Long Live the Queen (Book 5 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Twenty Seven: Alice Through the Looking Glass

Jack hurried down the stairs, hunched over the knife-box, pressing it firmly into his chest, even though he could feel its rancour. It had wanted to be taken.

Sam was down there, shouting at people. He snatched the front door key from Sarah, twisted it in the lock, and then slid the bolts across for good measure. The amulets were getting in his way, so he grabbed a handful and tore them down, making everyone in the hallway wince – even Sergei.

"Inspector, perhaps this is not the time to-"

"Chief Inspector," said Sam irritably. "And don't tell me you believe in them now."

"A wall of thorns has risen to a height of fifty feet around the city," Sergei pointed out. "It's impolitic to say what one does and does not believe at a time like this."

"No good locking doors anyway," said Jack, in a voice that was pressed determinedly into steadiness. "She'll get in through the mirrors and glass. We need to cover up anything in here that has a reflection."

They didn't ask who 'she' was. They must have known already. He didn't dare ask whether they could hear the furious chittering sound pouring down the stairs. He was afraid of being told it was all in his head.

He helped Sarah to hang tea towels and dust sheets over the mirrors, the paintings, the glass-fronted cabinets. Every framed photograph was turned face-down on the sideboard. He even untied the thick, tasselled ropes that kept the curtains back, and they fell together with a heavy, velvet whump. There was something unpleasantly final about that sound – as if the curtains were never going to be opened again.

Then he turned to Elsie, who was fiddling with the phial he'd given her, trying to unscrew its lid. Now Jack had the time to take her in, he noticed that her shoulder was bound up in bandages, though there was no trace of blood soaking through the gauze.

"You felt it?" he demanded. "When she got shot?"

She was very weak. Danvers was supporting her underneath one elbow, but her attention was completely taken up with the phial.

"What is it?" she whispered to herself. "I know it."

"Please be careful, Elsie," said Danvers. "The lid's almost off, you might spill it."

"It's of my world," she said, half-laughing. "It will obey me."

The lid came loose, and the white powder started to fall, but then it changed its mind in mid-air and swarmed up to Elsie's beckoning fingers.

It formed a kind of cloud around her hand. She cupped it and felt its edges, teasing bits out, coaxing it into a kind of shape like – a little tusk? A small, gently curving thing, anyway. The dust held the shape, coalesced and hardened, and then dropped into Elsie's hand as a solid object.

"A bone?" said Danvers.

"It looks like a rib," Sergei volunteered. "A human rib."

"I know it," Elsie repeated, almost inaudibly.

Danvers laid a hand on her shoulder. "Elsie, didn't Dr Faustus say that was how she cut herself off from you? By removing one of her own ribs?"

Elsie formed her mouth into an 'o' shape but said nothing. She continued to turn the bone this way and that in her hands, as if she could see the way it caught the light.

"Wait," said Jack, "does that mean you can control her now? She's not cut off from you anymore?"

"No, I-" Elsie shook her head. "I can't control her. The rib would need to be put back. But I can see her now – that is, I can see the hole where she should be. A sort of negative space." She shook her head again – in wonderment, this time. "She's... she's just like me."