Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes by Jeff Campbell, Charles Prepolec Read Free Book Online Page A

blackness of the corridor. His head was pillowed on his rolled-up blue coat and his little blue cap; he was profoundly asleep. Holmes tried to wake him, and then Peter, to no avail. I stood looking down at that thin, peaky-looking little face — he was very young, no older than John Darling. What is it that you were fleeing, Bobbie, that opened your heart so fully to the realm of dreams? ‘Bobbie never visits anywhere, ’ Peter had said. ‘ When he’s at home, he’s alone …’
    Alone with at least one person who knew or guessed about the Neverlands, and knew where to hire a kidnapper who would hide him in the other world forever.
    “He’s been drugged.” Holmes scooped the boy up in his arms as if he were a kitten. “Drugged or a spell. Peter, listen. Can you keep him in the Neverlands with you for another two days? It will take me that long to find the man who hired Krähnacht — Nightcrow — and make sure he’s not in a position to make a second attempt on the boy.”
    “He’ll be safe with me.” Peter inclined his head like a young king. He always liked to turn orders or suggestions around so that they were actually his idea.
    And behind us, the barred door clanged.
    We all whirled. And there he stood in the corridor, the nightmare wizard Nightcrow: a chubby gray-bearded man in the sort of tweeds you see hikers wear in the countryside — he had, of course, been in Yorkshire. And behind his spectacles, the coldest blue eyes I had ever seen.
    “A mortal man,” he said thoughtfully, regarding Holmes with those awful eyes. “A dream-child—” He looked at me, as if I were a butterfly in a net who’d make an interesting addition to some tray in a library. “And…” He looked at Peter. “And what have we here?”
    “We have here your doom, Nightcrow!” trumpeted Peter, striding to the bars. “I am Peter Pan, and I have come here armed with spells for your destruction! Holmes, play your magic flute!”
    “Holmes?” Nightcrow’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows ascended; he wasn’t in the least disconcerted. “So old Wylcourt’s hired occultists have given up trying to find the Gate I opened, and he’s hired Mr. Sherlock Holmes, eh? Now, that is a piece of news.”
    Holmes laid Bobbie back on the stone bench where we’d found him and said coldly, “I have nothing to say to you, Herr Krähnacht, except that I advise you to flee as fast as you can. For you are indeed doomed.” Then, when Nightcrow only folded his arms with the air of a man expecting to see an interesting show in complete safety, Holmes sat down on the edge of the bench, turned his back on Nightcrow, took his flute from his pocket, and began to play the air from Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Major. Peter flung up his arms, uttered a long wailing “Oooo-oo-ooo-ah-ah-ah-ooo-ooo-ooo,” and began to chant a string of nonsense syllables, coils of fairy-light (courtesy of Ten Stars, hiding prudently behind his back) ribboning from his outstretched fingers.
    I realized what was going on, and began to hop around Peter in the best imitation I could contrive of my friend Delphine Tremlow’s Ancient Grecian Dances that she teaches shop-girls.
    “Fascinating,” Nightcrow murmured, not disconcerted in the least. “You can’t do a thing to me, you know. We are neither in reality nor the dream world, and this enclave has its own laws. I look forward, Holmes, to observing you here over the next several years. As for Peter Pan — the Peter Pan — Well! I have a number of experiments I am eager to try—”
    “Silence, fiend.” Peter paused in his chanting. “I am weaving your Doom.”
    “I await it,” smiled Nightcrow sarcastically, “with bated breath. I’ve heard about you, of course — Did you come because young Viscount Mure was calling for you? He did, you know. For years now I’ve sought the secrets that lie within the realm of Dreaming, and now they’re within my grasp. My dear young lady, I hope your parents…”
    At that