Crows are gathering in the branches above me. They arrive as if by invitation, gliding in on silent wings, their feathers slick with recent rain. There are dozens of them, pressed together like mourners at a funeral, watching me with a curiosity that makes my skin crawl.
‘Up until an hour ago, we had Anna in our custody. Somehow she’s managed to escape,’ continues Daniel. ‘Where would she go, Aiden? Tell me where she’s hiding and I’ll instruct my men to make your death quick. There’s only you and Gold left now. Two gunshots and you’ll wake up in Bell, knock on Blackheath’s door and start everything again without my getting in your way. You’re a clever fellow, I’m certain you’ll solve Evelyn’s murder in no time.’
His face is ghoulish in the lantern light, twisted by need.
‘How frightened are you, Daniel?’ I say slowly. ‘You’ve killed my future hosts, so I’m not a threat, but you have no idea where Anna is. It’s been eating away at you all day, hasn’t it? The fear that she’s going to solve this before you.’
It’s my smile that scares him, the faintest sense that I might not be quite so trapped as he first believed.
‘If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll start cutting,’ says Daniel, drawing a line across my cheek with his fingertip. ‘I’ll take you apart an inch at a time.’
‘I know, I’ve met myself after you’re done,’ I say, staring at him. ‘You break my mind so badly, I carry my madness into Gregory Gold. He slashes his own arms and babbles warnings at Edward Dance. It’s horrific. And my answer is still no.’
‘Tell me where she is,’ he says, raising his voice. ‘Coleridge has half the servants in this house on his payroll, and I have a pocketbook thick enough to buy the other half if necessary. I can surround the lake twice over. Don’t you see? I’ve already won. What’s the use of being stubborn now?’
‘Practice,’ I snarl. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything, Daniel. Every minute I frustrate you is another minute Anna has to reach the Plague Doctor with the answer. You’d need a hundred men to guard that lake on a pitch-black night like this, and I doubt even Silver Tear can help with that.’
‘You’ll suffer,’ he hisses.
‘One hour until 11 p.m.,’ I say. ‘Which one of us do you think can hold out the longer?’
Daniel hits me hard enough to rip the air from my lungs and knock me to my knees. When I look up, he’s looming over me, rubbing his grazed knuckles. Anger flickers at the edges of his face like a storm creeping across a cloudless sky. Gone is the suave gambler of earlier, replaced by a scrappy conman, his body twisted by red-hot anger.
‘I’m going to kill you slowly,’ he growls.
‘I’m not the one who dies here, Daniel,’ I say, letting loose a shrill whistle. Birds scatter from the trees, the underbrush rustling with movement. In the inky blackness of the forest, a lantern flares into life. It’s followed by another a few feet away, and then another.
Daniel spins on the spot, following the lanterns. He hasn’t noticed Silver Tear, who’s backing into the forest, looking unsure of herself.
‘You’ve hurt a lot of people,’ I say, as the lights come closer. ‘And now you get to face them.’
‘How?’ he stammers, confounded by the reversal in his fortunes. ‘I killed all your future hosts.’
‘You didn’t kill their friends,’ I say. ‘When Anna told me her plan to lure the footman here, I decided we’d need more bodies and I asked Cunningham to help. Once I realised you and the footman were in league together, I expanded my recruiting drive. It wasn’t hard to find enemies of yours.’
Grace Davies appears first, shotgun raised. Rashton nearly bit his tongue off to prevent me from asking for her help, but I was short of options. The rest of my hosts are busy, or dead, and Cunningham is at the ball with Ravencourt. The second light belongs to Lucy Harper, who was easily swayed to my cause by the revelation that Daniel murdered her father, and finally comes Stanwin’s bodyguard, his head completely bandaged, aside from those cold, hard eyes. Though they’re all armed, none of them looks very confident and I wouldn’t trust a single one to hit anything they’re aiming at. It doesn’t matter. At this stage, it’s the numbers that count and they’re enough to rattle Daniel and Silver Tear, whose mask is sweeping back and forth, searching for an escape.
‘It’s over, Daniel,’ I say, my voice steely. ‘Surrender, and I’ll let you go back to Blackheath unharmed.’
He glares at me desperately, then at my friends.
‘I know what this place can do to us,’ I continue. ‘But you were kind to Bell that first morning, and I saw your affection for Michael on the hunt. Be a good man one more time, and call off the footman. Let me and Anna go with your blessing.’
His expression wavers, torment showing on his face, but it’s not enough. Blackheath has poisoned him completely.
‘Kill them,’ he says savagely.
A shotgun explodes behind me, and I instinctively throw myself to the ground. My allies scatter as Daniel’s man advances on them, firing shot after shot into the darkness. The unarmed man is cutting left, keeping low as he tries to take them by surprise.
I can’t tell whether it’s my anger, or my host’s, which drives me to lash out at Daniel. Donald Davies is raging, although his fury is one of class rather than crime. He’s aggrieved that anybody should presume to treat him so shabbily.
My anger is altogether more personal.
Daniel has blocked my way ever since that first morning. He sought to escape Blackheath by climbing out over me, undoing my plans in service of his own. He came to me as a friend, smiling as he lied, laughing as he betrayed me, and it’s this that causes me to hurl myself like a spear at his midriff.
He slips aside, catching me in the stomach with an uppercut. Doubled over, I punch him in the groin and then grab his neck, dragging him to the ground.
I see the compass too late.