by Jerico Lenk
A brisk wind flowed through the streets of London and the echo of carolers gave way to the rustling whispers and murmurs of onlookers at the grand scene outside No. 9 Mansfield Street.
Yard inspectors marched to-and-fro through the cheerless townhouse while constabulary stood guard about the pavement, Dorland’s body covered but the mess he’d made a bit harder to conceal as snow and slush soaked it up like cotton.
What was I to say when I returned to my Knight’s Hall room? “Cain’s familiar killed your father, Mary Ann. I’ll forward your thanks once I get some sleep.” That was terrible.
Westwood smiled compassionately when he arrived, though his eyes picked us apart without words. Chesley, on the other hand, refused to even glance our way as Scotland Yard’s Commissioner Bradford in his sleek grey overcoat and primly pressed trousers harangued Westwood like he’d already harangued us.
The sky was low and chilly, the heavy velvety grey of a December evening. Three Kingsley men had come at first notice. Cain stood amongst them bundled deep in his winter wraps, nodding out of obligation to those who spoke to him but staring forward with empty eyes. Unhearing, uncaring.
Dorland, grinning over the gruesome cabinet cards. My mother in the mirror, and the All-Seeing Eye on her blindfold. Cain, eyes wide, shining with hellish secrets. The fear in Clement’s face that made him look utterly childlike and painfully mortal. That damn Vivaldi, twirling, winding, as Cain’s daemon pushed Dorland out the window …
“And what happened then?” one of the inspectors asked, not without a bead of dutiful doubt.
“The Officer went on about how he’d conceal our deaths when he was through with us, moved like he meant to lean on the window but forgot he’d opened it, and down he went,” I said in a half-whisper, teeth clenched against their chattering. My tired voice was ready to just surrender to the trauma as I sat on the stoop of No. 9 Mansfield Street with my arms crossed and my hands, stinging numb from the frosty night, tucked against my sides for warmth.
It truly appeared as though events had transpired just so. As with Cain’s wrist, all the disturbing disfigurements inflicted upon Dorland had somehow disappeared, as if the daemon had covered its tracks. It left me reeling—had I really seen what I’d seen? The cluster of shadows in the shape of a man, walking right out of the mirrors?
I almost questioned it. But I knew better. Oh, I knew.
“There are photographs upstairs,” I told the inspector. “Little cabinet cards of … the victims. Proof. I can show you, if you’d like.”
The inspector softened, seeming suddenly full of pity for someone of my circumstances experiencing such a grisly affair, now that he was confident my testimony matched my teammates’. “Yes,” he murmured. “I’ll make note of that for our men. Thank you.”
“Here,” Clement husked once the inspector moved on. Injured arm in a sling, he tossed his coat down around me with his good hand much like he had that first night in the Bethnal Green churchyard. Not that his good hand was much better, wrapped for the gash mirror glass had left in his palm. He passed me a book of matches and stooped down so I might light his cigarette for him.
We watched as policemen struggled to remove Dorland’s body from the thoroughfare, field gurney sagging beneath the lumpy form as it shifted about below the covering.
“I’m sorry,” Clement said, awkwardly, as if hesitant to disturb me in my isolation on the steps.
“Why?” I replied curtly. His coat smelled like him and I wanted to curl up in it and go to sleep for a long time. Days, perhaps. Until I felt alive again, like the revenants allegedly of lore, on which we had a surprising number of files in Hermes Hall. Dear God, don’t let him bring up Willow …
“My decisions were unwise and impulsive, and it put you in peril here as I’m to be watching you closely for Westwood due to your—” He stopped suddenly.
I stiffened, raising my eyes to him. His gaze flickered to meet mine but I looked away again, quickly. “Due to my … what?” I asked, the words thick in my throat.
“Due to your newness,” he hurried to explain, flustered. “As a Cross inspector, as a clairvoyant. Your probation, of course. And you’re still quite young, after all.”
He could not lie to me, either because I knew of his secret self or because he could not manage it. I stared up at him. I didn’t say it. But the words waited on my lips, on a breath. Clement held my gaze, knowing the words were there.
Due to my mother.
Perhaps my eyes said it, as his eyes burned into me like a dying fire and said, Yes.
“I trusted you,” I said, in a bruised sort of awe. Trusted them both only to discover now that not only was Clement to spy on me in the shadow of Margot Winchester’s sins, but Cain was a witch himself with no qualms tasking his daemon to stalk me—to kill a man.
But I was too exhausted, too empty of feeling after all that had happened, to fight the truth. Westwood. My mother. Watching me. Witch’s blood. What else was there to say about it? My mother was a witch. And so was I.
I looked up at Clement from the steps, hunched down in his coat and offering a weak smile. His frantic scramble for words was apparent, but there was nothing he needed to say.
“I still trust the both of you,” I murmured. “You and Cain are two of the last trustworthy gentlemen left in the world, after all.”
Clement was still for a long moment, perhaps not believing me at first. But then he just smiled in a wilted and heartfelt way, looking off past the press and police chaos with tired eyes.
“Gentlemen,” Westwood called, waving to us from the sidelines near Cain and his uncles, who huddled whispering together in their fine toppers and dapper wraps. Westwood replaced his hat on his grey-brown hair, mouth twisting gently in thought. “Shall we leave the Yard to their work now?”
***
At the desk in his small, green-papered office, Westwood examined the pseudo-case file we’d assembled—or attempted to—the day before.
“Well.” He cleared his throat. “This is the event of the year, isn’t it? They say we’ve scandalised the entire holiday season.”
The fire under the mantle popped and sighed, and outside the snow had turned to a slow, dark, frosty rain.
“Yes … ” Westwood sighed, long and worn, resting his temple in tented fingers as he flipped gently through our meager file. “But … Black Cross protocol … building cases without permission, failing to report spectral activity and operating without Yard clearance … we are infinitely lucky Dorland catalogued his own evidence, or I don’t know that Bradford would have accepted any of this at all. Now, what this does for Cross reputation, I … ” He sighed again and dragged both hands down his face. His eyes passed over Clement, lingered on Cain a moment before moving off to me—not inconsequentially. I held his gaze, respectfully, wondering if he could tell I was aware of his tasking Clement to watch me.
“Temporary suspension,” he said in a rough, tired way. “Twelve days, beginning after leave. It shall reflect in your next wages.”
His gaze drifted about us a bit more compassionately. I even dared to think it proud.
“But I commend you,” he added, “for the heroic deeds you’ve accomplished. Now. It’s Christmas and I’ve a wife and two daughters waiting at dinner downstairs. Lord Kingsley, I don’t doubt you’ve also family to attend to, however … you are all welcome to dine with the rest of us. I would not take offence should you choose recuperation instead.”
***
One of Cain’s uncles awaited him in the front gallery. We stalled in the wide corridor before it, Cain pale and pouty, clearly spent and wanting nothing to do with his family tonight.
“I leave for Buckinghamshire tonight, until New Year’s,” he said apologetically. His eyes slid to me. “Home.”
“Tonight?” I echoed. “You won’t arrive until three in the morning, at least.”
Cain nodded.
“Wish the great family Happy Christmas for me,” Clement hummed, and Cain laug
hed, a dainty scoff, and smiled faintly.
“Yes, Happy Christmas.” He gave us both hugs and gentlemanly kisses. As he moved off to fetch his uncle, he turned, walking backwards, smile much revived into something akin to his usual impish smirk as he said, “Lucky for us, Krampusnacht has long passed, but keep watch for Belsnickel and don’t let him find out we’ve been bad.”
He disappeared into the gallery. I looked to Clement, perplexed.
“Austrian,” he explained, shifting his arm in its sling with a tiny pinch to his smile. “Christmas devils.”
In the dining hall, we joined Westwood and his family, and a few other Cross men who were not exactly secret about how often they glanced at us. They’d heard the news already, of course. Everyone had heard.
It was peaceful, at least, a humble Christmas spread, warm drinks and warm conversation, and a good fire burning under the mantle. But it also seemed rather lonesome. I felt somewhat lonely, which was different from lonesome somehow.
Back at Julien’s-off-the-Strand, had anyone taken my usual job of organising stockings and little personalised notes on the fir tree? My father, Miss Valérie, Daphne, Agatha, Zelda, and Cook, taking dinner and playing games together, as if all family. Or was the house lifeless and quiet—I, absent. Daphne gone. Zelda gone. I could almost see my father, sitting alone with a brandy and his pipe as he stared listlessly into the fire, saddened by the emptiness. But maybe that was actually a memory, from a long time ago, shortly after my mother had left.
Surely the story would be in the papers the very next day, little hired boys crowing out on street corners: Killer o’ ladies Officer Henry Dorland of the Black Cross Order of Occult Occurrences, fell from his very own window! Spill’d his guts all o’er the pavement! But a threepenny bit!
What would my father think when he heard of it? Would they disclose my name? My mother’s name? Would he care at all, suddenly, or … ?
Clement sighed, carefully pushing hair out of his dark and heavy eyes lest he agitate the cut on his hand, as we made our way to the dormitories together. “Will, I’ve some anodyne from the druggist, for peaceful rest … if you’d like some, too.”
I nodded slowly. I wanted a sleep with no dreams, no thoughts on how I might keep what happened in Dorland’s attic secret forever. No thoughts on what it meant, how glad I was that he was dead.
I changed for bed as he went to fetch the medicine from his room. Mary Ann was silent—nowhere to be found. With only a half-knock to announce his return, Clement wandered in and flopped down in the corner armchair, fiddling with the quartz at his throat and looking around lazily as I took a healthy swallow of the Ferris and Co. anodyne syrup, then passed it back to him. He lifted the medicine bottle in idle cheers.
It didn’t take long at all for me to drift off once I got comfortable under the covers, all the tingling tension uncoiling from my body. I stirred just once before dropping off the edge of wakefulness and into the soundest, most blissful sleep, when the lamp went out and Mary Ann’s shadow pranced away along the wall—and I found Clement also curled up asleep on the bed, facing me. I studied him a moment, as best I could with the way my eyes begged to close again.
He looked so peaceful and childishly soft, fingers curled limp into his injured palm. His face, for once, was empty of thought, and empty of subdued feeling.
I remembered, barely, lying curled up like such near my mother when I was very small. How comforting it was to have another weight on the bed, the warmth of someone’s body not touching but very close. And Clement’s peacefulness was like that of someone who needed very badly to remember what that felt like, too.
“Look what I’ve brought from home!” Cain cried, dropping down on my bed a fine, slate-blue suit just my size. “A late Christmas gift. I hope it causes no offence—it’s custom tailored.”
I ran my hands over the soft fabric, blushing and flustered that he’d spent money on me. “You didn’t have to, Christ … ” I insisted, but I didn’t try to stifle my giddy smile. “It’s so nice!”
My eyes caught on his reflection in the mirror and I seized up for a moment, stomach pinching as I recalled his daemon. A swarm of shadows. Those ruddy red eyes and smile so wide and sweet it was hideous, blood running down Dorland’s disfigured face, rosying shattered glass, Your little daemon told you …
“Stop looking for him,” Cain said below his breath. “Can I borrow that comb?”
I averted my eyes from the mirror as I passed him Agatha’s pearl-studded comb. I couldn’t help it; every now and again I just remembered, stabbed by leftover shock. “I’m sorry,” I said, but Cain shook his head.
“It was a moment of great distress. Dmitri can be frightening at times, and Dorland … ” He fixed his hair in the glass, adjusted his cuffs and collar. “Anyway, I have the red-eyed gentleman on a tight leash.” His eyes slid over to meet mine through his reflection as he smiled faintly. “You haven’t any reason to fear. I promise.”
London was all manner of festive for the New Year. Bells clanged and clattered from church to church; warm lights spilled across the streets and glittered through the winter weather.
The Black Cross end of year ceremony filled the grounds with about half the crowd of All Hallows’, still a remarkably sizeable affair for a building so usually underpopulated. With port and champagne, everyone gathered in and around the great gallery, exchanging good tidings, clove-stuffed oranges, gilded nutmegs. Journalists directed men with box cameras to-and-fro, perhaps more excited than they might have been had the Cross not been talk of the town after Dorland.
Quinn found Cain and me almost as soon as we entered, dropping his big hand down to give us both brief, but tender, squeezes to the shoulders.
“I’m proud,” he said. I blushed, not quite sure how to reply. To have Quinn’s praise …
“Quinn, when you smile like that, it scares me,” Cain sing-songed. Quinn sighed and gave him a tiny, loving shake.
“My brother,” he introduced the man next to him, who was smaller and much less wolf-like, perhaps only because of his hairless face.
“Good evening,” he greeted, clearly not as interested in the whole affair as Quinn desired him to be.
“Oh, thank God!” Clement heaved a breath of relief when Cain and I found him in the crowd. “I was afraid you’d try to wear a dress.”
A different kind of heat flared in my face. “All right,” I snapped, but that was all I said before, much to Cain’s obvious amusement, I snatched Clement by the sleeve and pulled him out of the gallery with me.
In the hall, I let go and spun to him fiercely. He looked surprised and uncomfortably guilty—cowed, almost, rearing back against the wall so suddenly that he knocked a painting askew and scrambled to fix it before it fell.
“Clement,” I said, more than mildly panicked something would never be the same between us. He wouldn’t like me anymore. Cain’s knowing my bi-gendered state did not change a thing, but … why did it matter so much to matter at all to Clement? “I am only sometimes a girl, so do not make jokes like that. You’re not being witty. I don’t like it.”
He set his port down on a nearby sideboard and peered at me in miserable bewilderment. “Well,” he said, tripping over the words, “when you revealed it all to me, it was not the most opportune time to speak in detail of it.”
“I thought, by the banter between you and Mr. Zayne, and Mr. Zayne’s more earnest acquaintances, you wouldn’t be ignorant to that side of things. Listen, it’s not difficult, I’m confident even you can grasp it.”
“Oh, I believe I do!” Clement was blushing. Furiously. In shame or perhaps frustration. “You’re androgynous,” he said.
A startled laugh broke free from my throat and a handful of others around the hall glanced our way. Androgynous—anatomically both sexes. Embarrassed, I turned to press my back to the wall beside him, avoiding his eyes as I said, “Not quite. Simply queer. An intermediate of boy and girl, and it’s … really as simple as that.”
&nbs
p; He didn’t look at me.
“Believe me,” I kept on, brow knotting. “If I didn’t have to tell you, I wouldn’t have. I don’t want to be on guard against others’ judgments and advances.”
“Judgments,” Clement echoed with the husk of a laugh, as if the prospect insulted him. “Advances.”
“I’m afraid of you thinking differently of me, acting differently!” I persisted, then shrank further back against the wall at a few more glances our way. My face was on fire. Lowering my voice, I said, “What does it matter my gender’s ambiguous? It’s not as though I traipse about every day thinking, ‘Female Will this’ or ‘Male Will that.’ Do you do that? No. I’m just Will. I’ve never lied, nor put forth any deceit, so please—”
“All right,” Clement murmured. “You’re getting worked up. I never meant to work you up, Will.”
“I know it’s your habit to ridicule, in order to keep your secret-self safe,” I said thinly. “But this is not a frivolous thing.”
He fell silent, frowning. Thinking, perhaps, that I was either right or I was wrong. Thinking of all our secret self moments—the honest conversations, my running to him after seeing my father, burning the remains of Miss Weiss, Christmas with anodyne and much needed repose in my room …
Clement sighed, mouth pressed in a firm line. “It’s odd to think about,” he murmured, “and I apologise, but I might often forget to think about it at all.”
“Good,” I whispered sullenly, but in truth I felt indescribable relief.
“Who are you today, then?”
“I’m just … Will,” I said, uncertain of how else to say it. “The same Will you’ve known from the start.”
There was a tight hush between us. After a moment, he ventured to glance at me through his lashes.
“Well,” he said, “you said yourself, trustworthy fellows are mysterious, aren’t they? And this … uniqueness of yours is certainly mysterious.”
