CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
In the Walker’s Grasp

The Icarus stood in the middle of the dusty library, his cropped wings brushing the roof as he loomed over Edie, panting short angry screams.

Edie turned her face away.

“If you find him worrying, you shouldn’t have broken the window,” said the Walker. “He would never have been able to get in here without an opening that size.”

Edie looked at the Walker’s face. There was no blood where she had slashed him, but an impossibly healed white scar cut across his face, just below one eye, taking a nick out of the bridge of his nose and ending in the other eye. That eye was now dead, clouded a pinky white, with no iris or pupil to be seen.

“And if you didn’t want him angry with you, you should never have killed his brother.”

“I didn’t kill his brother,” said Edie quietly.

“The Minotaur was his brother. Not an actual brother, but a brother in that they were the creations of the same maker, the same sculptor. They had much in common as a result.”

Edie didn’t need to look to confirm the truth of that. The Icarus had the same powerful legs and body, the same sense of dark energy bunched up and ready to erupt.

The Walker stood up and looked down at her. One of her arms was again tied to the chair.

Far off in another part of the house, Edie could hear the despairing sobs of the Blind Woman. The Walker noticed her listening. He smiled and snapped his fingers. The Raven flew in the window and settled on his shoulder.

“You’re wondering why she is crying so heartbreakingly.”

Edie didn’t say anything. The Walker’s hand traced the scar across his face.

“You’re wondering what I am going to do to you. For what you have done to me.”

He was right, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him know. She was unnerved by how calm he had been ever since finding her at the churchyard. He had almost been polite as the Icarus had trapped her and they had led her away.

He smiled without a shred of humor, and started writing on a sheet of paper. His voice was quiet, conversational, almost warm.

“I am doomed to walk the city until the Stone releases me. And so I cannot die. I heal, as you can see, prodigiously well. But in four hundred years, no one has done what you have done. . . .”

And here he looked up from the writing and pointed to the blind, pinky-white eyeball next to it.

“Now, because of you, I must walk the world one-eyed. Be sure that that is a wound and an affront that requires a magnificently well-thought-out punishment. I shall not deny myself the pleasure of planning the gradual stages of your end by rashly killing you now in anger. For despite what foolish men say, revenge is not a dish best served cold: to my taste, it is a dish best served after exquisitely detailed preparation and execution, and enjoyed at blood temperature.”

He finished off his note. Edie found that the more he tried to frighten her, the angrier she got. And the angrier she got, the stronger she felt. Unfortunately, it was also true that the more he tried to frighten her, the more frightened she became.

She tried to suppress the mind-killing fear and watch what he was doing as he folded the note and produced the two interlocked circular mirrors from his pocket. She watched as he unsnapped them, and then unsnapped them again, revealing a second set of mirrors clipped inside. He took one set of mirrors and carefully adjusted a tiny bezel running around the edge.

“That will bring them straight back to where I shall be,” he said to himself, then noticed her listening.

“We shall meet in an open space. That way, if George brings help, I shall see them and you will suffer the consequences.”

He reached over to the table. Edie saw that he had sandwiched the black mirror between the two wax disks and tied them in place. He had also knotted a leather thong through the hole in the mirror’s handle. He put the thong around his neck so that the heavy package hung on his front like a giant medallion. Then he pushed it inside his sweatshirt and buttoned his coat.

He pulled his dagger out from behind him and turned back to her. As he moved, he revealed a woman’s cloak and a bonnet on the desk. She had seen them before. She had seen the bonnet tangled around her own face as the Walker drowned her. In the open spaces of the ice-covered Thames. At the Frost Fair.

Despite herself, she shrank back in the chair. He waved the knife, imagining that it was causing her to flinch.

“Now. Do scream if you like. The Icarus will enjoy it. I need just one thing from you before we go.”