Garrick was silent, as was his natural state.
“Do not forget it still needs me. If it expects to get what it wants then it will have to trust me. “Grosvenor regarded Garrick, still half buried in his crude sepulcher. “Mine is a simple transaction, quid pro quo. Your fault lay in asking the impossible. I shall give thee what thou most craves. And you answered, immortality.” He shook his head.
“Thou thinkst thou understand it better than I do?” Garrick asked. “It delights in its own cleverness. To it there is no difference between boring through earth or boring through a man’s mind. When thou art smote like its tunnels at daybreak, it will take pride at its work.”
Grosvenor chuckled. “You are nothing if not persistent in your estimation of it. It’s a dumb animal, nothing more. As a hound retrieves a pheasant from the brush, so has it retrieved my reward from deep below. Just as it retrieved the carbuncles that made you what you are today, I might add. But enough.” Grosvenor stood. “I will miss our little debates. There is nothing left you can teach me and yet there’s much harm you could still do, so we must bid farewell. My apprenticeship is concluded.” He bent to pick up one of the larger stones he had been squatting upon.
“And the lives of those thee imperil? Thou thinkst nothing of them?”
“Why should I when the lives of those already devoured fail to bother me? They fulfill a greater intention—the realization of Bonaventure. No one among those living in the new house will ever bother to mourn those who died erecting its foundation.” Grosvenor hefted the rock in his hands. “It’s a little rich for you to counsel regret considering your own actions.”
Something like a groan escaped Garrick’s barely parted lips. “Perchance immortality has granted me time for it,” he said softly.
“Well,” said Grosvenor, “your time’s run out.”
With a roar he slammed the stone down on Garrick’s skull, shattering both, but looking at the pieces afterward Grosvenor couldn’t determine which was which.
•••
As Grosvenor and Isaac Rose turned the corner of the stone house, Lyman’s hammer paused in mid-swing, hesitating over the head of a six-penny. His eyes studied Rose with a mix of alarm and suspicion, for the other man’s expression contained little of the rugged good nature that had enamored Minerva. Lyman’s voice, meanwhile, was silent, his lips otherwise preoccupied in pinching several nails between them.
“Ah, there you are,” said Grosvenor. “Mr. Lyman, pleased to meet Mr. Rose.”
“This is him, huh?” Rose asked Grosvenor.
“Yes,” said Grosvenor, “I’m afraid so.”
Lyman pulled the nails from his mouth. “What—”
Rose socked Lyman fast in the left eye. Lyman sprawled to the ground.
Lyman rolled on the ground a moment, holding his face and cursing.
“Listen to the yap on him,” said Rose. “I’ve long believed swearing is a sign of weak character. Here’s proof.”
Grosvenor watched in disgust and distaste, as if Lyman’s injury was a contagion. “Was that really necessary? You said nothing of violence.”
“I do apologize,” said Rose, “but I must remind you that my business associates are missing and I believe Caleb here has some knowledge of it.”
Rose leaned down and grabbed Lyman by the shirt collar, pulling him to his feet, then shoved him against the wall. “Where are Misters Myerson and Doyle? Tell me, you little wood rat.”
Lyman held his empty palms up, squinting at Rose through his one good eye. “It’s all right, don’t hit me. You want the money—I’ll give you the money. It’s in the basement.”
“I don’t want just the money,” said Rose. “Where are the other two? There’s no way a scrubby runt like you could’ve squared off against them.”
“I’ll show you. The money is in the basement. Let’s all go to the basement.”
“He may have buried it down there,” said Grosvenor. “I scoured the house not long after his arrival but couldn’t find it.”
Lyman glared at him but Grosvenor only shrugged. “A thief has no right to complain about burglary.”
Rose half-carried, half-pushed Lyman ahead of him, his forearm wrapped against Lyman’s throat, into the house and down the stairs and through the tunnel to the cistern room. All the while Rose’s attention stayed sharp for tricks or booby traps or hidden weapons. Grosvenor shuffled behind, carrying a pair of lamps.
Lyman pointed toward the open cistern. “It’s in there,” he said, “hanging from the top rung.”
Rose, after confirming the room was empty of weapons or escape routes, threw Lyman to the dirt floor. He cautiously leaned over the side of the pit.
“Well, I’ll be. There’s a bag hanging here.” Rose grabbed the rope and began pulling it up hand over hand.
The ends of Rose’s hair danced. Softly at first and then with growing intensity, a breeze blew up the cistern and through the room. Rose stopped his reeling and stood frozen, almost mesmerized. Something far off rumbled, growing louder.
Grosvenor dropped the lanterns and grabbed Rose by the shoulder. “Get back.”
With a sound like splitting timber, a great pale monstrosity lunged over the edge of the cistern, its snapping jaws seizing the empty space where Rose had been a second before. It landed on the basement floor, half in and half out of the hole, swinging its reptilian maw like a scythe.
With a high-pitched shriek, Rose drew a caplock pistol from his coat, but Grosvenor grasped his wrist and pushed it toward the ceiling while waving his other hand in front of the beast’s snout.
“Stop! Do not attack!”
The thing regarded Grosvenor with shiny black eyes little bigger than pinheads.
“There is no food here. Return to your pit.”
A baritone growl rolled in its throat.
“Go, I said.”
Slowly with its spade-like claws it pushed itself backwards, its sinuous bulk receding into the cistern. Just before its jaws passed the
