The Dark Remains (22 page)

Jace hung up the phone. The hand unit seemed made of lead rather than plastic as she settled it back into its cradle. She waited a second or two—for what, she didn’t know; for the last echoes of the roaring to fade from her ears, perhaps—then looked up at the two men who stood in the doorway.

She wasn’t certain exactly when in the course of her conversation she had become aware of them, only that before she hung up she had known. They had a way of impinging on the senses slowly. It was as if they were so used to watching unnoticed from the shadows that it required special effort to make their presence felt.

“I told you they wouldn’t help you,” she said.

One of the men—the dark one with almond eyes—shrugged as he slipped sunglasses into his coat pocket. “Nor did we expect them to, Deputy Windom, for we trust your opinions. We have found your descriptions of the local population most insightful.”

Jace let her gaze slide past them. Somehow it was easier not to watch them when they spoke. “Then why did you go to Davis and Mitchell’s ranch?”

Now the other one laughed: a raw, brash sound. “Sometimes when a man does not wish to help you, he cannot prevent himself from doing so. It is interesting that Mr. Burke-Favor has called you, no? I wonder what the old cowboy had to say.”

Jace did not like the blond one. He was big and broad-shouldered, but somehow pale and sickly despite his size,
as if too many years under the Arctic sun had left him forever deformed, like a gangly, wax-white bean plant she had once grown in a dark closet as a school science experiment.

Jace clutched the edge of the desk. These men always talked in innuendo and gray shades of truth. She hated that about them. And now, because of these men, she had taken to uttering lies and performing acts of subterfuge herself.

“I don’t like this,” she said through clenched teeth. “A report made to a law enforcement officer is confidential until it is officially released.”

The dark one approached. With a graceful motion of his hand he took her words and set them aside. “There are greater issues at hand here, Deputy Windom, than bureaucratic regulations. I believed you understood this.”

The pale one started to speak, but the other lifted a hand, silencing him. So Jace’s judgment was correct. Despite the big one’s bluster, it was the small, slender man who was the commander.

The dark one sat on the corner of her desk. The black fabric of his suit made soft, sensual sounds as he moved. He smelled like her gun after she had just polished it.

“Your duty is to protect the public, is it not, Deputy Windom? Now here is a man whom you know to be a danger to all who come in contact with him. A man who we are interested in for our own reasons—for knowledge he has wrongfully withheld from us, and for the death of three of our operatives. And this is all in addition to the deaths of at least two citizens of this town. If you have decided to stop assisting us, I cannot hope to understand your decision, but I would expect at least for you to inform us.”

Rage flared up inside Jace, then just as quickly died. She felt the first, queasy hints of the world yawing beneath her. She knew that if she shut her eyes she would see it: the dim, oily ocean, swirling.

She disliked these men, but she needed them. In the days after Maximilian’s death, nothing had made sense to her. She had drifted, a castaway on the gray sea, and she had nearly drowned. Then, unasked for, they had come, and their words had been a life preserver. Madness had surrounded Travis Wilder. But the men from Duratek had offered reason, explanation, and logic. With nothing left to save her from sinking, Jace had grabbed on for dear life.

The chair seemed to rock gently beneath her. No, she could not let go yet. If Travis Wilder was not a murderer, then he was certainly a bringer of death and madness, of that there could be no doubt.

She shut her eyes, and for a second it was there: leaden waves roiling beneath a sky that was a mirror, so that it was impossible to know which way was up and which was down.

You shouldn’t have done that, Daddy
, she whispered without sound.
You shouldn’t have done that
.

Jace opened her eyes. “I know where he is.”

The man before her smiled. “So you do, Deputy Windom. So you do.”

Six hours after her conversation with Hadrian Farr, Deirdre Falling Hawk packed her one battered duffel bag, signed out of the dreary East End efficiency flat she had been renting by the week, and checked into the Savoy Hotel.

The desk clerk eyed her T-shirt and scuffed leather jacket with polite disdain. However, when he swiped the credit card Farr had given her and glanced down at the card reader’s glowing display, his eyes bulged and a small, squeaking sound escaped him. After that the mousy fellow
nearly tangled his arms together in an effort to serve her. He clapped for two bellhops to bear her bag ahead, then asked if she would prefer flowers or champagne in her room.

“Both,” Deirdre said with a smile.

For all their faults, that was one good thing about the Seekers: They had a positively magical credit rating. Deirdre didn’t know where the organization got its money. Rumors spoke of warehouses stuffed with Renaissance treasures and chests full of Roman coins. However, she suspected the more likely story was that, over the centuries, the Seekers had invested in various international financial concerns. There was nothing like five hundred years of compound interest to fatten a bank account.

Whatever the source of their money, one thing was certain: the Seekers were fabulously wealthy. And Farr had told her to take a room anywhere she wanted, as long as it was near the Charterhouse. They were flying nonstop to Denver in the morning to meet with Dr. Grace Beckett and Travis Wilder, and they did not want to be late.

Why are you doing this, Deirdre?
she asked herself in the elevator.
You said you would never have anything to do with the Seekers again
.

There was only one answer, and it wasn’t that this was her chance to tell Travis she was sorry. Whatever their faults, whatever their machinations, the Seekers knew things, had access to things that no others could possibly show her. Knowing what she did—that there were indeed worlds other than Earth—how could she blind her eyes to them?

She had made no apologies to Farr for her earlier behavior, but she had taken his credit card, and she had agreed to meet him at the Charterhouse at 8
A.M
. Now a lightness filled her, and a wild energy, as when she rode her motorcycle too fast through twisting canyons. There were answers waiting for her on the other side of that
ocean, answers to mysteries she had dreamed about since girlhood. And while it was not her reason for going, she would apologize to Travis Wilder all the same. Whatever he might believe of her, she would always hold him as a friend.

The two bellhops showed her to her room, and Deirdre tipped them generously from the wad of pound notes Farr had given her. They shut the door, leaving her alone. There was a massive bed, an ornate sofa and chairs, and a marble fireplace with a gas fire burning. The champagne and flowers had arrived ahead of her, arranged on a table before a window that had a view of Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the Thames.

Not bad.

Deirdre kicked off her boots, unzipped her duffel bag, and pulled out the file folder Farr had given her earlier. She headed for the bed, detouring along the way to grab the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket, and flopped on the king-size mattress.

For the next hour she drank champagne and flipped through papers. She hadn’t talked long with Farr at the Sign of the Green Fairy. He had said he had matters to attend to before their departure, and that he would brief her further on the plane to Denver.

There wasn’t much in the folder, and she had seen most of it before. There were photographs of Travis and Dr. Beckett, and of various locations in Castle City. There was the drawing of a sword taken from a half-burned journal found at the ruins of James Sarsin’s London bookshop in 1883, and a photograph of Dr. Beckett’s necklace, which could be nothing but a fragment of the very sword depicted in Sarsin’s journal. Of course, Sarsin was one and the same with Jack Graystone, Travis’s antique dealer friend who had persisted for many centuries in London and then in Colorado. How his case—one of the most celebrated in the history of the Seekers—was connected
to Grace Beckett was still an enigma. But perhaps that would be answered soon.

Deirdre skimmed through the rest of the folder. There were schematics of the Mine Shaft Saloon, chemical analyses of samples taken from burn stains on the floor, and also from soil samples taken at the Beckett-Strange Home for Children. Only at the end of the file was there something new to her: the transcript of Farr’s conversation with Dr. Beckett, recorded yesterday.

Champagne bottle propped between her legs, Deirdre sat cross-legged and scanned through the transcript. Certain words stood out.
We’re back
. And then later,
We’re all in Denver
.

We
, she kept saying. But exactly who was Beckett referring to? Travis Wilder certainly. But her words seemed to imply the presence of another. One didn’t usually say
we’re all
when talking about just two people. Then, near the end, her eyes met words that caused a thrill to well up insider her, like the bubbles in the champagne bottle.

We’re not alone—we have a friend. He’s in the hospital, in a coma
. A question from Farr. Then,
Yes, he’s from Eldh
.

Deirdre read the words again, heart racing. If this were true, it had enormous implications for their studies of the alternate universe. It was almost unimaginable what they could learn of the otherworldly culture and biology from direct study of an indigenous.

Deirdre read through the rest of the transcript. The last sentence struck her.

Please help us
.

Beckett had called the Seekers to ask for help. But to help with what?

She shut the folder and laid it aside. Suddenly the taste of champagne was sour in her mouth. She set the bottle on the nightstand, dug into the pocket of her jeans, and pulled out something round, silver, and heavy.

Save me
. That was what the woman Glinda had said earlier that day, when she slipped the coin into Deirdre’s hand at the absinthe bar in Soho. However, her plea was just as mysterious as Dr. Beckett’s. Save her from what?

Deirdre turned the coin over in her hands. In the light, she could make out the symbols. On one side was a pair of shoes with little bows on them. On the other side were the letters
SD
. She didn’t know what it meant.

But maybe someone else would.

It was already getting late; she knew she should go to bed. Then again, she would have nine hours to sleep on the flight to Denver. And something told her time was running out for Glinda.

Deirdre stood, wishing as her head swam that she hadn’t drunk so much of the champagne. She blinked to clear her vision, then pulled on her boots and grabbed her jacket. At the door she hesitated, casting one last glance back at her expensive suite. Something told her she wouldn’t be getting the Seekers’ money’s worth out of it.

She tried the desk clerk and the concierge, but neither of them had seen anything similar to the coin before. Her best chance was back at the Sign of the Green Fairy. She headed through a side entrance, onto a narrow street. Outside stood one of the hotel’s maintenance workers, smoking a cigarette. He was young—rail-thin, pale, and stoop-shouldered, but somehow pretty for it all. His hair was bleached stark white, and tattoos of dragons raced up his arms, disappearing beneath rolled-up white shirtsleeves.

“Hey, American girl,” the young man said. “Nice jacket.”

“Thanks.” Deirdre started past, then on a hunch she turned back. In a way he reminded her of Glinda, at once tough and far too fragile for this world. She showed him the coin.

His lip curled up in a sneer. “No bloody thanks, girl. That’s not really my scene.” Belatedly he seemed to rethink
his words. “But hey, I suppose if it works for you, then that’s … well, that’s that.”

“What is it?” Deirdre said, meeting his bleary eyes.

“You don’t know? Bugger. I thought you were making a proposition.” He took a long draught on his cigarette. “It’s a token. It’ll get you a free drink over at SD.”

“SD?”

“Surrender Dorothy. You know, over in Brixton. I was going to say, you really don’t look like part of that scene. You haven’t got any glitter on you.” He tossed his cigarette into the gutter and sighed. “Shit, I’m out of fags. Want to come with me and buy a pack? I know a room in the hotel we can do it in. I’m pierced, if you like that.”

Deirdre grinned. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and tossed it to him. “Sorry. You’ll have to make do with this.”

He caught the cigarettes in fumbling hands as she walked away. By the time she looked back over her shoulder, he was leaning against the wall, smoking again.

She caught a cab to Brixton. Deirdre paid the driver and stepped out, letting go of the handle barely in time to keep her arm from being ripped off as the vehicle sped away.

The street was deserted, but distant shouts echoed off sooty facades, and here and there shadows huddled in the alcoves of doorways, the cherry-red tips of cigarettes hovering before them like fireflies. Deirdre scanned the dim storefronts and at first saw nothing. It was only on her third or fourth pass that she saw a small, emerald neon sign she was certain had not been there a moment ago. It formed two letters:
SD
. Beneath it, also in neon, was outlined a pair of red shoes. Deirdre headed for the sign. There was a narrow, unmarked door. She opened it and slipped inside.

The doorman was an achondroplastic dwarf clad in black leather. He perched on a barstool behind a podium, his head shaved and a pointed blond beard on his chin.
His eyes were a brilliant, handsome blue. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. After looking her up and down, he bared large, white teeth in a grin.