Tarnished

by Cooper, Karina

  “Fine,” I bit out. “You kept me safe while I was out of my skull, thank you ever so much.” He—she?—was talking debt. I couldn’t help my sarcasm. “So I owe you. I’m a collector, I can easily repay.”

  “Easily?” The word stretched out, a thoughtful sound. “Perhaps.”

  “I won’t perform,” I told the screen. “If you’ve any thought of dressing me up in pretty paint, you may as well strip the payment from my hide now.”

  I’d swear the room dipped in temperature suddenly. There was no sound, but gooseflesh tore over my arms, rippled down my spine.

  For a long, aching moment, silence reigned.

  Then a breath. “Do not ever,” the voice said, so softly, so icily that I repressed a shiver, “presume to tell us our business, Miss Black. You are our employee. You will do as we command. Should we choose to, as you so quaintly suggest, strip the payment from your hide, that is exactly what we shall do, and we shall do it on our terms.”

  My weight shifted, and I heard the rustle of movement behind me. My shoulders went rigid as I pictured the Chinese guards reaching for me. Ready to obey any directive.

  I set my jaw, but before I could force any graciousness from my tight throat, the voice continued in the same cool tones. “Despite your apparent desire to be so used, you are not fetching enough to garner the same price as even the plainest of our sweets. It would take you far, far too long to redress your debt in that manner.”

  My head reeled. Saved and insulted all in one breath? I bit my lip.

  “Therefore,” the voice continued crisply, “we agree to those terms. In exchange for saving you from the rings—”

  “But you just said I wouldn’t fetch a price,” I cut in quickly.

  “We said you would not fetch as swift a price.”

  This was rapidly spiraling out of control. Nothing for nothing, Hawke had said. My own need to assure I’d be left out of the ring was dropping me farther into debt.

  I gritted my teeth, one hand splaying across my stomach. “Is that what you told Zylphia?” I demanded. “Pay with her body or pay with her hide?”

  The voice was silent a moment. When it spoke, I was given the undeniable sense that my host was answering me only because he or she—bugger it, he would do—wished. “Zylphia already fulfills the role of garden flesh. Punishment must take another form.”

  So she had been whipped. “Why? What had she done?”

  “There are no secrets from us, Miss Black. We do, however, expect a certain amount of decorum from our employees, which now includes you.” The voice steeled. “Do not attempt to hide anything from us, and you will not feel our bite.”

  My eyes narrowed. So they’d found out Zylphia had hired me.

  “Fine,” I said evenly. “I won’t—” I caught myself.

  I’d already said the word perform once. The Karakash Veil, if that was who my host was, had taken it to mean I chose not to sell my thinly retained virtue.

  I bit down on my tongue, hard enough to hurt. I didn’t market my unique skills. I never have. But if I bartered for immunity from the circus as a whole, I could lose even more. I’d have to step carefully. Cautiously, I amended my statement. “So, I won’t become a sweet. What is the price of that reprieve?”

  “In exchange, you will take Zylphia.”

  “Take her? Take her where?”

  “Clearly, you are meddling in affairs of magic and lacking entirely the ability to understand it.” I locked my lips closed before I argued further with the Karakash Veil’s outmoded sense of thinking. “Therefore, in order to fulfill your duties to us, you require someone who can. Zylphia’s bloodline will ensure she is useful.”

  Her bloodline? I frowned. “What bloodline?”

  “A useful one, Miss Black.”

  Unlike my mysterious host. Except I couldn’t take Zylphia anywhere. I needed to get home, and I needed to do so without spilling my secrets any more than I already had. I shook my head. “Zylphia is a sweet, not—”

  “If you do not take and keep her with you, we shall sell her.”

  Ice pitted in my stomach, and suddenly, I was too angry to be ill. “You wouldn’t dare,” I said, taking two steps toward the screen.

  Hands grabbed at me, much faster than I ever expected possible. I didn’t sense even a whisper of motion behind me. Although I was allowed to keep my own balance, the implacable grip at my upper arms told me that was only a matter of courtesy.

  I glared at the screen, for the moment ignoring both men at either side of me.

  “She is ours to do with as we please,” the voice said, as if I hadn’t just caused any sort of interruption. “We will sell her, Miss Black, and we will ensure that it is to the lowest possible creature. Are we clear?”

  I almost snarled. Fighting the urge with everything I had, I spat out, “Clear.”

  “Excellent. You may repay your greater debt by bringing us the móshù.”

  “Bringing . . . what?”

  “The magic, Miss Black,” the Veil sighed, and I heard impatience in the breath. “The drug. We shall expect it directly. Good day.” A string of Chinese syllables peppered the air, and I suddenly recognized the high, sharp tones of the voice I’d heard in the private gardens. The very voice Hawke had argued with.

  I didn’t get a chance to say anything else as those hands tightened, and I was literally dragged from the room. I fought their direction, wrenching at their combined grip, but it was as if I were nothing more than a child between them. The door swung open, and on some unspoken communication, they both pitched me out to the hall.

  I stumbled, wrenched one foot and staggered to my knees.

  “Good Lord!” Zylphia caught my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  It took me a moment to find words in the rage and helpless frustration filling my skull. I bit my tongue until the small pain sawed through my tunneled focus, and I realized I was staring at a small patch of floor between my splayed fingers.

  I pushed up to my feet. My friend’s hands fell away. “Collect your things,” was all I trusted myself to say.

  She was silent.

  I turned, and noticed for the first time that she’d changed. Her jacket, although plain, was almost proper. It buttoned to her chin, hugged her generous curves to her waist—my trained eye picked out the unmistakable cinch of a corset—and narrowed to a V at her waist. She even wore a bustle beneath her matching skirt.

  My mouth fell open.

  Zylphia patted a hand along her dark, kinked hair, coiled up into an elegant chignon. “I received orders,” she said. But her tone was self-conscious. Her eyes remained cast to the floor.

  She was worried. Comprehension was slow to dawn, but when it came, I reached out and took her hands in mine. She winced. I held them tighter. “This isn’t your fault,” I told her. “So you’re required to shadow me, that’s all right.” I summoned a smile, ducking my head to look into her clear blue eyes. “I could think of worse shadows for your Veil to slap on me.”

  Zylphia’s too-generous mouth curved faintly. “You don’t believe in magic.” She knew me well enough.

  Which might explain why she’d never told me of this so-called bloodline of hers. I wouldn’t ask now, not in the Veil’s own halls.

  I shrugged loosely. “I don’t believe in magic,” I agreed. And then I gave in. Just a titch. “But you do, it seems, and so does your Veil. And whatever the correct term is, something infected me. We shall find what.”

  With a sigh, Zylphia picked up her valise. “I don’t like it.”

  “Nor I, but we’re to make the best of it.”

  And in the interim, maybe I’d find a way to free Zylphia from the Karakash Veil’s garden.

  As we left the Menagerie, I saw no sign of Hawke. It was well past midnight and the pleasure gardens were well occupied. The circus tent glowed like a blood-red jewel, but Zylphia led me along the quieter paths, where the Menagerie staff often went unseen. I walked quickly, exhausted and spent.

  I
didn’t dare take my time. Every step of the way, I felt the prickle of eyes upon my back.

  Nothing for nothing, Hawke had said.

  And didn’t I understand now? My time was limited, and the metaphorical collar placed on me all too real for my likings. I needed to get out from under my debtor as soon as humanly possible.

  I needed to find that bloody cameo.

  Some of the ferrymen knew Zylphia. I shouldn’t have been surprised. A great deal was going to change now that I had an unwitting partner in crime.

  Fortunately, Captain Abercott was already too deep in his cups to bother with polite conversation. We sat in silence as he devoured the sweet with half-lidded eyes, and I hurried her off and away.

  We were nearly to my home before she spoke, her voice hushed and very carefully restrained. “I never took you for gentry.”

  And there it was. The moment I’d been dreading.

  My fingers flexed as I stopped. She stopped beside me. “I knew you colored your hair,” she added after a moment.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” I told her, my voice tight and thin. I wasn’t feeling any better. My head had exploded like an aether engine somewhere between the Menagerie and the ferry, and I still felt as if I wanted to climb inside the nearest basin and lose my insides.

  She said nothing as I turned to face her.

  But whatever she saw in my eyes forced her a step back, her own gaze widening.

  “My name is Cherry St. Croix,” I said. “I am not a member of the peerage, but I walk among them as a well-to-do miss of at least semi-decent reputation. I live in Chelsea, I have staff—of which you are now one, might I remind you—and if you so much as breathe a bloody word of this to anyone, I’ll feed you to the sweet tooth myself.”

  It ended on a note so hard that she flinched. Her gaze banked, mouth tightening, but she nodded once. “I won’t tell a soul.”

  “Promise it, Zylla.” I didn’t touch her, but every fiber of my being strained to grab her by the shoulders and shake. “Promise me, on pain of death, that you’ll tell nobody.”

  Her shoulders squared beneath her plain brown jacket. “They told me I’m to tell them everything,” she said evenly. “That I’m to share every detail of your life with them.”

  I would swear I saw red cracks forming in my sight.

  But Zylphia surprised me. She reached out, touching my cheek with two fingers, her expression softening. “You’re my friend, cherie. Doesn’t matter to me what side of the drift you’re on. I’ll only tell them the bits we agree on, right? Lies or no.”

  My mouth twisted. It was good enough. Given she’d only recently been whipped for keeping secrets, it was better than I could have hoped for. She’d soon learn how unforgiving London proper could be, even among the servants, and she was a fine-enough actress that she’d learn her way among them. I nodded once, fighting back tears of frustration and anxiety and exhaustion, and led the way home.

  Every light in every window blazed.

  I stepped through the back door, gestured Zylphia in behind me, and made it three steps across before the kitchen door swung wide. A woman screamed.

  I clapped a hand over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut as my head threatened to shatter into a thousand bloody pieces of agony.

  Mrs. Booth seized my shoulders. “Washington Barrett!” she shouted. I’d never heard her use her husband’s name before, she’d always been the very model of propriety. She shook me, then pulled me to her bosom. “Oh, bless me, she’s home safe!”

  I found myself propelled into the dining room, protesting. Only to stop cold. I stared blankly at the array of weapons laid out on the dining table. Rifles, pistols, even two sets of matched fencing rapiers. Booth lowered the dual pistols he held aimed in each hand as soon as he recognized me in his wife’s grip.

  The stark, unmitigated relief on his old, weathered face filled me with shame.

  “We have been very anxious, miss,” he said, his baritone mildly reproachful.

  “Cherry!”

  I braced as Fanny’s wail lanced through my ears.

  “Betsy, she’s home!” And then she shrieked, loud enough to wake the dead. “Trousers? Lord have mercy, your hair.”

  And suddenly I was surrounded by every member of my staff, and a hysterical Fanny. Betsy watched me from the side, her features tight and worried, while the others clamored around me. I was pulled this way and that; questions peppered at me from all directions.

  “Stop, stop!” I begged, disentangling myself with effort. “Please, I’m so sorry.”

  “Miss, you look quite green,” Mrs. Booth said worriedly. “You, girl—” She frowned at Zylphia. “Who are you?”

  I forced down a roiling ball of queasiness to say, “Mrs. Booth, this is Zylphia. She’s . . . a new member of my employ. Please set her up as . . . as . . .”

  The blood left my face. My skin broke out in a clammy sweat and I swayed.

  Betsy whistled sharply. “You, girl, get me a pot of fresh tea. The green bin. Mr. Booth, sir, can you carry her to her bed?”

  I struggled against the hands grasping at my arms, my shoulders. All this noise, it would surely wake my demon guardian. “Ashmore,” I muttered, only half aware I’d said anything at all.

  “Gone, miss.” Without warning, Booth bent and swept an arm behind my knees. I crumbled like a paper doll. With surprising strength, and shaky dexterity, my butler carried me awkwardly up the stairs. “He left early this evening.”

  Fanny fluttered behind us, and as I glimpsed her shockingly pale face over Booth’s shoulder, guilt sliced almost to my soul. I pressed my face against his chest and squeezed my eyes shut. “ ’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Now, there’s no need for that.” Booth’s deep voice floated over my head, gentle as a summer breeze. And just as sweet. To my horror, tears pricked behind my eyelids. “You gave us a fright, but we weren’t all that ready to give up on you. Betsy?” he called back.

  “Just behind you, Mr. Booth,” I heard.

  I sniffled. “Were you looking to outfit an army?” I asked, my smile tiny.

  “Ah, just some souvenirs from the old infantry days,” Booth said, a little more than sheepish as he set me down on my bed. “Rest up, now.” He backed stiffly away. His gaze remained awkwardly on the ceiling, as if setting eyes on me in my own bed might somehow prove impolite.

  I closed my eyes, heard Betsy shoo everyone out. Everyone but one. “She was sick all day,” I heard Zylphia tell my maid. I curled into the bedclothes, hugging a pillow to my chest.

  Betsy sighed. “It’s something below, isn’t it? You, all this? It’s caught up to her.”

  “I wish I could say,” Zylphia said softly.

  “Don’t. I don’t care to know. Bring the tea. We’ve got to get her presentable, though Lord only knows why it matters now. They’ve seen the lampblack and trousers and—” My maid’s voice broke. Firmed quickly. “The whole house is in disarray.”

  “Is that laudanum?”

  Crystal clinked. Cold, edged facets pushed into my fingers, and eager for the oblivion of sleep, I drank the entirety of the draught Betsy poured for me.

  “Mrs. Fortescue—that’s her chaperone,” Betsy explained. “She sent the houseboy out to purchase some. We thought the miss might need a bit of help when she returned.”

  I knew what Betsy didn’t say. Laudanum was a powerful reprieve from pain; opium direct was better. Lacking in the ability to barter for opium above the drift, Betsy found the next best thing. Dear Fanny had loosened the purse strings to acquire it.

  Just in case I came home near enough to dead to warrant it.

  Betsy instructed Zylphia quietly, and I let them undress me without argument. The laudanum soothed my stomach in increments, wiping away all trace of illness and hunger and shame and fear until I drifted slowly off to sleep. The whispered voices of my two friends were my lullaby.

  But sleep was not my savior.

  I dreamed. Feverish, anxious dreams plagued with memo
ries of black, black hair and golden skin. With fangs dripping crimson in the shadows. I heard Micajah Hawke screaming hoarsely in the dark; pleading, I thought, or threatening.

  I dreamed of white angel wings and woke gasping, only to find Zylphia’s arm cradled under my shoulders and a glass of laudanum at my lips. “Take it slow,” she whispered. “It’s not as strong as you like it.”

  How did she know? “Betsy,” I croaked as soon as my mouth was clear.

  “Gone home, love. Sleep. It’ll do your body a world of good.”

  Her blue eyes were understanding.

  Until they ran down her caramel cheeks like melted wax and I was once more cast adrift in an unrelenting tide.

  I gave up hope and all sense of self as I dreamed of everything and nothing at all. Clinging to what little flotsam of identity I had left, I slept.

  And in my sleep, I relived it all.

  Every. Screaming. Note.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I didn’t wake slowly. It was more as if I crossed a threshold, stepped through some formless door and all at once, I was awake.

  And I was filled with boundless energy.

  I knew this feeling. I threw off my blankets, blinking in the daylight creeping through my drawn curtains. I patted my chest, my stomach, my cheeks, and found myself all there. I suffered no twinges of pain. No twitches of nausea.

  Kicking my feet over the mattress edge, I took a deep breath and stretched. I often felt like this after a bout with opium. I attributed it to the laudanum I took at night, or to the rare occasions I was able to get to an opium den for business.

  That only cemented it for me. The madman below the drift had used opium in his drug. I still refused to call it magic, no matter what a faceless voice behind a silk screen said.

  It came in a dust, a powder, like any other chemical agent. Science would unravel it long before magic could ever be proven.

  I stretched the kinks out from my spine. Truth be told, I was a little stiff. I hadn’t slept easily, although only the vaguest shadows of my dreams remained.