Page 29 of What Angels Fear

Paul Gibson sat forward, his hands coming up, palms pressed together. “Sebastian, think about this: whoever this man was, he could kill again—in fact, he almost surely will kill again. You know that, don’t you? But as long as the authorities are looking for you, they’re not going to be doing anything to find him.”

Sebastian didn’t say a word.

Gibson flattened his hands on the scarred wooden tabletop and leaned into them. “She’s dead, Sebastian. The woman who was Rachel York is long gone. What’s left is just a shell, a husk, that once held her. In a month’s time, it’ll be rotting pulp.”

“That’s simple justification and you know it.”

“Is it? What we would do to her is no worse than what time will do to her. And there’s nothing you can do to stop that.”

Sebastian took a deep, bitter swallow of his wine. He told himself Paul was right, that catching Rachel’s killer was more important than preserving the inviability of her grave. He told himself her killer could, if free, kill again. But it was still wrong. He raised his gaze to his friend’s. “How soon can you set it up?”

Paul Gibson let his breath out in a quick huff. “The sooner the better. I’ll send a message to Jumpin’ Jack first thing in the morning.”

“Jumpin’ Jack?”

The Irishman’s dimple flashed, then was gone. “Jumpin’ Jack Cochran. A gentleman in the resurrection trade I have reason to know.”

“I won’t ask how you know him.”

Gibson laughed. “He got his name when one of the stiffs he was sliding out of its coffin suddenly sat up and started talking to him. Old Jack jumped out of that grave real fast.”

“You’re making that up,” said Sebastian.

“Not a bit of it. The lads he had with him were all for swinging a shovel at the man’s head and finishing him off right then and there, but Jack would have none of it. Hauled the fellow off to an apothecary, and even paid the bill when the unlucky devil died anyway.”

“I am filled with admiration for the man’s character,” Sebastian said with a grin, and rose to leave.

The Irishman’s face fell. “You’re staying, aren’t you?”

Sebastian shook his head. “I’ve put you in enough danger as it is, coming here. I’ve a room at the Rose and Crown, near Tothill Fields. They know me there as Mr. Simon Taylor. From Worcestershire.”

Gibson walked with him to the front door. “I’ll let you know when everything’s arranged.” He paused, his face thoughtful as he watched Sebastian button his scruffy topcoat up under his chin. “You do realize, of course, that we could go through all of this, and still not learn anything useful?”

“I know it.”

“You’re only assuming that the man who killed that poor girl was someone she knew. It might not be, you know. She could simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. You might never find who did it.”

Reaching out, Sebastian paused with his hand on the edge of the door and looked back at his friend. “No. But at least I’ll have tried.”

Gibson met his gaze, his face unsmiling and drawn with worry. “You could still leave.”

“And spend the rest of my life running?” Sebastian shook his head. “No. I’m going to clear my name, Paul. Even if I have to die trying.”

“You could die trying, and still not succeed.”

Sebastian settled his hat lower on his forehead and turned into the icy blast of the night. “It’s a chance I’m just going to have to take.”

Chapter 21

Sebastian stood alone in the shadows and watched as Kat Boleyn separated herself from the knot of laughing, pretty women and hot-blooded, predatory males clustered around the stage door.

Golden lamplight pooled on gleaming wet pavement. The wind gusted up, sharp and bitter, and brought with it a rush of smells, of fresh paint and sweat-dampened wool and the thick grease of cosmetics: theater scents evocative of a time long past, when he’d believed—really believed—in so many things, like truth and justice. And love.

He’d been twenty-one that summer, not long down from Oxford and still drunk on the wonders of Plato and Aquinas and Descartes. She’d been barely seventeen, yet in her own way so much older and wiser than he. He’d fallen hopelessly, wildly in love with her. And he had believed, truly believed, that she loved him.

Ah, how he had believed. She’d told him she’d love him until the end of time, and he had believed. Believed her and asked her to marry him. And she had said yes.

It was still raining, but softly now. He watched her walk quickly toward him, the hood of her cloak raised against the drizzle, her gaze turned toward the hackney stand at the end of the street.

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