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“It’s not selfish. What happened to me isn’t your fault, and you can’t fix it. I wouldn’t particularly want to throw myself into training a rookie knowing she could vanish at any moment.”
“I am quite certain any of us could ‘vanish’ at any moment.”
“Like being hit by a bus? Or thrown down a stairwell for reasons unknown?”
“Omnibus drivers are a reckless lot. I suspect stairwell-throwing is a less common form of sudden demise, although, speaking as a physician, I can confirm that stairs are terribly dangerous.” He shifts behind me. “I am not as concerned about losing my new assistant as I am about losing someone whose company I enjoy.”
I lean back against him. “Ditto.”
“Ditto?”
“It means ‘the same.’ I like your company, too.”
Silence. Then, “You make it seem very easy to say such things.”
“I know, right? Tell someone you think they’re cool, and the universe doesn’t collapse around you. Weird.”
“Cool? I presume that’s a compliment.”
“It is. And—” I stop as something squeaks near us. “Is that a rat?”
“Probably.”
I scramble up. “We need to get out of here.”
“We could check the door. See whether it’s locked.”
“The—? Goddamn it. We haven’t even checked the door.”
“Don’t look at me. I’ve suffered a head injury and cannot be held responsible for any mental oversights. Also, you could turn on the light.”
“What?”
“Using my superior powers of detection, I believe I catch the faint smell of gas lighting.”
“We’ve been sitting in the dark—”
“Head injury. Not responsible. Also, I could be wrong. It does happen.”
I start feeling along the wall, only to remember I’m not going to find a switch. The gas needs to be lit at a source. I do, however, nearly stumble over a table, and on it is a match box. That tells me there’s a light nearby, and I soon find it.
The lamp flickers, faint, as if it isn’t the main source of illumination, but I can make out the stairs and the door at the top. I march up the stairs, turn the knob and—
Locked.
I examine the knob, but the key works from the other side. I march back down.
“I suppose that would have been too easy,” Gray says. He’s pushing to his feet now, and while he’s wobbly, there’s also an unguarded look about him that makes me forget how annoyed I am about him not mentioning the lights and the door.
I help him find his balance. “Are you sure you should be standing?”
“I believe so.” He tilts his head one way and then the other. “I have quite the ringing in my skull, and my stomach hurts enough that I might not even be tempted by cream pastries. Also, I do believe…”
He unbuttons his jacket. I yelp, seeing blood soaking through his shirt.
He only sighs. “Yes, the stitching has come undone. Likely in the tumble down the stairs.” He does up the jacket again. “It will be fine. The question now iswhywere we pushed down here?”
“I don’t care about why. I care about whether there’s a wayoutof down here. You saw windows from the outside, right?”
