The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross Read Free Page B

and all the corpses in the audience. They’d disappeared back into the glamour.
    The body of Polonius still lay on the stage, though. And then Amelia stepped into the spotlight from the wings.
    “Good night,” she said, looking around at the empty seats. “Good night.”
    “Amelia!” I cried. “Wait!” I ran down the aisle to her, but it was too late. The spotlight flickered once more and then she was gone too, just like the others. And why not? She belonged to them, after all, not to me. Before she vanished I saw she was marked by the same black ring on her finger that I wore on mine. Black bone. Like the kind that all the fey wore. The bone that bound us to Morgana.
    Now it was just me and the dead Polonius. I waited for the lights to flicker one more time and the darkness to take him, too, but that didn’t happen. I went over to him to see why he was different. He clutched a piece of parchment in his hand I hadn’t noticed before. In fact, I was sure it hadn’t been there before. I took it from his dead grasp and unfolded it.
    It was a map—a street view like you find online, but hand-drawn in ink with great detail. The forced work of one of the fey, no doubt. It depicted a street with row houses. One of them that looked just like the others was circled with what I was certain was blood. A single word was written on the street outside the place.
Baal
.
    I looked back at Polonius, but he was still dead. He’d make an interesting find for the stage crew the next day. He might even become a theatrical legend, like the ghosts who seemed to haunt every theatre that needed some sort of extra box office draw.
    “Something is rotten in the court of the faerie queen,” I said, but there was no one left to listen. So I went back up the aisle and through the empty lobby, out into the dark and rain outside.
    Just when you think things can’t get worse, that’s when they get worse.

TEA WITH AN ANGEL
    Baal was where the map said he would be. When I rang the doorbell, he answered the door with a cup of tea in his hand. The steam made arcane patterns in the air. Baal wore glasses and a cardigan that made him look like a retired professor instead of an angel. Maybe he had been a professor for a time. The angels all had to make a living ever since God had abandoned them to the mortal world.
    “I thought you guys would have stopped answering the door by now,” I said. “Given what usually happens when I come knocking in the night.”
    Baal studied me for a moment, then sipped his tea. “Would it have made a difference?” he asked. “Could I simply have fled out the back once you’d found me?”
    “Probably not,” I said, which was a lie. I wasn’t exactly mortal, sure, but that didn’t mean I could be in two places at once. There’d been more than one angel who had slipped out the back door on me before. I didn’t like to advertise that fact though. It made them think I was soft.
    “So,” he said, and blew the steam from his tea.
    “Yes,” I said, keeping an eye on the symbols that danced in the air between us.
    “I don’t suppose we could talk about this like civilized beings,” he said.
    “That’s a laugh to call yourself civilized after what you did at Gomorrah,” I said.
    “I was under orders,” Baal said, frowning.
    “I’ve heard that one before,” I said.
    “Very well,” he said, “why don’t you just tell me what I can give you to make you go away?”
    “Not this time,” I said. “Not unless you know how to stop a play from killing people.”
    Baal looked up and down the street, but it was empty of anyone who could save him.
    “Which play?” he asked.
    “How many plays are there that can kill people?” I asked.
    “You’d be surprised,” Baal said. He turned and walked down the hallway of his home. “I imagine you’re going to come in one way or another,” he said over his shoulder.
    I took that as an invitation and followed him. I made sure to close the door behind me and