The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (58 page)

Another police officer, one he didn’t recognize, was talking to a manic Rosemary. His sister alternated between what seemed like restless excitement and skittish terror as she reviewed the details of their ordeal. “Miss Albany helped me spit out my gag, and then I could sing! If I was as loud as I could be, I
knew
I could reach the gnome in the mirror and ask him to find you! I called another gnome to come and untie our ropes, and then I had to go and help my brother, even if it was dangerous!”

“You were a very brave girl,” the police officer said with a flash of teeth through his dark bristly beard. He reached up and gave her a respectful tip of his hat. “I’d say you about rescued him.”

Rosemary shot him a mischievous smile. “I’d say,” she agreed, her blue eyes sparkling. Chris returned her grin with one of his own. It wasn’t easy to find a smile for her, but it was the least he could do, after she’d saved his life for the second time in less than a week. Of the two states she was fluctuating between, he preferred the slightly unnerving cheer.

The rain had ceased, though the clouds had yet to clear, and people were stopping in the street to watch all the bustle milling around in the front of the Buckley estate. It had been years since there had been any activity there at all, aside from rapidly growing weeds and grass that never seemed to be cut often enough. They couldn’t hear anything from beyond the soundshield, but they could tell something of interest was going on, and it was human nature to pause and peer and wonder at it. No press had been allowed inside the soundshield, either, but that didn’t stop the photographers from taking their pictures for the papers. Chris couldn’t even imagine what the headlines were going to assume for tomorrow’s paper.

“Christopher?” the uniformed officer standing before him asked.

Chris blinked and shook his head, directing his attention back to William Cartwright. “I’m sorry,” he said with his best apologetic smile. “Could you repeat the question?”

William sighed irritably, giving him a flat look. “Did you
push
him?”

“No,” Chris said quickly. “He fell.” In truth, the series of events that had passed on the rainy rooftop were a strange, adrenaline-fuelled and distorted blur in his memory. Already, the edges were all indistinct and runny and fuzzed, like the world without his eyeglasses. He couldn’t say with certainty whether or not he had pushed Ethan Grey to his death, but in the version of events he’d already begun to build around in his mind, he hadn’t.

He had enough trauma on that rooftop.

William made an unconvinced sound in the back of his throat, scribbling something down in his notebook with a pen that looked nearly out of ink. It seemed to create more scratches than writing. “Did he confess to the crimes he’s been accused of, and would you testify accordingly before a magistrate of the Queen’s peace?”

“Yes, he did. And yes, of course I would, if I were called on.”

Chris watched him write in silence for a moment, but after a quick glance around to see who might be listening in, leaned forward. “I thought you weren’t a real police officer,” he murmured, his curiosity having grown to overshadow his polite restraint.

The timeseer flicked him a nonplussed look and snapped the notebook closed. “I’m not,” he said. “But there aren’t nearly enough of them, like anything else these days. And I have a uniform.” He rolled his eyes. “Besides, despite all the fuss made about truthsniffing, it’s really not bloody difficult. Anyone could do it.” He tucked the notebook into the breast pocket of his uniform, and reached up to settle his hat more firmly on his head. His full lips pursed. “When I said I’d like to see you again, an hour in the future wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“Ah,” Chris said, flushing. He lowered his gaze. “Neither did I.”

A beat of silence, and then William folded his hands before him. “You don’t seem well,” he said.

Chris snapped his eyes back to the other young man’s. “I just fought for my life.” His voice was sharp. “I don’t
feel
well.”

“You pity yourself,” William said, not seeming to notice the warning in Chris’s tone. He tucked his long, shining hair behind his ears. “Instead of just doing things, you fret needlessly about them.” He gave Chris a long look, one that seemed especially prying because of Chris’s state of undress. Chris wrapped his arms around his middle and gave the young man a look he hoped was sour and threatening, but it didn’t seem to be heeded. William simply turned about with that confident peckishness he displayed in all things. “Just do them and stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s unappealing. No one likes that.” And he walked off, ignoring Chris’s attempt to call after him and have it out.

Now he stood alone in the hurricane of movement around him. One of the reporters beyond the soundshield caught his eye, and he waved him over enthusiastically with a wide smile, but Chris turned away in disgust. The vultures seemed to follow his family about everywhere, of late, and fate seemed inclined to simply bred more corpses for them to come down and feast on.

He found himself walking without really intending to. He laid his hand on Rosemary’s shoulder as he passed her, and smiled awkwardly at Miss Albany without fully meeting her eyes, but he didn’t stop at either of them. Though he never sat and decided his destination, he’d had one in mind from the moment he started moving.
Instead of doing things, you fret needlessly about them.
Well, perhaps he did. Perhaps, wherever he knew him from, William Cartwright knew him better than he knew himself.

Olivia Faraday stood with her chin between her fingers, examining the splattered corpse of Ethan Grey like it were a collapsed cake: disappointing and unpleasant, but perhaps there would be better luck with the next one. Grateful to not be taking notes, for once, Chris didn’t let himself look very hard at the body. Instead, he looked very hard at Olivia. The look of mild, scholarly interest on her face, the pull at her lips that could have been either a smile or a grimace, the studious depth to her icy blue eyes. She was wearing a bustled red gown with black trimmings, black lace gloves, and her curled hair was piled up and covered by a hat garnished in stuffed male hummingbirds, all the very height of fashion. Her crutches and bandaged leg did a great deal to spoil the illusion of an elegant and average socialite, however. As did the way she stared down at the corpse he’d caused, as if judging whether or not it was still suitable to eat.

He tried to remember her as he’d seen her that night in the hospital, but that Olivia seemed very far away, and this one seemed so close.

“Olivia,” he said, and she snapped to attention like she’d been shocked.

“Christopher!” she exclaimed with a manic grin.

“I―” he began before being cut off.

She reached out and seized both of his hands in hers. “You are a
genius
!” she crowed. Before he could react to either of these things with more than a confused gape, her face darted forward and she pressed a kiss to each of his cheeks before wrapping her arms about his middle and pulling him tight. “An absolute
genius!
”

“Oh,” he said faintly. He put his hand to her shoulder and went to push her away, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. His stiff body hung in her arms like frozen meat. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Do you know what Constance would have done if a killer had come into her house and threatened her? Or Herbert? Or Margaret? Or Timothy?”

“I…can’t imagine.”

“They would have bloody gotten
killed
is what they would have done!” Olivia giggled madly. “Every single one of them! Useless!
They
would have been the ones on the ground, here, looking like someone dropped a bloody watermelon. But you! Not you! Not Christopher Buckley!” Her laugh could be described only as a cackle. Chris was sure if she’d been hale and hearty, she’d have picked him up by his middle and swung him around. She gripped the collar of his shirt in both her hands, not even seeming to notice he was half-dressed. “You are perfect!”

“…thank you,” Chris said. He didn’t know what else
to
say. He wished she was angry at him for spoiling her resolution. Or sympathetic he’d been put under such distress. Or
anything
but what she
was
. Anything else, anything at all, would have made this easier.

She kissed him once more, a lusty peck on the mouth, before turning back to survey her new corpse once again. “Bloody fantastic,” she breathed. There were two spots of colour high on her cheeks, and she breathed like she’d run a marathon. “Bloody fucking fantastic,” she said again, and he felt
his
cheeks begin to burn. “Did he say anything?” she asked. “Was I right? Was it jealousy that made him kill the Duke?”

“Something like that,” Chris said. “From what I gathered, he’d hoped the Duke would…I don’t know. Suddenly find it all a brilliant idea, if he came to him as Vanessa and then changed his face to his own. Obviously, it didn’t work out, and being rejected was…”

“He didn’t handle it well, no, of course not,” Olivia said, and for a moment, a bit of her glee faded. “Who likes being rejected? Especially someone like him. His whole bloody life was probably some form of rejection or another, hmm? I almost feel sorry for him.”

Chris choked on those words. “He was a murderer.”

Olivia tsked. “Of course he was! We determined that. But nobody is only just
one
thing. Mister Grey was a killer. And a brilliant artist! And a handsome charmer! And he was also a man who’d been taught to hate himself. Hating yourself that much for that long could make anyone snap.” For a tiny flash of a moment, he saw the Olivia from the hospital. But she hadn’t hated herself, and her single moment of softness passed as she clapped her hands before her and continued, voice bubbling. “And snap he did! And the daughter! Were we right? An innocent question and then panic?” She shot him a look like a little girl on her birthday, eyes twinkling. “Tell me we got it!”

Chris nodded.

“Naturally! And the Duchess…” Olivia chewed at her lip, and then shot him a questioning look.

“He didn’t mention the Duchess,” Chris admitted. “Or if he did, I don’t remember it.”

“Hmm,” Olivia mused. “That’s odd, isn’t it? He admits to everything else, but not that? Why? Obvious enough it was him, I’d think.” She looked over the body, and a small furrow appeared between her brows. “Obvious enough…” A dark cloud seemed to pass beneath her features, but in an instant, it was gone. When she turned back to him, the sun had come out, and she was bright-eyed and grinning. “I say, Christopher, I think we should―”

“Miss Faraday,” he said, forcing the words out and finding them more painful than he’d ever anticipated. “I regret to inform you I need to resign my position in your employment.”

Olivia blinked. The twinkle went out of her eyes. Her smile fell off her face and died between them. “What?”

“I’m leaving Darrington,” he hurried to explain. “I don’t know exactly when, yet”―
or how, or where I’ll be going―
“but it will be as soon as I possibly can, and I think it would be best if I tendered my resignation now, rather than later.”

“I don’t understand,” Olivia said. Her eyes scanned his face, as though searching for a sign he was lying to her, telling some grand joke. As if he would.

He pushed himself onwards, knowing if he looked back for a moment, he’d lose his nerve. “I’ll continue doing any work you wish of me while I prepare to leave, until you’re able to find a new assistant. I’d prefer to make the transition as smooth as possible for the both of us. If you could―”

She slapped him.

His head
snapped
to one side. His thoughts scattered in all directions like a flock of disturbed ducks. He tasted blood, and raised a hand to his lip to see if it came away bloody. It didn’t.

He shook his head, trying to gather his wits back together. He readjusted his spectacles. When he blinked down at the face of Olivia Faraday, she stared up at him with a face that was
not
, as he’d expected, furious, but rather deeply and immeasurably wounded. He waited for her to fling accusations at his face, but they didn’t come.

They stared at one another for a long time. He saw something that might have been tears glimmering in Olivia’s eyes, and might have simply been glittering resolve. Her lip trembled, but the hand she’d raised to strike him never fell, never even moved. As for himself, he felt…he just felt…

“Oh, thank all the Gods! Christopher!”

He’d never been so grateful to hear someone call his name in his life. He blinked and turned away from Olivia, towards the voice he’d heard. He broke into a smile at seeing Fernand push his way past disgruntled police officers, his face a mixture of relief and concern, and it was very easy, very
welcome
to find the excuse leave Olivia’s side and hurry to Fernand’s.

He went to clasp hands with the old man, but, to his surprise, Fernand spread his arms wide and folded him into a tight embrace instead. He thumped on Chris’s back with the pommel of his cane, making Chris gasp as the wind in his lungs protested. But then he laughed and accepted it, returning the gesture. He tried not to think of Olivia, standing somewhere behind him. He tried not to think of how inexplicably devastated she had been. “You, young master,” Fernand wheezed into his ear, “need to stop getting into these life-threatening situations! Gods, it seems every time I have someone on the mirror, lately, they’re telling me how you nearly lost your sorry life!”

“Mother Deorwynn, Fernand, believe me, I know,” Chris laughed. He pulled away and looked up at the old man, who even stooped was taller than he was. “If I said I was sorry, would you forgive me for it?”

“Bah!” Fernand scoffed, clapping him on the back one last time. “There’s no point in saying you’re sorry if you’re just going to keep doing it.”

“Well, I’m certainly intending to stop. I just…” Chris blinked. Suddenly, it was as though a brilliantly illuminated path was spread out before him. He saw exactly what he had to do to leave Darrington, to help Rosemary. All he had to do was ask. “Fernand,” he said. “I…” He shook his head, amazed at how obvious it was. “Could I speak to you inside?”