Kell and Lila stood frozen in front of him, only a few short strides separating them.
“I’m in no mood for games,” warned Holland, his usual calm now flecked by annoyance. When neither Kell nor Lila moved, he sighed and drew a silver pocket watch from his cloak. Kell recognized it as the one Lila had left behind for Barron. He felt her stiffen against him as Holland tossed the timepiece in their direction; it bounced along the blackened street, skidding to a stop at the edge of the inn’s charred remains. From here Kell could see that it was stained with blood.
“He died because of you,” said Holland, addressing Lila. “Because you ran. You were a coward. Are you still?”
Lila struggled to get free of Kell’s arms, but he held her there with all his strength, pinning her against his chest. He felt tears slide over his hand at her mouth, but he didn’t let go. “No,” he said breathlessly into her ear. “Not here. Not like this.”
Holland sighed. “You will die a coward’s death, Delilah Bard.” He drew a curved blade from beneath his cloak. “When this is over,” he said, “you will both wish you had come out.”
He lifted his empty hand, and a wind caught up the ashes of the ruined inn, whipping them into the air overhead. Kell looked up at the cloud of it above them and said a prayer under his breath.
“Last chance,” said Holland.
When he was met by silence, he lowered his hand, and the ash began to fall. And Kell saw what would happen. It would drift down, and settle on the veil, exposing them, and Holland would be upon them both in an instant. Kell’s mind spun as his grip tightened on the stone, and he was about to summon its power again when the ash met their veil … and passed through.
It sank straight through the impossible cloth, and then through them, as though they were not there. As though they were not real. The crease between Holland’s two-toned eyes deepened as the last of the ash settled back to the ruins, and Kell took a (very small) measure of comfort from the Antari’s frustration. He may be able to sense them, but he could not see them.
Finally, when the wind was gone and the ground lay still, and Kell and Lila remained concealed by the power of the stone, Holland’s certainty faltered. He sheathed the curved blade and took a step back, turned, and strode away, cloak billowing behind him.
The moment he was gone, Kell’s grip on Lila loosened, and she wrenched free of him and the spell and shot forward to the silver watch on the street.
“Lila,” he called.
She didn’t seem to hear him, and he didn’t know if it was because she’d abandoned their protective shroud or because her world had narrowed to the size and shape of a small bloodied watch. He watched her sink to one knee and take up the timepiece with shaking fingers.
He went to Lila’s side and brought his hand to her shoulder, or tried, but it went straight through. So he was right. The veil didn’t simply make them invisible. It made them incorporeal.
“Reveal me,” he ordered the stone. Energy rippled through him, and a moment later, the veil dissolved. Kell marveled a moment at how easy it had been as he knelt beside her—the magic had come effortlessly—but this was the first time it had willingly undone itself. They could not afford to stay there, exposed, so Kell took her arm and silently summoned the magic to conceal them once more. It obeyed, the shadow veil settling again over them both.
Lila shook under his touch, and he wanted to tell her it was all right, that Holland might have taken the timepiece and left Barron’s life, but he did not want to lie. Holland was many things—most of them well hidden—but he was not sentimental. If he had ever been compassionate, or at least merciful, Athos had bled it out of him long ago, carved it out along with his soul.
No, Holland was ruthless.
And Barron was dead.
“Lila,” said Kell gently. “I’m sorry.”
Her fingers curled tightly around the timepiece as she rose to her feet. Kell rose with her, and even though she would not look him in the eye, he could see the anger and pain written in the lines of her face.
“When this is over,” she said, tucking the watch into a fold of her cloak. “I want to be the one to slit his throat.” And then she straightened and let out a small, shuddering breath. “Now,” she said, “which way to Fletcher?”
TEN
ONE WHITE ROOK
I
Booth was beginning to fall apart.
In this grim grey London, the drunkard’s body hadn’t lasted long at all—much to the displeasure of the thing burning its way through him. It wasn’t the magic’s fault; there was so little to hold on to here, so little to feed on. The people had only a candle’s light of life inside them, not the fire to which the darkness was accustomed. So little heat, so easily extinguished. The moment he got inside, he burned them up to nothing, blood and bone to husk and ash in no time at all.
Booth’s black eyes drifted down to his charred fingers. With such poor kindling, he couldn’t seem to spread, couldn’t last long in any body.
Not for lack of trying. After all, he’d left a trail of discarded shells along the docks.
Burned through the place they all called Southwark in a mere hour.
But his current body—the one he’d taken in the tavern alley—was now coming undone. The black stain across his shirtfront pulsed, trying to keep the last of the life from bleeding out. Perhaps he shouldn’t have stabbed the drunkard first, but it seemed the fastest way in.