Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

I didn’t say anything. We stood staring at each other.

Behind me, I heard Mr. Johnson’s bland tones. “She wants the skull in the jar.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Like your ma ordered. She did tell you, right? Go and ask her.”

I didn’t expect him to buy it; it was a hopeless situation. But while his brain worked, I ran my eyes over the tabletop next to me. I figured I had about five seconds.

“My ma?” Leopold Winkman said. “She wouldn’t have asked a grubby little punk like you to—” His face changed; grew suddenly slack. Whether it was the limitations of my disguise, or because he remembered who had owned the skull, or simply because of the way I’d looked at him, clear-eyed and contemptuous, he finally got it. “Wait…” He took a slow step back. “Wait, I know who you are. Lucy Carlyle!”

“Don’t worry.” It was the skull’s whisper. “You can take him, big girl like you.”

Leopold flung back his coat, revealing a pistol at his belt.

“Or possibly not,” the skull said.

But I was already diving for the table, seizing the skull’s jar and tucking it under one arm, grabbing at another silver-glass box, and hurling it at Winkman. As I did so, I ducked. The gun went off. Glass shattered beside me; one of the boxes on the table exploded, fragments pattering against my back. The box I’d thrown cracked into Winkman’s shins, bowling him over. He dropped the gun and rolled onto his back, squealing.

“Shrimp down,” the skull said. “Nice.”

There was a concussion of air beside me, strong enough to move the wig across my head. From the shattered box in the center of the table rose a blue-white shape. Winkman’s bullet had freed its ghost. Mr. Johnson sensed it. He sprang off his chair, retreating to the back of the room.

I didn’t stay to see how he fared. With the ghost-jar in my arms, I leaped over Leopold and made for the arch….

Only to find it truly blocked this time—by a one-eyed relic-boy little older than me. He carried a curved knife with a serrated edge. Behind him, two of Winkman’s men were also stepping bulkily into view.

“My turn,” the skull said. “Lift up the jar and keep going.”

I lifted the ghost-jar. It flared with sudden green other-light—casting a vile radiance on the men ahead of me. The youth with the knife stared deep into the glass—and gave an unholy scream. He staggered back, knocking into the men behind him, sending them all careering against the wall.

The skull chuckled. “How was that? Gave him my best face there.”

“Not bad.” I made like an eel, twisting between the sprawling bodies, hurling myself through the arch and out onto the platform, where a full-scale brawl was under way. At its heart was a slim young relic-man with hair like an evil hedgehog; he stood near the Winkmans’ table, swinging a long, black candlestick around his head and keeping the crowd at bay. Nearby, Adelaide Winkman was shouting orders and completely failing to bring the situation under control.

“This is your plan?” the skull said. “Interestingly fluid. What happens now?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

But Lockwood had been watching out for me. He danced forward, grasped the Winkmans’ table, and overturned it, sending a sparkling waterfall of coins crashing to the floor. In the same movement he leaped over it and came racing toward me. Behind him, Adelaide and her helpers were engulfed as a frantic tide of relic-men made efforts to reach the coins.

“The arch beyond you, Luce!” Lockwood cried. “Cross to the other platform!”

I turned—but at that moment Leopold Winkman burst out of the side room. He ducked under Lockwood’s viciously swinging candlestick, threw himself at me, and snatched at the ghost-jar under my arm. The impact knocked me over; Leopold and I tussled on the floor, kicking and punching. My wig fell off. I was conscious of Lockwood calling, of other people drawing near. All at once Leopold struck the side of my head. Lights burst in my eyes. My arm went loose; the ghost-jar was torn away.

“Lucy! Save me—”

“Skull!” My head rang with the blow. I raised it, blinking. Leopold and the jar were gone. I was lying on my back. Above me was a confusing blur of fighting forms—Lockwood, the Winkman flunkies, several relic-men. One man saw me move; he lifted a heavy stick to strike at me. Someone stuck out a dirty Wellington boot and tripped him. I glimpsed Flo’s tatted straw hat as he fell away. Then Lockwood was wrenching me to my feet, hauling me onward up the platform.

“Lucy…!” A faint, despairing cry behind me in the crowd.

“The skull! Lockwood, I lost it—”

“I’m sorry. So sorry. But we really need to go.”

Lockwood’s face was bruised, his wig askew. His candlestick was gone. Together we ran toward the far end of the hall. The tunnel mouth was boarded up over here, but a connecting passage led to the southbound platform. We fled down it, pursued by a tide of noise.

“The ladder’s a no-go now,” Lockwood gasped. “It’ll have to be a tunnel.”

Fewer candles burned along the second platform, and there was no one on it. A few yards from us was the tunnel mouth, filled by another great pile of sandbags, salt, and iron. Lockwood and I jumped down onto the track, scrambled up to the top of the slope, and stared down into the blackness of the tunnel.

“It’s unblocked,” I said.

“Yes.”

“It’ll lead us out of here.”

“I’m sure it would.”

“So come on, let’s go.”

“No.” He clasped my arm. “Ghost.”

How had I not seen it? A gray form was standing in the tunnel, not so very far off. It was man-shaped, but two-dimensional and contorted, as if it had been cut from paper, then twisted. Its head was cocked toward us, as if drawn by our sound, our smell, our body heat—by whatever it was of life that the pale, thin shape had lost and still desired. As I stared at it, my foot slipped on a pebble; I jerked forward down the slope, just a little way; a few chunks of rock and sand fell onto the line. At once the ghost darted out of the tunnel, only to draw back when it got near the iron.

I wished quite a lot of things right at that moment.

I wished I hadn’t followed the skull’s voice.

I wished I hadn’t encouraged Lockwood to bring me here.

Most of all, I really wished we had our rapiers.

The shape drifted nearer. Lockwood motioned with his head, and we stepped carefully back across the mess of iron and salt and rubble, down toward the old platform.

Where Adelaide Winkman was waiting for us in the light of the flickering lantern. She held a long, narrow-bladed knife in her right hand.

It wasn’t just her, by the way. She was backed up by a host of relic-men, who in their ragged, shambling hideousness looked like a crowd of the agitated dead, plus the implacable flunkies with their knives.

But it was Adelaide your eyes were drawn to. It was that weird double adjustment that your brain had to make. First you saw what looked like a large blond housewife, pink of face and plucked of eyebrow, her motherly curves squeezed into a voluminous and flowery dress, yet standing among a crowd of criminals. Then, just when you were getting used to the strangeness of that , you realized she was the scariest of the lot. It was the blue-gray eyes, mostly; the pencil-thin slash of the lips, partly; plus bonus points for the swell of her forearms and her evident physical strength. She’d long sworn vengeance on us for having put her husband away. Perhaps this was why she was smiling.

“Mr. Lockwood,” she said. “And Miss Carlyle. How surprising to see you at this market.”