The Kindred of Darkness Read Online Free Page B

like a little red-haired marsh fairy against the clean white of the pillows, lashes like long black feathers on pink-stained ivory cheeks.
    Grippen stood beside the crib …
    NO
…
    The child woke as he reached down with those long-nailed hands …
    NO!!!
    Gasping, Lydia jerked from sleep in time to hear the clock in the upstairs hall chime three.
    The oil lamp had gone out. The gas-jets burned low.
    He was in this house
…
    And how did he get out of it?
Lydia got to her feet, put on her eyeglasses.
Did he carry poor Nan over one shoulder like a sack of grain and Miranda tucked under his arm? Did he make two trips?
    She frowned.
    He couldn’t have carried Nan through the streets of Oxford in his arms
.
    He had an accomplice
.
    From panic and fear, her mind became oddly cool. It was a problem to solve, like any medical puzzle.
    The sun didn’t set until almost nine. The sky held light for nearly an hour after that.
    Her train had come in just before eleven and she’d heard the station clock strike half-past as she saw Grippen standing before her on the bridge.
    Living accomplices
.
    The desk lamps had burned out. She fetched a candle from Jamie’s desk, lit it at the gas jet, carried it upstairs to the nursery. The glow of the blue-glass night light showed her the empty cot, the big black-and-white toy bear and the elegant doll called Mrs Marigold, her haughty china features wreathed in corn-golden hair braided into some fantastic coiffure of Miranda’s own devising.
    They would have to be living. He’d have to get Miranda out of Oxford, and be back to intercept me, AT MOST ninety minutes later
.
    The Dead travel fast
, Leonore’s demon-lover said to her in the ballad, but even they couldn’t be in two places at once.
    Living accomplices, to deal with Nan and Miranda after daybreak
.
    She stepped back into the hallway’s darkness, shielding the candle with her hand.
    Trains would be leaving Oxford, either for London or for railway hubs like Nottingham, up until ten.
A horse and gig? Would a sixteenth-century vampire know how to drive a motor car? They could have gone to ground anywhere
… But as James had once pointed out during one of Cousin Ritchie’s excited accounts of a cracking good book he’d read, it actually takes a good deal of time and expense to hold someone captive, particularly if one wants them to remain in relatively good condition for any length of time. ‘It isn’t something one can easily do in one’s attic.’ (Cousin Ritchie’s book had theorized that it was possible for German agents in London to do precisely that.) ‘The servants would talk.’
    And if Grippen didn’t want Miranda to remain in relatively good condition, he wouldn’t have kidnapped Nan as well
.
    Vampires may be able to fade into shadow and illusion
, reflected Lydia,
but their human allies are flesh and blood
.
    Feeling calmed, she descended the stairs to her room, where she kindled a night light of her own, removed her spectacles, and lay awake, on top of the bedcovers, staring at the tiny pool of amber on the ceiling until the coming of first light.
    Mr Polybius Teazle had offices in London’s Old Street, near the railway line. Lydia found his address in James’ address book. The building was a flat-fronted brick horror, and Teazle’s office, two flights up, shared a hallway with a dentist, an accountant, and a manufacturer of false teeth. Teazle himself was about James’ age, and had James’ slightly downtrodden air of a man whom nobody would notice in a crowd.
    But like James, she guessed, he saw more than he let on, and she was very glad she hadn’t given him her right name, and had arranged to contact him through an accommodation address.
    â€˜Mr Grant tells me that you have operatives to search public records.’ John Grant was the name under which James had done work for the Department in England – when