Zachary’s Day Out #4
The driver turned to look at him in amazement. The two of them stared at one another for a moment. Then the driver said, in a hushed tone, “Sir—I have been waiting the whole of my career for someone to say those words to me.”
He roused the horses, and the carriage took off at speed. “Good man!” Alastair cried, as the cab swung out into traffic. Thomas nearly fell off his seat.
Zachary’s cab had turned off the square, and their own cab followed. Thomas willed the horses faster: Zachary wasn’t getting any farther ahead, but they weren’t catching up, either.
“Where do you think he’s going?” Thomas said, turning to Alastair, who was patting down his pockets.
“If I had to guess?” Alastair said grimly. “Ice cream.” He withdrew a small notebook from his pocket and tore a sheet of paper out of it.
“Ice cream where? And what are you doing?” Thomas said, struggling to keep upright as the cab careened around another corner.
“How should I know?” Alastair demanded. “What is this appointment he mentioned? Lunch at what club?”
“He must have told the driver something,” Thomas said.
“I’m sending a fire-message to Henry,” Alastair said, scribbling away at the paper with his stele. “At least he might know what the mirror does or how to undo it.”
The cab came to a sudden halt, and both of them jerked forward unpleasantly.
Thomas saw that this was because their driver had allowed another carriage to turn in front of them at a crossing, and now was forced to follow at a normal pace.
“Show some spine, man!” Alastair told the driver. “Urgent business!”
The driver gave him a doubtful glance. “What kind of business?”
“A child’s life is in danger!” barked Alastair.
“I didn’t see a child get into that cab,” said the driver. “I saw a middle-aged man.”
“It’s the same thing!” Alastair shouted frantically.
The driver had begun to slow the carriage down, probably due to thinking Alastair and Thomas were dangerous lunatics. Fortunately, a bit ahead, Zachary’s cab was coming to a stop.
“Never mind!” Alastair shouted at the same level of intensity. “We’ll take it from here!”
With a flourish he finished the fire-message and held it in the air, where it disappeared with a bright flash and a loud crackle.
“What in blazes was that?” the driver demanded, but Alastair had already flung the door open and leapt from the coach. Thomas, sighing, reached for his wallet and began counting out what he estimated to be three or four times the actual fare.
“What just happened?” the driver demanded of Thomas. “Who are you two?”
“I can’t say,” Thomas said, honestly enough. “Important city business. But thank you.” He handed over the coins. “Do keep the change.”
The driver looked down at the small windfall he’d received, a little mollified. “Well,” he said. “It’s the least you can do.”
Thomas nodded, and without another word, sprang from the carriage and sprinted down the block after Alastair.
—
Once Thomas caught up, he realized why Zachary had alighted where he had.
Alastair was staring through the picture windows of a sweetshop.
Above the door hung a painted sign in an elaborate, old-fashioned Victorian style advertising the shop as butterwick’s fancy.
Brightly colored sweets of all shapes and sizes nestled appealingly in glass jars.
Thomas might have halted on his way to look in the windows himself; the spectacle spoke to a kind of childhood whimsy and delight that could pierce the heart of an adult with nostalgia.
For an actual eighteen-month-old, Thomas thought, it was essentially an opium den.
Alastair did not look swept away by nostalgia or whimsy.
He looked appalled. Inside Zachary sat on the checkerboard floor, legs sprawled in front of him, his suit jacket unbuttoned.
He’d got several of the glass jars in front of him and was grabbing handfuls of boiled sweets, toffees, and licorices out of them and cramming them into his mouth.
His cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s; his beautifully polished cordovan Oxford shoes bounced up and down on the ground in delight.
His waxed mustache had gone askew, and there was a red ring of sugar around his mouth.
Alastair exchanged a look of exasperation with Thomas, gave a heavy, resigned sigh, and pushed the door open.
Its merry jingle was mostly drowned out by the snuffling noises made by Zachary and the shouting of the baffled proprietor—Butterwick, Thomas presumed—a small round figure in a white apron brandishing a metal scoop. “Get up, man! Be reasonable!”
Zachary ignored the shopkeeper, who seemed to not know what to do.
“You have to pay for what you take!”
Zachary let a mouthful of congealed, brightly colored sugar fall from his mouth. “Put in on my bill!” he shouted back.
Butterwick looked up at Alastair and Thomas with great vexation, as though he needed them to confirm that what he was seeing was actually happening. “You don’t have a bill!” he argued with Zachary. “I’ve never seen you before in my life!”
Zachary folded his arms in haughty annoyance, an effect somewhat spoiled by the wad of caramel slowly oozing from between the fingers of his closed fist. “That’s preposterous! I come here all the time! You must not have worked here very long.”
Alastair gave another long-suffering sigh and went to kneel down and try to reason with Zachary. Thomas had already taken his wallet back out of his pocket and approached Butterwick apologetically.
“Apologies, good man. Let me pay for whatever he’s taken.”
“You’d better, my good sir!” Butterwick snapped. “I’ll have to throw out all the jars he’s got in front of him! Are you going to pay for all of that?”
“I suppose I am, yes,” said Thomas. He wondered idly if he could submit a statement of expenses to Sona when all this was over. Of course, that would require Sona to know what had happened, which he hoped would never come to pass.
“What’s wrong with him, anyway?” Butterwick said. He sounded calmer, perhaps because it had occurred to him something could be truly wrong with the man on the floor, or perhaps because of the wad of bills Thomas had just pressed into his palm.
“He’s not allowed out on his own,” Thomas said. “He slipped through our fingers and escaped, I’m afraid, but we’re here to take him back.” This was true enough, at least.
“Ah,” said Butterwick. “Escaped from Bedlam, has he?”
“Something like that,” Thomas muttered.
Zachary was rising to his feet. “Why are you two following me?” he demanded of Alastair, brushing bits of sweet from his tie.
“Zachary,” Alastair said, “we need to take you home now. Come along.”
“I’ll thank you not to call me by my first name,” Zachary sniffed, drawing himself up to a pose of dignified offense. “You’ve no reason to be so inappropriately familiar.” He squinted at Alastair. “What are those funny marks on your arm?”
Of course he could see through the glamour, Thomas thought. He was still a Shadowhunter; most were born with the Sight, though the runes they received later focused it.
Alastair growled his frustration. “I am your older brother, Alastair. You are a tiny child, not a London businessman. You must listen to me!”
Zachary looked down at himself and huffed in disbelief. “Any idiot could see that’s nonsense. I’m a fully grown man. And your elder, I daresay. You’ve got no right to follow me as you have been.”
“Really,” said Alastair, folding his arms in a manner that, Thomas could not help but notice with amusement, closely resembled Zachary’s own posture. “Where do you live, then?”
Zachary snorted. “In a big stone house, obviously. What a stupid question.”
“What’s your home address?” Alastair demanded.
“I don’t have to answer to you!” Zachary stormed to the door, where he retrieved his hat and umbrella. “Good day!” he said, buttoning up his jacket—a difficult task since all of its pockets bulged with his ill-gotten candy. “I say again, good day, sirs!”
Alastair, of course, followed him immediately, leaving Thomas to try to edge past the shopkeeper to the door.
“If I ever see him in here again,” Butterwick said calmly, “I will get the constable and see him arrested and dragged back to Bedlam in chains.”
“You won’t see him again,” Thomas said, hoping he was telling the truth.
Outside, Zachary was waving his umbrella in front of him, keeping Alastair at bay. “Leave me alone!”
“Thomas,” Alastair said. “Get around behind him and grab him.”
This Thomas gamely attempted—there was only the one umbrella, after all—but before he could put his hands on Zachary, the overgrown child had begun to shout again.
“I’m being attacked!” he cried. “Help! Thieves! Thieves and ruffians! Call the police!”
The other mundanes on the street had taken an interest, and a large man with a bowler and about eight inches of height on Thomas came stalking over. “Oi,” he demanded. “What’s all this? These men bothering you?”
“They’re trying to rob me! I need to get back to the office!”
“They’ve ruined your shirt,” the man observed. “Alfred, come help, would you?”
A crowd was beginning to gather around them. Another very large man—Alfred, Thomas guessed—was pushing his way through to join the fray. “Get away from him,” the first man demanded.
Alastair held up his hands in surrender. “We’re not trying to rob him,” he said. “We only need to talk to him—”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” ground out Alfred, getting between them and Zachary. “Make yourselves scarce, or there’ll be trouble.”
Thomas considered what would happen if he and Alastair got into hand-to-hand combat here on the street. They would win any fight, but nothing good would come of it. Alastair clearly agreed, as he took a step back and nodded.
“We don’t want any trouble,” he said, which was true, Thomas thought, even if it was rather too late for that.
“Then shove off,” said the first large man. “Are you all right?” he said to Zachary.