“What’re they doing?” she whispered. “Margaret? What are they—”
“What they have always done,” replied Mrs. Harrogate. “They are preparing to fight.”
“They can’t fight,” she snapped. “Look at them. They can’t even eat solid food.”
And she fumbled angrily at the cord around her throat for the weir-bent there. She didn’t see the keywrasse anywhere. But if the wards had fallen, then surely it could come through too? More and more catlike, less and less obedient, she thought. A small group of kids stood to one side, watching. There were other faces pressed to the windows behind.
“Remember why we are here,” said Mrs. Harrogate. “We must warn Dr. Berghast. We must protect the glyphic.”
Alice took her Colt from her pocket. “If that bastard’s already here, I’d say we’re too late,” she growled. And then she heard a familiar voice.
“Alice?” it cried, urgent. “Alice!”
Charlie.
She turned and there on the stoop of the manor kitchens she saw him spilling out, all long awkward arms and legs like the adolescent boy he was, and there behind him the others, his friends, the Japanese girl with the sullen mouth and that little pudgy towheaded boy who hardly spoke and, what was it, something else, a figure of flesh and sinew lumbering out just behind them. She took a quick involuntary step back, lifting a cuff to her mouth at the smell. Last of all came the blind woman, the schoolteacher, turning her face this way and that in the faint glow of the burning outbuildings across the field as if she were seeing all.
Alice didn’t see Marlowe.
But then Charlie was throwing his arms around her, and she was blinking in relief. He looked exhausted. The others were crowding Mrs. Harrogate, worried about her injury, clamoring to know what was happening out in the burning field. They’d come running down through the manor at the same time as Alice and Margaret had arrived.
It was Miss Davenshaw who spoke. “The old ones will not be able to stop Jacob Marber. He’s grown too powerful. Even Dr. Berghast means to flee.”
Mrs. Harrogate’s head snapped around. “What do you mean?”
“He is gone,” she said simply. “He has not been anywhere to be found all day.”
Alice unbuttoned her oilskin coat, she adjusted the brim of her hat. Something was happening out in the field. The old talents had gone still. “We need to get out of here,” she said slowly. “All of us. We need to go now.”
But Charlie was looking past her, at the fire and the old talents standing in the grass. “We can’t leave, Alice. There’s something we’ve got to do first.” His voice was quiet. “Before Jacob Marber gets to us, I mean.”
Mrs. Harrogate wheeled her chair sharply into Alice. “We do not have time for this. We must find Henry. At once.”
“I thought you wanted to protect the glyphic,” said Alice.
“You can’t,” interrupted the Japanese girl. She was peeling off her gloves as she spoke. “No matter what you do. There’s no way to stop what’s happening to him. But you can still seal the orsine.”
Mrs. Harrogate studied her with glittering eyes. “A litch has been sent to open it.”
“A litch—?” Charlie stumbled back, fear twisting his mouth. “You mean, like what attacked me back in London?”
“The same.”
“Charlie,” Alice said, a dread rising in her. “Where is Marlowe?”
Charlie looked helplessly over at the Japanese girl. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. He’s inside it, Alice. Inside the orsine. We both of us went in, only he never came back out. I tried to go to him, I did. Dr. Berghast wouldn’t let me.” He gestured out at the burning field. “And now if Jacob Marber’s here, it means it’s already started.”
“What’s started?”
“The glyphic. His dying.”
Mrs. Harrogate was looking away, out across the field, scanning it. “Perhaps the child is safer in there, hm? At least for now. Tell me, girl, how does one seal an orsine?”
The girl smoothed out her long braid. “We have to get to the island. We’ll need the glyphic’s body.”
“Henry will be on the island. With the drughr.”
“Jesus.” Alice shook her head. “Then it’s too dangerous. We’ve seen the drughr, we know what it is. There’s no fighting it.” She reached up, took Charlie’s shoulders in her hands and turned him square to her. “Listen, if the orsine rips open, then Marlowe can get back through, right?”
“Yes—”
“Well. That’s something, then.”
“But back to what?” Charlie cried. “The dead will pour through. I’ve seen them, Alice, what they do to the living. They’re … awful. Marlowe wouldn’t want that.”
“Miss Quicke,” Mrs. Harrogate said from her wheeled chair. “We will get the child back. We will go through the drughr, if we must. It came through an opening in London, did it not? It … made an opening. We will find a way to do that, too. But the orsine must be sealed.”
Charlie’s eyes were wet. “Alice, we’ve got to try,” he pleaded.
She didn’t know what to say. She knew he was right, they all were. But just then there came a sound, a shriek, from off across the grass, and Alice spun in time to see the silhouetted figure of Jacob Marber—there was no mistaking him—walking slowly forward in his silk hat, his long coat crackling around him. She was already moving sideways, across the flagstoned walk, seeking a better angle to see him when he raised his hands, and a darkness seemed to grow from his upraised palms.
Something was happening to the old ones, too. They were changing, their talents manifesting. Three of them ran forward at a speed impossible given their age—no longer frail, swift now—and she stared in fascination as two of them seemed to thicken, grow larger even as they ran, their heads down like battering rams. The third, an old man in a nightdress, was increasing in height, his legs and arms lengthening, so that he had soon outpaced the other two and he was reaching a gigantic hand down as if to flatten Jacob Marber where he stood. An old woman, standing back, seemed to levitate up off the ground, almost to hover, and there was a strange white light like starlight shining from her. The others, too, were transforming, though Alice couldn’t make out exactly how.
Something was wrong with Marber though, that much was clear. The great darkness around him, his dust, twisting up in a cyclone from his fists, seemed to hurl itself outward against the onrushing giant and the two muscled runners and then be sucked back in, surrounding him again, and she could see he was struggling. Then the giant too was pressing down with his big palms against the dust, leaning into it, forcing it slowly back down, and Alice started to think, to hope, that perhaps Harrogate was mistaken, perhaps they all were, perhaps the old talents were stronger than any had given them credit for.
It was then she noticed two things: one of the eight, frailer than the others, leaning into a cane and standing some distance away, with his head bowed; and a quick crawling thing, pale and almost unseeable in the eerie firelight, skittering crablike over the grasses toward him. She knew Coulton at once; and she lifted her revolver in a smooth reflexive motion and took aim, but it was almost like he’d felt her attention, her focus, for in that instant he skittered sideways, setting the old talent between them. And a moment later Coulton had leaped up, all claws and fangs, and driven the frail old figure ferociously into the earth.
She shot anyway, squeezing the trigger calmly, and the shot went wide; she’d been hoping to scare the litch off the old man, but it made no difference; and when Coulton next raised his face she saw a dark bib of blood and gore overrunning his chin and staining his throat and the front of his ragged shirt.