The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (31 page)

Miss Albany’s eyes snapped with frustrated impatience. “
Yes
, Miss Rosemary is fine. Mister Buckley, Miss Olivia Faraday is on the magic mirror for you, and she needs to speak to you right away.”

Olivia? On the mirror? Chris’s heart leaped all the way back up into his mouth and he sat up in a rush. “Am I late?” he asked. If he was, there would be no mercy. “What time is it?” But did he even want to go to work?

“You aren’t late. It is not long past dawn. I came early today because I was―” she faltered. “I came early today. Please, Mister Buckley, please, get up and see to Miss Faraday.” She peered at him. “On the mirror,” she clarified.

He didn’t blame her for her impatience with him. Still fighting against the last remnants of sleep, he awkwardly climbed to his feet, nearly tangling his legs in the covers he’d heaped onto the floor. He was still fully clothed from the day before save his spectacles, and Miss Albany’s features sharpened when he slid those onto his face.

“I’ll stay with your sister,” Miss Albany offered, and, after shooting a lingering look at Rosemary and fighting with the sour sickness in the pit of his stomach, Chris could do nothing but leave the room and hurry down the stairs to the mirror in the foyer.

When he first slipped in front of it, Olivia didn’t seem to notice him. She was staring off to one side, her expression deep in thought. There was a dull greyness to her eyes. Something seemed off in her surroundings. Chris shifted and then cleared his throat loudly.

His employer started, turn, and focus her gaze onto him. Fire sparked back in her eyes, but her expression remained grave. “Thank the Three and Three,” she breathed. “I was worried I wouldn’t be able to reach you so early.”

“I was―”

She didn’t even seem to notice him speaking. “I need you. You need to come to the val Daren estate. Now. Immediately.”

“The val Daren estate?” That was why her surroundings had seemed odd—she was in Evelyn val Daren’s beautifully furnished foyer, not the dim and sparse waiting room of her own office. Chris mentally shook himself. It was too early and he’d slept poorly. “What’s going on? Why are you there? Why do you need me? It’s barely past dawn.”

For just a moment, Olivia broke eye contact with him. When her eyes fluttered back up to his, his heart seized in his chest, and he realized before she opened her mouth that something had gone very, very wrong.

“Is it Rayner Kolston?” he asked, saying the first thing that came to him.

“Kolston?” Olivia blinked, and then muttered an epithet under her breath. “That’s right, we were going to see
him
today, weren’t we? Well, that will have to wait.” She shook her head. “No, Chris, it’s something else. Analaea val Daren is dead.”

It was as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. The wind rushed out of him all at once. No. No, that couldn’t be right. “No,” he said aloud, his voice sounding as if it came from the end of a long tunnel. “That’s wrong. I only just spoke to her yesterday. You must have it wrong.”

But Olivia was shaking her head. Regretful, and something else. Uncomfortable? “I’ve seen her body myself. Her blood is all over the walls. She’s been dead since yesterday, but no one found her until…” Olivia took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. “Her mother mirrored Maris and then Maris mirrored me. I need you,” she repeated.

“This is…”

“This is a complication. Complications can be good, because they’re more evidence, and more evidence leads to more solutions. But they can also be bad. They can be very bad. A complication like this adds so much data. It muddies the waters. Everything has to be re-examined, and that’s time for the killer to cover their tracks, and―”

“And a young woman is
dead,
” Chris snapped. He knew it wasn’t in his best interests to say it, but Gods, he’d let himself think for one stupid moment that Olivia’s listlessness was a result of grief, of mourning for the awkward, strange, unique young lady whose life had just been cut tragically short. He’d let himself be touched by her humanity. Was he an idiot?

Olivia’s eyes flashed, and she met his sharpness with her own. “So? I cry about it and feel very poorly? What good does that do anyone?” She waited for him to respond, and when he didn’t, she shook her hair back. It hung loose and straight as wheat, today. “None. What does do some good is finding out who killed her, and who killed her father, and doing something about
that
.” Her nostrils flared and she folded her hands carefully on the table before the mirror. “I need you here, Mister Buckley. Now. Come as quickly as you can.”

He expected her to release the gnome connecting the mirror and stomp off, but she met his eyes and wrested an unwilling response from him. “
Fine,
” he said. “I’ll even pay the cabbie extra to hurry, but I want compensation.”

She waved him off. “Write it up. I don’t care.” And
then
she disconnected the mirrors, and her image dissolved into swirling grey mists behind a pane of black glass, which eddied and pulsed for a long moment before solidifying into his own bleary reflection.

Chris could have turned the table over in a combination of fury and grief.
Damn her
, he thought, and then, right on its heels,
Gods save me, Ana.
He thought of the girl, for despite their proximity in age, he couldn’t think of her as anything else. He remembered the way her manner and personality would twist and spin between two different people, and he wondered, again, which was her and which was who her mother wanted her to be. The reserved, composed, elegant lady, or the lacy and girlish child. It pained him that he didn’t know. It seemed like he should.

There was no way he could simply walk away from this now. Ana was dead, and if there was
anything
he could do to help bring her killer to justice…

“Mister Buckley?”

He looked up, realizing suddenly his fingers were clutching the edges of the table before him and his knuckles had turned white. Miss Albany stood at the head of the staircase, one hand resting on the balustrade, looking down at him with worry plain on her face. “Are you quite all right?” she asked. “I felt your distress hit me hard enough to stagger all the way in Rosemary’s room.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and shook his head. “I―I need to go in. Something’s happened.”

“Is Miss Faraday quite all right?”

His lips curled into a sneer and he was too exhausted to smooth the expression. “Oh, Miss Faraday is bloody
fine
, as ever.”

It hadn’t been the right thing to say, and Miss Albany’s face pinched with disapproval. “I see,” she said, her empathetic concern diving back down beneath the surface of her professional calm. “I suppose you should be on your way then, if it’s so serious as that. Do not worry about compensating me for the extra hours today. It was me who chose to come in.” She turned to walk away.

Chris rubbed his face with his hand. He couldn’t imagine what it was he’d done to upset her, aside from failing in the courtesy she so hated. And he didn’t have the time to worry about it. Or the energy, physical or mental. She’d come in early and it was fortunate for him. Her work was looking after Rosemary, and that was precisely what he needed her to do. “Miss Albany.”

She stopped, swaying a bit, and then turned to look down at him, her hands gripping the balcony.

“…something happened last night,” he said, and as he spoke, the words just tumbled out. “You remember when you said you thought I may have been followed home? I think you were correct. Someone was in here last night, in the house. They”―he closed his eyes, wincing around his fear, the thudding of his heart―“they left a note, you see. They know about the investigation and for some reason, they’re coming after me, after Rosemary.”

He heard her quiet gasp. Thoughts tumbled around in his head. Analaea val Daren was dead. Had she died before or after the note had been left? Somehow, it suddenly seemed crucially important that he know. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and opened his eyes. Miss Albany stared down at him, all blood drained from her face and her mouth tight. “I need help,” he said, and it came out plaintive and weak. “I don’t know what to do.”

Miss Albany stared down at him for a long moment, and then, slowly, nodded. Just once.

She hitched up her skirts and descended the staircase, and he watched her until she stood beside him and reached out to lay a hand upon his arm. “She needs to be protected,” Miss Albany said, her voice chillingly even and composed. It might have unsettled him, if he had anything still settled in him to be affected.

So he just nodded in agreement.

One of Miss Albany’s fingers tapped against his shoulder and her gaze unfocused as she visibly dived into her thoughts. They stood in silence until, very slowly, she nodded. “She needs to be protected,” she repeated, and then turned her head to meet his eyes. “Yes, I can do that. Leave this in my hands, Mister Buckley. I’ll contact the relevant people. I promise you, I will make sure your sister is kept safe.”

Something in her voice made him believe so strongly he could taste that she was telling the truth. He sighed and nodded his relief. “Thank you,” he breathed, and then, even as it killed him to speak the words, “I have to go.”

It took physical effort to leave the house. He didn’t so much as go upstairs to change and straighten himself. He hated to be seen in yesterday’s clothes
again
, with his hair pressed flat in places and standing up in others. But if he went up, he’d get lost in the maze of it all again. Rachel Albany had proved she’d defend Rosemary yesterday afternoon, and he needed to trust she’d continue to do so.

The grey light of dawn was fading before the yellow light of morning, and the first cabbie he found was cheery and cooperative, agreeing without argument to tear through the streets all the way out to the val Daren estate. Chris held tightly to the hook hanging from the ceiling for the whole trip as his body was thrown from side to side, and he tried to prepare himself for what would be waiting when he arrived.

The estate was quiet and sombre. Chris’s steps were unnaturally loud as he walked down the path to the front door. It was still early enough that mist clung to the hills surrounding the house, there was a sharp chill in the air, and dew shimmered from every leaf and blossom in the gardens. He remembered Ana’s smile. He remembered her saying,
“I feel as if I can trust you.”

When he went to grip the old lion-faced knocker in his hand, he was startled to have the door burst open. He was nearly bowled over by Officer Maris Dawson and the two policemen who followed after her. The stocky little policewoman stopped in mid-step and looked him up and down. “The Duke’s daughter is dead,” she said by way of greeting. Matter-of-factually.

Did none of these people really care when someone died? “I heard,” Chris said.

Officer Dawson nodded. Discomfort showed in the stiffness of the gesture. “I thought you might have. Olivia’s in with her now. Me and my boys”―she gestured back at the men behind her―“are going back to the station to get personnel for an autopsy.” She grimaced at the word. “Nasty business, cutting into corpses. I miss the days before we did that.” She stepped to one side, and, as her men did the same, beckoned him into the estate. “May as well get in there, Buckley,” she said, and cast him a look that wasn’t unsympathetic. “Faraday’s up in the girl’s bedroom, and she’s been howling for an assistant all morning. Always been useless on her own, that one.”

Chris found Olivia standing in the doorway of Ana’s room. She turned to him as if sensing his presence the moment he rounded the corner, and her face broke into a grateful smile. “Oh, good!” she exclaimed, long golden earrings swaying. “Good, good! You’re here! Come in, come in, I need you to make some notes.”

Without another word, she bustled off into the bedroom. All the gravity she’d displayed on the mirror was long gone. With a coal burning in his stomach and his heart doing somersaults in his chest, Chris started down the long hallway, following after his employer.

He froze at the doorway.

Oh, Gods.

He thought he’d seen blood when he’d first gone into Viktor val Daren’s study. He remembered the thick, congealed pool beneath the hanging corpse, the spread of it all down the Duke’s front, the way it had smelled like iron and salt, the dark angry red of it. He’d seen less blood in butcher shops. He’d never imagined seeing more.

But now he realized the Duke had died quickly. One slash to the throat, and the blood had spilled out from there. A single clean, killing wound. It had been over in a minute. Life had come out in one steady red stream, and it had all ended up in one place. The Duke’s death had been merciful.

Analaea had fought.

His breath went ragged and he raised a hand to his temple. He staggered back a step, heard a strangled noise emerge from his throat. He groped blindly for the door frame.

Olivia must have heard him. She turned about while he found the frame and clung there, resting his cheek against the cool painted wood, unable to draw his eyes away from the scarlet butchery in front of him. He struggled to breathe. He heard Olivia sigh.