Update 3/25: still can't upload photos thanks a bunch WP.

**TW: This chapter depicts abuse.**

The Founding of the Institute and Its Venators

By Grayson Wilkes.

24-25 May.

I wanted to set myself on fire.

No, actually. I wanted someone else to. And watch me burn. Langdon Wilkes was going to be the death of me. How was it that I wanted him all the time, thought about him at every second of the day, fantasised about exactly what had happened on the couch in the sitting room? With less clothes, maybe?

I had a hard time settling down that night. After Naomi had put our father to bed and then gone to bed herself, I stayed awake. I stripped down to my drawers and paced the length of my room, hands clenched in my hair. Bloody feelings. They were the reason why I could never sleep at night.

I woke from my fitful doze the next morning in exactly the same state: in only my underwear. I also knew I needed a bath, because I smelled like it. So I shuffled to my bedroom door and cracked it open. There was Naomi, her hair loose, feet bare, and dressed only in a wrinkled, sleeveless chemise, helping our father down the stairs.

"Put on some clothes, Juliette," he was saying. "No respectable woman wants to be seen in that state of dress."

"You wanted breakfast early, remember, Papa?" she said, and I heard the strain and the sadness in her voice. "I've had very little sleep as it is. But the both of us were up early, so there you are."

"It was that baby," said our father. "Up all night. Never stopped crying."

By now they had disappeared, and I heard the sound of skin slapping skin, followed by a surprised, pained squeak from Naomi.

"I'm not an old man, Juliette," Father snapped, his voice sharp. "You don't need to treat me like one."

"I'm sorry, Papa, only...you've fallen down the steps before, sprained your shoulder..."

"Go get dressed. I can't look at you like this."

I heard Father's shuffling steps moving away, and Naomi's softly thudding back up the stairs. At the top, she gripped the newel post and covered her face with one hand. I heard her let out a sob, and then another one. I opened the door when she crumped to the ground, more sobs shaking her shoulders. I knelt down next to her and pulled her into my arms.

"Oh, Wells...what am I going to do?" She shook her head, face still covered, as she buried it in my shoulder. "Papa won't let me help him..."

"Maybe we consider...the asylum again?"

She uncovered her face to look at me, eyes red and cheeks stained with tears. "How could you say that? After last time...?"

"They'd be able to help him. Keep him safe."

"It's an institution, Wells!" Tears brimmed in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. "They wouldn't know what to do with him!"

"And we do?" I never wanted to be around him anymore, seeing how he was descending into madness further and further by the day.

"He knows this place, this house...changing his surroundings would only upset him..." Naomi swiped hard at her cheeks, but her tears just wetted them again.

"But he doesn't know you. And he doesn't know me. It's only going to get worse."

"Don't you think I know that?" She clenched her fists and covered her eyes again. "My God, Wells, he...he told me I was indecent. And that he couldn't look at me. He was ashamed."

"He hit you, didn't he?" I said.

"He's done it before, Wells, I..."

"Where did he hit you?"

She dropped her hands, and I saw it: a reddening welt blooming up from her jaw and over her cheek. Father's aim was getting worse, but his strength, apparently, was not. There was no account of his ever hitting our mother, and if he had, I didn't remember it. I would have been too young at the time to even know it was happening. But I had a pretty good idea of it now, if he'd hit Naomi before. And because he thought she was our mother, the possibility was there.

"This is not right," I said. "He cannot treat you like this."

"No, Wells." Naomi clutched at my arm as I went to stand. Her brimming eyes begged me not to. "Please...you've seen how violent he gets..."

"He hit you, Naomi. I won't stand by and let it happen."

"Only one other time, and I brought it on myself..." She latched onto my arm. I almost didn't recognise her: tearful, submissive, cowed, and beaten. Nothing like my fearless sister who could cut down zombies in a single stroke, whose aim was true when shooting a silver bullet, who had confronted a Drowned Man without so much as a tremble.

"No. He hit you, and that's not your fault."

"Please, Wells, please." She was begging, tears running steadily down her face. Her eyes implored me not to do it. "Please don't confront him, he could hurt you...please..."

"I won't be a bystander anymore. I refuse." I got to my feet, Naomi's grip slipping off with a sob. I stalked back to my room, yanking on trousers and my shirt from yesterday, then turned right back around and back to the top of the steps. Naomi was on her feet now, blocking my way. Her hands gripped the newel posts so tight her knuckles were white, and her expression was stricken. "Naomi, please move."

"Please, Wells," she pleaded, her voice a whisper. "Please don't..."

"Naomi." I kept my voice firm. "Step aside."

She just shook her head, her tears streaming down her cheeks.

"I'll move you myself if I have to," I said. I knew she was trying to protect me, but seeing her like this killed me. And the fact that our father had done this to her made me even angrier about it. No one, not even Father, could hurt her like this and get away with it.

"No," she whispered. "I won't let you."

I wrapped one arm around her middle and lifted her feet off the ground. I felt her resist, her hands holding on for dear life. Then I took the steps, one at a time, until she had to let go. And I didn't put her down until the foyer, with nothing to hold onto.

"Wells..." It came out as a sob, with nothing else to follow it. Just my name.

"Stay here," I said, and then without waiting for her response I marched right into the kitchen, where Father was puttering about. "Father."

He turned. "You. Boy. Help me with this bloody contraption, won't you? I want a coffee."

"I'm not doing anything for you," I said. "Not until you apologise to Naomi for hitting her."

Father's eyes flashed, and I saw just a brief glimpse of the man he was before the ghost-madness. "I want a damned coffee, boy."

"Apologise. Or you won't get anything."

"How dare you speak to me like that," he growled.

"You hit your daughter," I said. "You hit her across the face. You told her she embarrassed you by being indecent. She's trying to help you, Father. And she is not Mother. Mother is gone. For good."

"I ought to punish you for your insolence," Father snarled, flinging off the blanket he had draped around his shoulders and drawing himself to his full height. He wasn't that much taller than me — half a foot, if that — but at that moment he seemed to tower over me.

"Go on. Punish me." I felt my fists curling. "Give in to your instincts. Hit me."

"You have crossed a line, boy." Father was across the kitchen and an arm's length away from me in a few strides.

"Good. That means I'm getting through to you."

His hand came out, and so quickly I didn't see it, struck me across the face. I staggered backward, my vision flashing white with the impact. Father was on me again, shoving me so hard I nearly fell straight into the ottoman next to the couch.

"Papa!" I heard Naomi scream, her voice breaking. "Stop! You'll kill him!"

"Stay out of this, Juliette!" Father roared.

I recovered enough to deflect his next attack, catching his wrist and twisting it all the way around. He had already been off-balance, one foot off the ground, and he went toppling forward. I wrenched his arm behind his back as he crashed to the floor, pinning his neck with my forearm.

"Do you want to try that again?" I hissed. "See who's crossed a line?"

"Let me up, boy," Father hissed back.

"Not a chance," I said. Then I let go of his neck, only to ram my elbow into the base of his skull. His entire body went limp.

I heard another sob from the foyer. Naomi was where I'd left her, both her hands over her mouth and tears pouring endlessly down her face.

"Tomorrow," I said. "We start looking for asylums. No more arguments."

She nodded, without another word. In that moment, I think we both knew we couldn't go on like this. Not if we both wanted to keep our sanity.

—

My sister's tears continued to fall as she gently dabbed at my split lip. I knew I had provoked Father into coming after me, into reacting the way he had. But he had, without realising, taken advantage of Naomi's gentle, sensitive nature and heartlessly stamped all over it.

"I was so afraid, Wells...I thought he was going to..." Her voice cracked and she swiped at her cheeks roughly with the heel of her hand. "The look in his eyes...I saw it, but you didn't...and it terrified me..."

"He doesn't get to do that. Hit without being hit back."

"You could have been killed, Wells..." She dropped the pink-stained cloth and swiped at her cheeks again. They were as red and raw as her eyes. "I can't...I don't know what...I couldn't face this life without you..."

"Naomi..."

"Don't," she whispered. "I know you wanted to defend me...but I need you. If you'd...if he'd..."

She began wiping at her face furiously when her tears came in earnest, and I caught her wrists.

"Stop, please," I said, tipping my forehead against hers. "I know. And I want you to know that I would do anything to keep you safe. Because I need you too."

She let out a sob, and I pulled her close. This was how it'd always been, and how we'd continue to be. We needed each other, and not even Father could break us apart.

—

After I'd dropped a double dose of laudanum in Father's coffee and sent him up to bed, I proposed we plan the break-in and rescue of the blood-binding victims. It would take both our minds off the scene from earlier, not to mention my sister was very good at planning things. She could have it down to the minute if asked to, although for this plan, we were relying on so many other people it was hard to account for them.

I left her alone and went to survey our weapons room. Having that shotgun last time had been a stroke of luck for more than just us, and I wondered if we should pack it again just in case. At least I hadn't been the only one to notice that Marjorie was a complete natural at it, firing off rounds at the thing's vital areas, disabling it for someone else to deliver a killing blow. Sometimes that was the only thing a hunter needed — just a second's advantage. I began to see Naomi's point about hunters working in teams.

I began to set the weapons aside: rapiers, like last time, with extras in case something happened, silver daggers and bullets, more salt shells, wooden stakes, holy water, and iron filings. The shotgun too, and the special revolver we carried specifically for the silver bullets. We couldn't bring any extra bags like last time, at the risk of leaving anything identifiable behind. So we'd have to carry it all. Luckily the webbing of our hunting gear had plenty of extra loops and hooks, so we could stow nearly any of these things on our person. And if Marjorie came along unarmed, we could always give her shotgun duty again.

By the time I came back, Naomi had spread out onto the floor, with a complete map of the Institute that appeared to be drawn by hand on multiple sheets of paper.

"Did you draw that yourself?" I asked, nodding to it as she glanced up at me. She looked a little wild, her face flushed and eyes bright, her hair in messy tangles down around her shoulders.

"Yes, why?"

"How did you...? Where did you find a map?"

"This." She snatched a book from the couch cushion next to her and tossed it at me. I caught it, barely, before it smacked me in the face. I spotted the name Wilkes, and it hit me a second later that it was probably written by one of the past ancestors of the most current Wilkes.

The Founding of the Institute and Its Venators, it read. Below it, Grayson Wilkes.

"I didn't even think we had a book like this," I said.

"Look, Wells." Naomi straightened from where she'd been crouching on her knees over the map. "Just because you hate all things Institute, it doesn't mean we can't still learn something from it."

"I never said I hated—"

"Yes you did. You have, many times." Naomi scrubbed a hand through her hair, combing it all over one shoulder. "I doubt you do now, because the boy you love attends it. But we all have to change our opinions sometime, you know."

"You love him too," I fired back. "I can see it, when you look at him."

"It only helps me understand why you do," she said, her tone defiant but her eyes pained. "He is everything anyone would want in a man."

"I don't—"

"Do not tell me you don't think the same," she said, stabbing a finger at me. "I heard you two in here the other day. Grunting and groaning. The only thing that hurts me more is wishing it were me."

"Naomi, really—" I knew she was in love with Wilkes, of course. But there were certain times when neither of us could have it all.

"You of all people would know what it feels like, Wells!" Just like that her tears were back — not as plentiful as they had been earlier, but still steadily trickling down her cheeks. "You would know what it feels like to love someone you cannot ever hope to have!"

There it was. Something we'd both been denying from the very beginning. Neither of us could have Wilkes in the way we wanted for different reasons, and it didn't seem fair somehow that the one who would win in the end was Marjorie.

"I hate myself for feeling like this," Naomi said, and her fists clenched in her nightdress, which she still hadn't changed out of and it was nearly noon already. "I wish...I wish I didn't. Because you...you, Wells, deserve to be happy, if just for a little while. I know I have to control myself, but...sometimes when I see him, I just want to...throw myself on him, it's unbearable..."

I sighed heavily. That was the trouble with Wilkes, it appeared — he endeared himself to everyone he met, and now three of them were head-over-teakettles in love with him. No one and everyone wanted to stake their claim on him. "What do you suppose the solution is, then?"

"We have to let her have him," Naomi said, swiping angrily at her face. "It's the only way to keep us from a tug-of-war for his affections."

I didn't answer right away, but of course she was right. It wasn't fair, but it was the only way to resolve it. If Marjorie had him, he'd have the status, the prestige, and the privilege without any stink of scandal. Neither of us would even be suspect. And together, they had the potential to shape the future.

"So we give up, then?" I said.

"No, not give up." Naomi shook her head and dropped it to her hand, fingers splaying over her face. "This isn't a war, Wells. We knew who was going to win out. We just...let them be."

"That sounds a lot like giving up."

"God's sakes, call it what you want!" She slammed her palms against the rug. "It doesn't matter! But I'm not going to argue about it anymore, all right?"

I saw the pain this caused her, and it mirrored my own. I knew how he felt about me, because it came across every time I'd kissed him. It made the pain go away, for however long it lasted. In whatever moment that was, Langdon Wilkes was mine. But she was right. It was no use arguing.

So instead I sat down cross-legged at the edge of the map. "So tell me what the plan is with this map here."

—

26 May.

The plan was pretty well formulated by the next day. We would meet Cornelius, should he agree, at the front gate of the Institute, and we'd slip inside together just before midnight. I had a feeling he was the one who knew where the blood-binding subjects were kept, which was where he would get us into next if everything was quiet on entering.

That was another snag Naomi had run into — she hadn't known if it was down underground or up on a higher floor or even on the roof. She'd instead given me three different scenarios. If we had to go underground, there'd likely only be one escape route: the way we came in. So we would have to time it just right that when we released the subjects, we'd have to be out of there before they were. If we had to go upstairs, to a top floor, there'd probably be more possibilities, and we'd have some more breathing room. And the roof didn't need much explanation — that'd practically be an open-and-run kind of situation.

"And if it's none of those?" I'd said when she finished.

"Then I'll smack you upside the head for getting me into this bloody thing in the first place," she'd snapped back, but I had a feeling she was just as eager to see if this worked as I was.

There was another complication too: What if it was guarded? What if Trenton Wilkes had somehow anticipated this might happen and taken extra precautions to make sure it wouldn't?

"That's why we're bringing weapons, isn't it?" Naomi had argued. "We aren't exactly going in unprepared."

"That's exactly what I was afraid you'd say," I'd said. Then I'd held up the Wilkes book. "This was written in 1810. This map's already outdated."

Naomi had bit her lip. "Eighty years is a long time."

"And I know for a fact that the Institute's much older than that. A hundred and nine years before this book was even published, actually. So a lot of things could have changed since then." I'd taken a deep breath. "If those guards are trained Venators, they'll know the layout much better than we will. We won't know how to escape them."

"Langdon will," she'd said.

"He has to go find that vampire's head, remember? I was thinking you, me, and Cornelius would break in, free the subjects. Wilkes and Marjorie would go find the head, since they were the ones who were there when he agreed to it."

"And you think dividing our hunting power is a good idea? Marjorie's the only decent shot among us."

I'd shrugged. "Well, I don't trust Cornelius or myself alone with Wilkes, and besides me you're the one who's got the most hunting experience. And I'd say there's probably going to be more of a fight to get out, when we're all back together."

Naomi had shaken her head. "Don't count on that. The Institute's much larger than you think."

After that she'd shooed me away so she could write a letter to Wilkes that detailed the plan, which we were planning on executing tomorrow night. I busied myself with preparing our weapons, polishing and sharpening and anything else I could think of that would help.

About two hours later, when I finished that and wandered back upstairs, Naomi slapped the letter into my chest on her way up to her room.

"Would you kindly post that, dear brother?" she said, reaching through the banister posts to ruffle my hair. "I'm taking myself up to have a bath."

"You don't offend," I said. "Yet."

She gave me a slap upside the head for that comment.

I stepped outside, noticing it was warm enough now that I didn't need a coat. It was when I reached the end of our front walk and about to turn onto the street, heading towards the letter box on the corner that I saw the oddest thing: two bats, hanging upside-down from the lamppost across the street. Their red-irised eyes widened and blinked at me, and one flapped its wings as it shinned closer to its partner. I felt the back of my neck prickle, just like it did when vampires were nearby. It was odd, to say the least, especially out in broad daylight. People who didn't hunt thought that vampires slept during the day, in big wooden coffins or some other nonsense. But many didn't, preferring to spend it out among the humans in different forms: rats sometimes, or bats, like these. I'd even come across a few masquerading as pigeons.

I reached the corner, shoved the letter in, and hurried straight back to our front door. The bats were still there, just watching. I squinted back at them, but they didn't move. Didn't even blink.

With that I let myself in and shut the door behind me, putting the chain on it as an afterthought. Then I trooped upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door, where thin fingers of steam were escaping from under the crack.

"Yes?" Naomi's voice came from inside, with undisguised irritation.

I cracked the door open, seeing her sitting up in the bath, wet hair trailing over her bare shoulders. "Did you know the vampires are watching our house?"

"You saw one? Out in daylight?" Naomi rested an elbow on the edge of the bathtub, then her chin on top.

"Two, actually. Hanging from a lamppost in their bat forms."

"Did they try anything?"

"No. I think they're just making sure we stick to the plan. Either that, or they're plotting something themselves."

"For all our sakes, I hope it's the first one," she said, then flapped a hand at me. "Now close the door. You're letting all the warm air out."

I did, then skulked to my own room to pace. I was counting on Wilkes being able to persuade both Cornelius and Marjorie to go along with our plan without any of their parents finding out what they were up to. Difficult, since they all seemed to be conspiring with one another. The trickiest one to get past by far was Wilkes's father. He, out of all the older adults, seemed the most likely to be pure evil. I was hoping, since he'd managed it before, that Wilkes could give his father the slip long enough to reach us at the Institute tomorrow night.

I stopped pacing long enough to look out my window, which faced the street. The bats were still there, but now one was on the lamppost right outside our front gate. As I watched, the second one took off and flapped over to join the first one. They hung there, without moving, and I had to wonder if that was going to be just the beginning of the strangeness.

—

27 May.

Wilkes's reply came back around midday. Short and cryptic, because it was likely his father was reading his letters before he sent them. But the basic message was that he'd persuaded Cornelius to get us inside, and that he would be fetching Marjorie from the Wellington Arch and bringing her along.

I was itching to ask them about the bats — if somehow the vampires were trying to intimidate us into holding up our end of the bargain. It wouldn't be beyond them, as far as I knew. We'd already been preparing for most of the day, taking inventory of our gear and supplies. So if the vampires thought we were suddenly going to back out, then they had another thing coming.

"This is the part I dislike the most," said Naomi, once we had everything together and were killing some time in the dining room. "It's the waiting before the thing we're doing."

"I like it even less than you," I said, picking up a book at random and leafing through it. "I keep thinking something will go wrong."

"It's a valid fear," she said. "I'm almost sure something will."

"You don't suppose we're going about this all wrong, do you?"

Naomi raised an eyebrow at me. "Going about what now? This wasn't my idea, I'll have you know."

"I mean...did we give Wilkes too much hope?"

My sister raised an eyebrow at me, the braid she'd been twisting into her hair unravelling as she let go of it. "Are you being serious, Wells? You're doubting this plan right now? When we're mere hours away from commencing it?"

"Think about it, Naomi. What if it doesn't work? What if we can't break in? What if...?"

"Stop," she said, holding up a hand. "Do you really believe that? Do you believe that we can't do it?"

"We have to entertain all possibilities, you know."

"I'm not saying don't," Naomi said. "I just think that you have to get to a point when you're about to do something big like this and you have to think about the things that will work and not what won't. I know Langdon and Marjorie will join us, and Cornelius will know how to get us in. And we will find the blood-bind subjects, I'm sure of it. So I know you're worried. But we've done things more dangerous than this, and it was just the two of us."

I looked hard at my sister. She seemed so grown-up, her face no longer round with baby fat and her body taking on the willowy curves of a woman's — not a young girl's. Not to mention her eyes, which were so serious they seemed to age her ten years.

"You're staring at me," she said, her brow furrowing. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, it's..." I shook my head. "Nothing. Sorry."

"I would tell you not to worry, but I know you will," she said as she untwisted the rest of her braid and started all over. Within seconds, she had it done. "We can do it, Wells. I'm certain we can."

I nodded. I wanted to be able to think the way she did. But however hard I tried, I couldn't.

—

However, to my surprise, when we arrived at the gates of the Institute a quarter to midnight, I spotted one lone figure, all in black, peel itself from the shadows. Cornelius Selling's hair and eyes shone like silver coins in the moonlight, and the breeze ruffled it just barely. A glint of silver at his hip, under his coat, told me he had brought just as many weapons as we had.

"Cornelius," I said.

"Wells," he said. Then to Naomi, with a shallow nod, he said, "Miss Hudson. Or do you prefer Naomi?"

"Normally, I'd say we aren't on first-name terms," she said. "But for this occasion, I believe we should be."

"How soon are the others supposed to arrive?" I asked, after that chilly greeting.

Cornelius took out a silver pocket-watch and flicked the lid open with a black-gloved thumb. "In about ten minutes, I would say."

We waited in an awkward silence. Next to Cornelius, we must have looked completely amateur in our scruffy worn hunting leather. The cloak he wore looked new, and the all black he wore underneath reminded me somewhat of an undertaker's uniform. But that too looked crisply starched and pressed.

The sound of a horse's hooves clopping along the cobbles reached us soon enough, and two figures alighted from it at the corner. I recognised Wilkes, in a long cloak that reached down to his ankles, handing Marjorie down from the hackney. She too wore a dark cloak, but underneath I could see she still wore a dress. It was quite possible she didn't even own any trousers.

"Hello," Wilkes said as he approached us, one of his hands occupied by Marjorie's and the other on the hilt of his rapier, which gleamed silver under his cloak.

"I gather you escaped the parents' notice?" Cornelius asked, and it seemed to take Wilkes a moment to realise he was addressing both of them.

"Father was soused and hiding in the library," he said. "He always gets that way on the anniversary of...Mother's demise."

Naomi and I only nodded solemnly. Since we learned that news secondhand, it seems even more tragic.

I saw Marjorie squeeze Wilkes's hand gently as she answered. "Have you forgotten that our parents are en route to Norwich as we speak? For their annual meeting?"

"Right, well..." Cornelius rolled his eyes, a gesture I've used on Naomi many times. "How about we make this quick, then? Care to help me open this gate, Wilkes?"

The two of them got to work, for once cooperating.

"Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined them working together," Naomi said. "They are about as opposite as two people can get."

"Desperate times," Marjorie said with a shrug.

With a clank and a rasp of chain, the gate was unlocked. I heard Cornelius say something like Attaboy Wilkes, which was another bit of strangeness.

That was what made me remember the bats. I stopped Marjorie, who was closest to me, on the way in.

"Marjorie, did you see any bats outside your house yesterday?"

Her brow furrowed. "Bats?"

"Yes. I saw two hanging off a lamppost on the other side of our street."

"Now that I think of it, I thought I saw something fly by my bedroom window while I was sitting by it reading," she said, rubbing her chin with a thumb. "I thought it was a bird at first, but just out of the corner of my eye it was too oddly-shaped to be a bird."

"So the vampires were watching your house too."

"The bats are the vampires?" Unlike a non-hunter, Marjorie seemed to believe it.

I nodded. "But I don't know what they were doing there. And I didn't see them when we left."

"I suspect it was because they'd changed back to vampires."

She had a point. But that left one question: Where were the vampires now?

"Are you two coming, or are you going to stand out there all night?" Cornelius's head appeared around the column just inside the entrance.

We trotted inside, and he and Wilkes pulled the gates shut behind us. They put us inside the Institute's main courtyard, where we'd come in the first time to break into Trenton Wilkes's office. This time, Cornelius led us along a covered walkway that bordered the courtyard, turned a sharp corner, and immediately pushed through a shadowed doorway at the very end. We followed him, down a tightly spiralling staircase slippery with mildew. He plucked a torch from one of the metal sconces on the wall and scraped it along the stone like a giant match, which instantly illuminated the staircase in front of us.

I lost count of the dizzying circles we made, when finally we came to the bottom, our boots crunching on small animal bones that littered the ground. Ahead of us there was a curving passageway with a vaulted ceiling, the walls shining with damp.

Cornelius didn't stop. He led us along the passageway, his cloak flapping like the wings of a massive bird. I felt Naomi catch my hand from behind, her breathing hoarse and quick.

Abruptly we turned another corner and emerged onto a balcony. Below us stretched a domed octagonal room, the floor appearing to be painted with some kind of sigil. Around the room, tucked into the alcoves carved into the walls, were cages. Too many of them to count. And inside them, there were creatures: werewolves, some half-wolf and many full-wolf, fur bloody and matted; vampires, most listless and unmoving on the floors of their cages; spirits, bound to the bodies they came from by some invisible force; and one creature I'd only seen once before, much like the Drowned Man — a nearly full-grown kelpie, its too-large body pushing through the bars.

"Cripes," I heard Wilkes breathe.

"Good God," Naomi whispered.

There was a noise from below, somewhere between a boom and a crack. Then rapid footsteps, two sets of them. Two hooded figures appeared from directly underneath the balcony — one tall, the other shorter. Cornelius waved at us to get down when they revolved slowly on their heels towards us, and he extinguished his torch by jamming it into the ground. I raised myself just far enough to see over, and my stomach lurched when I saw who they were.

The shorter one was Marcus Trotter, looking owlish in his spectacles. And the taller was Augustus Selling. We were truly in trouble now.