Whisper the Dead (The Lovegrove Legacy) (26 page)

He was a fool for having dropped his guard, even for a moment. Wolfcatchers never dropped theirs. They were never satiated and considered their work holy, not savage. His own mother bore the marks of their handiwork: a scar from throat to collarbone, a nick on her upper lip where one had tried to rip her canine teeth out for a talisman. A growl reverberated in his chest at the thought.

“Beg pardon,” he said instead, in his most cultured and
haughty tone. The one most unlikely to be associated with a wolf.

Tobias called on his legendary self-control to keep his pace unhurried, his breaths even. If he was lucky, the hunter would keep on walking, seeing only an aristocrat in an expensive crowned hat. He was aware of every raindrop, every creak of every cart wheel, every scratch of the cat in the nearby alley. Adrenaline prickled under his skin, sharpening to jabs as he fought the instinctive magical response building in his blood and bones.

The illusion of being invisible, cast by fog and shadow, shattered.

The Wolfcatcher didn’t say a word, didn’t even pause, but Tobias knew when he was being hunted.

They launched into a run at the same time. Tobias could outdistance him if he shifted, and they both knew it. Wolfcatchers counted on the fear of their quarry. The pelt, bones, and teeth of a shifter in animal form was where the magic lived. It was what the Wolfcatchers wanted, and they laid violent and cunning traps to that end.

Since they seemed to have surprised each other, the hunter was likely alone. It was a small advantage. He’d still have all of the spells at the ready; it was how they lived. They were more animal in the hunt than the wolves were. They gave themselves over to it like a lover.

Tobias ran faster. At least his face was partially hidden under the brim of his hat. The Wolfcatcher was tracking him by instinct, not by name or reputation. He wove through the streets until they became crowded with women huddled under streetlamps to
finish their sewing. Candles were dear in this part of London. Children ran back and forth, playing some sort of game. Men stood in doorways, talking. It was as good a cover as he was likely to get.

He glanced behind once, catching a glimpse of his pursuer. The wolf teeth he used as a toggle on his coat gleamed. In the country, the Catchers wore strips of fur cut from pelts. Tobias felt his own teeth sharpen, elongating to canine fangs. His wolf was both jubilant and desperate. Tobias snapped his traitorous jaw shut, tilting his head down to hide another momentary lapse of control.

He tried to figure out where he was exactly. Near Fleet Street, perhaps. There was a safe house nearby. He and his siblings had memorized all of the shifter burrows in London the very moment they were old enough to escape the attentions of their nanny. There were three between Seven Dials and Westminster. Surely he was close.

Not quite close enough.

The Catcher’s first charm glanced him, slicing through the mist and blasting it clear away. It reeked of pepper and pond water, disorienting his sense of smell. The second cracked like glass, the sound shivering in his sensitive ears.

But the Wolfcatcher wasn’t accustomed to pursuing someone like Tobias. His shackled magic did more internal damage on a daily basis than any hunter spell. Pain meant nothing to him.

The dagger came next, slender and wickedly pointed. It sliced through his jacket, cutting through the thin shirt to the skin beneath. The cut was shallow, a mere annoyance.

But the wolfsbane now seeping into his bloodstream was something else altogether.

All wolves knew the plant intimately. Its purple blossoms flowered late in the season and were made into tinctures and powders to torture wolves.

Effective tinctures.

He was already slowing down. The Wolfcatcher would be on him in moments. He stumbled, his arm full of fire and vinegar and rust. Sweat dampened his hair immediately. The pain licked down his arm to his hand, which curled into a paw. Fur spiked with more sweat. His nails turned to black claws. He choked on the taste of salt and wolfsbane flowers.

He was too slow. Too tired from fighting shadow people and Gretchen.

An iron chain dosed in wolfsbane water lashed him across the cheek, coiling around his neck. The Wolfcatcher yanked savagely, sending him sprawling on the pavement. His cheek was already split from the chain. The poison was making him clumsy and light-headed. The chain tightened again, and he scratched at it desperately, twisting this way and that. Coins and iron nails tumbled out of his pocket.

He paused, blinking rapidly to make his eyes focus properly. He fumbled more coins out of his pockets and the gold cufflinks out of his shirt. They seemed impossibly bright. His cravat pin decorated with sapphires was easy, even with the thick frozen fingers of his still-human hand. “Alms!” he cried out, tossing them into the air.

The gaslight flames caught the unmistakable glitter of gold and jewels. People converged, children squealing and adults grim
with silence, hoping to keep the others from noticing. The ones too suspicious to fall for his ploy at least didn’t get in his way.

It wouldn’t buy him much time but it would have to be enough. The wolfsbane sent darts of acid into his chest, robbing him of breath. He shoved the chain off.

He wouldn’t die. Not like this. His family needed him. Without the protection of a viscount and a Keeper, they would be vulnerable. His mother might rule the Lawless Pack, but society rules were vastly different.

The Wolfcatcher would not have him.

Neither would his wolfsbane.

He tripped along, stumbling to a stop across the street from the grim façade of a workhouse. They were set up to discourage people from lingering, and they succeeded with dismal success. Folk naturally avoided any contact with such a place, knowing them to be mirthless boxes where the poor were forced to toil with little hope of improvement.

This workhouse was different, and not just because it was cloaked from any eye that couldn’t see as a beast. Even witches would walk right past it. The only clue to the presence of the Hoof and Horn burrow were claw marks scratched into a brick at the corner. Tobias fell, more than walked, inside. The oak door was so heavy it may as well have been still a tree, rooted to the earth.

He managed to make it to the bar where he half collapsed. The door thumped shut behind him, and the resulting draft sent the candle flames dancing. They left trails of purple light and Tobias watched them, knowing the wolfsbane was well and truly in his system now.

“Please,” he croaked to the woman behind the bar. She had a braid wound around her head and the kind of no-nonsense stare that was comforting. Comforting or not, he didn’t have any money left. He’d tossed it all onto the street. “Lawless …”

“Oh, I know who you are, love,” she said. “Jonquil!” she called over her shoulder.

A woman emerged from behind an elaborately carved wooden screen in the corner next to the bar. She wore a thick linen-and-leather apron over a dark brown dress. Dozens of amulets and charms hung around her neck, and pouches clung to the wide leather belt around her waist. The brooch of a dagger crossed with a needle proclaimed her to be a magical healer. The wolf tooth dipped in silver and wrapped in a ring of rabbit teeth meant she specialized in shifter healing. She frowned at him, nose twitching. “Wolfsbane poisoning,” she said with a sigh. “Your pupils are as big as ponds.”

“Beg your pardon.” He wasn’t sure why he was apologizing.

“Drink up, Greybeard.”

Three tincture bottles floated in front of him, and after watching him pluck at the air, the healer slapped the bottle into his palm. She guided it to his lips. The first sip was gritty with salt. The rest tasted exactly as awful as it sounded: a concoction made from salt, peppermint, cloves, and mallow leaves steeped in the water of a Welsh healing well.

“Thank you,” he said to Jonquil. “I am much obliged.”

She snorted, pushing him back down when he tried to stand up. “You’re far from healed, my lord.”

When his pupils finally retracted enough that his vision stopped blurring, he was able to get a better look at his surroundings. What had been fuzzy outlines and too-bright lights became a collection of wary shifters and firelight.

Burrows clung to a wary peace at best, fostered by a mutual enemy more than any mutual affinity. In any other place, rabbit, wolf, cat, and the other various shifters could not have shared drink together. The smell was smoke and musk and fur, with a heavy overlay of rosewater to cover the more animal traces. Magical sigils had been painted on the walls with a paste of red ochre, soot, and herbs. Rowan berries strung on white thread wound through the iron chandeliers and hung like Yule garlands on the windowsills. The floor was scattered with salt, apple seeds, and lavender.

Above the main fireplace hung a shield made from the teeth of every kind of shifter—from wolf, boar, rabbit, and fox, all the way to mice and voles. Wolfcatchers and other magical hunters took the teeth for their magical properties, but these had been freely donated and their power manifestly tripled.

Three men swaggered in his direction. One wore a necklace of human teeth in a grisly imitation of the wolf-teeth trophies Wolfcatchers wore. These were hardened hunters, the kind Ky and his friends admired.

“Who poisoned you, friend?” he asked.

“I didn’t catch his name,” Tobias replied, his voice raspy from where the chain had pressed against his throat.

He snorted. “I don’t need his name to kill him, mate.”

Tobias tried to stand again, even as Jonquil clucked at him. “He’s long gone,” he said. “Leave it.”

They laughed, practically barking. Two rabbit-shifters in the corner buried their heads nervously in their hoods. Tobias pushed back with weary determination at his own wolf, scenting a challenge. Jonquil slipped her arm around his throbbing shoulder to steady him. “Easy,” she murmured.

He breathed through his nose, concentrating on the sting of salt, the residue of so much shield magic in the burrow. “You’re in no condition to stop them,” she continued as the men thundered out of the burrow. “Even if they weren’t Carnyx.”

“If they track him, they’ll kill him,” he protested. He was still feeling fuzzy from the poison, but he felt like that was something he should care about.

“Probably.” Jonquil didn’t sound nearly as perturbed.

“He’s human.”

“And so not my concern,” she returned with a pragmatic shrug. “I don’t know anything about human medicine.” She placed a pillow under him as he began to topple. “But I do know if you go out there right now, you’ll get yourself killed and waste a perfectly good wolfsbane remedy.”

Tobias wanted to protest but the healing potion had been laced with belladonna and valerian. He fell asleep, slouching in a most undignified manner.

When Gretchen arrived at the academy
, she found Emma at a small table in the dining room with Catriona, the Scottish girl everyone else was too afraid to befriend. Her habit of foretelling a person’s death was alarming. As long as Catriona didn’t eat all of the strawberry tarts, Gretchen didn’t care.

She slid into a chair, commandeered two tarts and a roll, and poured hot, strong tea into a cup. Her eyes were gritty and sore from lack of sleep. Still, she was tired, not blind. The others had all stopped to stare at her, teacups and forkfuls of coddled eggs suspended halfway to their mouths. Gretchen slathered butter on her roll. “I gather word is out, then?”

Emma made a face. “Did you doubt it? Lynn crossed herself when I walked by, and she’s not even Catholic.”

“Did you save any of the graveyard dirt?” Catriona asked.

Gretchen blinked at the non sequitur. “Um, no. Should I have?”

“Pity. It’s quite powerful.” Her expression was rather disconcertingly hard for a girl who tended to float about half smiling at nothing at all. When she didn’t elaborate, Gretchen went back to eating her breakfast.

“Daphne’s father was here earlier to speak to Mrs. Sparrow,” Emma told her. “And three of the girls’ parents have already pulled them out of school to take them to the country.”

“Is it any safer there?” Gretchen wondered.

“There are more people to kill in London,” Catriona put in calmly. “And witches are easier to find here.”

“Splendid,” Gretchen said. “You are cheerful, aren’t you?” She smiled to take the sting out of her words. Catriona didn’t giggle or gossip so Gretchen was inclined to like her, despite her morbid pronouncements.

There was a hitch in the general dining room chatter before it exploded again.

“Now what?” Gretchen said. “Honestly, it’s like being in a room full of mad little sparrows.”

Daphne paused in the doorway. She wore her usual day dress, trimmed with ribbons and flounces, and her hair looked as much like spun sugar as ever. The set of her mouth, though, was more about swords and sabers than sweets. The other students went silent again, save for one of the girls, who burst into hysterical sobs.

Daphne straightened her shoulders and sailed into the room, like a ship going out to war. The girl wept harder, hiccuping, “Poor Lilybeth,” until Gretchen wanted to throw the rest of her bread roll at her. Daphne swallowed hard, searching the
expectant faces staring at her. She finally slid into the empty chair beside Gretchen as the others began to whisper behind their hands again, eyes round.

“Daphne?” Gretchen asked gently, equally surprised.

“Yes.”

“You don’t
like
us, remember?”

Daphne sniffed. “At least you don’t fuss about like I’m a china doll.” Her eyes were red, but she held her chin high. Emma poured a cup of tea and slid it toward her.

“Fair enough,” Gretchen added. “But if you eat the last strawberry tart, I will stab you with my fork. I don’t care how sad you are.”

A smile trembled on the edge of Daphne’s mouth.

“And don’t worry,” Catriona added. “You don’t die from pity.”

As Mrs. Sparrow had elected to cancel classes for the day to better accommodate the parade of distressed parents, Gretchen took her grimoire and left for the apothecary to purchase supplies for more protective amulets. She wore her arrowhead, but she’d taken off the hagstone to give to Penelope and the rowan berry for Emma.