Read The Peculiar for Free Online Page A

his fingers.
    He froze. Something had shifted in the depths of the house. A floorboard or a panel. And then all Bartholomew heard was the clip-clip of feet approaching briskly from the other side of the door at the far end of the room.
    His heart clenched, painfully. Someone heard. Someone heard the noise, and now he was coming to investigate. He would find a changeling in his private chambers, a pauper from the faery slums clearly breaking into his house. A constable would come, beat Bartholomew senseless. Morning would find him swinging by the neck in the hot breath of the city.
    Bartholomew flew across the room and wrenched at the doorknob with desperate fingers. It was locked, but the person on the other side would have a key. He had to get out.
    Racing back to the chalk circle, he leaped and landed squarely in the middle. His heels struck the floor, the force jarring his legs.
    Nothing happened.
    He threw a frantic look back at the door. The footsteps had stopped. Someone was right there, right on the other side, breathing. Bartholomew heard a hand being placed on the knob. The knob began to turn, turn. Click. Locked.
    Panic slithered in his throat. Trapped. Get out, get out, get out!
    For a moment the person outside was silent. Then the knob began to rattle. Slowly at first but becoming more insistent, getting stronger and stronger until the whole door was shivering in its frame.
    Bartholomew stamped his foot. GO! he thought desperately. Work! Take me away from here! His chest began to ache. Something was pricking the back of his eyes, and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to sit down and cry like he had when he was little and had lost hold of his mother’s hand at the market.
    The person outside began to beat viciously against the door.
    It wouldn’t do any good to cry. Bartholomew ran his hand over his nose. A crying thief would still be hanged. He looked down at the markings all around him and tried to think.
    There. A section of the chalk circle was smeared across the floor. The ring didn’t go all the way around anymore. He must have ruined it when he fell.
    Dropping to his knees, he began scrabbling the chalk dust together, piling it in a rough line to close the circle.
    A dull snapping sounded from the door. The wood. Whoever is outside is breaking down the door!
    Bartholomew couldn’t hope to copy all the little marks and symbols, but he could at least complete the ring. Faster, faster . . . His hands squeaked against the floor.
    The door burst inward with a thunderous crash.
    But the wings were already enveloping Bartholomew, the darkness howling around him, and the wind pulling at his clothes. Only something was different this time. Wrong. He felt things in the blackness; cold, thin bodies that darted against him and poked at his skin. Mouths pressed up to his ears, whispering in small, dark voices. A tongue, icy wet, slid over his cheek. And then there was only pain, horrid searing pain, tearing up his arms and eating into his bones. He kept down his scream just long enough for the room to begin to flit away into the spinning shadows. Then he shrieked along with the wind and the raging wings.

CHAPTER IV
Nonsuch House
    N ONSUCH House looked like a ship—a great, stone nightmarish ship, run aground in the mire of London at the north end of Blackfriars Bridge. Its jagged roofs were the sails, its lichened chimneys the masts, and the smoke that curled up from their mouths looked like so many tattered flags, sliding in the wind. Hundreds of small gray windows speckled its walls. A pitted door faced the street. Below, the river swirled, feeding the clumps of moss that climbed its foundations and turning the stone black with slime.
    A carriage was winding its way toward the house through the evening bustle of Fleet Street. Rain was falling steadily. The streetlamps were just beginning to glow, and they reflected on the polished sides of the carriage, throwing tongues of light onto the