The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1)

by Gregory Ashe

  The man—she couldn’t remember his name—nodded. “Of course. I’m just trying to find him. Do you know where he is? Maybe at a hotel?”

  Irene laughed, although the sound danced like broken glass in her head. “No, the hotel is a wreck.”

  “Somewhere else, perhaps?”

  “Yes. He’ll be at—”

  “Irene!”

  A woman’s voice. Familiar. Irene risked opening her eyes again. Pearl, dressed in a lovely red coat, pushed her way to the platform. Pearl’s hair had come loose and hung around her shoulders, and her cheeks were red from the cold.

  “Officer,” Pearl said. “Thank goodness you found my friend.”

  “Captain,” the man said.

  “Irving Harper,” Irene said, as the name came back to her.

  Harper nodded.

  Pearl looked at Harper and then at Irene. “Irene, are you well? Heavens, what—” She turned to Harper. “She’s been struck.”

  “Yes, I was—”

  “You were sitting here, questioning her, while she bled to death in the cold.” Pearl pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, scooped up a bit of snow, and pressed the icy bundle to the side of Irene’s head.

  It felt wonderful. Irene’s headache shrank by a mile.

  “Of all the brute, cruel things,” Pearl was saying. “Officer, I’ll be speaking to your superior about this.”

  “It’s Captain, ma’am. Miss Lovell—”

  “I see you got her name out of her. And that wasn’t enough? The poor thing needs a doctor.”

  “Miss Lovell is fine. Your name, ma’am—”

  “Miss Lovell can’t even sit up straight and you’re badgering her. She could have been killed on that train. Look at her. Poor thing, she’s a wreck. Come on, Irene. Let’s get a cab.”

  “I’m afraid I have a few more questions. Miss Lovell was just about to tell me something important.”

  Pearl sniffed and helped Irene down from the platform. Irene’s legs wobbled, and Pearl caught her around the waist. Irene patted her hand.

  Had she ever disliked Pearl? It seemed hard to imagine. That headache was a mountain blocking Irene’s memories.

  “Nothing so important it can’t wait until she’s seen a doctor,” Pearl said. “That will be all for today.”

  The frustration on Harper’s bulldog-face was visible, and Irene had to smother a sudden giggle. The poor man looked so pitifully bewildered.

  “If I could have your address, then—” Harper asked.

  “No need, Officer,” Pearl said. She guided Irene into the street and hailed a cab. “I can assure you that I will be in touch with your superior as soon as possible.”

  Pearl climbed into the cab. As she shut the door, Irene heard Harper protest—one last time—“That would be captain, ma’am,” and then the cab pulled out into the street. Irene leaned back against the seat while Pearl dabbed the damp handkerchief to her temple.

  Irene let out a weak chuckle. “You know how to make them dance, don’t you?”

  For a moment, silence.

  Then Pearl let out a low, melodious laugh. Quiet and beautiful. Like the woman herself.

  “I’m afraid I’m an amateur compared to you, my dear. Lie still now. That’s a nasty cut, and you need to rest.”

  Irene snuggled closer to Pearl, letting her head fall on the other woman’s shoulder. Irene wanted to ask about Cian, and about Sam, and about all the rest of it, but the questions floated just out of reach. She shut her eyes, listening to the cab’s tires, smelling the dried lavender that clung to Pearl’s coat, and fell asleep.

  The sofa was still too small. Cian shifted from side to side. He curled into a ball—a rather large, bulky ball. He let his feet dangle off the edge.

  None of it worked.

  His mind went back to the train. The brief, adrenaline-fueled fight with the golems. The helplessness, a hand around his throat, when Sam tried to kidnap Irene. And the sick in his stomach now, as though he’d spent an evening doing somersaults with a belly full of glass.

  Because he’d left Irene behind.

  When he closed his eyes, he saw Corinne. Her face pressed up against the stone wall. One eye wide with terror. Staring at him.

  He had left her too.

  When he heard someone in the kitchen, he got up and made his way toward the flicker of gaslight.

  Pearl stood at the stove in a heavy nightgown. Her hair was up, her eyes shadowed, her full face cut with planes of light and dark. She looked like a statue of Venus that had put on a pair of wool socks.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Is she—”

  “She’s fine, Cian. Just sleeping.”

  Cian dropped into one of the chairs and put his elbows on the table. “She didn’t seem fine.”

  “She took a bad blow to the head. If she isn’t better in the morning, we’ll take her to a doctor.” Pearl took a pair of mugs from the cabinet. She prepared tea in silence and brought the mugs and teapot to the table. “Honey?”

  Cian shook his head.

  Pearl stirred a bit of honey into her tea. She slid the second mug towards him. Her large, dark eyes never left him.

  Cian sipped at the tea. Chamomile. But bitter. He spooned honey into his as well.

  Pearl smiled. It was a losing kind of smile. The kind that only came around at two in the morning.

  “It’s not your fault,” Pearl said.

  “Of course it is.”

  “You can think what you want, of course, but a bit of advice: don’t say that to Irene. She’ll resent you.”

  Cian laughed and tried the tea again. Better. “It won’t matter. I’ll say something else wrong and she’ll put her back up. I never thought women were so complicated until I met her. I’d always just—well, things had always worked out.”

  Pearl smiled and took a drink of her tea to cover it.

  “What?” Cian asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Cian gestured for her to speak.

  “If you thought those other women weren’t complicated, Cian, you were likely doing something wrong. That’s all.”

  “No argument there.”

  Pearl let out a quiet laugh. She laughed until she was crying, wiping her eyes. It took Cian a moment to realize that the tears weren’t from the laughter. After another minute, Pearl’s laughter and tears subsided, and she stared into her mug.

  “Pearl?” Cian asked.

  “I’m fine, Cian. Tired. And, as you know, we women are oh so terribly complicated.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  “She does care for you, you know.”

  “Irene?”

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  Cian hesitated. He ran his thumb along the edge of the table. He wanted a smoke and a drink and a man who might understand the shit that Cian was in.

  Instead, he looked at Pearl and said, “Sure, sometimes I think that. Then I say something that makes perfect sense, and she rides me like I’m a lame horse. Or she flares up and starts picking fights. Or I turn around and—”

  Pearl raised an eyebrow.

  “And she was with Patrick. I mean, I’m not blind. I know he’s a good-enough looking fellow. The girls in the Patch practically throw their skirts over their heads when he walks past—”

  “Charming,” Pearl said.

  “—and it doesn’t take a genius to see that Irene’s taken with him.”

  Pearl rearranged the honey and the teapot.

  “You don’t agree?” Cian asked.

  “I think that girl worries more about you—and about what you think—than she does anything else. I think she’s got spirit and brains that would terrify most men. And I think that if you don’t know that some men and women fight like cats and dogs when they’re in love, you’re as dumb as Irene likes to claim.”

  “That doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
/>
  Pearl shrugged. Her gaze had moved to one of the walls, as though she were staring through it, seeing something beyond it.

  Harry.

  He had disappeared with Sam as soon as they had arrived at the apartment, locking himself in the back room and ordering Cian not to let anyone in. The silence from that room had been worse than anything Cian could have imagined.

  Then Cian saw the look on Pearl’s face. The realization was a brick to the side of the head.

  “You love him.”

  Pearl gave him that losing smile again, that two-in-the-morning smile. It was the smile that a statue might wear after a thousand years.

  “God, I had no idea. You hide it well.”

  Pearl laughed and wiped her eyes. “I wish that were true. Irene knew from the first minute. I imagine that’s why she enjoyed Harry’s attention so much. You, Cian, are a man, so it stands to reason you didn’t notice. I’m not sure Freddy knows. Some days, I’m not even sure Freddy remembers I’m a woman.”

  “It’s a hard fact to miss,” Cian said.

  Pearl smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Shea.”

  He pretended to take off his hat. Then he said, “Does Harry know?”

  “Of course.”

  The truth about Harry was working its way like a snake through Cian’s gut. “Pearl, it’s not my place to say anything. I know that. You tell me to shut my mouth and I’ll shut it. But Harry. He’s not—well, the thing about him is, he’s—”

  “I know,” Pearl said, and the words were a sigh.

  They sat for a few minutes in silence. Then Cian tapped his mug against Pearl’s. The tiny clink felt like the only sound in the world.

  “To impossible loves,” Cian said.

  They both drank deeply.

  Harry came out of the back room at ten the next morning. He had his coat in one hand. His shirt was still pristine. No blood. No signs of struggle. Aside from his immaculate clothes, though, Harry looked like a man who had crawled out of hell backwards. New lines scored the corners of his eyes, and his face was hollow, as though he’d gone a week without eating, or been recently bereaved, or perhaps both. He shut the door and dropped into a chair.

  Cian poured him a scotch.

  Harry drank it without a word.

  “Well?” Cian asked.

  Harry held out the glass. Cian poured him another finger of scotch. When Cian passed the glass back, Harry pressed it to his cheek. “He talked,” Harry said. Then he downed the scotch.

  “God,” Cian said, letting out a breath. “And?”

  “Is Pearl up? Irene?”

  “Pearl is. Irene’s still resting.”

  “I don’t want to repeat this.”

  Cian went to the sitting room. Pearl sat with her knitting basket in her lap and a length of what looked like the beginning of a scarf.

  “Harry wants to talk,” Cian said.

  Pearl tucked her knitting away and joined them in the front room. She sat on the sofa. Now that Cian knew what to look for, he saw it right away. Harry might as well have been the only man on earth, the way Pearl watched him. Cian wondered if he looked that way sometimes.

  He wondered if it was too early for a drink for himself.

  “Are you ok?” Pearl asked.

  Harry nodded. “It was a long night.”

  “Is he—”

  “He’s fine, for now. Sleeping.” Harry paused. “Pearl, I don’t want you in there with him. Or Irene. Hell, or you, Cian.”

  “With that kid? I handled him all right until now.”

  “He’s got something wrong with him. Something the Children did to him. You told me he tried to hurt Irene.”

  “The boy threatened her, sure,” Cian said. “But threatening her is a lot different than actually trying.”

  “He would have done it. He would have done a lot worse than whatever he told you.” Harry stopped. “Stay away from him for now. We’ll see what happens tonight and then we’ll figure out what to do with him.”

  “And what happens tonight?” Pearl asked.

  “Sam told me an interesting story. What he first told us was true, up to a point. He’d gone looking for the mask because he knew both Byrne and the Dane wanted it and he knew they’d pay good money. He went to the Children because he heard they were willing to pay even more. Now, this is the part of the story where Sam started fibbing. Yes, he went to make a deal with the Children, and yes, they took him captive. The Children, however, weren’t the ones who double-crossed Sam.”

  “Sam didn’t take the mask to the meeting,” Cian said. “He told me as much on the train.”

  “Exactly. A smart thing to do, since they may have killed him outright if he had brought the mask. Instead, they kept him and tried to get the location of the mask out of him. Sam might be barely more than a boy, but he’s tough. I don’t think he told them.”

  “But you’re not sure,” Cian said.

  “No, he must not have told them,” Pearl said. “Otherwise, why go to such effort to find him again? They’re desperate for the mask and they know that Sam is the only one who can tell them where it is.”

  “Not anymore,” Harry said with a smile. A pasteboard smile.

  “He told you,” Pearl said.

  Harry nodded. “He hid it right under the Dane’s nose. In a brothel, in the room of a girl Sam had visited a few times. On the south side of the city.”

  Pearl wrinkled her nose.

  “And we’re going to get it,” Cian said. “Why not go right now?”

  “Because it’s too risky. By day, the girls are sleeping. Any strangers are going to get the door slammed in their face.”

  “So we kick the door down.”

  “And get shot up by the Dane’s men.” Harry shook his head. “Better we go tonight.” Then a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “As customers.”

  “Maybe we should think of a more believable lie,” Cian said.

  The smile dropped from Harry’s face. “I’m tired, Cian. It’s been a bad night. So I’m afraid I don’t have my normal patience for your barbs. Let me make something perfectly clear to you: you are here because I allow it. Either you do as I say, without complaint and question, or you leave. What we do is too important for me to risk everything on an overgrown mick. Understood?”

  “I understand,” Cian said. He stood up. “I’ve known men like you, Harry Witte. Don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes. I know you. But like it or not, I’m doing this. Not because I give a damn about you, but because I know it’s important. Because I’ve seen what those people can do. Once the mask is destroyed, we part ways.” Cian stopped. He took a breath, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said, “I’m going to check on Irene. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Eight sharp,” Harry said.

  Cian nodded. He went down the hallway towards Harry’s bedroom and didn’t look back.

  He could hear Pearl’s voice and his name. Then a sharp reply from Harry. Then silence.

  Damn Harry Witte. And damn every bastard like Harry Witte, and Harley Dunn, and the rest of them.

  Cian paused at the door to Harry’s bedroom. He took another breath, shook the anger from his shoulders, and knocked.

  “Come in,” Irene said, her voice thick with sleep.

  God, a man could wake up to that voice for a hundred years and never be bored.

  The room was dark, the curtains drawn, with pommels of light carved where the curtains met the floor. It took a moment for Cian’s eyes to adjust. Then they almost dropped from his head. Irene lay in bed, the covers pulled down to her waist, in nothing but her camisole. The lines of her neck and shoulders and arms drew his gaze. Her dark eyes drank up the room. Cian stopped for a moment and wondered if he was still breathing or if he had forgotten how.

  “Don’t tease me,” Irene said, brushing her short dark hair back. Every movement exposed new, and interesting, inches. “You’ve seen me in my camisole before.”

  Cian tried to say something. It came out like a
growl. He cleared his throat.

  “Really? That’s so interesting,” Irene said with an impish smile. “Come sit down, Cian, before you fall through the floor.”

  There wasn’t a chair.

  Irene patted the side of the bed.

  Cian’s legs felt like he was walking on wet newspaper. He dropped onto the side of the bed. Irene’s smile faded. She studied him in the half-dark. A small white bandage covered her temple. The room smelled of liniment and warm bedding and the unmistakable scent of Irene’s skin. Cian’s cheeks were hot.

  “I was having the most wonderful sleep,” Irene said, “until someone started shouting.”

  It took Cian a moment to realize that she was speaking to him.

  And, more importantly, that he was staring.

  “Oh,” he said. “Yes. Well, it was nothing. A disagreement.”

  “With Harry?”

  “Who else?”

  “You’ve been butting heads with him since the two of you met.”

  “He’s a presumptuous ass.”

  “Not really.”

  “He’s—just trust me, Irene. He’s trouble. I’ve known men like him. They’re only looking out for themselves, and if you trust them, you’ll get hurt. Or killed. He’s going to do that to Pearl, one day. Get her killed, I mean.”

  “I don’t think so,” Irene said. “I think he loves her.”

  Cian snorted. “Trust me. He does not love her.”

  “And how in the world would you know, Cian Shea?” Irene propped herself up. “Are you suddenly the expert on love?”

  “Not at all,” Cian said. “But I’m fairly sure that Harry doesn’t have eyes for Pearl.”

  “Well I think he does.”

  “Irene, for God’s sake, would you just—”

  “And what makes you so certain? I have a woman’s intuition, Cian.”

  Cian took a breath, ready to respond, and then paused. Instead, he said, “Can we make a deal?”

  Irene eyed him suspiciously.

  “Please?”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “We table this current argument—as interesting as it is—because I’m about to pick an even bigger fight with you. I’m tired and I need to conserve my strength.”