Page 82 of Who Cries for the Lost

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

She turned to face him. “No, neither do I.”

He said, “You need to leave town. Now. And stay away until I figure out who the hell is doing this.”

A strange smile curled her lips. “Run away and hide, you mean?” She shook her head. “No. I won’t live my life in fear. It’s a promise I made myself long ago, and I’m not about to break it now.”

“I know,” he said. “So don’t be afraid. Just... be careful. Will you leave town? Please.”

“No. But I will be careful. I can promise you that.”

“It might not be enough.”

She met his gaze, her brilliant St. Cyr blue eyes glittering with both her fear and her fierce determination not to give way to it. “It’s the best I can do.”

Chapter 46

The murder of André Ternant and the disappearance of at least two other people whose names were likely to have been on Fouché’s infamous list sent Sebastian east again, to St. Giles. But he found the shop at Seven Dials shuttered, and his insistent pounding on the front door and ringing of the bell went unanswered.

“Ain’t nobody there now,” said an old man’s voice.

Sebastian looked over at the aged knife grinder sitting cross-legged against one of the shop’s canted walls, the tools of his trade arrayed around him. “One’s dead and another run off yesterday morning before she thought anyone was up to see her.”

“And the third?” said Sebastian.

The old man sniffed. “She left maybe half an hour ago.”

“She left town?”

“Her? Nah. Gone to St. Giles, she has.”

Sebastian’s first thought was, But this is St. Giles. Then he looked beyond the old man to the soaring stone spire that rose above the wretched rooftops and understood what he meant.

The Palladian-style Church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields stood in the center of a vast ancient graveyard, not far from the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court. There had been a chapel here since the days of the early twelfth century, when this was a leper colony, although that building was long gone. Sebastian had heard there were so many plague victims buried in and around the last church in the seventeenth century that rising damp undermined that structure to the point that it, too, needed to be replaced. It was hard not to think of those lepers and plague victims now, as he wound his way through the thicket of worn stone monuments and rusting iron fences to where Sibil Wilde, dressed in a Renaissance-era gown of celestial blue satin trimmed with cream lace, stood with her head bowed.

“Surely she hasn’t been buried yet,” said Sebastian, walking up to her.

Sibil looked around, her eyebrows twitching into a puzzled frown that cleared suddenly. “Oh, you mean Astrid. No; last I heard, her body was still with the surgeons, although I don’t understand why. It isn’t as if we don’t know precisely how she died.”

Sebastian nodded to the simple headstone beside them, which he now saw bore the name Alice Crowley. “Who was she?”

“A friend.” Sibil hesitated a moment, then added, “A dear friend. When I was attacked, Alice tried to stop the man. He killed her.”

“But he didn’t kill you?”

She shook her head, her hand coming up to touch her fingertips to the scar on the side of her face. “He wanted me to have to live with this.”

“What happened to him?”

“Someone blew his head off.”

“You?”

She smiled with her eyes. “Perhaps.”

Sebastian looked out over the sea of lichen-covered headstones and crumbling tombs. He could see a hunched old man in a tattered greatcoat winding his slow way through the thicket of ancient tombstones, but otherwise they were alone. “A wherryman pulled the body of a French émigré named André Ternant from the Thames this morning. From the looks of things, someone stuck a dagger in his side, but they didn’t mutilate his body. Do you have any idea who might have killed him?”

“Why would I know such a thing?”

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