Thieftaker (32 page)

For once, fortune was on Ethan’s side. He heard a sound—half cry, half snarl. A man’s voice, beyond doubt, colored in equal measure by rage and shock and pain. At the same time, Anna disappeared, as if snatched away by demons. Ethan sprinted to Holin’s side as quickly as his leg would allow.

The boy yet breathed, though only just, his chest rising and falling in a shallow, irregular rhythm. The rain had soaked through his clothes. His skin felt cold and his lips were a pale shade of blue.

Ethan slid his arms under the lad, knowing that Holin wouldn’t survive much longer without a fire, dry clothes, and warm blankets.

“You shouldn’t have done that!” He knew without looking that Anna was back and standing behind him. She didn’t sound like a child anymore. Her voice was taut and harsh; a little girl’s voice blended with that of a grown man.

In the next instant, Ethan pitched forward over Holin, landed hard on his shoulder, and rolled onto his back. The molten iron seared his entire body from the inside, filling every inch of him, to the very tips of his fingers. He opened his mouth to scream, felt himself vomit instead. But still the anguish continued to build until he feared that his mind would melt or explode or simply cease to function.

He won’t stop until I’m dead.
Ethan didn’t need Anna to tell him this. He knew it, and for an instant he welcomed the idea. No more life; no more pain.

As soon as he formed this thought, the agony ceased, and again Ethan wondered if this conjurer could read his mind.

“Fine, Kaille.”

Ethan stared up at the illusion. She still looked like a little girl, even if she sounded like some creature from beyond the living world.

“You leave me no choice but to end this matter. You’ll watch the boy die, and then in the morning you’ll go to the sheriff, and you’ll tell him that you’re the one who killed Jennifer Berson, and that little boy last fall, and this one as well. You’ll admit that you’re a conjurer; you’ll tell him you used your ‘witchery’ to commit these murders so that you could cast control spells. I’m sure he’ll piece together the rest.”

“I’ll go to him tonight! I’ll tell him what’s really happened.”

“You won’t remember what’s really happened. By the time I’m done with my spell, you’ll be passed out in the lane. You’ll wake, find yourself next to the boy’s body, and you’ll know, as you do your own name, that you killed him.”

Ethan reached for his blade, but before his hand even found the hilt, the same burning agony poured into his veins again. His body went rigid; his stomach heaved again. He would have clawed out his own eyes to make it stop.

“I can do this all night, Kaille. I can make you suffer in ways you never imagined, and well before my power is exhausted you’ll beg me to kill the boy and cast my spell. Or you can accept that you’ve lost, and be spared that torment. It’s your choice.”

“Yes!” he rasped. “Just stop! Please!”

As soon as Ethan spoke the words, his pain drained away, leaving him spent and limp, his heart laboring. He forced his eyes open, saw the girl standing over him, tiny, luminescent, a fierce grin on her waiflike face.

“Good, Kaille,” she said. “A wise choice, for once.”

Ethan turned away from her, and doing so caught a glimpse of movement on the other side of the lane. Briefly—the span of a heartbeat; no more—he thought that someone had come to help him. But the form was too small, too dark. It took him a moment to recognize Pitch, his dark eyes shining with the distant glow of Anna’s conjured fire.

Alarm crossed Anna’s face and she glanced quickly in the direction Ethan was looking. Seeing the dog, however, her face relaxed back into that triumphant grin.

“It’s a simple spell, really,” she began, her voice easing back toward the normal tone of a small girl. “You speak it just the way you would any other. Strange, isn’t it? There should be something different about a spell that kills. Don’t you agree?”

Ethan barely listened to her. Pitch stood staring at him, his head canted to the side. Ethan stared back, his heart aching. What could he do to save Holin, to save himself? Nothing on his own. He couldn’t match the conjurer’s power or skill or cunning. Not alone. But he wasn’t alone anymore.

“Pitch.”

He mouthed the word, nothing more. But Pitch raised his ears and gave a tentative wag of his tail. Ethan felt hot tears mingle with the rain on his cheeks.

“Forgive me.”

A different kind of pain clawed at Ethan from within, as potent as that caused by the conjurer’s attacks, and more damning. For if he survived the night, this pain would never go away.

Anna had paused in what she was saying. Ethan sensed that she was watching him. He could imagine the confusion on the girl’s face, but he didn’t look up at her. He kept his eyes locked on Pitch’s. And he spoke the words in his mind.

Caecitas ex vita huiusce canis—ex Pitch—evocata.
Blindness, conjured from the life of this dog—from Pitch.

Instantly he felt the power of the spell thrumming along his entire body, like tens of thousands of tiny needle points tickling his skin. The cobblestones trembled with it. The entire city pulsed. Surely every conjurer in Boston felt it. Yet Pitch didn’t shudder or flinch. He didn’t make any sound at all. His legs gave way; he toppled onto his side and lay still.

Ethan realized that he was alone, save for Holin. Anna had vanished once more. He could hear the man—the conjurer—screaming again, fury and pain in the inarticulate cries. Probably he could have tracked him by the sounds, learned who he was. Under the circumstances, he might have prevailed in a battle of spells.

He didn’t make the attempt. Struggling to his knees, he crawled to where Pitch lay, knowing that he ought to do something to honor the creature; knowing just as surely that he couldn’t. As he ran trembling fingers over the wet fur of Pitch’s head he tried to say again that he was sorry. The words caught in his throat. He climbed to his feet, staggered to Holin’s side, and lifted the boy into his arms. Pausing once more to look at Pitch, he hurried down the lane, past Henry’s shop and his room. At the next corner, he turned northward and bore the boy back into the North End to Elli’s house.

By the time he reached her street he was exhausted and weak. The houses here were as dark as they had been on Cooper’s Alley. All except Elli’s. She would be panicked, unable to sleep or eat, unsure of whether to wait there with Clara or venture into the dark streets in search of her son. Even from down the lane, Ethan could see that candles shone in her windows, so that pale shafts of light cut across the street, making the rain sparkle. He saw her peer out into the night from the nearer of the two.

She must have seen him coming. In the next moment, her door flew open and she ran down the steps, heedless of the rain.

“What’s happened to him?” she asked, her voice high and strained. “Is he hurt?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan told her, breathing hard, his leg aching.

He stepped past her, entered her house, and went immediately to the sitting room, where a fire blazed. He laid Holin on a sofa and began pulling off the boy’s wet clothes.

“He looks half dead!” Elli said, hovering at Ethan’s shoulder. “How did this happen? What mischief did you get him into now?”

He whirled on her so quickly that she fell back several steps. Grief and guilt and the memory of pain flared in his chest like conjured fire. But though a thousand angry replies leaped to mind, he bit them all back. There were tears in Elli’s eyes, and her cheeks were every bit as ashen as her son’s.

“I didn’t do this,” he said, struggling to keep his voice level. He could feel Pitch’s wet fur under his fingertips. His chest burned with guilt, with grief, with the remembered pain of the conjurer’s relentless attacks. “And I just … did something to save him—to save both of us—that I’ll regret for the rest of my days.”

She said nothing, but nodded.

Ethan turned his attention back to the boy’s soaked clothes. “Get blankets, as many as you can find. And throw another log on that fire.”

“Of course.”

She hurried from the room, and Ethan finished undressing the boy. He moved the sofa so that it faced the hearth, and when Elli entered the room with an armful of blankets, he took several from her and together they laid them over the boy.

“Some soup or tea would help him,” Ethan said.

“All right.” She started to leave. “For you, too?”

He glanced back at her, their eyes meeting briefly. “Thank you.”

Once more she left the room. Ethan knelt beside the sofa and studied Holin’s face, head, and neck. He saw nothing to indicate that the boy had been injured, which meant that this stupor had been induced by a spell. Elli would kill him if she learned that he had conjured in her home, even if he cast the spell for Holin’s benefit. So quickly, while she remained occupied in the kitchen, he pulled out a single mullein leaf.

“
Suscitatio ex verbasco evocata.
” Awaken, conjured from mullein.

At first nothing happened. Ethan considered trying the spell again with more leaves. But then the boy’s eyelids fluttered, and he let out a low groan.

Instantly, Elli was by Ethan’s side. “I thought I heard him.”

“You did,” Ethan said. “He should be awake before long.”

Holin moaned again, opened his eyes and then closed them. A moment later, he shifted beneath the blankets, looking and sounding far more like a sleeping boy than like a child caught in the thrall of a conjurer.

“The Lord be praised,” Elli said. Tears flowed freely down her face, and for once she made no effort to hide them from Ethan.

“He looks like he’ll be all right now,” Ethan said. He climbed to his feet, feeling old and sore and wearier than he would have thought possible. His clothes were as soaked as Holin’s had been, and he realized that he was shivering. “I should go.”

“The tea is almost ready,” Elli said. “And there are some clothes in the back room that belonged to John. They should fit you. Get yourself changed. I want to know what happened tonight.”

Ethan knew better than to argue. He limped to the back room and found an old chest filled with men’s clothes, all of them far nicer—and no doubt far more expensive—than anything he owned. He rummaged through the chest until he found what had to be the oldest, most threadbare shirt and breeches John Harper had owned. He stripped off his wet clothes and put these on. The breeches were too long for him, though they fit around his middle, and he had to roll back the shirtsleeves. But putting on the dry clothes made him feel far better. He returned to the sitting room, arranged his damp clothes before the hearth, and took a seat beside the fire. Soon, he had stopped shivering.

Elli had already settled into a chair by the hearth. She held a cup of steaming tea in one hand and was stroking Holin’s wheat-colored hair with the other. As Ethan sat, she straightened a bit in her chair. A second cup of tea sat on a small table beside him. Elli pointed to it.

“Thank you,” he said, picking up the cup and holding it under his nose. It smelled of apple and mint, and warmed his hands.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Elli asked. He could hear the effort she was making to keep any hint of accusation from seeping into the question. “Do you know why this was done to my boy?”

He hadn’t even considered the question of why. He had seen Holin lying there in the lane, and had focused every subsequent thought on finding a way to save the boy’s life. But as soon as Elli asked him, the answer became obvious. Sephira Pryce.

Sephira’s men killed Daniel Folter, and Anna tried to convince Ethan that Daniel had killed Jennifer. Holin had seen Nigel and Ethan in the street, and now the conjurer had taken Holin and tried to use him for another killing spell. Sephira and this man were working together. But to what end?

“Ethan?”

His eyes snapped up to hers. “I’m sorry. I was … The short answer to your question is that Holin was taken because of me. Because someone saw us together yesterday, when I walked him home.”

“Who?” she asked, as if intent on killing whoever it was herself.

“I shouldn’t—”

“Who, Ethan?”

“Sephira Pryce,” he said.

Elli blinked once, but offered no other response.

“You remember the conjurer I mentioned yesterday?”

She nodded, growing pale once more.

“He’s the one who had Holin. But I think he and Sephira are working together. I think that’s how he knew to go after Holin in the first place.”

“Was he going to—?” She broke off, seeing the look on Ethan’s face. “Holin could have died, just like those others.”

“He’s fine now. We were fortunate.”

She stared at him for a long time, until at last Ethan looked away and sipped his tea.

“You weren’t fortunate,” she said. “You saved him. You told me you did something that you’ll regret.”

“Let it go, Elli.” He said it softly, but he knew she wouldn’t argue.

“Well, thank you,” she said at length. “For whatever you did.”

“Don’t let him go to work tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry,” she answered, falling into the stern tone he had heard her use with Holin and Clara. “What about the next day?”

“It’ll be over by then.” Speaking the words, he knew it was true. He could scarcely believe that his confrontation with Nigel had been only yesterday, that he had spoken with Janna this very morning. Tomorrow night was still a lifetime away, in more ways than one.

“You think you can defeat this conjurer so soon?”

Ethan shrugged, staring fixedly at the fire.

“Ethan?”

“If it takes longer than a day, and I think Holin is still in danger, I’ll let you know.”

He glanced Elli’s way and found her watching him, her green eyes seeing right through the placid expression he had imposed on his features.

“That’s not what you meant, is it?”

“Before I go, I need to wake him, and ask him some questions. Is that all right?”

He was sure she would object, that after all that had happened she would want to protect Holin even from this. But she surprised him. “Yes, but I’m staying right here.”

“Of course.” He put down his tea cup and shifted to the sofa so that he was sitting beside the boy. He gently shook Holin and spoke his name. At first Holin merely stirred without waking, but Ethan shook him again and called to him a second time. After another moment, the boy rolled over, his eyes open. He looked at Ethan and then his mother before lying back and staring up at the ceiling.