by Bec McMaster
"Do we know who?" She didn't like the way Daniel was examining her, as if Verity were some bizarre object that he didn't recognize. "The Clover Lads? The Black Cats? They accosted me in an alley earlier. I thought they were bolder than usual."
Conrad and Nigel exchanged glances at that.
"What's going on?" she demanded.
"Perhaps you can explain?" Daniel rasped in his hoarse voice. Someone had tried to hang him once and failed. There was a cheroot sitting in the ashtray by his fingers, but he didn't move. Only watched her. "Heard you and Murph were workin' on some kind of job. Heard you bailed."
Mercy tried to shoot her a warning look from beneath the brown bowler's hat that covered her mousy hair. A smear of black kohl razored across her face, making her green eyes stand out in the shadows, but Verity rather thought she'd been crying recently, and that made her feel protective. At sixteen, the girl was several years younger than her, but they'd grown up together in the workhouse and when Murphy offered her the gig, she'd insisted upon Mercy coming too.
Madame Noir, and Murphy's Wraith. Thief and assassin. And allies.
"I didn't bail!" Verity spat. "They tried to break the terms of the deal. As soon as I delivered the goods, one of them stabbed me."
"Who?" Guthrie's fingers twitched.
And Verity froze. "I-I don't know. Someone put some kind of memory hex on me."
"A compulsion," Bishop added, and all of a sudden every eye in the room was upon him.
"This is Mr. Bishop," she said, mentally cursing him. "We're working together to discover who betrayed us."
"And who the fuck are you?" Guthrie's gaze locked on Bishop.
"A friend of Verity's," Bishop replied calmly, as if the tension in the room hadn't just ratcheted up ten degrees.
"Seems awful convenient, Verity." Guthrie focused those shark's eyes on her. "Murphy cuts you in on a deal that he doesn't mention to any of us, then you go missing and he winds up dead, and all of a sudden you can't remember anything."
"Convenient or not, that's what happened."
"Show us the wound."
She paused. "I can't. Mr. Bishop healed it."
Guthrie sank back in his chair as if her words proved her guilt.
"Merce," she said, drawing her friend's attention. "We need to know what happened to Murphy. Were they men wearing blank masks?"
"Mercy belongs to me now, Ver." Guthrie's hand closed over her friend's fist, and Mercy looked away.
Verity's eyes narrowed, her mind chasing down all of the potential meanings to that and coming across one that chilled her. "What do you mean? I paid her debt. That's what this entire job was about! She's free to come and go as she pleases."
Guthrie arched a brow. "Seems there's been some kind of mistake. I've been through Murphy's ledgers. There's no payment, Verity. Mercy owes a hundred pounds to the Crows."
No! Verity's hands crashed on the desk, and she leaned over it. "That's bullshite and you know it. The debt stood at eighty-eight pounds three weeks ago, and if I did this little job for Murphy then the debt was clear—"
"Interest," Guthrie spat. "Debt's a hundred quid. And it's your word against ours. If Murphy made such a promise, then why is it that none of the others have heard about it? Murphy told Betsy and Conrad everything. He wouldn't keep this a secret."
A secret…. The words shifted a memory in her head, of Murphy settling those smoke-stained hands over a letter and toying with the edges of it. "Can't nobody know, Verity-lass. This one's top dollar, and dangerous. You're the best and they've asked for the best...."
Verity blinked. That conversation had happened right here in this room, the night before she set out to observe Bishop's house.
She looked around. "He mustn't have written it down in his ledger. Said it was a secret. Top-dollar gig."
Guthrie simply smiled and she wanted to punch him in his smug face. This was wrong. Mercy wouldn't look at her, as if ashamed.
I bloody well told you to stop gaming!
"I've never lied in my life, not to the Crows," she told them all. "All I ever wanted... all we ever wanted was to...." To be free. "To pay our debts." She looked desperately at Mercy, knowing that their dream was crashing into dust, right here in this room. Every time they came closer to earning their way free of the Crows, someone hammered another nail into the coffin. There was always something: food, board, a roof over their heads, weapons training.... As if they hadn't been the best things that Colin Murphy had hauled out of that workhouse. "I can pay her debt. Just... I need time." Time to think. Why did Murphy not write it down? He wrote everything down!
"Tick tock," Guthrie said. "Every day earns extra interest."
How the hell was she going to get the money?
"Or..." Guthrie drew the word out. "You could come back and work for me. Do some high-risk jobs, fetch in some coin. Maybe we could offer special terms of interest to see the debt cleared quicker. And yours too, I might add." Guthrie flipped open a ledger. "I believe you're almost within fifty quid of being free."
"You son of a bitch," she whispered, seeing the noose all of a sudden. This was what he wanted. Because Verity's debt was so close to being cleared, so close she could almost smell it, and Guthrie had always wanted to own her. He'd never let her see that debt paid. Not now when he was trying to consolidate his hold over the Crows. "How do we know that you didn't kill Murphy, just so you could fill his shoes? Just so you could trap me like this?"
Guthrie's eyes narrowed.
"Because the air smells like brimstone," Bishop murmured, pressing his fingertips to the ashy smear on the wall and then rubbing the residue between his gloved fingers. "A demon was here, not too long ago."
Everybody looked at him, as if remembering he was in the room.
"What?" Guthrie demanded.
Demons? A little chill down Verity's spine, however, remembered that smell, as if her inner self was trying to warn her about something.
Conrad's dark-skinned fist curled over the axe at his side. "The Crows don't hold no truck with the Shadow Dimensions."
"Don't they?" Bishop looked supremely disinterested in that statement. "What was the state of the room when Mr. Murphy's body was found, and what did the body look like? I presume it was found?"
Silence. Deafening, thundering silence.
Then Mercy spoke. "The smear marks on the walls are from Murphy's curses. He's a hex witch of formidable power and could strip a man's skin from his bones with one flick of his wrist. But... something deflected the curses. The chair where Murphy had been sitting was burned to its seat, and the body was slumped over the desk. It looked almost normal until one lifted his head off the desk." Mercy paled, which was a damned unusual sight indeed. "It looked as though something had eaten his face."
Bishop arched a brow at Guthrie. "And you think Verity did this?"
"What are we supposed to think? He wasn't scheduled for a meeting and the entire house was guarded. Conrad himself was sitting at the door when it all happened, and he didn't see or hear anything unusual. Not a sound, not even the smell of burning. No signs of break-in, and the windows were barred from the inside." Guthrie shot her a glare. "The only person who could have possibly entered unseen was our Verity."
"While I agree that Miss Hastings has unusual talents, she's not the only person who could get into a locked and guarded room."
"Oh?" Guthrie challenged.
"I myself could do it, as well as at least four others whom I know."
"And who, precisely, are you?" Guthrie demanded, sinking back into his chair, his hands curling over the armrests. "Some kind of theft specialist?"
In answer, Bishop slowly stripped his leather glove off his left hand, revealing the four rings that circled his fingers, their glittering obsidian stones winking in the candlelight.
Nigel almost leapt out of his skin. "G-grave Arts!" he stammered, scrambling back against the wall. "He's a sorcerer!"
That catapulted them all into action. Verity caught Mercy's
arm as the girl reach for her blades, and shook her head sharply. Their eyes met and Mercy's hand slowly relaxed on the blade, but her green eyes were wary when they returned to Bishop.
Guthrie's nostrils flared. "Order?"
"Of course." Bishop nonchalantly slipped his glove back on, as if this sort of thing happened on a daily basis. "I'm an adept of the seventh level."
Conrad's fingers clenched around his axe. "What I want to know," Conrad said, shooting her a look, "is how, precisely, you come to know 'im. You been conspiring to get out, Ver?"
"No. God." She waved a hand. "Bishop was the target. Murphy made me steal a relic from him. When the commission tried to kill me, he was the one who saved me. We've cut a deal. The Order won't crucify me if I help him get the relic back."
"We could stop them from touching you," Guthrie said, like a rat seeing a way in.
"No, you couldn't. And I'm fairly certain none of you could stop him from walking out of here, just in case you're planning on burying the evidence." She rolled her eyes.
"That depends." Guthrie stood, aiming a faint smirk at Bishop. Cockiness was his stock in trade, but she knew him well enough to see that he was sweating. "There's five of us and only one of him."
"The only person here who could cause me any consternation is the girl." Bishop tipped his head toward Mercy, who watched him with glittering eyes. "But she's untrained, isn't she?"
Verity, despite her alliance with him, took a half step closer to Mercy. For if trouble erupted, Bishop was the sort to take down his most dangerous enemies first. And how the hell had he known about Mercy's talents? Mercy could kill with but a clench of her fist.
It's what he does, said a whisper in her head. Like recognizing like.
"I'm not going to hurt her, Verity," he said. "I have no intentions of hurting anyone." Unless provoked, seemed to hover in the air.
"So we're at an impasse," Guthrie said. "We don't know who killed Murphy, and there ain't no sign of Murphy clearing this theft, except for Verity's word on it, as it ain't in his ledger. Now you come nosing—"
"Wait!" Verity hovered in the middle of the office. Ledgers! What if Murphy had kept a secret one? It went against the Crow code, but if Murphy were skimming, and he didn't want anyone to see.... "One second." Verity slipped around the desk and dragged a chair out of the corner. She withdrew her knife from her sleeve and used it to pry up one of the floorboards. "I always wondered why there were scratches on the floor here, and I once caught Murphy trying to pretend he hadn't been hiding something in this corner."
The floorboard came loose and Verity caught her breath, dragging out three old, heavy-set books. Not as thick or well-used as Murphy's ledgers, but... secret ledgers. Full of dates, jobs, figures....
"He did write the job down!" she said, rifling through it and finding the last entry. Then she realized that there was no mention of Mercy, or how much the commission would have given Verity. Damn it!
"Let me see that," Guthrie snapped and there was a brief tussle over the ledger, which Verity won.
She needed to know who Murphy—and she—had been meeting with the night of the commission.
A closer look at the name listed in the register stole her breath. "Noah Guthrie," she whispered, meeting Daniel Guthrie's eyes.
He snatched the register out of her hand. "Noah was here?"
"Noah was involved," she said, suddenly certain. "He was the one who met with Murphy to commission the theft." And swirling behind her eyes was the memory of Noah's face, smiling at her across a table she didn't recognize, as though the words had unlocked some key in her mind.
Verity blinked. Her head began to throb. The memory vanished. Noah might be Daniel's younger brother, but he'd always been kind to her. She couldn't equate the image of his sneering smile with the Noah that she'd known.
But she had other problems. "Date, time of meeting, and record of it." Verity forced her voice to harden. "Clearly I wasn't lying."
"Only says Noah was 'ere and wanted the job. But Noah ain't no master of memory hexes," Guthrie pointed out.
"Who knows what Noah is master of?" As much as she missed him, Noah had been a troubled soul, drawn to drinking and finally to the opium dens that ruled the East End. Murphy had been forced to throw him out of the Crows, and Noah had simply vanished one foggy morning. "It's been years since he graced the Dials. We all knew he ran with a bad crowd. Perhaps they taught him more of his magic?"
"Noah didn't have the capacity for it," Betsy said. "His mind was rotted from the opium. Even if he had the strength to perform such hex work, he wouldn't have had the will. Noah ain't your culprit."
"And ain't no sign of what Murphy were paying." Guthrie snapped the book shut. "Which means you still owe fifty quid."
Verity's fingernails bit into her palms, but she knew the way the game was played. "You'll have your fifty quid. As soon as I can get a chance to work it off, but until then I need to focus on Murphy's murderer. I want a stall on the interest."
"Denied." Guthrie looked smug.
"Denied," Conrad echoed, and then Betsy and Nigel. The three of them hovered around the desk, making it clear whose lead they followed.
Damn them. Verity glared back. If it weren't for her, Conrad wouldn't still have both hands, and Nigel owed her for that little job she'd kept quiet about five years ago.
A couple of twenty-pound notes landed on the desk. Bishop plucked several more from his pocketbook, then counted them out. "One hundred pounds, which is all I'm carrying at the moment. That's more than enough to pay out Verity's debt to the Crows, and to make a good start on the other young lady's debt. Yes?"
"What?" Verity's jaw dropped open. "You don't have to give them money!"
"Yes." Bishop gave her that look, the one that said she might as well save her breath. "I do."
"So I can be beholden to you instead?"
A shocked look met her words, then he turned toward the Crows.
"The debt is paid," Bishop said, and taking her arm, he linked it through his. "Verity is free and I'm of a mind to see you write it down in your precious little ledger."
Guthrie stared at the money. "And if I refuse?"
He suddenly gasped, staggering against the desk. Betsy whipped around, knife in hand again, but Bishop merely clenched his fist and she went to her knees too, clutching at her chest.
"I have kept my tongue throughout this entire proceeding," Bishop said, and turned those flat eyes on Conrad when the big man took a step toward him, as if in warning. "I have watched you try to force this young woman into a corner, treating her like a criminal, and I have not yet taken umbrage. Because she asked me not to."
Guthrie choked on nothing, his eyeballs flaring in fear and his hands scrabbling at the papers on the desk.
"I have paid you the money that she owes." Bishop stepped forward and even Nigel scrambled out of his way as he placed his gloved hands on the desk and leaned over it to stare into Guthrie's face. "If you refuse to take it and clear her debt, then I shall treat you as the miserable pox you are, and wipe you from the face of this earth. It's as easy to me as simply... seizing the breath in your lungs."
Guthrie's face turned a particular shade of red.
"In fact," Bishop warned, his voice lowering, becoming almost hypnotic, as if he hungered for it. "The thought of your death pleases me... very much."
Something was wrong.
"I would like to kill you," Bishop crooned. "I can feel the blood rushing through your veins, right now. I can hear your heart racing." He closed his eyes, like a man listening to a symphony composed by the masters. "That little shudder as it pulses for oxygen...."
"Bishop," Verity whispered, catching his sleeve.
His head swiveled toward her and she forced herself to hold firm in the face of that stark expression. This was not the man she knew. Then he blinked, as if realizing who stood in front of him and dared to touch him.
"Please, stop," she whispered.
Dark lashes fluttered ove
r his eyes. "Because you asked," he murmured, and his fingers flung wide, releasing whatever kind of hold he had on the pair of them.
Guthrie sucked in a huge breath, staggering back into his chair and collapsing. Betsy managed to push herself up onto her hands and knees, her back heaving as she sucked in mouthfuls of precious air. Her thin arms were shaking.
Mercy watched on with an almost anticipatory air to her expression.
"Heed this warning," Bishop suggested, once again slipping Verity's hand into the crook of his elbow. "The only reason you're still alive is by her good graces and sense of sentimentality. If it were up to me... well." His thin smile said it all, really, as he turned toward the door.
Verity met Guthrie's furious eyes, and saw there her future. Oh, sweet Jesus. He'd ruined everything.
Chapter 5
VERITY GASPED FAINTLY as they exited the building. "You j-just.... Do you have any idea what you've just done to me?"
"Rescued you from this filth," Bishop replied with a faint snarl. His temples were throbbing and he desperately, madly wanted to kill something. What a vile cesspool of people. This place ought to be burned to the ground. No wonder the Order despised the Hex Society.
"Rescued me?" Verity darted in front of him, stabbing a finger into his chest. "I sold my soul to the One-Eyed Crows when I was twelve and it wasn't because I had some hankering to join a curse-workers gang! It was because it was the only option for a girl like me in these streets. Without the Crows I'm nothing but prey, and there are people here who would enjoy repaying certain debts, thanks to the Crows!" She looked as though she’d just realized something. "You just signed my death warrant. I can't come back here. I'll have to... flee the country."
Bishop's temper flared. "You weren't coming back here in the first place."
"And who made that decision?" The finger stabbed him in the middle of the chest again. "You? Let me guess, you have a little side offer you're willing to offer me... as long as I entertain you. A little way to help pay off the debt I now owe you."
