Page 15 of The Business of Blood
“Yes, sir,” Croft nodded, never taking his eyes from me. “Constable Fanshaw will stay and secure the scene until Miss Mahoney isquitefinished.”
He turned quickly on his heel and led the way toward Baker Street, but the bounder didn’t miss the glower I directed at him. I did not wish to be tended like a maiden fresh from the nursery, and well he knew it.
“It’s for your own safety.” Croft’s departing words carried the hint of a smile over his shoulder, though I was sure he was a stranger to the very expression.
“The bloody hell it is,” I muttered under my breath. Profanity made me feel loads lighter as I stepped up into the dingy common house. I released the long hiss of breath that prepared every woman for a sticky, disagreeable job and got to work.
Luckily, Constable Fanshaw seemed to have had enough blood for the moment and lingered outside.
Hao Long bent to hold a wide, bladed pan to the floor while I scraped the clotting blood into it with something that resembled a flat broom,sansbristles. Once the pan filled, my assistant dumped it into the pail and put it down again to receive more.
Because of the sheer amount of blood, Hao Long filled more than five pans before we uncovered most of the floorboards beneath. On the last sweep, a grating sound accompanied a vibration up my arm, and our eyes met in confusion.
Gathering my skirts, I crouched down and reached into the flat dustpan brimming with crimson sludge. The blood wasn’t warm anymore, but neither had it cooled to room temperature as yet. It had the consistency of discolored honey left in the sun.
Something round and hard rolled against my searching fingers. I tried to grasp it, but it escaped. Then I found another and another. Eventually, I was successful in extracting an imperfect sphere the size and shape of a small, freshwater pearl.
Hao Long fetched a glass tube of peroxide and held it out for me to drop the object into.
We both watched in silent fascination as the blood bubbled and dissolved away. The gasp at the sight of what we uncovered rattled in my chest before it escaped.
At the bottom of the beaker, innocuous as you please, sat a single bead, its color distinct and unmistakable. I knew at once that there several more, judging by the grating sound they made on the tin pan. All shaped, pierced, and crafted by the deft hands and primitive tools of an artisan on a distant continent. Ultimately to end up in the leavings of a macabre crime.
Only one man of my acquaintance wore beads of this stark and startling hue. A color darker than the sky but lighter than the sea, shot through with ribbons of gold and black.
“Turquoise,” I whispered the foreign word as I’d heard it pronounced only once before. A rare stone, only found in America. And, in my experience, only worn by Aramis Night Horse.
TheTsadeqSyndicate’s lethal assassin, known as the Blade.
5
Ishouldneverhave agreed to dispose of those bodies.
Once you did something like that for men like the Hammer and the Blade, the blood stained your hands, too. Not to mention, once you sold your soul to men like them, it was guaranteed that they’d ask you to do it again.
And so they had. Many times over.
I hated that I was a criminal. I despised that desperation and hunger drove me to do something unforgivable. At least, in the eyes of the law.
I’d heard wise men say the past should be left alone, that a person should only look forward. But there were those of us mired in the decisions we’d made and, as it seemed, we’d never stop paying the price for them. My experiences had led me to believe that we were products of our pasts, and though redemption and forgiveness may or may not be offered in the hereafter, I still had to protect my secrets lest I meet God before my time.
That knowledge didn’t stop me from frantically searching for any possible way out of the predicament I found myself in as I scurried up Fleet Street until it turned into the Strand. I didn’t want to break the law. Not again. But what choice did I have?
I clipped along as quickly as I could, fleeing the dreadful prickles of awareness that’d hunted me since Whitechapel. Something tickled the sensitive threads of muscle along my spine. Invisible, wicked fingers stroked the tender skin of my back through my many layers of clothing. I glanced around often, even ducked into a doorway once to ascertain if someone followed me.
I convinced myself that only memories stalked me through London. Nothing else.
Nooneelse.
Very few hansom cabs braved the streets on such a night, and I’d not been able to hail one at this hour. I had the money; I should just acquire my own conveyance and employ a driver willing to work all hours.
It had seemed like too much of a bother until now.
Whores and revelers eyed me with curious suspicion as I swept past them. I couldn’t say I blamed them for staring, I knew full well what I looked like. Slight and buxom but too old at nine and twenty to be of much use as a whore in this posh part of town. Aidan had once told me that I was the prettiest girl in all of Ireland, both north and south. But I wasn’t a girl anymore.
My mother used to comment on my “endearing” bit of overbite and “adorable” freckles. According to her, both would keep me from true comeliness and thereby protect me from the sin of vanity. She’d been right, I supposed, though she didn’t live long enough to see me grown.
To the ladies of the evening, their customers, and the bohemians who owned these hours, I seemed like any genteel spinster with an expensive but sensible wardrobe—and somewhere important to be. They wondered where someone such as I was headed at this time of the morning.
