“You seek this other man, this murderer.” The Veil did not deign to answer me directly, which was all the answer I required. “The sweets call him a sweet tooth, we understand. Quaint, though unlikely he has ever partaken of our gardens with honest coin.”
It mirrored closely the certainty Hawke had once given me; an assurance that Leather Apron, the murderer who called himself Jack the Ripper, had never given the Menagerie coin.
They were two separate men, I was utterly sure. The sweet tooth had called the Ripper a talentless lout, eager for attention.
A bit of professional rivalry, maybe. It didn’t matter. A murderer’s pride was less than worthless, and the reference to “honest coin” had to be let go in deference to my complicated situation.
The Veil allowed the silence to linger as I stared at the gleaming floor. It wasn’t until I winced that I realized I’d bitten the soft part of my lip, so lost in my concerns was I.
I looked up. “I will bring him to the Menagerie.”
“Yes. You were hired, were you not?” By Zylphia, which the Veil had already known. The girl had been whipped for the temerity of hiring her own collector. “Yet, Zylphia belongs to us, and we can revoke the collection order.”
Panic drove me to take a step. “No!” I did not need to see them to know the men had moved. I flung one arm wide, to show I meant no further transgression. No hands seized at me. Quickly, I continued, “Please. This man, this sweet tooth, he was there with the professor.”
A pause. “Explain.”
“If I can locate him, he’ll have more secrets.” I didn’t know for sure. From what he’d told me in that dark, terrifying night, he’d only been the professor’s killing hand, collecting the healthier organs from the sweets for the my father’s use. I did not have to elucidate that much to the Veil, however. “I have been trying to locate him for near a month.”
“It seems, Miss Black, that he located you.”
“Yes.” It took effort not to let the fury of that statement fill my voice; it ate at my consciousness like a plague, fed the ache in my throat and made it harder to breathe.
I dared not let on. Staring instead at the crimson silk, I stopped just short of pleading. “I ask that you allow me to pursue this man and deliver him here.”
Another pause, a thoughtful silence. Only the crackle of fire filled it, and the humming intensity of raging need—of burning revenge—filling my ears.
I had said “please.” There was no greater clue I could have given as to the strength of my need.
Finally, the Veil sighed, this time in thinly masked exasperation. “You are given one more opportunity, Miss Black.” Before I could echo his put-upon exhalation with my own sigh of relief, he added shortly, “Yet it comes with strings.”
I shook my head. “I am already bound.”
“Not carefully enough, obviously.”
“What more can I do? Our negotiations demand I be left from the auction rings.”
“We are not in the habit of requiring reminders of what we ourselves negotiated,” returned the Veil, and I finally received my silent wish. His tone turned cutting sharp; a warning, and my last if I did not gather my wits.
Although I had never heard the Veil yell, I couldn’t help but think a raised voice would be the death of whomever invoked it.
I would not be so stupid. I had wished for a change in nature once, and did not like the result. Impatient by the constant drain at my nasal passages, I cleared my throat again roughly, swallowed the garbled liquid building within it lest it affect my words.
“What do you demand I do?” If my tone came over that divide as a weary one, if I considered that it rang with the death knell of the despairing, I had nothing more to say of it.
The Veil was, in the end, right.
If the serum was all I had to barter with, and I could not complete my collections, what sort of use was I?
Worthless above the drift, and indebted below.
That same black cloak of melancholy that had accosted me before Coventry’s attack now clung to me like a blanket, stifling in the hot air.
“You are not so pretty that the auction rings would be efficient,” said that voice, lacking in sting and made all the worse for its practical application. “And such duties would leave you unable to find your quarry. No, your talents are better—”
Slam! The harsh crack of wood against silk-lined paneling cut the Veil’s words sharply, leaving a silence thicker than the haze affecting the warm air. Both Chinese men were already moving in lockstep as I spun, weight on the balls of their feet, lethal hands unsheathed from their sleeves.
Yet it was not their simple grace that earned my stare.
Micajah Hawke filled the frame of polished wood and suddenly frozen warriors, a halo of light shining from behind him as the gaslights that illuminated the interior halls flickered brightly.
If the Veil’s men were graceful birds in flight, Hawke was the tiger that would tear feather and bone. Both broad-shouldered and lean-hipped, his physique had never leant any credence towards pampered softness, and his carriage naturally invited wariness from those intelligent enough to listen to the visceral instinct of prey. He walked with supreme confidence, spoke with the polished edge of a born sinner.
Hair black as midnight brushed his shoulders in a perfectly straight mass, held back with a leather thong and swept from his face to reveal sharp lines and unyielding planes set in an implacable scowl. Rumor suggested he came from Gypsy stock, which would account for the dark hair and swarthy tint of his golden skin. Yet given as I was to wild fancies on occasion, I often considered that a pact with the Devil was to blame for his eyes.
Dark brown under most circumstances, now they gleamed as if a flame had been lit behind them. The blue streak running through the center of his left eye burned as if the heart of that fire centered there, uniquely colored and wholly unforgettable.
In the depths of my opium dreams, wrapped in a mire of guilty fascination, I had spent many hours remembering the color of that blue river. Whatever characteristics my disorderly imagination had given Hawke’s stare, it paled beside the truth of it. Sharp as the knives I carried in my corset, wicked as the Devil with a bargain in mind, that gaze pinned on me.
This was not a glare that imparted the kindness of friendship.
The Veil’s men hesitated, exchanging a glance I could not read behind impassive features, but Hawke strode between them as if they were mere objects—a careless authority he wore like the finest mantle, whose hem the lowly mortals of his realm dared not touch. I had always hated the way he made me feel, as if I were a temporary interest, or a contrary bother he was forced to manage.
Hated especially that he made me feel at all.
I almost always found him by night, already bedecked in the fashions of the day as if born into them. Not so, this day.
The lack of tails and waistcoat did not soften his dangerously seductive demeanor. Where he was so often a temptation in the dark, now he was the foreman who would not be crossed. Every long stride pulled his working trousers tight against powerful thighs. His shirtsleeves, plain and rolled over his muscled forearms, did nothing to soften the taut shape of his beautifully tapered chest. The dizziness I fought as he encroached seemed all too familiar, my heart pounding furiously.
I could lie, to myself and to all who dared inquire, but I recognized the unwelcome stirrings of simple arousal.
I may not have appreciated the length to which Hawke had gone to save me, putting his mouth on me in places where such things should not be, but my body remembered him keenly. And, I was ashamed to admit, still wanted.