The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden (16 page)

“We wish to find a ring.”

“Aha,” said the man to Thomas. “A common request. I am pleased to tell you I have assisted in many such matters.” There was no hint of pain at the lie. How easily humans did it. “Sir, do you not wish to remove your cloak? You must be very warm.”

Deadnettle ignored him. So did Thomas. “You wish to discover Mordecai's secret,” Thomas continued. The man's eyes widened. He looked from Thomas to Marigold and peered at Deadnettle as if hoping he would suddenly be able to see through the thick cloth.

“Help us, Jensen,” Deadnettle said, speaking for the first time. A twitch of the arm, and his cloak dropped away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Path of Faery Letters

J
ENSEN WENT WHITE WITH SHOCK,
pale as a faery. Thomas near laughed at Deadnettle. That'd been a decent bit of theater, better than the tumblers and ventriloquists in the music hall.

“What
are
you?”

“We are called by many names,” Deadnettle said, and Thomas heard the chant in his mind.
Old ones, old ones, old ones.

“What do you know of a ring called the Ring of Dispel?” Thomas asked, paying no mind to Jensen's question.

“I . . . Ah. That is, yes, anyone interested in the Mysteries knows of it. An old tale. Very old. There are many versions, but the thread of the story remains the same. Given
to a human by the queen of the fae—” His face went, if anything, even more bloodless. “It cannot be.”

“It is,” said Thomas. “He's been keeping 'em locked up, prisoners! Making 'em weak and sick and dying!”

“You shall have to tell me everything,” said Jensen, pointing to the chairs around the table with a trembling hand.

They did. Thomas filled in what bits he could, but mostly it was Deadnettle and Marigold. All about being dragged through the gateways and locked in cages when they weren't in the horrid cellar, and the iron and the bells. Jensen rose when Deadnettle reached that part, and moved every bit of the metal from the room.

“Tell me about the other one,” said Jensen when he returned, looking at Deadnettle but pointing at Thomas. “How is it possible?”

Deadnettle opened his mouth, as did Marigold, but it was Thomas who spoke first. “Magic created us,” he said, “and I never got to meet 'im, but I think he was just a boy, like me. He was just trying to do what his elders bade him, and what was best for his family. He was wrong, and all right, maybe it didn't work such treat, but I dunno if being wrong was his fault. Not when the whole thing was never his idea in the first place. Where I'm from, folks try to scrape by every day, and do the best they can. It's what Lucy 'n Silas do, and it's what I did until I met this lot. Still
am, p'raps. So I reckon, I reckon Thistle was mostly like me. He could do a few things I can't, but I can do a few things
he
couldn't, so there. Maybe if we'd ever been in the same place at once, we'd've been like a whole person. Like them twins who finish each other's words an' that.”

“You forgot clever,” Deadnettle added mildly. “Both of you.”

“And very brave,” said Marigold.

Thomas felt his cheeks heat.

“Well,” said Jensen. “I never imagined. I knew Mordecai had some secret, some knowledge he would not impart to the rest of us, but this is cruelty beyond what I would have thought even him capable of. I apologize, on behalf of us humans, for what you have been forced to endure. You may think me a charlatan, an impostor”—his foot hit the pedal of an odd device beneath the table, and a series of muffled raps sounded—“and you would be correct. But my interest in what is beyond our limited vision has always been real. You must explain one more thing, however.”

Thomas waited. Deadnettle sat with his hands folded upon the tablecloth, and Marigold leaned forward. “If we were to locate the ring, and how I would like to, not only for Mordecai's defeat but to right such grievous wrongs done to your kind, how will you use it? I saw with my own eyes your relief when I removed the iron.”

It seemed weeks, months, years ago that Thomas had been frustrated by not being able to ruffle the leaves on the trees. He straightened his shoulders. “Thomas is a very special kind of faery,” said Marigold. “He will save us.”

•   •   •

The room was cleared of near everything save the table and chairs and one of the lamps. Jensen's tools and tricks to fool the humans who came to call upon him weren't needed here, and Deadnettle said it helped to be free of any distraction. Jensen wasn't half-thirsty, stopping to drink two glasses of water from the jug and calling to the gray-haired woman for more. Thomas's stomach shook with a whole storm of butterflies. It was all very well for Marigold to say he'd save 'em, and he would, too, but he'd not done this bit before. Marigold telling him all about what it was like didn't feel the same, in the face of it.

Furious whispers came from the corner. Thomas left Jensen rolling up his sleeves and neared, listening to the argument.

“I am more experienced.”

“And I am stronger.”

“All the more reason. You know the difficulties of this, Marigold. I would be less of a loss.”

“Nothing will happen, Deadnettle. Let Thomas choose.”

“He cannot possibly know—”

“Let me choose what?”

The faeries faced him, young and old. “The longer a person has been gone, the more difficult it is to reach them,” said Deadnettle. “The more dangerous for us. Marigold and I were
discussing
which of us should allow him passage into this world so that he might answer our question.”

Oh.

Thomas didn't want to choose; Deadnettle was right. How was he supposed to know which of 'em would be better at it? But he, Thomas, had promised to save them. He was their faery king, though he could do none of the things they could do. He could do things they could not, and that made him, as Marigold said, a very special kind of faery. True, Deadnettle might've thought at first that he could just boss Thomas about, tell him what to do and he'd do it, and maybe Thomas'd done it at first too.

But not now.

“You can do it?” he asked Marigold.

“Of course.”

Jensen cleared his throat. The three of them turned to him.

“I am afraid I do not know what to do next. My previous customers have been content—or perhaps not—with whatever show I put on for them, but I suspect it is you who will be putting one on for me this time.”

The butterflies in Thomas's stomach urgently flapped their wings. Deadnettle set a chair a little ways from the table, muttering that it was far preferable to a cage and, clearly bested, gestured Marigold to it.

“You will have to ask her to bring you the keeper of the iron ring. Ask for the ring by name, as we do not know for certain the name of the one who held it last. It may take some time for the spirit to appear; she will have to search far back across the ages.”

Thomas, Deadnettle, and Jensen took their seats at the table, their faces turned to Marigold. Jensen patted his forehead with a handkerchief far finer than his suit.

“Ready,” said Marigold, and closed her eyes. Another gulp of water, and Jensen spoke.

Nothing happened, bar a hush falling over the room. And then, then it swirled and thickened until Thomas tasted fog on his tongue. Marigold's large eyes flickered under their lids. The lamp flame dipped and stretched, casting shadows across the room. Thomas thought for a moment that Jensen had put his foot on the pedal of his device, but it was the shutters tapping outside the window.
Tap, tap, tap, SLAM.

When they had walked here, there had been no wind. It howled now, screaming down the lane outside as if trying to get away as fast as it could. More screams came, human
ones, paired with footsteps running down the stairs and a door slamming below.

Blood ran cold in Thomas's veins. His teeth chattered. Deadnettle's knuckles clenched the arms of his chair. The thick dark hairs on Jensen's head stood straight on end.

In her chair, Marigold shook and shook, her teeth bared. Pain twisted across her face, and Thomas felt Deadnettle's hand clamp down on his shoulder, pushing him back to his seat. Marigold's eyes snapped open.

“We seek the ring known as the Ring of Dispel!” Jensen shouted. “Tell us where to search!”

Marigold spoke with a voice that was not her voice, and tumbled sideways to the floor.

•   •   •

Silence. But it did not feel like silence, with the crash of Marigold's body still echoing through Thomas's head. He reached her an instant before Deadnettle, two before Jensen.

Thomas had seen far more death than most. She lived, but it was a close thing.

“Wake up!” he shouted, slapping her face.

But she did not.

“Is this usual?” Jensen demanded, but he could see Deadnettle's fear plain as Thomas could. “Oh dear. But we . . . we . . .”

“Do shut up!” said Deadnettle. “Marigold. Oh,
Marigold.” The old faery whirled around, and Thomas'd never seen such a wild stare. “We must get her home. Do you understand? Not to the Society.
Home
.”

Home. The faery realm. A place of great healing, Deadnettle had told him. And at the time, he had spoken of it with longing clearly for himself.

“It is the only thing that might save her now. We have no time, Thomas. Do whatever you must. You heard what was said, yes? Go! Now! You”—he pointed at Jensen—“will you assist me?”

Thomas ran. Down the stairs and down the lane and into a hansom before the cabbie could get so much as an eyeful of him. The horse reared and kicked and neighed, rocking the carriage so hard that Thomas was thrown from one side to the other. He yelled to the driver and heard the crack of the whip as frantic hooves took off down the busy street.

Marigold. She had been so kind to him. Sure, part of it was him being the spitting image of Thistle, but she'd liked him for himself, too, and helped him where she could.

The carriage teetered on two wheels around a corner, and another. Soon—not soon enough!—it clattered over a bridge. “I wants paying, scamp,” shouted the driver, panting as he fought the nag to a standstill. The cracked cobbles wobbled underfoot when Thomas jumped down.
He tossed a whole silver faery coin up, watching it flip over and over through the air into the outstretched hand.

“Cor! Wot's this, then?”

Thomas ran inside. A clang echoed, the pot Lucy had been scrubbing tossed aside.

He let her embrace him, but there was no time, no time for this. “Where's Silas?”

“Why, Silas's out, poppet. Didn't say where. You know 'im. I'd imagine Charley is off sailing those wee boats of his, if 'e'd be a help?”

Thomas took a breath for what felt the first time since Marigold'd fallen. Warm, comforting scents gathered around him. “The faery girl I brought here is proper ill,” he said. “I need to save her. I need to save them all.”

Lucy reached out to cup his cheek with a rough, reddened hand. “They's asked a lot of you, ain't they?”

Yes. But then again, no. Thomas didn't like to think of what he'd try to escape a rake like Mordecai. And in turn, they had shown him who he was. What he was.

“Please,” he said, “please go find Charley. Silas . . . It's fine. Leave him. But find Charley. Tell him he's to go to where we went before and get them out. There's a hazel tree in the very middle of the big park at Westminster. He knows where it is.” He felt behind the door, fingers closing around the familiar handle.

Wintercress had told Deadnettle precisely where to leave Thomas. She'd left him a book, though he'd never known it. Thomas walked south, leaving the rushing of the river far behind, eyes darting back and forth. South, then west, toes pointing to where, long ago, the faery realm had lain over this one. It was miles away, 'course, hundreds of miles, but Thomas knew this was right. Not even faery vision would be looking hard as he was, in case she'd left him anything else.

There. Etched into a low wall, gray and crumbling, the spikes and whorls near faded to nothing.

They said,
This way.

Thomas kept on, past the houses and shops and filthy slums.

Keep going.

He had to search and search for the next, pushing aside overgrown brambles that scratched his hands to blood. The letters were more jagged, sloppier, as if she had been overtired when she'd carved them.

This is as much as I know.

He cocked his head to the side, puzzled and puzzling. What'd she mean, this was as much as she knew? Thomas wanted to sit, to think, but Marigold . . .

His steps quickened instead, to the next road, dodging the carts and barrows to the other side. Foot raised to step to the curb, Thomas felt something wash over him. It
wasn't pain, not so's he'd call it, but . . . odd. Like a thousand little spider legs scrabbling over his skin. He moved back and forth. The spiders fled and returned and fled again as Thomas moved. Puzzled, he stepped away and held out an arm, feeling the tingle crawl up to the elbow.

The barrier, the one that kept the faeries trapped. He could feel it, yes, but he could also step through it.

Curious. Deadnettle might like to know, though Thomas hoped it soon wouldn't matter, and neither Deadnettle nor any of the other faeries would need to concern themselves with anything whatsoever in the human realm once they were back in their own.

“Oi! You! What you doing in the street, boy?”