“It was my family’s speciality,” Imp said defensively. “Oneiromancers, able to enter the past through dreams. Or maybe dreams of the past—of other pasts that never happened, or that happened and got trampled over by time travellers.”
“The fuck are we doing here, then?” demanded Del. “What’s it a dream of?”
“It’s a dream of the version of 1888 where the book we’re looking for was misfiled and lost, rather than our 1888, where the book went back into a closed library collection and got bombed to fuck during the Blitz. And maybe if we find the book and take it home with us this stops being a dream, and the version of history where the book was correctly-filed-and-then-bombed, that turns into the dream.”
“Fucking time travel,” complained Doc. “Makes my head hurt.”
“But the people—” Wendy repeated.
“It’s a dream. Dreams attract resonant stuff that doesn’t happen in the real world.” Doc coughed significantly. “The lasses who’d be working are hiding or sticking to well-lit streets, this is poor pickings for beggars, everybody’s abed, and the police are looking to protect the money, not the likes of people who live here. So we’re anomalous—”
“Hey, everybody,” Game Boy broke in, “what’s this?” He’d found the one door in the alley that wasn’t stove-in or hanging drunkenly askew. Now he stood in front of it, peering at a chiselled engraving in a stone plate to one side. “What’s that name again, Purse Galveston something?”
“We’re looking for the reading room of the Piers Gaveston Fellowship,” Imp announced. “Named after King Edward II’s catamite. There was a notorious Oxford drinking club in the eighties—nineteen eighties, that is—who took his name. They were basically an upper-class BDSM orgy club. This bunch is somewhat older.” He did a double-take. “Hey, is this—”
“Yep.” Game Boy looked smug until he clocked the lack of a doorknob. Indeed, the door was most formidably shut, a barrier of blackened oak studded with iron rivet-heads, with only a keyhole by way of an entry point. A very old-looking keyhole, clearly not fronting for a modern cylinder lock or anything easy to extract or pick. “How do we get in?”
“We knock,” Wendy said. She flexed her hand and a baton appeared: “Open up in the name of the law!” she called as she pounded on the door.
“Uh, honey—” Del caught her eye, shook her head, looking amused—“when did they first take women in the filth, anyway?”
Wendy swore, then glanced back down the route they’d come. Nobody stirred in the mist, but: Whitechapel. The police had swarmed the area after the bodies began to turn up, conducting house-to-house searches and interviewing hundreds of suspects. There’d been vigilantes, the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, harassing strangers and stalking butchers, surgeons, and anyone else with cause to carry sharp knives for work. “Dammit,” she muttered, “criminal damage it is, then.”
Wendy made her baton disappear. In its place, a steel battering ram coagulated out of the mist. It was heavy, and an ice-cold sweat broke out on her forehead as she pulled it into existence. Wendy’s power of illusion had its limits. Her pulse hammered and a chittering sounded in her ears, like a million hungry mandibles chewing at the edge of her sanity. “He-help me,” she tried to say, sagging under the weight of the steel cylinder.
Del grabbed two of the handles. “I’ve got it,” she said. “Together?” Wendy nodded wordlessly, concentrating on staying conscious and lining the head of the cylinder up on the unseen lock behind the keyhole. “Okay, in three, two, one…”
CRASH.
The impact jarred all the way up to Wendy’s shoulders. Del voiced a muffled grunt of pain. “Shit!” The door held, although it had buckled around the keyhole. “What the hell?”
“Try again,” Wendy gasped. “I can’t hold it together much longer.”
“Let me guide it?” Game Boy stepped in close and laid his hands over Wendy’s wrists. “Now—”
CRASH. Something gave way and with a shriek of tearing metal the door swung inwards, away from the strike plate. The lock mechanism clattered to the tiled floor within. “Hey, what if there’s someone in—”
“Allow me?” Imp stepped across the threshold, grinning as he pushed his shirt cuffs back. “Some light would help—no, I really don’t think there’s anybody home.”
Wendy let go of the battering ram and it vanished instantly. The pressure on her skull subsided more slowly. “Breaking, and now entering.” She steeled herself for the inevitable sense of wrongdoing as she followed Imp into the entrance hall. “Is anybody home?” she called, feeling slightly fatuous after the tumult of smashing in the front door.
Game Boy followed her. “I hope we’re in time—” he began, just as Imp turned his flashlight up to full brightness and lit up the roof—“Oh shit.”
Eve was fretful because an unpleasant sense of déjà vu had stolen up on her as she realized what she was doing: once again pursuing a male family member through empty nighttime streets towards an illicit destination, hoping she’d be in time to save him from the consequences of actions she’d unwittingly set in motion.
“It should be here,” she muttered grimly, checking the map for the umpteenth time. Under her breath: “Dammit, Jeremy!”
The alleyways and yards of Whitechapel grew danker and more noisome the further away from the main roads they went. Eve hadn’t seen any open doors and red-shaded lamps for a while, nor constables or costermongers; not even tattered match-selling beggar children. If she had to guess the time she’d have said it was past midnight. While the fog still swirled, a chilly drizzle had begun to fall.
“Any ideas, ma’am?” Even the Gammon, Franke, was showing signs of unease.
“We’re looking for an alleyway off Dutfield’s Yard by Berner Street, not far from Whitechapel Road—” Eve stopped, realizing she was talking to herself, a habit she despised in others. “Unmarked sturdy door faced with rivets and a sign saying Piers Gaveston Fellow—”
“Like this one?” The Gammon froze, then stepped warily aside. He brushed back his coat and reached for his UMP9.
“Bingo.” Eve’s shoulders heaved
