Tarnished (26 page)

This once,
I read, my lips moving,
I shall skim the bounds of propriety and direct you to Whitechapel Station. Tick tock, Miss St. Croix.

“Geraniums,” Fanny said after a moment’s thought. “Nutmeg geraniums, unless I miss my guess.” She hesitated. “I don’t recall this one.”

The trains stop for no woman. Yours faithfully.

There was no name. My fingers tightened on the card, bending the edges.

“Cherry?”

I looked up.

“The geraniums,” Teddy said, frowning. “They indicate an expectation of meeting. Have you made plans with some upstart?”

There didn’t have to be a name. There was no one else it
could
be. The madman must have followed me to the Menagerie. Someone must have let slip about my hair, perhaps followed me and Zylphia home.

I didn’t know how it got out, but it seemed my secrets were destined for revelation.

The bastard had all but demanded I accost him.

I rose. Teddy stood abruptly, alarm written clear as day over his sharp features. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Cherry?” Fanny asked, her own voice reflecting the worry I couldn’t do anything to salve.

Teddy caught my arm. “Cherry, what is going on? You’ve been acting awfully—”

Footsteps scurried down the hall. We all looked over as Zylphia caught herself on the door ledge, her cheeks flushed. She didn’t bother with formality of any sort. “Come quick!” she demanded.

I picked up my skirts, card and flowers crushed to the fabric, and pursued Zylphia to the kitchen. The man who waited there did so uncomfortably, his cap in his hands and his plain, undecorated coat still on. He was a tall man, given to breadth and uniquely suited to his employ as a blacksmith’s journeyman. Soot stained his hands, had settled into his pores from a lifetime of work, but he loved his wife.

“John,” I greeted, as worry clawed at me. “Is something the matter?”

He bowed awkwardly, that somewhat clumsy bob of one not quite sure of the correct mode to address a lady of any standing. I had met Betsy’s husband only once, and I had no call to be calling him by his Christian name, but damn propriety.

“I’m sorry t’be botherin’ ye fine folks,” he stammered uneasily, his thick Scottish brogue strained.

I waved that away.

His eyes widened, and I realized I’d swiped a mass of flowers in his direction. I tossed them to the table. Petals scattered. “What’s wrong, Mr. Phillips?” I pressed. “Is Betsy all right?”

And then I saw it. The flicker; a wince. “I was hopin’ t’be askin’ ye th’ same, miss.” John clutched his cap tighter, all but folded in his work-chapped hands. “She didna come home last night, like she does. I thought maybe ye’d kept her over . . .” His voice trailed away as his gaze flicked to three sets of suddenly worried faces.

Teddy looked confused.

“She’s na here?” John asked.

A wealth of pain, of heart-stopping fear rested in that single question.

“She left for home last night,” Zylphia said softly.

John’s shoulders sagged. “God help me.”

My hands shaking, I smoothed out the card. The brown ink blurred.
We look forward to your prompt perception
 . . .

My gaze fell on the nosegay. The roses gleamed like blood against the white flowers. Sympathy. Blood on the snow. There was no snow in London, but there were places where the fog was so thick, it was akin to walking through a blizzard.

The trains stop for no woman.

Whitechapel lay in the very heart of such a place.

Dear God in heaven. “I have to go,” I said suddenly.

“Wait just a bloody minute,” Teddy said, but I shook off his hand and sprinted for the door.

“I’m sorry,” I called over my shoulder. “But I must ask you to leave, Teddy. I shall explain everything later!” Lie, more like.

“Cherry, wait!”

I didn’t. I didn’t dare. I had no time to waste changing, none to waste explaining. The warning was clear. It wasn’t sympathies for my debt to the Karakash Veil the rotting bastard was actually sending. It was sympathies for the death of my friend.

He had Betsy.

And it was her blood that I’d mistaken for tobacco ink.

Chapter Sixteen

Z
ylphia caught up with me halfway to the West India docks. She had enough presence of mind to bring a cloak, which she handed to me wordlessly. The hood draped over my hair, hid enough of my features that I could travel unmolested in London below.

“Go back,” I told her, pulling the cloak closely around me. I didn’t dare stop to converse.

“Not likely,” she replied, and I realized she kept one hand curved around a long shaft hidden beneath her own cloak. “The gent left, and Betsy’s man went home to wait for her, in case she returns.” Her jaw set. “She won’t, though, will she?”

“She bloody will,” I said grimly. “Zylla, go home. This one’s only after me.”

“You don’t even know who it is,” my friend said as she easily matched her longer legs to my brisk pace. “I saw that note you left. He doesn’t leave a name.”

“It’s that man who drugged me.”

“Or it’s the sweet tooth,” she pointed out. “Or it’s another bloke you’ve gone and collected in the past. Or it’s a group of them,
cherie
. You want to go down there alone?”

“Yes!”

“Well, you can’t.” She turned slightly to show the satchel over her shoulder, the like of which Fanny would take to markets. “I brought you trousers to change into, and Mr. Booth sent me with a little something extra.” She hefted the hidden shaft, distinctly rifle-shaped.

I shook my head. “No time to change.”

“There will be time on the ferry,” Zylpha said, her caramel features as intent as I imagined mine were.

My lips flattened, but I said nothing.

Although it would have been faster to take the most direct route and hire my own gondolier, I instead took the route through the West India docks. Captain Abercott was already accustomed to my comings and goings, and for the right incentive, he didn’t bother with any schedule.

Once the ferry was moving, Zylphia pushed me into the captain’s tiny hold. It smelled of old seawater and beer. I shed my voluminous skirts quickly, stepped into a pair of my own trousers and—God bless her—my collecting corset. My kid boots looked too fancy for the rest, but there was nothing to be done about it now. They’d be ruined in the damp below. I just didn’t care.

I adjusted my hood and stepped out of the cramped little room.

“Better,” Zylphia murmured as I sat beside her.

Abercott’s slitted eyes glared daggers into my back. “What did you tell him?” I asked, frowning.

“He wanted twice the fee,” Zylphia said, her gaze steady over the railing as the fog slipped up to caress the deck. It was like sinking into a stew pot, but without the heat. Thick and viscous.

“And?”

“And I told him I’d curse his bollocks blue if he so much as thought of it.”

I wanted to laugh, but there was something so serious, so steely, in the sweet’s expression that I snapped my mouth closed around it.

She glanced at me. Then away.

That was the first time that something about Zylphia made me nervous.

The captain set us down. “Thank you,” I told him.

“Hmph.”

Once on the street beyond the dock, we worked quickly to secure one of the hackneys still in service below the drift. Though the ride was jarring, it was as fast as I could possibly like.

Every minute was like a knife inching closer to my throat.

My friend’s throat.

I sprang out of the hackney the instant it slowed. Zylphia swore a vulgarity, but I couldn’t dwell on it now. My mysterious opponent wanted a meeting, he’d get his meeting.

The hackney driver cursed behind me as I spooked his horse, but Zylphia had already paid him. My sanity—or lack thereof—was not his concern.

The cloak around my shoulders seemed to get heavier with every step I took, leaching the damp from the air. The lantern hanging from the retreating hackney quickly faded to nothing behind me, leaving me standing in a miasma nearly too thick to breathe, much less see through. I hadn’t brought my fog-prevention goggles, and I cursed myself for my lack of foresight. Zylla didn’t know where I kept them, or else I hadn’t given her enough time to look.

No goggles, no respirator. I was as blind as a babe in the dark. What the devil had I intended?

“Where are we headed?” Zylphia asked behind me.

“This is a large rail yard,” I mused, squinting through my tearing vision.

“Split, then?” she asked, already sounding as if she were prepared to argue.

I glanced at her. “Split,” I agreed. “I’ve got my knives. Keep the rifle.” The Springfield officer’s rifle she carried glinted dully in the fading light as she raised it in acknowledgment.

“I’ll take the right, then,” Zylphia said, and her pale eyes narrowed as they flicked to the fog behind me. “Be careful,
cherie
. Whitechapel’s already been host to a murderous sort.”

Leather Apron. Maybe the same killer we were after. Maybe not. I nodded once, and set off into the fog, only now and again picking out details as the coal-laden stench roiled and shifted. Here the corner of a building. There a pocked and pitted sign proclaiming the site as Whitechapel Station.

My toes rammed into the raised metal bars of a railway, and I stumbled.

Whitechapel Station, although not one of my usual haunts, was not wholly unfamiliar to me. I’d been here before on occasion. Usually on the trail of a quarry. Once or twice via the railway lines.

Fortunately, the yard was quiet. I’d spent so much time in my rooms that dark had to be less than an hour away, which meant there was precious little light to spare already. I squinted against the fog, yellow black and shifting so quickly, it was like walking through a filthy blizzard.

The station took up a wide parcel of land, and nothing had been raised above it. It connected many rails to various posts throughout London below. Most of the passengers never set foot into the rail yard, and the trains didn’t run as often by night. One or two per the hour.

Which meant, for all intents and purposes, I would be alone with my opponent.

I picked my way along the rails, pushing my hood off to better see around me. Everything hung still and heavy; there was no whisper of voices, no movement. Now and again, I stepped over a rail that vibrated subtly, as if a train moved over it somewhere down the line. The distant echo of a whistle came back to me, but nothing close enough to matter.

Somewhere else, near enough that I suspected it came from a mechanism for the rail yard, steam hissed. After it spat, I heard a dull clank of metal shifting.

It was all so surreal. A fog-shrouded dreamscape comprising acres of iron-strewn land, and I was alone inside it. Seeking, straining to hear, trapped.

Bugger that for a joke.

“Betsy!” I called. The fog sucked at my voice, all but ripping it from my lungs. “Betsy, where are you?”

A wall loomed suddenly out of the mist, and I reared back. My heel came down on broken rubble, loud as grating rock could be, and I swore under my breath. This was ridiculous.

“Betsy!” I shouted, striding past the building’s grimy façade. An alley mouth yawned open beside me, filled to the brim with the same black miasma. “Elizabeth?”

Nothing. Frowning, I turned away. What if she was unconscious? Dead, already?

No. I wouldn’t let myself think it.

I pulled the cloak tighter around my shoulders and turned back to the open yard. Here and there, the shape of a silent steam engine thrust from the cloud. A smokestack, a still caboose.

It was as if I’d stepped into a train cemetery.

“Bet—”

Fabric bunched at my neck, and suddenly I was choking on my own voice as my cloak dug into my throat. Something pulled hard, yanked me back into that alley so fast that it was all I could do to lodge my fingers beneath the clasp to keep myself from strangling.

My back collided with the wall, sharp and damp, my head rebounded with enough force to make me cry out. Heart thumping, I struggled, only to grunt as rough hands seized my shoulders, my cloak, and spun me around.

This time, my chest slammed into unforgiving brick, my cheek grated against the pitted stone. A hand flattened against the back of my head, holding me still. Grinding my face against the surface.

The pain at my cheek was nothing to the sharp point digging into the small of my back.

I wasn’t the only one with knives. Unlike me, however, my opponent had already drawn his.

“I’m delighted you came,” came a low, soft-spoken voice. It was masculine, I could hear that much. Even pleasant, nonchalant, for all the knife at my back was neither. I didn’t recognize it; to be fair, it was barely a murmur.

My hands tightened against the wall, but I didn’t dare push away. I’d impale myself on the rotter’s weapon if I didn’t play the next few moments carefully. As I took a deep breath, I smelled damp grit and the choking stench of coal. No cologne or fragrance; or at least nothing strong enough over the rail-yard rot. Nothing helpful to identify my assailant.

“Good evening,” I greeted, as drolly as I could manage with my face crushed against a wall.

“Why, Miss St. Croix.” The knife shifted, and suddenly it was at my neck. The warmth of a man’s body slid in behind my back as his breath tickled my ear. “So polite.” He chuckled, and though I couldn’t see his face, I didn’t have to. Every fiber of my being hissed a wild, panicked warning.

I’d heard laughter. I was familiar with the sound. But I’d never heard anything like this.

Subtly unhinged. Mildly threatening.

Every breath of it so easy, so uncaring, as if the man uttering the sound was beyond any comprehension of human understanding.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled. “Why did you take my maid?”

For all he encroached on me, keeping me still against the alley wall, the man didn’t press. He didn’t take advantage of my position, though I knew he could. It was only the blade at my throat. The hand at the back of my head.

His words soft in my ear. “How else was I to gain your attention? Subtlety had failed spectacularly.”

“What?”

“A mad one, that professor,” the voice said gruffly, and I frowned. Why did that voice, those words seem so familiar? “They say ’e collects
bodies
.”

A smoky room. A faceless rumormonger.

I gasped. “You were in that den!”

“As were you, naughty girl,” he said, once more in his soft-spoken tone. My opponent was a chameleon, then.

“Why?” I demanded. “Who are you?”

“Which should I answer first?” The point of the knife lessened, just a touch. “I followed you to the den. You looked ridiculous, you know.”

I gritted my teeth. “Charmed,” I muttered. “If all you wanted was an introduction, you didn’t have to take my maid. The flowers were a fine start.”

“Flowers are trite and inconsequential. Hardly fitting for you.”

I flinched. “You don’t know me well enough t—”

The edge at my throat tightened, and I bit off my acidic admonishment. “More than you’d think,” my assailant whispered. “Shhh.” His breath ghosted warm and damp against my ear. It smelled faintly of tobacco.

I shuddered in revulsion. But because I couldn’t help anyone with my throat slit, I fell silent.

When day turned to night in London below, even in areas where there was nothing but fog and sky above, the light faded suddenly. Rapidly. Even as I stared out at the murky fog, I recognized the subtle changes in the color of the gloom.

I was running out of time. Soon, it’d be full dark. I had to find Betsy first.

All I heard was the rapid beat of my own heart. The faint, almost obscured sound of wheels grating on rusted rails and the constant hiss and
whoosh
of steam traps venting to the open air.

I shifted my shoulders. “I don’t hear—”

“Tsk.”

The knife at my throat vanished, and with it, the man. I didn’t push off the wall, I lurched hard to the side instead. Away from the alley, my stomach launching into my throat as I expected to feel several inches of razor-sharp steel sink into my back.

It didn’t come.

At the alley mouth, I spun, fog swirling around my ankles. The damp clung to my hair, forcing it into a frizz. I wiped at my cheek with the back of my arm. “Where did you go?” I demanded.

The alley remained dark and still in front of me.

I swallowed hard. The man wanted me to follow. That much was clear. But I knew what waited for unarmed women in alleys such as this.

I looked around, forcing my brain to push through the fear, the frustration. The shiny edges where the events of the night past hadn’t quite worn off.

There.
A piece of piping tucked just inside the mouth, discarded and broken at one end. It was clumsy at best, but sharp. And it afforded me much greater reach than my knives. It would do.

Quickly, I loosened the clasp and let the cloak puddle to the ground. Shivering in the immediate damp, I knelt swiftly and picked up the pipe. “Come out and face me!”