Page 20 of The Business of Blood
And then I noticed what the bodice did to her breasts—breasts I didn’t yet have—offering them up proudly like ripe apples, begging for a bite. I noticed her small, even teeth while stretching my lips along my suddenly more prominent and despised overbite. She’d stopped plaiting her hair and securing it in dowdy ribbons like we did to keep it from disrupting our play. Today, she’d pinned it like some of the pictures we’d fawned over in the society papers.
Aidan had called round that day, and suddenly, I’d ceased to exist. My brothers, and the boy I loved, heard me plenty yet marked me not at all.
I’d let them all go off somewhere, refusing to leave in a silent and mulish dither. Waiting for them to cajole me out. Aching to be wanted.
They hadn’t. I wasn’t.
Finn and Flynn had returned much later, sly smiles affixed to their freckled faces. They proudly announced that all three of them had kissed Mary, but only Aidan had been brave enough to use his tongue.
“You probably shouldn’t run ‘round with Mary anymore, Na-na,” Finn cautioned, using the moniker our youngest brother, Fayne, had coined when, at two years old, he’d found Fiona too difficult to pronounce.
“She’s becoming the type of girl that’ll let just anyone…kiss her…and whatnot,” Flynn agreed, a blush deepening his ruddy features.
I furrowed my brow at their identical expressions of sage and manly sincerity, angrier at Aidan than anyone else.
I’d flayed them with my own sharp tongue that day, shrill as a banshee, beating them with their own masculine hypocrisy. I defended Mary, well aware that she wasn’t just allowing anyone to kiss her…she was letting my someone kiss her.
And yet, I loved her. I forgave her with no words spoken between us. We understood, as Mary let more men kiss her, that Aidan would not be for her. After a while, I saw who began to pay her for her time. Her kisses. Her…whatnot. I didn’t begrudge her the taste any longer.
Even at seventeen, Aidan had been an angel. Who wouldn’t want an angel’s embrace?
And Mary—ceaselessly pretty Mary—was about to let the devil into her room at 13 Miller’s Court.
I had to stop what happened next.
I was running now, my soles are bare on the filthy cobbles just as they had been on the shores of the River Shannon during the days that Mary and I romped through the chilly currents until our feet and lips turned blue.
It takes took me no time to reach the doorway. Seconds, maybe.
But I am still too late.
The devil has gone. Most of Mary remains.
Mary’s remains.
A glut of carnage. It’s the only way to describe it. Almost surreal in its ubiquity. None of her viscera is left untouched, but. Instead, it is splayed across the white bedclothes with the careful pride of a child showing off a collection of toys. An artful arrangement.
Just so.
Her womb, kidneys, and one breast pillowed the weight of her head. Her face was still all smiles…but only because her high cheeks, suggestive eyebrows, and pert Irish nose ha been carefully removed, while her lips are blanched by several oblique incisions. It is her skull that smiles up at me, relieved of superfluous flesh. A feminine Yorick. A woman of infinite jest…of most excellent fancy. Of a sprightly nature and a quick temper.
In need of validation that only the touch of a man—of many men—could provide.
I find her other breast by her right ankle. Her liver in between her feet.
Her thighs, splayed open in invitation, are missing their skin and fascia. Enough that I can tell her bones are healthy and sturdier than mine. Her intestines stretch along the bed on the right side of her body, her spleen discarded on her left.
She’s open from sternum to pubis. The skin taken from her thighs and abdomen draped across the bedside table, not unlike macabre doilies knitted from dust and clay by the hand of God.
Muscle is carved from her ribs, carved away until the Ripper got at what he was looking for.
Her heart. The one thing he stole.
Dr. Phillips says in his report that the deep gashes to her throat were inflicted first, killing her swiftly.
So why, then, are her fingers clenched so tightly?
Mine clenched also, clawing at an unrelenting pain in my throat. An uncomfortable pressure.
