Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [42]
Smiling, Miss McThane folded her arm into mine. "Sure thing," she said. "Jeez, you're all wet. Don't worry; I'll take care of you."
I was still too weak to resist as she guided me towards a side door beyond the altar. Within moments I found myself in a dimly lit room, the air thick with that peculiar mustiness that comes with spaces too long shuttered. Miss McThane closed the door and leaned back against it, surveying my forlornly dripping figure before her.
"Here." She took a long priest's robe from a wall hook, raising a cloud of grey dust from the fabric, and draped it over the back of a sagging chair. Stepping close to me, she deftly undid the buttons of my waistcoat, then those of the sodden shirt underneath. My breath caught in my throat as she laid her pale hand upon the bare skin of my chest. "You're just about frozen," she whispered. I remembered the smile she gave me from the incident in my shop. "We better get you thawed out…"
I backed away, toppling a candle-stand and a stack of mouldy breviaries behind me. "That's… that's not necessary," I said feebly. "I assure you – I can manage quite nicely, thank you–"
My avenues of escape – were blocked by the debris cluttering the small room. Miss McThane, advancing dauntless, soon had me cornered between a small pump-organ and an upended pew bench. The eyes of my pursuer glittered with a disturbing avidity; the organ gave a despairing wheeze as I leaned back, my hand braced against its yellowed keyboard. Her voice was a lewd pianissimo counterpoint: "Come on, you sonuvabitch…"
What! I had thought was a curtained wall behind me parted, allowing me to fall back on to the floor of a small alcove. Above me, when I looked up, was a face that trembled my heart even more than had that of Miss McThane: the smooth, porcelain and wax visage of a clockwork choirboy, one blue eye staring open at me, the other sealed by a rusty spring as though· winking at my undignified circumstances.
Miss McThane loomed over her prey, but I was scarcely aware of her. With rapidly mounting horror, I realised where I was and why the small church had seemed so oddly familiar to me. Though I had been here only once before, the terror engendered on that occasion had impressed the building's aspect permanently on my memory. I had been led from the river straight to the portals of Saint Mary Alderhythe, the site of the disastrous, even blasphemous resurrection of Dower's Patented Clerical Automata. That which I had taken to be a curtain was in fact the robe of the chorister whose mock-cherubic face now leered at me; rising up on my elbow and twisting about, I could see a whole row of the mechanical creatures, lined up in the alcove like soldiers on parade; beneath me was the brass track set into the church's floor to guide the singing mannikins on their appointed circuit through the church; A mocking fate had led me to the precincts where my meddling ignorance had unleashed those scenes of clattering, spring-driven chaos. Not just painful to my recollection, but the source of angry loathing from such as the crippled pastor (his injury the direct result of that dread evening) who had chased me from his desk only a day previously.
"Good God." I gazed up, stricken. "All I feared has come upon me."
"For Christ's sake," Miss McThane knelt down and grasped my shirt in her small fists. "It's not gonna be that bad. Sheesh–"
At that moment, the the vestry's door flew open; the church's light fell across us. "Not now;" said Scape, seeing us. "Goddamn it; you can do that later. We gotta get this friggin' church ready." He dumped on the floor an awkwardly shaped bag, which immediately split, spewing its contents. "Come on," he ordered as he strode back out the door.
Miss McThane stood up, tucking a few disordered strands of her auburn hair behind her ears. "Next time," she assured me, straightening out her vestments. She picked up the other garments and tossed