Most of the ghouls were young adults; a few were middle-aged, and there was one very elderly individual. One of the younger ones was carrying a bundle on her back that set up a thin little wailing. Greta watched as she unwrapped the bundle to reveal a very small ghoullet: Tiny greenish arms waved uncoordinatedly. Beside her Ruthven caught his breath.
“It’s quite all right,” he said, sounding rather astonished. “I’m … happy to help. What do you need by way of accommodations?”
The ghoul with the baby was bouncing it on a skeletal hip, trying to quiet the wailing, and shot Kree-akh an apologetic look. The chieftain sighed, turning his attention back to Ruthven. “Water,” he said, “clean water, and any meat scraps you don’t need.”
“I can do better than that,” Ruthven said, and turned to her. “Greta, help me fetch blankets and look in the freezer for anything that might suit our guests. I’m going to put on a kettle. Do any of you need medical attention?” he added, to the ghouls.
“Not urgently,” said Kree-akh. He had his arm around the young ghoul, said something to her in their language. Greta wondered if the ghoullet was his child or grandchild, and how old it was, and remembered him in her office saying I lost two young ones. “But the thought is kind,” he added.
“Kind, nothing,” said Ruthven. “I want you to tell me all about what happened, if you are willing, but for the moment let’s get you settled and safe—and if you could please not show yourselves to the furnace repairperson if and when they arrive I would profoundly appreciate it.”
“We are good at hiding,” Kree-akh said, as drily as a ghoul could manage. The baby was winding down to whimpers and hiccups, not in full cry, and Greta thought he looked more than a little relieved. “Perhaps less good at not being heard; but we are good at hiding.”
Greta pushed away her curiosity—she would have loved a chance to examine an infant ghoul, she’d never seen one before—and went back up the stairs to fetch blankets and supplies. The house had taken on a subtly different air with the advent of each new group of occupants. It was no longer simply the impersonal, gorgeous mansion of an aristocrat. Now it was something slightly more like a castle, a fortification to retreat within. A small and complicated little world.
She still didn’t know what to do about any of this, or where it was going. Greta was a scientist both by training and inclination, and not knowing was not an acceptable state; the difference between this situation and any she had experienced before was that she also did not know where to even begin looking for answers.
First things first, she told herself. Crouch End. The car. Cross that off the list of things to worry about, and perhaps someone else will have thought of something by the time you get back. At least Varney’s recovery proves that the poison isn’t necessarily fatal, and these monk people are vulnerable to an extent. They can be hurt.
She thought, seeing again Kree-akh in the slanting shadows of the cellar light, with his arm around the young mother and her child, that she would be eminently okay with hurting the Gladius Sancti, Hippocratic oath or no Hippocratic oath.
CHAPTER 9
Fastitocalon had borrowed one of Ruthven’s coats, too short in the sleeves but at least warmer than anything he currently owned. Greta sat squashed next to him on the bus, which was hot and bright and crowded, full of life. It was unquestionably comforting, even if she did feel mildly carsick. Being somewhere this normal and ordinary, full of normal ordinary people who didn’t have magic powers and couldn’t turn into other things, and whose eyes didn’t glow in the dark, was a luxury Greta had not honestly considered before now.
It was also really, really hard to make herself think constructively about what was actually happening, from the viewpoint of this bus seat. The whole miserable, terrifying business seemed as remote and impossible as a dream, and she knew it wasn’t, and she didn’t know what to do …
“I hate this,” she said, almost to herself.
Beside her Fastitocalon blinked out of a doze. “Mm?” he asked.
“Nothing. Sorry. Go back to sleep. There’s four stops left.”
He looked at her closely, peculiarly intent. “It’s not nothing,” he said. “What’s the matter? I am very deliberately not reading your mind, by the way, so you have to actually tell me.”
That got a small, not very mirthful chuckle out of her. She welcomed the faint constant sensation of never being entirely alone, the awareness of his presence nearby; since her father’s death Fastitocalon had been watching over her in Wilfert’s place. It was a consideration she appreciated. “It’s just—I’m not good with not being able to sort things out, Fass. It’s what I do, it’s what I’m for. I don’t necessarily know how to fix everything to start with, but I can find out. There are processes by which I can actually gain understanding, but with this … there’s no way in. I don’t know what to do and I want to so very much.”
Greta hadn’t actually meant to say all of that, but it had come tumbling out in a flood, too fast to snatch back the words. “They’ve murdered eleven humans that we know of, nearly murdered Varney, driven Kree-akh and his people from their homes and murdered two of them as well, and—the surviving ghouls are holed up in Ruthven’s basement and one of them has a baby, and I want to do something, Fass, I want to stop this happening.”
He nodded, simply. “Yes,” he said. “I know. I do too. It’s—there’s so much we don’t know. Simpler to consider what we know it’s not, and go from there.”
“Well, it’s not ordinary wildtype humans,” Greta said. “Whatever has happened to them has changed them, I don’t know to what extent but it’s very obviously an alteration.”
“Quite. And the change, or the author of the change, is neither angelic nor demonic in nature,” he said, and she blinked at him.
“What? How do you know?”
“I can sense these things,” Fastitocalon told her solemnly, tapping his temple with a finger. “Truly my powers are vast. No, it’s just that—well, angelic, or heavenly, objects or entities are immediately recognizable to the right type of vision. They’re covered in a sort of sparkly golden dust and make me break out in hives. Demonic and infernal stuff is just as recognizable, only I’m not violently allergic to the sparkles, and they’re red rather than gold.”
She thought again of how many times she’d wanted to ask what are you. Fastitocalon smiled a little and continued: “In any case I know it didn’t come here from either Heaven or Hell, because it would have tripped the monitoring stations and someone would be doing something about it, which they do not seem to be.”