Provided proper tinder and dry kindling, Marlowe’s expression could have been used to start a fire.
“Please, sir,” I said. “We don’t mean to make things more difficult, but I’m afraid it really is of the utmost importance that New Fiddleham be prepared for what’s to come.”
Marlowe turned to me with weary eyes. “And what is to come, precisely?”
I opened my mouth, but halted, trying to find a way to explain the whole affair that didn’t sound like madness.
“Madness,” Jackaby cut in. “Chaos and war and pandemonium. Have you read the Book of Revelation? A bit of that. More monsters.”
Marlowe pursed his lips and placed his palms very slowly on his desk while we explained about the Fair King and the Dire King, about the Annwyn and the barrier, about the rend in the veil and about the end of the world as we know it. Marlowe listened.
When we were finished, he took a deep breath. “A year ago I’d have had you in lockup for wasting my time with an impossible report like that.”
“A year ago, I think you did,” said Jackaby.
“But a year ago my lockup wasn’t already full to capacity with the subjects of impossible reports.”
Jackaby tilted his head. “Come again?”
Marlowe nodded sourly toward the hallway. “You’re not the only one hunting monsters these days.”
“I knew Mayor Spade was on the hunt,” Jackaby said as Marlowe opened the door to the holding cells. “But I underestimated the size of his net.”
There were only three cells in Mason Street detention hall, two of which were now packed full of men, and the third full of women. Several more sad suspects sat waiting their turns in chairs across from the holding cells. None of them looked especially like criminals. One of the women in the far cell looked old enough to be my grandmother. She was wearing an apron still chalky white with flour. A pair of schoolboys huddled in the corner of one of the men’s cells, sniffling. A man in oil-stained overalls sat on the bench beside them, shaking his head and sighing heavily.
“This is insane,” Jackaby said. “I know Spade and his militia have been canvassing the city, but I thought they were like the butt of a bad joke the city was telling itself. I didn’t think anybody was taking them seriously!”
“Nobody was,” Marlowe said. “Public opinion had their whole operation chalked up to paranoia and superstition, until a couple days ago. The other shoe dropped when Spade’s guys finally caught some kind of imp yesterday morning. Looked like a naked monkey to me. They’re calling it the Inkling Devil. I’m surprised this is the first you’ve heard about it. They paraded what was left of the thing through the town on a stake. I’ve been doing managerial gymnastics trying to keep the rumors from throwing New Fiddleham into a panic, and Spade’s boys are putting on a damned puppet show with a real-life demon.”
“They killed it?” Jackaby’s voice was even, but I could see the dark clouds rolling over his brow.
“Spade called it a matter of public safety. He said he was raising awareness, needed to show the people the truth. A real live dead demon gave teeth to everything Spade had been saying in all of his speeches and rallies. Now neighbors are reporting neighbors and landlords are ratting out tenants. This is just the crowd we’ve processed since last night.” Marlowe waved a hand at the cells. “Spade wants every detainee thoroughly interrogated and documented. The paperwork is a nightmare. We’ll have to start shipping them up to Crowley Penitentiary soon. There just isn’t room enough in our jailhouse.”
I surveyed the dejected lot. More than miserable, several of the detainees had suffered recent injuries—black eyes, bloody lips. A man toward the back was cradling his arm as though it might be broken, and behind him I could see a fellow whose face appeared to have been badly burned.
A portly officer with a walrus mustache was frantically filling out reports and signing paperwork for the latest batch of remandees.
“Mind if I have a little peek at those, Alton?” Jackaby asked as he slid the officer’s clipboard off his desk and began to flip through the most recent arrivals.
“It’s Allan,” the man said. “Hey—I’m gonna need that back.”
“It’s fine,” Marlowe grunted.
“Where is Snorri Schmitz?” Jackaby asked the room.
Manacles clinked as Mr. Schmitz waved a hand forlornly. He was a short, round-faced man. “This doesn’t list any offense,” Jackaby declared. “It just says he was accused of being half gnome!”
“You have to admit, he is rather on the stumpy side,” mumbled the mustachioed officer. Snorri glowered at him. “But if you say he isn’t, Mr. Jackaby—well, then I suppose you’re sort of the expert.” He looked to Marlowe to confirm this. Marlowe looked at Jackaby.
“What? Of course he’s half gnome! That’s not the point! Show me the law that says having human parents is a requirement for citizenship!” He flipped a few pages. “Stupid. Stupid. If that one were a changeling, those irons would be burning his skin. Stupid. And how about this? You’re accusing this woman of witchcraft and devil worship? Well, which is it?”
“Erm, both?” Allan supplied.
“Oh, come on, Allan! You don’t have to be an expert in the occult to work out the problem there. Who’s the one person you need to believe in if you’re going to worship the devil?”
“Er . . .” Allan’s mustache bobbled. He looked to Marlowe for help, but the commissioner only raised an eyebrow.
“Care to take a crack at it, Miss Rook?” Jackaby turned to me.
“The devil?” I said.
“Right you are! If you’re going to worship Old Scratch, you’ve got to believe in him in the first place, haven’t you? Witchcraft is a belief system, Alton—”
“Allan.”
“—and those who practice it believe in various gods, goddesses, and spirits. Care to take a stab at who’s not on the list?”
“The . . . devil?” Allan guessed meekly.
“Now you’re catching up! If you are going to make a lot of idiotic accusations, you might at least try to avoid making mutually exclusive ones!”
A door opened at the end of the hall, and two officers half dragged the sagging body of a thin man in a gray cardigan up to the door of the cell. Jackaby dropped the clipboard back on the desk and watched the procession shuffle up.
“Detainees will move away from the door,” instructed the first officer, pulling the keys from his waist. The men inside did their best to squeeze back a few paces, and the prisoner was deposited within. His cell mates helped him limp over to the bench. His face was badly bruised, and he was bleeding from a cut just above his eye.
“Like I said,” Marlowe grunted. “Thoroughly interrogated.”
“What happened to that man?” demanded Jackaby.