بخش 26

CHAPTER 50

GRASPING HANDS

THE STARSTUFF WAS wearing off. The other prisoners hadn’t felt this yet: they were still giggling with glee, cavorting and spinning in midair, the chain transmitting the motion from one to the other so that they were all whirling and spinning madly in the sky. The drunks who’d been at the rear of the prisoner line were singing a song about whiskey in the jar. Some distance away, Humdrake was now floating horizontally, his face to the sky, smiling beatifically and waving his arms, doing a lazy backstroke to nowhere.

But Peter knew it was wearing off, and they were starting, ever so slowly, to descend. For the tenth time, he lunged and strained against the chain, trying to fly the mass of prisoners over to Humdrake and the shiny brass shackle key on his key ring, which dangled tantalizingly from a hook on his belt. And for the tenth time, he was unable to move the mass at all.

Unlike Peter’s euphoric fellow prisoners, the crowd below had noticed that the group was beginning to come down. A contingent of police officers had gathered and, with much shouting and shoving, begun to clear out the space where it appeared the group would be landing. The bobbies did not know how these prisoners had managed to flee skyward—the word “witchcraft” was already being whispered in the crowd—but they clearly intended to take them back into custody when they returned to earth.

Slowly, slowly the prisoners descended toward the waiting bobbies, whose arms were outstretched in readiness. Peter gauged the distance: fifty feet to the bobbies’ hands, now forty, now thirty, now twenty, ten…

Bells.

Peter spun around, looking for the source of the sound, his eye catching a blazing blur of light coming over the courthouse roof, angling downward and streaking directly toward him until, with impossible deceleration, it stopped short six inches from his face and turned into…

“Tink!” Peter cried.

You smell terrible, she said, wrinkling her nose.

“I know,” he said. “Could you—”

Who are these filthy boys?

“We’re prisoners,” he said. “I need—”

Why did you open your locket?

Peter looked down and saw a policeman’s grasping hand just five feet from his toes.

“Please, Tink, I’ll explain later,” he said. “Go get the keys from that man.” He pointed toward Humdrake backstroking happily a few yards away, just above the outstretched arms of two bobbies. Tink, after giving Peter a what-would-you-do-without-me look, zipped over, grabbed the keys from Humdrake’s belt, avoided the swiping hand of a leaping bobby, and zipped back to Peter.

Peter’s cluster was almost down now; the bobbies had managed to snag the feet of the last drunk in line, and were starting to reel in the entire group. Peter grabbed the key ring from Tink and fumbled frantically through the keys, finally getting the shiny brass one. He bent over and inserted it into the hole in the shackle.

“Get that one!” shouted a deep voice just below him. “He’s got a key!”

Peter felt a hand grab his left leg; he kicked it free. He turned the key, and the shackle on his right ankle opened. Another hand grabbed at him, then another. Strong hands. Peter kicked with all his strength, heard a loud “Ow!” and a curse below him, and then shot upward, away from the chain and the shackles, away from the grasping hands, away from the shouting crowd and the chaos beneath him.

He soared into the darkening sky with Tink at his side, free again, leaving the other prisoners—still obliviously euphoric—to settle slowly into the arms of the London law, captive once again, but now in possession of a story that they would be telling until they drew their last breaths on earth. CHAPTER 51

THE MESSAGE FROM EGYPT

MOLLY AND HER MOTHER were talking quietly in the sitting room. It was the first moment they’d been able to find alone together since breakfast. Throughout the morning, each time one had approached the other, it seemed that Jenna had been lurking about. Finally, Louise Aster had ordered Jenna to leave the house on a trivial errand—an order that Jenna had obeyed with obvious reluctance.

Molly and her mother sat on the sofa, their heads close together, their voices low. They discussed the suspicious actions of Jenna, and the disturbing change in the behavior of Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Cadigan, as well as Hornblower’s reaction. Molly, relieved to be talking about these things at last, told her mother about the unusual warmth she’d felt—twice—from her locket, and the unfamiliar policeman who’d been passing by at odd hours, and the strange man who had suddenly appeared out of the darkness when the bobby was talking to Mr. Jarvis.

“What do you mean, strange?” asked her mother.

“Well,” said Molly, trying to remember what she’d seen in those fleeting seconds, “he was very dark.”

“You mean, he was wearing dark clothing?”

“Yes, I suppose he was,” said Molly. “But it was more than that. He…his whole form was the blackest of blacks, as if he were part of the night itself.”

“What did he look like?”

“I couldn’t see his face. He was just a black shape, and the way he moved, it was—” Molly hesitated.

“What?” said Louise.

“It was the strangest thing. He moved quickly, and yet so easily, as if there were no effort. It wasn’t like a person running at all; it was like ink flowing.”

“Did Mister Jarvis see him?”

“No. He was looking the other way. The bobby saw him—he had to have; he was looking right at him—but he didn’t react. And the dark man was gone a moment later. It happened in an instant.”

“What happened?”

“I’ve been thinking and thinking about that, trying to picture it,” said Molly, frowning. “It was so quick, and there wasn’t much light. But whatever it was, Mister Jarvis looked different afterward. I can’t explain it very well, I’m afraid. But it was as if something that should have been there wasn’t. He’d changed somehow. I’m not making sense, am I?”

Louise didn’t answer, but her face filled with worry.

“What is it, Mother?” Molly asked. “Do you know who the dark man was?”

“No,” said Louise. “Not really.”

“But you know something,” Molly said. “Tell me, please!”

“I can’t say for certain,” said Louise slowly. “I don’t know if there’s a connection…but just before your father left, he received word from Egypt, from one of our people there, an old friend of your father’s named Bakari. He sent a brief message, apparently written in great haste.”

“What did it say?”

“Some starstuff fell,” said Louise. “A small amount. Our people detected it immediately and sent a group of six to retrieve it. They were transporting it to Cairo when something went terribly wrong. There was an ambush; somehow the Others knew exactly where they were. Bakari was the only one of the six who managed to escape.”

“That’s awful,” said Molly, “but what does it have to do with what happened here last night?”

“Bakari said that they were betrayed.”

“By whom?”

Louise put her hand on Molly’s. “By one of us,” she said. “By a Starcatcher.”

Molly’s eyes widened. “But that’s impossible,” she said.

Louise nodded. “So we thought as well. But Bakari’s message was quite definite.”

Molly frowned. “But I still don’t understand what it has to do with—”

She was stopped by the tightening of Louise’s grip.

“Bakari’s message ended with a strange warning,” said Louise. “Neither your father nor I understood it at the time.”

“What was it?” said Molly.

Her mother looked out the window, then back at Molly.

“The warning,” she said, “was ‘Beware the shadows.’”