“I think my dream . . . I think it was somehow about my father?”
“Oh yes? More tea?”
“Are you sure you can’t tell me who my father is, Mum?”
“Oh no. It was a different time. I wasn’t the same person. He . . . did you say yes to more tea?”
“Yes, Mum.”
They drank more tea, both lost in their own thoughts.
Eventually, Susan said with some determination, “I think I’ll go up to London early. Get acclimatized. There’s bound to be pub work I can get. And I . . . I’ll try to find my dad.”
“What was that, darling?”
“I’m going to go up to London. Before I take my place. Just find some work and so on.”
“Oh. Well. It’s natural, I suppose. But you must be careful. He told me . . . no, that was about something else. . . .”
“Who is ‘he’? What did he say to be careful of, or about?”
“Hmm? Oh, I forget. London. Yes, of course you must go. When I was eighteen I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. But I insist on postcards. You must send me postcards. Trafalgar Square . . .”
Susan waited for Jassmine to continue, but her mother’s voice trailed off and she was staring at the wall, whatever thought had been about to emerge lost somewhere along the way.
“I will, Mum.”
“And I know you will be careful. Eighteen! Happy birthday, my darling. Now, I must get back to my painting before that cloud comes over and ruins the light. Presents later, okay? After second breakfast.”
“Presents later. Don’t miss the light!”
“No, no. You too, darling girl. Even more so for you. Be sure to stay in the light. That’s what he would have wanted.”
“Mum! Who’s ‘he’ . . . come back . . . oh, never mind. . . .”
Chapter One
A clerk there was, sinister gloved
Dexter scorning, his sword well-loved
Wielded mirror-wise, most adept
Bookes and slaughter, in both well kept
A SLIGHT YOUNG MAN WITH LONG FAIR HAIR, WEARING A PRE-OWNED mustard-colored three-piece suit with widely flared trousers and faux alligator-hide boots with two-inch Cuban heels, stood over the much older man on the leather couch. The latter was wearing nothing but a monogrammed silk dressing gown, which had fallen open to reveal an expanse of belly very reminiscent of a puffer fish. His fleshy face was red with anger, jowls still quivering with the shock of being stuck square on his roseate nose with a silver hatpin.
“You’ll pay for this, you little f—” the older man swore, swiping with the cut-throat razor that he’d just pulled out from under one of the embroidered cushions on the couch.
But even as he moved his face lost rigidity, flesh collapsing like a plastic bag brushed against a candle flame. The young man—or perhaps it was a young woman who was dressed like a man—stepped back and watched as the tide of change continued, the flesh within the pale blue robe falling into a fine dust that ebbed away to reveal strangely yellowed bones poking from sleeves and collar, bone in its turn crumbling into something akin to the finest sand, ground small over millennia by the mighty ocean.
Though in this case, it had not taken an ocean, nor millennia. Merely the prick of a pin, and a few seconds. Admittedly a very special pin, though it looked like any other pin made for Georgian-era ladies. This one, however, was silver-washed steel, with Solomon’s great spell of unmaking inscribed on it in letters too small for the unaided eye to see, invisible between the hallmarks that declared it to have been made in Birmingham in 1797 by Harshton and Hoole. Very obscure silversmiths, and not ones whose work was commonly sought after, then or now. They mostly made hatpins, after all, and oddly sharp paper knives.
The young man—for he was a young man, or was tending towards being one—held the silver hatpin in his left hand, which was encased in a pale tan glove of very fine and supple cabretta leather, whereas the elegant fingers of his right hand were free of any such covering. He wore a ring on the index finger of his right hand, a thin gold band etched with some inscription that would need close examination to read.
His gloved left hand was perfectly steady as he slid the pin back into its special pocket in the right sleeve of his suit, its head snug against the half sovereign cuff links (1897, Queen Victoria; the jubilee year, not any old half sovereign) of his Turnbull & Asser shirt. His right hand shook a little as he did so, though not enough to make the hatpin snag a thread.
The slight shake wasn’t because he’d disincorporated crime boss Frank Thringley. It was because he wasn’t supposed to be there at all and he was wondering how he was going to explain—
“Put . . . put your hands up!”
He also wasn’t supposed to be able to be surprised by someone like the young woman who had burst into the room, an X-Acto craft knife in her trembling hands. She was neither tall nor short, and moved with a muscular grace that suggested she might be a martial artist or a dancer, though her Clash T-shirt under dark blue overalls, oxblood Doc Martens, and her buzzed-short dyed blond hair suggested more of a punk musician or the like.
The man raised his hands up level with his head. The knife-wielder was:
1. Young, perhaps his own age, which was nineteen;
2. Almost certainly not a Sipper like Frank Thringley; and
3. Not the sort of young woman crime bosses usually kept around the house.
“What . . . what did you do to Uncle Frank?”
“He’s not your uncle.”
He slid one foot forward but stopped as the young woman gestured with the knife.
“Well, no, but . . . stay there! Don’t move! I’m going to call the police.”
“The police? Don’t you mean Charlie Norton or Ben Bent-Nose or one of Frank’s other charming associates?”
“I mean the police,” said the young woman determinedly. She edged across to the telephone on the dresser. It was a curious phone for Frank Thringley, Merlin thought. Antique, art
