Page 9 of The Unweaver

Teddy fired. The phantom vanished without a trace. Then, inexplicably, he was careening through the air from above, only to disappear as Teddy shot at him. In the blink of an eye, he reappeared across the crypt and was gone again, dodging bullet after bullet with threatening ease.

The candles guttered out in the breeze of his passing, plunging the crypt into darkness but for a single trembling flame.

“It wasn’t us!” Teddy wailed. “Please—”

The phantom kicked off a wall, flipped with fluid grace, and disappeared midair. The bullet hit the empty space he’doccupied a heartbeat before. He rematerialized, crouched on the ground behind Teddy, and swiped his legs out from under him.

Teddy crashed onto his back. The gun clicked but didn’t fire. Empty. He was out of bullets. Laboring to his knees, he hurled the gun at the phantom with a frustrated howl. It pitched through emptiness and struck the wall.

Above him, the phantom winked into existence and crashed down between his shoulder blades. Teddy collapsed on his face with a sickening thump. The phantom stood on his back until Teddy’s screams turned to wheezing.

“Fuck you in particular, Teddy,” the phantom snarled, leaping off Teddy and kicking him in the jaw. Teddy’s head snapped back, blood and spit flying. Her twin sprawled on his side, limp as a ragdoll.

Cora tried to crawl towards Teddy, but he seemed so far away in the darkness. Her panting sawed through the harrowing silence that fell.

Steps approached her, slow and measured. The phantom kicked her onto her back and loomed over her like a menacing shadow. He pressed a boot heel over her windpipe, choking the scream out of her.

She thrashed and clawed at him uselessly, trying to rot through his clothes to the flesh underneath, trying to reach her knives stashed just beyond reach. The boot heel only ground down harder.

Her broken ribs pierced her lungs. Blackness encroached her vision. In her waning consciousness, she was dimly aware that her enchanted cloak was still intact. A small mercy. He wouldn’t remember what she looked like, if she survived.

The cold fury in his fathomless eyes as he glared down at her promised Cora that she wouldn’t. Bending down, he hissed, “You reek of death.”

An odd sense of calm settled over her. This was it. The death she had sensed earlier had come for her in the form of a tall man in a black coat. Cora surrendered.

Teddy’s whimper drew the phantom’s attention. The crushing pressure on her throat lightened as he turned towards her twin’s prone body.

No! Not Teddy. With Necromancy, she pulled Moriarty’s limbs like a marionette. The corpse flopped like a fish in a puddle of his own blood.

The distraction worked. The phantom reappeared beside the twitching corpse and knelt down. Limned in the last candle’s despairing light, his features were a portrait of grief as he brushed back a bloody clump of hair from the crater of Moriarty’s head. He cradled the corpse in his arms and then they were gone.

Teddy was groaning. Her throat was too bruised to call out. Through the damp and gore, she crawled to him. Every inch was agony. At last, she reached him. He was mumbling something through clenched teeth.Pain?She rested her ear against his lips. Again, the word came, little more than a puff of air.

“Bane,” Teddy whispered in a broken voice.

They had just been attacked by the Realmwalker.

Chapter 3. The Magpie Spy

“How did that little favor go, pet?” Mother asked Cora, her dulcet tone laced with a subtle venom. Sunlight filtered through the lacy curtains of her office and caught the lambent eyeshine both in her eyes and the Siamese cat’s purring in her lap. The telltale amber glow of Bestiamancers.

The Siamese cat, one of Mother’s pets who transformed into animals, domesticated and ferocious alike, had been gifted to the Prime Minister’s wife and supplied her true owner with priceless information. Cora never knew if the rat scurrying underfoot or the bird overhead was just an animal. Mother was always watching, always listening.

Cora envied the Bestiamancers for their anonymity, to be able to shed their human hides for animal ones and become something else entirely. She did not envy, however, the animal hearts they had to consume to do so.

Mother caught Cora’s pointed look at the cat. Cora wouldn’t divulge anything in front of anyone except Mother and her ornery second, Owens, who transformed into an equally ornery crow.

Owens is the soul of discretion, Mother had insisted over her protestations at involving another in her secret. As far as Cora knew, Owens had kept her identity hidden the many years she’dbeen doing Mother’s favors. Her secrecy was the only concession Mother had been willing to make in their arrangement. Cora suffered no delusions it was for her benefit.

“That will be all, Florence dear.” Mother patted the flyaway strands of her steel wool hair pinned in a loose bun. Her plump face crinkled in an indulgent smile as the cat hopped down and sauntered away. Her smile faded when the swishing tail disappeared, and they were alone. Mother turned her full displeasure on Cora, her lips puckering as if the very sight of her was sour.

Cora endured the reproachful sweep of Mother’s gaze. She might have over a foot on the stout old woman, but Mother still made her feel small. Shifting in the overstuffed armchair, she awaited the punishment Mother had curated after the Silvertown docks disaster.

This office, decorated in nauseating pastels, frilly lace, and filled with the cloying scent of gingerbread, was the magpie spy’s preferred torture chamber. The dolls on the shelves, tracking her with lifeless glass eyes, didn’t help matters.

Mother flicked cat fur from her jumper. Among her seemingly endless supply of ugly jumpers, today’s did not disappoint: lumpyandpuce-colored.

“Well?” Mother prompted.

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