by Bec McMaster
“With what?”
Garrett retrieved the small, brass recording device from his pocket. “We call it ECHO.” Echometry communications…something starting with H and observations. No matter how many times Fitz told him, he never could remember it all.
Once the information was recorded, Garrett could play it back over a phonograph in the comfort of his study. Fitz was working on making something smaller that could repeat the information instantly.
Mallory peered at it. “Why, I ain’t never seen the like. Records me voice, aye?”
“Clearly enough to fool your wife.” They shared a smile.
“Aye, well, go ahead and question me, sir. I’d like to hear me voice, I would.”
Gesturing him through into the factory, Garrett clipped the ECHO to his lapel. “Monday, twenty-first of November. This is Acting Guild Master Garrett Reed, recording a conversation with Mr. Mallory, foreman of Factory Five. So, Mr. Mallory, last night the factory was closed and you arrived at half five this morning to stoke the boilers. Can you explain to me how you found the bodies?”
“Aye.” Mallory leaned close, speaking slowly and loudly, as if to a deaf man. “I come in through the side door and turned the lights on back there. Didn’t need to light the whole factory, see? Just down here where the furnaces stand.”
“You may speak normally,” Garrett instructed. “The ECHO has an accurate recording radius of twenty feet.”
“Aye, sir.” Mallory shuffled in embarrassment, then pressed on. “Through here, sir. You’ll see the row of furnaces there? They’re what we use to purify the blood.”
The enormous row of furnaces radiated waves of heat in the chilly morning. Gaslight gleamed on the heavy black iron, though almost everything else fell into pools of darkness. The Nighthawks were instructed to leave any scene as it had been found, at least until initial observations had been recorded.
“So you lit the furnaces? How long did that take?” He could see the wheelbarrow tracks and taste the coal dust in the air. Coal bins were full to overflowing and a shovel still sat in one of the wheelbarrows.
“Aye, lit them up. Then I went upstairs to boil a spot o’ tea at half six, so I must have been down ’ere an hour.” Mallory gestured to a grimy clock face on the wall. “Been a factory man all me life, sir. It’s habit to keep time.”
No doubt Mallory did the same thing every Monday morning at precisely the same time.
Garrett followed him up the stairs to the factory. Morning light gleamed through the dusty windows, casting a grayish pall over the enormous room, and it was frigidly cold up here. Somewhere in the eaves a pigeon fluttered and cooed, frantically searching for a way out. Huge steel cables hung from the ceiling, suspending the walkways that overlooked the main room and led to the offices upstairs.
A dark figure caught his attention: Perry. Dressed in her tight black leathers, she almost blended into the shadows that swallowed up the walkways above. The only thing that caught his eye was the pale oval of her face, almost as familiar to him as his own. She paused here and there as if examining the area. Scenting the air, he knew. Perry could track a man to the London borough where he lived, purely by the scent trail he left.
“All the factories shared the mess hall outside,” Mallory explained. “But there were a gas stove and kettle in Mr. Sykes’s office. He’s the overseer.”
Garrett tore his gaze away from her. Focus. “But he’s not here?”
“Ah, well. Ain’t his practice to be here till midday or thereabouts. I sent word to his house, but ain’t heard back yet.”
“Sleeping off a soused head?”
Mallory looked relieved. “Something like that, I’d expect.”
Garrett questioned Mallory thoroughly until they finally found themselves maneuvering from the enormous row of machines toward the bodies.
This was where Garrett differed from Lynch. He liked to take a man’s measure, to hear the story from witnesses before he sought out the bodies. Lynch, however, took his evidence in scientific facts and autopsies. Lynch could guess what type of man had the means of doing something like this, but he lacked the ability to converse with people easily. Garrett knew people inside and out. He could put them at ease with a few well-placed words, and he listened. People liked to talk about themselves, given an attentive audience.
Both methods worked and Garrett stuck with what he knew. He wasn’t Lynch. He could never be Lynch. And the Nighthawks and the Council would just have to get used to that.
By the time they came upon the bodies, Mallory had relaxed enough to forget his words were being recorded as he spilled details of the ghost he’d seen. “Way up on them ramparts, where your Nighthawk’s standing. ’Twere a woman, sir. I could see right through her, and she gleamed fair pale…”
Mallory stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw the pair of bodies, and this time he couldn’t stop himself from making the sign of the cross.
Two of the Nighthawks, Faber and Scoresby, had secured the area and Scoresby was setting up the mechanical shutter camera with Barrons looking on in curiosity. Dr. Gibson would be arriving soon to make his own analysis and take the bodies away for autopsy.
No help for it. Garrett looked at the bodies. Pale and naked, their fingers tangling, almost as if reaching for each other. One was a brunette, her dark curls covering her features. The other had long, blond hair with ringlets framing her heart-shaped face.
“Poor wee lasses,” Mallory muttered, working his cap in his hands. “Can’t think what they were doing here at night.”
Garrett knelt down and, using a stylus, lifted one of the girl’s stiffening arms. Dark stitches in her skin showed where deep cuts had been made to her chest. Almost as though something had been removed inside, then the skin replaced. But little blood spatter around her. He felt her throat, but the skin was quite cold and cadaveric rigidity had begun to set in. Dr. Gibson would no doubt discover more.
“Found anything?” Perry asked, appearing on quiet feet. He could never work out how she did that, as her boots had small heels on them.
“This one was already dead,” Garrett murmured. “Look at the bruising on the bottom of her arm—and body. She’s been moved from where she died, but the death occurred sometime last night, I’d say. Gibson will have a more accurate idea of time.”
He circled toward the other girl, stepping carefully. “This one, however, was killed here.” Blood splashed from the gaping chasm in her chest, the ribs splintered and the flesh around the wound mangled. “I think the heart has been removed from both of them, but this was done quickly and far less efficiently than the other girl. He was hurried here. Not as precise.”
A glance showed arterial blood spattered across the nearest machines and drying on the timber floorboards. Garrett’s nostrils flared at the sight of blood, and his gaze shot toward the stairs that led down to the furnaces. He had to focus. “You heard nothing when you came in?” he asked Mallory.
“Nothing, sir.”
And he would have heard precisely that with the furnaces roaring. Garrett frowned. “I believe you startled the murderer and he killed the second girl here, while you were below. The first young lady was already dead and perhaps he was moving her.” Did the second girl struggle? Was that why he killed her? Had she tried to scream for help when she heard Mallory moving about?
“How?” Perry murmured. “Carry one body over his shoulder and the other young woman in his other arm?”
“That argues for either brute strength or help. No sign of the heart?” Garrett directed the question at Scoresby, who was taking photographs of the scene.
“No, sir.”
“How did he move the first body here and murder the other girl? She would have been struggling, I’d assume?” Barrons asked.
“Don’t ever assume. What are your thoughts?” Garrett knelt down, directing the question to Perry. “Think there were two of them?”
“Possibly.” Perry circled the girls, her lean form drawing his gaze. He wait
ed patiently while she knelt and examined the blond, looking at her hands and fingers, then her face. She quickly performed the same examination on the brunette.
When she looked up at him, her gray eyes were solemn. Troubled.
“You recognize one of them?” he asked.
“No. But I do recognize the sort. Look here,” she said, lifting the blond’s hand. A ruby ring decorated the girl’s middle finger, though red marks showed where someone had tried to remove it.
“She came from money, then,” he mused.
“Not just money, Garrett.” Perry turned the girl’s palm toward him. “No calluses, no signs of wear… Her skin is pale and flawless. Like she spends most of her time wearing gloves and has never performed a day’s work in her life. This”—she pointed to the ring—“is not just a common ruby. See the silverwork? The way the carved roses curl around the ruby and hold it in place?”
He leaned closer, aware of leather straining as the other men did too.
Perry’s thumbnail flicked one of the silver thorns and it popped out, a bead of clear liquid seeping from the end of it.
Barrons sucked in a sharp breath and Perry looked up. “You’ve seen them,” she said, and it was no question.
“It’s a fashion among the debutantes of the Echelon these days,” Barrons admitted, scratching at his jaw. “I don’t recognize either of the girls, though, which is not unusual. I rarely mingle for societal purposes these days.”
“It’s not just a fashion,” Perry corrected. “It’s a weapon. A poison ring. The liquid inside is hemlock, designed to paralyze a blue blood long enough for the girl to get away if he attacks her.”
Garrett reached for the girl’s hand and examined the ring. Hemlock and its effects on a blue blood had only been discovered recently, and the information was still circulating throughout London in humanist pamphlets.
He’d heard rumors recently that some of the younger lords of the Echelon had begun to play dangerous games, taking what they wanted from the sheltered young ladies for the night and casting them aside without a thought. Once blooded, a young girl’s entire reputation could be ruined and she would be seen as anyone’s for the taking. A blood whore.
The rings must have come into fashion shortly after word of hemlock’s effects reached the Echelon, as a girl’s only means of protection against such a scenario.
The other girl’s fingers were bare but there was a mark on her right hand that attested to the presence of some sort of jewelry in recent times. Something she wore frequently enough that it had left its mark on her.
“Look at their hair,” Perry said. “It’s thick and glossy with health and long enough to be looped up in fashionable styles. If a young working girl had hair like this, she’d have sold it. Their nails”—she held up the blond’s hand—“are perfectly manicured.”
All signs he probably wouldn’t have looked for. Perry’s skills ran in the other direction from his.
“Plump girls,” Garrett began to notice. “Neither of them knew hardship.”
“If word of this gets out…” Barrons trailed off grimly.
“We’ll find out who they are,” Perry replied, her voice hardening as she folded the girl’s hands over the ragged hole in her chest. “And then we’ll find the killer.”
The firmness of her tone surprised him. Garrett examined her face, but it was expressionless as usual. Perry always kept her emotions locked firmly under key, but she couldn’t hide them from him. What was it about this situation that bothered her?
Wiping her hands on her breeches, she stood up and let out a breath.
“Scoresby, make sure you photograph this entire area in detail,” Garrett said. “Faber, I want the whole factory searched for anything out of the ordinary, including anything that might have created this ‘ghost.’” Although he had his doubts about precisely what Mallory had seen. A man stumbling across two bodies in the dark was often confused. “When Dr. Gibson arrives, help him to load the girls into the medical van.” He looked at Perry. “Ready to question some of the jewelers?”
Barrons was still staring at the bodies. “I believe I can spare you some time with that inquiry.”
“You know where the rings come from, my lord?” Perry asked.
“My ward, Lena Todd—now Lena Carver—is responsible for distributing them among the debutantes. It was her idea, you see.” Barrons’s head lowered in thought. “She might know if any of the debutantes have gone missing.”
“Lena Carver.” Garrett frowned. “The new verwulfen ambassador’s wife?”
“Aye,” Barrons replied.
“Bloody hell,” Perry muttered under her breath.
Bloody hell, indeed.
***
By the time they exited the factory, several other Nighthawks had arrived, along with Dr. Gibson. Garrett gave them directions, then commandeered one of the novices to drive the carriage.
Perry reluctantly handed over her driving goggles and glared at Garrett as he held the door open for her.
“I always hold the door open,” he pointed out.
Perry glanced up at him from beneath her thick, dark lashes as she climbed inside. “And do you always stare at my backside when I climb in?”
Garrett choked back a laugh and followed her inside. “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.” Slamming the door shut, he felt the familiar throbbing hum as the boilers started. At least now their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.
When she didn’t reply, he looked up. Faint rosy circles colored her cheeks, despite the infinitely cool look she gave him.
“Good God. Are you blushing?”
“You would have to say more than that to make me blush. I’ve heard all manner of vulgar commentary from you over the years, enough to grant me some immunity.”
The steam carriage started forward. Perry glanced out the window, the gray light of a frosty November morning washing over her features. The unsettling urge to push at her hit him again.
“Don’t pretend you’re in any way innocent,” he replied. “Do you remember what you were whispering in my ear at the opera?”
Her glare practically incinerated him. “I’ve tried to forget the entire incident.”
“Did you succeed?” His voice roughened.
This time she looked away, turning her face to the window and granting him her profile. She was a long time in replying. “Quite.”
Liar. “Perhaps I should remind you.”
“Perhaps we should concentrate on the task at hand?”
A thousand responses leaped to mind, but Garrett said nothing. Simply watched her, reading the clues that he hadn’t noticed until now. How wound up she was. Tight as clockwork.
Not about him, he was certain. Or she’d have been like this since the opera. No, this was new.
“This case bothers you,” he said.
“No more than usual.”
“You’re always on edge after something like this,” he noted. “But you don’t get quiet. You get angry and you don’t relax until we can get in the training room and you can punch the bag a few times. Or me.”
“Do you want me to fight with you?”
“I’d like you to tell me what’s bothering you,” he replied, though he could have taken up the gauntlet.
Perry’s gaze dropped to her hands. “It’s nothing.”
“Is it about the case?”
“I… It’s… I never like seeing young girls like that. They were what? Sixteen? Seventeen? They’ve barely lived.”
“A lot of them are.” He stared out the window as they passed through the streets. Here in the heart of the city, the cobblestones gleamed and elegant passersby laughed beneath their bonnets and top hats. A far cry from the streets outside the city walls that kept out the rabble, the kind of people that he’d once come from. “It’s the children,” he admitted quietly. “They’re the ones that bother me the most. Them and the whores.”
“Whores?”
Garrett shrugged. “They don’t have anyone
to protect them. Circumstances force them to do what they must, and most of them die cold, lonely deaths. Do you know why that bothers me so much?” he asked. “It’s because I see my mother. I see her body.” A flash of it swept through his vision. Mary Reed, lying naked and broken in an alley after her night’s shift. Robbed of everything—her clothes, her meager coin purse, her dignity.
He’d been all of nine and left to fend for himself. Oh yes, he knew how those children and whores died. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen to step away from the gutters and better himself, one of the reasons he’d joined the Nighthawks when it became apparent he had the craving virus. He hadn’t been able to protect his mother, but there were always others.
He forced the memories away. “Do you see yourself in those young girls?”
She shook her head abruptly. But the stillness was there in her shoulders.
“Or is it something else?” He watched the way she took a quick breath and looked away again. “It is. Something else is bothering you.”
“Garrett, leave it alone.”
Like hell. But he’d long since learned that if he kept questioning her, she’d obstinately dig her claws in and say nothing more. Perry was possibly the only person he couldn’t eventually wear down.
“As you wish,” he replied softly.
Stillness fell between them, broken only by the steady hiss of the steam engine. Garrett stretched his arms out along the back of the seat and watched her stare out the window stubbornly, pretending that she didn’t feel his gaze.
The silky, black strands of her hair, cut longer in front and shorter at the nape, fell over her forehead. A boyish, careless cut, but one that drew his gaze to the smoothness of her throat and the long line of her nape. He’d pressed a kiss there at the opera. Felt the kick of her pulse against his tongue as he fought the urge to bite her, to mark her as his. It was the first time his demons had ever come close to overruling him.
“Do you think the verwulfen ambassador will be home?” he asked, mainly to break the thick silence in the carriage. He hated the way silence seemed to settle over them now. As though both of them were far too aware of what had changed, yet neither wished to mention it. Sometimes he felt like he was truly losing her. If the opera had never happened, he could have confided in her about his CV levels and found some sense of solace, at least.