Chapter 29
Griffin
“I’ll watch from the upper story,” Christine said, hefting her rifle. “It will give me a good line of sight. With any luck we’ll put an end to this nonsense tonight.”
We stood in the foyer of Whyborne House, accompanied by Niles and Fenton. Persephone had refused a ride in the touring car, and had yet to arrive. Rupert had also not put in an appearance.
“I’ll send a footman with you to run messages back and forth, if needed,” Niles agreed.
She started for the stairs. “Good luck,” I called.
Christine paused. Her attitude had been entirely businesslike, but the tension in her jaw and her complete dismissal of any pleasantries suggested that anger still boiled beneath. I didn’t dare ask if she knew Iskander had spent more time with the Endicotts, or if she’d even seen him since their argument.
Hopefully by now Iskander and Hattie were in place with Whyborne. Even more hopefully, any attack would come here, not at the Lesters.
“To you as well,” Christine replied stiffly. “I just hope I get to shoot someone.”
A footman appeared from the rear of the house. “Sir, Miss Whyborne is here. She’s brought...guests. I left her in the drawing room.”
“Very good,” Niles said. Before he could continue, a ketoi emerged from the same discreet door the footman had used. Scars raked one side of her face, and only a socket gaped in place of the eye on that side. In her hand she held a tall spear, decorated with shells and teeth that rattled as she walked.
I’d met her once before, when the ketoi had found the body of a sacrifice in their waters. “Calls Dolphins,” I said with a bow.
She nodded a greeting. The footman stared at her, rather nervously. The servants had seen Persephone before, but Calls Dolphins looked even more ferocious than the average ketoi.
“Sings Above the Waves brought ten of us with her,” she told Niles. No wonder Persephone had chosen to come on foot tonight. “We will help defend this place.”
“I’ll let everyone know,” Fenton said. He’d paled slightly, but his voice remained unperturbed. “The footmen are armed, and I wouldn’t wish anyone to be startled by an ally.”
“Do so,” Niles ordered. “Griffin, let’s go greet my daughter.”
I followed him to the drawing room. Another ketoi had accompanied Persephone, and she turned to face us when we entered.
Niles stopped, the color draining from his face. “Heliabel.”
“Hello, Niles.” She stood with her arms folded over her chest, her face impassive. Once, she’d been the mistress of this house. Confined by long illness, her body frail and worn, she’d spent most of her life in the upper rooms.
The sea had transformed her. Given her tentacle hair and orca skin, stripped away feminine curves, added fins to her arms and legs. Cured her of pain and illness, and left her lithe and strong. Like all the ketoi, she wore almost nothing save jewelry and a skirt of gold netting, to which she could attach any small items she wished to carry. God alone knew what the servants thought, seeing her again.
I hadn’t expected her to return here, to the house where she’d spent so many years watching the world go by outside her window. Neither, from his expression, had Niles.
“You’re as beautiful as ever, Bel,” he said at last.
“As intelligent as ever, as well,” she replied. “Odd how that compliment is seldom made.”
It had the sound of an old argument. His mouth tightened slightly, but he only said, “I assume Persephone told you about Stanford.”
“Of course she did.” Heliabel turned away, pacing across the thick rugs. She stopped in front of the fireplace, tilting her head back to gaze up at Guinevere’s portrait. “My poor Guinevere. If only she had come to me, when she learned of our heritage. Of the prophecy, and Stanford’s plans. But we were never close. She would always choose to go to the park or visit friends, rather than sit with her sickly mother.” A rueful smile tugged at her lips. “I certainly can’t blame her for that. Perhaps I should have tried harder...but I had Percival, and he needed me more than the other two. Or at least, he needed somewhere safe to escape them.”
Niles shifted uncomfortably. “I tried to do my best by all of them.”
Heliabel’s tentacle hair slithered over her shoulders. “I can’t help but think...if the Endicotts had not cast their spell against the ketoi, if it had not reached me across the Atlantic, if I hadn’t been so ill but instead able to take more of a hand in raising Stanford...perhaps things would have been different. I might have been able to balance the worst of your indulgences, at least.”
Niles’s sharp intake of breath was audible even several feet away. “No one could have predicted what happened.”
“That a bullying child rewarded for his most base impulses would grow to be an even worse man?” She turned back to Niles, her face hard. “I couldn’t stop Stanford from taking Guinevere from us. But I will not allow him to harm either of the twins.”
Fenton cleared his throat from the doorway. “Mr. Rupert Endicott has arrived,” he said. The faintest note of disapproval tinged the words, though whether because he knew something of the Endicotts, or because of Rupert’s race, I didn’t know.
I seized gratefully on the chance to extricate myself from the tense atmosphere of the drawing room. “I’ll speak with him.”
I found Rupert in one of the smaller parlors. “Ah, Mr. Flaherty.” He gazed about the room with an air of interest. “This is quite the example of American excess, I must say. No wonder your heiresses so often find themselves appalled when they marry a duke or an earl, only to discover the family estate is damp, falling apart, and lacking in plumbing.”
“Did you meet Guinevere, when she lived in England?” I asked. She’d returned here with Theo and Fiona, though they’d been privy to none of her secrets. Nor she to theirs.
“I’m afraid I never had the pleasure,” he replied. “May I ask you a question?”
Perhaps staying in the drawing room would have been less awkward after all. “If you must.”
“I know of your background. I imagine your life in Kansas afforded few luxuries.” He gestured at a gilded candelabrum, cast in the shape of a cherub surrounded by decorative swirls of gold. “You seem a decent man, and yet you took an abomination for a lover. Is it because he is the heir to all of this, and you hope to someday share in the bounty, as it were?”
I clenched my fists, nails biting my palms. My Ival was a treasure beyond any gold or gems, and fury crackled in my blood at Rupert’s dismissive words. “Don’t speak of Whyborne that way in my hearing ever again.”
“Is it genuine affection, then?” His look became pitying. “I meant it earlier, when I said there is something profoundly wrong with Dr. Whyborne. Beyond his ketoi blood, which alone would be bad enough. He isn’t human, and if you expect human emotions from him, you’ll be disappointed.”
“I used to work for the Pinkertons, Mr. Endicott. I lost my faith in humanity a long time ago. What you view as profoundly wrong, I see as entirely right.” I turned away from him and walked to the window. We were on the first floor, looking out on High Street. The electric streetlights caused the marble sheathing the mansions around us to glow in the night. “I will say, for a man who seems so learned, you are shockingly ignorant about some things.”
“I see.” Rupert sounded a bit nonplussed.
“I doubt it,” I said. “Now, if you’re done asking insulting questions, we should...”
I trailed off, squinting into the semi-darkness outside. Had something moved, in the shadows of the alley between mansions?
I stepped back. “I thought I saw—”
Before I could say anything further, a spectral, greenish shape appeared just in front of me. It looked like a lizard, or a dog, or something that was neither. I drew my sword cane and lunged at it.
Just as it went from ghostly wraith to solid. The Hound shrieked in surprise and pain. I wrenched the blade out of the hole it had made in the beast’s body and struck again. It fell to the floor, collapsing in on itself, until nothing remained.
Rupert’s eyes had gone wide behind his gold-framed spectacles. “Good lord! How did you know where the Hound would materialize?”
It took me a moment to understand. He hadn’t seen the spectral Hound, because it hadn’t yet emerged into our dimension. My shadowsight must have revealed the magic gathering at the point it would appear.
“I’m sure Hattie told you of my magical sight,” I said.
“Indeed, but—” Rupert stopped, turning to the door. The sounds of battle echoed from beyond. “It seems our Hound wasn’t the only one. Let’s go.”