“That girl is at least two years old. She isn’t Professor Hoole’s daughter, is she?” I asked. “That was your big secret.”
Mrs. Hoole shook her head. “I wasn’t born into Lawrence’s world,” she said. “I’ve lived through things—things I never want my child to see.” She took a deep breath. “It was for the best she never knew her real father. I wanted a better life for her than the one I had known. I looked to marry someone with money, someone on the way up. After Hope was born I began hanging about the college, looking to court a naive, wealthy student. Someone with prospects.
“A bit by mistake, I caught the eye of a kind but rather lonely professor instead. I kept my old life hidden from Lawrence, kept Hope hidden. Mrs. Wick looked after her while we courted. After he proposed—I’m so embarrassed—I was just in too deep. I was never disloyal. The fact is, I had accidentally fallen in love right back. I loved Lawrence, but I loved Hope too much to risk his leaving me should I ever tell him the truth. As soon as we were married, I begged Lawrence to hire a live-in housemaid. I told him I knew a woman who had been good to my family, and that she had a little girl to look after. Mrs. Wick came to live with us, and with her came my little Hope.
“That’s why I didn’t bring her with me when I came to meet you. I didn’t know if I could trust you. But then you stopped that terrible man from killing me and you gave me shelter from the creatures. I heard them up above me after you had gone. It was a terrible noise. They came to the cellar door, crashing and thudding—but they couldn’t get in. Your protection may be the only reason I’m alive, Detective. I left to bring Hope back, to keep her under that same protection, if you’ll permit it.”
Jackaby looked dour. “I cannot.”
“Please, Detective. My little Hope didn’t choose to be who she was. She didn’t choose to have a woman like me for a mother. She didn’t ask for any of it. I’m not perfect, Mr. Jackaby, but I would give everything for my daughter.”
Jackaby nodded. “Thank you for your honesty, Mrs. Hoole,” he said. “I like honest. Alas, I’m afraid I cannot keep my promise to you or to your daughter. The situation had changed. We have made targets of ourselves and by extension this house. Your own assassin has taken your place in the cellar. My home is no longer safe.”
Mrs. Hoole sank. “Where will I go?”
Jackaby pursed his lips and closed his tired eyes. After several long seconds he opened them again. “I want you to memorize an address. Memorize it—never write it down—and reveal your destination to no one.” He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Got it? There are good people who live there. They will help you.”
“Sh-Should I tell them Mr. Jackaby sent me?” Mrs. Hoole asked.
“No. Tell them—” Jackaby took a deep breath. “Tell them their son sent you. Tell them that he misses them.” A tingle rippled up my spine as I realized what he was saying. “Most of all, tell them to get ready. I left a box with them a very long time ago. A cigar box tied with twine. Tell them to use it. All of it. They will need everything they can muster.”
My employer—a man who never spoke of his past, who hung no portraits over his mantle, who did not even share his name—had parents. He had a mother and a father who were real people and lived in a real house somewhere in the real world. I found the notion almost mystifying. What could they possibly be like?
Jackaby attended to Mrs. Hoole, outfitting her with a satchel full of charms and wards, a roll of spending money, and some fresh fruit and a few slightly stale biscuits. He offered to fetch some pickles and jam from the cellar, but the widow declined politely. She thanked the detective profusely before departing with little Hope on her hip.
“Wouldn’t it be safer to travel with them?” I asked when the door closed. “Just to be sure they reach their destination?”
“They would be no safer in our company,” said Jackaby. “They are better off alone.”
“That isn’t really why you didn’t offer, though, is it?” Jenny’s voice preceded her appearance. She came into view beside Jackaby. “When was the last time you saw them?”
Jackaby stared out the broken front window, watching the widow walk away. “I have not seen my family in roughly two decades, Miss Cavanaugh. We do not correspond. The sight does not discriminate when it takes a host, and it does not make accommodations for family. I found my own way after it took me.”
“But you were so young then,” I said.
“I was ten years old.”
“They didn’t believe you, did they?” Jenny said. “You were just a boy who had lost his friend. You were confused and afraid, and your parents didn’t believe you. So you ran away?”
Tears welled in Jackaby’s gray eyes. “No, Miss Cavanaugh,” he said. “They did believe me. They believed every word. They never doubted me for a moment, my parents, even when I was sure I was mad myself. My parents are not perfect, but they were prepared to give up everything for me. And they would have had to, if I had stayed. So I left.”
He watched Mrs. Hoole turn the corner with her daughter and vanish into the lamp-lit streets of New Fiddleham.
“I don’t like secrets, but I understand why she kept hers,” he said. “My parents are my secret. I didn’t hide my name for my own protection—I hid it for theirs. They are about to need more protection than my absence has afforded them. Some locks cannot be unbroken, and what we’ve unleashed is going to be big.”
“Where do we start?” I asked.
“Poplin,” said Jenny. “Howard told me to look for Mayor Poplin.”
“That’s a good lead, but Poplin has been ten years on the run. I’m interested in something a bit closer to home before we go chasing the past again.” He pulled the little red pouch from his coat pocket. Within it rested the stone Pavel had slipped me. “The Dire Council is planning something massive, something melding magic and machinery, and they are employing the sharpest scientific minds they can lay their hands on, and for all we know they could be ready to unleash it tomorrow. We need more than ever to know who’s behind it.”
“And you think that stone is the key?”
“I think it’s a channel,” he said. “I think it’s the reason for your blackouts, your unexplained behavior, even your attack on Pavel . . .”