“That’s … sensible,” said Alan. His wariness had been replaced by something more complicated. But Maud was quite clearly doing this with or without escort, and hell—it wasn’t like he wasn’t curious. “All right then. Let’s be off while there’s daylight.”
Maud attracted more glances than he did on the Underground. She wore the specific hat and blue coat that Robin had seen in his vision, and no doubt they were nothing special by her own wardrobe’s standards. But she looked as though she should be in a motorcar or a private cab, not down here where most of the men had the same shabby-respectable garb as Alan. A wizened woman in faded black gave Alan a gimlet of a stare when he took the seat next to Maud’s, as if suspecting him of being importuning.
Maud happily began to pass on to Alan some information—learned from Edwin, naturally—about the history of the London Underground’s construction. She learned the names of the young boy and girl sitting on the next row with their mother, and also learned their opinions on picnics (favourable) and ants (less so). Alan had never seen anyone strike up a conversation with strangers on the Underground. As usual, Maud was a law unto herself.
They came up onto the street into a hot summer afternoon. Alan felt more able to contribute to the conversation when he wasn’t being eyed from all sides as too common for his companion.
“How are the university plans, Miss B? Maud,” he amended at her playful frown.
“Suspended,” said Maud. “But Robin says I’ve stuck to the idea for long enough. He’s given his word that I shall go. And—Violet’s said she’ll loan me the fees.” She said it with only a short falter. The Blyths were happier than most toffs Alan knew to talk about money.
“Still a shameless trollop, I see,” said Alan.
Maud was a safer bet for teasing than Edwin. She laughed and hooked her cotton-gloved hand through the crook of his arm. “That’s me. No, I—I still want to go, desperately, but it feels less urgent than it did. Perhaps because I’m not running away from so many things now.”
Alan had the unkind wish to drag her to his own house to meet Bella, to show her what a girl looked like when she had real problems to run away from. Hell. He shouldn’t have let himself tease her, shouldn’t have invited this intimacy of manner, no matter the ease of Maud’s company. He didn’t fit into this world. He wasn’t there to fit in.
At first glance, the cemetery was nothing special. Alan would have walked right past it if he’d ever had cause to come to this corner of London. Apparently it was one of a few that were often used by magicians.
On second glance, it absolutely crawled with stray cats.
“That’s promising,” said Maud.
“Did Edwin say where exactly Dufay’s grave is?”
“It’s not too large, at least,” said Maud, meaning no.
They were looking for something from the last century, so Alan could skim his gaze past the ancient or fresh-looking stones. Most of them were of the former type. Flowers were scarce, and many graves well overgrown, their headstones shawled with moss.
Marco Rossi had faithfully paid his funeral insurance, so at least Maria had been able to hold her head up and bury him in a good Catholic cemetery. Alan visited the grave every year: a simple stone amongst a sprawl of crosses and angels. Less of that here. Very few stones above waist height, and only a handful of boxy aboveground tombs. Alan saw only one other person on the paths, a stout, white-haired man paused at a grave halfway along the row they’d just come down.
Beneath the unclouded sun Maud looked uncomfortably warm, even after removing her blue coat and carrying it over her arm. She kept rubbing at her forehead as if it ached.
Alfred Dufay’s grave turned out to be one of the grander ones. A rusted fence ringed the site at ankle height, and the stone had an elaborate border pattern. A tortoiseshell cat with a missing ear was asleep on the grave. Alan was more inclined to put that down to the warmth and angle of the sun than any ghostly presence.
“We are man’s marvellous light,” read Maud. It was engraved beneath the name ALFRED DUFAY and the years 1798–1861. No biblical homilies. Nothing about whose beloved son or husband or father Dufay had been. Just the lines from the song.
“It’s the right Dufay, then. Do you feel anything?”
“I feel like I’ve been plunged into the steam room in the Lyric’s Turkish baths. But I suspect that’s just the weather. Mrs. Navenby was anchored to the locket—I had to touch it.” She frowned at the gravestone and began to tug at the finger of a glove. “I suppose—”
And then she stumbled sideways and into Alan, as if she’d been pushed. Her coat fell to the ground and she tripped on it. Alan put out a hand to steady her but snatched that hand back again when he saw her face.
The wrongness of it lurched in Alan. Somehow Maud’s round-cheeked, friendly face was taking on menacing angles, as if glass objects were shifting beneath a piece of taut linen. It settled into a deep frown.
Alan swallowed hard. “Mr.… Dufay?”
For a horrible moment Alan thought Maud had yowled without moving her lips. No—it was the tortoiseshell, awake and with all its hair standing on end. It swiped once at the edge of Maud’s skirt and then bolted. Alan couldn’t spare attention to see where it went. Maud’s head tipped to one side and then the other as she inspected him. She looked barely human. Worse than birdlike.
“Ha—arm,” Maud said, or possibly hard, or some other word that sounded like half-chewed gristle in her mouth. Her lips dragged back over her teeth. The next sound was no word at all but a pained, feral growl, and she lunged right at Alan with her fingers in claws.
“Bloody hell! Maud!” Alan had hold of her wrists. She wasn’t strong, but whatever had control of her body was determined, and probably cared less than Alan did if some of Maud Blyth’s tendons were to snap. “Can you bring yourself back?”
“What,” she said hoarsely, and writhed. “Wha—at.”
Definitely not Maud. And not seeming much like a gentleman who’d been alive a century ago, either, unless he’d died of something very unpleasant and his mind had gone beforehand. Alan should have asked more questions.
“I’ve seen you do this, Maud,” Alan said between gritted teeth. “You swapped back and forth, easy as you like. And I don’t know who you are, but you can piss off and let her speak for herself.”
Maud blinked at him. What happened next reminded Alan of the trick where someone whipped away a tablecloth and left the setting: a sense of shifting, along with a sense of dangerous motionlessness. The angles of her features changed yet again.
“Oh my,” she said, and gave a long, rich laugh that raised the hairs on Alan’s neck even more than the growling had. It was intelligent, mature, and malicious. And it was still not Maud. “Room for everyone, darlings, wait your turn—”
Maud bent at the waist as if kicked. Her arms dragged out of Alan’s grip and she staggered backwards two steps.
“—no,” she gasped.
“Maud?”