by Viola Carr
Eliza fought to catch her breath as he twirled her faster. “Did she know?”
“That you were mine? In her heart. It was Henry who refused to admit it. Afraid you’d inherit his . . . affliction.” A rough grunt of disgust. “That’s what he called me. God-rotted hypocrite is what he was. Wanted to share in the fun without getting his hands dirty. Spend the night drinking and whoring and worse, then turn up next morning at Harley Street fresh as a daisy, with nary a wrinkle on his conscience.” Their lilting steps quickened, her skirts fanning out. “Doesn’t work like that. I’m no one’s plaything. Not Eddie Hyde.”
“And the night Madeleine died?” She hardly dared ask. “Do you know . . . ?”
“She broke my heart.” A growl, rough on Eliza’s cheek. “Accidents happen. Let that be a warning.”
Icy claws tore into her chest.
We had the devil’s own trouble . . .
An accident, Henry. Happens all the time . . .
Shadow doesn’t always behave . . .
Why does everyone assume it’s the husband?
“You killed her.” She fought, but he crushed her tightly, whirled her faster, the music galloping wilder, more frantic. “You killed her, and Henry and Marcellus covered it up. And then you killed Henry . . .”
“Henry killed himself.” He twirled her at arm’s length, then pulled her close. She was breathing hard against his chest. He seemed to relish it. “With aqua vitae, my sweet,” he whispered in her ear, and a smile licked his voice with glee. “He tried to get rid of me. They all tried. Here endeth the lesson.”
“Let me go.” She wriggled, but he was too strong. Her head throbbed, organ notes pounding her skull in discord. She’d made a life out of seeking justice for murdered women, trying to save a mother who could never be saved. And now her own father—God help her—her real father had turned out to be the enemy.
“Henry and I could’ve lived together, Eliza. We could’ve shared her. But no, he had to have everything his way.” At last, the music crescendoed and Mr. Hyde bowed to her, coat skirts brushing the floor. The crowd cheered, raucous.
He kissed her hands, one after the other. “I took care of you, daughter.” His words nearly escaped her in the din. “I made you respectable. Don’t forget that.”
“Then why?” Her throat ached, stubborn. “If you don’t want this for me, then why have Marcellus spoil my remedy? Why let me suffer?”
Someone threw Hyde his hat, and he jammed it on and tweaked the brim. “Because you need to realize that you can share, too. Lizzie loves you, in her way. Don’t shut her out.” His gaze blackened, thundery. Such an evilly handsome man. Such corruption. “Don’t make my mistakes, Eliza. Mine and Henry’s. It’ll only end in blood.”
Eliza’s eyes stung, and she yanked her hand away and fled.
Now that she was out of the King’s sight—beyond his strange, invisible aura—the crowd closed in, careless. Eliza fought her way through, barely noticing the elbows and knees and sharp fingers that jabbed at her body. Her hair hung in knots, torn loose by the change. She didn’t care.
Raw emotion clogged her throat, blinded her, filled her ears with screaming. Justice be damned. She burned for revenge. To make him scream and burn and suffer for what he’d done.
Her life was built on a lie. Her scientific rigor, the murders she’d solved . . . none of it meant anything. And it was all his fault.
Don’t shut her out. Hyde’s words rang an ugly carillon. She despaired. What was she supposed to do? Set Lizzie free whenever the mood struck? Let her do whatever she pleased?
Things like stalk Billy Beane. Attack anyone who threatened her. Frighten the tripe out of Marcellus Finch, who for all his lies had stood by Eliza when she’d had no one else in the world.
And as for the other thing . . . Her cheeks burned, even though no one watched. Lizzie was a flirtatious, worldly woman. Never even mind her friends in Seven Dials—could Eliza be Lafayette’s lover? His mistress? Tempt an evil fate in some rust-ringed dungeon—or a bloody one at the mercy of a wolf?
Stop it, Lizzie hissed. That’s mine. He’s mine.
Eliza’s head throbbed inside, bruised. As if Lizzie punched and kicked, a struggling animal trapped in a sack, clawing, bleeding . . .
Dazed, Eliza shook her head, but it wouldn’t clear. Lafayette was a mistake, a moment of weakness. One of those accidents that happen . . .
Or had she secretly wanted it all along? Had she sought it out, tempted like Henry to enjoy dark pleasures without consequences? Did we seek it out, hell, I sought it out, yes, me, us-I-her-we-me, and if I do it again, who’s gonna stop me, Eliza? You?
She fights me, but I swipe her aside. I rake out the rest of my hair, and her twisted pins drop to the floor, lost. Could you stop me, sister? Do you even want to, sweet girl?
Because in truth, we don’t give a rat’s arse what they all think, neither of us. Eliza with her funny gadgets and doctor’s bag. Me and my cherry skirts and saucy grin.
And you know what? Remy Lafayette might be a strange one—a dangerous one, for all his manners—but he don’t judge us for being different. He accepts us.
I like you just the way you are . . . A shiver spills through me, warm yet chilly, the spidery kiss of absent crimson hair . . .
Christ. And I’m supposed to be the depraved one? But I can’t think about romance tonight. Not after finally meeting my father. My FATHER, God rot his blackened hunchbacked soul, who threw his wife down the stairs when she wouldn’t have him and then cried over her corpse. Who gave Eliza a reason to live, but with the same careless hands snatched it away.
The rage bubbles inside me, a boiling volcano ready to explode. I want to rip his lying throat out and bathe in his BLOOD. I want to run laughing beside him under blazing stars, live as he lives, do as he does. I want to fall weeping at his feet and beg him to love me, just for an hour, the way he loves her.
Jesus on a purple-arsed donkey. Where the hell’s the gin in this madhouse? That’s what I’d like to know.
Behind me, the carousel organ has broken into a fierce fairy reel that makes me shudder and hurry on. I’ve heard the stories. Is this Rats’ Castle that kind of place? Don’t drink the wine, don’t eat the fair folk’s enchanted food, or you’ll be stuck here for years at some uppity fairy bitch’s whim like Tam friggin’ Lin. Dance to their magical melody, and you’ll dance forever.
I push through the jabbering masses to what looks like a bar, a ragged wooden bench lashed between two poles. Behind it, barrels and vats, bottles of liquid pink and green and gold, bales of strange gear. A fat leprechaun teeters on a stool, solemnly poking his fingers into a yellow-faced bloke’s long droopy ears. A scaly snake-faced girl licks my shoulder with her forked tongue, and I shove her away . . .
Wild black hair, mismatched dark eyes.
Johnny pushes a cup of gin towards me. “Never thought to see you here.”
I can’t help but stare. The strange fey light gloats over him, lights up his weird with an eerie radiance, and I’m damned if I know how anyone ever thinks this man is ordinary. His hair’s shredded velvet, his skin shines like pearls, and between his long fingers, shadows whisper and dance. He’s luminous. Magical.
“You neither.” I finger the cup, odd reluctance circling like hungry sharks in my head. I ache. I’m weary, and I long for a friend. I want to open my soul, tell him everything, lean on his warm sweet shoulder and say, my father’s a murderer and I’m going right the same way, let’s drink ourselves stupid and love each other to black-scarred oblivion.
But all of a moment, I’m twitchy. He’s cagey, silent. Not so charming as usual. Something ain’t right.
His cock-eyed gaze rolls away, just for a second. And I know.
“Oh, hell.” My mouth parches with a thirst so deep I want to scream, and there’s a ragged black hole where a moment ago my heart used to be. I shove the cup aside, and it spills, dark on the wooden bench like blood.
“Lizzie—”
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nbsp; “All this time, you knew.” My eyes burn, acid-bright, and something inside my head squeezes. I grit my teeth. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to!” He rakes at his hair, his bone-china jaw tight. “He bade me protect you. The King’s the King. Ain’t no defying him.”
He never could convince me with a lie. I believe him, and I love him for it. But the devil take me, I hate him, too. And Lizzie don’t never forgive.
“So what, you been spying on me, is that it? All these years.”
Johnny don’t answer.
I know it ain’t fair, but my hair crackles with spite, and I say it anyway. “And what about fucking me? Did he bid you do that, too?”
His black gaze melts. “It weren’t like that—”
Smack! I’ve hit him. Like a girl, right across his delicate fey cheek.
He don’t hit me back. He just stares, shadows and pain. Already, an angry red splotch blooms on his skin.
And I walk away.
I don’t much care where I’m going. I shove bodies aside, not fussed where they fall. Down, down, along rickety galleries and twisting corridors into the stinking bowels of this place, where it reeks of dead breath and even the light is weak and frightened. There’s dirt on the floor here, tunnels carved from the very earth, centuries of civilization piled upon itself and crushed to death in the mud.
Eliza yells, hammering at the inside of my head. Go away, sweet girl. You won’t like it here.
Water splashes under my feet. I duck under a moldy wooden lintel. A cavern, where a fire burns in an ironclad hole. Acrid smoke drifts at eye level. In the shadows, figures mutter and stretch, the dark shapes of men . . . and things. Someone’s groaning. I glimpse misshapen limbs, a distorted face, the fleshy stumps of wings.
A green-faced man with a beak for a nose and mouth passes me a long-stemmed brass pipe. I suck on it, the smoke bitter in my mouth. My senses spin. I suck again and wobble on my feet.
“Good stuff.” My voice zooms into the distance. My legs feel muddy, their strength washed away.
“Like it, cherry pie?” Beakface grins. He’s wearing a coat of lank gray feathers. “More where that came from.”
Someone thrusts a drink into my hand. Gritty black liquid sloshes over my wrist and stings my skin. What the fuck is this? I don’t care. I raise it to the ceiling. “Hail to the King,” says I, and I gulp it down.
Warm languor crawls from my stomach along my limbs. Oh, my. Which way’s up? I’m floating, miles above the earth where the sky is black and silent, where stars and planets whirl in cosmic waltz. Dance, and you’ll dance forever.
Somehow, that don’t seem so bad any more.
Thunk! My head hits the floor. I’m on my back, someone’s tugging at my hair, my dress, snapping the hooks on my bodice. Greasy fingers fold over my wrist. Something warm and wet’s on my fingers, pulling. Sucking. Trying to consume. A tongue wrapping my knuckles, teeth nibbling at the skin between thumb and forefinger. The pain is muted, distant. I can barely feel it. I can’t even move.
My breasts were cold, but now they’re warm, slick, so tender. Something bites my nipple. A creature’s crawling under my skirt. Some hot, wet thing slithers up between my legs, hunting for an opening. A mouth nibbles on my thigh. Teeth sink in. I try to yell, but all that comes out is a groan. The same noise that mutilated thing in the corner was making. Jesus fucking Christ, are they eating him? Are they eating me?
Beakface leans over me, grinning. His tiny jagged teeth gleam, and his mildewed feathers stink and crawl with fleas. “Easy, now. Relax. It’ll take a while.”
I try to grab him, fight back, bite his ugly face off, but my muscles are water, so heavy. So very heavy. I try to scream, but my throat is clogged with woolly goo, and something grabs my jaw and forces itself into my mouth. Fur, cold and bitter, choking me, working itself deeper down my throat . . .
Suddenly, I can breathe again. I’m free. Someone—Beakface?—screams, and cartilage pops, a horrid crack! Warm arms lift me, the familiar scent of flowers, his rough coat on my cheek. He carries me, light as the wind, up to where it’s bright and the air is dry and warm, and now that I can taste what I’ve drunk, bile burns my mouth and I spew gritty black hell.
He lays me on something soft, so blessedly soft, like a cloud. I sink into it, deeper, warmer. His fingers trace my forehead, my cheekbone, my bruised lips. I struggle to focus, but his mismatched eyes guide me, lure me to safety—or is it ruin?—and I try to whisper his name, but darkness ambushes me. A rough-edged voice curses fit to strip paint, not Johnny but someone else, and I try to stay afloat but I can’t and the last thing I see before I fall is my father’s twisted face.
Moonlight slants silvery ghosts onto the darkened landing, and dust motes dance. It’s long past little Eliza’s bedtime, but she can’t sleep. She keeps hearing noises. Scuffles in the dark, sobbing, the ominous creak of floorboards . . . and other, stranger sounds. The ones monsters make.
She knows about monsters. She’s seen them, late at night, leering shadows on the wall of Father’s laboratory. They cackle. They caper. They howl.
Maybe she was dreaming. She should go back to bed. She should call for Mother.
Anything but keep walking into the dark.
Her white linen nightdress is still warm from bed, but the old house’s floor is chilly under her feet. She hugs herself, shivering. Ahead, candlelight leaks from a half-open door. Voices within, muffled, frantic. Someone is pacing, nervous, back and forth, back and forth.
Compelled, she pads up to the door and peers in.
A candlestick burns on the bedside table. Light licks the rich red carpet, the hem of the bed’s white drapes. The door is in the way, she can’t see the bed entire, but she can see one corner post, and the edge of the lace curtain is dipped in wet, dripping darkness.
Dangling beside the bedpost is a lady’s pale arm. Limp, motionless fingers, beseeching the uncaring floor.
“No.” Father’s voice, his beloved scent of cigars and laboratory alcohol. “No, it wasn’t the way you think. He’s . . . oh, dear God.” A heavy sigh. “I have to wake Gabriel, tell him—”
“Henry.” A second voice interrupts, low and persuasive. “Henry, old bean, listen to me. Gabriel will go directly to the magistrate. Pretty society wife tumbles down the stairs? In her condition? They’ll never believe you, don’t you see? Let me take care of it.”
Father’s voice drops to an angry whisper. “What do you mean, ‘take care of it’?”
A rustle, maybe a shrug. “A dark street, a few strategic wounds. An accident, Henry. Poor pretty lady, a victim of senseless violence. These tragedies happen all the time—”
“I swear to God, sir, you will not violate my wife.”
The strike of a match, the smell of tobacco smoke. “Who said anything about violation? A simple robbery scenario will suffice. Won’t even need to crease her skirts.” A sigh. “I did warn you to keep her out of it.”
A fragment of harsh laughter. “You told me so, is that it? We’ve both been in this from the beginning—”
“Which is why we can’t give up now, not after all we’ve worked for.” A deep exhale. “One way, you’ll hang. The other way, you’ll burn. My way? We fix this, and we carry on. What’s it to be?”
Silence, broken only by pacing footsteps and the inexorable drip-drop-drip of that dark stain.
“Very well.” Father’s voice trembles. “Very well, damn you. But we are proceeding with formula twenty-seven right away. I’ll countenance nothing else.”
“Very well. I’ll return presently. Burn the sheets. And Henry . . .”
“What?”
“You know who we can talk to about this.”
“Take care.” Steely threat.
“Victor’s ready. But we have to be quick. Before the decay sets in—”
Scuffle! Thump! Someone falls and takes furniture with him. “Never speak of that,” Father says grimly. “Never, hear me? Not for her.”
; “Of course, old bean.” Indistinct, wet. “Merely a suggestion, say what? No need for violence. Carrying on.” Light footsteps approach the door, a tune hummed under his breath. “And her ghost wheels her barrow . . . through streets broad and narrow . . . crying, ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive-oh . . .’”
Little Eliza flees. Back to her cold bed, where she yanks the quilt over her head and curls into a tiny weeping ball, her hand stuffed into her mouth . . .
ACTUS NON FACIT REUM
ELIZA WOKE TO THE RATTLE OF LITTLE BRASS FEET.
Her head pounded, swelling with each thud. Damp all over, cloth sticking to her limbs. Why so hot in here? Morning sunlight scorched her face, and she groaned sickly and rolled over.
Her cheek hit cool sheets. Her own bed. Someone had brought her home.
Our father, whispered Lizzie hoarsely. King Eddie Hyde. Daughter of rats, that’s what we is. The bad half of a bad half . . .
For once, she hadn’t the heart to tell Lizzie to shut up. The truth of it ached, deep in her soul where she’d always known something was amiss . . .
Cogs whirred, and the sheet tugged away under her cheek. “Urgency required,” trumpeted a little metallic voice. “Sleep inappropriate.”
She muffled her eyes with the pillow. Her stomach was scraped raw. “Go ’way.”
Hippocrates pulled the sheet again. “Telegraph. Urgency required. Make greater—”
“Uhh.” She fought to lift her head, which had suddenly filled with lead, and cracked one eye open. The room swirled, underwater. “Wha’?”
“Telegraph, eight o’clock. Current time, half past nine.” Hipp jigged, blinking his blue light, and his cogs grated anxiously, rrrk! rrrk! rrrk!
“Half past nine?” She stumbled out of bed, tangling in sweaty sheets. Her guts boiled, vengeful. “Oh, dear . . . Out of the way, Hipp.” She staggered for the washstand and emptied her stomach contents into the jug. Ugh. Her eyes streamed, burning. Vile black grit swam in the mess, and she wiped her mouth and averted her gaze.
Her damp skin felt chilled, and she realized she was naked. She winced, imagining the efforts of those who’d carried her home. Wonderful. Had Mrs. Poole seen? Molly? The neighbors?
