being beaten by invisible wings. A door appeared, a very small one, only a foot wide on either side of her. Nettles could just glimpse a seascape behind her, black cliffs and rolling, white-capped waves and a midnight sky full of stars.
“By stone, you’re getting worse by the day,” the short goblin said. “Soon we’ll be crawling into the Old Country on hands and knees.”
“Shut up, Grout,” said Nettles, but his scowl went even deeper.
The woman made a pitiful face, twisting her hands through the soiled lace of her gown. “Yes, watch your mouth. Watch who you’re speaking to.”
Grout spat. “Oh, and who’s that? You’re just a slave. You’re worse than a slave. You’re a Peculiar.”
“I am the King’s servant!” the old woman cried. “Show me the dignity!” But that only seemed to goad Grout further and he started prancing, rattling his bottles.
“You’re just a sla-ave!” he sang, hopping around her. “Just a slave, just a slave, just a rotten slave.”
The pale woman looked to Nettles, her eyes drooping and watery. “Make him stop!” she said.
“Slave, slave, slave!” Grout screeched.
The old woman’s eyes became imploring. “I used to be his favorite.”
That was that. Nettles’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Well, you’re obviously not anymore,” he said, and it was as if he had slapped the old woman.
She drew back, staring. “How dare you?” she said. “How dare you both?” She began to shake. She was so small and old, but she was trembling with fury.
And then suddenly a door banged open at the far end of the cellar and voices echoed, loud as gunshots. Lamplight danced along the walls, coming closer.
“I’ll show you,” the pale woman snarled. “I’ll show you what I can do.” She stepped toward the goblins.
“No!” Nettles barked, but too late.
A cold wind whipped into the cellar. And suddenly the space was filled with wings. They slashed past Nettles’s face. With a lurch, the door expanded.
“Enough!” he screamed over the flapping wings. He dashed forward, through the door, onto the cliffs. “Come on, both of you, or we’re all dead!”
The old woman started to walk. “Say you’re sorry!” she shrieked. “Say you’re sorry!” With every step she took, the door grew, the feathers whirling wilder and darker. The blackness had reached the ceiling. Bits of dust and stone sifted down. The stars of the Old Country shone into the cellar, glimmering in the puddles on the floor.
“Now, you dimwits! D’you want the whole house coming down on our heads? Get in!”
Shouts. The glow of the lamps grew, spreading. Shadows appeared on the walls. The shadows began to run.
Even Grout looked frightened now. “I—I didn’t mean nothing by it! I didn’t, I’m sorry!”
But the pale woman wasn’t listening. “I used to be his favorite,” she said. “I am the Door to Bath. I am the greatest door of the age. He’ll be pleased with me again.”
She began to run, straight toward the oncoming English.
“Come back!” Nettles shouted. “Come back!”
The wings swelled, darker than night. The ceiling gave a wrenching grunt. Grout leaped onto the cliffs.
A deafening screech filled the cellar. It came from Wyndhammer House above and the hall full of heat and dancers. Feet, hundreds of them, battered the floor, pounding on and on like thunder.
Wyndhammer House began to fall.
The bells of St. Paul’s were tolling thirty-five minutes past midnight, but Pikey was not even thinking about going to bed. He scratched through the ankle-deep mud, his shoulders up around his ears to keep them from freezing. He didn’t count the strikes of the bells.
There was no moon in the sky. The clouds drifted, black and endless, snagging on the spires of St. Paul’s, on weather vanes and gable tips. It was so dark.
Only dead folk and the fay come out on moonless nights. Dead folk and those soon to be dead. Anyone wanting to keep the blood inside his veins and the coat on his back would not be found alone in the streets after eleven o’clock. But Pikey didn’t have a choice. He needed to find his patch.
After the fall of Wyndhammer House he had fled straight back to the square in front of St. Paul’s. He had searched for hours, bent double, picking through the muddy cobbles like an old farmer seeding a field. He was on his seventh time now. The cold was sinking into his bones. His legs had gone stiff as posts. But he couldn’t find his patch. It was gone, taken away or trampled deep. When a gang of draft dodgers came, whooping and shouting into the square, Pikey ran off in a fright.
He limped toward the warren of alleys that led to Spitalfields, rubbing his hands to keep the dull ache of the cold away. He tried to stay in the shadows, darting from doorway to doorway, running whenever he heard footsteps. He didn’t know what had happened at Wyndhammer House, but he would bet his boots it had something to do with faeries, and he was beginning to be afraid. What if someone had seen him there? What if they were following him, right now? He couldn’t be caught like this. Not with his bad eye in full sight.
He tried to go faster. The city became a beast after dark; the streets were its throats and the graveyards were its bellies, and ever since things had started going rotten between the English and the faeries the beast had gotten hungrier. The leadfaces had appeared first, hired by Parliament to chase the faeries from the city and then gather soldiers to fight them once they’d fled. After them had come the highwaymen and gunslingers, the thugs and ruffians and faery hunters with their iron teeth and packs full of knives and nets. Since the Ban had been declared they had been popping up in London like mushrooms. They set about in the night, searching for any fay that had not already left. Sometimes they found one. Just last week Pikey had heard of a whole colony of nymphs and water sprytes discovered in the Whitechapel sewers, hiding in the green and stagnant water. Where they were now Pikey didn’t know, but he did not want to join them.
He was just turning the corner at Glockner’s Inn, shuffling along the edge of the gutter, when he saw the girl.
His heart stopped, just like that, as if it had frozen stiff.
She was standing about ten feet away, staring at him. But she was not in the street. Not with the cobbles under her feet and the houses and blackened chimneys of London at her back. Behind her were trees and snow. Moonlight.
“Wot the—” Pikey breathed. In all the time he’d had the clouded eye, he had only ever seen three things through it: a long wooden staircase with a guttering light at its top; a gray-and-peeling face, leaning close, leering with red-coal eyes; and snowy woods. There had never been a girl before. Never a child in only a nightgown, standing barefoot in the snow as if it were nothing.
The girl took a step toward him.
Pikey’s brain made an odd, twisting lurch as it tried to grasp what was happening. She seemed to be above him, and he on the
