Tarnished (32 page)

“I found you outside the tunnel, feverish and out of your mind. I took you to Cage,” she added. “You weren’t wholly unconscious, but I think it wasn’t as . . . difficult as your first bout with the magic.”

This time, I did stop. I stared at her, my fingers aching with the strength of my hold on the velvet cloak. “It’s not magic,” I said flatly.

Her lovely blue eyes shifted. “I’m only—”

“It’s not magic, Zylphia,” I repeated, aware that I sounded like a stubborn child. But I couldn’t call it magic. I couldn’t. Science, chemicals, even
alchemy
was more tolerable than faith or magic or monsters.

Monsters were people. Not magicians.

“Fine,” she said softly, but I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. She had a heritage, too, didn’t she? The Veil had said so. “Whatever happened, you vanished in that tunnel. I don’t know how you got out, either.”

This, I could cope with. “When you found me,” I said slowly, “was there . . . anyone about?”

She reached into her sleeve and withdrew a long, thin blade. Nearly a straight razor, but for the hilt. “This pinned your hair to the ground.”

Reflexively, my hands went to my head.

Zylphia caught them, her eyes flashing a warning as she pressed the knife into my palm. “Don’t go fussing in plain view. You lost some, but a little resourceful styling won’t show it.”

I looked down at the knife. Studied its keen edge and blood-flecked hilt. I traced it with my thumb, studied the dried flakes it left behind.

Not just a bounty, after all.
My arms spasmed.

I remembered. The sweet tooth. He was a collector, like me.

But a killer, unlike me. It came back, thick as treacle. Slowly. Sticky and muddled, but I . . . I’d watched him . . .

“Cherry?”

“He killed him,” I whispered.

Zylphia said nothing.

I looked up, met her forthright stare. To my shame, my eyes filled with tears. Exhausted, angry, helpless tears. I could feel my face reddening even as I fought back the inescapable urge to cry. “The professor is dead,” I managed tightly. “Woolsey is dead for sure, now.”

Woolsey, who was St. Croix in disguise. I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t even frame the words.

She flinched, and curled an arm around my shoulders. Gently, as cautiously as if I were a lost child, she guided me toward the West India docks. “There’s other days to catch the sweet tooth, love. You’ll get your revenge.”

Would I? As I allowed my spying friend to make the sky ferry arrangements, as I sat quietly and watched the fog thin from the bow of the
Scarlet Philosopher
, I wondered if it were my vengeance I owed the collector.

Or my gratitude.

I
t took me three days to find my feet once more. I spent a majority of the time in my bed, mulling over the incident below the drift. Slowly, strained through the frenetic whisper of my own thoughts and the outrageous dreams that plagued me by night, I threaded some of my memories together.

But I wanted
answers
.

I knew that the compound given me had been opium and aether. But it was likely distilled with other things I wasn’t sure of. If aether was found in all things, I reasoned, then perhaps it wasn’t that far off to speculate that it was an
indicator
of life. Perhaps there was no aether in
dead
things.

But a rock was dead, wasn’t it?

I ignored that for the time being. If aether, in fact, was already in a living thing, and my father’s—I couldn’t bring myself to so coldly call him my father while speculating about his attempted murder of me, his only child. Right, then. If Abraham St. Croix’s intent was to replace
me
with Josephine, but in my own body, then he’d need to force me out—how strange was it to talk of my own self like a box?—and ensure that the transfer didn’t damage my body.

Thus, perhaps he utilized the opium to weaken my resolve, and aether to fill my anatomy so full with . . . well, with
life
that any damage sustained would be repaired by the . . . the what? The drug? The compound?

How would I even go about testing this theory?

And then I caught myself thinking of the words
test
and
experiment
and curled up in my bed with the pillows over my head until I remembered how to think like a human again.

I couldn’t possibly test these theories. Not without severe loss of human life. And soul.

I was not my father’s daughter. I simply wasn’t.

Yet no matter how calmly, rationally,
logically
I could think during the day, every night plagued me with dreams. I’d never seen the like. Black- and white-winged angels fought for territory inside a dungeon jammed with blue lightning. I heard my father’s laugh, and it changed as I chased it down eternal hallways covered from wall to ceiling with Oriental carpets and jade figurines.

I drank more laudanum those nights than I had the entirety of the past fortnight, and I told myself that it was only to help with the after-effects of the . . .
incident.

I think even then, I knew it for the lie it was.

I’d given all of my staff a terrible scare. I recognized the scars my adventures left when my maid gave her notice. Through a film of tears, she curled and combed and pinned my hair and explained that she’d decided to resign from her post.

“I’m going home with John,” she told me, her fingers trembling against my neck. Her eyes were filled with worry beneath a fading bruise across her brow. “To Scotland. His family has land there, and there’s always work for a blacksmith and trained lady’s maid.”

I reached up and covered her hands with mine. “I understand,” I whispered. My maid, my friend, had a life of her own to lead. I’d scared her, and badly. I couldn’t drag her into any more danger. Not when she had her own family to worry for.

And as long as she lived out in the country, she’d be out of the mysterious collector’s reach.

I made certain to speak with Mrs. Booth about generous severance pay.

When I surfaced at the breakfast table, nobody spoke of anything untoward. The newspaper waited by my tray and Booth’s
step-thunk, step-thunk
once more punctuated Fanny’s brisk recitation of the week’s schedule. We’d missed the appointment at Madame Toulouse’s.

Teddy had been by twice, apparently. I’d been asleep for both, but he’d left cards, each with a threat of hurt feelings and worry scrawled on the back. I’d have to reach out to him, soon.

I still wasn’t sure what I was going to tell him.

There were no letters from Lord Compton. With the earl’s abrupt absence, the invites to my door stopped abruptly. It worried Fanny, I could see that; she was disappointed, concerned for my well-being, and I think that she quite enjoyed her taste of what Society life could have been to her. Worse, with the halt of invites to my door came the ceasing of invites from the other Society chaperones and mothers.

She said nothing, of course, but I knew Fanny. Society could be hurtful. For all that it provided protection of a sort, a foundation of care, it could also be cruel and unkind. I understood that the marchioness hated me—or, more like, my dead mother
through
me—but it bothered me that it affected Fanny so. I didn’t know how to help.

So we pretended that nothing at all was awry.

Amid the usual articles of interest in my morning reading, there were gossip columns that spoke of me in thinly disguised references that would fool no one. I began to read them, for all they caused my teeth to grind and head to ache. If there were any hints of my true behaviors, I would need to know. But as I scanned them, there was only rampant speculation that I’d lost favor with the earl entirely, and was considered, quite firmly,
no longer the thing
.

The marchioness and her L.A.M.B. society were certain to be dancing a jig over it.

I wondered where the earl had gone so suddenly. Why he’d left no word. Had I done something to offend? Did it matter?

No. Perhaps it was better that Lord Compton tend to his own affairs. Between whatever issues might linger with his brother, his potential problems with opium—as if I were one to judge—and the demands if his mother, I told myself it was best that he remain out of my rather complicated life. With his lessened attendance, it was as if my logical thoughts once more placed him squarely under a category of simple acquaintance.

If only I’d stop dreaming of him.

Oh, who was I fooling? If only I stopped dreaming
at all
.

I skimmed over the periodicals at the table, making all the appropriate sounds as I nibbled on toast and jam. Among the bold, black headlines, I found an article detailing the failed theft of the H.M.S
. Ophelia
from her own dock. It earned a passing chuckle, and a brief flurry of patriotic blarney from Booth. “Mark you,” he rumbled as I tried to muffle my amusement against the rim of my teacup. “Any thieves get it in their heads to take what belongs to Her Majesty had best reconsider, hup!”

“I certainly couldn’t agree more,” I murmured, desperately avoiding meeting Fanny’s narrow-eyed censure.

“Why, when I was in the service, not a pirate around would dare show so much as an eyebrow,” he told me seriously. “Mind, we were armed to the teeth at all times. Different times, then.”

“Of course,” I murmured, forcing myself not to laugh as he took his genteel indignation back to the kitchens. Sometimes, I wondered at Booth’s memory of his “infantry days.”

“Pirates.” Fanny sniffed. “Cherry, really.”

“I still would like to attend the christening,” I told her. “This article says it’s in a month.”

“Perhaps.”

It was almost . . .
normal.

Almost. I didn’t explain what I’d learned in that laboratory below the river. How could I? What could possibly make less sense? My father had abandoned me to a life of petty crime and exploitation, taken on the identity of a man he’d once known, opened an exhibit to better fuel his experiments on my mother’s corpse, murdered himself in the eyes of the public, and then tried to kill me, too.

Impossible. It was up to me to carry this burden alone.

Well, almost alone. In too few days, Betsy would be gone, but Zylphia was already taking her place. I saw little enough of her while Betsy taught her what duties she’d be expected to fulfill, but as dark once more fell over London and I prepared myself to go below, it was Zylphia that helped me with my hair.

Was it terribly sad that she was the closest thing I had to a confidant? I knew that she had to be reporting at least some of my movements to the Karakash Veil. I hadn’t told her everything about the laboratory below for that very reason. I didn’t trust her not to try to retrieve the cameo with its alchemical secret herself.

But I told her just enough to make me feel better, enough to work through some of the details I still found difficult to recall. Like the whereabouts of that damned laboratory.

Hawke had claimed there was no such thing in the tunnel. I hadn’t quite found the courage to check myself.

I would have to. Soon.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” she asked, meeting my eyes in the mirror.

I wasn’t. But I’d rather shave my head bald than admit it. “It’s just a collection,” I reassured her, surprised by how easy the words came. “Regardless of circumstance, I failed. Until I locate the alchemical serum”—which I swore upside and down I’d
never
let the Veil claim—“or pay off my debt, I can’t afford to stop now.”

“I don’t like it,” she told me, tucking the end of my braid up into a tight knot. This, I think, would hold through anything.

But she didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to. As she tossed the ladder over the sill and threw her leg over the edge, she shot me a look over her shoulder that told me she was as aware of my position as she was of her own. Both of us, indebted. Owned, really.

We shimmied down the ladder and moved quickly to the docks. I let Zylphia finagle Captain Abercott; she had a way with him that surpassed even his irritated bluster.

I left her waiting at the usual corner where I would meet Ishmael, unwilling to take a noncollector to the offices. Part of me worried that she’d get it in her head to try her hand at collecting.

The rest of me still didn’t wholly trust her.

I moved as hastily as I could, keeping to the shadows and the dark paths well away from any of the guttering gas lamps, but I admit that my hackles prickled the whole time. I couldn’t shake the feeling, the paranoia, of being watched. Which was ridiculous. No longer content to assume I was untouchable, I backtracked so often, rounded back around on my own trail so convolutedly that I was
sure
no one could follow.

But the events past had left me . . . jumpy.

No longer quite so arrogant.