Chapter 14
CHAPTER
“THERE WAS A babe once,” he began. “Taken straight from his pram in Kensington Gardens by a crow-man. Its real form is a crow, but it likes to make itself a man to blend in. Keep watch …”
I thought of the balloon vendor I’d seen who had not aged in years. It must be him.
“This crow, Solomon is its name. Heard the babe crying and reached into its pram and brought him up into the tree. It was there that Solomon gave the child passage to the island and gave him many of the gifts that birds carry. Solomon told this baby that he’d be betwixt-and-between.”
“Betwixt-and-between? What the bloody hell does that mean?” Michael said.
The fire shivered. Shadows crawled higher along the walls.
“It means he belongs to neither world. Not fully bird. Not fully boy. Not alive the way you’re alive, not dead the way the dead are dead.
He exists in the space between things, between childhood and adulthood, between dream and waking, between story and flesh.
” He coughed. “It’s what makes him so difficult to kill.
He’s not entirely real. But he’s real enough to commit murder. ”
Silence fell around us, dense, cloying.
James turned toward the window and when he spoke again, his voice dropped to a frayed thread.
“And he has the girl,” he said. “Agnes. There’s not much time. And he will come for more. All of them.”
Something in my chest seized. “We have to get her out of there!”
“You can’t just run off and go get her. He will kill all of you. We have to plan this right.”
“How long do we have?” John asked.
“She’s much smaller than you lot were. I’d say three days.”
Outside, the fog pressed harder to the glass, as if straining to hear.
John’s voice cut through the quiet. “How do we kill him?”
“You don’t kill him,” James said. “You end him.” His posture stayed rigid. “A creature like that, shadow-rooted, attention-fed, doesn’t die. But his story can end.”
Michael looked to all of us. “I’m ready. What do we need to do?”
“To end it,” James said, looking at us, “you need to call it by its name. The name it was given when it was born.”
My head spun. Everything lurched.
The fire crackled. Shadows jumped across the walls. John’s. Michael’s. James’s. All stretching with the light. Except mine.
James looked at me with a sense of knowing. “I see it. He’s taking your shadow.”
“Wendy …” Michael was crossing over to me before I could tell him that I was fine.
I raised a hand. “I’ll be all right.”
“Your life is tied to his. If you go, I don’t know if you’ll be able to return here,” James said.
“I’ll worry about that later,” I said. I had to save Agnes.
The coals hissed, then sagged. Their glow weakening.
Michael’s gaze slid to John. “You’re the barrister,” he whispered. “Where do we even go to find a name?”
“Records,” John said. “We’ll have to move quickly. Figure out when he went missing. If Scotland Yard has any account of it. Missing persons. Birth records. Anything.”
“You’re going to ask me to walk into Scotland Yard?” I asked.
“We have to, Wendy,” John said. “There’s no time to waste.”
And he was right.
The clock struck. The beginning of a new hour, of which we didn’t know how many we had left.
“It’s time I leave you.” James lifted his hat, turning it slowly in his hands, rehearsing the weight of a farewell he had never learned how to give. At the threshold, he stopped.
“He’ll appear gentle at first, Wendy. Apologize. It will say anything to keep you there. Remember everything he took away from you.”
James adjusted the coat on his shoulders. I opened the door, and we watched the rain for a moment, before he turned around.
“In the life I imagined,” he said quietly, “you and my Roger would be growing old at sea. Two children remade into something stronger than what hunted you.”
Tears filled my eyes, and all I could do was thank him.
And as I closed the door and pressed my back against it, all I could think about was time.
Three days to save Agnes. Three days to save the children. Three days to save myself.