“Careful, laoch. Ye don’t want to fall in this room.” He shoved open a pair of sliding pocket doors.
They rolled aside, and a moment later, a series of lightbulbs fixed to the ceiling buzzed to life. The light wavered at first. When it finally held steady, Gabby saw that the room was large, perhaps the size of the rectory’s sitting room. There were no windows, but none were needed. It was already bright enough, and not just from the electric bulbs.
Polished silver lined the walls. To her left, swords of every shape and size—rapiers, katanas, cutlasses, broadswords, and styles she couldn’t name—hung from silver dowels drilled into the walls. Directly ahead, daggers, dirks, and knives, straight-handled and bowed, hung in rows, from longest to shortest. And to Gabby’s left there were crossbows and darts, throwing stars, and even a few battle-axes.
She could barely breathe. It was all so beautiful.
Beside her, Rory crossed his arms. “I thought ye might fancy it.”
Gabby went for the daggers first. She had her sword from Nolan, and as gorgeous, light, and natural to wield as it was, it was hard to transport in the inner folds of her cloak.
“Are they all blessed?” she asked.
Rory nodded. “We do them in batches. The reverend at that church of Vander’s disna ask many questions.”
Gabby couldn’t imagine he would get many answers if he did.
“We all have our weapon of choice,” Rory said from where he stood by the door, watching her. She didn’t dare touch any of them. Her fingers would leave spots on the silver.
“What is yours?” she asked before remembering the daggered vest. She smiled back at him. “Never mind.”
“Vander has his crossbow and Nolan his broadsword,” Rory said.
“And Chelle her throwing stars,” Gabby added.
“Aye, nothing rips the air better than Chelle’s stars.”
She liked the dagger she’d stolen from Vander’s desk a while back. He knew about it now, and he’d been gracious enough to let her keep it.
“I don’t know what my weapon of choice is,” she said, moving toward the swords. It was funny. It wasn’t long ago that she wanted baubles, dresses, and hats with the same sense of longing she now felt for these silver weapons.
What would her London friends think of her?
“Dinna worry, laoch. It’ll find ye.”
Gabby stopped at the corner where the sword and dagger walls met. A floor case started there. It reached to her hip and ran the length of the sword wall. Beneath the display glass, Gabby saw more silver things: some swords and daggers, but mostly crossbow darts. They were laid out neatly, and at first glance Gabby guessed there were perhaps fifty darts, maybe more. They weren’t as shiny as the weaponry hanging upon the walls. Instead of high silver, they were like polished pewter.
“What are these?” Gabby asked, also noticing a thick padlock on the case cover. She lifted it and gave it a small tug. Locked fast.
“Those aren’t blessed,” Rory answered. He came up to the stand and peered through the glass. “They’ve been dipped in mercurite.”
Gabby dropped the padlock, the memory of the burning mercurite still fresh in her mind. “I thought demons weren’t affected by anything but blessed silver.”
“These aren’t for demons,” he answered. “They’re for killing gargoyles.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For the first time ever, Ingrid hated books.
There were far too many of them, all unorganized and uncategorized. And her time was dwindling. So far, none of the random books she’d flipped through had mentioned anything about mimic demons. Constantine had needed days to search his own massive (and neatly organized) collection, and here she was scrambling like an idiot with fifteen bloody minutes!
“A fool’s errand,” she said under her breath, and then sneezed as dust traveled up her nose.
Maybe there was no other way of getting rid of a mimic. But Ingrid didn’t think she could kill a living thing to destroy one.
She slammed the cover of the book she was skimming and then jumped out of her crouch as a loud crash echoed it. Ingrid faced the door, expecting someone to come charging in, but no one appeared. The crash had sounded like it came from the floor below. Perhaps even from the second level, where Mama still sat with Chelle in the parlor. She thought of her father and Grayson. What if the crash was a signal from Chelle?
Ingrid opened the door and peered into the hallway. It was so quiet she began to wonder if she had heard a crash after all. She decided it was best to err on the side of safety, so she started toward the servants’ door Rory had led them through. She had barely made it halfway down the hall when indecipherable shouting shattered the silence.