“You’ll pay for this, you little f—” the older man swore, swiping with the cut-throat razor that he’d just pulled out from under one of the embroidered cushions on the couch.
But even as he moved his face lost rigidity, flesh collapsing like a plastic bag brushed against a candle flame. The young man—or perhaps it was a young woman who was dressed like a man—stepped back and watched as the tide of change continued, the flesh within the pale blue robe falling into a fine dust that ebbed away to reveal strangely yellowed bones poking from sleeves and collar, bone in its turn crumbling into something akin to the finest sand, ground small over millennia by the mighty ocean.
Though in this case, it had not taken an ocean, nor millennia. Merely the prick of a pin, and a few seconds. Admittedly a very special pin, though it looked like any other pin made for Georgian-era ladies. This one, however, was silver-washed steel, with Solomon’s great spell of unmaking inscribed on it in letters too small for the unaided eye to see, invisible between the hallmarks that declared it to have been made in Birmingham in 1797 by Harshton and Hoole. Very obscure silversmiths, and not ones whose work was commonly sought after, then or now. They mostly made hatpins, after all, and oddly sharp paper knives.
The young man—for he was a young man, or was tending towards being one—held the silver hatpin in his left hand, which was encased in a pale tan glove of very fine and supple cabretta leather, whereas the elegant fingers of his right hand were free of any such covering. He wore a ring on the index finger of his right hand, a thin gold band etched with some inscription that would need close examination to read.
His gloved left hand was perfectly steady as he slid the pin back into its special pocket in the right sleeve of his suit, its head snug against the half sovereign cuff links (1897, Queen Victoria; the jubilee year, not any old half sovereign) of his Turnbull & Asser shirt. His right hand shook a little as he did so, though not enough to make the hatpin snag a thread.
The slight shake wasn’t because he’d disincorporated crime boss Frank Thringley. It was because he wasn’t supposed to be there at all and he was wondering how he was going to explain—
“Put . . . put your hands up!”
He also wasn’t supposed to be able to be surprised by someone like the young woman who had burst into the room, an X-Acto craft knife in her trembling hands. She was neither tall nor short, and moved with a muscular grace that suggested she might be a martial artist or a dancer, though her Clash T-shirt under dark blue overalls, oxblood Doc Martens, and her buzzed-short dyed blond hair suggested more of a punk musician or the like.
The man raised his hands up level with his head. The knife-wielder was:
1. Young, perhaps his own age, which was nineteen;
2. Almost certainly not a Sipper like Frank Thringley; and
3. Not the sort of young woman crime bosses usually kept around the house.
“What . . . what did you do to Uncle Frank?”
“He’s not your uncle.”
He slid one foot forward but stopped as the young woman gestured with the knife.
“Well, no, but . . . stay there! Don’t move! I’m going to call the police.”
“The police? Don’t you mean Charlie Norton or Ben Bent-Nose or one of Frank’s other charming associates?”
“I mean the police,” said the young woman determinedly. She edged across to the telephone on the dresser. It was a curious phone for Frank Thringley, Merlin thought. Antique, art deco from the 1930s. Little white ivory thing with gold inlay and a straight cord.
“Who are you? I mean, sure, go ahead and call the police. But we’ve probably only got about five minutes before . . . or less, actually—”
He stopped talking and, using his gloved left hand, suddenly drew a very large revolver from the tie-dyed woven yak-hair shoulder bag he wore on his right side. At the same time the woman heard something behind her, something coming up the stairs, something that did not sound like normal footsteps, and she turned as a bug the size of a small horse burst into the room and the young man stepped past her and fired three times boom! boom! boom! into the creature’s thorax, sending spurts of black blood and fragments of chitin across the white Aubusson carpet and still it kept coming, its multi-segmented back legs scrabbling and its hooked forelimbs snapping, almost reaching the man’s legs until he fired again, three more shots, and the huge, ugly bug flipped over onto its back and spun about in frenzied death throes.
As the deafening echoes of the gunshots faded, the woman realized she was screaming, and stopped, since it wasn’t helping.
“What . . . was that?”
“Pediculus humanus capitis. A louse,” replied the young man, who was reloading his revolver, hitching up his waistcoat to take rounds from a canvas bullet belt. “Made bigger, obviously. We really have to go. Name’s Merlin, by the bye.”
“Like Merlin the magician?”
“Like Merlin the wizard. And you are?”
“Susan,” said Susan automatically. She stared at the still-twitching giant louse on the carpet, then at the pile of reddish dust on the lounge, contained by the pale blue robe. The monogram “FT” was uppermost, as if pointing out who the dust used to be.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Can’t explain here,” said Merlin, who had gone to the window and was lifting the sash.
“Why not?” asked Susan.
“Because we’ll both be dead if we stay. Come on.”
He went out through the window.
Susan looked at the phone, and thought about calling the police. But after a single second more of careful but lightning-fast thought, she followed him.
Chapter Two
A left-handed bookseller I did spy
In a wood one darkling day
I durst not ask their business, why
Best not to know, I do say
THE WINDOW OPENED ABOVE THE ROOF OF THE CONSERVATORY, which ran from the back of the house to the fence. Beyond that lay the dark mass of Highgate Wood. Merlin was walking out along the steel ridgeline of the conservatory, Cuban-heeled boots notwithstanding. The flat ridge was no wider than his hand, with long sloping panes of glass on either side. But he acted as if they were of no account, though if he fell he’d smash through them and be cut to pieces.
Susan hesitated and looked back. The monstrous bug was still writhing, but there was something else happening now. A dark fog was flowing up the stairs. It looked like thick black smoke, but it moved very slowly and she couldn’t smell burning. Whatever it was, she instinctively knew it was wrong, something inimical. She shivered suddenly, bent down, and crawled out onto the ridge of the conservatory, moving swiftly on hands and knees.
“There’s a weird black fog coming up the stairs,” she panted as she reached the end. Merlin was standing in front of her, but as she spoke he jumped, clear across to a branch from an ancient oak that overhung the garden fence.
“How can you do that in those heels?” gasped Susan.
“Practice,” said Merlin. He held on to a higher branch with his right hand and extended his left. “Jump.”
Susan looked behind her. The extraordinarily dense, dark fog was already coiling out the window. It didn’t move like normal fog at all; in fact, one broad tendril was coiling out towards her specifically. Reaching for her. . . .