Gideon turned to the briefcase resting in the seat beside him, opening it carefully to produce a photograph. His last resort. The one that had to work. “King’s College Hospital interns were set to perform an autopsy earlier today, yet when they examined the body, they found a rather vital organ missing.”
Avery noticeably shifted. “So?”
“In its place, they found rotting plants wrapped in straw, with no visible cuts to the body but their own.”
Avery mulled this information over. “You’re telling me the organ was missingbeforeanyone made an incision?”
“Correct.” Gideon nodded and handed her the photograph of the body. He could see her eyes light up at the photograph itself—it was unknown, it was unlike anything she’d seen before—like the car, it was technology that had bloomed in her absence. He took in the surreptitious glances she flashed both at him and then the photograph. She wanted to ask. She wasdyingto ask. The true trouble being, of course, she was dying to ask anyonebuthim.
Avery leaned toward the window, using the illumination of the streetlight to better make out the details, her brow furrowing. “Not just an organ—thebrain. Stolen?”
“I do not imagine the young woman gave it away.”
There were countless things one might do with a human brain. Those options increased when the brain was healthy, and they became even more interesting when the brain was chosen specifically because of whose it had been. “One of ours?”
Gideon shook his head. “Mundane.”
“You said they didn’t know about the missing brain until the intern’sautopsy—what was the coroner’s initial conclusion when she was pronounced dead? Aneurysm? Heart failure?”
“Car accident.”
Avery shifted her focus from the photograph, her mind flooding with new questions, new alleyways, new possibilities. “And the driver?”
“She was the only one in the car.”
Avery blinked, hard. “You’re suggesting she was drivingwithouta brain?”
“You have been out of London far too long. Stay a while, it might not seem so far-fetched.”
Avery scowled the way she always did when trying to dissuade a laugh. “How was she driving?”
The joke, however trite he may have found making it, had given Avery away. She did not banter back, she did not accept the offered deflection, she remained honed on the puzzle he had laid out before her. “She was found alone in the driver’s seat of her car, presumably in the same state as at the time of her autopsy. How and why she got there is your department, I would be loath to speculate.”
It was working. He could see her mind spinning with the possibilities. The uses of a brain in various spells alone included divination, protection, evocation—conjuration—and that was just the list of legal uses.
Her fingers drummed, and he could practically feel her heartbeat quickening. The rain, she may have forgotten; the feeling of the earth beneath her feet, the taste of food, those she may have forgotten, butthis…This, he knew, was seared into her soul: the adrenaline of the unknown.
Avery reexamined the photograph, and muscle memory prompted her to pat her pockets. “I need a magnifying…” That was when she noticed the car had stopped. She peered out the window more closely and grew very still. “Where are we?”
Gideon didn’t dare risk smiling. “Your new home, should you agree to our terms.”
The streetlamps were new, and nearly every building surrounding it had been renovated past the point of recognition, but the large woodenbuilding on the corner would beunmistakableto her. True, some things had been updated over the years, but the bones were much the same: the Georgian-style facade with great big paneled windows. Her eyes searched the familiar storefront and spotted the unaltered sign that simply read: Hudson’s.
Avery was hushed, reverent. “Are we on Baker Street?”
Gideon pointed to the corner building. “The owner rents out the old living quarters as apartments from time to time. She’s one of us. You’ll be safe here.”
Avery frowned. “You mean I’ll bewatchedhere.”
“Safety and supervision traditionally go hand in hand.” The idea was clearly repulsive: a former sanctuary recast for parole and defiled by council control.
This was perhaps one of his larger gambles. She would initially find it insulting, but perhaps, if he had played his cards right, she would still feel impossibly drawn to one of the last remnants of the world she once knew.
After a long silence, she found her voice again. “I want to see it.” It was a firm demand.
Gideon opened the car door. “I thought you might.”
The street was silent, the last of the nearby pubs having closed an hour prior. They easily crossed the street to a cerulean blue door with a mail slot off to the side of the business. Gold numbers down the center indicated the building number: 221.
