The Peculiar Read online

  The staircase brought them into a narrow corridor, brightly lit. The rat faery pushed Bartholomew down it. At the very last door they stopped. The faery knocked once and, without waiting to be invited, entered.

  Bartholomew’s eyes widened. It was the room. The beautiful room with the painted lampshades and the bookshelves, the ring of chalk on the floor, and the clockwork sparrows. The same one he had stumbled into from the whirling black wings. Only this time someone was sitting behind the desk. A wiry white faery dressed all in black, eating a brilliant red apple.

  The faery looked up sharply as they entered. Juice ran down his chin, and flecks of the apple’s red skin clung to his lips.

  “I have him, Lickerish. Now what of Melusine?”

  The Lord Chancellor said nothing. He touched a handkerchief to his lips and fixed his eyes on Bartholomew, watching him keenly.

  The rat faery pushed Bartholomew toward the desk, dozens of tiny mouths nipping at his shoulders, the backs of his legs, compelling him on. Still the Lord Chancellor said nothing. He folded the handkerchief. He set it aside. He picked up a tiny metal feather and began twirling it slowly between thumb and forefinger.

  When Bartholomew was only inches away, Mr. Lickerish stopped. “Ah,” he said. “Here you are again.”

  Bartholomew gritted his teeth. “I want my sister,” he said. “Give her back. Why can’t you open your stupid door and leave Hettie be?”

  The feather snapped in two. “Leave Hettie be?” The faery politician breathed. “Oh, I’m afraid I could never do that. Hettie is the most important part. Hettie is the door.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The Peculiar

  Mr. Jelliby was pretending to be a corpse. He sat on the chair, drowned in shadows, not daring to move, not daring to breathe, waiting for Bartholomew and the rat faery to leave.

  A minute later and he knew it had fallen for his trick. He lifted one eyelid. The faery’s voice echoed in the vastness of the warehouse, then was lost in an explosion of mechanical clanks and hisses. Mr. Jelliby opened both eyes wide and stood up. Edging around one of Dr. Harrow’s shoes, the scuffed and muddied tip of which just stuck out from a crack between two crates, Mr. Jelliby stole out of his hiding place.

  He had not gone ten paces when a booming noise sounded above him. Dim light flooded the warehouse, as a great portion of the roof slid open, baring the sky and the airship hanging in it. Night was approaching. A gear-work elevator was rising, swinging gently on the anchor cable. The elevator was not closed in, and Mr. Jelliby could still see its two passengers clearly. The rat faery stood, arms and legs and appendages that had no name wrapped around the railing. Next to him, crouched on the floor, was Bartholomew.

  Mr. Jelliby darted out from among the crates. He could see the inside of the warehouse clearly now, dank and dripping, the mountains of crates touched with moss, cranes and hooks hanging down over the dark water that lapped at the far end. At the center of the warehouse, a pair of leather shoes sat. They were small-children’s shoes-and blackened. Scorch marks radiated from them like a charred sun. Their soles were nailed to the floor. Close by, the huge heap of the elevator’s cable dwindled away, uncoiling into the sky. The elevator was already thirty feet above Mr. Jelliby, and getting farther away by the second.

  Rushing forward, he gripped the cable with both hands. Just don’t look down, he thought. If the rat faery saw him, he didn’t suppose it could do much. At least not until Mr. Jelliby arrived in the airship.

  The cable pulled him into the air. The cold metal bit into his hands. He tried to support himself with his feet, but the tips of his shoes kept slipping and he had to claw with all his might to keep from falling.

  Higher and higher he rose, through the open roof and into the sky. The warehouse shrank away beneath him. The wind growled, cold and fierce, swinging the cable. His fingers went from stiff to unfeeling. Above, the elevator whirred, and he caught snatches of the rat faery’s voice jeering at Bartholomew.

  He closed his eyes. He didn’t dare look down at the city. But he didn’t dare look up either. If he saw how much longer he had to endure before reaching the safety of the airship, he thought he might give up then and there. He pressed his forehead against the cable, feeling the sharp frost against his skin. Safety. There was nothing safe where he was going. Mr. Lickerish was almost certainly up there, along with who-knew-how-many of his faery minions. Even if Mr. Jelliby survived the journey, he would only have gone from bad to worse.

  The air became colder still as the dirigible cast its shadow across him. He opened his eyes. The airship was huge, filling everything, a giant black whale swimming in the sky. Mr. Jelliby had taken Ophelia on a pleasure flight in an air balloon once. He remembered how they had both stared at it in wonder as they approached it across Hampstead Heath. Its colors-the colors of a tropical bird-had been poison bright, brighter than the trees and the grass and the blue summer’s day. So bright that it had been impossible to look at anything else. It could have fit inside this one’s cabin.

  Mr. Jelliby’s arms felt ready to snap. He could feel every cord in them, every tendon and muscle straining against his bones. The cable pulled him higher, up and up. He could make out the vessel’s name now, picked out in silver filigree on its prow.

  The Cloud That Hides the Moon.

  His shoulder gave a violent twitch. For a horrible moment he thought his arms would simply give way and he would fall down, down, down into Wapping. Moon? This was the moon? The moon in the sparrow’s note. The moon Melusine had been speaking of. She hadn’t been mad. It was an airship.

  A hatch began to open in the underbelly of the cabin. Mr. Jelliby caught a glimpse of a hall, all aglow with warmth and yellow light. The elevator rose into it and came to a halt. The cable stopped too. Three hundred feet above London, Mr. Jelliby looked around him uncertainly.

  God in heaven. His eyes swiveled up to the hall. The rat faery had dragged Bartholomew out of the elevator and disappeared. The hatch started to close.

  “No,” Mr. Jelliby gasped, and his lungs scraped as if coated with ice. “No! Stop!”

  But even if someone in the airship had heard him, they were more likely to give the cable a sharp shake than to rescue him.

  He began pulling himself upward, inch by inch. The hatch was closing slowly, but it seemed so far away, miles and miles up. He could barely feel the pain in his arms anymore. They just felt dead, solid. .

  No. He set his jaw. He wasn’t going to die up here. Not frozen to the cable like some foolish insect. Fifteen more feet, that was all. He could manage fifteen feet. For Ophelia. For Bartholomew and Hettie.

  He struggled on, hands and legs and feet all trying to push him upward. The hatch continued to close. If it shut completely there would be nothing but a small hole where the elevator cable went into the hall. Not nearly large enough for a man. Five more feet. Four more feet. Only a little longer. . With a final surge of strength, Mr. Jelliby forced himself through the opening. The metal cut into his ankles, clamping. He jerked his feet up with a cry, scrambled away, lay shivering and gasping on the floor. The hatch clanged shut. Then all was still.

  He would have liked to just lie there. The carpet was soft against his cheek. It smelled of lamp oil and tobacco, and the air was warm. He would have liked to just sleep there for hours and hours, and forget about everything else. But he willed himself to get up, and blowing on his chapped hands, hobbled toward the stairs.

  Keeping himself pressed to the wall, he stumbled up them. A corridor was at the top. It was long and brightly lit, strangely familiar. He saw no one and heard nothing but the hum of the engines, and so he crept down it, pausing at each door to listen. He felt sure he had been here before. Sometime not so long ago. He came to the end of the corridor. The last door looked newer than the rest, smoother and more polished. And then he knew. Nonsuch House. The lady in plum flitting down the gaslit corridor. The faery butler’s words when he had caught Mr. Jelliby. “Come away from here this instant. Come
back into the house.” The hallway was in the airship. That day of the ale meeting he had unwittingly wandered into Mr. Lickerish’s secret place. Somehow they were connected, the old house on Blackfriar Bridge and the dirigible in the sky. Some faery magic had knitted them together.

  Voices were coming from the other side of the door. The voice of Mr. Lickerish. The voice of Bartholomew, quiet but firm. And then another door began to open some ways up the corridor.

  Mr. Jelliby spun, fear welling in his chest. He was trapped. No place to hide, no place to hide. The hall was bare, just lamps and paneling. The doors were all locked. All but one. One had a key in its keyhole. He ran to it, twisted the key. A well-oiled bolt clicked open. He slipped in just as a small brown gnome emerged into the corridor.

  The room in which he found himself was pitch black. Drapes had been pulled across the window and all he could see was a splinter of red light from the setting sun, bleeding in.

  Someone else was in the room. He realized it suddenly, paralyzingly. He could hear breaths-small soft breaths close to the floor.

  His hand reached for the pistols on his belt, and he cursed silently when he remembered they weren’t there. He pressed his back to the door, fumbling for something to turn on the lights. His fingers found a porcelain dial and he turned it. Lamps flared to life along the walls.

  He was in a small sitting room. It held a wardrobe, and a Turkish sofa, and a great many carpets and tasseled pillows strewn across the floor. And there was a girl. Curled up on a cushion of jade-green silk was a changeling. She had a sharp, pointed face. Branches grew from her head. She was asleep.

  Mr. Jelliby’s hand fell from the dial. “Hettie?” he whispered, taking a few steps toward her. “Is that your name, little girl? Are you Hettie?”

  The child did not stir at his voice. But it was as if she could sense she was being watched, even in her dreams, and after a heartbeat or two she sat up with a start. She looked at Mr. Jelliby with wide black eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, going down on his haunches and smiling. “Bartholomew’s here, too, and we’ve come to rescue you. You needn’t be afraid.”

  Her face remained taut. For a moment she just stared at him. Then, in a small frantic whisper, she said, “Put out the lights. Quickly, sir, put them out!”

  Mr. Jelliby looked at her, confused. Then he heard it, too. Footsteps snapping quickly along the corridor. Not the dancing footsteps of Mr. Lickerish, or the shuffling ones of the hunchbacked gnome. Something heavy and strong was out there, coming straight for the door to the sitting room.

  Mr. Jelliby leaped up and wrenched the dial all the way around. The lamps fizzed out, and he flew across the room, plunging into the drapes that hid the window. Someone stopped outside the door. A hand was laid on the key. Then it was taken away again and there was a pause. The door banged open.

  Mr. Jelliby could just see a figure come into the room before the door closed again. Whoever it was did not turn on the lights. But the figure had a lamp. A small green orb floated in the darkness. It made a ticking noise, snick-snick-snick, like a clock. It expanded slightly. Suddenly the lamps blazed again. There stood the faery butler, his mechanical eye fixed on the far side of the room, a slight frown creasing his brow.

  “Little girl?” he asked, in his oozing, whining voice. “Little girl, tell me something. Can you walk through walls?”

  Hettie didn’t look at him. “No,” she said, and burrowed into her pillow.

  “Oh.” The faery butler’s frown darkened. “Then why was the door unlocked?”

  Mr. Lickerish extended one long finger and touched it to Bartholomew’s chin. Then he crooked his finger sharply, jerking Bartholomew’s face up with it. Bartholomew gasped and bit his tongue to keep from crying out.

  “Changelings are of both worlds, you see,” Mr. Lickerish said. “A child of man with blood of the fay. A bridge. A door. Don’t suppose I will explain my plans to you, though, because I shan’t. You’re far too stupid to understand them.”

  “Just tell me why it has to be Hettie,” Bartholomew said, twisting against the rat faery’s grasp. He knew this was the end. He would be lucky to leave the room alive. There was no point being timid anymore. “Why wasn’t it one of the others? Why wasn’t it the boy from across the way?”

  “The boy from across the way? If you mean Child Number Nine then it was because he was a flawed, degenerate creature just like the eight before him. Descendants of low faeries, the lot of them. Sons and daughters of goblins and gnomes and spriggans. The door did open for them. It did work. But it was such a small, weak door. And it opened inside them.”

  The fire crackled in the hearth. Mr. Lickerish laughed softly and released Bartholomew’s chin, settling back into his chair. “Perhaps you heard that the changelings were hollow? Surely you did. The papers made such a fuss over it. What did they have to be shocked about, I wonder. Some faery, going about his business in the Old Country unsuspecting as you like, found himself suddenly confronted with a heap of steaming changeling innards. They were not enough, those other nine. They were too common. Too faerylike, or too human. But Child Number Eleven. Hettie. She is the daughter of a Sidhe. She is perfect.”

  Bartholomew swallowed. “I’m her brother. He’s my father, too. I’ll be the door.”

  “You?” The faery politician sounded as if he were about to laugh. But then he paused, and gazed at Bartholomew. Bartholomew thought he saw surprise in those black eyes. “You want to be the door?” the faery asked. “You want to die?”

  “No,” Bartholomew said quietly. “But I want Hettie to live. I want her to go home. Please, sir, I’ll be the door, just let Hettie go.”

  Mr. Lickerish looked at him a long while. A smirk played at the corners of his mouth. Finally he said, “Oh. What a foolish thing to want.” And then, turning to the rat faery, “Take him back down to the warehouse and dispose of him. I thought he might be dangerous. He is not dangerous. He is not even strong. He is simply peculiar.”

  The rat faery peered at Mr. Lickerish, rats slithering and squeaking. “Melusine,” he said quietly. “What of Melusine?”

  “The warehouse, Jack Box. Now.”

  The rat faery pushed Bartholomew toward the door.

  “Where is Hettie?” Bartholomew shouted, struggling against the rat faery’s grip. “Where’s my sister?”

  But Mr. Lickerish only took a great malicious bite out of his apple and gave no reply.

  Mr. Jelliby remained perfectly still behind the drapes. The swaths of black velvet wrapped around him, stifling him, smothering him with their odor of old wax and withered petals. Sweat broke across his forehead and the drapes stuck to his face, hot and itching. He pressed himself farther back into the window well, all the way until he felt the cold panes against his cheek. Drat. The door had been locked from the outside. It was dead proof someone else was in the room.

  On the other side of the drapes, the faery butler’s green eye began to flick back and forth along the walls, clicking and buzzing as it focused on everything. The wrinkle in the carpet, the indents in the pillows, the fingerprints on the porcelain dial. .

  “Troutbelly? Are you here? Little girl, did that degenerate gnome come in?”

  Hettie gave no answer, and the faery butler didn’t wait for one. He strode across the room, looking into the wardrobe, opening drawers, kicking at the plump silk pillows.

  “Jack Box? Selenyo pekkal! This is no time for games!”

  The faery butler was directly in front of the drapes. Mr. Jelliby could hear his wheezing breaths, feel his presence like a weight on the other side of the velvet. The faery butler’s green eye narrowed. He reached forward, ready to throw open the drapes. Mr. Jelliby had his hands in fists. One second more and he would leap out, swinging like a maniac. But then a speaking machine rang from the wall, shrilling and rattling like an angry bird.

  The faery turned abruptly and picked up the mouthpiece.

  “Mi Sathir?”

  The rat faery wa
s very quiet as it herded Bartholomew down the corridor. No taunting, no threats. Bartholomew had expected it to begin the moment they were out of earshot of the study, but Jack Box’s mouth remained clamped shut.

  They walked down the curving staircase, toward the hall of the airship. The rat faery moved behind Bartholomew, claws scuttling, pinning his arm to his back.

  “Mr. Lickerish isn’t going to help you, you know.” Bartholomew’s voice was sharp. “I don’t know why you think he will. I don’t know what’s wrong with the lady in plum, but Mr. Lickerish doesn’t care. He just keeps you to do things for him.”

  “Shut up,” the rat faery spat, and yellow teeth pinched into Bartholomew’s back, his wrists, and shoulders. “Shut up, boy, you don’t know-”

  Bartholomew wanted to cry with the pain, but he didn’t. “He’s not going to help you, can’t you see? You’re going to die when that door opens. You’re going to die just like everyone else. Mr. Lickerish doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”

  All at once the rat faery threw Bartholomew against the banister and collapsed, rolling and tumbling down the steps. Bartholomew watched it come to rest at the foot of the stairs, a wretched trembling mass.

  He glanced back up the stairs. Should I run? Someone might be watching. Some little pisky peeking down from the chandeliers, or a wooden face inside the wainscoting. And where would I run to?

  Bartholomew approached the rat faery slowly.

  “What is wrong with Melusine?” he asked. He tried to make his voice gentle. “If we stop Mr. Lickerish you can help her. That’s the only way you can help her.”

  The rat faery looked up at Bartholomew. Its face twisted in surprise, then suspicion, then confusion. Bartholomew thought it would say something, but its mouth just opened and closed over its uneven teeth.

  “Who is she?” Bartholomew asked, stooping down next to him. “Who is Melusine?”