Chapter One
One
WINTER
WAS SLOWLY releasing its grip on New Haven. Across the campus, trees
budded and bloomed, the midmorning sunlight just warm enough to convince
the young men to open their coats and abandon hats, but chill enough
that they did not linger, heads down, hands tucked into pockets,
brightly colored scarves fluttering. Then the bells tolled eleventh
hour, and the graveled paths cleared as though by magic, leaving the
campus Green still once again.
At the western edge of the Green, a
three-story house filled most of a corner lot. Surrounded by a low
stone wall, a small plaque at the entrance announcing that the house was
property of the university. It, too, was quiet. The white-trim porch
boasted a comfortable-looking quartet of chairs and a low mahogany
table, as though waiting for warmer afternoons for chess, or some other
decorous pursuit.
Past the front door, however, that quiet gave
way to chaos. Chairs had been overturned, rugs shoved aside, and the
ornately papered walls had been ripped in places. In the middle of one
room, Aaron Harker pivoted, arms windmilling as he tried to keep his
balance without losing sight of his prey, a gray-green figure the size
of a cat and the shape of a frog, if a frog were to rise up on two feet
and scurry like a ferret.
“Stop them,” a familiar, breathless
voice called. “Stop them!” His sister Rosemary, across the room, was
holding an iron poker in one hand and a broom in the other, looking like
a demented version of Lady Liberty guarding not a harbor but the exit
out of the room.
Aaron pivoted again and swore. “What the blazes do you think I’m trying to do?”
The
imp he’d been struggling to catch slid between his legs, leaving a
trail of slime across his boots, and Aaron, lifting one foot out of the
mess, pivoted a third time, getting dizzy from his attempts to follow
the creature. They’d managed to chivvy the creatures from the upstairs
rooms, but evicting them from the building entire had been more of a
challenge. There were at least eight that they’d caught sight of, but
they hadn’t exactly been able to line them up and count them.
“Slippery
little bastards,” he muttered, wiping the back of his hand across his
forehead. He’d discarded his jacket and cap across a chair in the
parlor, and sweat was making his shirt stick to the small of his back
uncomfortably, as though it were deep summer rather than only mid-April.
“Above
you!” Rosemary warned, and Aaron looked up to see an imp swinging from
the chandelier, screeching insults when it realized it had been spotted.
Aaron had just enough time to calculate the likely weight-bearing
capabilities of the fixture before the chain gave way, the imp falling
with an ear-piercing shriek, followed by the bulk of the chandelier.
Clear crystal beads rained down like hail, bouncing and rolling all over
the floor.
Aaron threw himself backward just in time, almost
tripping over another imp. “Goddamn it.” It had been a long day,
starting with an early-morning summons from the provost of the
university, and Aaron was tired of playing nice. “Bother, I take it
back. Eat them!”
The Molosser hound guarding the staircase gave a
sharp bark, the sound resonating throughout the first floor and making
the imps shriek again. Botheration let his lower jaw drop in what could
almost be considered a grin, sharp white teeth and pink tongue visible,
but since Aaron had not given an actual order countermanding the order
to guard, he stayed put.
Most uncanny would wet themselves, coming into close quarters with a hound. Imps lacked that level of self-preservation.
“Pbbbttttthhhhtt!”
They didn’t have speech, as such, but the meaning was entirely clear,
particularly with the gesture the fallen imp made, spoon-fingered hands
cupping between its legs before scurrying out of reach. But that
movement put it nearer Rosemary and her poker, and she took the
opportunity to whack it face-first into the wall.
The remainder
of the imps, rather than being dismayed, let out another round of rude
cheers, sounding remarkably like the brothers of the university
fraternity house they had infested.
“That’s enough out of you.”
Two hours of this, and Aaron had reached his breaking point. Although
he’d been doing his best to avoid touching them until now, Aaron reached
down and grabbed the nearest one by the scruff of its slimy neck,
punting it toward Rosemary. With the reflexes that made them an
effective team, she swung her broom, hitting the imp square in the chest
and sending it flying, falling in a crumpled heap by her previous
target.
“Two down, six to go,” she said with grim satisfaction,
dropping the now-broken broom handle and hefting the poker with both
hands. “Who’s next?”
The remaining imps scrambled up the
draperies and over furniture, but Rosemary was clearly just as tired of
trying to do this peacefully. Within thirty minutes they had subdued the
remaining creatures, leaving them groaning in a pile on the parquet
floor.
“We asked you to leave quietly,” Aaron reminded the pile. “It didn’t have to be like this.”
From the bottom of the pile, another rude noise sounded.
“They’re imps. I told you asking nicely wasn’t going to work.”
Aaron
glanced at his sister, her curls falling from the braid that had been
coiled neatly that morning, her face flushed with exertion, then down to
where her fingers still gripped the iron poker, and bit back the
response he was going to make. Stepping closer, Aaron gently uncurled
her fingers where they’d clenched hard enough around the metal bar to
turn her knuckles white, taking the poker from her and putting it aside.
“You all right?”
“Yes. Of course.” She sounded offended that
he’d even asked. “The day a pile of feral imps is anything more than an
annoyance, it’s time to retire. Let’s just get them into the box and be
done with this.”
On a proper hunt, there would be a body to
dispose of, either by burning, burial, or sinking in a deep body of
water, ideally one without strong currents. But while imps were a
nuisance to civilized folk—or university students—they weren’t
particularly dangerous, and their corpses would turn the soil noxious.
While meeting with the provost, the Harkers had arranged for a wooden
crate lined with flat iron plates to be left by the side of the house.
Once they had secured the imps within, an employee of the university
would haul them back out into the countryside. Odds were something out
there would eat them before too long, which was likely why they’d come
into town in the first place.
Their mistake, Huntsmen remedied.
After
reclaiming his jacket, Aaron fixed his collar and slicked his hair back
before replacing his cap. There was nothing to be done about the sweat,
but from a distance, he looked respectable once again.
Taking
the coal shovel from the fireplace, he used it to lift the first of the
knocked-out imps, gingerly carrying it out the front door to where the
box waited, half-hidden by the thick trunk of an elm tree. Unpainted
wood, half as tall as Aaron and twice as wide, the stenciled lettering
on the box’s sides suggested an earlier incarnation, but it didn’t need
to be pretty to be effective.
It took several trips to clear the
house, even with Rosemary disdaining the use of the shovel and merely
dragging them out, one in each fist. Each body made a wet, hollow noise
as it thumped against the others, and several of them twitched faintly
but otherwise remained knocked out. The iron plates couldn’t kill them,
not merely by contact, but they did enough damage to keep them docile
for a while. Hopefully, long enough for them to be dumped somewhere far
away.
When the last of the pile had been deposited, Aaron let the
lid drop shut a final time, the iron latch falling into place with a
satisfying clank.
“And good riddance,” Rosemary said. “We should
do one more tour of the house, but I suspect they all came out to play
once you threatened to set it on fire. Which, by the way, and I
shouldn’t need to remind you, is never the answer.”
Aaron sniffed
at his sleeve, then his hand, and made a face. “Fire might be the only
thing that gets this smell out. And the ooze… ugh.”
She clucked her tongue at him. “It’s not that bad.”
“No, it’s worse.”
Rosemary
rolled her eyes. “And they say women are too dainty for this work.
Fine. I’ll clear; you wash your hands. Bother”—and she called the hound
over from where he’d wandered to relieve himself—“guard!”
The
hound settled himself a few feet from the box, nose on paws and gaze
intent on his target. After using the garden pump to splash the worst
off his skin, Aaron leaned against the stone wall and studied his
four-legged companion. “A lot of help you were,” he said. “Although I’ll
grant you I wouldn’t want them in my teeth, either.”
Bother’s erect ear twitched, acknowledgment that he was being spoken to, but otherwise he did not respond.
Aaron
shifted again, his skin twitching. Rosemary could tease him all she
liked, but he could still feel the weight of imp ooze. It would take
more than a splash of cold water to erase the memory.
“Mr. Harker?”
Knocked
from his wistful thoughts of a long hot bath, Aaron’s left hand reached
for the bone-handled knife at his hip even as he turned, relaxing only
when he saw the two men standing on the other side of the wall. The
speaker was the provost, a stern-faced man with a slicked-back mustache
that would have better suited a younger man, and a pinched look between
his eyes. His suit was now covered by a long black coat, a fashionable
derby set on top of his head, and a blue-and-white knit muffler similar
to those worn by the students wrapped around his neck, but the sour
expression on his face was the same they’d seen in his office a few
hours earlier.
In comparison, the man next to him was an
expressionless shadow in brown, a short coat and uniform with its
polished black buttons up and down, and buffed black shoes underneath,
immediately identifying him as a member of the Messenger Service. The
service seemed to choose their employees based on unremarkableness;
Aaron suspected that even if he stared for an hour, ten minutes later he
wouldn’t be able to recall the shape of the face under the cap or the
color of his skin.
“Mr. Harker,” the provost said again, clearly
annoyed that Aaron had not responded already. Aaron was thankful
Rosemary was still inside; beyond the fact that the man had summoned
them like tradespeople, the provost clearly had little use for women,
and Rosemary had no use for men who had little use for women.
Aaron nodded once, waiting; he saw no need to confirm that he was, yes, still Mr. Harker.
“It’s
done?” the provost asked, his tone somehow managing to be both hopeful
and disdainful. In response, Aaron nodded toward the box, even as
something within thumped once, weakly, and then fell silent. Then some
mischief took over his tongue, and he said, “You should warn your boys
about leaving food out. You never know what’s going to come to dinner.”
If possible, the provost’s scowl deepened.
And then, because if he was going to be treated like a tradesman, he might as well act like one, Aaron said, “You have our fee?”
There
was a moment where Aaron thought he might have pushed too far, but the
provost reached inside his coat and withdrew a slender brown envelope,
which he handed to Aaron over the wall.
There was a temptation to
brush his hand against the man’s sleeve, to see if he would jump back
in polite horror, but the weight of the messenger waiting made Aaron
simply take the envelope, slipping it into his own coat pocket.
Huntsmen worked for the greater good of humanity. But they had bills to pay, too.
The
transaction completed, the provost wasted no time departing,
acknowledging neither Aaron nor the messenger beyond a brusque nod.
Both men watched him leave, then the messenger turned back to Aaron.
“Aaron Harker?”
“That’s me,” he agreed. Unlike the provost, the messenger had reason to confirm his identity.
The
man handed him an envelope of his own. This one was a simple
cream-colored envelope, sealed with a delicate bronze drop of wax
pressed with a plain signet. Despite its travel, the corners were
undented, the paper itself unmarked, as though other letters had been
afraid to touch it.
Orders from the Circle, in Boston.
There
was a bitter irony somewhere, Aaron was certain, that now was the
moment the Circle chose to resume contact. Not that there was a rule
against Huntsmen working directly for anyone, thankfully. The stipend
they received from the Circle covered the basics, but not much beyond
that, and while the Harkers did not live extravagantly, there were books
and wine and new shoes to be acquired on a regular basis, and
Botheration was not inexpensive to feed.
And there had been no official hunts coming their way for several months now, which had meant a smaller stipend.
No
hunts, no communication at all. Because of Brunson. Not that anyone
would say so. But the Harkers had grown up knowing that they were
slightly beyond the pale, knowing that they had to prove themselves more
than others, and he knew, even if Rosemary wouldn’t admit it, that they
were being censured.
And yet, there was no way the Circle could
know what had really happened in Brunson. Their report had been clear:
an uncanny had murdered three people, and a fourth had died during the
hunt, of causes unknown. All truth. Simply not… all the truth.
Sensing
Aaron’s mood, Bother chose that moment to stand up, drawing attention
to himself. The messenger, to give him credit, didn’t flinch at the
approach of the massive beast but stood his ground, his gaze fixed on
the human, not hound.
Aaron rubbed a thumb across the wax seal, though not hard enough break it. “Are you supposed to wait for a response?”
“I was not requested to do so, Mr. Harker.”
“Fine.”
Aaron tucked the letter into his pocket, equally careful not to crease
it, and pulled a quarter coin from the other pocket, offering it to the
man. “Thank you.”
When Rosemary reappeared a few minutes later,
her own attire and appearance repaired, both Aaron and Bother had their
attention fixed on the imp box, only the envelopes heavy in his pocket
proof anyone else had been there at all.
She stepped off the porch steps and stopped. “What happened?”
He couldn’t resist. “Why do you think anything happened?”
She just stared, hands on her hips, until he relented, pulling the envelopes out to show her.
“Finally,”
she said, exhaling her relief, stepping forward to reach not for the
envelope with their pay, but the one with their new assignment. He
pulled it out of her reach just as her fingers touched it and, when she
scowled at him, tilted his head to indicate the two burly workmen
approaching from the Green, a heavy handcart pulled behind them.
“It can wait until we’re home,” he said.
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