Rose (15 page)

Gus became a very small black cat in seconds and streaked back into the bushes. Isabella's shoulders shuddered with fear—Rose could see through the metalwork of the bench—but she dug out a lace-edged handkerchief from her reticule and buried her face in it dolefully.

“Dear child…” Miss Sparrow had halted opposite Isabella's bench, and now bent closer to inspect her. “May I be of assistance? Are you perhaps lost?”

Her voice was honey sweet, and it sent sticky ripples down Rose's spine. She could
hear
the glamours in it, clanging like badly tuned bells.

“I—I don't know…” Isabella sobbed. “My nursemaid stopped to talk with one of the guardsmen outside the barracks, and I ran on because she took so long, and she'd promised we should go to the park. But I don't think it was
this
park, and I know I live close by, but I cannot think where!”

It was word-for-word the story they had agreed, and Rose and Freddie exchanged relieved glances. Isabella hadn't decided to embroider the lies, as they'd feared she would.

“You poor little dear,” Miss Sparrow cooed. “Don't worry. I'm sure we shall find her. Why don't you come with me, and we'll go and look? Or do you know your address? My carriage is waiting only on the other side of the park—I can take you home directly.”

Isabella sobbed and spluttered incoherently, and Miss Sparrow seemed to tire of trying to placate her. She put a hand gently on the back of Isabella's neck and twitched away her handkerchief. “Why, your handkerchief is wet right through, dear child. You must borrow mine. I have a nice clean one, just here.” And she drew a handkerchief swiftly from her sleeve and held it against Isabella's face.

Rose had one glimpse of Isabella's blue eyes glancing back toward their hiding place in sudden panic, then her eyelids drooped, and she slumped back against the sorceress's supporting arm.

“There, dear,” Miss Sparrow hissed. “We'll take you home.” And then she turned, following Isabella's last betraying stare and looked right into their hiding place. “And your little friends too.”

The cellar was dark—a thick, black darkness that they could almost touch. Nothing like the darkness outdoors, where even in smog-ridden London, there were occasional glimpses of stars.

It smelled too. Fifteen children using one bucket starts to smell very quickly. Rose had gagged as Miss Sparrow thrust them into the stinking darkness.

“Why didn't you rescue me?” Isabella complained. “You didn't keep to the plan.”

“Bella, the plan didn't include her spotting us and dragging us out of the bushes!” Freddie said crossly. “At least she didn't catch Gus. Hopefully he'll make it back to the house.”

Rose wasn't really listening to them bickering. She was peering through the darkness, trying to work out where the other children were and how many of them were imprisoned here. She could hear them breathing, very quietly, nervously.

“Who's there?” she whispered. “Maisie, is that you? Lily?”

The silence was broken by a tiny gasp, and someone shuffled closer. “Rose?” Maisie's voice was quavery, and she sounded disbelieving and horrified. “Oh, Rose, she got you too! I thought you'd be safe in that grand house.”

“It's Rose! Sarah-Jane, Rose is here! Ellen, did you hear?” Lily's voice sounded as though she were bouncing up and down. “Annie, my friend Rose!”

“We came to rescue you,” Rose admitted in a small voice. She felt rather silly. She had been imagining a dramatic rescue scene, with spells shooting all over the place and Miss Sparrow vanquished. Instead, they had been captured themselves, and now they were dependent on the whim of a clever but unreliable cat. And if Gus did decide to help, instead of throwing in his lot with Miss Sparrow, whose magic was far more to his liking than Mr. Fountain's at the moment, what could he do?

“I went back to visit everyone, you see,” Rose explained sadly. “And you weren't there. Miss Lockwood told me an amazing story about you really being Alberta, but you'd left your locket behind. It just didn't fit, somehow…”

“I believed her, Rose,” Maisie said, her words barely above a whisper. “She said she was my mother. She was so pleased to see me. And then when I told her about the boat and the fountain—she knew it all, Rose!”

“It was a trick. I left you open for her, Maisie, making that stupid story up. I'm so sorry. And now we haven't even managed to get you out!”

“Don't worry, Rose,” Ellen said sadly. “You hadn't told us stories, and it didn't make any difference. We believed anyway.”

Rose reached for Maisie's hand in the darkness. It was thinner and bonier than ever. “Does she feed you?” she asked in a small voice.
Us
, she should have said, she supposed.

“She has to,” another voice broke in. A gruff little voice, a boy. “She needs us strong.”

“What for?” Rose squeaked nervously.

There was a pause, as though no one really wanted to tell her. Then a faint whisper came out of the dark, from over in the corner. Rose's eyes had adjusted to the darkness a little now, and she could almost make out that the speaker was slumped on a pile of rags. Her skin glowed pale in the darkness, as though she were milk white.

“Blood,” she breathed, and the word seemed to echo around the cellar. “She takes our blood.”

Isabella made a doubtful, disgusted noise. “What on earth
fo
r
?”

“Amy's right. It's some horrible spell,” Maisie whispered. Rose could feel her shudder through their clasped hands. “I saw it when she brought me here. Once she'd got me inside the door—oh, she changed, Rose, so quickly. It was like she was a different person! She even looked different, can you believe that?”

Rose felt the movement in the darkness as she and Freddie and Isabella exchanged glances. “Oh yes,” she muttered ruefully.

“Before, when she was pretending to be my mother, she was fatter, I'm sure she was. And she talked different, softer somehow. She held me, Rose, and that's when I really believed her. I didn't think anyone could hold me like that and say what she said, and it not be true!” Maisie's hand was burning on Rose's now, in the feverish telling of her story.

“She's a genius at glamours,” Freddie sighed. “And a damn good liar, as well.”

Maisie was silent, and Rose realized that she had no idea who had spoken. She patted Maisie's wrist reassuringly. “That's Freddie, Maisie, he's my master's apprentice. Mr. Fountain, he's a magician, and he's enamored of this Miss Sparrow. Well and truly gone. He wants to marry her.”

There was a hissing rush of laughter and whispers.

“Good luck to him,” Maisie said wryly. “She'll eat him alive!”

“She shan't! She won't! I shan't let her have him!” Rose could almost swear Isabella was spitting sparks. She let go of Maisie and grabbed Isabella before she flung herself down in a fury. Who knew what she might land on?

“And this is my mistress…Miss Bella, stop it! What's the point of squealing like that?”

“Shut her up. She'll bring the witch down on us!” the boy's voice spoke out anxiously.

Freddie and Isabella drew in their breath sharply, and Rose realized that it was a word she'd never heard used in the Fountain house. It was always
alchemist
or
magician
. Witch, obviously, was not a polite term. It seemed sadly amusing that they should care, just now. But at least it had shocked Isabella out of her temper.

“You won't be alive to care about him soon,” Amy's whisper came from across the room again, a faint thread, embodied a little by grim amusement.

“Amy's been here the longest,” Maisie whispered to them. “She's been taken upstairs four times. She says she doesn't think she'll last much longer.”

“So what happened when she brought you back to this house?” Rose asked with horrified fascination. They had not seen much of Miss Sparrow's residence, as it had been dark when she'd bundled them out of the carriage, and she'd dragged them along the hallways and straight into the cellar.

Maisie shivered, remembering. “When the front door banged shut, Rose, I was so happy—she'd said my father would be at home, waiting to meet me. She shut that door, and I looked around for him. I turned to ask her where he would be, and her face! It was like a monster. So white, and her eyes shining hard, like, like coal. She dragged me into a room, all full of jars and bottles and spirit lamps. And she picked up a knife, Rose. She'd gone so strange, I thought she was mad and she was going to kill me. But she just nicked my wrist and let the blood run out into a bowl.”

“She'd run out. We were all too worn down, and she needed more. She needed fresh blood.” Amy's giggle sounded ghostly in the dark. She wasn't much more than a ghost now.

“When I woke up I was here in the dark, with my wrist bandaged up,” Maisie explained. “I think I fainted. I could hardly move. It was as if she'd taken all the life out of me with the blood.”

“What does she do with it?” Rose could hardly form the words. She didn't want to hear, but she had to.

“I think—I think she drinks it,” Maisie said quietly.

“Urgh!” Isabella nestled closer to Rose. “She wouldn't! That's cannibalism, it's horrible.”

Freddie suddenly made a little, satisfied noise and held his hand out toward Rose and the others. He had a large glass marble sitting in his hand, one of the expensive kind, with a beautiful red and yellow flame-like spiral running through it. Now it was glowing softly and making his hand glow too, so that his fingers had red cracks in them. Rose had never realized just how comforting light was until she'd missed it. Everyone in the cellar sighed and crawled toward it, so that they were sitting in a close, huddled group, gazing at the tiny light.

“A magician's apprentice,” Amy breathed. “I didn't believe you before.” The light made her skin look as thin as paper.

“Can't do much yet,” Freddie said shyly. “But I'm quite good at lights and flames. That sort of thing. Just took me a while to think of what to put it in.”

Rose looked around anxiously, now that she could see what was what. There were fifteen others as well as themselves. Lily seemed to be the youngest, and Amy looked like the oldest, but perhaps just because she was so worn out from the blood-letting.

Lily was sitting cuddled up against another little girl about her own age, who Rose decided had to be Annie, the girl the street children had lost. They both had their thumbs in their mouths, and they were leaning on a girl in the ruin of an expensive nightgown. She had to be the one from the newspaper, who'd been snatched from her bed.

“Magic,” the gruff-voiced boy muttered, staring distrustfully but hungrily at the light.

He was wearing livery a little like Bill's, Rose realized. She was willing to bet that he was Bill's friend, Jack. He hadn't run off to join the circus after all, she thought sadly. “Not all magic's bad,” she protested.

“Rose can do it!” Maisie boasted. “She makes pictures.”

“She worked out who'd taken you as well.” Freddie glanced up from the light at Maisie. “She looked for you in a mirror. It was really clever magic.”

“Oh, Rose,” Maisie said gratefully.

Rose shook her head dismissively. “I still don't understand what it is she's doing. I wish Gus were here, Freddie. Can you think of anything? Anything from those letters she sent to Mr. Fountain?”

Freddie frowned at the marble light, trying to remember.

Suddenly there was a clicking noise as the hammers of a heavy lock fell into place, and the door swung open. Miss Sparrow stood in the doorway, holding up a candle. It made her look monstrous, a huge shadow falling away behind her, and the light glittering horribly in her black eyes.

Luckily, Freddie had thrust the marble into his pocket as soon as he'd heard the noise, and it seemed Miss Sparrow hadn't noticed it. She walked into the cellar and held up the lantern, examining the children. Then she stooped down, like a hawk hunting her prey, and seized Amy by the arm, jerking her to her feet. Amy hung limply from her grasp, like a rag doll, not even complaining.

The others complained for her.

“Not Amy again!” Sarah-Jane gasped. “You can't! You'll kill her! Can't you see she's half-dead already, you mean old witch!”

Freddie scrambled up and tried to lift Amy back to her feet, but Miss Sparrow batted him away with a sweep of her hand, and he fell to the floor, gasping. A trickle of blood ran down from his nose, and Miss Sparrow watched it eagerly. Rose shuddered as a pale, pointed tongue licked out over her lips.

“Don't waste it, don't waste it,” Miss Sparrow mumbled, seemingly to herself, almost unaware of the children listening, as Rose passed Freddie a handkerchief. “Little mage-children's blood…Three of them, all at once. Stronger blood. Maybe that's what it needs. Later, we'll try…After this one…This one could be the key, anyway…” Then she shook herself slightly and tore her gaze away from the red-stained linen. “Your turn later,” she said, smiling around at Rose and Isabella and Freddie. She licked her lips again, and her eyes lingered on Rose's handkerchief. Then she dragged Amy out, and the door slammed once more. Freddie drew the marble out of his pocket cautiously.

“I can't believe she took Amy again,” the girl in the nightgown said, shaking her head slowly. “Why? It isn't as if she can have much blood left! She's so weak she can hardly stand up.”

“Alice is right. It'll be the death of her.” Maisie stared miserably at the floor.

The others nodded. “Why didn't she just use one of us?” Jack asked angrily. “We wouldn't go and die and mess up her nice laboratory!”

Rose gulped and gave a strange, retching little moan. She'd just had a truly horrible thought—and she realized too late that she probably ought to have kept it to herself.

“What?” Freddie demanded, his hand still gingerly cupping his bleeding nose.

Rose looked around at them all unhappily, and whispered, “Maybe she
wants
her to die.”