Page 23 of A Treacherous Trade
“Betrayal, Fiona.They’vetold me. Someone close to you is going to betray you… or worse. You are going to betray them. Lovers, I think. Your lover? Or maybe someone you love? Someone will be in love, and then…treachery. Treachery will tear them apart.”
I heard Mary gasp behind me and had to suppress rolling my eyes with such fervency they might have gotten lost in my skull.
If I were a superstitious woman, I would argue that it had already happened. That the man I loved had betrayed me. That his treachery had been against every living soul.
Even God.
But I wasn’t one for the occult any more than I was one for religion these days. Indeed, I didn’t think Aunt Nola nor her spirit guides could predict the future any more than I believed that anyone could predict whether a soul had gone to God or the Devil.
All I could do was clean up what was left of them when they were gone, and accept that we’d all find out eventually, when it was our time.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I did my best to gather the lost vestiges of my patience.
I loved my father’s sister because she had helped to raise us after my ma died. And I loved her because she was like him in so many ways, my da. The same strawberry hair, the same flakes of ginger and cinnamon flecking their translucent skin. Same shrewd gaze and generous heart.
Except now, her eyes were ever more often clouded.
I made to go to her. “Nola—”
“The dark squares!” she shrieked, which set poor wee Teagan to answering in kind.
I noted, unkindly, that if the child were so disturbed by the sound of a screech, one would have thought she’d take pity onusfrom time to time.
“Of course, the dark squares.” I didn’t think I was able to keep the exhaustion out of my voice, but still, I stopped short. Bending my head, I lifted my hem, if only to be certain my heels touched the darker squares of the fine entry floors as I made my way to Nola.
It was a fixation of hers on what we called her “bad” days. She became convinced that if a light square on the floor were to be trodden upon, the sky would fall. The streets would be overrun by brimstone. London would burn.
Again.
And so we did this dance for her, to keep the End of All Things at bay. To save what little we could of her sanity.
I’d reeled in some of my vexation by the time I reached her. Enough, at least, to gently say, “Nola, please explain what you mean when you saybetrayal. Is this another one of your card readings? Or did you hear something? Another letter?”
I asked, because once the Ripper had delivered me a note here, and she was the one to coax and comfort me as I very nearly lost my own mind.
She shook her head. “Theytold me.”
They. Them. Days like today, I detested every last one of these invisible spirit guides, all of whom were silent until Aunt Nola needed something, or had a premonition of some awful kind.
All of whom cared nothing for my schedule or my own sanity.
They were not optimists, I’d gathered, nor were they omens of anything good. More like harbingers.
Iftheywere here, then Nola truly did need more care than usual.
Mary drew abreast of me by way of the dark squares, shushing the baby by shoving a finger between her gums to gnaw on. “What did they tell you, madam?” she whispered, her voice lowered in reverence.
A believer, I thought, was Mary. But I hadn’t the heart to ask her outright, lest she be offended by the skepticism I could not always hide.
Regarding me from beneath a veiled expression, Nola finally produced something from a pocket inside her bronze and black braided gown. Three cards. “All right, itwasthe cards they spoke through, but Fiona, it’s one of the worst readings!” she insisted, as I clenched my hands into fists. “They told me to pull three for you because you’d disappeared this morning.”
“I left a note,” I reminded them both, spearing Mary with a quelling glare. “A couple, in fact.”
“I showed you them, didn’t I, Madam Mahoney?” Mary said, paling a little. “I told you she’d be back—we just didn’t know when.”
“I knew you’d gone somewhere dangerous.” Nola’s expression turned both wounded and accusatory, her ashen complexion made more so by the dwindling light of the dreary afternoon. She reached out to me, her claw-like hands gripping my arm with surprising strength. “You were chasinghimagain, weren’t you? The demon in your dreams.”
I did my best not to find it odd that she’d called the Ripper that, when I’d only just thought of him as such this afternoon.
