Bacchus nodded and stepped out into the hallway.
He found his own way to the door.
CHAPTER 4
Cuthbert knew he needn’t travel far from London to find Merton’s stolen opuses; he’d been able to make the trip from there to St. Katharine Docks in one night. The problem was, his memory stalled somewhere between cutting clay for future projects in his studio and finding himself on the docks with Elsie. In between, he recalled nothing but a handful of impressions: running through the dark, feeling stone beneath his hands, experiencing the confinement of a cold, starless place. A spiritual aspector could not erase his memory—only a rational magician could do that. But she could most definitely make it hard for him to recall what he had been doing, especially in the shadows of night.
Cuthbert had mulled over the puzzle pieces almost constantly this last week. He’d filled up an entire sketchbook with half-finished charcoal drawings. He’d even dreamed about his escape, and while he of all people knew dreams couldn’t be trusted, he’d sketched the dreams first thing upon waking, even before using the water closet. And so he was fairly certain Merton had guided him to a cemetery, sepulcher, or crypt, although that didn’t narrow things enough, given there were a multitude of them in London.
Were Merton here, he could rip the information from her mind himself. She couldn’t manipulate him again without touching him, and he was constantly on guard. A deep, damaged part of him wanted to seize her every thought, force her into a puppetlike state, rip apart her secrets and sorrows and drown her in them. Make her suffer as he had suffered. And yet, when he thought of Merton, he thought of Elsie, and that made him tuck away his anger and his hatred and focus on the task at hand. Because she was in prison, yes, but it was more than that. Despite being tied in with Merton from the start, Elsie made him want to do better, be better. She was the closest thing to a daughter he’d ever had. She’d been with him longer than Emmeline, and as a child, no less. She’d unknowingly brought bondage to him, but in the end, she’d also been his salvation.
She’d been a pawn, too. Cuthbert couldn’t dwell on vengeance until she’d had her liberation as well.
Merton’s London townhouse was the first place he went after seeing Elsie, and the space was entirely empty, without even a skeleton staff or housekeeper to look after it. She wasn’t to be found at the Spiritual Atheneum, either. Cuthbert didn’t want to give himself away by asking after her, so he broke his rules and dived into the minds of anyone who might know, pushing past goals and desires, complaints and crudeness, searching for any mark of his enemy. No one had seen her since the dinner at Kent just before his liberation.
Cuthbert could only hope it meant Merton saw him as a threat and sought to save her own hide, not that she was moving on to another portion of whatever mad plan she wanted to unfurl. How many spells did one person need? And what did she intend to do with them all?
Rubbing a hand down his face, Cuthbert dropped onto a bench in Burgess Park, considering. Thanks to a decade of church hopping, he knew which cathedrals and the like had crypts. Which had cemeteries large enough to hide away Merton’s secrets. Were it Cuthbert, he wouldn’t stow away his treasures at a large or frequently visited place, not where they could be discovered. It had to be something out of the way, but not so out of the way that he couldn’t retrieve them swiftly.
Closing his eyes, he replayed the night of his escape in his head. He was sure he hadn’t gone north, not at first. Would he find his way better if he mimicked the conditions of that night? If he searched in the dark, instead of the light?
Light. He’d been moving toward the light, hadn’t he? The moon rose in the east . . .
He needed to find the place now. Before Merton figured out they were on to her and ransacked the place herself.
Rising, he left the park and paid his way onto an omnibus. He’d asked around for the oldest churches and gravesites near East London. His eyes scanned the streets as he rode, as though he could spot her among the throngs of people.
He pulled his hat low when he reached the first village on his map, small enough that he might be seen as a stranger. He did not have a large repertoire of spells, given that those he knew had been gathered and adopted illegally, but those he did have were potent. He hopped from mind to mind, learning his way through the streets and alleyways as he did. He found the cemetery and its church easily. Somehow he knew it wasn’t right, but he checked anyway before moving on. He had to keep moving if he didn’t want to go mad.
It was at the third parish he visited that something raised gooseflesh on his arms. He paused, turning around, his surroundings completely unfamiliar and yet not. A wave of frustration worked through him. If only he could use spells on his own mind, hypnotize answers from his subconscious. But there was something.
He could see the spires of the local chapel and began toward it, but that felt wrong somehow. Retreating, he again stood in the place from before, a cobbled road at the crest of the town. It would have been a good view, if not for the thick trees.
Turning slowly, he noticed a narrow staircase to the east, centuries old and laid with stone. A chill coursed down his back. He’d been on that staircase before. The second-to-last step was uneven. He’d tripped on it in his rush . . .
His rush . . .
Clenching his jaw, Cuthbert ran toward the stairs, not out of a desire for speed, but to help him remember. She’d driven him hard; he’d been exhausted upon reaching the docks, which was why Merton had demanded he use opus spells to slow down his pursuers. He sprinted for the stairs, and despite expecting the dip in the stone, he tripped and fell onto his hands and knees at the bottom.
His right knee pounded painfully, the stone striking an old bruise. A bruise he must have gotten here.
Standing slowly, Cuthbert closed his eyes, imagining night wind in his hair despite it being midafternoon. He felt a questioning gaze from a passerby and ignored it.
Running downhill, toward a gas lamp. Around the corner. Another stumble at the end of the cobblestone path.
Opening his eyes, Cuthbert jogged down the way, finding an unlit lamp at a crossroads. Left would take him deeper into town, right . . . at the end of the street, the trees were overgrown and the path narrowed, turning to packed dirt.
Cuthbert ran right.
He slowed when he reached the trees, stooping to avoid their branches. He looked around for any broken boughs, any opening in the green. He found nothing. He followed the path for an eighth of a mile before it ended at an old stone wall, flowering weeds poking through its mortar.
He almost didn’t notice the steep dip to his right. Sitting, he slid down it five feet and followed the wall. The trees lifted just enough for him to identify three burial chambers, the stone crosses at their heads weathered and nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the stone.
This was it.
Holding his breath, he approached the first sepulcher, scanned for witnesses, and shouldered the heavy door open, the scents of must and mildew rushing at him. The interior was small, but the chill was achingly familiar. He checked the tombs. The first held only bones and remnants of rotted clothes. The next was the same. But the third . . . the third was larger. There was a stone casket in the back, and just behind it a smaller one, made for a child. The moment he touched it, Cuthbert knew it. The roughness of the ancient stone, the weight of the lid. This was it. Grasping the lip with both hands, he heaved it up and over, then stood aside so light from the doorway could pour in.