Rook, page 1
contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Acknowledgments
About the Author
pagelist
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Landmarks
Cover
Contents
Chapter One
Acknowledgments
This one is for Ashli, Elizaveta, Meghan, Evangeline, and Eddie—and for so many more amazing readers who have breathed life into New Fiddleham and kept the lights glowing, even while I was away.
chapter one
Life goes on—which I have always felt was rude on life’s part. It comes crashing into us at full speed, leaves us reeling, and doesn’t spare so much as a backward glance as we drag ourselves back to our feet in its dust. It isn’t that life doesn’t care—although, to be clear, it doesn’t—it’s that life clearly has its own agenda, and no intention of pausing to let the rest of us catch our breath.
I was already out of breath as I crested a hill looking out over the busy streets of New Fiddleham. My mentor had a naturally rapid gait, and it had been too long since I’d had any practice keeping pace. “A moment, if you don’t mind, Mr. Jackaby,” I called.
“Of course.” He paused to stand in what he might have believed was a nonchalant posture, leaning stiffly with his shoulder against a lampp
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t apologize,” he chided, but his aura churned.
Auras, for those who have the good fortune of not being able to see them, look a bit like a glowing light and a bit like wispy smoke and a bit like a dream you tried to hold in your mind after waking up. Auras are slippery. They’re also everywhere. Everything has its own energy. Sometimes that energy is simple—an average brick’s energy is ruddy and brick-shaped; an average pebble’s is small and pale. Other times, an aura is a hundred times larger and more complicated than the physical object generating it. A simple silver brooch could fill a room with waves of midnight and sadness, or a strand of hair could burn as bright as a bonfire. That might all sound like a dazzling spectacle, and it is, but one does not wish to be dazzled when one is trying to butter a potato. One wishes that a potato would just sit still and be a potato for five blessed minutes. Auras are exhausting. And I had spent my formative months as a Seer sequestered in a building packed with my mentor’s paranormal relics and crime scene mementos. They dazzled ceaselessly.
Until recently, Jackaby had been the one to see auras, and he had been good at it. He had made a career out of it, solving impossible mysteries by following invisible clues. The sight should have remained his until the day he died—and technically it had. Fortunately, Jackaby’s untimely demise had only been temporary. Less fortunately, his supernatural sight had transferred itself behind my unready eyelids the moment his heart had stopped beating, and there it had remained even after his resuscitation. The power was mine now, whether I wanted it or not.
“Shall we?” Jackaby asked.
I nodded, following him under a narrow brick arch. My eye twitched as we crossed through the tight alleyway. The space was claustrophobic, and the air was thick with the electric grays of anxiety and fear. One wall had been splattered with dull red paint, in which someone had hastily scrawled the words MUNDUS NOSTER. Each letter thrummed angrily. It made me feel itchy, like scar tissue forming around a cut.
“What’s that?” I asked aloud.
“Hmm?” Jackaby followed my gaze. His lip twisted in a brief sneer. “Don’t pay it any mind. Just local gangs demonstrating typical New Fiddleham hospitality. At least they’ve put some effort into their Latin this time. Our world. Not particularly original. I’ve seen four or five variations in the past week.”
I swallowed. “Is that normal?” I asked.
Jackaby didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His aura churned faster.
“This is why you wanted me to get back out into the city, isn’t it?” I said. “To see things like that for myself?”
“You are not responsible for stopping every vandal in New Fiddleham, Miss Rook,” Jackaby replied. He kept his eyes fixed forward. “I told you already, this trip is only for practice. No ulterior motives. No pressure. When you are ready, you’re ready.” A few agitated pinwheels of anxiety spun off his aura, but he kept his expression flat. “You’ve been cooped up for months. It’s good for you to get back into the world, breathe some fresh air.” He sniffed. “Or at least some New Fiddleham air. Mind that sticky-looking puddle, there.”
He had a point. It had been ages since I had ventured more than a few blocks from home, and on those rare outings I tended to keep my attention on the cobblestones. The house had become my safe haven. Granted, it was also a safe haven to several species of supernatural wildlife, a handful of temperamental nature spirits, and at least one ghost—but none of those things were as frightening to me as the outside world. As it happens, the resident ghost of 926 Augur Lane had become one of my dearest friends of late. Her name was Jenny Cavanaugh, and she would have given you the coat off her own back, if that coat had not also been a spectral apparition incapable of passing to mortal hands.
I picked up the skirts of my walking dress as I hurried to stay fast on Jackaby’s heels. “So this whole exercise isn’t even a tiny bit about the commissioner’s request?” I asked.
“Hmm? What was that?” Jackaby deflected clumsily.
“For a consultation? I saw the letter in your office.”
“Ah. Well. No, this trip is certainly not about Commissioner Marlowe. Unless . . .” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Unless you felt like you were ready?” A faint hint of bright turquoise formed a hopeful little halo behind his head. “It’s only that the police are ill-equipped for a lot of the new cases coming their way. I’ve been assisting here and there when I can, but the sight would be particularly helpful right about now.”
“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry. I want to be ready, truly. Jenny says—”
“It’s fine,” Jackaby said, hurriedly. “It’s fine. His requests can wait.”
“Requests?” I asked. “More than one? How many has he sent?”
Jackaby’s mouth hung open for a beat. His eyes darted to the left. “Look at that! We’re here!” he declared. “Last stop for the day.”
We had drawn up along the side of a wide building hewn from broad gray stones.
“Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”
An ordinary tour guide might have been encouraging me to take in the majestic sight of the Romanesque arches above us or perhaps the savory smells of the street vendors half a block ahead. I could tell that this was not my mentor’s intention.
“See it?” Jackaby patted the wall beside him. “Should be just about here, yes?”
I nodded. “I see it,” I said. “It looks like a stain—only it’s not really there, is it?”
Jackaby beamed happily. “Of course it’s there. Well. I can’t see it—not anymore—but I remember it. What does it look like to you?”
I took a deep breath. “It’s got layers,” I said. “Dark green underneath, but not a proper green. It’s a guilty sort of green? Like seaweed and shame. Then it gets lighter and more yellow as it warms up. It’s . . . sparkly? It’s like there are slivers of diamond mixed up in the bricks. They’re good sparkles, I think. Mostly.”
“Well, Detective?” Jackaby prompted. “You’ve got all the pieces of the puzzle. Take a guess. What’s just on the other side of that wall?”
I bit my lip. For months, I had memorized the unique tints of specific creatures. Elven magic, troll musk, pixie dust—they all gave off distinct energies, like footprints. But the sight didn’t stop at species. Every being, human or otherwise, had a history and memories that trailed behind them like swirling eddies, further coloring their energy. Fears and hopes saturated every passerby. Bang any two people together, and you’d find the air thick with a cloud of thoughts and emotions. Reading the residue that people left behind was like trying to tell what had been written on a blackboard based on the chalk dust coming off the erasers.
“Behind this wall is . . . a room?” It was like I had inherited an artist’s priceless paints, but I could barely manage to scribble out a finger painting. “It seems like a place where a lot of people have visited.”
“Okay,” Jackaby said. “Move past the obvious, now. Why do people come here?”
“They come here . . . because they feel bad?” I ventured. “Except coming here makes them feel worse, I think. But feeling worse makes them feel . . . better, somehow?” My head was beginning to hurt. “Does any of that make sense?”
Jackaby nodded. “Nearly there. What sort of place is it?”
“A . . . pub?”
“So close.” Jackaby snapped his fingers. Ripples of disappointment spread along his aura.
“Oh, just tell me.”
“We’re on the side of St. Mary’s,” he said. “Behind these bricks is the confessional. Remarkable how those heavy feelings have seeped all the way through solid stone over the years. Beautiful, too, isn’t it? I always found it so hard to describe. You should really see the particles of guilt when they catch the light around sunset.”
I ran my fingers over the swirling energies that clung to the wall. It was oddly pretty. I closed my eyes, but the colors still hung before me in darkness—the sight a stronger force than my own eyelids.
“Ready to head back?” Jackaby asked.
“Why should guilt be beautiful?” I asked. “It seems like guilt should be ugly, shouldn’t it?”
Jackaby shrugged. “I suppose it’s less about the emotion and more about the honesty of confessing.” He adjusted the strap on his satchel. “Honesty’s rare. Finding a place where you feel safe enough to be open and true—that’s something special. I think the sight responds to that.” He patted the wall once more, affectionately. “Shall we?”
The walk back toward Augur Lane took us over wide, winding streets, down narrow alleys framed by tall brick buildings, and past the stately grounds of St. Pantaloon’s (the latter being a hospital that was supposed to be named for Saint Pantaleon, patron of physicians and midwives, but—due to a bit of sloppy cursive on the official documents—had been named, instead, for baggy women’s trousers). One of the things I had come to love about living in New Fiddleham was that it refused to abide by the logic of any other town—nor by any logic at all, most days.
