Library of Souls (Page 75)

“Hurry up and let us out!” Enoch said.

“With which key?” I said. The ring held dozens, all identical save the big gold one.

Emma’s face fell. “Oh, no.”

More guards would be coming soon, and unlocking every cell would cost precious minutes. So we ran to the end of the hall, unlocked the door, and gave the keys to Hugh, whose cell was closest. “Free yourself and then the others!” I said.

“Then stay here until we come back to get you,” Emma added.

“No chance!” Hugh said. “We’re coming after you!”

There was no time to argue—and I was secretly relieved to hear it. After all this time struggling on our own, I was looking forward to having some backup.

Emma and I heaved open the big bunker-like door, took a last look at our friends, and slipped away.

* * *

On the other side of the door was a long rectangular room cluttered with utilitarian furniture and lit from above by greenish fluorescent bulbs. It was doing its best impression of an office, but I wasn’t fooled. The wall was spongy with foam soundproofing. The door was thick enough to withstand a nuclear blast. This was no office.

We could hear someone moving around at the far end of the room, but our view was blocked by a bulky filing cabinet. I touched Emma’s arm and nodded my head—let’s go—and we began to advance quietly, hoping to sneak up on whoever was in here with us.

I caught a glimpse of a white coat and a man’s balding head. Definitely not an ymbryne. Had they not heard the door opening? No, they hadn’t, and then I realized why: they were listening to music. A woman’s voice sang a soft, slinky rock song—an old one I’d heard before but couldn’t name. So strange, so dislocating, to hear it here, now.

We slid forward, the song just loud enough to mask our footsteps, passing desks crowded with papers and maps. A rack mounted to a wall held hundreds of glass beakers, silver-flecked black liquid spinning inside. Lingering, I saw that each was labeled, the names of the victims whose souls they contained printed in small type.

Peeking around the filing cabinet, we saw a lab-coated man seated at a desk shuffling papers, his back to us. All around him was a horror-show of random anatomy. A skinned arm with musculature exposed. A spine hung like a trophy on the wall. A few bloodless organs scattered like lost puzzle pieces on the desk. The man was writing something, nodding his head, humming along with the song—something about love, something about miracles.

We stepped into the open and moved toward him across the floor. I remembered where I’d last heard the song: at the dentist, while a metal pick stabbed at the soft, pink flesh of my gums.

“You Make Loving Fun.”

Now we were only a few yards away. Emma held out a hand, ready to light it. But just before we got within reach of the man, he spoke to us.

“Hello, there. I’ve been expecting you.”

It was a slimy-smooth voice I would never forget. Caul.

Emma summoned flames that shot from her palms with the sound of a whip-crack. “Tell us where the ymbrynes are, and I might spare your life!”

Startled, the man spun around in his chair. What we saw startled us, too: below his wide eyes, his face was a ruin of melted flesh. This man was not Caul—he wasn’t even a wight—and it couldn’t have been him who’d spoken. The man’s lips were fused together. In his two hands he held a mechanical pencil and a small remote control. Pinned to his coat was a name tag.

Warren.

“Gee, you wouldn’t hurt old Warren, would you?” Caul’s voice again, coming from the same place as the music: a speaker in the wall. “Though it wouldn’t matter much if you did. He’s only my intern.”

Warren sank low into his swivel chair, looking fearfully at the flame in Emma’s hand.

“Where are you?” Emma shouted, looking around.

“Never mind that!” Caul said through the speaker. “What matters is that you’ve come to see me. I’m delighted! It’s so much easier than hunting you down.”

“We’ve got a whole army of peculiars on their way!” Emma bluffed. “The crowd at your gates is just the tip of the spear. Tell us where the ymbrynes are and maybe we can settle this peacefully!”

“Army!” Caul said, laughing. “There aren’t enough fight-ready peculiars left in London to form a fire brigade, much less an army. As for your pathetic ymbrynes, save your empty threats—I’ll gladly show you where they are. Warren, would you do the honors?”

Warren pushed a button on the remote in his hand, and with a loud whoosh a panel slid aside in the wall to one side of us. Behind it was a second wall made of thick glass, which looked into an expansive room engulfed in shadow.

We pressed against the glass, cupping our hands around our faces to see. Gradually, there came into view a space like a neglected basement, jumbled with furnishings and heavy drapes and human forms frozen in strange postures, many of which appeared, like the spare parts on Warren’s desk, to have been stripped of their skin.

Oh God what’s he done to them—

My eyes darted around the dark, my heart racing.

“That’s Miss Glassbill!” Emma cried, and then I saw her, too. She sat in a chair off to one side, mannish and flat-faced, perfectly symmetrical braids falling down either side of her head. We pounded on the glass and called to her, but she merely stared, in a daze, unresponsive to our shouts.

“What have you done to her?” I shouted. “Why won’t she answer?”

“She’s had bit of her soul removed,” Caul said. “Tends to numb the brain.”