could see that they were, see the glass reflecting the gaslights from the city below. Where is the draft coming from? Teeth chattering, Garrett reached for her wand and struck a light.
The temperature dropped sharply. Garrett clutched her wand to her chest. Mike growled his terrier's growl, voice of a much larger dog in a little dog's throat. Meanwhile, Sebastien swung his long legs out of the four poster and stood. When he spoke, even his cool breath frosted in the icy air. "Ghost?" he asked.
"Sebastien!"
Garrett threw herself across the bed, away from the nightstand, jumping up with her back against the far wall, the coverlet dimpling under her feet. Mike scrabbled toward her, crowded her ankles growling, all sharp teeth and powderpuff defiance. Slowly, Sebastien turned. . ..
The candle on the nightstand ascended into the air and was joined and circled by others that materialized out of the darkness. A vast, lumpy darkness, clawing with enormous hands like annealed black clots of wax, a ring of candles blazing on the gnarled stump that might have been its head.
Garrett screamed as the thing reached for her. She leveled her wand at it and spoke a word. A spark flashed between them, did nothing. Mike snarled and would have lunged after the threat, and Garrett swept her leg aside, knocking her indomitable companion from the bed. He yelped, and she flinched, but for a second he was safe from the squelching abomination that examined her face with familiar pale eyes.
It grabbed for her and she twisted away, falling half into the crevice between bed and wall. In a moment, those slick, sucking hands would touch her flesh. "Sebastien! The candles!"
Sebastien hesitated, hands half outreached as if to grab the monstrosity and haul it away. Candlewax dripped from its crown, spattering the tile floor; droplets that touched its black hide vanished without a trace.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't touch it! The candles! Put them out!"
Mike growled low in his throat as he found his feet again, eyes gleaming in the flickering brilliance. Something moved through the blackness, flaring light. Candlewax dripped, spattered, ran.
The thing lurched closer, stepping onto the bed. Sebastien glanced about wildly, caught up a rug from the floor, and swung just as Garrett, half-pinned, shouted a word of magic and hurled her wand like a throwing knife.
The rug came down on the dark thing's crown, dashing candles out. Garrett's wand vanished into its breast, silver tip first. The thing wailed, spinning wildly, reaching for Sebastien with groping, malformed paws. He skittered aside like a toreador, swinging the rug again, smashing the thing in the face. A final candle fluttered out as it fell forward, keening, clutching Sebastien's shirtfront, and Garrett saw the horror in his eyes as it started to enfold him in devouring blackness.
And then it sagged to its knees, slid downward, cloth tearing in the grasp of its suddenly human hands. It fell, curled inwards, and buried its face in its knees, dappled moonlight shaking in short red curls.
* * *
Duke Richard waited for her in her parlor, flanked by city Guards. The early afternoon light crept in through white eyelet lace, gilding his hair. He had his hat in his hand, as if he did not intend to linger, but Mike sat on his shoes, tongue lolling.
When she entered, he dismissed the Guards.
"Richard," she said, when the door was closed.
"Investigator Garrett."
She came a few steps closer, and did not let her hurt show in her face. "I'm glad to see you, your Highness."
His jaw worked, and the hat tumbled from his hands as he came to
her, pulling her close, all but crushing her in his arms. "Abby Irene." His voice broke.
She leaned into the embrace for a long, quiet moment, listening to the pounding of his heart. When he finally let her step back, she did. "I'm safe."
"But barely. And I wasn't there to protect you."
"Sebastien was," she said, and regretted it immediately. "What's to become of Officer Forester?" He'd been taken away in chains before sunup.
"He's cooperated. Named his accomplice. Or his handler, more like—the Lord Mayor's pet sorcerer."
"Neither one implicated the Mayor?"
"Stayed silent as the grave. To hear Forester tell it, LaMarque—the sorcerer—offered him revenge against the lad who ruined Forester's sister. Forester took him up on it, not knowing the price. And then LaMarque—and Peter Eliot, of course, but neither one of them has or will admit that—used that consent, once granted, to enslave him. From what he said, he killed the Carlson family