The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) by Kate McIntyre Read Free Book Online Page B

up to their ankles.
    The sanctuary had been as beautiful and glorious as Chris had remembered, but Mother Greta had led them away from it into a small side door, which opened into worn, plain hallways with wooden plank floors and walls with copper piping for heat bared to the world. The ground was set half a foot lower than it was in the sanctuary, keeping the water contained. Olivia picked up her scarlet skirts, making a face, while Maris didn’t seem to notice the cuffs of her split skirts becoming soaked within seconds. Some emotion Chris couldn’t place weighed heavily in his chest as he picked through the watery halls. So many times, he’d warned Rosemary that something like this could happen. All it would take was a single moment of failed concentration, and an elemental would wreak vengeance.
    “Mother.”
    They all turned as one to look. A statue of Deorwynn, the Mother, extended her arms and offered comfort. Her stone skirts were soaked.
    There was a flicker of movement in Deorwynn’s shadow. A young woman in a Maiden’s habit stepped out, looking for all the world as if she were leaving Deorwynn’s comforting embrace.
    The Maiden was short and slight and pretty, and Chris could make out a few strands of auburn hair from beneath her habit. She was also trembling, and her violet eyes were haunted.
    “Elisa,” Mother Greta said, stepping forward and wrapping the Maiden into her arms. They stood like that until Olivia cleared her throat and the women stepped away from one another, looking ashamed. “Elisa,” the Mother priestess said again, “this is… I, that is, I went for assistance in the matter of… Lachlan.”
    Sister Elisabeth’s eyes slid past Chris and Olivia and settled on Maris. She licked her lips―they were so thin she barely looked as if she had a mouth. “Police?” she asked, looking askance at Mother Greta.
    “And an… investigator,” Mother Greta said, but before those words even settled, Olivia glided forward and seized Sister Elisabeth’s hand to shake it.
    “
Deathsniffer
,” she stressed.
    “Faraday,” Maris snapped. “That is hardly what I would call
discreet.”
    “Oh, don’t be daft, Maris,” Olivia breezed away from the girl and started heading down the hall again. “Little Elisa Kingsley already knows that her Youth didn’t die in an accident.”
    The Maiden blinked. She chewed at her lip and then turned and started after Olivia. “How do you know that?” she asked.
    “You looked bemused, at most, when you saw Officer Dawson here. If you didn’t know that what happened to Mister Huxley had been foul play, you would have gone wide-eyed and petrified, I’d think.” Olivia twisted her head to give them a little triumphant look. “I suspect that you told the entire family already, Missus Milton?” And then, before the Mother could respond, Olivia stopped suddenly and they all ran up against one another. “This,” she pronounced, “is an
awful
lot of water.”
    Mother Greta’s jaw clenched, and then she moved past them and turned into a small room with an open door off to the side. “In here,” she said.
    At least, it had seemed like a small room. The door had been modest, old, scuffed, and small, but inside, the room was… palatial. Large enough to fit all five of them easily and have room and then room again to spare, it was the sort of bathing room only seen in the homes of the rich and influential. The Buckley estate’s certainly couldn’t compare. The tile was ivory and white marble, the ceilings vaulted and painted with night stars set in fantastic constellations. Decorated pillars went up to the ceiling, and sculptures of dancing angels were set on marble stands around the perimeter of the room. The toilet was thronelike, the tub was bedlike, and every single thing, including the beautiful ceiling, was dripping with water.
    In the middle of the tiled floor lay the body.
    Chris reeled back from it. There was no smell, not yet, but Chris had never