by Kim Foster
“Flick, it’ll be fine. He knows you’ll do whatever it takes. And I know it, too. It’s one of the things I love best about you.”
A warm surge of gratitude flows through me. What would I do without Kit? For so long I’ve had to keep people at arm’s length, afraid of them learning the truth about Nate. But not Kit.
He kisses me again, lightly, then lifts his head from mine. His eyes darken as he looks over my shoulder back toward the market.
I turn and take in a sight that makes my stomach twist.
CHAPTER TWO
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
A coach has stopped in the street, polished, lustrous black, with enormous, brass-trimmed wheels, led by a glossy thoroughbred. Its presence makes everything around it look even shabbier.
Out steps a gentleman with a luxuriant black mustache. He wears a black hat and the whitest gloves I’ve ever seen. As soon as the gentleman’s feet touch the ground, he raises a kerchief to his face, blocking out the smell, no doubt. Behind him follows a huge footman carrying a small square box, one side opening like an accordion and a small brass cylinder attached to the other. I’ve only seen something like it once before—but I’m quite sure it’s called a camera. The gentleman and his footman begin across the market.
“Slumming,” Kit says with a growl. I watch, nodding. It’s become a fashionable new pastime for the upper classes. Kit stands stock still, his arms folded over his broad chest, watching the strangers warily.
Behind me I hear a faint scratching sound. “Felicity?” says a tiny voice.
I turn to see my brother. Nate has the fine bones of a bird. His cheeks are pale beneath the grime, and his grubby clothes hang off his skinny frame, but a smile illuminates his face when I crouch down to him, setting his apple cheeks shining.
“Nate, what are you doing out here?” I scold, smoothing the hair that falls across his forehead. I don’t like the idea of his walking even the short distance from our little attic to the market, alone. I always feel more comfortable when he is safely at home, stirring the soup pot or reading a book. Our father taught us both to read, and it’s a love we share.
“I had a bad feeling,” he says. His hands go to the edge of his jacket and fiddle with frayed threads there. “I needed to find you. To make sure you were okay.”
I look at him sharply. “A bad feeling?” We both know what that could mean.
Then his face seems to grow smaller, more scared, as he gazes past me. “Who is that?” he asks, a small trembling finger pointing over my shoulder, toward the stranger. As I stand and turn, I can feel Nate tucking in close to me, holding on to my leg for comfort as he often does.
The gentleman in the black hat moves through the crowd, narrowing his eyes at people with a mixture of curiosity and disdain. His footman walks a step behind, a predator of a man with enormous hands and a cold glare; people cower as they move past.
The men move closer and an uncomfortable feeling stirs deep in my gut.
“I don’t know who he is,” I say to Nate. “I’m sure he’ll leave soon, though.”
I look uneasily back at the strangers who are coming ever nearer. The gentleman is not purchasing any of the items for sale. In fact, people are barely attempting to draw him to their wares.
He pauses and gestures to his footman, who promptly unfolds a spindly stand and positions the camera on top of it. He stands behind the contraption, maneuvering himself in front of Sam the fishmonger’s stall. A gentler man you’ll never meet than Sam. He tries to ignore the strangers and continue his business, but his ears have gone pink and he squirms with discomfort.
Kit grunts. The muscles in his jaw flex. “Who does that toff think he is, prancing around like he’s viewing animals in a zoo?”
My stomach tightens. Kit’s right, but it worries me how angry he’s getting. “Just calm down. They’ll be gone soon.”
“It’s not right. You know it’s not.” His blue eyes are even darker now, deep pools filled with all his powerless rage.
I look back to see the gentleman taking photographs of Sam. A bright light flashes and sparks fly. “That’s perfect, Cobbs,” says the gentleman to his servant. “If only the poor man didn’t have such a dreadfully dour expression …”
I tuck Nate behind me, and call out boldly to the stranger. “Flowers for your lady, my lord? The first day of spring is auspicious—St. Archibald’s Day. It’s bad luck to go without a daffodil, something an educated gentleman such as yourself knows well, I’m sure.”
It’s a lie. There’s no such saint as Archibald.
The stranger’s head whips in our direction. “I say. A flower seller! How fascinating. Here, get some photographs of these specimens, would you, Cobbs?” The gentleman eyes us with delight.
Kit grunts. “If you’re not going to buy anything,” Kit says forcing the words through his teeth, “then it’s time for you to leave. Go back where you came from. You don’t belong here.”
My eyes dart to Kit. He’s being too bold.
But the stranger barely pays Kit a passing glance. He makes no move to leave.
“M’lord?” says the footman from behind the camera. “Is this the angle you’d prefer?”
The gentleman narrows his eyes, lining up the image before he fiddles with a knob on the camera.
“Do not take a photograph with that contraption,” Kit says. His voice is low and tight. A warning. “We are no curiosity.”
The stranger ignores Kit and continues fiddling with the camera. Kit’s muscles are coiled, ready.
I push Nate even further behind me. “Go stand behind the onion cart,” I whisper to him. “Stay hidden, and do not come out.”
A crowd’s gathered now. Restless unease washes among them along with muttered words.
“Leave it be, Kit,” says John the turnip man, in a low voice. “Let the man take his photographs and be gone.”
But Kit remains tense beside me. I need to do something.
“Oh, you don’t want to take our photograph, my lord,” I call out to the stranger. “There are more pleasing subjects to be found in Trafalgar Square, surely. The morning sun rising on Nelson’s Column, perhaps? Undoubtedly a much finer view …”
The gentleman takes no notice me.
“Besides,” I continue, “you may find folk demand payment for such a thing.” I look pointedly at his waistcoat. “And I must say, your purse looks quite heavy there. I would hate to think of a pickpocket taking advantage of your distracted state …”
This, at least, causes a flicker of hesitation. The stranger inspects me more closely this time. Something in his expression changes. Some sort of … recognition.
“Ah. Interesting,” he says slowly. “My dear, after I am finished with my photograph, I believe we may have matters to discuss.”
I frown and take a step backward. What is he talking about?
Kit moves in front of me. “You have no business with her,” he says, tucking me protectively behind himself. “Now, I’ll give you one more warning.”
The stranger pauses, eyes Kit. “Or what?” he says in a tone that has lost its edge of humor. His face, too, has transformed into something dark. But either Kit doesn’t notice the change or doesn’t care.
“Or I’ll make you leave,” Kit says, drawing up to his full height, chest spread wide. “This is my home, and these are my people you’re insulting. We want you to go.”
In spite of my fear, a spark of pride warms my chest. Kit has many fine qualities, not the least of which is bravery and honor. He knows exactly who he is.
The stranger’s nostrils flare. “If you know what’s good for you, boy, you had best stand down.”
“Do not call me boy,” Kit says with a snarl.
The gentleman pauses and his mouth forms a tight line. He turns his head slightly, to address his footman, though his eyes remain fixed on Kit. “Cobbs? Take a picture of this … boy fir
st. He is a most interesting subject. A great deal of talk for one so powerless and pathetic. See if you can capture that angry glint in his eye—”
With a great roar, Kit lunges at the stranger, fists raised. And then, an impossibly loud sound cracks through the square, silencing everything.
Kit falls like a hammer. Muffled screams surround me as the air thickens with the smell of gunpowder.
Deep red blooms on Kit’s chest. I’m at his side in an instant. A spasm of pain tears across his face, eyes widened. He takes one last shuddering breath, and then the light of Kit’s brilliant eyes is gone from them forever.
I look around me in disbelief. The stranger glances down at us indifferently. A faint wisp of smoke escapes the pistol in his hand. The footman also holds a gun and he swings his eyes around the crowd, eager for any new challenge.
“I believe it’s time for us to have that talk, Felicity,” says the stranger. I barely register his words.
My gaze is pulled back down to Kit. All around us, people are cowering, huddled behind their carts. I want to scream, to howl, to cry …
Instead, a deep burn kindles in my gut, a tingle crawls over my scalp. Then, something inside me breaks loose.
CHAPTER THREE
“I can’t go back to yesterday—because I was a different person then.”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Movement around me slows. The mist from the horses’ nostrils hangs suspended in the air. Carriage wheels on cobbles and the bells from St. Paul’s Cathedral sound stifled—dampened and low.
I see everything at once. Time bends, curving around me.
Locals and customers cower in the market, screams frozen on their faces. They crouch behind carts. A surge goes to my muscles and somehow I know—I just know—I can do impossible things. I am not thinking. I am pure rage. A deep burning takes hold of my bones.
I reach Kit’s murderer in a heartbeat. Impossibly fast. Before he can fire his pistol again, I punch forward, catching him square in the throat. His eyes pop wide. I chop the hand that holds the gun and it skitters away on the ground. He staggers. I punch him again, smashing his nose, and blood spurts everywhere. I kick at his knees, sending him to the ground. I don’t know what I’m doing, or how I’m doing it, only that it’s coming from somewhere deep inside.
Everything around me is slow, like it’s moving through water. Sliding like molasses. But I am a spark. Fire. Lightning.
I hear the report of a gun—a dull, low rumble, not the sharp crack it should be—and I have time to spin. The bullet tears from the footman’s weapon in a plume of smoke. But I don’t feel the sharp agony of the shot. Instead, I see the bullet as it comes toward me. It moves through the air trailing a spiraling smoke wisp behind it like a comet. I slide out of the way, ducking easily underneath it.
With a slow, deep thud it slams harmlessly into a vegetable cart behind me, smashing into the cabbages and sending a fountain of dusty hay into the air.
And now the footman is mine.
He struggles to reload his pistol. The gentleman is still on the ground. Still unconscious. Breathing, but not an immediate threat. Cold fury surges through me. A lifetime of oppression and bad treatment condenses to a single moment.
Sounds swirl around me, a fugue. The crowd, the market, everything has faded to a blurry distance. All I feel is the pinpoint focus of my hatred, bent on my target.
There is murder in the footman’s eyes. He means to stop me. To kill me.
That’s not going to happen.
As the footman pulls his gun and points it in my direction, I cross the short distance in two quick strides. I crouch down before he even realizes I’m upon him and rise up under his arm, grasping and twisting it, forcing his shoulder around and sending the pistol skittering away. He is much larger than me but I feel impossibly strong. Impossibly agile. I don’t stop to think about it. I just move.
I lever the man’s arm and push him down with tremendous force and then he’s kneeling in front of me. Before he can stand or turn around, in one quick, vigorous motion, I wrap my arms around his head and twist. Snap.
I feel his large body go slack beneath my hands. He drops to the cobblestones, dead.
“Felicity!” a child screams. “Stop!”
At the sound of my brother’s small voice, I abruptly come back to myself. The world snaps back to normal speed. Screams ring sharply in my ears.
I take in the scene: Kit, dead in a pool of blood; the footman, dead, neck at an unnatural angle; the stranger, conscious now, on his hands and knees, blood dripping down his face.
A wave a fatigue and nausea passes over me and I stumble forward. I know my hair is wild, my dress torn; blood spatters my knuckles.
Everyone in the market is looking at me with horror.
A clarion realization slams into me: I am Tainted.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I have my own matches and sulphur, and I’ll make my own hell.”
—Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed
The world crashes down. I’m falling into an abyss, arms pinwheeling as I tumble through the rabbit hole.
I glance around me. Do they all know now? Surely everyone saw what I did, what I am capable of. I did nothing to hide it. Didn’t even know there was anything to hide.
Bitterness floods my veins. All those years of hiding Nate’s secret, and now mine has been laid bare for all to see.
Felicity, we have to go. Run. Now. Nate’s voice inside my head is desperate and urgent. I vaguely contemplate my ability—not mental, not like Nate. Physical, obviously …
There is a tight grip on my arm. “Oh no, you’re not going anywhere. You’re coming with us.” Two policemen in their blue uniforms and brass buttons flank me. Peelers. Where did they come from?
On the other side of the crowd, another policeman is helping the gentleman up, handing him a handkerchief to stanch his bleeding nose.
I have nowhere to go. I reach out, hoping to touch the ability again—but I feel nothing. I have no clue how to summon it back.
Nate stands in the crowd, giant eyes staring out from his small, pale face, and I realize the horrible mistake I’ve made.
“No, wait. I can explain.” I can’t let the police take me away. I can’t leave Nate alone.
Last year, a woman killed her husband in our neighborhood. Shot him right in the eye, when she learned he’d been messing about with the washerwoman down the street.
Even with her three babes at home, the police carted her away to Newgate Prison. Less than a week later, she was swinging from the gallows.
My eyes swivel wildly as I scan the crowd for someone, anyone, who will help me, help us. But I’ve always been so careful to keep the world at arm’s length.
My gaze lands on a man—the one I saw in the market earlier wearing a smoke-gray suit. He is very still, watching me. Then the crowd shifts, and he disappears from view.
The Peelers push me with rough hands toward the police carriage. Movement catches my eye—Nate, running toward us.
Panic blisters my mind as I’m shoved ever closer to the yawning doors of the carriage. Nate’s hollering, fighting through the crowd, but he’s not strong enough. Fat tears make tracks down his thin, grimy face.
I struggle against the policemen but it’s futile. “Nate,” I scream, “find the seamstress—the old lady in Plough Street!” But the crowd is too loud. He can’t hear me.
With one final shove, they push me down inside the wagon, my palms skidding on the rough floor. I twist around with desperation and open my mouth to shout to Nate again. But the doors are already halfway shut.
I shout repeatedly, my throat burning, screaming out in vain.
Nate’s tiny face in the midst of chaos is the last thing I see before the cruel doors seal me inside the blackness. My own hoarse voice is the only sound echoing in my ears as the carriage lurches forward, tearing me away.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Night, the mother of fear
and mystery, was coming upon me.”
—H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
Two guards drag me from the carriage. My wrists are bound in heavy iron handcuffs, and I stumble, blinking in the morning’s cold light.
Stone walls loom over me, reaching into the sky. The smell makes my eyes water—human waste, filth, and desperation. I don’t have to ask the guards where they’ve brought me.
Newgate Prison.
They push me forward through the gate and as the door slams behind me, I turn to catch the last sliver of brightness.
I wonder if I will ever see daylight again.
Pushing that thought away, I focus on breathing. Though the guards prod me through a bewildering series of doors and gates, I’m trying to keep my wits about me. And all the while I have one burning thought: I must find a way out. I cannot leave my brother alone on the streets. I spent the entire terrifying ride trying to open my mind to Nate, but it hasn’t been working and I don’t know why.
Perhaps it’s the terror of what’s happening to me now. Or the horror of what I did in the market. Or maybe—and I can barely stand to think it—something has already happened to him.
No.
There must be a way out of here. An escape. I just need to find the right person—someone understanding and sympathetic. Someone who will know that I do not belong here. Except …
Perhaps I do belong here. I killed a man.
Hopelessness pushes at my consciousness like flames licking the edges of paper.
The guards march me down a long corridor, saying nothing. We enter the area for female prisoners. Some of the bedraggled women slink to the front of their cells to see the new arrival, squinting at me through the bars as I pass. I hold my chin high, and try not shake too much.
At last, we stop in front of an empty cell. One of the guards opens it with a large key. The sound of grinding metal echoes down the corridor.
