The Van Helsing Legacy: We Shall Not Sleep [SAMPLE]

SIX

December, 1919

The house was in a furore. We could hear it from several houses away, and Mr Apostol's steps faltered.

'That can't be good,' he commented.

I stopped to listen.

The main voice I heard was Clare's, though I could not make out the words. Many women combined pitch with volume when trying to make themselves heard, and their voices became shrill. Clare's did not. What she neglected in pitch, she made up in even still greater volume, and her tirade broke over us from a hundred-yard distance in the inexorable bass rumble of an approaching train. That was not the sound of her grief. The woman was out for somebody's head.

It was not the time to be introducing strangers into the house.

'All I can think is that Quincey's come back without an adequate excuse, and his wife is giving him what-for.'

'I should come back later.'

'Come back here? Heavens, no! It's not likely to be safe any time today. Perhaps Uncle Joe's flat.'

I looked up to find Mr Apostol watching me curiously again, despite the commotion so nearby. That struck me as odd and a bit uncomfortable. I was capable of attracting male attention when I actually put effort into my appearance, but I was sleep-deprived and hungry and grouchy and had on previous occasions been frightened by my own reflection in a state like that. I had to be misreading him. Or there was something strange on my face. A flash of terror convinced me that my nose had actually begun to ooze. My face was numb enough that I might not have been aware of it. I scrubbed at it with my handkerchief, which did not come away as damp as I had feared.

'Actually, have you a card? I'll pass it on to Uncle Joe, and he'll call for you when the coast is clear.'

He drew a card from an interior pocket and held it out to me between two black leather fingers. I scrutinized it through my spectacles.

GHEORGHE NICULAIE MARIUS APOSTOL

MONMOUTH ACADEMY

of the

TERATOLOGICAL SCIENCES

Assistant to the Associate Master of Archives

I took it, scrounging a stub of pencil from one of my own pockets. 'What's the address?'

He gave it to me—in Marylebone—and I scribbled it onto the back of the card.

'Will you come, too?' he asked. 'I'd like you to.'

I did not seem to have misread him, after all. I floundered. There was no natural way to work into the conversation that, while I would be pleased to see him again, I had no particular interest in stepping out with him, or indeed at all. Well, no, that was not quite accurate. I had been happy enough to step out with Allan Barrow the previous spring. The affair ended with my apologies and his confusion when he proposed that we spend an afternoon atop a blanket beneath an overturned punt, an idea that did not appeal to me. I couldn't say that to a stranger.

I shrugged. 'Possibly. But if Quincey has shown up, I'll need to be heading back to Oxford.'

He paused uncertainly, not sure whether that had been a summary rejection, but I wasn't sure whether it had been, either, so I couldn't blame him.

'I'm in Oxford, sometimes,' he tried.

Oh, poor lamb. I would have to pawn him off on Chessie. Most men did not mind being shoved at Chessie, as she was a Good Sport, and Chessie had never minded, either. That would be easier than playing along until my disinterest inevitably offended his ego.