Chapter 58

At the far end of the street, shadows were sparse. Blood spattered the ground, only to be washed away by the rain. The torn wounds steamed white in the downpour, then sealed themselves as good as new.

"Fresh blood... I want to drink it clean... No, I must control myself. This is the Frenzied-Blood Sect's test... The enforcers have still found me—they know the Timed Death Sentence was never carried out."

"I have to hurry. I must hurry! The blame on both the Inside and the Outside has to be shaken off—shaken off!"

Baron stuffed the battered windbreaker that served as concealment into the Dragon-Gall ring, then changed into a clean set of casual clothes in a roadside phone booth.

By the time the east turned pale he stepped out, after making sure the Battle-Sisters weren't on his tail. He hailed several cabs and, after a brief look, chose the second-to-last one.

"506 Westing Street."

...

Xenon headlights cut through the curtain of rain and the taxi pulled up on Westing's long avenue.

"Three pounds," the driver said.

Baron handed over the notes and asked him to wait by the curb.

"I'm busy," the driver muttered. "This'll cost me fares."

Busy my foot. You're the only cabbie on the street sitting in your car smoking and reading the paper—consider this charity for your business.

Baron kept the thought to himself, counted out twenty more pounds, and remarked that it was about a London cabbie's daily takings.

The driver reached for the money with a grin, but Baron held back: five pounds now as deposit, the remaining fifteen when he returned.

The driver blinked, then nodded.

Baron stepped out.

The rain was heavy, visibility poor, yet he still remembered the layout of the houses. Few pedestrians braved the pavement. Following memory, he arrived outside Mrs. Eleanor's villa.

Nothing had changed since his last visit—red brick, pointed arches, dark tiles; ivy rampaged across the gable, jewelled green where rain shattered against it.

Every window was shrouded in heavy curtains, not a gap at the sills or in the parlour. From the outside it looked like a sealed coffin, enlarged.

Because her family lay in coffins, she had turned her house into one to shut away her heart? Baron mused, then recalled he had seen no bodies of Mrs. Eleanor's kin in the cemetery the night before, so perhaps the thought was mistaken.

Though that was precisely what he had come to investigate.

He did not enter at once, but loitered like a rain-drenched pedestrian, letting the Mimic's Chain slip into motion. He looked for watchers or pursuers and, as always, mapped the best routes for flight and concealment.

Years of experience had left him with instincts rather than technique; the Inquisition's Battle-Sisters still toyed with him through superior skill. But running—at running he had maxed every talent point.

After circling and finding nothing suspicious, he vaulted onto Eleanor's windowsill, slit his palm, and let blood fill the lock until it hardened into a key.

Click. He eased the window up and climbed inside.

...

His last visit had ended in debt-collecting and arrest, so Baron still knew the second floor well enough. He made for the bedroom Carmen had shown him, ear pressed to the panel, listening. Silence. He slipped inside.

The room was unchanged since the family's death; some Europeans, he had heard, kept the spaces of the departed exactly as they were.

He paused before the bedside photograph of the family of four and nodded an apology, then began to search—only to freeze at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Without hesitation he dropped flat beneath the bed.

The door opened. A pair of cartoon slippers stepped inside.

Mrs. Eleanor must be forty-five if she was a day—still so girlish?

The thought had barely formed when the mattress sagged with a soft thump and a girl sighed above him.

"Why did Mother pull every curtain shut and forbid Grandfather and Grandmother from opening them? At this rate I'll never see the sun again."

Baron, who had been preparing to crawl out, froze. Shock rippled through him; unnoticed, his pupils flashed crimson and gold. Even the Crystals of Prying Mystery failed to hide the cross of judgement that blazed forth.

A heartbeat later the cross faded. Baron lay still, breathing softly, listening as the girl poured out her worries.

Finally she murmured, "If only Father were here," and left.

Baron tilted his head in the dimness and caught a glimpse of her as the door closed: silver hair, pale grey eyes—almost identical to Carmen except for colour. Yet perhaps it was not the girl who resembled Carmen, but the witch who had copied the girl's face.

According to the reports—and his own eyes—that girl and her grandparents should have been dead. Yet here she was, alive.

Every discarded possibility surged back.

The dead family he had seen at his arrest—something had always felt off. At room temperature blood clots in two and a half to five minutes; the bodies had been lying in pools of gore, yet the time of death could not have been more than ten minutes before. The deliberate arrangement—three corpses side by side on the bed—suggested the killer had planned more, but been interrupted by Carmen.

Add the emptied coffins, the Bloodsucker who preyed on families of three, the blood-ritual, the missing souls...

The chain of suspicion tightened.

Mrs. Eleanor had drawn the curtains because "they" were still alive; she hid the family's impossible happiness from prying eyes.

When the footsteps faded downstairs, Baron crawled out. On the bedside table stood a new frame: a photograph of five.

His eyes twitched. Everything fell into place.

Without hesitation he slipped through the window.

...

Back in the cab he paid the remaining fifteen pounds.

When the driver asked where next, Baron named a place.

The taxi halted on an empty road near the police station.

The driver stammered that the twenty pounds had not included the fare.

"It includes it," Baron said flatly.

The driver smiled. "All right, sir. Consider this trip on me. We're here—best get out now. Rain's light, but if it gets heavier you'll never leave."

Baron nodded, yet stayed seated, leafing through a newspaper.

"That twenty pounds," he said idly, "covers not only this ride but the fare I skipped last time."

In the rear-view mirror the driver froze as his passenger closed the paper, eyes cold, golden pupils flaring around a cross-shaped scar.

The Dragon-Knight pressed a pistol to the back of his seat and into the driver's skull. "Am I right, Bloodsucker? Or should I say... Master Baggin's pupil, Mr. Rankow?"