James frowned. “A brain aneurysm. It was quite sudden.”
“That’s terrible.”
His face clouded. “It’s a damned shame. Cady was a sweet girl.” He smiled. “No sense, though. I suppose that’s why she liked Edgar.”
Molly flinched at the name.
“That’s right,” James said, eyes widening. “You were looking for him last night.”
“Yes.”
“Edgar! Come over here. There’s a girl that wants to see you.”
She clasped the knife in her pocket. This was not going at all as she’d planned. She’d wanted a quiet place to confront him. The garden or an empty lecture hall. She could not do it here. There were too many people. Too much . . .
A figure just a few feet away at the punch bowl raised his glass and waded toward them.
“Really,” Molly said. “It’s not—”
“Molly Green, meet Edgar White.”
* * *
“Do I know you?”
Surely, this could not be right.
The boy in front of her was nothing like what she’d imagined.
Edgar White’s thinning blond hair was plastered to his skull with pomade, and a limp mustache clung to his upper lip. His body was short and slight, almost as small as her own.
“I think you know my friend,” Molly said, all thoughts of her original plan disintegrating. She would not lose this chance. “Kitty Wells.”
Edgar’s face drained of color.
James’s eyebrows lifted as he stepped back into the crowds. “I believe I’ll leave you two alone to talk.”
As soon as he was gone, Edgar grabbed hold of her elbow. “How dare you?” His voice was an angry whisper, and she could smell alcohol on his breath. “Bringing her name up here.”
“So you do know her?”
He smirked, the ugly mustache wiggling like a live animal. “In a manner of speaking.”
Hot dots of fury exploded behind her eyes. “How could she ever like a man like you?”
The smirk deepened. “A girl like that will take whatever she can get. I’ve had dozens like her.”
The anger exploded. Before she could stop herself, the knife was out of her pocket and pressed into Edgar’s belly.
“Kitty’s dead, you know.”
Confusion flashed across his face, and then fear as he looked at the knife. “Are you mad?”
“You were supposed to meet her that night. Did you kill her?”
The words were louder than she’d intended, and they rang out across the room. From the corner of her eye, Molly saw Ava making her way toward her in a crisp line.
Noting the attention, Edgar let out a loud, false laugh. “Quite the joker. Not entirely the place for it, though, yes?”
She kept the knife wedged into his belly. From this angle, no one else could see it. All she had to do was push.
“What did you do?”
With his other hand, Edgar bent down as if to embrace her. He took hold of her hand with the knife and gave it a painful squeeze. The knife dropped to the ground, and Edgar quickly stepped on top of it. “I told your friend it was over. That’s all. If you want to know what else happened, ask any of the whores in the city. Otherwise, I’ll thank you to leave me alone.”
He shoved her away, and she found herself caught in the arms of James Chambers, his face wrinkled in concern. “Molly, is everything all right?”
She spun away, racing out of the silent room, eager faces already bending to gossip. Finding the nearest door, she stepped through, slamming it closed.
But before she had time to fully process anything that had just happened, a new horror assaulted her.
Staring at her from across the room was the dead face of Cady Rutledge.
17
The corpse sat propped on a chair, eyes sewn open, head resting on Ursula’s shoulder.
There was a bright flash, and a man emerged from behind the curtain of a camera, frowning. “The light is not right. Stay there. I’ll talk to your father about finding another room.”
He disappeared, leaving Molly alone with the two sisters.
Ursula’s face was pinched into an agitated frown. “What are you doing here?” she said.
“I’m sorry.” Molly was already reaching for the door. “I didn’t know . . .”
“Get her off of me!” Ursula’s voice caught in her throat. “Please! I can’t take it anymore.”
Molly hesitated, and then went to her, repositioning Cady’s body gently back against the chair.
Cady’s plain features had been made up to look more lifelike, rouge smeared against gray flesh and painted over blue lips. The effect was garish.
“Ursula,” Molly whispered, Edgar momentarily forgotten. “I’m so sorry.”
Ursula had changed her gown. Now, in the midst of a sea of black mourning garb, the two sisters were dressed identically, in white dresses filled with pleats and ruffles made for young girls.
“They want me to take a picture with her.” Ursula’s voice had grown wild.
Molly had heard of such practices—taking a picture with a dead relative to look as though the individual were still alive—but this seemed monstrous.
“Sometimes, it’s better if you just pretend they’re somebody else,” Molly said. “Somebody you don’t know. It makes it easier.”
Ursula’s face hardened. “She’s my sister.”
“I know,” Molly said. “I only mean, while you’re taking the picture, just to get through it, it might help to think of this as just a body. Just . . .”
“Just a body,” Ursula whispered, looking at the corpse, its limbs as stiff as a doll’s. “Just a body.”
Molly nodded. “Yes.”
The photographer burst back into the room, clapping his hands. “Come! We must move quickly. Your father has found us a place in the library.” For the first time, he noticed Molly and frowned. “There are no friends or family allowed. You must leave.”
She nodded and stole gratefully away, Ursula’s haunted expression following her out the door.
“Where have you been?” Ava was waiting for her in the hall, anxious. “And what in the world were you thinking back there, causing a scene?”
She started to apologize but was stunned to feel her aunt’s hand slip into her own. More surprising still was the chilly touch of metal. Molly looked in her palm to see her knife returned.
Ava’s gaze did not waver. “It’s smart for a girl to have protection. But for a party like this, I’m afraid you’ve chosen the wrong kind. Next time, use your brain instead of a blade. Now let’s go. We aren’t wanted here.”
Molly tucked the knife away. They left, moving through the crowds who seemed to still as they passed, eyes bathing them in cold stares. She caught a final glimpse of Edgar, and then they were outside.
Molly felt the squeeze of Ava’s hand, empty this time. “I’m sorry. I should have left you at home.” She gave Molly a grim smile. “It’s only . . . it can be hard to walk into the lion’s den alone. It was selfish bringing you here.”
“Why did you come at all?”
Ava winced. “I liked Cady. She was one of the few girls who cared more about her deeds than her dresses.” Her expression hardened. “Besides, if I didn’t come today, it would give them an excuse to exclude me at the next important event.” She shook her head. “No one dared tell the emperor he didn’t have any clothes, and they damn well won’t tell me I can’t be a part of Philadelphia’s high society simply because of my work.”
“I thought they didn’t know what you did.”
“They don’t call me the Corpse Queen, if that’s what you mean. People like that don’t even know such a person exists. They only know of my association with the doctor. But on days like this, it’s enough. The rich don’t like to be reminded of their own mo
rtality. Living forever is the one thing they can’t buy.”
Molly thought of poor Cady, face painted like a child’s toy.
She hardly dared to ask the next question. “Will we—”
“No.” Ava had cut her off sharply. She nodded across the park toward a large white mausoleum. “She’ll be kept in there. With the rest of her family. Safe, and resting in splendor.”
“Do we never take the rich, then?”
“They buy their privacy even in death.” Squeezing Molly’s hand a final time, Ava sighed. “We shall hope to buy ourselves that same luxury someday.”
Letting go, she raised her hand to hail Tom. He nodded and pulled the carriage around.
“Waste of a good body, though,” her aunt said, stepping into the cab. “Would have been good money cutting into a girl like that.”
18
Molly spent the rest of the afternoon replaying her meeting with Edgar, prodding at the memory like a tongue against a sore tooth.
He was a horrible man who clearly counted women disposable, but his shock at Kitty’s death had seemed genuine. Although, Molly reasoned, he’d also made Kitty believe he loved her. Perhaps his surprise was nothing more than another well-acted lie.
She paced the library floor, trying and failing to find an answer that made sense.
No, try as she might, she could not make herself believe the insignificant little man she’d met today was capable of her friend’s murder.
Because someone hadn’t just killed Kitty, they’d also cut away her tail.
And according to the rumors, there was only one man in Philadelphia who used his skill with a blade to mutilate the corpses of women, slicing away pieces of them to keep.
The Knifeman.
If, after meeting him, Molly found it difficult to imagine Edgar capable of killing Kitty, she found it harder still to imagine him as such a seasoned killer. So who was? If not Edgar, who was killing these women?
The Tooth Fairy certainly seemed monstrous enough, but as far as Molly knew, he did not wander outside the city. And more than that, Kitty had kept all her teeth.
When evening came, she hurried outside, eager for the clarity fresh air might bring. Tom was not in the wagon but beside it, splayed out in the drive with his face lifted to the night sky.
“You make a habit of this?” Molly said.
He sat up, startled. “Hello.”
Wrapping her skirts around her, she sat beside him. Most of the snow had melted, but the ground was still damp. “What in the world are you doing?”
Tom lay back down, gently pulling Molly with him. Surprised, she let him. The drive’s stones cradled her head, as cold as a tombstone against her skull.
“Look up there.” He pointed at the sky.
She did. Its black was complete, the stars and young moon covered with clouds. “There’s nothing.”
“Maybe.” His voice scratched against her ear, sending a shiver up her spine. “Or maybe everything. All we’ve been and all we’ll ever be.”
“I thought you didn’t believe the dead did anything but rot.”
He hesitated. “Wanting and believing are two different things.” Tom turned his head to her, and she saw the jeweled gleam of his single eye in the dark. “Sometimes I wonder what it’s like is all. Nights like this, it’s easy to close your eyes and imagine you’re one of them.”
The heat from his body radiated against her, and suddenly the earth didn’t feel so cold.
“Maybe we just turn into something else,” Molly said softly. “Caterpillars have to disintegrate completely before they can emerge from their cocoons. Their larval cells die and become imaginal. Undifferentiated. Then they can become anything.”
“You’re a strange girl, Molly Green.”
She did not know if it was a compliment.
“Come on.” There was a choked sound in his voice as he sprang from the ground. “We’ve work to do.”
She followed, unsure why leaving felt like such a disappointment.
* * *
It was a good night.
With each stop, their load grew heavier. By midnight, Tom and Molly had piled up three bodies in the back of the wagon. A girl from the workhouse and two drowned bodies bought from a policeman for a dollar.
“That’s plenty for tonight,” Tom said. “No need to be greedy. Let’s get you home.”
“Home?” Molly looked at the sliver of moon, clearly visible now through the parting clouds and still high in the sky. She thought of her room, waiting, its silence sending her mind back into its endless spin. “But it’s hardly past midnight. Isn’t there more to do?”
He hesitated. “I’ve got one more job, but it ain’t no place for you.”
She knew that Tom often went out on other runs after he dropped her off, but he’d never told her about them before.
“What is it?”
“Payback.” His voice grew tight. “Your aunt don’t take kindly to others meddling in our business.”
An iron taste flooded her mouth. The Tooth Fairy.
She needed to find out more about him. To learn just how much he was capable of. The night swelled to a vision of the skinned body on the road, its teeth plucked clean from its mouth, exactly like the girl at the cemetery.
“Your aunt said not to bring you.” Tom eyed her with that unnerving stare.
Molly’s nails pierced her palms with neat crescent bites as her hands clenched into fists. The cut on her palm was covered in an armored scab now, and she did not feel the pain.
“Take me.”
“It could be dangerous. She’ll fire me if anything goes wrong.”
“Take me.” Her voice was surer now. If she meant to find Kitty’s killer, she needed to face the monsters in this city.
All of them.
Tom broke into a grin. “Now, I thought you might say that.” He whipped the horses to life. “Hold on. And whatever you do, don’t smile.”
* * *
They stopped in front of a small cemetery on the edge of town. Molly had never seen it before. The lack of any gates, coupled with the small wooden crosses that served as grave markers, denoted this burial site as a poor person’s hallowed ground.
“Will he be here?” Her skin felt stretched tight with nerves.
“Ah, that’s the question,” Tom said. “If we’re lucky, no. The Tooth Fairy likes to make his rounds late to clean up what others left behind. He don’t care about the bodies being fresh, see. Teeth are good for a long while after the body rots.”
“Are teeth all he takes?” Molly asked, thinking again of Kitty.
“They’re his main business.”
She shuddered. “What does he do with them?”
“Sells ’em to dentists, who polish the pearls and pop them back in the mouths of the living.”
“No!”
“The cheapest sets go for no less than seventy dollars. It’s a very lucrative business.”
“I’d rather live on mush the rest of my life than have some dead man’s teeth in my mouth.”
Tom leaned closer, and she could smell soap on him. “Now, you’ve such pretty teeth, Molly. Let’s not talk about losing them.”
For a second, she felt the illogical urge to touch his skin, to run her fingers over the rope of scars.
He pulled away. “Stay there. I’ll get the tools.”
“Tools?” But he was already away rummaging in the back, under the tarpaulin.
She waited nervously. Cemeteries had a certain scent to them, she was discovering. Cinnamon and tree bark mixed with the frost of winter’s final winds—a banshee’s bakery.
“There we are.” Tom dumped a shovel, a pickax, and a crowbar by one of the wagon wheels and held out his hand. “You ready?”
She took his hand. Tom’s skin was rough and warm, and she won
dered if the calluses there felt the way the scars on his face might. She let go and jumped out of the wagon.
“The Tooth Fairy don’t usually mess in other people’s business,” Tom said. “And before now, we’ve stayed away from his. This cemetery, it’s one of three to which he lays claim.”
“Are there many others in this line of work?” Molly asked as she followed Tom through the tall grass and the lines of wooden crosses. A few actual stone markers dotted the landscape, but these were few and far between.
“Oh, it’s ‘stiff’ competition.” Tom grinned.
She laughed. “I mean, is the Tooth Fairy the only one?”
“No, there’s plenty of others you don’t know.” He paused at the foot of what looked to be a fresh grave, throwing his tools on the ground. A mound of newly dug dirt rose in front of an especially simple wooden marker, no name visible. “A lot of folks will sell a body if they find one. Landlords and such in the worse parts of town. The other sackmen aren’t in our league, though. Just part-timers who troll the easier marks and drink their wages up soon as they get ’em. The Tooth Fairy, he’s been getting above himself lately is all. Trying to sell bodies he shouldn’t.”
“I thought you said he sold teeth.” The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
Tom picked up a shovel. “Aye. The teeth are his main priority. But sometimes he comes across bodies with . . . peculiarities. Until recently he’s sold exclusively to your aunt if he finds anything interesting, and she sets the price. In return she leaves him and his cemeteries alone. But he’s been getting greedy these past few months. Seems he and his partner found they can make more money selling to others and are trying to start their own little empire.”
“Partner?”
“They call her Bloody Mary.”
“A woman?” she said, surprised.
He nodded. “She’s her own kinda doctor. Specializes in corpse medicine. Chops up bits of the dead and dries ’em for people to eat as medicine. A stew of heart for a lovesick lass, a child’s finger to cure warts.”
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