A dull snapping sounded from the door. The wood. Whoever is outside is breaking down the door!
Bartholomew couldn’t hope to copy all the little marks and symbols, but he could at least complete the ring. Faster, faster … His hands squeaked against the floor.
The door burst inward with a thunderous crash.
But the wings were already enveloping Bartholomew, the darkness howling around him, and the wind pulling at his clothes. Only something was different this time. Wrong. He felt things in the blackness; cold, thin bodies that darted against him and poked at his skin. Mouths pressed up to his ears, whispering in small, dark voices. A tongue, icy wet, slid over his cheek. And then there was only pain, horrid searing pain, tearing up his arms and eating into his bones. He kept down his scream just long enough for the room to begin to flit away into the spinning shadows. Then he shrieked along with the wind and the raging wings.
A carriage was winding its way toward the house through the evening bustle of Fleet Street. Rain was falling steadily. The streetlamps were just beginning to glow, and they reflected on the polished sides of the carriage, throwing tongues of light onto the windows.
The carriage shuddered to a halt in front of Nonsuch House, and Mr. Jelliby ducked out, leaping a puddle to get into the shelter of the doorway. He brought up his walking stick and knocked it twice against the pockmarked black wood. Then he wrapped his arms around himself and scowled.
He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be any-where but here. Scattered on his desk at home were gilt-edged cards and monogrammed invitations that would gain him entrance to a whole parade of lively and fashionable drawing rooms. And what was he doing but standing in the wind and rain outside the house of Mr. Lickerish, the faery politician. There ought to be laws against such things.
Drat these ale meetings…. They were a very old tradition, but that didn’t mean Mr. Jelliby had to like them. Members of the Privy Council, two or three at a time, met at each other’s townhouses for drink and pleasant discussion, in the hope that it would breed fellowship and respect for differing opinions. Mr. Jelliby’s scowl deepened. Fellowship, indeed. Perhaps it had done so four centuries ago when the members still drank ale. But it was all tea these days, and the meetings were frosty affairs, much dreaded by host and guests alike.
Mr. Jelliby stood up straighter. A rattling of locks had begun on the other side of the door. He must at least look as if he didn’t want to be anywhere else. He raised his chin, folded his gloved hands across the head of his walking stick, and assumed an expression of pleasant inquiry.
With a final, thudding clank, the door opened. Something very tall and thin thrust its head out and blinked at Mr. Jelliby.
Mr. Jelliby blinked back. The creature leaning out of the shadows of the doorway must have been seven feet tall, and yet it was so bony and starved-looking it seemed barely able to support its own weight. The pale skin on its hands was thin as birch bark, and all the little knuckles pushed up underneath. He (for it was a he, Mr. Jelliby saw now) wore a shabby suit that ended several inches above his ankles, and the air around him smelled faintly of graveyards. But that was not the oddest part about him. One side of his face was ensconced in a web of brass, a network of tiny cogs and pistons that whirred and ticked in constant motion. A green glass goggle was fixed over the eye. Every few seconds it would twitch, and a lens would flick across it like a blink. Then a thread of steam would hiss out from under a screw in its casing.
“Arthur Jelliby?” the creature inquired. He had a high, soft voice, and his other eye—the slanted, faery eye—squeezed almost shut when he spoke. Mr. Jelliby did not like that at all.
“Ah …” he said.
“Enter, if you please.” The faery ushered him in with a graceful sweep of his hand. Mr. Jelliby stepped in, trying not to stare. The door boomed shut behind him, and instantly he was plunged into silence. The clatter of Fleet Street was cut off. The noise of the rain was very far away, only a faint drum at the edge of his hearing.
Mr. Jelliby’s coat dripped onto black-and-white tiles. He was standing in a high, echoing hall, and the shadows pressed around him, heavy and damp from the corners and doorways. There was not a lit wick to be seen, not a gaslight or a candle. Mildew streaked the paneling in long, green trails. Faded tapestries clung to the walls, barely visible in the gloom. A grandfather clock with little faces where the numbers should have been stood silently against the wall.
“This way, if you please,” the faery said, setting off across the hall.
Mr. Jelliby followed, tugging uncertainly at his gloves. The butler should have taken them. In a proper house he would have, along with Mr. Jelliby’s hat and overcoat. Mr. Jelliby was suddenly aware of how loud his shoes sounded, slapping wetly against the floor. He didn’t dare look, but he imagined himself leaving a slippery trail over the tiles like a massive slug.
The faery butler led him to the end of the hall and they began to climb the stairs. The staircase was a mass of rotting wood, carved with such cruel-looking mermaids that Mr. Jelliby was afraid to put his hand on the banister.
“Mr. Lickerish will be seeing you in the green library,” the butler said over his shoulder.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Mr. Jelliby mumbled, because he didn’t know what else to say. Somewhere in the house the wind moaned. A casement must have been left open, forgotten.
The oddness of Nonsuch House was unsettling him more with every step. This was obviously not a place for humans. The pictures on the walls were not of landscapes or ill-tempered ancestors as in Mr. Jelliby’s house, but of plain things, like a tarnished spoon, a jug with a fly sitting on it, and a bright red door in a stone wall. And yet they were all painted with so much shadow that they looked decidedly sinister. The spoon might have been used to murder someone, the jug was full of poison, and the red door doubtless led into a tangled garden of flesh-eating plants. There were no photographs or bric-a-brac. Instead there were many mirrors, and drapes, and little trees growing from cracks in the paneling.
He was almost at the top of the stairs when he saw a small, hunched-up goblin rushing along the balcony that overlooked the hall. Something was jangling in the goblin’s hands, and he paused at each door, clicking and scraping, and Mr. Jelliby saw that he was locking them, one by one.
On the second floor, the house became a maze, and Mr. Jelliby lost every sense of direction. The butler led him first down one corridor, then another, through sitting rooms and archways and long, gloomy galleries, up short flights of stairs, ever farther into the house. Now and then Mr. Jelliby caught a glimpse of movement in the darkness. He would hear the scamper of feet and the titter of voices. But whenever he turned to look there was nothing there. The servants, most likely, he thought, but he wasn’t sure.
After a few minutes they passed the mouth of a corridor, long and very narrow, like the sort inside a railway carriage. Mr. Jelliby froze, staring down it. It was so brightly lit. Gas lamps fizzled along its walls, making it look like a tunnel of blazing gold cutting into the darkness of the house. And a woman was in the corridor. She was hurrying, her back toward him, and in her haste she seemed to be flitting like a bird, her purple skirts billowing out behind her like wings. Then the butler was at Mr. Jelliby’s side, herding him up a winding stair,