Ruthven quirked an eyebrow at him, then turned to retrieve the toast and set it into its rack. “You make a valid point,” he said. “Greta’s young man sent over the results of his tests last night, Varney, and it looks as if the poison these people are using is even nastier than we had reason to believe.”
“He’s not my young man,” she pointed out, and Varney was aware of having had to squash another sudden surge of murderous animosity. He was generally pretty good at controlling it while he was fully conscious—being woken up was evidently still sometimes enough to set it off—but just now it had flared up like a brief and intense physical pain, a stab of completely idiotic jealousy, and just as quickly faded back to nothing.
This is ridiculous, he told himself, you scarcely know her, but all the good sense in all the world could not stop Varney’s wretchedly traitorous instincts. If he were not so focused on the problem at hand he might have passed a few not unenjoyable days daydreaming about Greta Helsing and reminding himself of all the very many reasons he should not be doing so, but they had things to do, damn it, and Varney was so tired of his own predictable and infuriating predilections.
“He’s a handy acquaintance who happens to have access to a mass spectrometer,” Greta was saying. “And while I don’t really want to venture out at all today, I do need to go up to Crouch End and deal with the car.”
Cranswell frowned at her. “What if there’s more of them?”
“I hardly think they’re going to make another attempt the same exact way as before,” she said. “Although you can feel free to come with me if you think I need protecting.”
“I don’t think it’d help,” Ruthven told her. “No offense intended, Cranswell, but of the ambulatory members of the current household, you’re not exactly the best equipped to deal with murderous attackers, supernatural or otherwise.” He gave Cranswell a rueful, apologetic look.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I can’t throw people across rooms with one hand or anything like you guys, but we know that poison compound isn’t designed to drop humans with the slightest contact, right? What if you get stabbed, Ruthven?”
“I don’t intend to. I can’t take Greta to sort out her car, anyway; I’ve got to be here to let the central-heating person into the cellar.”
He turned back to the toaster, and it was Varney who watched Greta first blink and then turn colors rapidly, and then look awkward. It was not an expression he had seen on that face before. Tiredness, yes, intent focus and concern, but not embarrassment.
“Um,” she said. “About that. I … may have told Kree-akh he and his people could shelter in your basement. It’s possible they’re already there. I’m sorry, Ruthven.”
Ruthven turned to look at her. “May have? Why would they need shelter?”
“It’s—Kree-akh came to see me yesterday,” Greta said, still looking cross with herself, “and said he and his immediate tribe had been driven out of their encampment. By human-looking things that had blue eyes, and that could see in the dark, and did not smell like humans. Two of Kree-akh’s people were killed.”
“Killed?” Ruthven repeated. “Good God. Is—Are the rest of them all right? Was he hurt?”
“He said they were—well, not all right, no, but safe. For now. He wasn’t harmed in the attack himself. But the—the blue-eyed men were dressed like monks, he said. It has to be related to all of this, to Varney’s attack, to the man in my car.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry, Ruthven, I should have told everyone last night, but it got driven right out of my head by the mass-spec results.”
“Mm,” said Ruthven, eyes narrowed. “No harm done. Of course the ghouls can stay in the basement. I just hope they don’t encounter the furnace people. It is so draining having to thrall panicky repairpersons into forgetting the things they have just witnessed.”
“I really am sorry,” Greta said. “I don’t normally volunteer other people’s houses as sanctuary.”
“No, well. You were quite right. I’m glad you made the offer,” he said, straightening up. “But this is getting more complicated by the minute. Look, come with me and see if they are down there yet, and if so we can all have a nice talk about what they saw and what the hell to do next. Then you go up and sort out your car, and get that business over with, and come back afterward. If Fass is feeling up to it I’d suggest he accompany you; I have to stay here and deal with the furnace.”
Greta nodded, finishing her toast and licking butter off her fingers, and Varney had to look away in something of a hurry. “All right. And I do need to go over to the clinic again this afternoon, if nothing else dramatic transpires: I have a job to do.”
“Me, too,” said Cranswell, “but they’re not expecting me in the office this week. I want to do more research in Ruthven’s library.” He was also lounging at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, wearing a bathrobe over boxers and a T-shirt, and to Varney showed absolutely no sign of wanting to move. The contrast between him and Dr. Helsing was difficult to ignore.
Humans, thought Varney, watching Cranswell stir another spoonful of sugar into his mug, are remarkably variable.
Which made them, of course, remarkably difficult to deal with.
The cellars of the Embankment house were extensive, containing quite a lot of cobwebby racks of wine bottles as well as the recalcitrant furnace. Greta had been down here once or twice to fetch a particular bottle, but she had always felt somewhat uneasy in the damp cellar chill. As if something was looking over her shoulder, and plotting how best to wall her up inside a niche.
This was foolish and she knew it, but she was still glad Ruthven went first. He stopped just inside the doorway, sniffing, and sighed. Greta could just about pick up the smell of carrion herself, and there were shufflings and mutterings from the darkness at the bottom of the steps. It’s bad, she thought to herself, it’s really bad, if Kree-akh actually took me up on that offer so quickly. He must have had little choice.
“Well,” said Ruthven, hands on hips, staring down into the dark. Greta could make out multiple sets of red pinpoints of light now, looking back at them. “I wish I’d had more notice. I could have tidied the place up a bit, but—welcome, now that you’re here. How many of you are there?”
More shuffling and hissing conversations in ghoulish, and then the cobwebbed lightbulb in the center of the ceiling clicked on. Twelve ghouls stood—or huddled—in a rough circle around Kree-akh, who let go of the light’s dangling cord.
Greta knew that both they and Ruthven could see perfectly well in almost complete darkness. The light was a concession to her own human handicaps, and she felt slightly touched, in an embarrassing sort of way. “Thank you,” Kree-akh said. “Your … protection is appreciated.”