Doc took over again. From the moment they’d begun this trek he’d come out of his usual reticent haze to act as their self-appointed guide. “Victorian London was awful. I mean, it was an utterly shit place to live, unless you were one of the thousand families—the equivalent of a multimillionaire—”
“—So what’s new? I mean old,” Del snarked.
“No, really, I mean the air is full of acidic soot particles that condense into choking fogs so thick you can’t see three meters past the end of your nose: pea-soupers, they called them. The streets are full of horse-crap and dogshit, there’s no food hygiene, and a tenth of the population have or are incubating tuberculosis which eventually kills them. Every kind of disease runs rampant. Unaccompanied women are usually prostitutes, so if you get split up you can expect to be propositioned.” He nodded at Wendy: she bared her teeth and produced a side-arm baton out of thin air. “Well, maybe not.” He looked at Game Boy who stared back, glassy-eyed. “We think of Victorian London as a world capital, but really, it’s as dirt-poor as the slums of Mumbai back home. Poorer, maybe. Rich is relative and we’re all dressed well enough to be targets for muggers. Let’s not go wandering off or splitting up, huh? In fact, let’s buddy up: I’m going to keep track of you, Imp, and you, Del. Del, I want you to watch Wendy and Game Boy. Wendy, you can keep an eye on—”
“Let’s go,” Imp butted in as soon as Doc finished mother-henning them to death with stern injunctions about holding hands and wiping their noses and keeping track of one another. “Time’s getting on.” He marched to the staircase and started down it, the boards creaking ominously underfoot.
“Hey! I hadn’t finished!” Doc squawked after him.
Game Boy looked up at Wendy. “Is this okay?” he asked slowly. “Because—”
“I’m in.” Rebecca took Wendy’s arm and leaned close. “This is totally wild, right?”
“One question!” Wendy shouted after Imp.
“Yeah?” His voice welled up from the depths of the stairwell like icy water in a cave underground.
“Just what year are we visiting?”
“Didn’t I say? Silly me!” He tittered briefly. “We’re going to party like it’s 1888!”
WHITECHAPEL NIGHTS
Imp’s knowledge of London in the 1880s came from a vacation project Dad had inflicted on him one year around the time he was also studying magecraft. And his father’s presentation came to him pre-tested on his elder sister, who had taken a keen interest in the social history of the period.
Eve had studied the map, questioned the wisdom of walking ley lines between plague pits, and googled the tariff of fares for a London hansom cab. It would be about five shillings for a two-person cab, each way.
A sane cabbie probably wouldn’t enter Whitechapel at all, and she’d need to switch to a new one after six miles—the mandatory maximum distance for a cab ride, to rest the horses. But she’d paid more attention than Imp to their father’s admonitions about the unwisdom of traversing the roads of the dead. Imp was bold, Imp was daring, Imp was (in someone else’s frame of reference) reckless. Well, he might get to the library before her, but she had every intention of arriving alive, even at night in the year of Leather Apron.
It took no time at all to traverse the maze of corridors and staircases that lurked inside the top-floor closet. Presently Eve found herself facing an unremarkable exterior door. Someone had already come this way: the bolts were drawn back and the lock opened. Glancing around, she saw an arrow chalked on the wall beside the staircase. Good: her brother—or someone in his crew—wasn’t completely daft.
“Ma’am?” the Gammon asked uncertainly.
“They came this way and so will we. Come on, there’s no time to lose if we’re to hail a cab.”
They stepped out into night and mist, in an alleyway around the side of the town house. The sickly sweet stench of rotting compost and road apples hung over the damp-slicked flagstones, but it was well swept and clear of obstructions. “With me.” She threaded her hand through her escort’s elbow and pushed him along the alley. “This could be sticky if we’re seen exiting,” she murmured. “If we run into a constable—”
“Do you want me to…?”
“No need for that: I’m a scullery maid and you’re my beau, we’re just stepping out for the evening.” She paused just inside the shadowy mouth of the alley. The street outside was brightly illuminated after the darkness of the final maze of rooms in the dream house, and actinic gaslight shimmered in the misty air. At this end of the alley there was a sharp tang of sulfur and wood smoke. “It’s not respectable, but a sixpence should suffice.” The language of bribery was a universal tongue.
“Yes, ma’am.” He glanced either way, then stepped out of the alleyway, adjusting his coat.
A second later Eve followed him. She took his arm again, leaning just inside his personal space: it was a very muscular arm, attached to an absolutely ripped body. ’Tis a pity he’s a hunk, she thought, briefly entertained. She could appreciate a good piece of male ass in the abstract, but she doubted he’d enjoy the kind of games she preferred. “Anyone about?” she murmured. “Left.”
“No, ma’am.” He turned left and they proceeded along the
