The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (52 page)

A man’s face appeared in the mirror. “Hello,” he said, his voice genial. “This is the Darrington City mirror operator, do you need assistance?”

“Ethan Grey,” Olivia said, voice pregnant with breathless excitement. “
Seeshifter
categorization.”

“One moment, please,” the operator said, and the mirror clouded.

The last time, the operator had found nothing. Nothing at all.
There’s no one matching that name and categorization in our records, miss,
the pleading operator had told them, cringing as if expecting a blow. They’d asked for a worldcatcher, an artist who could capture the spark of life and movement in his work, and there hadn’t been any such a person in Darrington.

“Olivia,” Chris said, heart pounding in his throat. “You don’t think he’s a―”

The mists cleared. “I have a frequency for that name and categorization,” the man said with a smile, having no idea of what he’d just told them. “Wait just a moment, and I’ll put you through.”

Olivia turned to Chris, and her eyes glittered like sapphires or diamonds. “Ethan Grey is a bloody faceshifter,” she said, and it all fell into place.

ancel that connection, please, my good fellow.”

Olivia had turned back to the mirror before Chris could even react to the revelation she’d just throw before his eyes. He spun with dizziness from more than his bruised brains. Olivia was already dismissing the operator with the usual cascade of chimes and before the mirror could even dim all the way, she drummed out a frequency he didn’t recognize.

“A faceshifter…” Chris murmured, raising a hand to his temple. “Then…Miss Caldwell…”

“Darling Vanessa wasn’t even there that night!” Olivia crowed. “Gods, it all makes so much sense! The question has been fluttering around in the back of my head all day! Why would a backgammon player like Grey court a Duke’s daughter as his cover? It’s madness! It puts him under more scrutiny than anyone on the down-low would ever want! But it all makes sense, don’t you see? He chose Analaea for a reason! He
wanted
to be where he was. Ethan Grey―” The picture of the mirror solidified and Maris Dawson’s handsome face appeared, her orange curls a snarled nest and her stout little body wrapped in a dressing gown. Without missing a beat, Olivia simply turned in the middle of her tirade, eyes glittering wildly, “―was in love with the Duke!”

Officer Dawson’s brow furrowed. “…Miss Caldwell was?” she hazarded. “And do you have any idea what time it is? I thought you were at the hospital overnight!”

“No, no, no,” Olivia waved her off impatiently. “Miss Caldwell has nothing to do with any of this! Just like I suspected from the start! No, Maris, I’m talking about
Ethan Grey
!”

Officer Dawson’s eyes went wide. She gasped and then sighed, surprise and then release. “Yes,” she said, eyes sliding closed. “Oh, yes. That feels right. An artist. He would have moved in the right circles, known about val Daren’s reputation, even met him.”

“He’d never be accepted as one of the Duke’s protégées. He patronized only beautiful young women! But he couldn’t help it. He fell. He fell hard, and he fell right into a pit full of Sins of Passion.”

Maris’s eyes flew open again and a frowned marred the relief on her face. “But in the mirror―the seeing?”

“Oh, this is the best part, Maris, you are going to
love
this!” Olivia clapped her hands together and then leveraged herself on her crutches to lean forward conspiratorially. “He’s a faceshifter! He’s been masquerading as a worldcatcher this whole time, but the categorization records don’t lie! He’s registered as a seeshifter, and the only reason for a seeshifter to fake another proficiency is―”

“Mother Deorwynn and Father Calhoun.” The policewoman in her dressing gown gasped. “He went to the Duke as Caldwell and then when the Duke realized the truth―” Her gaze sharpened. “Faraday. Can you walk?”

“I can walk, Maris.” Olivia sighed, but Officer Dawson had barely stopped.

“Good. Call a hackney, get to the station, and bring your assistant. There’s a faceshifter in Tarland and we need to get him in hand as soon as possible.”

“Mister Ethan Grey, categorization seeshifter!” Officer Dawson shouted outside the locked door of the apartment building. “This is Officer Maris Dawson of the Queen’s Police. You have until the count of three to open this door.”

Cowering against the far wall of the surprisingly upscale bookstore where Ethan Grey rented out the top floor, Chris glanced at Olivia, who stood on her crutches like a bundle of energy. She still wore her burned, grimy, and ruined gown, but her ice blue eyes were all but crackling. “Olivia,” Chris murmured, feeling a chill go through him as Officer Dawson hit
two
. “Shouldn’t he have answered by now? What if―?”

“Shush,” Olivia commanded, and Officer Dawson counted
zero
.

The policewoman pulled her pistol, which glowed faintly silver in the dim light of the hall. “Clear the area!” she commanded, and aimed the gun at the doorknob. The shot was the sound of a glacier breaking in half. A blast of cold erupted from the barrel of the gun and turned the brass knob white. Officer Dawson wound up and planted a hard kick right beside the crystal-frosted latch.

The door burst inward without resistance, the knob and surrounding wood shattering like glass.

“Hang back!” Officer Dawson snapped, and, pistol held at the ready, stepped into the yawning hole left by the door.

The only light from inside came from the silver light of the icepistol. Officer Dawson might as well have been walking into a cave. It was black as ink outside, the sun still hours from rising, and no illumination shone from inside the apartment.

“Ethan Grey,” the policewoman said evenly, her voice calm and clear and her finger on the trigger. “You are under arrest. Please come quietly and peacefully, and no force will be required.”

Eerie silence followed Officer Dawson’s statement. Chris heard the ticking of a clock from somewhere, Olivia breathing beside him, and little else.

Slowly, the barrel of her gun never wavering, the policewoman took a step farther into the room. She dropped one hand and fumbled around with something, and then her fingers tapped a light and awoke a slumbering salamander, who roared to life. The light was shockingly bright after the dark, and Chris saw the entry of a messy, lived-in sort of flat.

The Officer nodded at them just once, then jerked her head into the room. Olivia started forward, the
thumping
of her crutches unnaturally loud, and Chris started after her.

“Grey…” Officer Dawson’s voice ushered them into the flat. “If you are present, you are officially in violation of law.” The flat was indeed lived in, with waistcoats and shoes and hats scattered about everywhere. There was a thick blanket on the couch; it didn’t look like Grey used his bed. And all around the room, leaned up on surfaces, nailed on walls, or even still resting in the cradle of their easels, there were paintings.

Chris was drawn to the closest one against his will. Three women, gowned and hatted in a style dated thirty years or more back, sat at a wrought iron, white painted table. Despite the fact that they were not the focus of the painting, he could see their ribbons, sleeves, and skirts all fluttering in the breeze. The focus of the painting was the garden. Flowers of all colours, a rainbow kaleidoscope, stretched out toward him, starting at the feet of those tea-drinking young ladies and ending so close he felt as if he could reach out and touch them. Each petal seemed to shiver on the promise of a wind, and Chris could swear he could faintly smell the blossoms.

“Well,” Olivia said behind him, musingly, as Officer Dawson threw open doors. “He’s quite good, isn’t he?”

Chris reached out and ran his fingers along the surface of the painting. It seemed terribly wrong that his fingers stopped when they reached the oil and canvas of the surface. “He isn’t even a worldcatcher,” he murmured. “All this is done with illusions.”

“Illusions and paint,” Olivia agreed, picking up a discarded brush, stiff with unrinsed paint. “I don’t think painter is one of the authorized professions for a seeshifter. It encourages them to get too creative. Start flirting with the idea of shifting people. He’d have to have done all of this on his spare time if he hadn’t falsified his categorization.”

Before Chris could reply, Officer Dawson appeared back in the main room. She looked as if she’d just smelled something foul and she holstered her pistol. “He isn’t here,” she said.

Olivia nodded. “I suspected when he didn’t answer your first call. I didn’t hear anything from inside, after all.” She sighed. “Well, that begs the question. Has he fled, or is he just out?”

Chris turned away from the painting to gape. “It’s long past midnight and it won’t be dawn for hours,” he said. “Where would he be?”

“Seeshifters tend to entertain a thriving nightlife,” Officer Dawson grunted. “And their tricks are especially appreciated when they’re off Lowry books.”

“
Appreciated
,” Olivia added, “is police euphemism for ‘well-paid.’ “

“So either he’s gone to ground, or he’s going to,” Officer Dawson growled. “Eadwyr’s sagging tits,” she swore, making Chris jump and flush brightly. “We
cannot
have a faceshifter loose in Tarland. If the people find out about this, it’s going to be chaos. We outlawed this for a reason!”

“And he could be anywhere if he’s run…” Chris said. He felt a bit dizzy, considering it. A man who’d been able to do that to the Duke, and to Ana, who could wear any face he wished.

Officer Dawson turned to Olivia. “Faraday,” she said, her voice low. “I know we’re not supposed to just speculate, but please. You’re a hundred times stronger than me. You never believed for a moment it was Caldwell, even when we saw her damn face in that mirror. Speculate.”

“All right, speculation,” Olivia agreed. She took exactly ten seconds to look around the room. “He hasn’t been gone long. Look here.” She three-legged hopped to a painting, one Chris hadn’t seen before. When his eyes fell on it, his heart seized up in his chest. Analaea val Daren’s beautiful, soulful brown eyes stared out of the canvas and her lips quirked into a small smile, which immediately vanished when he made eye contact with her. A few tendrils of her brown hair stirred around her ears as Olivia reached up and drew her fingers through the words painted there in bright red.