Hide Me Among the Graves

tell the difference.”

Trelawny dropped the knife and it clattered on the floor.

“This is Polidori’s protection,” he said furiously. “It seems the Nephilim won’t permit any human to cut the man who is the bridge between the species. But it shouldn’t protect me from me; I’m not just any human.” He glared around at the others. “I wouldn’t have confessed my sins here if I’d thought I wasn’t going to die.”

He picked up his shirt — which had got liberally splashed with the brandy — and tugged it on.

His face was grim as he added, “It seems we must rescue my granddaughter by Maria’s means.”

“And who’ll commit a murder?” asked Crawford.

“Oh, who was ever going to do it?” grated Trelawny. “It will be me. I’ve got so many mortal sins on my soul that one more won’t matter. I really thought—”

He finished buttoning his shirt and tucked it into his trousers. “I really thought, there for a moment, that the universe was offering me a noble death. Expiation.”

He walked to the stairs and was halfway up when he turned. “Come along, my sad crew — I’ve got an errand to run, and you’ve got to go roust Christina out of her nest.”

THEY BORROWED HATS AND two coats from Trelawny before getting into a cab in front of his house, so Johanna had a black bowler hat that made her short brown hair stick out to the sides and McKee wore a straw boater with a flower-pattern ribbon, surely something left behind at Trelawny’s by a guest. Crawford was wearing Trelawny’s Inverness cape and a tall brown beaver hat that had probably been fashionable in 1830.

None of them made jokes about the hats on the ride east past Green Park and up the Mall to Charing Cross Road. Crawford held the bottle with the sea mouse bobbing in it, and he tried to project a mental apology to the ghost but got no sense of acknowledgment.

“We can’t let—” he began finally as the cab started up Gower Street, but McKee and Johanna both interrupted him.

“Certainly not,” said McKee.

“I could—” said Johanna, but Crawford waved her to silence.

“None of us,” he said.

His wife and daughter both looked at him uncertainly.

“If—” Crawford said, pausing to look around to be sure the cab had four walls and a roof, “if Polidori appears in vulnerable human form even for a moment, we must try to kill him in that moment. We can’t let poor old Trelawny commit a murder — nor participate in one ourselves.”

Both women seemed to relax, cautiously, though their expressions were skeptical.

“We’ll fail,” said Johanna.

“We can jump into the river,” said Crawford, “if we fail.”

“We’d be safe then,” Johanna agreed, “as long as we remembered not to come up for air.”

For a minute or so no one spoke, and Crawford stared out the window at the passing pillars and the high neoclassical pediment of the British Museum. Fourteen years ago McKee had told him about her father taking her there when she was eleven and about her fear that she might be in the room full of Egyptian mummies when the General Resurrection occurred.

“Christina won’t be happy to see us,” said Johanna, bracing herself as the cab was steered into Torrington Place.

“I don’t believe she’s ever been happy to see us,” said McKee. “And small wonder.”

Christina’s house had muslin sheets across the lower half of the front window to keep soot from blowing in, but above it Crawford saw the curtain twitch as he climbed down from the cab; he waved the bottle as a placating gesture before helping his wife and daughter down and paying the driver.

Christina herself opened the door when he knocked — she was wearing a plain black smock, and her dark and prematurely sagging face was stern.

Without a word she took the bottle from Crawford, held it up to the daylight, and then held it to her ear.

She sighed in evident relief. “Thank you. I’m sorry I can’t invite you in, but we have plasterers due to repair the ceiling—”

“We contacted Maria,” interrupted McKee. “Her ghost, that is. She told us how to banish your uncle.”

Christina shivered as she hugged the bottle to her chest. “You—forced her?”

Johanna said, “Trelawny’s fourteen-year-old granddaughter is somewhere out in the City with your uncle right now. It’s a cold day, and it’ll be a colder night.”

Christina sighed, and the steam of her breath whisked away on the chilly breeze. “Come in then, you punishments for my sins.”

She led them into the entry hall, where Crawford noticed Johanna’s coat still hanging on a hook from last night; God only knew whose coat she had left at the Spotted Dog.

The parlor still smelled of garlic from the bottle Johanna had broken under the nose of the monstrous black- painted thing, and by the gray daylight filtering in through the lace curtains he could see the new cracks in the ceiling. Christina carefully set the bottle on the table, which had been righted.

Crawford said, “I’m sorry we left so abruptly last night—”

“Say calamitously,” said Christina, nodding.

“At least,” he went on, “the thing followed us out.”

“Yes, it did,” said Christina. “Mr. Trelawny shot it — it might be dead now.”

“Much luck,” murmured Johanna.

A housemaid appeared at an inner doorway, and Christina asked her to bring a pot of tea.

“What is the required sin?” she inquired with a brittle semblance of cheer after the housemaid had withdrawn. “The one Maria’s method calls for.”

Crawford didn’t look at his two companions. “You need to let one of us cut you,” he said, “so that you bleed, and then you must summon him, call for rescue — invite him back to you.”

He hoped that was enough — she would surely balk at the proposed murder of a stranger.

He could see a strong pulse in Christina’s throat. “I—” she said. “This hardly seems — how would this aid in banishing him?”

Crawford cleared his throat. “Maria believes he will then appear, wholly, in his vulnerable human form. You’re a blood relative of his, in, er, several senses, and you might be able to forcibly hold him in that form — by mental effort — for at least a few seconds.”

“So that you can kill him,” said Christina softly, “with wooden stakes and silver bullets.”

“And cremation,” added Johanna.

“I — don’t think I can do it,” said Christina.

Maria’s ghost had said, She would not want to do that, because she has always wanted to do that.

“We need you to try,” Crawford said. “Trelawny’s granddaughter needs you to try.”

“I — well, it would indeed be a sin. Even for a praiseworthy purpose, to call up a devil — invoke his love for me—”

McKee cocked her head. “Sister Christina,” she said, “do you mean it would be a betrayal of your uncle? Do you mean it would be wrong to trick him?”

Christina frowned and shook her head impatiently; and then she stopped.

“I,” she whispered, almost wonderingly, “think I do mean that! God help me—”

McKee leaned forward. “You trick a rat when you put bait in a trap.”

“You put it so elegantly.” Christina sighed. “That will be all, Jane, thank you,” she added to the housemaid who had brought in a tray and set it down on the table.

There were eight flat biscuits in a tray beside the teapot, and Crawford made himself ignore them. McKee and Johanna each grabbed two.

“When did you people last eat?” asked Christina in sudden concern.

“I had supper last night,” admitted Crawford.

“About twenty-four hours, for me,” said McKee, and Johanna nodded to indicate the same.