The Diabolical Miss Hyde (19 page)

That flashlamp smile. “So that's what your eyes look like.”

She arched stern brows. “Hardly the need to fling me from a landing to discover that . . . Goodness, Harley, you're bleeding!”

Griffin lay on the landing, clutching his side. His hat had rolled into a dusty corner. Blood oozed between his fingers. “Are you all right, Doctor?”

“Never mind me. What happened?” She knelt and peeled his fingers away. More blood gushed.

Griffin clenched his teeth. “The little rat stabbed me. I'm all right. Don't fuss.”

“Hush. I'm a doctor, it's my job to fuss.”

Lafayette peered over the landing's edge, sniffing the dark air. “Well, the little rat's gone now.”

“Wonderful.” Griffin tried to get up.

“Not a chance. Let me look.” Eliza eased his bloody shirt aside and poked her nose close so she could see. A glance along the flesh below his ribs: not deep, but it looked painful.

“You're growing thin, Harley,” she said brusquely as she folded a swab from her satchel over the wound and pressed his hand over it. “Hold here. You work too hard, you know,” she added without thinking, and immediately wished she hadn't. She wasn't the only one who threw herself into her work to avoid thinking about other, darker things.

“Physician, heal thyself,” muttered Griffin. “I'll live.”

“Foiled again.” Lafayette hopped onto the second ladder and started to climb. “Shall we see what our knife-happy idiot is hiding?”

Eliza glanced after him, then back. “I need to stitch this, Harley.”

“I shan't bleed to death.” Griffin waved her ahead. “Don't let him mess it up. And try not to fall off this time.”

Casually, Eliza rearranged her satchel, and when Griffin wasn't looking, she swiftly pulled out a phial of remedy and took a gulp. Warmth flushed from her belly to the top of her head. Sweat dampened her skin. She wanted to squirm, to press her legs together. How undignified.

Her stomach boiled, indignant, as if the substance wasn't welcome there. Strange. This last batch of mixture tasted different. Spicier, stronger. Had Marcellus changed the formula without telling her?

Defiant, she gulped a second mouthful, tucked the phial away, and followed Lafayette into the dark.

Cobwebs crawled over her face, dry skeletal fingers. She brushed them away, shivering.
Don't look down. Don't . . .
Another landing loomed, the ladder leading through a hole cut in wooden boards. She grabbed Lafayette's hand and let him help her to her feet.

She popped the switch on her little aether-powered electric light, and the coil buzzed and bloomed, throwing a bright ring against the dusty wall.

The landing was about ten feet square, small enough to make her swallow and shuffle away from the edge. A blanket lay heaped in the corner on a tatty straw cushion. Atop the bedding sat a dirt-smeared brown felt rabbit, one solitary ear flopping over its face, a leg and one eye missing.

Along the wall, above a splintery trestle table, stretched a row of rusted electrical levers. The hinges were coated in corrosion and dust bunnies. Electrical potential buzzed amid the faint stink of burned aether.

Someone below threw a switch somewhere, and goose pimples sprang on her arms, her hair standing on end. Her coil flickered and burned brighter, absorbing the power.

Lafayette cocked his eyebrow. “Is that thing certified?”

He knew it was. They both knew it was. Her nerves were still wound tight like a fishing reel, from the fall and from Lizzie's sudden strength. Lizzie had never forced through on her own like that before . . .

. . .
and if he looks at me like that again, I'll kick his pretty arse,
Lizzie whispered slyly.

“So arrest me,” snapped Eliza. The remedy hadn't worked. Lizzie was still right there, just beneath the surface . . .

“Perhaps I shall.” Lafayette didn't drop his sky-blue scrutiny. “There's more to you than is evident, Dr. Jekyll.”

She shivered, angry snakes still wriggling in the pit of her stomach. Her yearning was unsettling, unconscionable. To laugh like a madwoman, twirl until her skirts flew out like pinwheels, scream to “hell with it,” and just
change
. . .

“Oh, I don't think so, Captain,” she said lightly. “You give me too much credit. I'm insufferably dull when you get to know me.”

“Mmm. You're rather good at this, aren't you?”

“What's that?”

“Lying.” His gaze didn't drop. It burned, certain. Indefatigable. Whatever he'd meant, it wasn't an insult.

“I'm sure I don't know what you mean.”

“I'm glad you're on the side of the law. You'd make a formidable murderer.”

“Don't be ridiculous. And I'll thank you to cease your unseemly behavior, sir. You are far too forward.” She spun away, cheeks aflame. Her remedy was failing. What would she do without it? The urges would strengthen inside her, a poison vine taking root, she'd hunger and thirst and
want
until her skin burned and her blood screamed and she couldn't hold Lizzie inside any longer . . . and then . . .

And then . . . what? She couldn't go out in public, not with Lizzie about to pop out at any moment. She'd have to stay indoors. Become a recluse, like her father, his wits rotting inexorably away, going slowly mad in his laboratory while the world forgot him . . .

She sucked in a deep breath. Ridiculous. A moment of panic, that was all. She'd nearly fallen to her death. Completely understandable. She'd talk to Marcellus. He'd alter the formula, make her remedy stronger, more reliable. No need for dramatics.

In the meantime? Joking about it with Lafayette was a very bad idea.

So that's what your eyes look like,
he'd said. But whose did he mean?

“Eh? What?” She shook herself back to reality.

“I said, come look at this.” Lafayette was fingering through a pile of clutter on the trestle table. “Our Geordie's a collector.”

She peered, blinking, wishing for her spectacles, and held her light closer. Ribbons, fabric scraps, sequins, feathers . . . “Pieces from the girls' costumes?”

“And pieces of girls.” Lafayette showed her the broken-off bottom of a glass bottle. Fingernail clippings, still sporting flecks of pink paint. Locks of hair, carefully tied with string. Different colors, blondes, brunettes, a redhead. “I don't see any feet in this collection. Rather less ambitious.”

Eliza wrinkled her nose. “I can test those samples, see if any belong to Miss Pavlova. Or to Miss Ophelia, for that matter.”

She angled her light further. A shard of looking-glass sat upright on the table. Beside it, a comb, scissors, an old razor. Her shoulder brushed Lafayette's coat, and inside her, warm shadows stirred and sighed . . .

She jerked back. He'd see her. Smell her, with that sensitive nose of his . . .

“Vanity?” she suggested calmly, though her pulse skipped.

“Lysander's wife said he was a good-looking boy. It could be part of his method. Ladies do such wild things for a handsome face.”

Warm steel in her palm, deft artist's fingers on her cheek, a single drop of blood. “Let me show you . . .”

“Do they?” she asked tightly. “I'm sure I wouldn't be so foolish.”

His smile twinkled. “Don't shoot. I surrender.”

She flicked dust from pressed flowers, ribbons, old makeup pots scraped clean. “So what do you make of this jumble?”

He ruffled his chestnut hair. “Treasure.”

“Hmm?”

“Everyone has keepsakes. Trivial things that mean the world. Pitiful, isn't it? A man reduced to locks of hair and nail clippings.”

“That sounds like the observation of experience, Captain.” She flipped casually through the items with her tweezers. “Were you truly a detective in India? Or did you invent that to impress Underwood?”

He laughed. “Nothing so fascinating. I was a hunter. Disappointingly commonplace.”

“What, no romantic tales of dashing piratical exploits? One immediately suspects you of hiding something.”

“Maybe I'm just being mysterious and seductive.”

“Mmm. Half a victory to you, then. You've piqued my curiosity, at least. I imagine you stalking through the jungle wearing a safari suit and pith helmet, brandishing muskets and blunderbusses and taking pot-shots at anything that twitches. A hunter of what, pray? Tigers and nabobs?”

He measured her, a piercing probe of blue. “Of treasure, at first,” he conceded. “The conventional kind. Gold and silver, lost cities, the overflowing jewel chests of despots and thieves.” He made a mock bow. “Captain Lafayette of the East India Company, seeker of fame and fortune in darkest Bengal, scourge of villains and honest men both.”

“Now
that
I can believe.”

“Everyone's young and stupid once.” He poked at a dried
rose pinned to the wall, agitated, as if he were compelled to speak. “As I said: commonplace. Then the Rebellion happened, and overnight our happy little slave colony exploded into a lawless zoo. Enter Captain Lafayette, bounty-hunter.”

Rebellion,
he'd said. Not
mutiny
. “And then what? Why return to England?”

He rubbed his wrist, that odd silver-sealed bracelet she'd noticed the first time they met glinting in her lamp's light. Was it a memento? A lucky talisman? How unscientific.

“Wanted men hide in evil places,” he explained. “Bloodthirsty holes where the demons that devour us are made real. I encountered things I'd never believed existed. It . . . changed me.”

Well,
that
was obvious. She'd already met two Lafayettes, the flirt and the fighter. If she dug deeper—slid under his skin, slow and careful like a warm needle—would she discover another?

“For the better, I trust.”

He shrugged. “If you wallow in filth long enough, it stops washing off. I'd seen enough. I had to leave.”

His tone clanged, a tell-tale discord of untruth, and the compulsion to pry itched like a growth in her belly.
The very devil in scarlet.
Lizzie's whisper drifted back to her, colored afresh with rosy intrigue . . . and on its heels, Mr. Todd in Bethlem, watching Lafayette with that mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
Hello, shadow.

She shivered, a ghostly chill shifting on the air. She should let it alone. Before she exposed things best left buried . . .

“And now you hunt heretics for the Royal? An odd career choice, for a man who believes in demons.”

“I believe in what I can see, madam. Believe me, some creatures deserve to be hunted.” Lafayette poked at a jar of dried black greasepaint and wrinkled his nose. “Well, if this is our love-letter killer, I don't see any ink or paper. Or books, for that matter.”

Subject closed, then. “According to Underwood, Geordie's illiterate,” she offered. “So whence the letters?”

“Perhaps he pays a scribe to write his awful poetry for him.”

She glanced around the dirt-smudged loft, weary. Her head was beginning to ache, what with no spectacles, no food, the strange-tasting remedy . . . “With what, dust bunnies? How much do you think Underwood pays a live-in rafter-monkey?”

“Likely nothing at all. How shrewd of you.”

“And I see no weapons or tools. No knives or bayonets. Nothing that could have made those curious electrical burns at the scenes, either.”

“Another fascinating observation. Congratulations.”

Her head swam, and her throat felt coated in hot spice. “You don't believe Geordie has anything to do with this, do you?”

“No, madam, I do not. Assumptions make idiots of us all.”

“Despite the robe of devil's advocate that you seem to have slipped on in the last two minutes.”

He curled a severed lock of yellow hair around one fingertip. “I don't have a scientific explanation for you, Doctor. It just doesn't smell right. I don't scent murder here.”

Another wave of faintness. Her stomach burned distantly, a sure sign her need was gathering pace, and like a shedding snake's, her skin rippled. She wanted to writhe, scratch at it,
peel it off, make the horrid sensation stop. Sprint for home, break open her secret cabinet and gush that warm bitter elixir down her throat . . .

She fought to steady her breath, quell her rising panic. She needed to see Marcellus. Now.

But she couldn't leave. Not until the evidence was examined. Until she ensured Lafayette couldn't follow her. “You can scent murder?” she said lightly. “How quaint. If only investigations were always so simple.”

“They are, after a fashion. I've known compulsive killers in my time. Men with monsters inside them.”

“Creatures that deserve to be hunted?” Things like Mr. Todd, or Billy the Bastard.

Things like me . . .

A dark smile. “Precisely. They come in two types. Either they cover their tracks immaculately, like our Chopper friend, and you get not a whiff of them until they strike again . . .”

That's what you've come for, isn't it?
whispered Todd in her memory.
To dance with my shadow?

“Or,” added Lafayette, “you find them at the end of a short but lurid trail of gore. Sometimes, they're even standing over the corpse, drenched in terror and blood and wondering what in the world just happened. Which group do you think Master Glocky-Stick here would fall into?”

Eliza picked up the brown plush rabbit and tweaked its nose. Its single ear flopped. “A simple lad who sleeps with toys,” she mused. Her palms left damp marks on the worn velveteen. “It does seem unlikely. Still, I'll match the samples. One never knows.” She popped the rabbit back on the cushion and tugged a paper bag from her satchel to collect the hair.

“Aren't you supposed to wear gloves when you do that?”

She dropped the locks into the bag. “It's the size and shape of the hairs that concern me here, not any other substances that might be present. One day, perhaps, it will be possible to lift finger marks from surfaces and identify the person who left them. They're unique to the individual, you know. But not yet.”