Tim had taken over one of the alleged study tables in the back part of the Archives. Fuck it. They didn’t have students coming down to access the files these days, so not like anyone would be needing it, and this gave him more space to spread out. His only options for spreading out at the desks involved flopping on the floor like a teenager or invading Martin’s desk, and even though they knew exactly where Martin was, his desk still felt a bit like a shrine. Something sacrosanct, something to be left untouched. And sprawling on the floor meant Sasha absently stepping on him—or worse, looking up to see Basira eyeballing him over the edge of her book. Or whatever she was working on now, considering she’d finally actually started helping with their work after Martin’s return.
So here he was, hidden in a corner, in a part of the Archives that rarely got touched these days—all the statements back here were organized, more or less, and most of them were bullshit statements—pen between his teeth as he compared the papers in front of him. The answer was there, he could almost taste it, but it remained tantalizingly just out of reach, like a bunch of grapes over his head or a pool of wine at his feet.
“Need a fresh set of eyes?”
Tim jumped, and very nearly swallowed the pen. He spat it onto the table, coughing hard, and looked up to see Melanie standing beside him, holding a mug in each hand and looking, to her credit, somewhat apologetic. “Are you trying to kill me?” he choked out.
Melanie shrugged. “Pretty sure you’re untouchable at this point. Here, clear your mouth out with this.” She thrust a mug at him and added, “Sorry about that.”
Tim grunted, accepted the mug, and took a few slow, careful sips of what turned out to be hot cocoa. Once the discomfort had eased, he scanned the table to try and find a safe place to set it down. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sorry, interjection, used as a conventional apology or expression of regret.”
“I meant about me being untouchable, smartarse.”
“I mean that two of the most powerful of the publicly known avatars in the entire community care about you, and at least one of them can be pretty damn scary when he wants to be, so if anyone or anything tries to hurt you, woe betide them, and most of them aren’t going to figure you’re worth the risk.” Melanie met Tim’s raised eyebrow with one of her own. “Jon’s an Archivist, so is Martin, so there are definitely beings out there that would count killing them as a coup, regardless of the potential consequences. You? You’re not powerful enough to justify the hell that would be rained down upon their heads if they tried.”
“Thanks. I think,” Tim said dryly. “And the cocoa?”
“Peace offering. Martin does tea, I do cocoa.”
“Are you bringing these to everyone, or just me?”
“Just you.”
Tim nudged one of his papers out of the way, only to discover more papers underneath of it, and continued looking for a good place to set the cocoa down. “Mm-hmm. And the reason I deserve a peace offering is…?”
Melanie shrugged. “Well, as far as I know, the others aren’t fucking my brother.”
The mug slipped from Tim’s fingers. He frantically batted it to one side to keep it from spilling on his work—he’d never be able to catch it, but hopefully he could at least divert it—and cocoa sprayed in a truly spectacular fountain over the floor, spattering the edges of the files on the shelves. The mug itself hit the ground and smashed. The largest piece slid across the floor, slammed into the nearest shelf, and shattered further. Melanie yelped in evident surprise and jerked back, then yelped louder as her own cocoa sloshed over her hand and her mug followed Tim’s, straight to the ground, breaking into thirds and splashing both their ankles with molten cocoa and bits of ceramic.
“What’s wrong?” Jon’s voice called, faint but frantic, from the front of the Archives.
“Nothing!” Tim and Melanie yelled back in unison.
It reminded Tim powerfully of the time he and Danny had been play-wrestling in the sitting room and Danny had tackled Tim into their dad’s armchair, sending them and the chair ass over teakettle and putting a smudged but distinct black footprint on the wallpaper. Something similar must have been going through Melanie’s mind, because she made eye contact with Tim, and both of them burst into unexpected laughter.
“Let me go get a cloth,” Melanie said once she’d calmed down enough to speak. “Get this cleaned up for you.”
“Sounds good. I’ll go see if there are any shatterproof mugs in the break room,” Tim deadpanned, making Melanie start laughing again.
It really wasn’t that funny—any more than the idea of the two of them as naughty children frantically pretending they hadn’t broken Mummy’s favorite vase despite being entire adults was funny—but to Tim it felt like the snapping of a nervous tension he hadn’t realized was still there. He’d thought after Martin got free of the Strangers’ clutches, after he was back in the Archives, things had gone back to normal. Apparently, though, he’d been more stressed than he thought, and evidently so had Melanie.
He also hadn’t realized Melanie was aware he and Gerry were actually sleeping together, but at least she hadn’t called him on it in front of the others. Jon would probably die of embarrassment, which would upset Martin a good deal, and Sasha would never let him hear the end of it. At least Melanie was more likely to tease Gerry than him. In theory.
There were, as it turned out, two mugs jammed in the communal cupboard that fit the bill, a blue enamel-covered tin mug originally meant for camping and a clear acrylic mug with a line on one side above the words THIS MUG IS NOW HALF-EMPTY. Tim decided he’d let Melanie pick which one she wanted. Cocoa seemed faster than tea and he was eager to get back to work, so he mixed up the mugs and carried them back to the Archives.
Melanie was just gathering the last of the shards into a wet cloth when he arrived; she looked up and snorted when she saw what he was holding. Tim smirked in reply. “Your choice which one you get. What’s in them is the same.”
“Thanks.” Melanie swiped the floor one last time, dumped the cloth into a metal waste bin—it hit the bottom with a dull, wet smack—and took the acrylic mug from him. “Right. So before I nearly ruined your work, I was offering to help you with it? What are you working on, anyway?”
Tim sighed and took a sip of his cocoa, then waved at the papers. “I’m trying to figure out where the Unknowing is.”
Melanie picked up a page at random and studied it. “From old statements?”
“That part’s kind of a long shot, and I’m not sure it’ll help, but…” Tim studied the table, wondering where to start explaining his thought process. “The statements are all ones we’ve looked into that have Breekon and Hope in them, or might have Breekon and Hope in them. I thought maybe if I could get an idea of, you know, the general area they worked in, kind of triangulate, it might give us a starting point.”
“Doubt it. Aunt Mary used the actual company as a courier service for some of her legitimate deliveries, so I think they just kind of went everywhere.” Melanie shrugged. “Like Martin said, it’s probably why the Stranger picked the company, because nobody would have thought twice about seeing their van about. Besides, if that answer was anywhere it would have been in the log book.”
“Yeah, but you said it only went up to 2013, right? Some of these are later.” Tim sighed. “Like I said, I figured that was a long shot. It was the other part I was really looking at.”
Melanie raised an eyebrow and prompted, “Okay…?”
Tim wedged his mug onto one of the nearby shelves and picked up one of the papers. “Weather reports, for every city in the United Kingdom, for the time period from April twenty-fifth to June second. I was going to just do those two days, but, well, based on Helen Richardson’s statement, there’s no telling how long Martin was in those tunnels even if he did seem to just run straight through, so it had to be the whole span of time. I must’ve used up a whole cartridge of ink, but fuck it, it’s the Institute’s dime anyway.”
“Okay, but why?” Melanie frowned as she picked up another list. “And what’s this?”
“Every fucking waxwork I could find ever having existed in the entire UK. The ones with stars next to them are still active, so not as likely.”
“I get the list of waxworks, but—Jesus, this is a lot. No way we’d be able to investigate all of these without tipping off the Stranger. Not like they can’t guess we’re on to them.” Melanie shook her head. “Why the weather reports then?”
“Because it was raining when Martin woke up, he said.” Tim flapped the paper in his hand at Melanie. “And when Michael got him out. But it wasn’t raining here. Which means…”
“Which means,” Melanie said, her eyes suddenly lighting up, “that if you can cross-references places with abandoned waxworks with places where it rained on the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth of April, or probably the last week of May into the first couple days of June—”
“Not or. It has to be and.” Tim nodded at the understanding on Melanie’s face. “I’m hoping we can at least narrow it down.”
“Well then.” Melanie found a space on a shelf for her mug. “How about we start by getting rid of the weather reports for cities that don’t have waxworks?”
This was, apparently, exactly what Tim needed—an extra pair of hands to help him sift through the avalanche of information he had inflicted on himself. Before he’d been trying to dig himself out with a teaspoon. Now…well, he still basically had a teaspoon, but Melanie had one too, so maybe they would get out from under it faster. Anyway, at least she’d come up with a logical place to start, rather than what he’d been doing for the past…how long had it been, anyway?
“It’s still Tuesday, right?” he mumbled, more to himself than anything.
Melanie was the one who answered, though. “Still Tuesday. Martin texted that he landed safe and sound about an hour ago.”
“Okay, good. Means I haven’t quite been in my head so long I’ve lost time.” Tim skimmed the list in his hand to see if the sheaf of weather reports he was holding was needed or not.
“Happens to the best of us, mate.” Melanie dropped a stack on the floor unceremoniously. “You know that painting in the front room at the bookstore, the one of the eye? I remember when Gerry painted that, we asked him how long he’d been working on it and he asked us what day it was. And Martin used to go into these weird hyper-focused fugue states when he got especially stressed and emerge two days later with a complete jumper and the knitting needles practically embedded in his fingertips.”
Tim snorted. “What about you?”
“I said it happens to the best of us. I’m not the best of us, therefore it never happens to me.” Melanie caught Tim’s mock glare and smirked. “Seriously, though, in my case it’s usually research rabbit holes. I get started looking for something, I find a reference to something else that catches my attention, I start looking at that, and next thing I know the library’s closing and I have zero notes for the essay due tomorrow on the Corn Laws but I do have an almost excessive level of knowledge about the symbolism of pottery in the early dynastic period of ancient Mesopotamia.”
“Oh, God, I feel you on that. I’m pretty sure my teachers didn’t let us use Wikipedia in school less because it was unreliable in its early days and more because they knew most of us would get distracted following links.”
“Wikipedia did not make not doing that any easier, no.” Melanie turned back to the table. “Are there any abandoned waxworks in Bristol on that list?”
Tim had no idea how long they labored over the project, but no one came back to disturb them. Eventually they winnowed out all the cities that didn’t have a place like Martin described and moved on to comparing weather reports. He figured that would probably get them down to a fairly reasonable number of locations, maybe a dozen at best. He wasn’t sure how they would narrow it down from there, or even if they would be able to narrow it down on their own, but it was a start.
“That’s it,” Melanie said finally. “That’s the last city on our list. What have we got left?”
Tim looked at the table. Then he blinked and looked again. Then he plucked up the single stapled pack of papers and held it out to Melanie silently.
Melanie stared, took the papers, and looked around. The floor at their feet was littered with packs of papers that had been tossed in all directions—it was a mess, and probably a fire hazard—some face up, some face down, some crumpled and some in pristine condition.
“Are you telling me,” she said, and the undercurrent of frustration and anger in her voice was unmistakable, “that there is only one city in the entire United Kingdom that fits our criteria, where Martin could have been held? It cannot possibly be this easy.”
Tim straightened up, and his back cracked like a glowstick in the hands of an impatient toddler. “How long have we been at this? Might not be as easy as you think.”
Melanie grumbled wordlessly, still studying the weather reports for Great Yarmouth. Tim took the opportunity to fish out his phone. The first thing he noticed was that he’d missed several texts. Upon opening the app, he found the oldest was the one Melanie had mentioned when she first arrived stating that Martin had arrived safely in Beijing, another saying he was heading for Pu Songling, and a third saying that he’d been told he had to come back the next day and was heading to the hotel Elias had apparently had Manal book for him. In between were a couple of texts from Jon telling him to be careful and one from Sasha asking about follow-up on a statement she’d apparently asked for his help on, with Martin promising to call her later. There were also two separate texts, not in the group chat but sent directly to Tim, from “Booty Call 69”, also known as Gerry. The first had been sent at 5:27pm, according to the time stamp: [Working late tonight?] It was followed by a flirtatious wink.
The second had been sent at 6:13pm, only a single word. [Tim?]
The fact that both texts had time stamps rather than telling him how many minutes ago they’d been sent told Tim that he and Melanie had maybe been there a while past that point. He glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen and swore under his breath. “Jesus. It’s seven o’clock.”
“What? Fuck.” Melanie blinked up at him, then snatched his now-empty mug. “Be right back, let me go wash these out.”
Tim was just contemplating how to answer Gerry’s text when his phone began vibrating in his hand. He’d remembered to turn the ringer off, so at least it wasn’t blasting death metal across the (presumably empty) Archives, but it was still almost enough to startle him into dropping it. He recovered and answered instead. “Hello?”
“Tim, hey.” Gerry’s voice held a note of unmitigated relief. “Was starting to worry about you.”
“Yeah, sorry, I lost track of time.” Tim sighed and stared at the mess on the floor. “I actually didn’t feel my phone go off.”
“So you are working late, then.”
“Not on purpose, but yeah.” It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Gerry what he’d been looking into, but something held him back. Partly he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. Partly he didn’t want to get Gerry involved. Not yet, anyway. “I think I’m finishing up here in a few, though.”
Gerry hummed. “Want to come over? I think I have enough in my cupboards to throw together something quick and easy, and we can just relax for the evening.”
Tim was tempted. Sorely tempted. But something was itching in the back of his brain, and he wanted to poke at it. “Sorry, I don’t think I’d be very good company tonight. Can I take a rain check?”
“You’re always good company, Tim, even when there’s something on your mind. But I understand.” Gerry’s voice softened. “Sure. How about we meet up for drinks tomorrow after you get off work?”
“Sounds like a plan. Maybe by then Martin will be on his way home.”
“We can dream. Okay, get some rest. Love you, babe.”
“Love you too.” Tim hung up and took a deep breath, staring at the table.
Great Yarmouth. He’d never actually been, but he vaguely recalled that being one of the key settings of David Copperfield, and he was pretty sure it was where Anna Sewell had been born. Beyond that, he knew it existed, but not much else. Martin was from somewhere up north, maybe he’d know the area. It would be the height of irony if it was anywhere near where his mother lived—Melanie might know it, in that case.
House of Wax, the list said. Something about that was niggling at the back of Tim’s brain. Had he heard something about it after all? He was sure, absolutely certain, he’d never been anywhere near Great Yarmouth, but he’d definitely heard of the House of Wax. Or had he? It was a generic enough name, maybe, but…
Melanie suddenly reappeared at his elbow, her expression determined. “If we hurry, we can be there by midnight.”
“Be there?” Tim said, startled. “Where?”
“Great Yarmouth.” Melanie’s voice held an implied duh that suggested he really should have known that. “We have to be sure this is the right place, right? Get up there, confirm the Stranger’s hanging about there, be sure it’s where the Unknowing is going to be—”
“And then what, Melanie?” Tim pulled himself together with an effort and tried to think sensibly. “We can’t stop it. Martin was definite on that. If we don’t interrupt it while the Unknowing is actually in progress, it won’t do a damned bit of good, they’ll just pick it up and try again, and we won’t know where. And if they kidnap Martin again—or Jon, if we do this before Martin gets back—what if they don’t wait? What if they just skin him straight off and kick it off? Then all this is for nothing. Martin suffered for nothing.”
That was probably unfair, Tim reflected as Melanie’s face screwed up in anger and upset, but he didn’t apologize for it. It was still true. After a moment, she took a deep breath. “Okay. We won’t interfere tonight. But we need to see if we can figure it out, right? Not go in, just…look around the outside. See if we can see the van, or signs of life, or…something.”
Logic said to keep protesting, to call it a night, to call Gerry and say he’d changed his mind and would be over in twenty minutes, to say they’d go look when they’d had more time to do research. But one look at Melanie’s expression and Tim knew, with a certainty that had nothing to do with the Eye and everything to do with being an older brother, that telling her no wouldn’t stop her. She was going to Great Yarmouth one way or another, and if Jon had already gone home for the day, she would go alone rather than waste time calling him to meet her. And even if she did call him and meet him somewhere along the line…no. Tim couldn’t let them go off together again. One of them was going to get hurt, or worse, and Martin would never forgive him—no, Martin would never forgive himself. For Martin’s sake, and for Gerry’s, as much as for Melanie’s and Jon’s…
“Right,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s go. But I mean it, Melanie, if there is the slightest hint of danger…”
“Nag, nag, nag,” Melanie grumbled. “You big brothers are all the same. Come on. We’ve got to get to the station sharpish.”
They made it to the Tube stop in the nick of time. While Melanie sat fidgeting and staring out the window, as if she could rush the train along with the force of her mind alone, Tim took the opportunity to pull out his phone and send a text to Gerry. [Full disclosure, Melanie and I are chasing down a lead. Might be gone overnight.]
There was no response for a long time. Just before they reached the final stop, however, Tim’s phone vibrated in his hand with Gerry’s reply: [Just be careful. Both of you.]
[Promise. Love you.] Tim tapped out the message quickly, then pocketed his phone as the train pulled into Liverpool Street station.
It turned out to take almost five hours to get from the Archives to the nearest bus stop to their destination, and it was ten minutes to one when they finally stood on a deserted street. It was cool, as befitted the early morning hours, and Tim could hear the North Sea soughing against the shore not terribly far away. He could also smell the mingled scents of salt and a not-particularly-healthy river. There was no other sound but the rumble of the bus as it pulled away into the distance.
Melanie muttered unhappily as she studied her phone. Tim watched her and considered the merits of trying to very quickly fashion one of those toddler leash-backpack things out of scrap cloth. “How far are we?”
“Few blocks.” Melanie pointed. “Come on, this way.”
It wasn’t pitch black. Things weren’t that creepy. There were streetlights, a few lights being spit out from the pier, and the sky overhead wasn’t completely dark either. Tim wasn’t entirely sure they would be able to stay concealed, or frankly if there’d be anything to see this early in the morning. Or late at night, however you wanted to look at it. Still, they had to try.
They kept to the shadows as best they could, which wasn’t suspicious at all, but this part of town seemed to be more industrial warehouses than houses or thriving night spots. If all else failed, they could pretend to be a couple out for a moonlight stroll along the pier, although—he risked a glance upwards—the moonlight was nothing to write home about. It had just passed its third quarter and gone into waning crescent, and it wasn’t particularly high in the sky either. You couldn’t really see the stars from here. Tim paused and looked out towards the beach and wondered, just for a minute, what it would be like to be out on a boat in the middle of the North Sea, with nothing but the stars and the waves for company.
“Have you ever been here before?” he asked Melanie, refocusing and trying to keep up with her. It wasn’t that she seemed to know her way around so much as it was he just…assumed they’d been up this way over the years.
“Yeah, once,” Melanie said, a bit distractedly. “Well, sort of on the edges of the city. We shot an episode of Ghost Hunt UK up this way once.”
Tim made a mental note to look up the show. He’d heard nothing but good things about it—plenty of the students who’d come through the Institute, once upon a time, had cited it as a reason they’d got interested in the paranormal to begin with, and of course both Gerry and Martin talked it up to high heaven; even Jon had seen a few episodes and seemed to enjoy them—but he’d just never had the time. Maybe he could convince Gerry to watch a few episodes with him that weekend. It probably wouldn’t take much convincing, to be honest. “Did it pan out? I mean, was it a real ghost?”
Melanie shot him a filthy look and almost tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. He caught her before she could smash into the bin next to her. “What kind of question is that?”
“The kind that tells me whether you used the footage on an actual episode of your show or not.”
“Oh.” Melanie didn’t exactly relax, but she did at least appear slightly less outwardly hostile. “Yeah, it was real. Angry, too. We got some pretty good footage. And I found a Leitner—ghost didn’t touch it, but the owners said I could have it, so the three of us burnt it.”
“What was it?”
“The book? The Transvaal from Within. Slaughter and Flesh both.”
Tim’s blood ran cold. “I didn’t know they could both be bound in the same book.”
Melanie shrugged. “We keep telling you, the damn things overlap. There’s the place up ahead.”
The sight of the building looming on the horizon—sort of—pushed the nascent thought from Tim’s mind; hopefully he’d be able to retrieve it again later, but that was a concern for the future. For the present, he focused on what they’d come here to do.
The building was clearly abandoned, and had been for some time, or maybe it had just been accelerated in its destruction. There were three, all in a row, but Tim rather suspected they’d had some interior walls knocked out, or at least had connecting doors cut in them, to make one larger building. The sign bearing the name of the museum was faded and flaking and now appeared to be advertising Iuusc ot Var in a surprisingly elaborate script. There was only a single window on each facade, high up near the gable of the roof. A piece of litter skimmed down the street, caught in a brief gust of wind, like a schoolchild on the last day of summer term. A single beat-up old car that, by the state of the tires, was probably just as abandoned as the building was parked at one corner, but of an equally ancient Breekon and Hope removal van there was no sign.
“Well, they would keep it hidden, wouldn’t they?” Tim murmured, scanning the street for clues. The building looked…dead. Like it hadn’t been used since the museum had shuttered its doors twenty years previously. No lights in the high windows, no scuff in the gravel, no signs of regular use at the doors. Short of actively knocking on the door, though, which would be the stupidest thing they could do, he didn’t see how to confirm that other than to wait.
Melanie grunted unhappily, also scanning the street. “Blast. I wasn’t expecting this to be so open…look, you go that way, I’ll go this way, and—”
“Absolutely fucking not.” Tim snapped his head around and fixed Melanie with his sternest look. “We stick together.”
“There is nowhere for two people to hide,” Melanie hissed.
“And if I let you off on your own, what’s going to happen if you get in trouble? Or I do?” Tim also kept his voice to a whisper, but it didn’t make it any less angry. “No. Not happening, Melanie. I mean it. Not splitting the party is Horror Movie Rule Number One. Also, if I let you out of my sight, you are going to break into that building and then I’m going to have to go in after you and we’re both going to end up getting murdered by Boris Karloff.”
“Vincent Price.”
Tim blinked, his entire train of thought momentarily derailed. “What?”
Melanie threw him another withering glare. “Boris Karloff wasn’t in House of Wax. That was Vincent Price. Fine. Maybe we can hide behind that car.”
For a moment Tim considered suggesting they hide in the car, but one look at the amount of rust on the hinges and he knew they’d never manage it quietly. Instead, they managed to find themselves a position behind the car that let them keep an eye on the front door of the abandoned waxworks without (hopefully) being seen.
And waited.
Stakeouts, it turned out, were nothing like in the pictures, where the cops or spies or private eyes sat in their cars or hid in the bushes for a few minutes and then saw their marks or suspects or whatever, followed them, got the information they needed, and moved on to the next thing, be it arrest or payment. The reality of the situation was that Tim and Melanie stood in an awkward, twisted half-crouch, their feet behind the wheels so they couldn’t be seen if someone looked under the car and their bodies contorted so they were below the level of the roof but could see through the windows. Thankfully it was dry and cool, so while it was still a bit chilly for comfort they at least weren’t soaking wet—or worse, slowly being covered with snow. Still, they couldn’t risk straightening, stretching, or even shifting to find a more comfortable position lest that be the sound or motion that betrayed them. With the two of them, it wasn’t likely they’d both miss any signs of life, and in theory one of them could take a break, but in practice, neither of them did.
Tim wished they’d put a bit more thought into this. Maybe scoped the place out during daylight hours, got some idea of the best way to do it, then come back to stake it out. While he recognized that if he’d tried to put the brakes on Melanie’s impulse—tried harder, anyway—she would have come out here anyway, probably alone, and she probably would be creeping around on the rooftops trying to peer through the skylights (he had sudden visions of her leaning closer to a broken pane to try and overhear a conversation, losing her balance, and falling directly at Nikola Orsinov’s feet, thereby giving away both her presence and their plan to stop her), he still wished there had been a way to plan ahead.
Maybe if he’d threatened to call Gerry from the get-go…
The sky, which had never got truly dark, gradually lightened, and Tim began to hear the faint sounds of traffic from the feeder roads. It occurred to him that, while the buildings in front of them were abandoned, the building behind them might not be, and he wondered what time it opened. Slowly, with infinitesimal motions, he inched his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. The time read 4:16am.
“Melanie,” he whispered. His throat felt raw from cold and disuse. “We need to go.”
“What?” Melanie looked up at him with a scowl. “We haven’t found them yet.”
Tim angled his phone to show her the screen. “It’s not far off to sunrise. And we still have work today. We need to get back to London.”
The mulish look on Melanie’s face was one Tim knew quite well, and he felt his own face setting into stone in opposition, even as she said, “You go. I’m staying right here.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone,” Tim hissed.
“Well, then, I guess we’re both staying,” Melanie said coldly. She turned and resumed her vigil.
“Guess again.” Tim straightened and groaned as his knees and spine protested the change in position. “Let’s go. Train to catch.”
Melanie’s shoulders stiffened. “You can’t make me.”
There were several ways this conversation could go. Most of them would result in them being discovered, if someone did come out of the House of Wax. Tim considered his options briefly, then decided on Option B for Big Brother.
He hooked an arm around Melanie’s waist, hoisted her over his shoulder, wrapped the other arm around her legs to keep her from kicking him in the nuts or the nose, and hauled her back towards the bus stop like a sack of potatoes. A very irate sack of potatoes.
“What are you—Tim!” She struggled, but he’d had the foresight to restrain her arms as well, so she couldn’t hit him. “Put me down!”
“Once we get on the train.” Tim had already checked their return path on the way up and knew the buses didn’t start running this early, so he had a mile or two to walk before they got there. Hopefully he could handle it.
“Tim Stoker, I swear to God—”
“Are you going to run back to the House of Wax the second I put you down?” At Melanie’s frustrated growl, Tim nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s what I thought. If this is an official Institute outing, I’m the more senior employee, and if this is just us, I’m older than you, which makes me responsible. And I don’t care if I look like I’m abducting you for nefarious purposes, you are going back to London with me and that is final.”
“I can fucking take care of myself—”
“I am not losing another younger sibling, Melanie!” Tim barked, louder than he meant to.
The words hung in the air around them. To her credit, Melanie immediately stopped struggling, going limp over his shoulder. Tim still didn’t risk putting her down, not until they were actually at the train station; luckily, this was the sort of place where people minded their own business and nobody said a word about it. Once he did set her on her feet, she took his hand without another word and let him lead her to the ticket booth. In fact, she didn’t speak again until they were on the train and on their way to their next connection.
When she did, it was in a quiet, almost sullen voice, but he could tell she was sincere. “Sorry. I just…I wanted so badly for us to be right.”
“I’m pretty sure we are,” Tim assured her. “We just have to prove it. And we have to be a little smarter about it. If we want to study the place in daylight, we need to at least warn Jon we’re not going to be at work, you know? He’ll freak out. And if Martin calls today and he says he doesn’t know where we are…”
“Yeah, I know. You’re right. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.” Melanie took a deep breath and turned to look him full in the face. “And…I’m sorry about…you know, the other thing. I didn’t think. Just didn’t reckon I meant that much to you, you know? Not that I think you don’t like me, but…”
“Well, after all,” Tim drawled, “I am fucking your brother.”
Melanie burst out laughing, which had been Tim’s goal in saying it in the first place. Once she calmed down a little, he took a more serious tone. “I don’t talk to my parents anymore. Not since…you know. The Archives is my family now. And you’re a part of that. So yeah, Melanie, I care about you and I’m going to worry about you. I never had a sister, but I can only imagine what growing up with you would’ve been like.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure if Gerry quit dyeing his hair, it’d be more grey than ginger now,” Melanie said with a sigh.
“There’s a white streak that—” Tim stopped. “Wait, he’s a ginger?”
“Carrot orange. He hates it. And not just because it’s rubbish at holding dye.” Melanie rubbed her face briefly. “For what it’s worth, I think I’d have liked having you as a big brother, too. Even if I haven’t thought about it as much as I’ve thought about what growing up with Jon might’ve been like.”
Something in Tim’s chest twisted at the thought. As much as he wished Jon had had someone growing up, since the few glimpses of his past they’d gotten indicated he’d had a strange, lonely childhood, the idea of a small Melanie and small Jon in the same place didn’t bear thinking about. “I think that would have been the worst possible thing ever.”
Melanie snorted. “Why, because there’d be two of us and we’d end up either taking over a small nation or blowing up a city?”
“No.” Tim turned to look Melanie in the eye. “Because I don’t think either one of you would have survived to grow up if you’d known each other as kids. Especially if you’d known each other before you met Martin and Gerry.”
Melanie’s face turned putty grey, and he noticed her squeeze her thigh tightly, but she fell silent again.
When they got to their next stop—following a twenty-minute walk between stations—and Tim discovered how long it would take them to get back to London, he let Melanie go up to one of the tea stalls and pick up breakfast for them while he hung back. Keeping an eye on her, he fished out his phone and pulled up his contacts list, then selected BOSS-MAN and hit the buttons to connect the call.
A few moments later, Jon’s voice came on, sleepy but slightly panicked. “Hello?”
“Hey, boss, it’s Tim.” Tim figured that early in the morning, Jon wouldn’t be awake enough to recognize his voice right away, even if it was probably around the time he started getting ready for the day.
“Tim? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. Listen, um…Melanie and I are going to be a couple hours late this morning. We…were running an errand out of town, and things just…aren’t lining up like they should. We’ll tell you everything when we get in.” Or else, Tim added mentally, shooting a glance at Melanie. “But we’re okay. I promise. Just didn’t want you to worry when we weren’t to work on time.”
“Oh. Okay.” Jon definitely didn’t sound like his brain had come all the way online. “Just be careful?”
“We will. See you at about ten.” With that, Tim hung up. He wavered for a moment, then called Gerry.
In contrast to Jon’s voice, Gerry sounded immediately alert, like he’d been up for a while, or maybe like he’d never gone to sleep—although Tim knew that was just Gerry’s way; he always woke up completely in one go. It was something they shared, and something they both made good use of. “Hey, Timbo. Please tell me you’re not calling to tell me my sister did something stupid.”
“No, I’m calling to tell you we’re on our way back to the office,” Tim assured him. “It didn’t pan out yet, and we’ll probably be going back to investigate further, but for now we’re heading home. Well…back to London, anyway.”
“On zero sleep? That’s going to make for a fun day in the Archives.” Gerry chuckled. “If whatever you’re looking into can wait until later to discuss, why don’t all of you come to the bookstore after work? We can debrief, and you and I can have drinks here instead of out at the pub.”
“I like that idea.” Tim smiled. “Okay, sounds good. We’ll see you at the end of the day then. Are you open today?”
“Was going to be, but I’ve been up all night painting,” Gerry admitted. “Think I might stay closed and get some rest so I don’t snap into a flashback while you’re here again.”
Tim hesitated, then blurted out, “I’d rather be there for you when you have them than make you go through them alone.”
There was a few moments of silence. “You know, I think that might be the closest thing to romantic you’ve ever said to me?”
“God forbid.” It had become a running joke between the two of them; they’d concluded that the love they felt for one another might have been different than the love they felt for their pseudo-siblings, but it still wasn’t romantic. While they’d decided not to bother putting a label on it, they did joke about their lack of romance rather frequently. “So, see you later?”
“See you.” The smile in Gerry’s voice was obvious. “Love you, Tim.”
“Love you, too, Ger.” Tim hung up just as Melanie got back with two steaming paper cups and two breakfast sandwiches. “I let Jon know we’d be late, and I let Gerry know we were coming back in one piece.”
A funny look crossed Melanie’s face. “Did either of them know what we were doing?”
“Not exactly,” Tim admitted. “I told Gerry we were following a lead and would probably be gone overnight, but I forgot to clue Jon in.”
“We didn’t forget. We made a strategic decision to keep him out of this because he’d probably be so distracted missing and worrying about Martin that he’d do something stupid.”
“Yeah, well, look at it this way.” Tim took a deep drink of his tea and grimaced at the bitter taste as he led Melanie towards the platform where their next train would—eventually—come in. “At least I saved you from having to get another lecture from Elias fucking Bouchard. Come on, let’s go get situated and we can talk about what we’re going to tell the others.”