She didn’t understand the meaning behind his words, but it was obvious that they would all be here for a very long time if someone didn’t start talking. Somehow Helen knew it would not be Darius.
She sighed. “My name is Helen Cartwright. My parents are Eleanor and Palmer Cartwright and they were taken or… something earlier this evening.”
“What do you mean they were taken ‘or something’?” Darius narrowed his eyes, as if trying to gauge her truthfulness.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. One minute I was in bed and the next my mother was packing up my things and hiding me in the wall. I… I think the house was on fire.”
“Why would your mother hide you in the wall?” Even as Griffin asked the question, it seemed he knew the answer.
“They were meeting with their colleagues, a group of business associates that often came to the house for evening meetings.” Helen looked down at her hands. “They became noisy or… upset, and then my mother told me to hide and not to make a sound or I would be killed. She gave me this.” The piece of paper was still crumpled in her hand, and she held it out for Griffin and Darius to see.
“May I?” Griffin asked.
She hesitated before handing it to him. It was the last thing her mother had touched before closing the door between them.
He opened the piece of paper, tipping it to the light of the desk lamp before looking at Darius. “It’s our names and address.”
Darius’s face betrayed no emotion. When he spoke, his words were directed at Griffin. “There’s only one way to know for certain who she is.”
Griffin nodded, reaching into the neckline of his shirt at the same time Darius reached into his trouser pocket. When their hands emerged, they were each holding pendants.
“Does this look familiar?” Darius asked.
They were not identical to hers. Not exactly. She could see even from a distance that the scrolled crown at one end of their pendants had a slightly different pattern than the one that hung from the chain around her neck. But there was no mistaking it.
“It’s… It’s almost like mine.”
“What do you mean?” Griffin asked, though she heard relief in his voice that told her he already knew the answer.
Helen swallowed hard, hesitating only a second before pulling her own pendant from the neckline of her nightdress. She held it up without removing the chain from her neck.
“Like this. Only it seems yours is different on the end,” she said softly.
Darius stood, his eyes locked on the pendant in her hand, as still as one of the statues outside the house. Finally he turned toward the bookcase lining one wall. In his voice was a new resignation.
“Show her to a room. Then, we go and see Galizur.”
The house was even bigger than it seemed from the street. She followed Griffin up an elaborately carved staircase and down a series of richly carpeted halls.
Darius did not accompany them. He had not, in fact, even turned around after instructing Griffin to show her to a room. She had been dismissed, and though she gave a moment’s thought to refusing the room on principle, reason quickly settled in.
“Here we are.” Griffin stopped at a large wooden door. As he leaned in to open it, his face was contorted in the gleaming brass of the knob.
Following him through the doorway, she was surprised to see a clean nightdress folded on the bed and a tub of steaming water standing in the middle of the room. She had not seen a single servant. Yet it seemed someone besides the brothers knew that she was here.
“Helen?” Griffin’s voice shook her from her thoughts.
“Yes?”
He studied his feet before meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry. About your parents, I mean. It is…” His voice caught in his throat, and he turned away for a moment before composing himself and looking back. “It’s no easy thing to lose your parents in such a manner. It’s something Darius and I know a great deal about.”
His pain collided with her own until all she heard was the unspoken message in his statement. She swallowed her despair. She was not ready to consider her parents lost. Hope that they were still alive was all she had left.
“Did they… did they take your parents, too? Do you know what happened to them?”
She heard the desperation in her voice and felt sorry for her selfishness. She did want to know what had happened to Griffin’s parents. But more than anything, she hoped that knowing what had happened to Griffin’s would tell her what had happened to her own.
His throat rippled as he swallowed. “You should bathe and rest. We’ll talk more later.”
Her face grew hot with anger. “Why don’t you trust me?” She opened her arms. “Look at me. I’m just a girl in a nightdress.”
He shook his head sadly. “We’ll explain everything in the morning, Helen.” Turning to leave, he stopped when he reached the door. He did not look back when he spoke again. “Please make yourself at home. There’s a bell by the bed should you need anything.”
And then he was gone.
It took her a while to calm down. She was unused to feeling helpless and did not care for the sensation at all. Still, after standing amid the luxurious chamber in her filthy nightdress, she began to realize the futility in simply being angry. There was obviously more at work than she understood, but fuming in filth was not going to get her answers, to say nothing of the exhaustion seeping into her bones.
First, a bath. Then, sleep. Tomorrow, answers.
She was preparing to strip off her nightdress when she caught her reflection in the looking glass over the bureau. Crossing to it, she looked at the girl staring back at her. At the soot-smudged face and dark, tangled hair. She was almost unrecognizable. It was only her eyes, so deeply blue she was often told they were violet, that were familiar.
She stepped away from the glass, not wanting to see the hollowness in them, and began removing her nightdress. She left it on the floor, trying not to remember putting it on earlier in the evening. Trying not to remember her last moments at home.
She was naked and shivering in the center of the room. It was strange to be without clothing in someone else’s home, and she crossed quickly to the copper tub, lowering herself into the still-hot water. Using a delicate bar of soap, she washed from head to toe. Once she had rinsed the soap from her skin and hair, she lay back against the tub. She closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment to let go of all that had happened, as the faint scent of roses drifted up from the steam. When her thoughts came back to her parents, to the men who had burned her home, she simply pushed them away. At the moment, denial was her only friend.
Then, out of the rose-scented steam, she remembered something her mother had said in the frenzied moments before the door had closed on the hiding place in the wall.
Join with Darius and Griffin. They will take you to Galizur.
Helen’s eyes opened with the memory, and all at once, she was in denial no more.
FIVE
It took her a few minutes to dress and find the staircase leading to the main floor.
The house was eerily quiet as she made her way through the halls. She was used to the rushed voices of her parents, the ticking of the grandfather clock, the scuffle of the servants above and below stairs. Even in the dark of night, her home had rarely been silent.
Here, there was not a sound until she reached the bottom of the stairwell.
Murmuring drew her down the hall to the library door. The marble was cold underfoot, but she was glad she had left her shoes behind. They would have made too much noise on the hard floor.
The voices grew louder as she came closer to the library. She stopped just before reaching the doorway. The hall, spare and without furnishing or ornament, did not leave many places to hide. Glancing around, she settled for a deep shadow in the corner where the hallway met the entrance to what looked like the kitchen beyond.
Aided by the utter silence of the house, she picked up snippets of conversation from the library.
/> “She has the pendant. She’s one of us, Darius. Why are you denying the obvious?”
She could hear the frustration in Darius’s voice, even from afar. “Because I don’t want it to be true. She’ll be nothing but a burden. She hasn’t even reached Enlightenment.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have to protect her.”
“We can hardly protect ourselves, Griffin. She would be safer in hiding while we find out who’s responsible.” There was a shuffle from within the room, and she leaned farther back into the shadows, still listening as Darius continued. “Let’s go see Galizur. He probably already knows, but we should be sure.”
Boot steps sounded across the carpet, and she pressed as far back into the shadows as she could, holding her breath and willing herself to become invisible, yet again.
The brothers crossed the threshold of the room, turning, and passing her without a glance. They did not head toward the front door but to the back of the house. She waited a few seconds before following in their footsteps. She had never followed anyone before, but it seemed only wise to keep as much distance between them as possible.
The click of the door somewhere beyond her line of vision freed her from the shadows, and she hurried through the doorway which did, indeed, lead to a cavernous kitchen. There was only one exit. She made her way to it with as much speed as possible. It would not do to lose the brothers in her worry over being caught following them.
The door opened to the back of the house. She had the sense of a garden or grounds beyond, but it was too dark to make out anything other than the steps leading downward. Taking them as quietly as possible, she continued down a pathway at the side of the house. She could not be certain this was the direction Griffin and Darius had traveled, for they were already out of her line of sight. But the only other possibility was the backyard, and she was quite sure the brothers were not taking tea in the garden.
The path led her to the front of the house. She saw the streetlight under which she had stood some time ago, trying to decide whether or not to ring the bell, and stood back from it, not wanting to be seen. She had a moment’s panic as she surveyed the streets, black save the pools of light seeping from the streetlamps. What if she was too late? What if they were already out of sight?
But no. As she looked to the right and spotted the brothers making their way down the smoky walk, relief flooded through her. She followed them down the street, trying to maintain enough distance that they would not see her shadow or hear her footsteps, though this was likely an unnecessary precaution. She noted with satisfaction that her bare feet made nary a sound on the stone.
It was not easy, trying to keep up with the long-legged stride of the two men while trying to mind landmarks so that she would not be lost on her way back to the house. She was skirting a light post when a dark figure appeared out of nowhere, standing in the shine of the lamp.
“Oh, my goodness!” She clamped a hand over her mouth even before the words had escaped entirely.
“You must be joking.” Her shock at the sudden appearance of the figure was outdone only by her surprise at the dry—and now slightly familiar—voice that came from its direction.
She leaned toward him, peering through the fog. “Darius?”
He sighed, tipping his head so that she could make out his features. “You shouldn’t sound so surprised, given that you were following us. Unless you’re in the habit of following strangers?”
She shook her head. “But you… I… That is, I was following you.”
“I think that has already been established.” The voice came from behind her. She knew without turning that it belonged to Griffin.
She blinked a few times, trying to clear the fog that seemed to have drifted from the street to her mind. “I was following you. That means you were in front of me.”
Darius folded his arms across his chest, his expression growing as dark as the streets around them. “That’s generally how following someone works.” His gaze drifted to Griffin. “She is a clever one, brother.”
“No need to be snide,” she snapped. “You know what I mean.”
She looked up the street where they had been walking only moments before. She knew they had been there. She had seen them. And yet now Darius was right beside her as if he had appeared out of thin air.
Griffin sighed. “Listen, we’ll explain everything later. You really shouldn’t have followed us. It isn’t safe.”
She placed her hands on her hips. It was the only act of defiance she could muster, other than her words, which never failed her. “I’m not going back. Whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re going, it concerns me as well. I’m not a child and I won’t be ignored like one.”
“Any other time, I might like to argue that point.” Darius stepped from the lamplight. “As it happens, we don’t have time to debate the issue, and I’m quite sure you don’t know how to jump yet. You’ll have to come with us now, though you may very well wish you hadn’t, when all is said and done.”
He walked ahead without another word as Griffin gestured her to follow.
“Come. And stay close. It’s a very dangerous time for those of our kind.”
She lost track of their progress through the darkened streets. She didn’t know why she should trust the Channings after so short a time, but she no longer worried about finding her way back to the house alone. She somehow knew that at the end of the night, she would return with the brothers to their great, silent house.
They passed through the wealthy neighborhoods surrounding Claridge’s and into a less desirable part of the city. She wasn’t afraid, though Griffin’s face remained taut, his hand on a strange-looking object hanging from his belt. She couldn’t make out Darius’s expression, for he continued his pace well ahead of them. In any case, it didn’t matter. She doubted anything could change his angry countenance.
She was beginning to wonder where they were going when Darius stopped walking. She lifted her head, taking in the crumbling warehouse before them, certain that Darius had made a mistake. But when she looked to Griffin, he didn’t seem surprised.
“Where are we?” Her voice rang too loud into the darkness.
Darius was already stepping toward the large iron door at the front of the building. He didn’t look at her when he spoke.
“Calling on one of the only people in London who can help us.”
SIX
Darius stood at the door in silence, as if he expected it to open on its own. Helen resisted the urge to ask him why he didn’t knock. Her mere existence seemed to annoy him, and she was too tired and cold to buffer herself against his obvious dislike for her.
A moment later, the door was opened by a pretty, doe-eyed girl, and Helen was relieved that she had not suggested knocking. She already felt dim around Darius, though she had only known him a couple of hours.
The girl standing in the doorway seemed no more surprised to see them than Darius and Griffin were to see her open the door without prompting.
“Come. Father is working,” she said. “He has been quite busy of late, as I’m sure you can imagine.” She cast a smile Helen’s way. “If you don’t mind, we’ll make our introductions later, once we’re safely inside.”
Helen nodded as Darius stepped through the door. Griffin gestured for her to go ahead, waiting for her to pass before entering the house and shutting the door behind them. They followed the girl down a gritty, crumbling hall. There was nary a candle for light, but even in the dark, the girl’s hair glimmered gold and copper.
Helen was forced to an abrupt stop as Darius halted suddenly in front of her. Peering around his shoulders, she fought the press of claustrophobia when she saw that they had come to a large metal door. The hall seemed to contract, and she noticed for the first time that, other than the closed door in front of them and the one through which they had entered, there were no windows and not a single additional door. Helen glanced at Griffin. He seemed to sense her fear, and his teeth flashed white in the darkness
, casting more strangeness into the already bizarre night.
The clink of metal on metal drew Helen’s attention from the hall, and she stood on tiptoe to see around Darius’s broad shoulders. The girl had produced a ring of large, strangely scrolled keys from which she plucked one, almost without looking. She fitted it smoothly into a complex opening that looped and curved unlike any keyhole Helen had ever seen. The door swung wide and soundless.
The girl glanced past Helen and Griffin toward the front door, hurrying them forward with a wave of her hand. “One cannot be too careful, especially now.”
As Darius stepped past her, he stiffened, careful to avoid touching her. The girl did not seem to notice, smiling warmly as Griffin and Helen followed Darius into a high-ceilinged room stacked with crates. She closed the door, and a bolt somewhere within fell into place on its own volition.
“You haven’t asked about the girl.” Darius’s voice was argumentative and directed at the young woman leading the way in front of him.
She spoke without turning, a smile in her voice. “Darius Channing, after all of this time, don’t you think I trust you?”
Darius did not answer for a moment, but when he did, his tone had softened. “Even still,” he grumbled. “You might be more careful. You’re in danger, too, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
The girl stopped walking then, turning to look at him as she placed a small hand on his arm. When she spoke there was tenderness in her voice. “I’m well aware of the situation, but I have a responsibility to keep you and your kind safe and well. It’s my purpose—one you and I have discussed at length. Let’s not discuss it again when there’s so much to do.”
There were volumes unspoken in her words, and Helen wished suddenly for more space so that she might give them privacy. Clearly, theirs was an old argument.
Darius’s shoulders relaxed the slightest bit, and there was regret in the small nod of his head. Helen caught a glimpse of the girl’s forgiving smile as she turned back to lead the way.