The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (40 page)

She led them to a back room, indicating they should enter before her and then closing it after them. The chaotic noise of the big room behind them faded to a murmur immediately. Sterile, white alp-light filled the room, and Chris looked up nervously when the illumination flickered. The black nimbuses surrounding the glass balls overhead
seemed
solid enough, but…

There were two other occupants in the room. One was a second female police officer in the same split skirt uniform Officer Dawson wore. That was where the similarities ended. Where Officer Dawson was short, stout, handsome, and tough looking, this woman was tall, slender, beautiful, and long-limbed. Officer Dawson’s bright red curls and freckles were contrasted by flowing white-blonde locks and skin as clear as cream. Everything about her exuded an aura of fragile, demure femininity, and she stood with her hands folded before her and her eyes cast downwards.

The second person was a young man. A
very
young man. He looked no older than sixteen, which was impossible, because he was outfitted in the uniform of a police officer which meant he was categorized and of age for employment. But Chris couldn’t even make out roughness in his cheeks to indicate he shaved. His hair was dark and long around his shoulders, and his build was slight and waifish. “Pretty” was the word he would be called.
Not
handsome, like Chris was so often named. This was something else entirely. The long lashes framing his flat stare were almost girlish, like the fullness of his pouting lips, or the slenderness of the hands he drummed impatiently along the surface of the table he sat at.

“Hannah,” Olivia said by way of greeting to the tall, lovely woman. She laid the still-soaked umbrella down on the table.

“Miss Faraday,” the woman replied in a quiet voice that reminded Chris of a soft autumn breeze. She inclined her head respectfully.

“William.” Olivia turned her attention to the young man and unwrapped her coat.

The fellow ceased his tapping on the table. His eyes sharpened and his pout became a lips-folded glare. “I was supposed to have today off, Olivia,” he said, his voice a pleasant alto with an unpleasantly bitter flavour.

“Yes, and now you’re getting paid,” Olivia sang, throwing her wet wrap down onto the table and sending up a cloud of moisture. “Aren’t you grateful you have me?”

While Olivia went elbow―and nose―deep into her satchel, the pretty young man turned his attention to Chris. He looked him up and down, assessing him. “Who’s this?”

“This is Christopher Buckley,” Officer Dawson replied before either Chris or Olivia could. “Previously known as Constance, yes. Let’s not ask uncomfortable questions about it. This one is good.” Without missing a beat, Dawson half-turned and directed her next words at Chris. “Buckley, this is Hannah Burke, one of our officers.” She indicated the woman. “Officer Burke is special in that she oversees our more clandestine matters of business, which includes this charming fellow”―she indicated the young man―“William Cartwright. He’s our timeseer, but if anyone asks, he’s just one more weak truthsniffing police officer who fills for the more important ones.”

“Buckley,” Officer Cartwright tasted the name. He took a longer look at Chris, one that started at his toes and ended looking deeply into his eyes. Sharp intellect glimmered, and Chris saw a spark of recognition. For a moment, he was confused. But when the young man’s gaze flickered from Chris, to Maris, to Olivia, and then back to Chris, he understood. The papers. The stories that had been running. White Clover.

His realization must have showed, because something changed in Officer Cartwright’s expression. He fluttered his long eyelashes and shrugged one slender shoulder. “Less cringing than Constance, not that it’s hard. He’ll do, I suppose.” The boy turned away, appearing to dismiss the unimportant secretary even as Chris still tingled from the unspoken exchange that had passed between them. He wished he could define what had just happened. Not knowing made him nervous.

Officer Cartwright focused his attention on Olivia. “I hear you have something for me,” he said, and even as he did, Olivia produced the knife case and pushed it across the table. It slid like a stone on ice and stopped right before the timeseer. He took his time opening it and studying the weapon cradled lovingly inside before taking it into his hand. He wielded it like the weapon it was, holding it by the hilt, and turned his wrist about to examine it at all sides. A chill crawled up Chris’s spine. This was not just an examination. Something about the way the other man held the weapon made it obvious he was used to such weight in his hands.

“It belonged to a killer,” Olivia supplied when the silence dragged. “It doesn’t appear to be an antique, so it probably doesn’t have a long history.” Officer Cartwright didn’t respond. He kept turning the weapon about, as if trying to be sure he saw every last speck of its surface. “Do you think―”

“I’m
trying
to,” the timeseer snapped. “Stop talking.”

And she did. Just like that, Olivia closed her mouth and said nothing else.

“I can do it,” Officer Cartwright said, finally. Olivia let out the breath she’d been holding. She clapped her hands before her, exactly once, and then stood still and silent, awaiting more instructions.

Officer Cartwright set the knife back down. He looked up at Olivia, and then turned his gaze to Chris. “You sit to my left,” he said. For a moment, Chris thought he was talking to Olivia, but he realized the young man was still looking at him…and that everyone else in the room was, too.

“Will,” Officer Burke murmured into the silence. “It’s very important I receive as clear a picture as possible. You know I am required to write a report on every timeseeing you do for Her Majesty’s peace.”

“You can sit by him,” Officer Cartwright said. “Your image will be clean enough for your report, Hannah, I promise.”

“Then surely that position will be more than suitable for Miss Faraday’s new assistant, Will,” Officer Burke offered. “My reports are required to be as exhaustive as possible, and―”

“He sits by me,” Officer Cartwright insisted. The set of his jaw and the way he folded his arms reminded Chris of something…of Rosemary, he realized. It was the look of someone who was used to getting their way.

He had his way this time, as well.

They arranged themselves around the table. William Cartwright sat at the head, with Olivia on his right and Chris on his left. Officer Hannah Burke sat beside Chris, looking none too bothered by her having been overruled, while Officer Maris Dawson sat beside Olivia, looking the opposite. Chris suspected she disliked the apparent breach in procedure more than anything else. He hoped he wasn’t going to cause anyone work or trouble.

Officer Cartwright extended his hands, and, tentatively, when he saw what Olivia did, Chris reached out and took the one offered to him. It was warm and soft and strangely familiar, somehow. Chris shook himself and, continuing to take his cue from Olivia, he offered his other hand to Officer Burke. Her fingers felt like the bones of a bird.

“Christopher,” Olivia purred, one eyebrow quirked, “don’t be alarmed. This can be
very
surreal the first time you experience it.”

Before he could open his mouth and ask just what, exactly, that meant―

―everything plunged into darkness.

hadowy shapes moved just beyond his vision. Blurred patches of near-white against the black. Dimly—very, very dimly—he was aware of his body, aware of the room, of Hannah Burke’s small, delicate hand clasped in his. Dimly, he was aware that he was Christopher Buckley. But those things were far away, strange, unimportant.

His vision focused slightly and then went blurred again. There was a banister against his hand. He was climbing steps. His vision focused again and he saw the very last moments of twilight through a window, familiar carpeting beneath his feet, a painting on the wall he knew well. The world surged, then stopped, then raced, then slowed, then crawled. He was looking down at Rosemary in bed. She turned on her side. Her lashes fluttered and they made eye contact. “Chris?” She yawned, and he tightened his grip around the knife in his hand, flexing each finger…

“No,” he heard Olivia Faraday’s voice, a lifetime away, and Rosemary dissolved into haze and mist, leaving nothing but darkness and the feeling of gripping the hilt of the knife. “That’s not it. Go back further, William. Not far. Just a bit.”

An odd, dizzying sensation of walking backwards. Back down steps and across a floor and through streets, walking and walking, an hour of walking, all in an instant. The only images he glimpsed were seen through a thick haze. Trying to focus on anything was impossible. The vision moved of its own accord, someone else sifting through and pilfering a story, skimming a book, looking for the important parts. They recognized and dismissed things before he even knew he what was looking at, and they were moving again before he knew they’d been there, sliding through barely visible, half-obscured images he didn’t understand.

Ana’s face flashed before him, her mouth a rictus of terrible pain.

She clutched at her stomach, trying to keep her insides in. She scrambled away from him, eyes wide and tears streaming down her face. The knife was slick and sticky in his hand, and he stabbed again, and again, meeting her forearm, her hands, never anything important. The image jumped and popped and fizzed like a photograph held over a flame. The edges hopped and doubled. Ana sobbed. “I don’t understand,” she howled. “I don’t understand!”

“Gods, yes,
yes
.” Olivia’s voice was at the very end of a long tunnel, so far away nothing she was saying could possibly matter. “This is it. This is the knife she used! Go deeper. There’s something here. We need to find it, William! Just a little more.”

The image snapped into focus, and there was blood everywhere, blood all over his face, and he twisted the knife and there was blood on his hands, blood on his knees, blood all over the walls, and blood splattering Ana’s face like rain from Olivia’s umbrella. For that instant, everything was sharp and real and immediate and Chris could have put his head in his hands and wailed for how horrible, how visceral, how brutal it was.

He was faintly aware of someone gasping, and it all slid away into blurred red shapes, nothing visible but blood, blood, blood through a haze of tears. “I can’t,” Officer Cartwright’s voice had lost its superior, smug polish. He sounded small and weak and terrified. “Oh, Gods, it’s too much. It’s too much. I can’t connect. There’s too much blood. I
can’t
.”

Olivia was protesting. What she was saying didn’t matter.

The red faded and he was moving back again, back and then forward, always with the knife in hand. There were periods of complete blackness, then periods of movement and shapes and colours, and then blackness, a feeling of utter disconnection, of loss of identity. Time blurred past like they were running a race through it, backward and forward, and nothing was definite enough to put words to, nothing at all.

He was holding the knife. His other hand pressed against a rough grain of wood. Birds chirped out a window framed with gently wafting curtains, and his hands were covered in red pulp. He brought the knife down again, and again, and again. Moisture bloomed in his hands and there was red everywhere.