“Did you see him?” I asked through the confused clamor. I heard myself, finally. “Mr. Wake? He is Moonless, he can use the shadows. And Moran is here!”
Pretoria visibly grimaced—I must still be talking too loudly. She put a hand on my arm and began to speak to Lewis again, then did a double take and stared at me.
“You’ve been shot!” my sister accused me.
“I have not,” I shouted staunchly. “Where is Detective Supford?”
“Tied up in Maddeson’s office. Ottilie!” Pretoria tore open the last remaining button of my coat to reveal my blouse and a drooping blossom of blood. “This is dreadful!”
“Pfft, it hardly qualifies as being shot, more of a mild goring,” I insisted, squinting at the long wound beneath, scraped across my ribs.
“I, however, have been shot,” Lewis admitted.
We all turned on him and I found the source of his limp—a circular, bloodied hole in his trousers.
I gaped. “Lewis! Why did you not say—”
“I did. You did not hear,” he returned.
I dug into my pockets, shoving around the artifact as I shook out a handkerchief. I pressed it to Lewis’s thigh.
“Can we please run away now?” Perry shouted in exasperation.
That spurred us. Madge crowded in, to help my poor wounded self, I assumed, with the hopeful naivety only a little sister could supply. But it was at this juncture that my eldest sister, with false gentility, slipped the artifact from my pocket. In my distraction, binding the kerchief to Lewis’s leg with a belt supplied by Pretoria, it took me far too long to notice. My delayed, “You hag!” rang out only once she was a dozen paces away.
At that moment Wake stalked from the shadows behind the cloakroom desk and seized Geoffrey by the hair.
The young man died in a dazed way, sinking to his knees as the color fled his cheeks. I saw his final moment, when the spark of life left his eyes. My nightmares still paint the image most vividly. A bafflement, realization, and a terrible, crippling sadness—realization of a life unlived, hopes never to be achieved, loves never to be found. Then, nothing at all.
Wake’s back straightened. Bleeding burns on his face healed, his shoulders levelled, and he spat blood upon the floor.
Dr. Maddeson turned and fled, emitting a warbling scream that might have been comical in other circumstances.
“Get him!” I shouted.
Perry complied at the same time as Pretoria threw out her hands towards Wake, a skew of time already blurring the air.
He seemed to anticipate the gesture. He darted around her, avoiding the skew, and hurtled around a corner after Madge and the artifact.
Fear and hatred collided inside me, both of them directed towards Madge. My sister was not helpless, but her self-defense capabilities could be described as ‘provisional’ at best, and she had always been more than willing to hide behind the next, larger mage. Glim magic, too, was little use in physical confrontations. If Wake caught her…
Pretoria seemed to be of the same mind.
“I have them, get out of here!” she shouted, then she, too, was gone in a ripple of skirts. “Go!”
Lewis and I were left bleeding in the hallway with Geoffrey’s grey-skinned corpse and the stink of smoke.
I flinched after Pretoria, but in the sudden quiet, I could just about pick out a new sound. The roar of engines.
Headlights cut through the tall windows, beamingthrough the foyer and slicing down the hall towards us. Before they had even stilled I heard doors slam, and the light was interrupted by the flickers of running figures.
“Damn,” Lewis said, eloquently. “That will be the Grand General.”
“Can you walk?”
“I will follow you. Go. Help Pretoria.”
For a moment, I almost considered the idea. I had come so far for the artifact, suffered so much.
