The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (40 page)

“At least Georgiana’s gone,” Penny soothed. She patted Calum’s shoulder gently.

The whole lot of them nodded sagely at the name of his childhood friend, grim-faced, like a group of conservative old men talking about Doctor Livingstone’s arrest.

“Was she so bad?” he heard himself asking.

“Yes,” Elisa murmured, brushing hair away from her face.

Margaret nodded, fanning herself furiously with one hand. “Queen Georgiana, we called her,” she said bitterly. “And she was a right cunt. To every one of us, but especially Calum. Mocking his stutter, sabotaging his work, saying that she’d throw herself from a window before she married him and let him into her bed. She almost
broke
him.”

“I would have been all r-right, Margaret,” Calum said, and Margaret set her jaw and shook her head, but didn’t argue.

“Normally”―Tibault stuffed his hands into his pockets―“we just make plans to all meet on certain days, but today was a bit different.”

Elisa, standing in the back, held up a newspaper.
ACCIDENTAL DEATHS OF DARRINGTON PRIESTS WORK OF CRAZED SERIAL KILLER?
the headline read. Chris’s heart sank.
Godsdammit, Olivia.
Maris was going to have
both
of their heads for this. She just couldn’t help herself but be so obviously a Deathsniffer, could she? “People have been coming in and out of the churches all day,” Sister Elisa breathed. “Since just after dawn. Asking questions.”

“Not easy questions to answer,” Tibault added.

Penny nodded. “Especially to those of us who’ve… uh, lost someone.” She shot a quick glance at Elisa and then looked away. Chris couldn’t even bring himself to follow her gaze. “So Margaret worked some magic and sent out the message through her old street friends.”

“Elisa, Tibs, Penny and Calum, Amanda and Lawrence, Ian, and Patty and Alex.” Margaret counted on her fingers. “And me.” Ten. “It used to be Tom came along, but he got scared off hard by Wendy’s constant hullabaloo about the Father’s Wrath. And there was…” Another quick glanced at Elisa. “Um, nevermind.” She bared her teeth in an exaggerated wince.

“Lachlan,” Elisa whispered. The name hung in the dead, hot air, a whirlpool of pain that tried to pull them all in.

“Righty,” Margaret said, tugging at one of her braids awkwardly. “It’s still ten, though, because Penny comes now, and Alex.” She glanced about. Her mouth twisted a bit. “He and Patty didn’t show, though.” She scuffed at the ground and stuck out her tongue. “Busy getting busy, I figure.”

“Alex is a good sod,” Tibault interjected. “He treats Patricia worlds better than Timothy ever did.”

Margaret shrugged. “He’s fine enough,” she agreed. “And worlds better for Patty, you won’t see me fight it. But he’s sure made her standoffish.”

There was something to this, somewhere. Chris tried to focus his mind enough to make mental note of all of it. The group, the roles, the relationships. Sister Margaret’s foul mouth and street girl past. Brother Tibault’s reluctant, rough around the edges management. Sister Penelope’s mothering. He’d stumbled into a functioning little community, and somehow it had formed entirely through Grandmother Eugenia’s bending of the rules to allow the families to come together.

Calum’s small voice piped up. “Does the lady Deathsniffer know w-who’s doing this?” he asked quietly.

Margaret blew out a stream of air. “Righty,” she said. “We sure do want to know. She doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing, though, just asks a lot of questions.”

A burst of protective irritation swelled in Chris’s chest and he clenched his jaw. “She’s working through four
months
of data. If the lot of you had come forward earlier instead of leaving Mother Greta to draw the connections herself…”

Tibault shrugged. “We thought maybe it wasn’t so―so bad,” he said quietly. “Timothy was a right sodding bastard, Mister Buckley, if you’ll forgive my saying so. Patricia was better off without him and every single one of us knew it, especially her. And then, Virginia…” He glanced away. “I… I really did do my best with her. I did. I tried everything, for a year, but she wouldn’t grow into it. She never got better. So I just thought…”

“That you’d get a better Maiden on round two,” Margaret said. “Too bad you got Hot-Windy, instead.”

“Wendy’s not so bad,” Tibault disagreed, but he was flushing.

“Tibs isn’t lying, though,” Sister Penny said, patting Calum’s shoulder. “I know I’m late to this, but everyone was just
better
with Timothy, Virginia, and Georgiana gone. They were just bad priests!”

Margaret whirled on her. “And what about me, Pen?” she demanded. “Would you all be
better
with me gone? Because I’m as bad as they come! I put in my vote for reaching out and telling somebody, but hell if any of you listened!” She huffed. “I thought it was coming for me, next, for sure!”

“But they came for Lachlan, instead,” Elisa murmured.

The group went quiet. “Yeah,” Tibault said finally. “None of us expected that.”

“So now there’s no pattern,” Margaret groused. “Which is just
peachy
. It could be anyone! Well. If they’re picking people off at random, I wouldn’t mind seeing Jason meet a mean dryad. My destined husband would look worlds better with a tree growing out of his arse.”

Olivia would want to know this. All of this. Should he go to her office and tell her? He remembered her blushing, stuttering, and then insisting that he leave despite it. No, he’d tell her tomorrow, at the ball. He’d take her to one side and share all of this. Why was it that people just seemed to trust him like they did? They were just
giving
him all of this information. He’d just been at the right place and the right time and they poured it out for him. He narrowed his eyes. He projected his will at Sister Margaret.
Stop helping me
.

“Does Grandmother Eugenia know about any of this?” he asked. He kept his eyes on Margaret.

But she beat the rest of them to the punch, Brother Tibault with his mouth half open, in her eagerness to offer information. “Hells, hells, and hells, Mister Buckley. Nothing happens in Darrington’s churches that Granny Jeanie doesn’t know all about.”

What about murder? Chris wondered. He’d tell Olivia that at the ball tomorrow, too. A ball he’d be attending alone. Would he even be able to dance now, without thinking of Will’s body against his? Of the still air in the old Buckley ballroom shivering with Will’s voice as he whispered over and over, step, side, together?

He should apologize.

But then what? He wasn’t like that. He
couldn’t
be like that. He’d flirted with Rachel Albany on the magic mirror.

“Don’t worry,” Chris said aloud. He had to get out of here. The heat seemed like a weight, a thousand pounds on his shoulders, and the looming form of the Floating Castle in the corner of his eye was making him nauseated. “I won’t tell any of your families about this.”

Olivia was a different story.

He tapped a long, manicured fingernail against the carved wooden frame of the mirror.

The gnome inside woke up. The brown glow brightened. Chris looked at his nail, turning his finger from side to side. Was that
delicate
of him? Keeping himself so well groomed, so finely dressed, being so very concerned about his skin and his hair? His father certainly never had cared beyond the basics of propriety.

The brown light began to dim. He tapped the mirror again.

He
had kissed Will. Will had kissed back, but that wasn’t what mattered. He’d known, and he admitted to himself that he’d known, that Will would react in the way he did. It was impossible to pretend that Will didn’t have a touch of the fey about him. They’d flirted at the edge for months now, and only Chris’s special penchant for ignoring reality had kept it unnamed and untouched.

The sad thing was, he really did believe that Will would have let them go on forever like they were. Dancing on the precipice, never acknowledging. Will would have been content with that much.

But now…

Chris wasn’t a molly. He knew he wasn’t, because he couldn’t be. Because he had a definite interest in the female sex. He knew he did. So what did that
make
him?

He tapped the mirror again.

He turned his head to look out the frosted windows framing his door. Through the low, heat-heavy glow of the salamander, he could see the bench where his daily visitor had been parked for three months.

Empty.

He made up his mind.

He played the chimes in the familiar frequency and watched the mirror eat his reflection, cloud over, and pulse its russet glow. He stood and he realized that his hair was still mussed, his cufflinks absent, his coat dusty. She’d think he was drunk.

Did that change anything?

No.

Miss Albany’s face appeared in the mirror. Her smile was broad and sincere and so very welcome. His heart melted a bit just seeing her, acknowledging his attraction to her despite her plainness, his attraction that had grown because of her
character
―it made him feel less aberrant and wrong. It made him feel like a normal, red-blooded man who could fall in love with a normal, red-blooded woman. He relaxed.

“Mister Buckley―” she said, and before she could say another word, he interrupted her.

“Miss Albany,” he said, in a rush. “I believe you are right. I believe Rosemary
should
come to Darrington, for only tomorrow, and should leave at dawn on Maerday, and if you could both be here on a train from Summergrove the first thing tomorrow morning, it would be only my pleasure to meet you at the station, and―and only my
honour
to―to invite you to accompany me to a ball I’ve been invited to attend late in the evening.” He took a deep breath. “On my arm,” he finished, and Miss Albany’s eyes grew very, very wide. “As my lady.”

he moment he saw Rosemary, his eyes welled with tears.

She stood on the platform, a carpet bag held before her in both hands, glancing about in the crowd. She looked so―
different
. The enamel and rouge he and Miss Albany had agreed on was very much in evidence, and she’d lost more of her baby fat than Chris had been able to detect on the other side of a mirror. She was at least a third of a head taller and her hair was swept up and back and tucked under a pretty little country hat, rather than left loose in ringlets like a porcelain doll. Her gown was simple―provincial―but it suited her. The lacy confections she’d been wearing her whole life, courtesy of his indulgence, had always made her look so young. This simple dress, high- collared, high-waisted, with simple lines and washed out colours…