“I said, there’s no time.” This time, Bately’s voice pierced the inner crevices of her soul. “You don’t have the strength to fight, love, do you?”
Iris’s arm felt suddenly devoid of strength. Indeed, she didn’t have the strength to fight. Strange that she’d ever thought otherwise. Her body went limp.
“Pick ’em up, boys,” he said to a group of men. “The girl’s got an auction to attend. But what say we throw in Max for a few extra shillings? I’m sure Coolie won’t mind.”
Rough hands hauled up her trembling body and dropped her into the cart of hay next to Max. A musty-smelling blanket slid over them before the sound of a horse’s trotting and wheels turning took her into unconsciousness.
11
IRIS AWOKE TO A SHOOTING pain in her shoulder. There were shackles around her legs and arms tying her to a chair. The bullet was out, at least, likely lying somewhere in the wagon hay.
“Finally awake, eh?” Max said, similarly shackled next to her.
“Where are we?” Iris squeezed her eyes shut and pried them open again. “Do you know anything? How long have you been awake?”
“Don’t know. Not a thing. And about a few seconds longer than you.”
Exasperated, Iris began surveying her surroundings.
They were in a parlor surrounded by all sorts of bizarre, diverse items. Priceless paintings, busts and vases on the floor, and porcelain dolls on the marble table on Max’s right. In one corner, weblike spinning machines made of pearl. In another, a set of armor from ancient times. And next to the dolls were ornate cases of spices that looked imported from foreign lands.
To Iris’s left, a golden pocket watch, a set of talking drums, wooden lutes from the Elizabethan era perhaps, and some other musical antiques. Behind her were “treasures” of a more morbid sort: A sarcophagus. A pickled monkey’s paw in a jar. A line of skulls in glass cases and jars of teeth from specimens from Oceania, Asia, and the West Indies. They shared space with large jewels probably taken from the same homelands that the bones had come from.
“Wild collection, isn’t it?” said Max, wincing as he lifted his head. “As a boy, I was happy enough collecting buttons.” He looked up at the ceiling, squinting in the light from fixtures hanging on the walls. “Wonder where those went. Did I give them away? No, I couldn’t have—”
“I think we have more pressing matters,” Iris said, shaking her arms and legs. The iron chains rattled against the floor.
“Seems so,” Max said. “We’re tied. To chairs.”
“For an auction, apparently.” Iris stared grimly, remembering their kidnapper’s words.
“Try to save a girl’s life and you get auctioned off for your troubles.” Max laughed.
“This isn’t funny!” Iris insisted. “And…” She paused, suddenly feeling very sheepish. “I’m… I’m sorry for all this.”
“Who said I was mad about it?” Max shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, it was worth it.”
Iris straightened her back with a proud huff, avoiding his irresistible smile.
“If I remember correctly, you said your boss was after you because he had debts to pay.”
“George Coolie.” His name tasted foul on her lips. “I have no doubt this auction is his scheme. He had money problems. I was one of his best circus acts, but I quit on him. This has to be his contingency plan. I guess you were thrown in as part of the bargain.”
“How much do you think we’d go for? About the same as the skulls?” Max glanced over his shoulder at the glass case and shuddered.
Iris looked at the healed gunshot wound in her arm, courtesy of the man called Bately. “Higher. The two of us aren’t exactly normal. Back during the match, you were manipulating time, weren’t you?”
At first Iris wasn’t sure what to make of Max’s expression. He was hesitant. But then, why wouldn’t he be? It wasn’t so simple a thing, discussing one’s fanciful freakery.
But soon that cocky grin returned to his face. “Oh, so you noticed? Much like I’m noticing you seem perfectly fine after being shot at close range with a pistol.”
Iris swallowed. Well, “perfectly fine” wasn’t entirely accurate, but she nodded anyway.
Max let out a sigh that felt more like a laugh. “So there really are more of us out there.”
“If that’s even a good thing.” There was no doubt that the two of them would go for a pretty penny. Iris didn’t want to think of who would be sick enough to want to buy them or what perverse pleasures they’d be used to satisfy.
But at the very least, looking at the boy beside her, she felt less alone.
“A man once told me that whether having a gift is really a gift just depends on how you use it.”
His words reminded her of Adam, who she’d left in that underground ring with the Exploding Man. She wondered if he was still alive.
Max laid his head back and closed his eyes. “My mother sent me to England when I was only seven years old. Since then I’ve spent most of my time on the streets, stealing things and trying to survive with friends. And Bately,” he added with a sneer.
The man whose words had charmed her into obedience. “He’s your friend?”
“He was once. Haven’t seen him in a while. He’s likely a mercenary now,” Max answered bitterly. “When I realized I had these abilities, it made pickpocketing much easier. Imagine having all the time you need to steal? My street friends and I had plenty of adventures. Near misses, narrow escapes, the whole lot. Ever since that day at the fair.”
Fair? “The South Kensington fair ten years ago?” she asked quickly. “June second?”
Max’s friendly expression disappeared into something indiscernible. “Yep.”
She and Adam. Now Max. It couldn’t have been a coincidence they were all there. She decided to test him. “There was an explosion that day, wasn’t there?”
He fell silent, letting her words marinate for a moment before speaking. “It didn’t feel like a proper one. I mean, it was one, but… it felt like a wave flushing through me. It knocked me out for a while. I was nine,” he said. “My friends were there. So was Bately. They’d been affected too. When we woke up again, people were scared witless. Running everywhere.”
Iris nodded. The chaos. People running. The patches of fire.
He paused. “Later I heard there’d been a murder.”
Silence. He stared at the iron shackles around his legs.
“Gas-line explosion my ass,” he said, snapping out of his gloom. “Something else definitely happened that day. Because after then, we all changed. We all turned—”
Fanciful, Iris thought, the picture becoming clearer. “I was there too,” she told him. “I don’t quite remember everything, but I know I was there.”
The two sat in silence among the paintings and jewels and skulls.
“You. Me. Bately. The Exploding Man. What if we’re a result of what happened at that fair?” Perhaps her lack of memories was some sort of amnesia due to the trauma.
But then why wasn’t Adam affected? Or was he? Or were only a select few impacted?
“It fits,” Max said. “Before then I was just a normal boy—well, as normal as a Salvadoran pickpocket in London can be.”
“Now you can manipulate time.”
“I can slow down others’ sense of time,” he corrected. “Don’t ask me how or why.” Max’s brown curls fluttered across his forehead as he laughed. “It is what it is, I guess.”
But it was more than that. Like Adam promised, it was proof she could see with her own eyes. Proof that there were others like her. And a precious clue to her own past.
Except…
Iris looked down at her shoes. “I don’t remember my life before that day. I’ve been trying to remember, but my memories prior to a certain point are just… gone. It’s probably due to the explosion. People were obviously affected differently. But still I…”
One step forward and two steps back. Despite what she’d learned, she still felt de
feated.
“I just want to know who I am. If I’ve parents out there. If my name is even really Iris.” She remembered Granny’s cryptic words to her and shivered. “It’s so painful not knowing. But at the same time, I’m scared to know. Sometimes I wonder if I should just forget about it all—”
“No, don’t do that.” Max’s gentleness drew her attention. “Don’t give up. If there’s something you need to know, then what’s there to think about? Just don’t worry. All right? I’ll help you. You can trust me. No, you should trust me.”
“Should?”
“Well, who else can you trust?”
The image of her discarded partner flashed in her mind’s eye. She shook her head. She couldn’t go back to him. She couldn’t draw him into this madness.
“You’re very eager to help someone you just met,” Iris said with a little laugh—and a hint of suspicion. But how could she stay suspicious when Max thoroughly disarmed her with that incorrigible, kind grin? It was a mysterious charm he had.
Maybe the sight of her sensitivity had touched Max in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Or maybe he was just that reckless. Either way, he puffed out his chest—still bare, as Iris tried shyly not to notice. “People like us need to stick together. Believe me, I’ve learned that the hard way. My life hasn’t been the easiest,” he said with a sad smile. “There’s a lot of danger out there, as you’ve just seen. Stick with me. I give you my word, Iris, you won’t regret it,” he promised gallantly, ever the hero.
“People like us…”
“The good ones,” Max added. “Not the nutters like that exploding gentleman.”
“People like your friends?”
“Yeah. Jacob, Hawkins—I hope they’re fine. Bately better not have…” As he frowned, Iris remembered how the mercenary had mentioned them. “And Cherice.” Suddenly his face drained of blood. “Cherice, oh damn.” Max groaned as if he’d just been punched in the gut, and when she told him so, Max let her know that a punch in the gut was precisely what was waiting for him when the girl he’d left behind in the Pit found him again.
“But forget all that. Once you and I get out of this mess, I’ll do whatever I can to help you. You’re not alone in this.” Max rattled his chains. “As you can see.”
Iris’s shoulders relaxed and her whole body breathed with relief. Knowing that she wasn’t alone was invaluable to her. “Thank you.” She paused. “In that case, we really should try to avoid being auctioned.”
Max’s laughter chimed like music. “I’ll agree with you there.”
* * *
After some time, Iris could hear footsteps. “Someone’s coming! Max, anything yet?”
An exhausted Max slumped over on his chair. “I’ve been trying for hours,” he said in between breaths. “Scuffling around while chained to this bloody chair. I couldn’t find anything that can break or unlock them.”
She was more distressed by the way he was sweating and breathing heavily than by his failure. “Okay. Don’t use your abilities for the time being.”
The corners of Max’s lips curved only slightly. “So you’ve noticed my weak point, have you?” He winced as if a sudden shock of pain flashed through him.
“Don’t damage your body any further,” Iris warned. “I mean it.”
“Thank you for your concern.” Max rested his head back against the chair. “I mean that.”
The door opened, and a few men who worked for the auction house walked in behind a physician’s assistant from Cambridge University dressed in a vest and a perfectly straight brown bow tie. Not that he’d bothered to introduce himself to Max or Iris. She heard from their conversations. He didn’t address them at all even as he set down his tray of tools on a table.
“We’ll measure the male specimen first,” said the assistant. Iris’s stomach churned. The stick he was given… It was a horse measuring stick.
Their chains were double locked, first to fasten their limbs, then to tie their limbs to the chairs. But Iris still had Adam’s gun. The fools hadn’t even bothered to check. She just had to wait for her moment. If she could just untie herself…
Carefully, one of the men unchained Max from the chair, but his feet and wrists were still too tightly bound for him to move freely, especially in his exhausted state.
“Stand,” ordered the assistant.
“Want me to dance a little jig for you too, mate?”
A whack to his left shin with the wooden measuring stick sent Max doubling over.
“Max!” Iris yelled as Max trembled with pain.
“I said, ‘stand,’ not ‘speak, ’ you filthy wog.”
Max’s decision to remain sitting earned him a beating. Iris screamed, struggling against her chains, her blood boiling, cursing her own inability to save him like he’d saved her.
“Try the other one,” suggested one of the auction employees with a sigh when Max proved too difficult to crack. “She’ll be weaker than the male.”
“Now, I don’t know about that one, lads.” Max laughed, blood dripping from his lips.
The tool the assistant took off his tray looked like two long fishing hooks fused together at the ends. It wasn’t until he aimed the sharp ends at her forehead and chin that she realized he was trying to measure her skull.
“We’ll start with craniology, then,” said the assistant. “Looking at the shape of the specimen’s skull and comparing it to others of her race will be good information for those bidding on her. With the right precision, we can determine the female’s level of intellect as well as her predilections toward theft and other pathologies.”
Except Iris kept squirming. She wasn’t about to let that ridiculous tool near her precious skin. “If you’re curious about how smart I am, you’re better off asking me, idiot.”
“Oof,” Max said with a chuckle.
“Don’t touch me!” Iris spat in the assistant’s eye. “I said, don’t touch me, you sick—”
The door opened and slowly creaked closed.
Light footsteps. And yet there was a heaviness to each step, an impact that Iris felt deep in her immortal bones. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the old man’s great white beard, his dark eyes behind brass spectacles. His long black jacket. His bow tie, a blood red.
His clinical gaze on her.
Iris didn’t know why she felt as if her lungs were filling up with liquid. Or why the skin of her arms was sizzling with an electric charge, or why the acidic contents in her stomach were now threatening to rise up through her throat.
“Good afternoon, Doctor Pratt!” One of the auction’s men gave his hand a brisk shake. “Your assistant told me you were running a little late. Thank you again for volunteering to do this work for us on such short notice.”
The assistant gave up on trying to measure her. “Maybe you’ll have better luck, Doctor.”
Doctor… Pratt…
“When I heard of the treasure in your possession, I had to confirm it for myself,” the old man answered.
His maliciously blank stare seemed to mock the sudden swell of anger inside her. The dead air of the room weighted her shoulders, and darkness fell over Iris’s sight. Her body began to shake.
This feeling… The chains were hot against her skin. This feeling…
Fear. Yes, fear. Panic, rising up through her sweating body.
And rage.
He touched the square crystal cuff link on his sleeve and, without even an evil grin to match, raised his chin. “So you’ve returned from death, Iris. Hello, old friend.”
Iris’s head nearly split from the sudden shock of memories that flooded her. Of blood. Of hands on her skin. Of her flesh burning. Of her veins flushed with drugs to keep her mind clouded and addled. Tears and screams. Each memory was nothing more than a quick flash, but each flash was a painful blow stirring her rage to frenzy. The sight of his white crystal cuff link pushed her further. The white crystal drew her in, calling to her. Taunting her. Asking her, Do you know what I am?
This feeling… She gritted her teeth. This man!
Doctor Seymour Pratt, standing inches away from Iris, reached for the craniometrics tool.
And he leaned in.
“You should know this,” he whispered. “Now that I’ve confirmed you’re alive with my own eyes, this auction is meaningless. Regardless of who wins you tonight, you’ll end up back in my possession sooner or later.” He straightened up. “Then shall we get started?”
Iris’s throat could have ripped apart from the force of her scream. Blind rage possessed her, and in that moment she launched forward, her mind empty but with one command: Kill him. I have to kill him!
With her ankles and wrists bound, she grabbed the pointed tool away from the assistant with her teeth, forcing the blades open where they joined. Then she brought her wrath down upon the doctor.
“Iris!” Max yelled somewhere as the assistant gave a cowardly yelp, oceans away.
But the doctor caught the tool in his hand. And smiled. “You haven’t changed.”
It was as if every part of herself had vanished except for the bloodthirsty anger driving her. She let go of the tool and bit his arm instead, screaming and struggling. The assistant tried to pry her from him, but she wouldn’t go, not until the doctor was a bloody mess on the ground.
“How dare you!” the assistant cried. “This man is a physician! A surgeon! A scientific, ethnological genius! You will show him some resp—” He cried out from the blow Iris gave him to his nose with the back of her head.
Iris did not know Doctor Seymour Pratt.
At least, she could not remember him.
But she hated him. So much she could die from the poison of it.
“Stop, you animal!” The assistant threw her to the side. She crashed into the table to her right, her chair breaking off an arm. And as she fell to the ground, a small, heavy object dropped onto her head and clattered to the ground in front of her face. She gasped from the shock, the feel of blood dripping from her mouth slowly bringing her back to herself.
The object—it was the golden pocket watch. It popped open on impact. Clockwork, metal, and pins plucked the teeth of the little comb.
The Bones of Ruin Page 12