harbors secrets underneath its scales. It guards them covetously, hiding them deep within its body; only the mad or the worthy can find them. It was into these ageless places that I might yet have to venture to find Warden.

He had been looking for me; it made sense that he should have been abducted from my district. They couldn’t have taken him far. Even if they had knocked him out, he was a conspicuous load to carry.

While Jaxon and the others drank themselves senseless next door, I lay on my bed and set the oxygen mask over my mouth. With my eyes closed, I reached as far as I could out of my body without leaving it. The dislocation wasn’t smooth; more like trying to tear a thick, coarse piece of fabric. I’d let myself get rusty. When I finally felt the æther, it was singing with dreamscapes and spirits, as it always was in the inner citadel.

Toward
the end of my time with him my sixth sense had been perfectly tuned to Warden’s presence, to the point that I had some sense of his emotions. Now there was nothing.

They’d taken him too far. I sat up and pulled off the mask, frustrated. My limit was one mile. Beyond that, I couldn’t sense a thing.

It would take a long time to cover the whole citadel alone, and I’d have to be alert for Vigiles. I owed Terebell a debt, but paying it could cost me my life. And Warden’s, if I failed to find him. His captors—if there
were
captors—might even have taken him out of London. Smuggled him across the channel, perhaps, or just killed him and sold him to a black-market taxidermist. I’d heard of stranger things.

Out of options, I threw on my cravat and hat. As I got to the windowsill, I looked again at the ectoplasm.

Warden wasn’t the type to spell out his intentions, but he wouldn’t have planted such a thing in my backpack without purpose. I pushed the stopper from the second vial and knocked it back. It shocked my teeth like a mouthful of iced water, leaving an aftertaste of metal.

At once, everything sharpened. The vial slipped from my fingers and bounced off the carpet. It had the opposite effect to alcohol on my sixth sense, jolting it into hyperactivity. I felt the motions of the spirits upstairs like finger-strokes; felt the dreamscapes and the auras of the others like bright lights through the wall, screaming their emotions at me. I was a conductor, flowing with energy. I caught the wall, sick and breathless, my head whirling.

On an impulse, I submerged my sight into my dreamscape. As a dream-form, I cut my way through the overgrown poppy anemones, searching for any clue, any difference. Dusk had fallen in my mind. The flowers tangled around my knees, brilliantly red beneath the night sky. Each petal was edged with chartreuse light, as if my mind was bioluminescent. A breach between the clouds let in a single ray of light from the æther, illuminating my sunlit zone.

And
there it was. Golden light was streaming from the center of my mind and blazing a path into the æther, well beyond the range of my spirit.

His blood had made him visible.

When I jerked out of my dreamscape, my hands were sweating and trembling. I threw the backpack over my shoulders and flung open the window, leaving it ajar, before I climbed the back of the den and broke into a run across the rooftops.

It was as easy as reading an internal compass. Instinctual, as though this were a path I’d walked before. I had a feeling that if I were sighted, I’d be able to see the cord with my naked eyes, like an arrow pointing me to him. Across streets, between buildings, over rooftops and under fences. I followed the call, avoiding the Vigiles, ducking into alleys and scrambling over walls. By the time I reached the edge of I-4 and climbed into a rickshaw, I knew he was close. Less than a mile. And when the rickshaw crossed into II-4, I could almost see the beacon in the æther, beckoning me to a familiar district.

Warden was in Camden.

****

The market was as hectic as ever when I arrived. It was easy to blend in with the crowd. I still walked with my head down and one hand on the pistol in my pocket. The Rag Dolls would tolerate a rival mollisher’s presence if they caught wind of it, but they wouldn’t let me run around unchecked. I had to get this done before the ectoplasm left my system.

As I dashed down Camden High Street, I spied Jos, wearing a peaked cap over his cornrows, perched like a curious bird on a statue of Lord Palmerston. A whisperer stood beside him, playing a slow tune on her piccolo while Jos sang in a delicate voice. A large crowd
watched
in reverent silence. Polyglots sang best in their own, true language—Glossolalia, the Rephaite tongue—but they could make the most grisly street ballad sound beautiful.

Five ravens feasted on a winter’s day,

On the White Keep’s highest tower, so they say,

When the coffin carried the queen.

Not one raven chose to leave the fray

While the queen turned cold down Frogmore-way,

And the widow wore snow-white on the day

That London was in mourning.

Five ravens feasted on a summer’s day

On the White Keep’s highest tower, so they say,

When the king fled from his throne.

Every raven turned and flew away

While the blood turned cold down Whitechapel-way,

“He was stained,” they claimed, “by the Ripper’s blade

He is our king no more.”

At the end of the song, the crowd clapped and tossed coins at them both. Jos caught them in his hat, and the girl took a bow as the audience dispersed. The pair of them scrambled for the remaining coins and shoved them into their pockets. The girl ran off. When he spotted me, Jos waved me over.

“Hello, you,” I said, and he smiled. “Who was that?”

“Just someone I busk with.” He jumped down from the statue. “What are you doing here?”