The creature guarding the door slowly shut it behind them and swung the wheel with ease to latch it shut. Part-construct, it resembled an enormous stone golem. A charm had been painted on its forehead in blood, and its blank eyes were pits of gray.
Locked in. If only she didn't feel so nervous. No sense in portraying it, however, as the people leering at them would sense it and be upon them like vultures.
"Come along then," she said to Rathbourne. "Let's go corner that rat, Horroway, and see what he knows."
"Perhaps I'd best take the lead," Lucien murmured, eyeing the riffraff in the alley.
A hand to his sleeve stopped him. "And do what, precisely?" Miss Martin asked, her eyes serious as she looked up at him. "I'm well tutored in wards, courtesy of Drake. There's not much here that I cannot handle. Guard my back."
Then, with a purposeful swish of her bustle, she swept in front of him, striding over the cobbles as if she owned the place.
Bloody woman. Lucien growled under his breath and strode after her. If there was one place in all of London that made him hesitant to step into, this was it. The Labyrinth was a rambling set of streets that had been here for several hundred years. It looked like something straight out of Shakespeare's times. The eaves and rooves were crooked, some almost leaning against the opposite roof. Little shop faces opened into the alley, selling an assortment of goods: bat's feet and potions, all manner of oddments, rare astrology books, grimoires, dark pendants, and jewelry to deflect curses... Each shop had its own dark wares, and curious, invisible eyes watched them as they passed by the diamond-paned windows.
Dirty glass above kept the weather off the street and curious eyes out. If parliament ever realized it was here, it would send half the cabinet into conniptions. The Order had sworn itself to the monarchy years ago, and enough of them had done their part in certain wars or Colonial expansion, helping to leash other countries to Britannia's will, for the Queen and her cabinet to consider them allies, at least. Those war heroes and adventurers were considered servants of the empire, but as far as most of the Null world knew, they were but a source of parlor tricks and games and pretty sparkling lights. Not quite respectable, but certainly entertaining, and oh-so dashing in their uniforms.
If the cabinet knew the full extent of sorcery, of blood and death and poisonings, Miss Martin's father would finally be able to push through a law against them. This was London's dark secret, or one of them, a place belonging entirely to those of an occult nature. A place ungoverned by the Prime's long hand, with rules of its own and those of a mind to enforce them.
"This way," Miss Martin called over her shoulder and led him down an offshoot of an alley, which appeared even smaller and darker.
Steam billowed out of a grate in the cobbles, dashed aside by Miss Martin's skirts. Several barrow boys watched them pass, looking almost human until one of them blinked and a translucent eyelid slid shut over its eyes then vanished. Lucien let his hand fall to the pistol at his waist and stared them down as they passed by. Hell spawn, or their offspring. Miss Martin had charmed the bullets for him that morning, carving neat little runes of strength, death, and invulnerability to magic into them. He wasn't going to be as helpless as he had been yesterday.
"Horroway's most commonly found at Grimdark & Hastings. It's a bookshop owned by his friend Marius Hastings. Don't trust either of them, and don't turn your back."
"Truly? And here I thought I'd passed my apprenticeship." Lucien guided her around a puddle of... something. Black and inky in the cobbled streets, it gave a strange gurgle as if something moved within the dark waters. "I have been here before, Miss Martin."
"You have?"
"How else do you think I bought the book containing a summoning spell for a demon? Or the focus objects for the ritual?"
"You were... different then." Stronger, she meant.
He had no time to reply, for the sign heralding Osiris Place appeared, and tucked just off it was the bookshop, Grimdark & Hastings.
Miss Martin paused on the threshold as if to make a dramatic entrance, and then speared the two occupants within with a hardened gaze. "Elijah Horroway. A word, if I may."
A man had been leaning against the counter, his battered top hat casting shade over his face and his coat collar tucked up. The coat looked dusty and there were several stab holes in it. On his hands were a motley pair of fingerless gloves. He didn't move, peering down into the book he'd been studying.
His friend, however, Mr. Hastings, backed into the wall, hands held up in surrender. "Miss M-Martin," he stuttered. Light flashed off his half-moon glasses, disguising his eyes. He was prematurely thinning on top, with a cascade of gingery curls around the side of his head. "What an unexpected delight." Wide eyes danced helplessly toward Horroway, who straightened and tucked something back within his coat.
"What d'you want?" Horroway ground out in a voice as dry as the grave. Those gloved hands rested flatly on the counter, and he tipped his head to the side.
Lucien still couldn't make out Horroway's features. He wasn't certain he wanted to. But he strode casually to the center of the room, hands resting lightly on his belt. He wouldn't put it past Horroway to break Guest Oath here. Though perhaps, considering his condition, he wasn't bound to it. There was no blood in that body, after all.
"Hastings. Out."
"Y-yes, ma'am." Marius Hastings skidded for the door and vanished.
Miss Martin took her time, tugging off her gloves one finger at a time as she surveyed the room. She had a flare for the theatrical, he suspected. "I'm after information, Horroway."
"Are you now?" Horroway gave a dry laugh, then tugged a flask from his pocket and poured some of its contents into the tumbler in front of him. His elixir, no doubt. "Brazen tart like you... What makes you think I'd be so obligin'? What you goin' to offer me? A run up cock alley?"
They both watched as he threw back his special potion, one that anchored his spirit to the flesh he inhabited, or so it was said.
"Language, Mr. Horroway," Miss Martin chided. "I suppose it's one of the first few civilized arts to leave a body, hmm?"
That earned her a slit-eyed side look. Lucien stepped closer.
Horroway turned around slowly, leaning back with both elbows resting on the counter. His face was straight out of a penny dreadful—or perhaps a grave—pockmarked and somewhat flaccid. His pallid mouth didn't quite look as though it worked properly, resembling a gasping, breeched fish. Only he wasn't gasping. He wasn't breathing at all. A brass chain was tucked inside his filthy waistcoat, and on it hung an hourglass. Once he had to flip the hourglass—every month it was rumored—he'd have to find a somewhat fresher body to claim.
