The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden by Emma Trevayne Read Free Book Online Page B

ensure he speaks to someone.”
    â€œYou have been watching him.”
    Deadnettle nodded. Not much, but enough.
    â€œNot yet.” He did not tell her the other part of the errand, but she’d see for herself soon enough. He despised admitting even to himself that he needed her assistance, that he wasn’t strong enough to do some things on his own any longer. Especially after the theater, which had sapped them all.
    He led them out of Shoreditch, and every step away from the Society brought both pain and relief. Iron pressed in from every direction, where there was none in their cellar, but it soothed him to be a distance from Mordecai. In the ancient faery tongue, captor and benefactor were utterly different words, but in human English, they sounded eerily similar.
    â€œDeadnettle?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œYou heard Mordecai and that other man speaking . . .”
    â€œI did.”
    â€œWhy don’t we go to one of the other spiritualists and tell them what Mordecai’s done to us? You heard him. It doesn’t sound like they’d be pleased. And if Mordecai was the one to open the gateway and bring us through to start with, maybe one of the others can open it again to send us home.”
    Deadnettle turned a corner. “You are a fool if you think any of them wouldn’t do the same as he has done,given the chance. No human has ever given us a reason to trust them.”
    Her silence beside him seemed to deepen, and guilt twinged within him at her frown.
    â€œHow could they give us a reason? We have never asked one for help, Deadnettle. We hide away.”
    â€œWe will never ask such a thing. Never. You are not a fool, Marigold. But even if one were good-hearted and kind, of which I have seen no evidence, I believe Mordecai to have peculiar gifts that allowed him to summon us and keep us here. I have tried to ascertain the nature of them, but I cannot. I am certain, though, that we are trapped here unless we find our own way out.” And that, thought Deadnettle, meant pinning all of their hopes on Thomas.
    It was tempting to give up now.
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    The park was empty, it being far too early for most to be awake, and those who were did not have the leisure to lounge about on dew-sodden grass instead of delivering eggs or milk or newspapers. To be safe, Deadnettle put his finger to his lips and made sure of Marigold’s understanding nod before he kneeled down and prized the bottom stone out of the plinth on which a statue perched. It came free with a faint scraping noise that was overloud in the quiet dawn.
    A sack of coins was wedged into the gap behind, emptier than it once was, but it hadn’t been enormously full to start with. On the day, thirteen years earlier, that Mordecai had worked his human magic and dragged the faeries to England from their own land beyond the mists, none of them had been expecting it to happen. What had gone into the pouch was simply whatever the faeries had had in their pockets at the time.
    Since then, they had not had chance or reason to spend much of it. Heavy silver coins with strange lettering around the edges tended to attract all manner of unwanted attention.
    Well, spending was a risk Thomas would have to take. Another test. Deadnettle counted out several, polished one on his cloak, and held it up to the curious light caused by the meeting of the fading moon and the growing sun.
    Wintercress. Her sharp, beautiful profile glittered. To look at her was to know that she was special, the faery queen. Deadnettle touched her forehead, then nearly dropped the coin as he felt Marigold’s eyes on him. Quickly, he put the pouch and the stone back in place and stood, composing himself for their next tasks.
    Their journey across the river took them within hearing distance—which was still quite far for a faery—of Thomas’s home. Deadnettle stood, listening, until he couldbe certain of