CHAPTER 30

He turned and started briskly out of the boat basin, his white cane out but obviously more for show than use. I followed and caught up quickly with my long stride.

We went around the railroad tracks and under part of the new train station and came up in front of a broad flight of steps that led to an elaborate iron and gilt gate with a small church visible through its arch. SP had been worked into the black-painted iron filigree above the locked gates and picked out in gold leaf. A plaque mounted beside them identified the building beyond as ST. PANCRAS OLD CHURCH. Marsden stopped close to the gates. Then he shimmered, went thin, and walked through.

“Come in, girl. They’ll be waking up soon to do their own dirty work.”

I looked into the graveyard. The shadows were growing long as dusk fell, but the cemetery in my sight was a field of colored lights, close packed and spiking upward like searchlights reaching for the sky while a tangle of Grey power lines surged beneath it. For a place of the dead, it was one of the liveliest in London. Reluctant, I sank into the Grey and found a temporacline where the gates stood open and rusted. I stepped through and pulled back from the Grey.

The churchyard was busy with ghosts. They pressed in closer than the rush-hour commuters on the Tube had. Marsden led me deeper into the cemetery to a large stone tomb that stood in its own little oval of lawn behind its own iron fence. Marsden slipped through it and crossed the lawn toward the tomb, which looked a lot like an oversized stone phone booth with a tiny Grecian temple in it and a big stone block inside that. Feeling like a trespasser, I followed him until we were both standing beside the memorial stone of one Sir John Soane, an architect with rather odd taste in monuments, and his family. The silence under the stone roof was profound—even the Grey chorus of the city was distant—and it was empty of everything but the two of us.

“Hundred years ago,” Marsden started in a low voice, “this churchyard was three times the size it is now. Reached near to the Euston Road. Then they built a railroad and exhumed the bodies—well, some of ’em. They moved the stones from the lower churchyard to the inner churchyard. There weren’t enough room for ’em all, and a lot of the coffins was rotten or they had none to begin with, so they lined ’em up in trenches or mass excavations or just dumped ’em all in one big hole and made the memorial stones look as nice as they could. Some of them dead was nigh to fifteen hundred years in the ground, and they did not take well to the move. They’re restless. Just look out there; look at ’em movin’ about. You see how they’re clustered like prisoners round that tree and up that rise? Them’s the places that fool Hardy stuck ’em, pilin’ up the ghosts in batteries that could light half of England. This fella here, he wanted his rest quiet. So he built this. Grand and mad, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“I doubt he quite knew what he was doing, but the way he had it made and the way it’s laid, the shape of it as it lies across the leys, makes a sort of eddy in the Grey. We’re surrounded by a fence of the supernatural but immune to its touch until we step out. The ghosts don’t even know we’re here, so they can’t grass on us to any snooping mages or sorcerers. So, what made Edward send you?”

“I don’t breach client confidentiality without a damned good reason.”

“Don’t play games with me, girl.”

“I think a game is exactly what you want. You keep alluding to my father and to answers, but you’re not giving any. What game are you up to? You show up from nowhere and you know too much. Then you vanish and suddenly there are demi-vamps on my tail.”

“’Twasn’t my work as done that.”

“Really? How did you know where to find me today? Or yesterday?”

“I told you—I had a premonition. That’s one of my particular talents. Yours seems to be giving offense.”

“And here I thought it was attracting pains in the ass like you.”

Marsden’s pale, eyeless face was smooth and cool as the stones we stood on. For once I couldn’t see someone grinding ideas and lies into a response, but he was thinking. After a moment, he spoke again, chuckling a bit.

“He’s lost his control.”

“Excuse me?”

“Edward. He sent you to Purcell. But Purcell’s not there. The empire is failing—he’s been pulling strings in London for a dog’s age, but they’ve been cut, haven’t they? Edward’s panicking. He hasn’t any more idea what’s going on than you do.”

“And you do?”

“In no wise.”

“Then how do you propose to help me?”

He laughed. “I’m not here to help you, girl. I’m here to stop you.”

CHAPTER 31

“Stop me from doing what? How can you possibly stop me when you don’t even know what I’m doing?” I spoke boldly enough, but I didn’t know the answer, either, and I was afraid of him. I pushed myself back two silent steps. Whatever else Marsden was, he was a Greywalker and one with more experience than I had. It would only take a step out of our charmed circle by the tomb to be back in the churning power of the Grey. I wanted a head start.

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you’re up to for Kammerling. It’s what you may become that cannot be allowed. That is what I must put a stop to.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He cocked his head and adjusted his stance a little to face the sound of my voice. It hit me that in this Grey-free pocket, he was truly blind; he couldn’t see me at all so long as I stuck close to the Soanes’ tomb.

“You’re meant to take up where your dad wouldn’t go,” Marsden whispered. “He didn’t hop the stick because he could see ghosts, and he wasn’t mad, neither. He tried to put a stop to the Pharaohn’s plans by destroying the tool: himself. He didn’t know about me before him or that you’d be next in line.”

“Next in line for what? You make it sound like this runs in the family.” I wasn’t sure it didn’t, but I hoped that wasn’t true.

“Not exactly, but the possibility was strong in your case, and what your dad did made it stronger. It only needed a bit of pushing in the right direction and you’d be perfect for the job. And he’s pushed you ever since your dad blew his own head off. You’re knees deep in death, tangled up in the Grey since you was a child. He just needed you to die a little. Then he could shape you a bit while you were out of this armor of flesh.” He whipped out the cane and struck me on the shoulder. “Ah, there you are.”

“Ow! Who? Shape me into what? A Greywalker? I think it’s too late to put a stop to that.” I stopped talking and eased aside, keeping on my toes to make less noise on the stonework and get a little closer to the steps.

“The Pharaohn-ankh-astet. The king of worms. He has a plan. Has had since he and Edward first faced off here. two, three hundred years ago or more. I can’t tell you what it is—I don’t know—but whatever it is, you can be assured it is terrible. And he needs a Greywalker. A particular type. And as he couldn’t find one, he thought he’d make one.”

“Make one?” That rang an uncomfortable bell for me. I paused and stepped back to where I’d stood a moment earlier. “Sekhmet said something about the asetem-ankh-astet. Who’s this Pharaohn?” I hoped it wasn’t who I thought.

Surprise reshaped his face. “You’ve talked to the Lady of Dread?”

“You didn’t know that? I thought you knew everything I did and everywhere I went.”

“I have the curse of premonition, but it’s not a bloody crystal ball, my girl,” he spat. “When and where did you converse with her?”

“Today. In front of Sotheby’s. She told me Will was missing, that the asetem were involved. That’s why I went to see Michael, which was where the Red Guard picked us up after I chopped up the golem standing in for Will.”