These Ruthless Deeds

by Tarun Shanker

She nodded quickly. “Yes, Laura told me about it.”

  “Good. And her brother, Mr. Kent, has he ever asked you a question?”

  She furrowed her brow. “I … yes. I didn’t like it.”

  “Because you answered him, right?”

  “Yes. And I told him I thought Lady Kent was a goblin lady.” She huffed. “She isn’t nice to Laura.”

  I stifled a grin. “No, no she isn’t. But do you see how we all have things we can do that go beyond a regular person’s abilities?”

  Emily was staring off the roof. “My mama said it was ghosts.”

  Oh no. The poor girl. “What did she do?” I asked softly, taking another step toward her that she didn’t seem to notice.

  “They called a priest. Mama and Papa were scared.” She sounded so far away.

  “Where did you live? In Ireland?”

  “The farm. I miss it.” She was sinking against the chimney now, her small frame shaking slightly.

  “And when did you go to the asylum?” I tried again.

  “My sixteenth birthday,” she whispered.

  “Oh, Emily, I’m so sorry.” I knelt on the roof and began edging closer. “Miss Grey’s parents put her in there, too. Mine would have if they had found out about my healing, I’m sure. But it isn’t evil. You don’t have to hurt anyone. And it’s not ghosts.”

  She looked at me, peering through her long lashes, tears streaming down her face as she finally admitted in a choked voice, “If it’s not ghosts, then it’s me. I’m the one who did the bad things.”

  I had to force myself not to rush to her. “It’s not your fault. You did not mean to.” I tried to make sure I didn’t sound too fierce, but I was thinking about Mr. Braddock, about Miss Chen, about everyone who didn’t understand what their power was and only saw it do terrible things when it first appeared.

  “I didn’t want to hurt Laura,” she said, pleading at me. “I swear it.”

  “You didn’t, I promise,” I said instantly. “It was another person with a power. I think you saved her life.” I smiled at her and could swear she looked the slightest bit hopeful.

  “You can control your powers. I believe in you,” I said resolutely. “You will do so much good with them. Laura’s will not be the only life you save.”

  I scrambled to my feet and walked to the edge of the roof, looking until I was positioned correctly.

  “Be careful!” Emily was staring with her hands outstretched and I gave her a reassuring smile.

  “You can do this. You have the power. You control it.”

  “Miss Wyndham!”

  “Now, catch me.” With that, I stepped backward off the roof and Emily gave a shout.

  “No! Stop!”

  I did. In midair, just before I landed on Laura’s bedroom balcony. The roof tiles stopped rattling. Emily poked her head over the edge and gasped. “Oh!”

  I laughed. “Can you set me down?”

  I felt my body lightly drop the remaining foot to the balcony. I’d chosen the spot to jump because it wouldn’t have been deadly if she hadn’t caught me, but this was more pleasant all the same.

  Mr. Kent flung open the balcony door, eyes wide. “Miss Wyndham, what on earth—are you—”

  “I’m fine,” I said as Emily gave a little laugh and sailed down next to me. “Did you know that Emily has an extraordinary power that has nothing to do with ghosts?”

  Chapter 13

  THE SOCIETY OF Aberrations was evil.

  After two days of waiting, dreading further attacks upon my family and friends, that was the only thing I could be sure of. My friends were safe, now, but if I crossed the Aberrations again I wasn’t at all sure Catherine or Laura would survive. Or I could find myself in prison, my powers being siphoned off regularly by Captain Goode.

  And he was directed to do so by someone who did not even have a power. Presumably, a lord of some stature. Presumably, someone I had even been introduced to, or at the least had seen at a ball or function.

  I was pacing wildly, as I had for the past hour. I let Lucy help me undress as much as was necessary and then dismissed her. I had brushed my hair over and over, trying to determine what we should do, when the slip of paper fell into my lap. The note demanded my presence in the gardens in five minutes for another Aberrations mission. I wanted desperately to rip the note into a million pieces, ignore the Society forever, and tell them I was done.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk Catherine or anyone I loved again. The long-familiar pang at the thought of Rose came again as I slowly dressed, hating the Society with every inch of my being. I slid Catherine’s fan up the sleeve of my dress, its weight comforting.

  Ten minutes later I entered the chilly garden and was ferociously unhappy about it.

  Mr. Redburn looked as thrilled as I was. “You’re late,” he huffed, snatching my arm, yanking me through a portal and into the Society of Aberrations. Captain Goode was waiting and put his hand to my shoulder immediately. I resisted the urge to slap it away.

  “Congratulations. Hurting young women to retaliate against me—how very big of you,” I snarled at them, fighting the warmth of Captain Goode’s power. I would stay strong. Stoic.

  “Miss Wyndham,” Captain Goode began, looking grave and tired. “I can exp—”

  “She gets no explanations, Simon,” his brother snapped. “Now let’s go.”

  With that, I was unceremoniously dropped through a portal and onto a city street. It was night and the air was wet and cold. I looked around, my side smarting.

  “Miss Wyndham. A pleasant New York welcome from Mr. Redburn, I see.” Mr. Kent was helping me to my feet, a bite lacing his lighthearted comment.

  “She’ll be fine,” Mr. Redburn said, appearing on the street next to Miss Chen, who wore her usual look of indifference. “It’s her friends who have to worry.”

  “Then you admit it.” I went cold. “You caused those accidents.”

  Mr. Redburn snorted. “I wish I could have caused them. I love those assignments. The Society sent others, lucky bastards. Well, at least I have tonight.”

  Mr. Kent was barely able to keep his composure. He seemed to be holding hundreds of angry questions at bay. “What is happening tonight?” he asked.

  “We’re retrieving a very misguided man who betrayed the Society and ran away,” Mr. Redburn said with a smile, not even minding the forced revelation. “He’s right this way.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” he said, walking away. A portal opened beside him. It seemed to lead back to London—directly to Catherine’s house.

  “So you’re just going to keep subtly threatening us if we don’t do everything you say?”

  “Believe me, if we were trying to be subtle, you would know it.”

  “Actually, that would negate the very meaning of subtle—” Mr. Kent said before he disappeared into a portal below him.

  Three seconds later, another portal opened up, depositing him and a rush of mud on the street beside Mr. Redburn as he marched back to us.

  “This is as explicit a threat as I can make,” Mr. Redburn said to me. “Follow the Society’s orders, or I will visit your friend, take her to the tallest, most jagged-edged mountain I can find, and throw her off. Now, for the last time, we are going this way.” Mr. Redburn headed down the dim, empty street.

  Mr. Kent attempted to wipe his suit clean as he climbed to his feet. “I will murder that man,” he said evenly, sounding so sure I was surprised Mr. Redburn didn’t fall dead on the spot. He glanced back at me and stalked off after Mr. Redburn.

  “I suggest you follow,” Miss Chen said, seizing my arm. “You’re lucky your friends are still alive.”

  Every step toward Mr. Redburn boiled my blood hotter. “Did—why do you say that?” I whispered to her.

  “They killed one of my brothers the last time I refused them. They don’t have any qualms about that,” she muttered back. I turned to see that her eyes weren’t just
calm and cool. They were banked fire. They were a glass ready to crack at any moment.

  “My God. They are monsters.” I felt a fury clawing its way out of my mouth, but I forced it back down, trying to find a rational solution. “What if we all refuse?” I suggested. “Then there’d be no one to carry out their threats.”

  “There’s always someone who breaks,” she said.

  “Like us right now,” I said bitterly. “We have no idea what Mr. Redburn is going to ask us to do to this man.”

  “We don’t have a choice at the moment,” Mr. Kent said, squeezing out the mud from his sleeves. “Until we know how to keep everyone safe, we have to work with them.”

  “And how long have you been trying to figure that out, Miss Chen?” I asked, glancing at her sideways.

  “Almost a year,” she answered.

  No one had anything to say to that. I wondered where Mr.Braddock was, wishing for a look from him, a word, an answer that would tell me exactly what we needed to do. That we had to do what was right and not give in to their threats, no matter how personal they were. I worried he was on a mission of his own. He had the most difficult position of all. Anything he’d be forced to do would hurt someone. It was an impossible choice for him to make.

  Soon, we caught up to Mr. Redburn, finding him looking up at a five-story building.

  “All right, children, we’re going in. Third floor. Stay close, this one can open portals to anywhere, too. You might recognize him.”

  Mr. Redburn’s portal led into the middle of a narrow room, where three strangers sat in front of a fire. A young girl with black hair in braids, an older woman who looked like the girl’s mother, and a white-haired man, presumably the man we were looking for. My heart was thrumming so quickly I felt sick.

  Mr. Redburn spoke again. “You should have known we would find you, Hale. I’m sick of wearing your power. There’s a prison full of new ones I’ve been waiting to steal.”

  I felt my breath leave me. This couldn’t be him. He looked completely different from the last time I’d seen him. Unless he’d …

  The girl with the black hair leaped up and cried out something unintelligible. She would have run toward us if Mr. Hale hadn’t grabbed her around the waist and dropped her through a portal that appeared below her with a crackle. Before Mr. Hale could follow, Mr. Redburn reached into a portal of his own that opened across the room. He seized Mr. Hale from behind, but the mother, spryer than she looked, struck Mr. Redburn, shoved her companion into the hole, and dove in after him.

  Mr. Redburn rose to his feet just in time to see their portal close. Then he turned to us angrily. “Yes, by all means, stand around like idiots. Don’t grab them or anything.”

  A large crack opened below all four of us, dropping us into a sweltering forest. The mud squelched below my feet as I managed to land properly, but Mr. Redburn was already off and running. I lifted my skirts and followed the rest of the group, running through brush and bugs and hot thick air. Through the trees I could see Mr. Hale and his group stepping through another portal into a city and all of a sudden, Mr. Redburn had thrown open his own portal into our path.

  A horse whinnied and a carriage almost knocked me down as I emerged in the middle of a busy street, somewhere that seemed to be the Orient. Mr. Kent grabbed my hand and pulled me along so we would not get left behind—as much as I didn’t want to help the Society I also didn’t want to get stuck anywhere, never able to find my way home. We chased after our targets into a narrow alley that ended at a wooden door that was slammed shut before Mr. Redburn could reach it. He rammed against it hard, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Chen!” he yelled, slamming against it again as Miss Chen reached him. This time it shattered into a million pieces and he made it into the building as another portal on the wall closed.

  Mr. Redburn opened his own portal again, leading to a glaringly white tundra. I almost slipped on the ice as the cold air struck me harder than a physical blow. About twenty feet ahead of us, Mr. Hale and his companions were racing to enter another portal, when Mr. Redburn opened a second one right in Mr. Hale’s path.

  I heard a crackle next to me and turned to find Mr. Hale accidentally transported back to us. Mr. Redburn met him with a hard punch on the nose that knocked him off balance. So off balance, in fact, that he stumbled backward and fell.

  But he didn’t hit the ice. He fell into his own portal, which sent him crashing down onto Mr. Redburn’s back. As Mr. Hale brought him to the hard ground, he continued to pound at Mr. Redburn’s head while opening another hole that crashed them both down over Mr. Kent. In a matter of seconds, Mr. Hale created a pile of bodies as if he’d employed this strategy against difficult odds before. I didn’t know where to run as he landed on Miss Chen.

  The pile disappeared again, but I wasn’t hit. I waited in the cold silence for a moment until a portal deposited Mr. Redburn, Mr. Kent, and Miss Chen, along with a few gallons of water.

  “What in God’s name just happened?” Mr. Kent sputtered out.

  “He tried to pile us on each other and get away,” Mr. Redburn said, getting to his knees. “But falling in water ruins that.”

  He opened a portal on the ground between us, providing an expansive view of our surroundings from the sky. Mr. Redburn searched for Mr. Hale’s family, finding they’d run farther away and Mr. Hale was opening another portal to escape.

  “I’m tired of this. Just grab his family when I say so,” Mr. Redburn said. “He won’t run if we have them.”

  Mr. Redburn’s new portal opened up on a wet farm filled with a number of astonished workers, some staring down the field at Mr. Hale’s group and some at us. I splashed through the mud a few steps, trying to keep up, but Mr. Hale was looking over his shoulder at us, already running into another portal. And then I heard a crackle below us as Mr. Redburn tried to head them off.

  My stomach lurched and my scream caught in my throat as our next destination seemed to be miles up in the sky. I fell with only a brief, horrifying second to panic and wonder if this sort of fall would kill me.

  And then I hit a surface, hard. I scrambled up, finding the stars and the moon closer than I’d expected. We were on a quiet rooftop, surrounded by a city crowded with buildings, pointed domes, and towers that seemed to be reaching out to the sky for help. The distinct click of a gun broke the silence.

  Mr. Hale was standing above Mr. Redburn aiming a pistol at his head. He pulled the trigger without hesitation, a faint crackle sounded, and the gunshot rang out. But Mr. Redburn didn’t fall.

  Mr. Hale did. He hit the ground and cried out, blood staining his left leg. Mr. Redburn had opened a tiny portal in front of Mr. Hale’s gun at the last second and sent the shot into Mr. Hale’s own leg. The gun broke into pieces a moment later as Miss Chen climbed to her feet.

  “Grab the girl, Kent!” Mr. Redburn shouted, before he opened a portal next to him and seized the mother at the other end of the rooftop. He held a knife to her throat and looked pleased to find Mr. Kent holding the young girl in place by her shoulders. She tried to yell something, to me it seemed, but the words were muffled, as if there were a hand over her mouth. And that was when I noticed she didn’t even have a mouth.

  Mr. Redburn seemed to make the same observation. “Is that … your daughter, Hale?” he asked, mildly amused. “Does she have an ability, or rather—is it an inability to speak?”

  The girl gave a muffled moan again and looked at me pleadingly. She tried to wriggle out of Mr. Kent’s hold to no avail. He looked utterly distressed and a chill ran down my spine. I reached under my sleeve and pulled the dagger fan loose.

  Mr. Hale rocked back and forth, groaning in pain. “Don’t hurt her, please.”

  “Why, that depends on you. The Society was very generous to you and your mother, despite your many crimes. And we told you what would happen if you tried to run.”

  “What did you do?” Mr. Hale wailed.

  “Oh, she’s well enough—she simply doesn’t hav
e a home anymore. I thought you wouldn’t care. After all, you left her there. But you should concentrate on these two now, as you consider this invitation I am extending to you.” Mr. Redburn tightened the knife at the older woman’s throat. “If you want them to retain their … good health, shall we say, you’ll return to us and put your powers to good use.”

  “Of course I will, I promise, please,” Mr. Hale begged. It really did sound like him now. The fear that he had for the Society when we last saw him, it was still there.

  “Kent, make sure he is making honest promises,” Mr. Redburn said.

  Mr. Kent frowned bitterly but did as Mr. Redburn asked. “Mr. Hale, do you truly intend to rejoin the Society of Aberrations?”

  “Yes, y-yes of course,” Mr. Hale said, looking almost relieved by his answer. He didn’t take his eyes off the girl in Mr. Kent’s grasp.

  “Well, isn’t this delightful,” Mr. Redburn said. “Now, Mr. Kent, you have your own gun, yes? Shoot the girl.”

  “What?” Mr. Kent’s face was leached of color.

  “Do it,” Mr. Redburn said, and a trickle of blood ran down from the old woman’s neck. She was ignoring it, however, eyes wide and alarmed as she, too, focused on the young girl.

  Mr. Hale twisted around to see what was happening. “No—I will join, I told you—”

  Mr. Redburn interrupted. “I understand what you told me. You’ll join. But what good is that if you don’t believe our threats? You’ll simply run away again. Mr. Kent is going to shoot her, you’re going to watch and hate it, then you’ll be more careful with your wife and future children.”

  “No!” Mr. Hale reached out in desperation toward the girl and a faint crackle sounded below her, but nothing opened. He collapsed in pain.

  “Always looking for an escape. Fool.” Mr. Redburn turned to Mr. Kent. “Do it. Or do you want me to have a nice little chat with that talkative little sister of yours?”

  Mr. Kent looked at me, pleading. “Ev—”

  But I did not let him finish. I rushed over to the girl, seized her hand, and pulled her away, Mr. Kent letting go easily. I slid the latch out on the fan and released the blade, holding it out in front of me. There was a satisfying gasp from at least one person.