After a long, long moment, there, beneath her palm, she felt a slow thump.
Never before had one man been so difficult to kill. Mr. Shard LeFel watched with detached interest while Jeb Lindson balanced on one good leg and one bad ankle on top of a bucket. The rope around the man’s neck was thick and strong. So was the limb of the oak over which it was thrown.
Plenty strong enough to bear the weight of the man, even though he was twice the size of LeFel and the opposite of him in every way. LeFel’s silver white skin rivaled alabaster, his features so fine and fair, artists and admirers begged to paint his likeness. His hair was moon yellow, left long and sleek with a black ribbon holding it back from his high, white lace collar.
He wore no facial hair, nor powders, and dressed in the finest clothes, no matter the occasion. Suit, tails, and top hat from Paris, black gloves from Versailles, and one of his favorite vanities: a blackened and curved cane, carved from the breastbone of an African elephant, and plied tip to tip with catches of gold, silver, and deep, fire-filled rubies.
But even if all those things were stripped of him, it would still be his eyes that held him apart from any other man. Glacier blue, heavily lidded, they drew people to him witless and wanting, as if they had suddenly seen their dreams come alive and breathing.
It had proved a useful thing. In many pleasurable ways.
The big man atop the bucket shifted again, his unbound hands reaching into the night as if the shadows could aid him. He was stone dark, skin and hair and eyes, his wide hands blistered and calloused from a life of toil, his trousers and plaid shirt torn and stained—even before the five bullets ripped holes through his coat—directly over his heart, which continued to stubbornly, slowly beat.
LeFel had killed him twice. Once with a knife, a rotting scar he bore at his neck. Once with a gun, the small bullet holes in his coat belying the amount of lead burrowed in the meat of his chest. Each time, LeFel had watched his servant, Mr. Shunt, bury the big man. Each time, Jeb Lindson had found a way to crawl out of his grave and go walking.
Not much of a man left to him, really. Still, something drove him. Away from death and toward the living world. A heart like his, a soul that strong, was rare.
And it was a great inconvenience to LeFel’s plans.
LeFel glanced at the canopy of limbs above them. The moon would be up soon, full and strong. Strong enough to make sure Jeb Lindson stayed dead this time.
“Please . . .” The big man’s voice scraped low, ragged. Too much the same as it had been in life.
“You beg?” LeFel tapped the toe of his Italian boot against the wood bucket the big man stood upon. Not hard enough for the bucket to shift. Just hard enough for the hollow thunk to make his eyes go wide. It reminded him he was about to die. Again.
LeFel smiled. It was a lovely thing to see that even in death there was still fear.
Mr. Shunt, waiting at the edge of shadows, shifted, the satin and wool of his coat hissing like snakes against his heels. Too tall, too thin, Mr. Shunt kept his face hidden beneath the brim of his stovepipe hat that seemed latched to his head as if stitched there, and his turned-up black collar. His eyes, if ever they were seen, evoked fear, showing just what kind of creature lurked within the layers of silk. A very Strange man, indeed.
Next to Mr. Shunt crouched a wolf. Common as scrub brush, that wolf was Shard LeFel’s newest and most useful toy. It wore a collar of LeFel’s own devising—brass and copper with crystal and carved gears—and a leash, which Mr. Shunt held in the crook of one finger.
Next to the wolf stood a small barefoot boy. No more than four years old, the child wore nothing but his bed shirt. His skin was death pale, his hair a shock of red. He made no sound, nor did he seem to see the world around him. He gazed off in a middle distance as if still walking his dreams, untouched by the night, or the cold, or his company.
“What do you beg for, dead man?” LeFel mused. “What is there left to you? Not life. Only a mockery of that rattles in your chest. What sweet dream pulls you from the smothering rest eternal?”
“Mae . . .” The single word fell from his swollen lips like a prayer. “My Mae.”
LeFel frowned. “The witch?” He rapped the bucket with his toe again. “She has lied to you, sung you sweet falsities. You thought her magic was yours to keep, but I alone shall have it. Not even the vow she cast between you, the binding of your love, will hold her safe from my needs.” He kicked the bucket hard enough it shifted.
Jeb swayed, but stubbornly held his balance on his battered legs.
“There are things I require in this world. Isn’t that true, Mr. Shunt?”
Mr. Shunt chuckled, the sound of dry bones rattling.
“And when my brother saw to it I was exiled to these foul lands, for nothing more than killing his only heir, I had thought myself without recourse. But he did not know, could not know, the beauty of turned metal. Could not know the power harnessed in steam, could not know the primitive magic inherent in this land, nor the most interesting abilities of those who devise.
“And he certainly could not know that others of our . . . kind . . . would find each of these things pleasing as a midsummer feast.”
Mr. Shunt chuckled again. The wolf at his feet laid his ears back and bared teeth at the sound. The child did not seem to hear.
“You could have given in to me, Mr. Lindson. But you refused. Even in death. And now you, my poor dark man, stand like a mountain in my way. Stand like a mountain between myself and your beautiful living wife.” He aimed another blow at the bucket, but allowed only the softest tap of his boot.
“Mountains cannot stop me. I have hammered iron and silver across this land. I have broken every mountain that refused my harness.”
Jeb, silent, stared at him with a gaze that held too much hatred for a dead man.
“Just as I shall harness Mae—”
“Mae . . . ,” Jeb echoed. “My Mae . . .”
LeFel snarled. “She is mine!”
He slammed his boot into the bucket, shoving it sideways. Jeb rocked, the rope against the tree limb creaking beneath the strain.
Mr. Shunt sucked in a hopeful breath.
But Jeb somehow remained standing, silent, hatred in his eyes. LeFel stepped back, pulled a bit of perfumed silk and lace from his coat sleeve, and wiped his lips in a circle, over and over again, the motion soothing, calming.
All would be well. He would kill this mortal man correctly this time. He would kill him so the tie of magic binding him to his wife would be broken, so Jeb Lindson could not return to his wife, could not lay claim to her soul, her life, or the magic at her hands. The binding that held them together, and kept Mae’s magic out of LeFel’s reach, would be broken.
“You,” LeFel said, his voice shaking, but calm, “are a very lucky man, Mr. Lindson. You still have a small time left to breathe this air. To gaze upon this land. To ponder the life that is no longer yours before I take it from you a third time. Your death awaits the rise of the waxing moon. Poetic for a third and final death, don’t you agree, Mr. Shunt?”
“Sweet as a lullaby,” Mr. Shunt whispered, placing his hand gently on the child’s head.
Shard LeFel tipped his face skyward, and gazed at the velvet night caught between the tangle of branches. Soon, soon, the witch would be his.
Cedar threw the brace of wood across his door, and pulled to be sure the hinges were secure. He had already banked the fire, leaving a heart of oak to parcel out heat for the next eight hours, and set a pot on the hook above it. He had already hung the bucket of water up on the ceiling hook in the corner of the room and shuttered the cabin’s single window.
The last thing, the most necessary thing, he did not want to do.
A heavy iron chain thick as his wrist lay across the bricks of the hearth, one end welded through the iron ring pounded into the stone, the other end connected to a wide leather collar.