Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  “So I surmised,” he wheezed as he rubbed his chest. So much for breathing easily. “What do you carry in that damned bag? A pair of anvils?”

  She merely tightened her arms around the valise. “If you’re ready, we should go. I want to be far away from here before Branston comes home.”

  “Fine, but this long trip to Scotland just became a hell of a lot longer.”

  She eyed him with another of those world-weary stares that, for some reason, made his chest bunch with a strange, unexpected ache.

  “Agreed,” was all she said before she turned away.

  As they crept downstairs, David used his study of the floor plan to keep his mind from the throbbing in his head, the churning of his stomach, and the bone-deep ache of his body. His former army scout’s eye absorbed details such as number of rooms, position of stairways, and points of entry and egress. And, along with the strategic intelligence he gathered, he couldn’t help but notice how the spartan shabbiness of the upstairs chambers gave way to an over-the-top vulgar elegance as they descended to the first floor’s public rooms.

  Every window and doorway was draped in heavy dark velvet and gold cord. Ornate chairs upholstered in damask and silk sat beside gilded and veneered tables more appropriate to a ducal household than a down-at-heels town house in Soho. The walls were plastered floor to ceiling with paintings in every period and artistic style as if someone had purchased them en masse from a Petticoat Lane market stall. And hanging above it all like a sickly-sweet fog was the cloying odor of dying flowers.

  “What the bloody hell kind of business are you in?” he whispered, trying to breathe without gagging.

  She shot him a sidelong glance even as she surprised him by taking his hand in a firm clasp and tugging him toward the door. “We need to hurry. I don’t know how long Mrs. Thursby will stay asleep.”

  The entry hall lay wrapped in flickering shadows from a lamp set upon a side table. A clock ticked the turn of the hour. No sign of an irate housekeeper or either of the guards supposedly stationed on the premises, though loud snoring issued from the front parlor. He raised his brows, signaling his question. She shrugged in response, then pointed once at the front door and once behind her at the passage to the kitchens.

  He eased back the bolt and turned the latch, cracking the door an inch while he scanned the street, stretching with every Imnada and human sense for the telltale footstep, the betraying scents of sweat and gin and human flesh, even a revealing stir of the air or unexplained shadow.

  Nothing.

  Shoving the door wide, he stepped out on the stoop. Lifted his head, eyes swiftly adjusting to the darkness. Body drawn taut against any hint of danger.

  Not a whiff of minion anywhere. The way seemed suspiciously clear.

  Where were Corey’s men hiding? And why? He’d have felt better had they leapt from the bushes, guns blazing. This eerie calm rippled fear over his skin and tensed already painful muscles.

  He jerked his head toward the street. “There’s a hackney stand at the end of the block. If anything happens, don’t stop and don’t look back. Tell the driver to take you to Cumberland Place. I’ll find you.”

  She gave a last frightened shift of her eyes before nodding. For some reason he reached for her hand again, but she avoided him by drawing her hood over her hair and adjusting her grip upon her satchel. He dropped his arm to his side, unsure why her continued rejection disappointed him but dismissing the brush of emotion with practiced ease.

  Before he could whisper the order to go, she scurried out into the street and he’d no recourse but to follow.

  One street down.

  Five hundred miles to go.

  4

  Stunned at the ease with which they’d made their escape, Callista sat ramrod straight on the seat of the hackney carriage, her bag perched on her lap, her gaze traveling between the window and the man sprawled in the seat across from her.

  No. She needed to stop thinking of him as the man. He had a name—David.

  David . . .?

  Heat crept into her cheeks. Heavens. She didn’t even know his last name . . . or really anything about him at all. She was placing her trust in a man she’d known for a few short days.

  A man who, according to every book on the subject, wasn’t supposed to exist. The heat sank into her stomach, quivered between her legs. A man she’d kissed.

  All right, if she were to be strictly accurate, he had kissed her and she had startled like a scared deer—or a silly little girl—and nearly ended her escape before it had begun by knocking him unconscious.

  But he’d caught her off-guard. Never in a million years would she have imagined he’d lean down, his breath warm against her cheek, and press his lips to hers. She’d been stunned. Not just that he’d taken such a liberty—after four years living within the rough-and-tumble world of traveling players, churlish drovers, and itinerant chapmen, and the last six months avoiding the odious Mr. Corey and his gang of hired thugs, she knew more than she cared to about men’s base urges. No, it wasn’t his kiss that had surprised her. It was the fact that for a split second she’d almost enjoyed it. Her knees had nearly gone weak, her stomach had just about flipped, and her chest had more or less fluttered like she’d bats beneath her ribs.

  Either she’d almost enjoyed it, or she was coming down with the flu.

  “I don’t know your full name,” she blurted, trying to fill the silence with something beyond her turbulent thoughts.

  “No,” he replied, “you don’t.”

  She waited a moment. “Is it a secret? Are you a wanted fugitive?”

  His lips twitched. “I am now.” He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. “No secret. I just enjoy hearing you call me David. You say it with a bit of a shameful breathlessness.”

  “I do no such thing.”

  He smirked, and she made herself look out the window lest she clobber him with her bag—again.

  Still, it wasn’t long before she found herself casting swift glances his direction through downcast lashes. There was just something about him that drew her eye. Something beyond the golden Adonis looks, though these were sadly dimmed after days locked in the attic. His face flashed in and out of shadow as the hackney passed the occasional streetlamp or lit doorway, but the grim angles and deep gorges of illness were abundantly obvious, as was the greenish-gray cast to his damp skin. Each breath was an ominous wheezing rattle, punctuated now and again by a hacking cough. In fact, one could definitely say the man looked and sounded sick as a dog.

  Seeking reassurance, she opened herself to the power within her, but there was no twinge along her bones to indicate death loomed near. The man might resemble a walking corpse, but he was very much—and very disturbingly—alive.

  She stifled an almost-hysterical bubble of laughter. Now, not only had she called him the man, but she’d likened him to a dog. A more than apt simile as it turned out.

  She continued to sneak glances at him in between adjusting her cloak or shifting on her seat. Strange, how human he looked. In fact, as humans went, he was a breathtaking, heart-stopping specimen of one. Or would be once he recovered. No doubt women fawned for a single glance from those steel-gray eyes and simpered for the mere touch of his lips upon the backs of their lily-white hands. If they only knew that their knight in armor was a wolf in disguise.

  Which went against every nursery tale known. The wolf in those stories was the villain. Not the hero.

  Which would David turn out to be?

  “Have I a boil on my neck or a carrot sprouting from my ear?”

  Her fingers tightened on her bag, but she refused to be intimidated. “You don’t look well.”

  “I once had three bullets pulled from my body with a rusty fork.” He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth as the hackney swung round a corner, throwing him against the side of the carriage. “That, Miss Hawthorne, was a walk among the daisies compared to this. Are you afraid I’ll die and not keep our agreement?�
�� The corner of his mouth curled in a mocking smile.

  She wasn’t used to humor from men, either. It unnerved her almost as much as his unearthly good looks, and that shocking kiss, and . . . well, everything about him unnerved her.

  “It had crossed my mind,” she answered sharply.

  He chuckled—actually chuckled. But while Mr. Corey’s chuckle sent ice water rushing through her veins, David’s low, quiet laughter buzzed her insides and made her pulse race.

  Score a point for the truthful woman.

  By the gods! Those words had not come from his mouth. She’d been staring at those full, perfectly formed lips curled in a sly smile like an addle-pated debutante, and they had definitely not moved. No, those words—by gads, even his amused and cynical tone of voice—had appeared in her mind.

  “You’re a telepath?” The realization chilled her to her core, making her jerk halfway from her seat, the bag tipping from her lap.

  Between one breath and the next, David reached out, grabbing the handle before the bag struck the floor, the discordant clang of a bell rattling her already rattled nerves.

  “What the hell is in here?” he asked. “The family silver?”

  She grabbed the satchel, resettling it on her legs, wrapping it even more tightly to her chest. “I asked my question first.”

  He shrugged, the effort drawing a fleeting grimace. “Fair enough. I’m a path. Not a reader, Fey-blood. Your thoughts are yours to keep. Couldn’t read you even if I wanted to. It’s your turn. What’s in the bag?”

  She felt her chin rise in automatic defiance. “I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine, and my reasons for leaving my brother’s house are too numerous to mention.”

  “I’m a good listener.”

  She shot another nervous glance out the window. So far, there had been no sign of Corey’s henchmen in hot pursuit, but she’d be a fool to think he’d give up without a fight. He’d not risk such a loss of face as to have his intended bride slip her leash. She tried not to recall the feel of his hand closing around her neck as he issued his vicious threats. To do so would shatter her fragile nerves. She needed to remain calm and in control if she wanted to win her way to freedom. She forced herself to take a slow relaxing breath. “The man you saw with my brother—they call him the king of the stews.”

  “I know Victor Corey. Aside from his criminal empire, the villain holds markers from half the ton. He’s got ministers, MPs, and more than a few peers in his pocket. Your brother plays with dangerous friends.”

  “He’s not a friend. Branston borrowed heavily when we first came to London. Far more than we could ever pay back, even should we have made a success of the business.”

  “So Corey decided to accept your maidenhead as compensation. Crude but not surprising, given the man’s past. That still doesn’t answer the question. What’s in the bag? And what business are you in?”

  She fiddled with the leather strap, shifted upon her seat. “These are my bells. I use them in my work.”

  “Which is . . .?” He motioned with his hand.

  “People come to me after a death.”

  “You’re a gravedigger?”

  “They come for solace, not for spades.”

  He lifted a brow. “Now I am intrigued.”

  She pinched her lips together in a frown. What was it about their every conversation that left her flushed and flustered? Annoyed with herself, she blurted, “Pull your mind from the gutter. I’m a traveler into death. A summoner of souls. A necromancer.”

  * * *

  There was no time to pursue what had suddenly become a very interesting conversation. The slam of a pathed sending ripped across David’s mind—a scream of terror, a plea for help.

  Shit. When it rained, it bloody well poured.

  He rapped on the roof, signaling the driver to pull over. “Stay here, Miss Hawthorne. Sit tight. Say nothing.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  But he’d already swung from the hackney, only a slight hitch in his stride as he hurried toward Cumberland Place, senses on alert for any possible trouble.

  Carriages jammed the street and men and women crowded the flagways; laughter and conversation floated on a damp spring breeze. Lamps blazed from the windows and above the door of No. 3, while liveried footmen stood at attention on either side of the marbled steps leading to the fan-lit entryway. Of course. The Fowlers’ ball was tonight. He’d been sent an invitation. In fact, Lady Fowler had brought it to him herself, stayed far longer than was necessary, and returned home much happier than when she’d arrived.

  A smug smile curled his lip. The woman was wasted on that dottering old baronet she’d married.

  “What’s going on?”

  David whipped around to find Callista standing behind him. “I told you to stay with the carriage,” he growled.

  “You didn’t think I’d let you sneak off that easily, did you?”

  “I’m not sneaking.”

  “You certainly look as though you’re sneaking.”

  He closed his eyes on a deep calming breath before he answered. “I’m reconnoitering. You really don’t trust me, do you?”

  “No,” came her curt response, but there it was again. A tiny curve of her lips, a brightness to her eyes. She needed to do it more often. It smoothed years from her face. Unfortunately, the current situation didn’t exactly seem well suited to smiles and laughter.

  He shook off the distracting thought and bent all his attention back to the problem at hand. The sending had stopped abruptly, the mental shout of surprise and then alarm had fallen silent. “Something’s not right.”

  She peered over his shoulder at the aristocratic throng clogging the pathways and making their way up the wide steps. Tilted her head, a look of intense concentration on her face, eyes locked on an invisible distance.

  “My house is just there.” He motioned to the far end of the crescent. “It seems quiet, but—”

  Callista’s body jerked as if she’d been struck, her eyes wide and midnight black in a face drained of color. “The door into death is open,” she said in a shaky voice.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  She flashed him a determined glance. “It means someone’s died. Violently, by the feel of it. ” She grabbed his hand and tugged him back toward the hackney.

  Questions fired like gunshots through his frazzled brain and his body ached with every second he couldn’t lie down and collapse in a heap. He dug in his heels. “Wait. If we’re going to make it farther than Islington, I need money and clothes.”

  David swung around, the blood draining from his head into his ankles in one vicious rush. On the front steps of his house stood his worst nightmare in the flesh. Cold, empty eyes, a lipless slash of a mouth curled at the edges into a permanent snarl, and a whippet-thin body that nonetheless bore the strength of the strongest of beasts—Eudo Beskin. I know you’re out there, St. Leger. The traitor Kineally’s dead.

  The enforcer’s sending threw David back in time to the moment two years ago when the Ossine had come for him. He had explained. Then he’d pleaded, and finally he’d fought. But there had been no escape. His stomach clenched as memories of pain churned his insides and sizzled like fire along his limbs.

  He sent up a prayer for Caleb Kineally. There would be no funeral pyre. No rites or rituals to help his soul pass through the Gateway to the land of their ancestors. As punishment for his crimes, he would be buried in the ground, staked with silver through the heart to hold his spirit fast to the earth for all eternity.

  Should have known you were involved with these rebels, Beskin continued. Should have killed you when I had the chance.

  David took Callista’s arm. “We need to get out of here now!”

  She took a few scrambling paces after him until she dragged to a halt. “Stop! Those men that just rounded the corner. I recognize the tall one. He’s Mr. Corey’s lieutenant. They must have followed us.”

  Two men strolled up th
e flagway as if out for an evening walk. Nothing in their outward appearance spoke of murderous intent, but David knew dangerous men when he saw them—the way they carried themselves, the expressions in their eyes. Neither had come here tonight looking to dance.

  “Come,” David said in a hushed voice. “I have an idea.” Outflanked, he made the only move he could in this deranged chess match. He dragged Callista Hawthorne through the jewel-encrusted perimeter of the Fowlers’ guests.

  “Hey, now!”

  “The nerve of some people.”

  “He’s ripped my train with his big feet.”

  “Oof! How dare you, sir!”

  David and Callista elbowed their way to the top of the steps, where Lady Fowler welcomed her guests. Her eyes lit with delight when she saw David coming toward her, and she spread her arms as if she meant to crush him to her ample bosom. “Mr. St. Leger! What a lovely surprise.”

  Damning the woman’s big mouth and parade-ground bellow, David cringed as all eyes swiveled in his direction. Revealing no hint of the growing anxiety tightening viselike in his gut, he bent over Lady Fowler’s outstretched hand, hoping his knees didn’t give out and send him straight into her lap. “You’re a vision as always, Lady Fowler. The belle of the ball.”

  She gave a coquettish laugh and smacked him playfully with her fan. “You’re such a tease, sir. I’m merely the evil stepmother tonight.” She leaned close, her lips brushing his ear. “God, but I’m wet for you, my darling man.”

  David snapped to attention, yanking Callista up the final step to stand beside him. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought my . . . second cousin with me. She’s from . . . uh . . . Dorset. Turned up out of the blue today. Couldn’t leave her at home all alone. You understand. Family duty and all that.”

  A frown creased Mrs. Fowler’s penciled brows and pouted her full red lips while she eyed Callista as one might a stray puppy. “I certainly understand the odious pressure of family responsibility.” Her narrowed gaze moved from Miss Hawthorne’s thick woolen travel cloak and leather satchel to David’s odd, haphazard attire.