The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (30 page)

Chris jerked up. No, he―yes. Yes, he had to. It would work. He knew it would work. He straightened his shoulders. He took a deep breath. “All right,” he said quietly. “How about this? No money, just one favour.”

Kolston threw back his head and barked with laughter. “Hah! You gonna weave me up some new business cards, kiddo?”

“Not me,” Chris said. He took a deep breath and pushed on. “My sister. She’s a spiritbinder. A wizard. It’s been speculated that she’s the strongest alive today. One binding, or summoning, or unbinding, or―or anything you want. No questions asked.”

Kolston let out a low whistle. His eyes narrowed. Chris saw what he’d been hoping for there, now: greed. Pure glittering
want
. “That’s right,” he murmured. “The White Clover wizardling. She’s yours.”

“Yes,” Chris whispered. This was a mistake. He couldn’t do this.

“No questions asked?” Kolston asked slowly.

“No directly hurting someone.” Chris had to remember, he
had
to keep in mind that this man was a killer, a heartless rogue who destroyed people for a living. But he was so close, so
close
, and if could just get that
pen
… “Otherwise… no questions asked.”

Kolston peered at him. A long time passed. A clock ticked somewhere outside the room. “Two favours,” he said, finally.

Chris puffed up a bit. “
One
,” he said firmly. “And I want my thirty royals back.” He was trading his soul. The
least
the damned man could do was take it.

Kolston sighed. “You’re not going to budge, are you? I know that look. Bloody
fine
, then.” And his ratty, awful face broke into a smile. “Kiddo,” he said, extending an ink-stained hand, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Chris reached out, but then hesitated. This was wrong. This was against everything he stood for. This was a mistake.

Doctor Livingstone was doomed without him.

So he shook anyway.

hristopher Buckley had sorely underestimated what his employer could create with three months’ worth of newspapers.

He stepped wonderingly into the office of O. Faraday, Deathsniffer, eyes widening until they were bulging out of his skull. There was no trace of the tasteful, dark reception area with its pleasantly professional atmosphere. The flickering candles that usually rested on every surface had been
thankfully
extinguished, preventing, at least, a catastrophic fire. All the light came from a flickering salamander-lantern on his desk. Papers were strewn around the room like there had been a sylph loose in an archive. Absolutely everything was littered with the disemboweled remains of broadsheets. Chris’s mouth fell open. “What the bloody…?”

A blonde head popped up from behind his desk. Olivia turned and saw him and grinned. “Ah! Christopher!” She was holding another salamander lantern in her hand. There was paper in her hair. “You’re back! Are you feeling better about Livingstone?”

“Yes,” Chris answered honestly. And he’d only traded his soul for it.

“Good!” Olivia chirped, oblivious. “
I
have discovered something while you were off spreading balm on your soft heart!” She leapt to her feet and immediately began striding about the office. She didn’t seem to have any particular reason to her movements. She just had energy to burn. Papers swirled in her wake. “There had to be a pattern. Once a month, I realized, but not on a particular
day
a month. And not with any actual set number of days between.” Her hands moved as she spoke, fingers dancing like she was mimicking butterflies. “Timothy Lane died on the 7th. A Calday. Virginia Landon died on the 3rd of the next month. Deorday. And then Georgiana Edison died the 30th of that
same month.
Cwenday. And finally, this last one. Cwenday again, but the 1st of a new month―skipping an entire month.” She turned to give Chris a sly look. “Are you following this?”

“No,” Chris responded honestly, his head already spinning trying to visualize the calendar she was describing.

She laughed wickedly. “Don’t fret. Not everyone can keep it all up here.” She tapped at her temple slyly and stomped back over to his desk. She rummaged about and came up with a set of hastily sketched out calendars laying out the last four months. He scanned them as she held them up proudly, but a lot more dates than just the ones she’d outlined were marked.

“Why are there marks on all those Godsdays?” he mused. “And the Maerdays directly after them?”

Olivia turned the calendars around coyly and shook a finger at him. “You’re getting ahead!” she scolded, seeming a bit genuinely disappointed.

“Please skip to the end,” Chris urged. He couldn’t make sense of it.

Olivia sighed. She leaned back against the edge of his desk, set aside the calendars, and reached up to straighten out her necktie. “All right,” she said. “We’ve both been terribly misled by not being church-goers, it seems. We missed something very simple. Anyone who says their prayers every night would have noticed, but since we’re both terrible ambivalent heathens, we didn’t even
think
of Hallowed Godsday.”

Something itched at the back of his brain and Chris’s brow bent into furrows.
Christopher, surely I can persuade you to attend just this week. It’s Hallowed Godsday, after all.
Why had he never said yes? It would have made Fernand so happy. “One Godsday a month…” he murmured.

“Not exactly,” Olivia corrected. “Like I said, Miss Landon and Miss Edison actually died in the
same month
. Occasionally, there are two Hallowed Godsdays in one month, because―”

“―because it’s always the Godsday that follows a full moon!” Chris remembered now. “Yes, that’s right! Fernand―he sometimes spoke of―it’s the most important Godsday in a month for those who keep the faith closely. And then the Maerday that immediately follows―”

“All the priests take their single day of rest,” Olivia said, a smile spreading across her face until it was almost a rictus. She held up her calendars again, and pointed to the Godsdays and corresponding Maerdays she’d marked out.

Every single red skull she’d drawn on the calendars happened within a week of Hallowed Godsday.

“So…” Chris said, knowing that Olivia had actually stumbled onto something, but not sure what, exactly, she’d stumbled onto.

“So,” Olivia looked like the cat who’d knocked over the cream. “We need to find out what exactly these Maidens and Youths all did on that single day of rest. Don’t we?”

And if they could… excitement stirred deep in his gut, and he tried to ignore. “How long do we have until
next
Hallowed Godsday?” he asked.

“Twenty-three days,” Olivia answered promptly. Of course, she’d already done all the math. “Long enough that we shouldn’t have to worry about our friend making any more bodies for us to see to.” She laughed. “It’s so simple, isn’t it? Goodness, I should have hired someone who attended church, shouldn’t I have?”

Chris flushed. “You didn’t pick it up, either,” he said, sounding a little churlish, and Olivia’s eyes lit up like a child seeing a sweet. Before she could jump him for it, however, the front door opened.

Chris quickly maneuvered out of the way of whatever guest they were receiving, dipping his head and murmuring an apology.

“Ah, there we are. It took you long enough,” Olivia said, straightening. “Good afternoon, Mother Greta.”

Chris looked up, surprised. Indeed, the tall, thin, meek Mother Priestess stood in the doorway, and Chris made the sign of Three and Three in respect. Olivia forewent the gesture altogether. Mother Greta took a hesitant step into the office, glancing about with an expression of shock and growing horror on her face. Her expression showed what she was thinking clearly:
Oh no. I have delivered the fate of my holy family into the hands of a madwoman
. “Miss Faraday…” she breathed. “I… you said you needed to speak to me…”

“Yes!” Olivia said, rushing forward, pushing Chris aside so hard he stumbled, and linking arms with Mother Greta, pulling her along. “Indeed! Come right along and we’ll…” She stopped in front of the velvet upholstered chairs, both stacked with the innards of the newspapers she’d presumably used to piece the last few months together. Her expression was almost comically confused, as if she was facing an unsolvable puzzle. Chris darted forward and quickly set about grabbing the papers, filling up his arms until he was at risk of losing the whole stack, and he moved off, dropping them into a corner.

Olivia flowed into one of the chairs. The Mother sat timidly, looking as if she might change her mind and leave at any moment. “Might I offer you tea?” Olivia said sweetly. Chris made his way over to the tea trolley, which was also covered in the remains of Olivia’s fact-finding mission.

While Chris filled the pot with water and tapped the little burner to wake the salamander, Olivia performed a remarkably political softening on Mother Greta. It always shocked Chris to realize that she could play at courtesy if she saw value in it and understood the situation well enough to feign empathy. She inquired gently about the state of Mother Greta’s holy family, tailoring her questions about each member specifically from what Chris had told her about his encounters with Sister Elisa, Grandmother Harriet, and Grandfather Thaddeus.

By the time the water was boiling, Mother Greta actually looked mostly comfortable, which was remarkable considering she was sitting in the bowels of a news-devouring monster. The priestess was now offering information of her own accord, softly and haltingly, with Olivia only nudging her. Chris carefully filled the tea strainer with the leaves while he listened.

“It will get easier,” Mother Greta murmured. “At least, I need to keep telling that to myself. We’ll be assigned a new Youth in days, now. Grandmother Eugenia says to just keep looking forward, it gets easier, but it’s different for her. Brother Timothy wasn’t―”

Olivia struck like a snake. “Oh,” she said, almost too casually. “You know Grandmother Eugenia, then?”

Mother Greta’s eyes widened, and then she dropped her gaze. Chris lifted the leaves out of the water, watching her intently from the corner of his eye. “Church secrets,” she said quietly.

“One thing I like to tell my clients,” Olivia said. “Keeping secrets never solves murders.”

Mother Greta bit her lip. Chris poured the tea. “The person who did this is still out there,” he said quietly. He tried to nudge Mother Greta with his will.
Help us. Trust Olivia.
“And they could hurt another Maiden or Youth.”

The Priestess nodded slowly. Chris cursed quietly. Had his words reached her, or the pressure of his will? Impossible to say. “I take it with two lumps,” the priestess said, and Chris fulfilled the order.

“In theory,” Mother Greta said, and she nodded gratefully when Chris brought her a saucer. She cradled it delicately in her long hands. “The holy families are entirely insular. A fully self-sufficient unit.”

“In reality?” Olivia pressed. She was losing patience with the supportive act, and there was a gleam of avarice in her icy eyes.

Mother Greta took a tip of her tea, one finger extended like a fine upper-class lady. Chris suddenly wondered who she’d been before she’d failed categorization. And how long she’d been trapped in that room with a man like Alfred Pritchard watching stonily and making his notes. “In reality,” she admitted, “it’s the loneliest thing in the world. Only being able to really talk to five other people, none of whom understand or identify with your specific burdens.” She hunched her shoulders and refused to look at them. “The concerns of a middle-aged woman seem silly to a wise grandmother, while a young lady can’t relate to them at all.” She took another sip, and Chris could tell that she was stalling. Quietly, he found his notebook and opened to a fresh page.