Immediately, he thought of Mina. She’d almost certainly already eaten and begun her day’s tasks—Stephen wouldn’t think of them as duties, since she’d taken them on herself—and the thought was a disappointing one. The one that followed was even less happy. Perhaps she preferred his absence. She’d certainly seemed eager enough for it the previous day.
It shouldn’t have mattered. She was mortal. A few months ago, she’d known nothing of the world beyond the obvious physical manifestations and would have laughed off any mention of magic as a tale for children. She hadn’t even been conceived when Stephen had made his trip to Bavaria. Yesterday and the day before had exposed Mina to a great deal. If she’d decided that she wanted no part of it—or of him—then the lass was showing good sense.
But he remembered the wonder in her face when she’d been casting the wards and the way her eyes had glimmered at the end.
He would have liked to see that expression on her face again.
“If wishes were horses,” Stephen said darkly to the empty room, and picked up the newspaper.
He didn’t read most of it. The political situation in France, the Queen’s latest speech, and the theatrical reviews brushed lightly past his consciousness. Trying to keep his mind off Mina, Stephen had to send it down other paths.
His health was one. Sleep had done some minor wonders for his lungs. He could breathe without pain now; more importantly, it would be safe to transform. Injury to the human form could cause…problems…if it was bad enough, and Stephen particularly wanted to be in full control that evening. He cleared his throat experimentally, felt no pain—and then froze, suddenly focusing on a column in the paper.
East End Slaughter, the headline read.
Below it, in smaller print: Men Butchered, and then Police Seek Killer.
An unsettling set of headlines, to be sure, but not one that would ordinarily have caught Stephen’s attention. London was a large city. Men had been killing each other for longer than he’d been alive.
Photographs were new.
One was of a lonely section of docks near a large warehouse. Someone had removed the bodies: no need to scare the ladies.
The other was older. One of the men had been in a police station before, brought up on charges of theft, and the officer there had been a forward-thinking man who took pictures of his charges. The picture was a few years old, and the paper didn’t reproduce it that well, but Stephen recognized the man nonetheless. It was Bill, the elder of the would-be thieves.
He would have wagered everything he owned that the other corpse was Fred.
When he went to tell Mina, she was in the library again, this time frowning assiduously at one of the larger and older books. Her ledger was open before her, and she had an uncapped pen in one hand. She looked up when the door opened but didn’t speak.
At first, Stephen couldn’t think of anything to say, either. In all his life, there had never been a good way to break the news of a death—and a death like this, with less pain in it than guilt, was even harder in its way.
He settled on bluntness. “I’m afraid I come with bad news,” he said. “I’m not completely sure, but it seems likely. You’ll recall the thieves?”
“I do,” said Mina. She put the cap on her pen and closed the ledger with a soft but decisive sound. “And I know. Told you I read the Times on my own, didn’t I?” she added. “Nasty business.”
“Yes,” said Stephen. He looked from her eyes to her hands. The former were calm and the latter still. Her voice was a little quieter than usual, a little less brash and challenging. That was all. “I hope you’re not—I hope it hasn’t been upsetting you.”
Mina shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a grim bit of work, and I’m sure the details they don’t tell us are worse. I won’t deny it gave me a start—” She crossed the Turkish carpet in a few swift strides, keeping some distance between herself and Stephen but coming close enough to look into his face. “But you’re taking it rough, aren’t you?”
“I feel some responsibility for it, aye,” he said. “After all, the feud’s between Ward and myself, and the house is mine, and I’m the one who decided to question them. Had I called Scotland Yard, they’d likely—”
“They’d be just as dead,” said Mina and snorted. “You think a couple of cells would stop a bloke like Ward? We already know he’s got people in the underworld. My underworld, that is, as well as yours.”
Stephen had been expecting to see a stricken look in her cobalt eyes, dreading the look of pain and guilt on her fine-boned face, and most of all fearing to see anger at him for dragging her into the matter, for putting blood on her hands. He would have tried to explain how the thieves’ deaths were his fault, and not hers.
Faced with a creature of worldly certainty, who begged for no reassurance and demanded no explanation, Stephen could only stand and listen.
“And what were we supposed to do to keep them alive? Lie down and let Ward kill you, and then go after the Professor and whoever else got on the wrong side of him afterward?” Mina gestured in the general direction of the crown and made a revolted face. “Not hardly. You didn’t make him go out and hire those poor stupid blighters, and you didn’t make them take his money. You want to come over all noble and stricken, choose a cause worth your while. They’re not.”
She finished by glaring at him with such ferocity that Stephen had to laugh, despite everything. “Yes, miss.”
“Watch it,” Mina said, smiling herself. “I’m not as bad as that.”
“No. Not at all,” Stephen said. “Thank you.”
“Nothing to it,” she said. “I’m just surprised, a bit. You must’ve—”
“Killed men? Aye. Not so many as all that—I never went for a soldier—but it’s happened a time or two.” Stephen rubbed his forehead as if that would bring the right words to the front of his mind. “It’s different when they’re not trying to kill you. You haven’t done either, have you?”
“No. I just knew men like them. Not bad sorts, really, and they didn’t deserve what they got. Nobody does. But Ward’s not the only man with a temper, and you’re just as dead from a bullet. Even if they didn’t know what they were signing on for, they knew.” Mina frowned. “I can’t say it any plainer than that.”
“There’s nobody I know who could have,” said Stephen.
For some days to come, the men’s deaths would weigh on him. He knew himself too well to doubt it. The worst of the burden was gone, though, freeing him to think of other things.
Ink spots, for example. Mina was a tidy woman, but fountain pens were never to be trusted, and a smudge dotted her cheek, only a finger’s width from the corner of her mouth.
Then there was her mouth itself, sweetly curved and silently promising all sorts of things; the long slim line of her neck, with her hair curling against it; the swell of her breasts, not very well hidden even by her severely businesslike dress.
He could have gone on making observations for a long time, had he been more of a philosopher and less of a man. He took Mina in his arms instead.
As she’d done from the beginning, she fit there very neatly: firm and soft at the same time, tall enough that a man could kiss her thoroughly and heatedly without having to bend a great deal, and, this time, so eager for his touch that Stephen could have quite happily lost his mind then and there. After the first startled moment, after the first quick intake of breath, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back as if she’d been contemplating it as long as he had.
That thought did nothing for Stephen’s self-control.