“Do you want to?” I asked. “We can alter the plan if you’ve changed your mind.” I doubted that would work out well for the Novaks or myself, but I didn’t want to give Michael the impression I was pushing him. It seemed unfair after all the weirdness he’d had to endure that he should also be coerced by someone like me, someone he was inclined to trust, but probably shouldn’t even know. I was coercing him a bit and I knew it. I needed Alice dead in a permanent way and I had to get Will out of her clutches. I didn’t mention the difficulty of getting the police involved, or explaining the problem to them in a way that didn’t make Michael sound crazy. It wasn’t likely to happen that way. I let him argue himself out.
“We. could ask Sekhmet. ” Now, that was a pretty crazy suggestion. Suicidal even.
“Sekhmet? Where did you come up with that name?”
“You and Marsden talked about her. I know who she is—she’s the Egyptian goddess of war and justice and women.”
“Do you believe in goddesses now, Michael?”
He glanced away. “I don’t know. I didn’t think I believed in ghosts or vampires. or talking statues. But if she’s real. wouldn’t she be more powerful than we are? Couldn’t she just. fix it?”
“I wish. I don’t think that’s how she works, though. She’s kind of fierce and. well, I don’t think it would be a good idea to ask. She told me to go solve my own problems and do it right or she’d be angry. Angry goddesses are a lot of trouble. They usually break more than they fix.” And I didn’t want my heart to be dinner for Anubis.
Michael looked pensive, nodding. “Hm. Yeah. I guess she might not be a good choice.”
“Do you want to back out?”
“No. I guess not. I’m just worried. I mean. what’s going to happen.?” Michael looked small and scared.
“To you and Will?” I finished.
He nodded, mute and keeping his head down as he walked on.
“Once we’re out of this, I think you’re safe. Alice is the only person interested in hurting you two to get at me. One of us will not be walking away from this. I intend for it to be Alice.”
“I feel creepy when you say that. I mean. ” He dropped his voice to a harsh whisper. “We’re talking about killing someone.”
“Yeah. It creeps me out, too.”
The buildings of stone and brick kept reeling by and it seemed surreal that we were having this conversation on a civilized street in London with a mist-fine rain touching our faces and dewing our hair with tiny lights and jewels. A dank bar in some abandoned, dark place would have been more appropriate. We walked for a while without speaking, our pace more normal, but our thoughts bleak.
“We’re going to do it. Aren’t we?”
“I’m going to do it,” I said. “Because I have to. You’re going to stay out of it, wait with the bikes, and then take Will and run like hell.”
“They’ll be waiting for you—they know you’ll come after my brother.”
“I’m counting on it. We’ve got a plan, remember? And if that doesn’t work, I’ll wing it.”
“Do you need ice cream for that, too?” He snorted a sudden laugh, breaking the uncomfortable tension with a blow of the improbable.
“I hope not. I barely fit in these pants as it is.”
We found the big department store and went inside to test the legitimacy of my job through retail therapy. In the end, the card worked like a magic wand and nothing bad happened. Knowing Edward hadn’t hung me out to dry was more reassuring than I’d expected, but I thought I’d better make the rest of my arrangements without getting back in contact with him, just in case. Michael split to drop off supplies and start moving the motorcycles. I watched him go and then doubled back to the ladies’ washroom to change into my new clothes before I went on about my end of the business.
A little restored and dressed in clean, inconspicuous clothes and practical shoes, I set out to do something about the key Purcell had given me. Marsden had identified it as a very old-fashioned safe-deposit box key—the sort banks had stopped using decades ago. But a few strange little companies still maintained private vaults the key would fit. He’d suggested the most likely one, given the age and financial connections in the case, and I headed there.
My destination proved to be one of four dozen near-identical shop fronts located in an elegant Georgian arcade—a sort of eighteenth-century shopping mall—behind a tragically grandiose facade from a much later era. Ironically, it wasn’t very far from Will’s flat, just north of Piccadilly Circus. The arcade was sandwiched between the Royal Academy and a red-and-white masonry building from the late Victorian era that might have been right at home in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.
A gentleman wearing a vest and a top hat decorated with gold braid asked, “May I assist you, madam?” as he saw me peering at my directions.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about being “madam,” but I wasn’t too proud to ask after the business Marsden had suggested. The long, sky-lighted row of shops was rather more upscale than I’d expected when Marsden had called the shop “an old silversmith’s,” and while I’m not easily intimidated, I know better than to stand out if I can avoid it. But the beadle, as he called himself—which I guessed was a kind of private policeman in a Victorian suit—didn’t mind. His accent was the kind of upper-grade working-class you’d expect of his job—not too posh for the position, but not too dirty, either.
“Ah,” he said, smiling a bit. “That would be down the other end, on the right as you go. The sign’s quite discreet, so you shall have to look sharpish just above the door, but you’ll know it by the silver angel in the window. Percy’s rather fond of that shop.” He gave the merest wink as he said it.
“Percy?” I asked.
“He’s our poltergeist. Don’t mind him and he won’t cause any bother.”
I had the impression that the beadle wasn’t entirely serious, but if he’d met some of the poltergeists I’ve known, he wouldn’t take it so lightly. I thanked him and headed into Burlington Arcade, moving through a throng of ghostly shoppers dressed in clothes from the Regency to the modern. There was also a number of older ghosts doing somewhat less savory things, such as flinging garbage over the former garden wall against which the shops had been built. I imagined that the current row of shops was roofed over to put paid to that sort of shenanigans.
As I walked through the phantom crowd, something blinked and twinkled at me from the surfaces of glass panes and around the corners of doors. When I reached the silversmith’s I was looking for, my eye was drawn to the window where a silver figure about a foot high gleamed in the show lights. It was an angel standing on top of a box carved of cloudy crystal, its wings spread like a cape in the wind while streams of small, flat rectangles fell from its hands. I leaned closer, narrowing my eyes to study the odd figure, and saw that the wings were fletched in oblongs identical to the objects that fell from its hands. I tilted my head and got a better look at one: It was a letter, complete with a tiny chased stamp. The angel’s wings were made of letters. As I stared at it, the silver figure glimmered blue and gold and then turned its head and seemed to wink at me before returning to its normal state.
Something giggled.
“Percy, I presume,” I muttered, opening the shop door.
The interior glowed with light off the polished surfaces of hundreds of silver objects and sparkling glass cases under discreet white lights. A young woman in a stylish pantsuit turned to look at me as I entered. “Good morning,” she said. “How can I assist you today?” She sounded as if she saw me regularly and was delighted I’d dropped by. I was delighted myself to be talking to a perfectly ordinary human with nothing sinister in her energy corona and no otherworldly minions lurking about. I didn’t count Percy.