The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (56 page)

Grey’s lips firmed into a thin line. “You’re all the same,” he said. “Do you really think anyone is stupid enough to―
no
.” He shook his head. “No. I want
money
.”

Chris’s heart skipped a beat. He stared down the barrel of the firepistol. “Oh…” he said weakly.

“I can’t get into a bank, or a store, or even bloody take a purse off a lady in the street with how the coppers have their eyes out for me,” Grey continued. “But I’ve seen all the papers. They won’t stop talking about you, your amazing little sister. You have this big house, this important father. And I thought to myself…well. I’ve been to that place. I know the way in there.
That’s
one way to get myself some royals.”

But he didn’t have royals. He didn’t have a dime and nickel to rub together. There was a wad of ten notes in his pocket, an envelope with forty in his study, and that was the extent of the Buckley family fortune. Chris licked his lips and swallowed again. His throat was so dry it was painful. His fingers trembled and he hoped Grey didn’t notice. “I…” He gave a tremulous smile. “I have jewels,” he said. His mother’s jewels, and the thought of giving them to this faceshifting pervert hurt his heart, but nothing was more important than Rosemary’s safety. “Expensive pieces, very valuable. I can―”

“
No
,” Grey said, tightening his grip on the firepistol. The nimbus
flashed
as the salamander responded to his anger. “Do you think I’m an idiot? I’ll take those into a shop and find coppers waiting for me there, too. No. Nothing that can be traced. I want
notes
. I want
royals
.”

Gods, he didn’t
have
royals. He could say that, admit it, but it wasn’t the answer Grey was looking for. There was a wildness in those eyes, a terrifying desperation. He didn’t know what this man would do, but the answer that came to him when he asked the question was “
anything
.” “I…” Chris took a deep, shuddering breath. What was he going to do? Gods, what the three hells was he going to
do
? “There…” The lie leapt onto his lips. “There’s a vault,” he said. “My father kept money in a vault in his study. It’s on the third floor. There’s a combination lock.” He held his breath, hoping against hope.

“What’s the―” Grey cut himself off with a jerk of his head. “No,” he said, and Chris’s heart sank to his toes. “No, none of that. You’ll come with me and you’ll do the combination, yourself.”

“I won’t―” Chris began.

“Shut up,” Grey said, and twitched the barrel of the gun. “Keep your hands over your head and don’t make
any
sudden movements. I swear to Eadwyr and Healfdene, I’ll blow your head off if you make me.” Chris swallowed all the empty promises he’d been about to offer, closing his eyes and taking trembling, deep breaths. “Turn around,” Grey said, and Chris obeyed. “Good. Now move.”

Somehow, his feet moved. One in front of the other, he started back down the hallway.

What am I going to do?

Because he had to do something. There were no vault, no combination, and no royals. His plan lasted only until Grey realized that, and then he was back to the same inevitable conclusion. He breathed deeply, turning his brain inside out, desperately searching for an answer. He was aware of the gun pointed to the back of his head like he could see it. So, too, was he aware of how Grey was built similarly to himself, but a good head taller. If it came to it, he wouldn’t be able to overpower the man, not even with the element of surprise.

“I’m not a monster, you know.” Grey’s voice suddenly cut through his tormented thoughts.

It caught him so off guard he blurted his next words without thinking, “You’re a bloody faceshifter!”

“You have no
idea
what it’s like,” Grey shot back in defiance. “No one has any fucking
idea
what it’s like, being the way I am. All the things you have to hide, how if you don’t, your whole
sodding
life is ruined! It’s just a―a
spiral
. You start out with one little illusion to cover something up, but it really
wasn’t
that big of a deal, so you do it again. But then people are asking questions, and when they know you’re a seeshifter, they suspect. So then you tell them you’re a worldcatcher. Why not? I’m a better painter than an illusionist, anyway, and I can mimic worldcatching good enough. But the more and more lies you keep throwing onto the pile, the more you―hands
up
!”

Chris thrust his hands all the way into the air, heart leaping into his throat. “I wasn’t doing anything,” he said quickly. “They’re just tired.”

“You think I’m something evil,” Grey said. “I don’t
want
to be here, you know. I just want this all to be over.”

Chris held his tongue, simply putting one foot in front of the other. They weren’t far from the narrow staircase to the third floor, now. He didn’t know what the hells he was going to do when they reached the top of it.

He stumbled and caught himself before he fell when the barrel of the gun jabbed
hard
into the back of his head. His wound from Grapevine Street pulled and he yelped in pain. “
Say
it,” Grey commanded. “I know what you’re thinking.
Say
it.”

Chris gritted his teeth. “You killed those people,” he ground out.

“It wasn’t supposed to be that way.”

“You took a knife into the Duke’s estate.”

“I didn’t―I didn’t know how he’d react, when he realized it was me. I thought, if he attacked me, I should be able to defend myself. I didn’t think anything would come of it.” A pause, and then, more forcefully. “I
didn’t
.”

“I didn’t say a word,” Chris murmured.

“It was never all meant to happen like this, dammit. I
loved
Viktor. It was never―you wouldn’t understand. Nobody would ever bloody understand.”

He didn’t want to understand. He didn’t want to think about any of this, not when Rosemary was in danger. He ran through possible courses of action in his mind. He could fall backwards down the stairs into the faceshifter, knocking him off his feet. No, that would never work. He could point to a place on the wall, say it was the illusive vault, hope against hope Grey would cross to see it for himself. No, that was idiotic. He could simply break into a run and hope his luck was stronger than Grey’s aim. Certainly, if he wanted the back of his head cooked. He felt dizzy.

“I never wanted him dead. It was the
last
thing I
ever
wanted. It was just…after he
rejected
me, I just―”

“The stairs are here,” Chris interrupted, not wanting to hear anything the man had to say. It wasn’t the Duke’s body he was seeing in his mind’s eye, but Ana’s. She’d bled to death, holding her guts in, trying to understand why the man she’d so loved was doing this to her. Ethan Grey could lie to himself all he wanted, but that alone made him a monster. “We need to go up.”

Grey pressed the barrel of the gun between Chris’s shoulder blades and pushed him towards the narrow staircase. Chris stumbled forward a step and mounted the first step, hands still held above his head. He wondered where his sister and her governess were. Were they terrified? Were they hurt? What had Grey done when he took Miss Albany’s dress?
No,
he reminded himself,
focus on now. You need to do something. Find something and do it.

An image flashed before his eyes. The salamander’s scales all going dark, its sinuous body becoming limp. The way it had just fallen.

He froze for a second. The barrel of the gun bumped against his back. “Keep moving,” Grey growled.

They were nearly to top of the stairs. Chris did as he was told, taking another step, and then another. He still didn’t know what had happened, that day. There hadn’t been
time
to consider it, to wonder.

They reached the top. Chris’s heart thumped in his throat. He knew he had about half a second during which it would be worth the risk, and even then, the case might be that nothing happened at all. But he had to take the risk, the chance. He rounded down the hallway, and Grey was still on the last step. There was no line of sight between his back and the barrel of the gun. He closed his eyes tightly. He took a deep breath. He gathered his will.

And he
pushed
.

DROP IT,
he projected,
smashing
every bit of conscious resolve against the faceshifter. He
forced
his concentrated willpower down Grey’s throat, feeling it all rush out of him in a desperate wave. He heard a gasp like he’d crashed into the man and knocked his wind out, and it would have to have been enough.

He said a prayer and ran.

He dashed madly down the hall, pumping his arms and puffing out his breath. He heard a vile curse being spat, but there was no telltale sound of the pistol hitting the steps. His heart jumped in his mouth. No. “
Stop
,” Grey roared, and Chris ran. He ran like devils were chasing after him. Where was he even
going
, he wondered, but he knew before his eyes even locked on the door.

“
Wrong choice
, Mister Buckley,” Grey called, his voice no longer muffled by the narrow confines of the staircase, and Chris threw himself against the wall by instinct. He hit too hard, his head rolled along the plaster and smashed against a doorframe and stars erupted before his eyes, pain centered on the healing stitches along his hairline, but his movement had been wise. The
crack
and the
roar
of a discharging firepistol burned up the hallway behind him, and the tennis ball sized sphere of molten flame singed the hairs on the back of his neck as it sped past, punching through the plaster of the far wall. He stumbled back into motion, hand on the wall to keep from tripping and falling. He could see blue sky through the hole.

He
threw
himself against the doorway, fumbling with the latch. He couldn’t stay still, it was
death
to stay still. He threw the door open and then himself inside of it. The door
shuddered
wildly in his hands and blackened splinters burst outwards, but the strong oak held against the fireball where the plaster hadn’t. “I swear to Elder and Crone, Buckley, if you don’t stop right
fucking
now―” Grey growled, his steps
thumping
up the hallway.

Chris stumbled over his old train set, knocked over his painted rocking horse. One of the carved handles that were its splendid ears snapped off when it hit the ground.

The window was still open from that night almost a week before when Ethan Grey had stood over his sister’s bed wearing Chris’s face and left a note and a knife. The sound of the rain was a pounding rush, its wetness a spray across Chris’s face. He swung his weight up against it, his ribs crying out in bruised pain as they smashed against the windowsill. He reached up and out, gripping the shingles in this hands, and pulled himself up faster than he’d ever managed even as an eager child using the toy box as a boost. Squirming his body along the shingles, scratching and scraping until he was completely out on the roof, he pulled himself up tight into a ball and pressed his back against the overhang, shivering in the cool night air.

What now?

He heard the door to his childhood bedroom creak slowly open. “Mister Buckley,” Grey’s voice was dangerously quiet. Chris could barely hear it over the sound of the pouring rain. He closed his eyes and held his breath. “Mister Buckley, how exactly do you think this ends?” Grey continued. The floorboards creaked as he slowly made his way around the room. “If I find you, I put this gun against your head and pull the trigger. If I don’t…well, your little sister and the brown shrew who watches her can pay for it, instead. Is that what you want, Mister Buckley?”

He couldn’t stay where he was, shivering in the rain and hoping it would end. There was nothing Chris wanted more than to simply curl up and wait until the danger passed, but it wouldn’t happen. It wouldn’t. He forced his eyes open, turned his head in all directions, searching for his next move. When he craned his neck all the way around, and warm rain fell on his upturned face, his eyes fell on the wrought-iron trimmings cresting the overhang…and then the roofing not far above it…

As quietly as he could, Chris climbed to his feet and turned around.

“Gods, come
on
,” Grey cried suddenly. Chris’s hands froze on the iron trimmings they clung to, heart in his throat. But there was a tortured sort of desperation in Grey’s voice as he continued. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I bloody
don’t
. Just come on out and give me the royals and I’ll go. I’ll be
gone
.” The iron was slick with rain. Chris’s hands slipped as he pulled himself up. He tightened his grip and clung desperately to his weak purchase, hanging against the wall, fighting back terrified sobs. “If I
wanted
to hurt you or your sister, I’d have done it the first night I followed you home! Just come
out
.”

Pulling himself up onto the overhang, Chris scrabbled with his socked feet to get purchase on the edge, and then perched there like a gargoyle, panting as softly as he could. Below, he could hear Grey begin to grow frustrated, tossing his boyhood wardrobe doors open, throwing his old things about, dumping over the toy box. Chris took a trembling breath and continued climbing, pulling himself up to the steepled roof hanging over the window he’d come out from. All it took was a glance down at the landing below to see how much higher this was than he’d anticipated. His head swam.

“It’s just all gotten so out of
hand
…” Grey pleaded. “After Viktor, I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but then Ana was there, telling me she knew what I was, what I’d done, and it just keeps
spiralling
, and, and…”

Chris remembered the knife slick and sticky in his hand, weaving in and out. Ana’s voice howling,
I don’t understand, I don’t understand.
The way her blood had splattered the walls, the ceiling, and the frilly pastel room. No, he resolved, setting his jaw. No, he wouldn’t feel pity for this man.