The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden by Emma Trevayne Page A

time for luck, but none came his way. She was gone. Clenching fingers and teeth, he pushed his way from the mass and ran from the square for the second time, just as confused as the first.
    Angry, too. A great red anger bubbled up inside him. Was someone trying to completely do his head in?
    Nothing made any blasted sense anymore.
    He took a deep breath.
    â€œI know you’re watching,” he said, quiet and firm. “You were watching in the graveyard. You’ve been watching me. I think you’re trying to tell me something, but blowed if I know what. Please tell me. I must know. Tell me what to do next.”
    There was no answer. Here, in the midst of the crumbling buildings, there weren’t even any trees to whisper.
    A single scrap of paper fluttered down from the sky, a snowflake in springtime.
    On it, in the strange letters that were becoming all too familiar, was a time and a place. Tonight.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The Shoreditch Spiritual Society

    D EADNETTLE WATCHED THE PIECE OF paper flutter slowly down, shifting the winds so it would land exactly where he wished it to. These days, that much tested the very limits of his magic.
    But land it did, right in young Thomas’s hand. That the boy would obey the instruction, Deadnettle had no doubt. Everything he had seen thus far gave him hope of this at least, and hope, in this dark time, was a precious thing indeed.
    He had no fear that the boy would look up and see him, for Deadnettle was miles away, atop one of London’s many spiky towers. Until now, Deadnettle had chosen to follow the boy closely, but now he resisted the need to be near thelast of Wintercress’s blood. He would see the boy tonight, and so he did only what he must in order to know where Thomas was, using his inhuman gifts. In the faery realm, the astonishing senses—eyesight and the like—that they were blessed with were a wondrous gift, but not here. No, here Deadnettle wished to be blind and deaf and to not feel a thing when iron accidentally brushed his skin.
    He cautiously skirted some now, an old bit of railing, and slid down a drainpipe. He would return to the Society to wait for nightfall, the time marked by bells every quarter of an hour. Why must this cursed city have so many bells? Every chime sent fire through his rattling bones, an agony like lightning striking in his head. The sound was much softer in the cellar, but even Mordecai, with his magic and benevolence , could not silence them.
    Iron and bells. They were not the only traps with which Mordecai kept the faeries captive, but they were incredibly effective at ensuring the faeries had no energy with which to fight back.
    When darkness fell, Deadnettle ascended to the street, the hood of his heavy cloak pulled around his face. Brown was best, or blue; hysterical ladies tended to scream or faint at the sight of a figure dressed head to toe in black. Deadnettle was not the specter of death they imagined, but it was a terrifyingly close guess, and showing his face toexplain anything would raise a number of inconvenient questions. Thin skin and razor-sharp bones beneath might be explained as illness, but the brightly colored eyes, with neither white nor pupil, were particularly an issue. The time was long past that he had the strength to make himself appear human for a few minutes, though he had once been one of the most adept at it, had practiced it as a party trick back home.
    Horses and carriages—some garishly opulent, others barely held together with prayers and rusted nails—passed by, splattering muck as the beasts attempted to put as much space between themselves and Deadnettle as possible and the drivers whipped their flanks. Animals were so much more adept at sensing the other . In deference, Deadnettle kept as close to the railing as he could without searing pain, but it was never enough.
    He had no sympathy for the passengers, but the horses were as enslaved as he, bound by metal and