The stench is unbearable. Like sewers and rotting fish.

“How is this worse than being accosted by pirates?” you ask, as you follow Pride away from the stinking river, narrowly avoiding a rolling barrel.

“Watch it!” a man yells at you.

You apologise, moving closer to Pride. You’re in the heart of a busy dock, where small boats ferry cargo and passengers ashore from huge sailing ships.

Everyone is yelling. Men are dangling from winches in the open upper floors of warehouses, directing those below. Yet more men crowbar crates open to examine the contents—vibrant silk as far as you can tell—before nailing them shut again.

You wonder idly if any of these barrels are full of rum since you’ve developed a bit of a taste for the flavour, though not its effects, but you’re distracted from your thoughts by the sight of a tarpaulin laid out on the warehouse floor, piled high with tusks.

It doesn’t get much quieter even as you move away from the dock. The narrow streets are swarming with carts displaying all kinds of wares, including stacks of crockery. Who thought wheeling crockery across cobbles was a good idea?

“Why are we still not back?” you ask.

Pride shakes his head. “This is a real problem. I need to…” His gaze darts around, peering from one yelling street vendor to another. “Wait here. Do not move from this spot.”

You stand beneath a shop’s awning, hoping the deep shadows will make you invisible, and glance quickly at your clothes. Victorian, you’re certain. Decent, but not too fancy. Kane should’ve put a spell on Pride’s clothes too. The man sticks out wherever he goes, but nobody pays him much attention, which you find curious. Did Kane put a spell on him after all? One that helps him blend in?

Pride speaks to a man for a minute or so, then rushes back to you. “I need to get you somewhere safe while I figure out what went wrong with the portal.”

The narrow cobbled streets and cramped houses don’t look very safe to you. A black carriage sweeps by, and a haughty man sneers down at you from the window. Even his sweaty moustache looks displeased to encounter you, the thin ends drooping down over the corners of his downturned lips.

“I don’t want to be left in a strange place in… Victorian times?” you guess.

Pride bites his lip and looks sideways. “We’re back in London. That’s all I’m saying.”

“But where—”

“I have an idea. Come on.” Pride reaches for your hand, glancing up at a street sign on the edge of a building. “This way.”

“You’re sure you know where you’re going?” you ask.

“This is my old manor,” he says, dragging you along the cobbles. “That was the old London Dock behind us, and most of the street names are the same. We’re actually not all that far from Kane’s shop, so… whatever, I can’t take you there.”

“Is he there?” you ask. “Is he immortal like Cecilia?”

He stops suddenly, and you bash into his arm. “Listen, you can’t talk about her where we’re going. She… she doesn’t know yet.”

“Is she here? What is she?” you ask. “Is she a vampire?”

“I’m not answering about specific people, but yes, there are vampires here.”

You glance around as Pride drags you onwards. “Here? Like, right here, right now?”

“Most likely. We’re in the East End, which is a bit of a breeding ground, but you won’t encounter many this close to the river.”

“What else is there?” you ask. “What are you?”

“That’s classified,” he says.

“That’s what Rosemont said. He’s not a vampire, is he?”

Pride laughs, but it fizzles into a strangled groan. “No, not a vampire.”

“But he is immortal?”

“Stop asking questions.” Pride pulls you around the corner of a warehouse and across the road to a terraced house, only the top of which glows orange in the setting sun. The rest of the terrace is overshadowed by the warehouse. There’s a gigantic fern in the downstairs window, and a woman sitting beside it, eyeing you curiously.

Pride dashes up the steps and knocks on the door.

“Who lives here?” you ask, wondering who the woman is.

Before Pride can answer, the woman opens the door. “Yes?”

“Good evening,” says Pride. “We’re here to see Mr Hazard and Mr Balthazar.”

“Do you have an appointment?” she asks.

“No, but we were sent by the Duke of Rosemont,” says Pride.

“Oh. In you come, then,” she says.

You shuffle into the house after Pride, and a large plant looms at you out of nowhere, stabbing you in the eye. The plant pot wobbles on its column—Pride grabs it to avert disaster—as you try to rescue your gored eyeball.

“You may wait here,” the woman says before stomping up the stairs, her skirts fisted in one hand, while the other glides up the banister. The floor creaks overhead, and a door clicks open loudly before the woman gets a second knock in. Her voice carries. “You have two visitors. From the Home Office.”

Pride hisses. “Balls!”

“He told me he was Home Secretary once,” you whisper, blinking your furiously watering eye. “Is once now?”

Pride doesn't answer.

“Send them up, if you would,” comes a voice from upstairs.

“Right away, sir. Will you be wanting tea?”

“That would be lovely, Mrs Merrington. Thank you.”

The woman descends the stairs with a dreamy smile. “Mr Hazard will see you now. Turn right at the top of the stairs, and double-back on yourselves. You want the room at the front of the house.”

Pride thanks her, and you follow him upstairs, one hand over your eye.

A pale, flamboyant man with flowing red hair, wearing forest green velvet lounges in the doorway to the room at the front of the house. He frowns as he looks you and Pride up and down. “You’re from the Home Office?”

“Actually, we told her Rosemont sent us,” Pride says. “The rest was an assumption on her part, I’m afraid, Mr Hazard.”

The redheaded man arches one eyebrow and steps out of their way. “You had better come in, then.”

The room is brighter than you’d ever imagined a Victorian sitting room would look, with orange curtains, and uncomfortable looking furniture upholstered in various shades of peacock, from emerald to turquoise to indigo.

Another man rises from one of two twin armchairs beside the fireplace, laying his pipe on a side table.

You wrinkle your nose at the scent of pipe tobacco, though he mustn’t have lit his pipe long ago because the air in the room is clear.

“This is my associate, Mr Balthazar,” Mr Hazard says, waving a hand towards the Chinese man who looks both inconvenienced and barely awake.

Pride returns Mr Balthazar’s nod. “You might want to sit back down. Both of you.”

Mr Hazard’s mouth drops open in alarm. “Has something happened to—”

Pride raises a hand to stall him. “Nothing like that, I promise.”

The two men drop into their chairs by the fire, Hazard waving vaguely towards a blue settee with spindly legs that looks like it might buckle under the pressure of Pride’s enormous frame. You sit anyway, and the settee gives a creak when Pride adds his weight to the equation.

You wonder how Pride’s going to get the pair of you out of this one. What wondrous story he’ll come up with to explain your predicament.

“The truth is…” Pride begins. “We’ve met before. I know you as Uriel and Bel.”

“I think I’d remember that,” Hazard says with a smile that you think is supposed to be either charming or flirtatious.

“I also know three of your sons,” says Pride. “Gethin, War—”

“No!” Hazard holds up his hand.

“Yes, I know. You don’t talk about him.”

Hazard and Balthazar share a look.

“What do you mean three of my sons?” Hazard says. “I only have three sons.”

“Shit!” Pride mutters. “Alright, this is the part that I wouldn’t believe myself if I weren’t living through it. How much do you know about the artefacts Rosemont confiscates in the name of… Heaven’s Fury?” he finishes off in a whisper.

“Never heard of it,” says Balthazar.

“Bel, I think the jig is up,” Hazard says before returning his gaze to Pride. “What are you getting at?”

“We have an object that allows us to translocate from one place to another,” Pride explains.

Again a look passes between your two hosts.

“The problem is, it’s not working as it should.” Pride pulls the floppy frisbee out of your bum-bag. “It’s not only taking us to different places, but to different times.”

“What do you mean, different times?” asks Balthazar.

The discussion is interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by the housekeeper and her tea tray, which she leaves on the table without a word.

“Thank you, Mrs Merrington,” your hosts echo as the woman sees herself to the door.

As soon as it’s closed, Uriel leaps from his chair and presses his ear to the door. “She’s going downstairs,” he whispers, then heads to the table to pour the tea. “She can be dreadfully nosey.”

When everyone is settled with their teacups, Bel says, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“We’re from the future,” Pride blurts.

Hazard simply frowns, but Balthazar lets out a belly laugh. “Do you take us for fools?”

“I promise we’ve met before,” says Pride.

The two men are looking at you with the same degree of suspicion they’re bestowing on Pride.

“What about you?” Balthazar asks, his eyebrows raised disdainfully. “Have we met you before?”

Your watery eye spasms when you shake your head. “Absolutely not, no. I just came along for the adventure, and the next thing I know, there’s pirates and incredibly hideous underwater fish-beasts, and now I’m stuck here. I’d rather be at home watching YouTube.”

Hazard’s face crumples in confusion. “You… tube?”

“No spoilers!” Pride cries.

“Sorry,” you say, sipping your tea carefully. You expected it to taste worse. “I just don’t want to be stuck in Victorian London. No offence, but it reeks.”

Pride turns back to Hazard and Balthazar with renewed enthusiasm and desperation to be believed. “I work with your niece, Cecilia.”

“Cecilia is just a child, and—”

“Not anymore. Though she is still a pickpocket,” Pride tells him with a smile.

Hazard puffs up proudly. “The best bloody pickpocket in the whole of London.”

“You’re prouder than you should be about that,” says Balthazar. “You’ll encourage her.”

“Nonsense. I don’t encourage her in person, but of course I’m proud.”

“Wait, you’re Cecilia’s hot uncle?” you ask, your eye twitching so profusely now, one could be forgiven for thinking you were trying to communicate in Morse code.

Pride glares at you. “Didn’t I tell you to shut it about Cecilia?”

You mime zipping your lips.

“Hot?” Hazard asks. “Well, yes, it is rather stifling now you mention it.”

“Now they mention it?” Balthazar squawks. “I’ve been mentioning it since we moved back in.”

“It’s only temporary,” Hazard promises.

“You’ve been saying that for years.”

“And I always mean it.” Hazard sips his tea. “After all, we don’t stay here all year round. But the regular folk don’t want to come out to Mayfair, Bel. They’re more comfortable when they think we’re like them.”

Balthazar blurts out a laugh, returning his newspaper to his lap. “You can’t possibly believe they think you’re one of them. Lord, brother. You are many things, but I never pegged you as thoroughly deluded.”

That’s when you realise that these two are also definitely immortal. Because Kane told you the redhead or his inexplicably Chinese brother usually bring adventurers to his shop. And you are looking at them right now.

Hazard and Balthazar.

Uriel and Bel.

You’re certain there’s a Uriel in the bible, but… no, that’s too far-fetched even for this crazy situation you’ve found yourself in. Victorians had all sorts of unusual names… like Friendless, Mineral, and Uriah. Why not Uriel?

Uriel ignores his brother’s insult, turning to Pride instead. “And you’re from the future, you say?”

“Tell me you’re not falling for this,” says Bel.

“How else could he know Cecilia?” Uriel argues.

“He could be as gifted in detective work as we are.”

“Ah, a rival?” Uriel says, as if delighted.

Pride smacks a hand to his forehead. “No, I’m not a rival. Believe me, I’m not any kind of detective. I also know your other brothers.” He casts a sideways glance at you. “Casual acquaintances.”

Bel makes a production of closing his newspaper. “Which brothers?”

“Raphael,” Pride says. “I put him in touch with some people to crew his ship. And Rosemont. He’s still… piddling about at the Home Office.”

“See, Bel?” Uriel cries. “He does know them.”

Bel still looks suspicious. “Who else?”

“I haven’t met any more of your brothers, but I know Uriel’s son very well. He runs a warehouse. An empire of warehouses, in fact.”

“And what does he keep in these warehouses?” Bel asks.

“I’m not sure I should discuss that in front of my friend here, but would you believe me if I said he houses belongings for people who need long-term storage solutions? Very long term.”

Bel sighs. “I’m not saying I believe you, but… what is it you need from us? Why are you here right now?”

“My friend needs a safe place to stay while I look into why we keep landing in the wrong time,” Pride says. “You’re the only people I know in the area.”

Uriel beams at you. “We would love to host your friend, wouldn’t we, Bel?”

Bel eyes you with more displeasure than you deserve, though not quite on par with the snooty man in the carriage. “We would be delighted.”

Pride lets out a sigh of relief. “Excellent, thank you so much.” He places his huge hands on your shoulders. “I’ll be as quick as I can, but it might take a few hours.”

“You’re going right now?” you squeak.

“No time like the present, and it’ll be dark soon. I don’t want to be working all night.”

As soon as Pride is gone, Uriel says, “Let me do something about that eye.”

Before you can respond, he shoves a wad of something cool and dark green against your eye. You stand still while the wad of slimy something cools your eye. It’s actually refreshing and… yes, your eye is starting to feel better.

“There,” Uriel says. “Better?”

You glance down at his hand, which is no longer holding whatever that soggy eye-healing goop was. “Yes,” you admit, though you don’t ask him if your eye just absorbed the gunk, because you really don't want to know.

Uriel gestures to the table by the window, which is wearing a lurid orange tablecloth to match the curtains. “Do you like pudding?”

You take a seat and nod. “I love pudding.”

Uriel doesn’t even offer any to his brother, sharing the stodgy, dark berry pudding and custard between two bowls and pushing one in front of you. He hands you a dainty spoon. The pudding tastes divine, its texture soft and moist, the berries a perfect mixture of sweet and tart, and the custard thick and creamy. You’re in heaven for all of five minutes when Uriel says, “We need to get you dressed.”

For a moment, you wonder if Kane’s spell has caused all your clothes to fall off, but no… you’re still dressed.

“Uriel!” Bel warns.

“We can’t change our plans now,” Uriel says. “Molvander is sure to be there tonight, and I don’t intend to miss him.”

You glance between Uriel and Bel. “What’s going on? Where are we going?”

“Tonight,” Uriel says dramatically, “you and I are going to catch a killer.”