A Soul's Worth

by T. S. Barnett

  “Goodnight, Warren,” she added with a small smile. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Warren climbed back into the autocar, and Owen sat back in his seat to stretch out his legs in Elizabeth’s absence. “Don’t leer at my wife,” Warren warned him, though he could hardly keep the smirk off his face as he said it.

  “D’you see the look she gave me at dinner? Gives me the willies,” Owen said with an obvious shudder.

  “That’s because she’s a lady with no patience for brutes, and you’re a brute.”

  Owen shrugged. “I’ve converted quite a few ladies to my way of thinking, haven’t I?” He gestured to Warren and the empty spot beside him, clearly indicating Elizabeth. “So if this is all a big make-believe, you two aren’t...you know, keepin’ to the program, eh? She’s available? An’ you wouldn’t mind?”

  Warren laughed. “Owen, if you think you can convince Elizabeth to have anything to do with you, you have my blessing to try.”

  Simon cleared his throat quietly and sat forward in his seat as he reached into his coat pocket, and he presented Warren with a tiny vial of blood and a perfectly clean handkerchief. Warren himself hadn’t quite mastered Simon’s level of manipulation when it came to blood—for some reason it was more difficult than simply moving other physical objects. There was probably some deep philosophical reason why, but Warren was content not to concern himself with it.

  He took the vial from Simon and slipped it into his own pocket along with his handkerchief.

  “You plannin’ on buyin’ a bigger autocar, boss?” Owen spoke up after a moment. “I don’t think ‘er ladyship appreciated bumping knees with me all night. Not like she will later eh?” he added as an afterthought.

  Warren sighed lightly. “Has anyone ever told you what a charming person you are, Owen?” The Irishman shrugged. “No, I thought not. As for the autocar, I suppose I’ll have to, won’t I? I didn’t anticipate having an entourage when I bought it.”

  “You should get one of those ones what have the nice long insides. Maybe one that has those brass horses to pull it. You could ‘ave Cam pull it and get a discount on the ‘orses.”

  “You’re a mind before your time, Owen,” Warren chuckled, and they rode back to Belgrave Square in relative quiet.

  In the cellar, Warren sat the vial of blood on the workshop table and leaned over it, peering through the glass at the red liquid inside. Such a small thing, but it would allow him to be free of rumor once and for all. It would be different doing it to someone who wasn’t standing in front of him, but Simon had assured him that the distance made no difference. He would be able to feel Callaway’s mind.

  He reached out for the small knife on the table, and he reopened the small wound on his forearm that he had been using to practice with Simon. A cut on the arm was easier to explain to Ben than a clearly purposeful gash in his palm. With his own blood oozing out over his skin, Warren took up the vial from the table and removed the tiny cork, dripping Callaway’s blood into his wound. He said the words that Simon had taught him, and he let out a low sigh as he felt the heat drawn up from his arm to his heart.

  Warren leaned back against the work table, his body seeming heavier than usual. His vision was foggy, but when he shut his eyes, he could feel a second heartbeat alongside his own, a second set of thoughts running parallel to his. He could see through Callaway’s eyes—he was at home, looking into the mirror and unbuttoning his waistcoat. He paused to click his tongue and pick at the fresh cut on his hand. For a moment, Warren considered all the ways he could torment this man. He could make him see anything, feel anything, do anything. But he wasn’t worth the time.

  He pressed into Callaway’s mind with more intensity than he had dared push Simon, and he felt no resistance. An unsuspecting mundane had little chance of defense. Warren felt the man stop short as the blood in his veins began to boil, felt him clutch at his skull as the pressure built. Not too much, Warren thought, and he kept steady, his own heart pounding madly somewhere far away.

  Callaway’s cry drew someone to the room—a servant—and he collapsed onto the floor, writhing and pulling pointlessly at his hair. Warren pushed harder, feeling distantly that he was clutching the table too tightly, and after another moment that lasted an eternity, Callaway went still, his arms falling uselessly at his sides and his eyes staring blankly down the hall. The girl was tapping his cheek, calling his name, and then she was gone, but Warren could still hear her muffled voice. Warren lay there with Callaway on the floor, breathing huskily and pouring a line of spittle down his cheek from his slack mouth. Enough.

  Warren opened his eyes, attempted to ground himself, and repeated the words he’d said many times over the past week. The wound in his arm let out a small gush of blood onto the floor, expelling Callaway from his blood, and Warren let himself slip slowly to the floor with one white-knuckled hand still on the table. A cold sweat matted his hair to his forehead, and he took shaky breaths as he slowly released his grip on the table, flexing his fingers to loosen them.

  It was done. Callaway wouldn’t be a trouble to him any longer. He wondered briefly if he would begin to feel different anytime soon. For now, he took his leather case from the shelf and retrieved the stone that would stop his bleeding.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Warren’s peace of mind was short-lived. Ben talked constantly about the missing vagrants in the city, and he kept Warren updated on the status of his fellow constable—who was still missing, of course, since his body was likely already devoured by the Llewan and what was left of his mind now spent its time pouring tea and carrying luggage for Mr. Anderson. Warren almost wished he could just tell Ben the truth if it would keep him from having to listen to his constable lover worry and ponder.

  One afternoon, as expected, Ben came to the house after his shift was done, but today he pounded through the front door, and Warren could hear his shouting voice all the way from the bedroom. He shut the book in his lap, put out his cigarette, and opened the bedroom door to see Ben storming through the parlor. Warren followed in a rush while Ben called out again for Simon.

  The twins were in the kitchen searching through the larder when Ben entered, and before they had time to question his shouting, Ben snarled out, “Heald.” A spark flew from his brass palm as he reached out his left hand and pulled the brothers to their knees without touching them. A tin of biscuits clanged to the floor as Owen lost his grip on it, and both twins went completely immobile, to the point that Warren couldn’t tell if they were still breathing.

  “This is your doing,” Ben spat at Simon, bending to look him in the face.

  “What’s going on in here?” Warren cut in. “Ben, let them up.”

  Ben looked over his shoulder at Warren with a scowl. “Who was the man you thought broke into Sir Bennett’s house?” he asked without pretense, and Warren frowned at him.

  “Just an acquaintance,” he said casually. “Someone who met me at Wakefield’s.”

  “It was Callaway, wasn’t it? That’s what you said,” Ben pressed, glancing back at Simon’s frozen face. “Callaway.”

  “Yes,” Warren said. “Let them up, please. They haven’t done anything.”

  “And you spoke with him, like you said? You worked it out?”

  “Just tell me what you’re getting at, Ben,” he demanded. “Ask what you want to ask.”

  “Apparently Mr. Callaway has taken quite ill very suddenly,” Ben said grimly. “After some party you both went to, his servant says he collapsed in his bedroom, and now he’s stuck in his bed, can’t move or speak. He’s so bad that the police were contacted on suspicion of poisoning.” He looked into Simon’s motionless eyes with a scowl. “Only one man I know what could make that ‘appen and takes an interest in your affairs.”

  “Ben, no,” Warren insisted, and he stepped between his lover and the Irishmen. “He’s done no such thing.”

  “I warned you about ‘em, Warren,” he growled as he stood, his good hand clenched to keep the twin
s in their place.

  “He didn’t do it,” Warren repeated, watching Ben’s face’s warily.

  A veil seemed to lift from the constable’s face, and he shook out his hand and let the brothers drop to the floor in a fit of coughs. Perhaps they hadn’t been breathing very well after all. Ben snatched Warren by the arm and pulled him out of the larder, letting the kitchen door swing shut behind them. He leaned down close to his lover’s face, watching him with a careful eye. “You tell me now that you didn’t do this, Warren. Tell me that it’s not blood magic. I could look the other way when it was rabbits an’ such, but I can’t sit by if you’re ‘urtin’ people. It’s not right. Tell me you didn’t.”

  “Is that what you want to hear?” Warren returned, mildly surprised at the low calm of his voice. He looked into Ben’s face without fear. “Do you want to hear that it’s a happy accident for me? Or do you want to hear that I did what I had to do?”

  “Christ almighty,” Ben breathed, pulling away from Warren to put a helpless hand to his forehead. “You did, didn’t you? Warren, this is too much. You can’t do this to a person. He’d be better off dead than the way he is now.”

  “So you think I should have killed him?”

  “I think you should’ve let him be!” Ben snapped. “Isn’t it point of you marrying some woman that we’d be safe from rumor! You didn’t have to do this. You shouldn’t have done it, Warren.”

  “Shouldn’t have?” Warren moved to stand just in front of the constable, his lip curling. “You think I do these things because I want to? You think I want to marry a woman I barely know, or to make a man bedridden for the rest of his life? I do these things for you.”

  “For me?” Ben asked incredulously, a small laugh escaping him despite himself. “For me, he says. Warren, you’ve not done a bleedin’ thing since Sir Bennett died that’s done anythin’ for anyone but you. And a couple of thugs what’d do more good hung from the gallows than lurkin’ in our house. Don’t think I don’t know where you would’ve learned magic like that. You’ve gone blind, love. This ambition of yours—”

  “My ambition will keep us safe. My money will keep us fed. My influence will keep us free. There was no future for us until that day. We would have crept in the shadows, hiding, until we were caught and thrown in prison. That can’t happen now; don’t you see?”

  “Warren, you have to stop this,” Ben almost begged, putting his hands on the smaller man’s shoulders and squeezing them tightly. Warren flinched slightly under the metal grip, and Ben loosened his fingers with a short sigh. “I’ve agreed to everythin’. I agreed to be a family friend. I agreed to you marryin’ ‘at woman. I even agreed to those blighters takin’ up space in our home ‘til who knows when. But I can’t let this by. You can’t see enemies around every corner. You’ll go mad, and you’ll do ‘orrible things to people what don’t deserve it.”

  “Everything I’ve done has been because it was necessary for our future,” Warren said. “And I will continue to do it.”

  Ben let his hands drop from the other man’s shoulders, shaking his head as he took a step back from him. “You can’t. Please. I’m asking you, Warren, for me. What’s...what’s done is done, but you must promise me that it ends here. I can’t stand by while you cause such things. I can’t. Promise me that it’s the end of the blood magic. You can’t ‘ope to control magic like that. It’ll control you.”

  Warren sighed, folding his arms over his chest. “There isn’t any point to doing it again,” he said finally. “I told you what I’ve done would make us safe. So now it’s done.”

  “It’s done,” Ben repeated. “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” Warren said with just a touch of exasperation.

  “You’re making a lot of promises, Warren,” Ben said, and he moved close to the other man and slipped a hand through his hair. “Make sure you keep ‘em, eh?” He lingered a moment before leaving, and Warren was left alone in the bedroom, swearing to himself as he pushed open the kitchen door to check on the Travers.

  Since Ben had begun to make himself at home at the house in Belgrave Square, he and Warren hadn’t had as much time together as they supposed they would. Ben still had to make an occasional appearance at his small house in Southwark or risk his landlady claiming he had abandoned the place, so he sometimes spent the night there instead. He also still worked full time, of course, which kept him away on the Tuesday nights designated for Warren’s work with the Travers. These factors, plus the occasional party with Wakefield and others, meant that they spent two or three nights a week on a quiet evening together.

  Ben was clearly agitated when one of their few nights was interrupted by Elizabeth dropping by to ask for Warren’s signature on this or that, or his opinion on various shades of blue, or for the addresses of any of his acquaintances he wished to invite to the wedding. Ben tended to shut himself in the bedroom until she left, but tonight he sat in a chair across from Elizabeth with his arms folded tight across his chest, slumping in his seat and giving the tea tray rather a petulant look.

  “I’ve sent invitations to some family friends and business acquaintances in New York, but I doubt many of them will actually attend on such short notice,” Elizabeth said, steadfastly ignoring Ben’s grumpy glare in favor of the pad of paper on her knee. “Wakefield sent his RSVP back immediately, of course, which was rather irksome. I don’t know why you spend so much time with him.”

  Warren shrugged. “I don’t mind him at all. He’s helped me quite a bit—what with being ‘new money,’ I need a lot of guidance, you know. Would you prefer I came to you for advice instead?”

  “I can do very well without answering endless questions, thank you,” she said quickly. She finally glanced up at Ben and gestured to the tray on the table between them. “More tea, Mr. Cartwright? You look a bit sullen.”

  “You’re about an awful lot for someone who says they don’t give a damn about how this wedding goes.”

  “Ben,” Warren scolded him, but Elizabeth only gave him a chilly smile.

  “You will find, I think, Mr. Cartwright, that I shall be here rather more often than not before you know it, and I don’t very much like the idea of living under the same roof as a man who can’t contain his childish impulse to sulk as soon as I enter the room. I will assure you that I have no intentions toward dear Mr. Hayward—as I believe you should well know but don’t mind repeating once or twice—and that my interests are purely mercantile. I might remind you, further, that it was Warren who first sought out a wife, and not I a husband. Now may we move past this, or shall we both continue to pretend that the other is invisible?”

  Ben opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again. He looked between Warren’s pleading face and Elizabeth’s empty one and sighed. “I didn’t think a woman existed who was capable of marrying a man she had no feelings for and never developing any,” he grumbled.

  “You are afraid that Warren is so irresistable that, despite my intentions, I will simply be taken in by his charms and fall head over heels in love?” A small laugh bubbled out of her, and she quickly covered her mouth with one gloved hand and cleared her throat. “So sorry, darling,” she said as an aside to Warren. “I’m afraid that just isn’t the case.”

  Warren stared at her with lifted eyebrows for a long moment. “I’m...glad to hear it?”

  “Well, I don’t mean to be rude, but if I could be said to have a type, I rather think you would be the complete opposite. And if you kiss poor Mr. Cartwright the way you kissed me at Wakefield’s—” She was cut off both by Warren’s hiss and frantic hand gesture as well as Ben’s sudden shout.

  Ben leaned forward in his seat to glare across at Warren. “You kissed her?”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Warren said immediately. “It wasn’t because I wanted to. And like she said, it wasn’t even that good of a kiss.”

  “Oh, yes,” Elizabeth agreed, actually seeming to regret letting the detail slip. “Awful. I would be hard pressed to do it again.
Warren is—he’s too short to kiss properly.”

  “Thank you, dear,” Warren ground out, keeping his eyes on Ben. “Please. Don’t be this way. You knew I would have to pretend when we were out. I made you a promise, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Ben agreed after a moment, though he snorted softly in irritation. “I just...don’t want to hear about it, is all.”

  The Travers passed through the room without bothering to announce themselves, but they paused at the doorway into the front hall.

  “Do you need us, Hayward?” Simon asked while Owen leaned over to catch Elizabeth’s eye. “We’ll be back in the morning if not.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Warren shrugged. He bit back a smile as Owen blew a quick kiss at the stoic Miss Trentham, who only glared at him icily in return. “Don’t get into too much trouble.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Owen said with a mocking salute in Ben’s direction. “Constable. On our best behavior, honest.”

  “Shut your gob, Owen, or I’ll make your eyes match,” Ben snapped. Owen held up a hand in surrender, then placed it on on Simon’s shoulder to turn him, and they were out the front door without another word.

  “How are you fine with them living here?” Ben asked Elizabeth, gesturing at the empty doorway. “Especially with the way the one leers at you. You know they’re both criminals.”

  “I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, Mr. Cartwright,” Elizabeth said immediately, “but I thank you for your concern. I’ve dealt with worse than him. Now, if we might return to the business at hand? Or would you prefer to do a bit more grousing?”

  “Grousing,” Ben grumbled, throwing his hands up in defeat and folding his arms as he slumped into his chair.

  “Now,” she continued without giving him another look, “the venue has been booked…”

  Late in the night, curled up against Ben’s warm torso, Warren heard the harsh ring of the TXM sitting on the bedside table and lifted his head blearily. Ben mumbled beside him and rolled over onto his stomach while Warren reached over to pick up the small machine. The screen was difficult to see in the darkness, so he put a hand on the lamp and switched it onto the dimmest setting to avoid waking Ben. Squinting, he saw the number for the Travers’ TXM, and the single line of the message—Present for you in the cellar.