The Peculiar Read Free Page B

smiled.
    Bartholomew lay gasping on the floorboards, heart pounding inside his skull. I’m dead now. So, so dead. He didn’t look very much like a half-blood, did he? From down in the yard he would look like a regular boy. He pinched his eyes closed. A regular boy spying on her.
    Very slowly he brought his head back level with the window, this time keeping deep in the shadows. The lady in plum had moved a little ways distant from the boy in the yard. Her other, hideous face was gone, hidden under her hair. One long, velvet-gloved hand was extended, beckoning.
    The boy looked at her, looked back again at his house. For the shortest instant, Bartholomew thought he saw someone in one of the upper windows, a stooping shadow, hand raised against the pane in farewell. One blink later and it was gone, and the window was empty.
    The boy in the yard shivered. He turned back to the lady. She nodded, and he moved toward her, taking her outstretched hand. She clasped him close. There was a burst of darkness, a storm of black wings flapping. It exploded up around them, screaming toward the sky. A ripple passed through the air. Then they were gone, and Old Crow Alley was sleeping once again.

CHAPTER II
A Privy Deception
    A RTHUR Jelliby was a very nice young man, which was perhaps the reason why he had never made much of a politician. He was a member of Parliament not because he was particularly clever or good at anything, but because his mother was a Hessian princess very well connected and had gotten him the position while playing croquet with the Duke of Norfolk. So while the other officials were fairly bursting their silken waistcoats with ambition, plotting the downfall of their rivals over oyster dinners, or at the very least informing themselves on affairs of state, Mr. Jelliby was far more interested in spending long afternoons at his club in Mayfair, buying chocolates for his pretty wife, or simply sleeping until noon.
    Which is what he did on a certain day in August, and which is why the urgent summons to a Privy Council in the Houses of Parliament caught him completely unprepared.
    He stumbled down the stairs of his house on Belgrave Square, one hand trying to get the worst of the tangles out of his hair, the other struggling with the tiny buttons of his cherry-red waistcoat.
    â€œOphelia!” he called, trying to sound cheerful but not really succeeding.
    His wife appeared in the doorway to the morning room, and he pointed an apologetic finger at the length of black silk that hung limply under his collar. “The valet’s off, and Brahms doesn’t know how, and I cannot do it on my own! Knot it up for me, darling, won’t you, and spare us a smile?”
    â€œArthur, you must not sleep so long,” Ophelia said sternly, coming forward to tie his cravat. Mr. Jelliby was a tall man, and broad-shouldered, and she rather small, so she had to stand on tiptoes to reach.
    â€œOh, but I need to set an example! Think of the headlines: ‘War averted! Thousands of lives saved! The English Parliament slept through its session.’ You’d find the world a far more pleasant place.”
    This did not sound nearly as witty as it had in his head, but Ophelia laughed anyway, and Mr. Jelliby, feeling very amusing, sallied forth into the noise of the city.
    It was a fine day by London’s standards. Which meant it was a day slightly less likely to suffocate you and poison your lungs. The black curtain of smoke from the city’s million chimneys had been worn away by last night’s rain. The air still tasted of coal, but shafts of light sprang down through the clouds. Government-issue automatons creaked through the streets on rusty joints, sweeping the mud in front of them and leaving puddles of oil behind them. A group of lamplighters was out feeding wasps and dragonflies to the little flame faeries that sat behind the glass in the streetlamps, dull and sulky until nightfall.
    Mr. Jelliby turned