A/N: This takes place a few years after my other Bartimeus fic, Street Bones. But you don't have to have read it to understand this. All you need to know is that Bartimeus did not die after the Glass Palace incident, but he never became a part of the magician community again.
No one screamed that night, and the absence of a scream was the most sinister shriek Elizabeth Worm had ever heard. Elizabeth, like most people in London could expect at least one scream nightly- a startled mug victim, a teenage girl out walking past curfew, a drunkard surprised beyond belief by the presence of his own front stairs, a hungry baby.
But on this night there were no noises. And while Elizabeth Worm knew in her logic that she should be comforted and pleased by this, she was instead set on edge. She couldn't sleep in the silence devoid of screams, and as she peered out her third story window into the soundless night, Elizabeth couldn't shake the growing dread that the silence must mean something very large and very terrible was on the verge of occurring.
That night of the great fire, she remembered, hadn't that night been as silent as a crypt before the blaze? What about the night that Isabel Smith's five babies were all killed by a rat that crept into their cradle? It had been so silent, before Isabel's sobs started echoing through the street…
Elizabeth pulled her shawl around her thin flat chest and shuddered. Her tiny servant's room was always cold, and the fear welling in her chest just made her feel more frozen. Something about her room was beginning to make Elizabeth feel very uneasy… she was beginning to be overwhelmed by the sensation that there was some shadowy creature lurking in her closet, or under her bed, or maybe in that hole in the ceiling…That breathing she had heard, it was hers wasn't it?
Of course it was. There was no one else in the room. Therefore, there was no one else to be breathing. Simple as that.
Still, she kept her mud brown eyes directly on the door in front of her, unable to rid herself of the sickening feeling that, should she cast a glance to her side or over her shoulder, she would see some nightmare thing standing in the corner.
If only it wasn't so bloody quiet! Couldn't something make a noise? Couldn't a cat screech or a dog whimper or an owl hoot?
An involuntary shudder went up Elizabeth's spine… she made up her mind that she was going to go looney if she stayed in her room, so she lit a candle with shaking spindly hands and walked down a narrow creaking staircase into her mistress's sitting room.
She sat her candle down on a table by the fireplace and took a poke at the embers that were currently just barely burning.
Down in the sitting room of her employer, Lady Lavinia Wyndham, surrounded by a small warm glow and the familiar cheap imitation velvet red furnishings, Elizabeth smiled, and her fears and tensions left her. She was now far too awake to go back to sleep, but she was no longer worried of impossible figures lurking in the darkness.
She allowed herself a small chuckle at how silly and irrational she had been. Elizabeth knew she didn't have looks, money, or schooling, but the one quality the young maid had always prided herself on was her level headed logic.
When Lady Lavinia had claimed to see the ghost of her dead mother, Elizabeth had let her know it was only the neighbors washing fluttering in the breeze. When Lady Lavinia had wanted to spend half Elizabeth's salary on a personal medium, Elizabeth had proved to her mistress that the medium in question made the table float during séances with a series of wires and pulleys.
What had come over her? Why, she couldn't help but wonder, did something so simple as unexpected silence make her as irrational as a child?
Elizabeth sighed, picking up a copy of the The Strand magazine from a stack on the table beside her, and read The Field Bazaar. It was a story she more or less knew by heart, but it gave her comfort. Holmes, she reminded herself, never let his logic leave him. There was a man that would never be caught dead glancing over his shoulder for monsters in the shadows, unless he had hard proof that he needed to be.
She finished The Field Bazaar then picked up another copy of the magazine and started another story, this time reading of the secrets of the red-headed league. And when that one was finished she began another, and so on, until her candle had burned down to nothing more than an ant-hill of wax. She yawned, put out what was left of the candle, and began her way back up the stairs.
On the way, Elizabeth passed the door to Lady Lavinia's bedroom, and frowned when she saw that the door was open. She clearly remembered shutting it before saying goodnight to the mistress… but perhaps she hadn't. There had been, after all, a lot praying on her mind that night before she went to bed. With all her worries about whether or not she should let eager young Thomas Bartlett be her suitor, it was very possible that Elizabeth could have absentmindedly left the door ajar, and it blew open as the night went on.
With a small sigh, and the hope that her candle lasted, she went to close the door, taking a small look inside first to assure everything was well with her mistress.
All was not well with her mistress. The first thing she noticed was the overwhelming thick irony smell, a little like the butcher shop… Did Lady Lavinia have some sort of raw meat in her room? It wouldn't be a very practical thing to keep in one's room, of course, but Lady Lavenia was, unfortunately one of the most impractical people ever born.
Elizabeth walked into the bedroom to investigate further. The butcher-shop smell got stronger as she did.
She paused, and held her candle stub at arm's length. The bed was illuminated just enough for Elizabeth to tell that Lavenia was not in it.
Her frowned deepened. Was Lavenia sleep walking again? But surely would have heard something if that was the case… perhaps she had simply gone into the kitchen for a late night snack, as her mistress was apt to do. But that still didn't explain the smell…
Elizabeth turned to leave the room and go check in the kitchen when she stepped in something. She was barefoot, and it was something with the squashy, semi-solid texture of mud. That was very odd indeed…
Elizabeth slowly moved her now barely flickering candle down to her foot, and found that what she was stepping in was read and pink, with yellow spongy parts. Elizabeth, a farm girl by birth, recognized it as looking quite a lot like a sheep's stomach.
Except that it wasn't a sheep's stomach. As Elizabeth moved her candle upwards from her foot across the rest of the body, shedding light onto the wide blue eyes, the powder and cream covered white face, with black eyebrows drawn on and lips painted a cherry red, she realized that it was Lady Lavenia's stomach.
For the second time that night, logic left Elizabeth Worm. She turned and sprinted away, as fast as she could, from the ghastly scene.
She was unaware, as she bolted up the staircase to the third floor, that her candle had finally gone out.
She was unaware that the light she saw by wasn't coming from a candle, but was seeping out from under the door of her own bedroom.
Because she wasn't aware of this, she flung the door to her own bedroom open, panting with terror an exhaustion.
Then she heard breathing.
She heard breathing, and she also felt breathing. It was hot and rasping, like animal's breath. And this time, she knew that the breathing wasn't coming from her.
Elizabeth Worm looked up. Elizabeth Worm screamed a scream so loud that it should have been heard down streets and alleys for at least three miles.
But it wasn't heard down any street, or any alleyway. It wasn't even heard in the neighboring house.
No one heard Elizabeth Worm scream. The night continued in eerie silence.