The Bones of Ruin

by Sarah Raughley

  “Everyone ready?” Iris said as she and her two teammates left Max’s apartment and stepped out onto Goulston Street, making sure not to wake the old woman who’d fallen asleep on the building’s wooden doorstep.

  Nobody’d had much sleep at Max’s one-room apartment. Iris had spent each night on her cot tossing and turning from what she’d learned at the museum. Worse still, living with two men had its challenges to say the least. Especially two men who couldn’t stop bickering.

  “Shut the door, will you?” Max ordered Jinn, carrying all his meager belongings in a sack he held over his shoulder.

  Jinn balked. “You were the last to leave.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my apartment,” Max said, moving in front of him. “You were my guest. Now hurry up and close the door and don’t wake Gertrude.”

  As Jinn scowled, the cries of a colicky baby by a nearby newspaper stand wouldn’t be soothed even by his frantic mother’s exhausted singing as she held him to her chest.

  “Oh please, child, stop crying!” She began bouncing the baby up and down in her arms. “If you’re good, I’ll buy you a toy from Whittle’s. Would you like that?”

  Max had given Jinn a violet vest to wear atop his brown shirt. He took a brown sack with him, tied over his shoulders with rope, hiding his bolero blades inside. The tournament would soon begin, and they each needed to bring what they could to Club Uriel—though Iris didn’t have much except the ruined green dress she still wore. At least Max had finally found some new clothes: his brown trousers were held up by chestnut suspenders over a dirty beige top.

  “Wilton’s, eh? Snooping’s a good idea, Iris,” Max said as they walked down toward Graces Alley. His mauve newsboy cap shadowed his amused expression. “Can’t wait to see what’s up.”

  “Provided everything goes well.” Jinn kept a short pace ahead of the two of them. “The Committee may have something planned to keep us away until Monday.”

  Iris had considered it. Still. “Any information that’ll give us a heads-up on the competition can’t hurt.”

  “Don’t worry, Iris.” Though he was speaking to Iris, it was to Jinn that Max shot a cheeky look. “I’m a master at sneaking and breaking into things. With me around, you’ll get all the information you need.”

  “Oh right, from what Iris told me, you were a thief,” Jinn said, looking back at Max. “Thieving, lying, conniving—”

  “Conniving?” Max turned to Iris, who shook her head quickly.

  “I didn’t say that!” Iris let out an anxious huff and looked between the two of them. “Look, stop. We’re officially a team now. We have to work together.”

  But could they with these two constantly at each other’s throats? She sighed as they started down the street. At least she had a few shillings in her vest pocket. She’d asked Max for them so she could buy some new clothes with the promise that she’d pay him back. He’d given it to her on one condition: she take him with her to the store. Iris rolled her eyes. The boy was relentless.

  The bickering between the two boys continued until they turned left onto Whitechapel.

  “Coolie?” Iris grabbed the back of Max’s shirt with one hand and held Jinn back with another. No, not Coolie, but his debt collectors. With bowler hats on their pudgy heads and cigars in their fat lips, they stood at the corner of Whitechapel and Old Castle Street, feigning idleness as they sneakily peeked through the passing carriages for any sign of her.

  Coolie had lost his chance to use her to pay them off when she escaped the auction. But if they kidnapped her themselves, then they could hold her for ransom for even more money… or just have their own private auction. The dastardly possibilities were endless.

  “Someone must have tipped them off that we were staying at Max’s apartment,” said Jinn through gritted teeth. He took her hand. “We’ll have to go another way.”

  Keeping their heads down, they changed course, turning left on Mansell Street.

  From a distance, Iris could see a crowd building outside Wilton’s Music Hall, many of them impeccably dressed and wealthy.

  “ ‘The Fanciful Freaks of London,’ eh?” One man read the ridiculous-looking poster clinging to the rusted red walls next to the doors.

  “The Fanciful Freaks of London.” Max laughed. “Well, this is interesting.”

  A poster for a private show. Adam’s friends sure loved arrogantly hiding their secrets right underneath people’s noses. It was all a game to them.

  “Give me a ticket,” demanded the man. “I’ll pay double the price!” As if he had the money. But the little bald man in a gray suit guarding the door simply twitched his white mustache and shook his head, denying him.

  “Probably a terrible show anyway,” an old maid grumbled to her friend as they scurried away from Graces Alley.

  “You learn this on the streets,” Max told Iris. “The more you tell folks that they can’t do something, the more desperate they are to do it. All that money they’re willing to pay for a show adapted from a penny blood.”

  “Maximo.” Jinn nudged him in the ribs. “Over there.” He flicked his head behind them toward a darkened alleyway. “I’m sure I saw the debt collectors.”

  Iris whipped around. “You think they followed us here?”

  “It’s possible.” Jinn turned to Max. “You up for a little canvasing?”

  “You mean surveying the area?”

  “Just to check things out.”

  Max folded his arms across his chest. “Will Iris be okay if we leave her alone?”

  “Iris is standing right here, gentlemen.” Scoffing, she placed her hands on her hips. “And she’ll be more than fine on her own given that she can’t die, unlike her two strapping bodyguards here.”

  At her cheeky grin, Jinn and Max exchanged a sheepish glance and nodded.

  “We’ll be back soon,” said Jinn before leaving with Max. He couldn’t help himself.

  Iris drew closer to the crowd. To her surprise, on the other side of the street, some men were howling in anger.

  “Three-card monte! It’s a bloody scam!” one of them screamed as a boy hurriedly slid his cards off a wooden barrel and slipped them underneath his sleeve.

  No. Not a boy. Iris squinted. She was wearing boy’s clothes, but her rounded, soft features were unmistakably feminine. Not to mention that Iris had seen that pumpkin-colored bowl cut and suspenders before. Down in the Pit.

  “I demand you give me back my money, you shameful rat.”

  “Rat? I resent that,” she said in her cockney accent. “I prefer adorable little mousey.”

  “Mousey—?”

  “It’s what my brother used to call me, and now here you munchers are, desperate to watch a bit of theater that stole the title of his story, which none of you deigned to waste a penny on when we tried to sell it to you on the damn streets.”

  Brother? Iris stared at her.

  “What the hell is this stupid boy going on about?” someone said.

  “Stop babbling and give us back our money! Police? Police!”

  There were a few officers some ways away. But by the time part of the crowd began calling for them, the girl was already halfway down the street, coming toward Iris.

  “Really, these people are just ridiculous, aren’t they?” the girl said to her. “Always demanding this and that. So entitled, am I right?”

  Iris generally agreed, but then again, “Yes, but… well, you did cheat them.”

  The girl shrugged as she passed. She was actually quite pretty, though she smelled like a combination of apricots and fish. “Wouldn’t you?” she said before walking on rather quickly.

  The police were now looking Iris’s way as the gaggle of men pointed in the thief’s direction. Iris turned around fast. Policemen, thieves, and debtors. She didn’t expect her plan of snooping to go awry this early. Maybe she was better off shopping for a new dress, after all.

  Sighing, she put her hand in her pocket.

  Her breath hitched. Her money. It was
gone.

  She patted her dress again. Did she drop it on the way? Or—

  The shock of realization made her head snap up. The girl. That girl.

  How dare she?

  “You!” Iris screamed at the thief retreating quickly down the street. The girl turned, saluted, and began running just as the police with their clubs followed suit.

  Except Iris was going to get to that rat first. Nobody stole from her.

  It was a merry chase, one Iris didn’t have the shoes for. An odd procession of a thief followed by an immortal tightrope dancer, a group of Metropolitan policemen, and a few angry victims who wanted their pound of flesh along with their money. The girl weaved through carriages, jumped over tables of fresh food, and dodged horse-drawn wagons carrying blankets and hay—hay the thief threw in Iris’s face once she began to close in.

  Enraged, Iris wiped her face and looked to her right only to find Coolie’s debt collectors, pointing and grinning at her.

  You’ve got to be kidding me! With gritted teeth, Iris followed the girl into a narrow street, empty but for a few dirty pigeons on the ledge of an apartment window above. It was underneath the apartment window that the thief finally stopped.

  “None of you want to be doing this,” she said rather confidently as if she wasn’t just under five feet tall and facing a dozen or so burly men. “You may regret it later.”

  Iris watched the debt collectors—likely hoping to snatch her in the midst of the chaos. “Maybe you shouldn’t have started this mess in the first place, eh?”

  Instead of answering, the thief gave a curious birdcall, high, sharp, and far too close to a real hawk. She waited, but only silence followed. Iris scrunched her face, confused, as the thief tried again and again, only growing more frustrated each time.

  “This boy’s gone batty!” one of the policemen said, voicing Iris’s thoughts perfectly. “Check him for opium!”

  “Hawkins, damn it, where are you?” the thief cried, stomping her feet.

  Hawkins? Iris turned around, trying to find whoever the thief was waiting for, until suddenly she felt the girl’s back press up against hers. “Oi, my name’s Cherice,” she whispered. “Cherice Winterbottom. And I’ve got a proposition.”

  Winterbottom… Hawkins… Iris almost gasped. She was Max’s friend.

  But first things first. “And that is?” Iris began backing away from the crowd, but Cherice stuck close to her like a shadow.

  “I see you’ve got your own stalkers, mate.” Cherice nodded her head toward the debt collectors, their nasty eyes glued to Iris. Perceptive, this one. “What do you say you help me get these folks off both our backs, and before I make my getaway, I give you back your money?”

  “You’re giving me my money either way,” Iris hissed, spotting a stray wooden stick leaning against the dirty apartment building. “But I agree. We take care of them first. Then you apologize. Deal?”

  The men began charging.

  Cherice smiled wickedly. “Deal!”

  Iris went for the wooden stick by the bricks, grabbing it and turning around just in time to see Cherice’s cards fly from underneath her sleeve and fling themselves at the attackers. It was a targeted assault, each card nicking faces and beards, necks and suits just deep enough to cause eyes to dilate in horror. Just what kind of cards were these? And how was she moving them? Iris would have to consider it later. She used the opportunity to swing her stick at the debt collectors, who’d braved the pandemonium to get to her, whacking one in the shins, tossing the stick up in the air, kneeing his stomach, catching her weapon, and slamming it against the other’s face.

  “I’d duck if I were you, girly!” Cherice yelled at her, just in time for Iris to see the thief’s cards turn sharply in midair with a flick of her fingers, switch directions, and cut back toward her. It was as if she was moving them with her thoughts alone.

  “What in the bloody hell is going on!” a policeman cried as he ducked for cover.

  “Witches!” one of the scamming victims screamed, avoiding the sharp edge of Cherice’s cards. “Bloody witches! The rumors are true!”

  “Not witches,” Cherice corrected with an evil little grin. “Fanciful Freaks.”

  Iris gaped along with them.

  Most of the men in the alleyway turned tail to run. But a few stragglers continued to try their luck, including Coolie’s debt collectors.

  “Coolie’s still got a price on your head,” one said, holding his face where Iris had smacked it. “We’re getting our pay one way or another.”

  Iris flipped her stick around, her blood pumping. She was ready. She was hungry. Oh, how she’d been wanting to hit something for so long. And my, how she was good at it.

  But it was then that Cherice’s birdcall was finally answered. A birdcall in a lower voice coming from the apartment window four stories above. There behind the open window were two figures: both young men, the shorter partially obscured by the taller, who stood on the ledge with a book in hand, his back to them. His blond hair fluttered as he let himself fall backward.

  Iris’s breath hitched as his heels slipped from the ledge, as he took the hand of the other boy to pull him down as well. Ridiculous! They were both going to fall and break their necks!

  They both fell indeed—through a dark vortex that swirled open beneath them in the air, swallowing them whole before collapsing into nothingness again. Iris stared, shocked, as the vortex reappeared above the ground, spitting out both boys. While the shorter landed gracefully upon the asphalt, the taller landed on the back of one of the debt collectors with a crunch. Long and lithe, with a sharp face and impeccable black leather shoes, golden hair tied at the base of his thin neck, and that single book in his hand, the pages of which he had yet to tear his eyes from.

  “Hawkins!” Cherice cried as she willed cards back into her sleeve. “You idiot! Took you long enough.”

  “What was ’at?” The blue-eyed young man flipped a page as he casually stepped off the back of Iris’s assailant. “I didn’t hear a thank-you.” His voice had a whimsical lilt that seemed uninterested in much of anything. “How disappointing.”

  “Damn it!” The other debt collector grabbed the arm of the man Hawkins had landed on, but he was knocked out cold. He looked at them. “Y-y-you think I’m scared of you freaks?”

  Judging from the sweat dripping from his brow, Iris thought yes. That’s when the shorter boy stepped forward, causing the debt collector to squeal in fear. A handsome, olive-skinned, and wide-faced young man whose hooded, gentle eyes stared at the debt collector. He tried to look serious, though it was clear he was hiding his amusement.

  The debt collector readied his fist. “Don’t come any closer, you filthy—”

  A dodged punch followed by a cool brush of the throat. Cherice’s olive-skinned friend didn’t strike Iris’s attacker per se. But Iris could tell that he’d done something once the collector clutched his throat after throwing out a few hurtful, dehumanizing slurs.

  “Wh-what?” The man stepped back. “What am I saying? Why can’t I understand what I’m saying—?”

  “Oh dear, he can’t understand English anymore, can he, Jacob?” the one called Hawkins said as his partner scratched his head with a shrug. “I wonder what it sounds like in his head.”

  “What are you all saying? What is this?” The debt collector balked at the group of them, eyes bulging as if he were going mad.

  This Jacob—though he looked serene, there was no sign of pity in those clear eyes of his. “It certainly hurts to not be able to understand your own language, doesn’t it?” he said. “By the way, what were you calling me just then?”

  Just as the debt collector began gripping his head, Iris heard footsteps approaching.

  “I wouldn’t try anything more, mate,” came a voice from the entryway of the narrow street. “These lot aren’t ones to be trifled with. Believe me.”

  “Max!” Cherice and Iris cried at the same time, and then promptly looked at each other.


  Max strode up the street with Jinn in tow. The debt collector knew he was beat. Lifting his unconscious colleague by the arm, he dragged him out the other end, swearing revenge like they all do.

  “Everyone all right?” asked Jacob in a soft voice. That hint of cruelty was gone.

  “Jacob!” Max greeted the young man with a wave. “Hawkins!” The blond-haired boy saluted him. “And Cher—”

  The moment he was close enough, Cherice grabbed his shoulders and kneed him in the groin. The pain was so visible on Max’s face that Iris could feel it in her own immortal bones.

  “That’s for leaving me in the Pit, you stupid arse!” she cried as Max whimpered and nodded, accepting his punishment. But then, as if to give them all whiplash, Cherice wrapped her arms around Max’s neck while it was low enough for her to do so and gave him a deep, long kiss—on the lips, no less. “It’s good to see you again, though,” she said as Hawkins, Jacob, Jinn, and Iris looked on, thoroughly baffled.

  Max nodded again, his face blood-drained, his jaw slack. “I think I need to sit down.”

  17

  SO THIS WAS YOUR LITTLE gang?” In the alleyway, Jinn leaned against the brick wall of a building. He didn’t look impressed.

  “Gang?” The tall, willowy young man, who introduced himself as Lawrence Hawkins, coolly ran a hand through his sun-kissed blond hair. “Hmm…” He paused, tracing a long finger down a thread of his beige frock coat, mismatched with the rest of his shabby clothes. Stolen, likely. “Gang?” This time, he said it with a knowing grin. Iris could tell he was the type to take his time even when it infuriated others. “I suppose you could say that.”

  Judging from the scars on his hands and narrow, princely face, he’d been in a fight or two in his day. Even Cherice’s chipmunk features were marred with indents and discolorations implying varying stages of healing. Jacob’s black hair lay loose on his shoulders, his brown-and-yellow plaid pants stretching down just past his knees. His white shirt was dirty with the soot of industry.