The Savoy was proving to be one of our favourite homes. The grand hotel had been built in the late nineteenth century, with no expense spared, and had been modernised several times since. Although the majority of guests were short-term, there were many like ourselves who took one of the larger suites and turned it into a home, staying for many years at a time. Our suite consisted of a large sitting room, a dining room (with a small kitchenette off it, although we mostly had our meals provided from the Savoy’s kitchens), three bedrooms, a box room, a luxurious bathroom, and a powder room, all, save for the box room, appointed and furnished with the utmost sumptuousness and elegance. The luxury of the hotel, and its convenience to central London, were attractions, to be sure, but so also was the sense of “family” among the staff, and most certainly also was the fact that our suite, on the floor beneath the attic level, had windows that overlooked the Thames.
I could stand there for hours, watching the water sprites at mischief among the pleasure boats.
We had no entrance to the Idyll from the Savoy. Hundreds of years ago, when Weyland had purchased the house in Idol Lane, he’d constructed a stunningly beautiful, magical, faerie world on the top floor of the house. He called it his Idyll, and used it to retreat from the world. The Idyll had shown me a side of Weyland I’d never suspected—the creative, faerie aspect of him—and it was in the Idyll that Weyland and I had come to love each other. The Idyll still existed, but we could only access it from the Faerie, or from the steps inside the rebuilt spire of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East.
We rarely visited the Idyll. The intrusion of Catling’s imps into the Idyll in order to place that hex on Grace had destroyed some of its magic for us. As for Grace…I don’t think she ever went back into the Idyll after the Great Fire.
Catling had caused a great blight on this land. She would prove its death if she could not be destroyed.
I had to believe that Jack would aid us, and would succeed in aiding us. I had to.
We spent a desultory afternoon waiting for Jack and Harry. I telephoned Matilda, and spoke to her for a while about Jack’s arrival, and all that he had said and done thus far (I left out the fact Jack had kissed me; that was irrelevant, surely). She asked me to give him her best wishes, and the hope they could meet soon. Then I spent my time alternately flipping through magazines, watching the river from the windows, and walking as silently as I could to Grace’s room, standing outside her closed door with my hand raised to knock, then walking away again, too dispirited to risk a rejection. Weyland went down to one of the bars for a while, where, fortunately, he did not drink too much, then to the garage, where I suppose he spent an hour or so both farewelling one of the cars and instructing one of the mechanics to get it ready for transfer to its new owner.
Just after six in the late afternoon the internal telephone rang, and Robert Stacey, the concierge who ran the residential guests’ lobby (we did not enter through the main, glittering lobby of the hotel, but a smaller one just around the corner from the Savoy Court), said that two gentlemen were on their way to see us. He already knew Harry, and would have allowed Jack through on Harry’s recommendation, but I wondered what Stacey had thought of him.
Stacey was a Sidlesaghe. He always appeared in some form or other at whatever front door we kept, as our doorkeeper and watcher.
I don’t know who he watched more: me or Grace.
I put down the telephone, then realised I’d been standing there staring at it too long, and that Weyland was watching me.
I smiled wanly. “They’re on their way up.”
Weyland looked at me a heartbeat longer, then gave a tight little nod, and left the sitting room. I heard him knock softly on Grace’s door, then enter her bedroom.
I wish I’d had the courage to do that earlier.
Oh, gods, the nerves were fluttering in my stomach. Please, please let Jack be able to help Grace.
I took a deep breath, walked slowly to the front door of the suite, and, by the time the knock on the door came, hoped that the smile on my face was steady.
“Harry,” I said as I opened the door. “Jack.” I kissed Harry on the cheek, as I always did, hesitated awkwardly, then greeted Jack in the same manner.
Both men appeared tense and tired, and I wondered what had happened while they’d been out walking the City. Had Catling appeared to them? I hadn’t seen her since that terrible day she had dragged Weyland and me down to the heart of the labyrinth, but she would surely approach Jack at some time, now that he was home.
Harry had led Jack through into the sitting room, and I followed.
Weyland and Grace were already there, sitting on the sofa, and I was glad to see Grace had changed into something a little less inhibited than her earlier blouse and skirt. She wore a flowered linen dress I had given her some months past, but which I always had to badger her to wear. I wondered whether Weyland had urged her to change, or if she’d shown some initiative herself.
Weyland stood up from the sofa to shake both Harry’s and Jack’s hands. Harry nodded a welcome at Grace, but Jack leaned over to shake her hand, which I thought a trifle too formal. But Grace looked him in the eye as they shook, so I was grateful for that small mercy at least.
“Well?” said Weyland, not pausing for any verbal niceties, although he’d gone to the drinks cabinet to pour everyone a drink.
Harry and Jack glanced at each other, and I felt a premonition of dread.
“Sit down,” I said, then sat myself as Weyland brought me my glass.
Harry and Jack took two of the armchairs, but Weyland sat back next to Grace on the sofa.
“There’s something different,” Jack said without any preamble.
I didn’t know what he meant. Yes, London had changed…but surely he would have expected that? “Catling has grown,” I said. “She is stronger than ever.”
Jack stared searchingly at me as I spoke, as if he expected me to say something different, or as if I might be hiding something. Then he turned his head towards the sofa. “Weyland?”
“What do you mean, Jack?” Weyland said. “What do you want us to say? What is different?”
Jack moved a hand, delaying his response to Weyland for a moment. “Grace?” he said.
She’d been staring at her lap, but now she raised her face to him.
“Different?” she said. “Do you mean wrong?”
Harry glanced sharply at Jack at that question, and Jack himself leaned forward in his chair. “Is there something wrong, Grace?”
She didn’t answer immediately, but held Jack’s gaze for a long moment, then looked back to her lap where one of her hands was wrapped about her other wrist. “Everything has been wrong for a very long time.”
It was no answer and it didn’t satisfy Jack, but he let it go. On my part, I was amazed at how much Jack seemed to get out of Grace. Jack got sentences. The rest of us got little more than monosyllables.
“There’s something different, or ‘wrong’, about London,” Jack said, passing a hand over his face as if very, very tired. “I can’t define it, I can’t describe it, I don’t know what it pertains to…save that it touches in some way upon the Troy Game. Noah…you are a Mistress of the Labyrinth, a powerful one, have you felt nothing?”
“No. Jack, what can you mean?”
He gave a confused shake of his head, and so I turned to Harry. “Harry?”
“I can’t add anything more to what Jack has said. He can feel this, I can’t.”
Harry was frustrated, but I could tell he didn’t disbelieve Jack.
“We walked all over central London,” Harry continued, “from the Tower where you dropped us, around the northern line of old London Wall, to St Paul’s, to Southwark. Jack says that whatever the wrongness is, it is huge.”
“It has spread far further than just central London,” Jack said. “Long fingers.”
“Long fingers?” Weyland said, the instant before I asked the same question.
Jack waved a hand in the air, a gesture of utter frustration.
Weyland and I shared a look—one of utter dread.
“Is it Catling?” I asked softly.
He took a long time to answer. “No,” he said finally, “I don’t think so. It doesn’t have the feel of the Troy Game about it, although this difference, this wrongness, somehow is connected to the Game. I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t trust my judgement on this.” He took a sip of his drink. “It is all so…so…shadowy.”