The Faerie Lord by Herbie Brennan

was empty, not so much as a mattress on the floor, not so much as a tattered blanket in a cupboard. The whole place was absolutely, totally deserted. What was going on here?
    His light spell was beginning to dim, so he cracked another and leaned against a wall to think. This was definitely the house where the cabby claimed to have taken Brimstone. More to the point, this was the house Chalkhill had seen Brimstone leave at dusk. He
had
to be living here, yet there was no sign of human habitation whatsoever.
    Which meant Chalkhill had missed something.
    He went back downstairs and double-checked the rooms. All empty, like that stupid kitchen. He was double-checking the kitchen when a small sound behind him caused him to spin round, heart suddenly pumping. There was a familiar figure silhouetted in the doorway.
    ‘What kept you?’ Brimstone asked him sourly.

Chapter Twenty Six

    For the first time in her long life, Cynthia Cardui felt old. It wasn’t just the stiffness in the joints or the little pains that were one’s constant companion, it was the way emotions lost their power. One was calm. One was far more logical than one ever was in one’s youth. But, as if in horrid compensation, life grew cold.
    She stared down at the body of her lover. He had always been a thin man, thin and wiry, but since the life force left him, he looked shrunken, like a dried-out husk. So strange to see him like this and yet feel … nothing.
    The embalmers glided around her like wraiths, sober-faced women who all seemed to have slim hands with long fingers. They had inserted tubes into the major arteries of each thigh and attached them to terrible machines. One pumped out every last drop of his remaining blood, the other pumped in spell-bound
gravistat
to replace it. The gravistat liquid acted to dissolve internal organs while triggering the process of petrification.
    They were removing the brain now. (For some reason brains resisted the action of the gravistat.) Since it was important to preserve the skull intact – no cuts were permitted – the embalmers inserted an iron hook and expertly drew it out through the nose.
    Cynthia watched as the glistening lump of greyness dropped into a jar. Strange to think of all the prejudice and wisdom it had once contained; and all the love. By faerie custom, it was treated with little deference. She knew that when she left, it would be minced and laid out on a rock behind the palace to feed the birds.
    The gravistat itself was beginning to drain out now. The embalmers were used to the smell, but Cynthia took a step backwards. In itself, the liquid was odourless, but once mixed with liquefied intestines, the stench was extreme. From somewhere behind her, a priest-wizard began a sonorous chant.
    Had she and Alan done the right thing? The question was almost irrelevant. They had done the
only
thing. The tragedy was how much their actions had cost. But how bravely he had borne it. He had always been much more determined than she was, much less concerned with the personal consequences.
    Such consequences …
    She doubted she would ever take another lover, not at the age she’d reached now. She had no children and her profession meant she had few friends. (And was about to lose the most important of them, in all probability.) In such circumstances, she was likely to die alone. But at least Alan had not. She had been with him through the worst of his illness and poor dear Henry had been with him at the end. All exactly according to plan.
    She realised suddenly someone was speaking to her and turned to find the Chief Embalmer by her side. ‘I’m sorry – my mind was elsewhere.’
    ‘The pose, Painted Lady?’ the woman asked her. She wore the expression of professional sympathy that was an embalmer’s stock-in-trade.
    Cynthia looked at her blankly. ‘What are you asking me?’
    ‘For the memorial,’ the woman prompted. ‘I understood you wished to select the pose.’
    Ah, the memorial! She fancied