One by one, the companions introduced themselves to the Doctor, leaving out the fact that they already knew exactly who he was and what role he'd played in history. John and Jack introduced themselves as Caretakers, although they didn't say what for, and Burton said he was a traveling historian, and Theo his aide-de-camp.

Oddly enough, of all of them, Burton seemed the most impressed on meeting the Doctor, although Franklin paused and blanched when he shook Theo's hand.

He greeted the young women more formally, and looked with rapt interest at Archimedes.

"And you, my fine young fellow," Doctor Franklin said, scratching Fred's head. "You must be the third Caretaker, eh?"

"He's a talking badger," said Edmund, "but I promised not to tell the magistrate."

"You weren't supposed to tell anyone," John reminded him, rubbing his temples. "You're a bit of a trial, Edmund."

"I don't mind," said Franklin. "I'm rather fond of talking animals."

"How many do you know?" asked Fred.

"You're the first one," Franklin admitted, "but I'm a good judge of character."

While Edmund showed Burton, Rose, Theo, and Laura Glue around Franklin's study, Jack and John withdrew to a corner to converse privately.

"What do you think?" asked Jack.

John's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm as impressed as you are, Jack. That's not my concern."

"It's Fred, isn't it?" asked Jack. "Franklin didn't so much as blink that a talking badger showed up in his parlor."

"If that was all it was, I'd be more relieved. What worries me is what he said to Fred about being the third Caretaker. We introduced ourselves as Caretakers-but we never said anything about whether the others may or may not be. So why assume there would be a third at all? And why go right to Fred?"

Jack pursed his lips and frowned. "Those are really good questions."

"Here's something else," John said, handing Jack one of Edmund's maps. "I recognize these."

Jack reacted with surprise. "You've seen them before?"

"Not these exact maps, but this kind of parchment, and the hand in which the map was drawn," John whispered. "It matches the map that Hank Morgan had made to return to Tamerlane House."

"Remarkable," said Jack. "We need to meet Edmund's father, I think."

"Why so reserved?" Franklin said, interrupting. "So many wonderful things to see here, and you're whispering in a corner."

"Forgive our rudeness," said John. "We didn't mean any-"

"Nonsense," Franklin said, waving his hands. "I've been talking to Burton, and he's told me you have no place to stay. Is that correct?"

"It is," said John. "We've only just arrived in London."

"As it turns out," said Franklin, "I have an entire upper floor that is completely unoccupied. I never use it-I prefer to stay down here, working. If you would consider staying as my guests, I'd be happy to have you."

It didn't take any discussion to decide to accept. "We will," said John. "Thank you, Doctor Franklin."

"Pish-tosh," he replied. "It's my pleasure."

"There's one other thing," said Fred. "How would you like to meet a few more talking animals?"

"Do tell?" said Franklin. "Another badger?"

"Not quite," Fred replied, "but the hedgehogs are pleasant enough."

Franklin laughed. "Really?" he said. "Bring them on, Caretaker Fred."

It took another two hours to move all the animals that had been at Paralon from the alley over to Franklin's house without being seen. But once they were there, John realized that they had found in Benjamin Franklin the ideal host. He was fascinated enough by the creatures to be preoccupied with them for days; and he was an unusual enough character that they believed him when he agreed to keep their confidences.

It was growing dark by the time Jack and John could persuade Edmund to take them to his father's house. As reluctant as he was to take them there, he insisted his father would be even more reluctant to discuss the family trade.

The house of Ernest McGee was at the far end of Craven Street, closer to the tumbledown homes of the ne'er-do-wells and rabble of London. It was probably significant in some way, Jack thought, that there was very little difference between the children at the poorer end of the street and those from the more well-heeled households.

Edmund seemed to be walking slower and slower the closer they got to their destination, and John realized he really was dreading this visit.

They were greeted at the door by the McGees' servant girl, a slim, clean-faced young woman named Lauren, who was not much older than Rose or Laura Glue. It was obvious she was responsible for maintaining the entire household. Ernest greeted them in the drawing room, flashing a brief smile when he saw his son, which was replaced with a scowl when Edmund explained why they wanted to speak with him. It didn't take very long at all for the discussion to turn rancorous and short.

"I don't have the skill my father had, and not even he could keep up with old Elijah," Ernest spat, making no effort to conceal the bitterness in his voice. "What does it matter, anyway? The age of piracy is over. Not even the privateers are called upon any longer, so of what use is a mapmaker to pirates?"

"There are other uses for a mapmaker," Jack said softly, "than to work as an errand boy for pirates."

Ernest wheeled about in a fury, ready to unleash venom in response to the insult-but when he saw Jack's face, he understood. It was not an insult. It was a respectful call to action.

Ernest set his jaw and considered whether to say anything, then turned away. He used a bell to summon Lauren, and when she appeared he murmured a few words to her, then dismissed her. She returned a few minutes later with a tray of tea and cakes. Ernest McGee might not have liked the reason his guests were there, but he was still going to treat them as guests.

"It's been more than two decades since my father died," he said at last when they'd drunk the tea and eaten the cakes, "and almost ten years since I compiled that cursed atlas." He gestured at the workbench near the corner. "The Pyratlas, they called it. It was to be a complete assemblage of three generations of McGee family maps, bearing all the secrets of the pirates."

"And yet you forbade your own son from following in your footsteps," said John. "Why is that?"

"I forbade it," Ernest continued, drawing resolve from well-worn arguments, "because mapmaking has already consumed too many decades of my life, and I'll not see it destroy his."

"It didn't destroy your father, or his," Jack replied. "They were the best in the world, according to Edmund."

Ernest responded to the compliment with a half smile, appreciating the effort, even if Jack was exaggerating the truth. "We were silversmiths," he said, shaking his head as if he were recalling another life, or a half-remembered dream. "My grandfather was one of the most renowned in the world in his trade, before he became a mapmaker to pirates. He passed along the craft of silverwork to my father out of a sense of tradition more than anything else, which ended up being arbitrary anyway. My father was the one who fully embraced the family calling, as he referred to it, and we have been nothing but mapmakers ever since. At times I've thought we ought to just throw in entirely and become pirates. It would not have changed our lives overmuch had we done so."

"Forgive my noticing," Jack said, looking around at the well-appointed room, which would have been more in place in a house at the other end of the street, "but being mapmakers to pirates seems to have benefited you rather handsomely."

"You think I'm ungrateful, don't you?" Ernest retorted. "Well, perhaps I am. There has always been enough-more than enough-money for my family to do as we pleased. But I think that would have also been the case had we remained silversmiths...." His voice trailed off as he stood at the window, staring out into the street.

"If only Elijah had never started," Ernest said at last, "if only that pirate, Morgan, had never taught him the craft, our lives might have been very different."

"Morgan?" John and Jack exclaimed together.

"Which Morgan?" asked Jack.

Ernest turned to them in surprise. "I thought you would have known," he said. "The pirate governor, Henry Morgan, was the man who first recruited Elijah to be a mapmaker, and he taught him how to do it besides. Everything that's happened to my family started with him."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The Pirate's Biographer

The best thing about being a magician, Houdini had decided long ago, was that people believed that magicians could do anything. Which, in point of fact, was not too far removed from the truth where he was concerned. No cell could hold him, no locks could bind him. He could not be drowned, or burned, or sliced in two.

He could make anything disappear, given proper preparation, from a mouse to a freight train. And he could dazzle a crowd with nothing but a handful of ordinary household items and his rolled-up shirtsleeves.

He was a showman, no doubt. And his life was the stage. But when he met and befriended Arthur Conan Doyle, another aspect took hold and soon became the force that motivated everything he did.

Sir Arthur believed in an ethereal world of spirit, where magic was commonplace and the dead communicated with the living. Harry believed that magic was the result of skill and hard labor, and that the world of spirit was the realm of tricksters and charlatans. And he never believed in the ability to communicate with the dead until he became dead himself.

Harry had often promised his wife that if there was some means of communicating with her from the great beyond, he would. What she didn't expect was for him to actually turn up at her door, flowers in hand, still young and in his prime, in the company of his dead friend, the writer of detective stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

She declared him a fake and a fraud and threw him out. For years after, she still dutifully held a seance on his birthday, in the belief that the real Harry would somehow contact her.

Since then, he had thrown himself into his new calling: going about the business of the world, trying to save all of history, partnered with his friend who had embraced this new life to become that which he admired most-a Detective. But as for Harry, dead or alive, he remained what he always had been, a showman.

"What do you think, Arthur?" Houdini asked as they passed Trafalgar Square. "Is this a rational plan of action, or sheer madness?"

"All the best plans are always slightly mad," Doyle replied, "but I think the only way the Caretakers are going to sort this out is if we give them a hand."

Houdini chuckled. "They always underestimated us as Caretakers, and Burton wasn't much better," he said, nicking a couple of apricots from a nearly stand, then paying the vendor with a penny from his own till. "They're good about practical matters, but they just don't have any sense of style. Except maybe for the badger. He shows promise."

"Rose, too," Doyle said, taking one of the apricots, "as long as she is allowed to have her own head about things. She's growing up faster than any of them realize."

"If we don't figure out how to reattach her shadow soon, she may grow up faster than anyone is ready for," Houdini replied.

"Don't I know it," said Doyle.

"Over here, this way," Houdini said, pointing. "There's a street where there are horses and carriages, and it's smoky and noisy. That means blacksmith shops."

"It's as I've always said, Harry," Doyle mused. "These Caretakers lack focus. Always, they lack focus. Oh, a few of them have vision-but they're never going to be able to see anything through while they're stuck in that gallery, or arguing all the time."

"I completely agree," Houdini answered as he finished the apricot. He dropped the pit into the tin cup of a match girl and waved his hand over the cup. A shoot of green sprouted up from the pit, and in a few moments it was a miniature tree, full of leaves and bearing fruit of its own.

"They're so preoccupied with having come through the doorway," he continued, "that they've completely forgotten the most important thing ...

"... who it was who came through the door last."

The visit with Ernest McGee ended cordially enough, with John and Jack thanking him graciously for his time and trouble, and Ernest agreeing, somewhat reluctantly, to meet with them again. The revelation that Hank Morgan had been Elijah McGee's teacher was too significant not to share with the others-but they did not yet know enough about this family of mapmakers to speak of it openly in front of them.

Lauren saw them to the door, pausing a moment longer than was needed to say good-bye to Edmund, who was returning with them to Franklin's house.

"I still have some work to do," he explained. "I was supposed to finish earlier, but it was too good a day to waste being indoors, and not flying kites."

At Franklin's door, they found Theo waiting for them outside. He asked to speak with Jack privately, and so John and Edmund went inside, leaving the others to talk.

"I have felt our enemy," Theo said quietly. "The Echthros followed us through the door. It's here, with us, now."

Jack looked around, his hackles rising with panic. "Here? On Craven Street?"

Theo nodded. "I have felt its presence at the edges of my mind since we arrived, but I have only just decided that it was a certainty."

"Is it going to attack us like it did the ship?" Jack asked, scanning the sky above, which was sparsely dotted with clouds. "Or will it attack us more directly?"

"The Echthroi corrupt and subvert," he replied. "This one's goal was to stop us, and at the Frontier that meant stopping the ship. At Paralon it tried to summon its allies. Here I do not yet know what it intends-but we must be alert."

"Could it be the star?" Jack suggested. "Rao? The animals said it had become a Lloigor."

"No," Theo said. "Not the Lloigor from the Archipelago. The Echthros-the same that has followed us all along."

"Should we discuss it with the others?" asked Jack. "Warn them?"

"No, not yet," Theo replied. "The Echthros can take any shape, appear to be anyone. It may have already done so."

"Great," Jack groaned. "So how do I know you aren't the Echthroi-Echthros?"

"If I were, you would already be dead."

"If we do discover our enemy, what then?"

"I have a way to control it," Theo replied, "so that we may escape."

"Escape to where? We've been in the Archipelago, and we've gone back in time. Where else can we go?"

The End of Time pondered this. "You are right," he admitted. "We can't hide. So we must be successful, or perish."

The night passed uneventfully, which was a blessing to the companions, who had had more than enough of commotion and chaos in the last few days. Better than just settling in, the animals had proved to be amazingly compatible with Doctor Franklin and had, in a single evening, reorganized his entire library.

"I can't find a single thing!" Franklin said, beaming. "It's glorious."

He was a gracious host and had asked Edmund for the loan of the McGee's maid to help prepare breakfast. The flapjacks went over extremely well with everyone, as did the fresh bread and fruit, but there was a minor diplomatic incident when Lauren lifted the cover on a platter of sliced ham.

The foxes were all for it, but the hedgehogs threw a fit and threatened to have a public protest. It didn't help matters when the ferret started quoting a book on cross-species ethics that had been written by Fred's grandfather.

Eventually everything settled back to a dull roar, and the animals went back to work while the others set about planning their day.