Page 31 of The Number of Love
Now there was only Margot.
She cleared her throat and met Dot’s eye. “Thanks. And I might take you up on that at some point. But not yet. I need to...” Prove herself. To Lukas and to Dot. To Admiral Hall and Lady Hambro.
And to herself. Mostly to herself.
Dot nodded. Stood. Gripped the little paper bag. “The offer stands.”
“I know.” She fell in beside Dot. They stopped in Room 40 long enough for Margot to fetch the tea and crackers she’d brought for lunch—her stomach still objected at the thought of anything more—and they joined the crowds of laughing, chattering magpies known as secretaries who surged toward the roof and the rare autumn sunshine.
For the first time in her life, Margot left an encoded sentence half-decrypted.
For the first time in her life, she really didn’t care.
Der Vampir clattered onto the table. It gleamed in the lights, clean and straight and sure. But Das Gespenst’s hands were red. They might always be red.
Poor Yurei. He’d found Der Vampir and already had it in his stomach before Das Gespenst could stop him. A gruesome way to go—not the way he would have chosen for a friend, and not solely because it meant blood to clean up. He’d had no choice but to finish him off quickly.
For days Yurei had been begging Das Gespenst to end it for him. He should have done it before now. Quietly, easily. A pillow over his mouth, robbing him of what little breath he could manage to pull into his lungs. That would have been the better way. A way more deserving of a friend—a friend who would never know the favor he’d done him with his death.
He sagged onto one of the hard, simple wooden chairs and stared at the flat around him. Stared at the framed photograph on the wall, at the face of Yamagata Aritomo, the former Japanese prime minister.
A telegram lay on the table before him. It gave him orders, as they always did. Orders that didn’t care if his cough was better or worse, if he had pneumonia or didn’t, if he killed or was killed. They cared only that he was back in England again. Where they’d told him to be.
Get the codebook, it said. Just as the last had saidAssist in Spain. He squeezed his eyes shut. He’d never before minded the way they had him travel—he’d welcomed it. England, France, Spain, Africa. He’d been sent everywhere because of his linguistic talent.
But why couldn’t they have sent someone else back to England this time? Why that same command he’d been working on for months already? The codebooks, always the codebooks. He pried his eyelids open again, seeing the Old Admiralty Building rather than the flat. He’d tried the direct approach. He’d managed to get inside once, with a fabricated letter inviting him, but it had gotten him no farther than the lobby. Enough to see that security was tight.
Enough to see that young women were there in droves. Pushing tea carts, carrying mops and brooms, acting as secretaries. They would be the weak link. They always were—may his mother forgive him for saying so.
Before this last trip to the Continent, he’d not been certain whichof them he should target. But now he knew. Those two from the park—they would be his focus.
He ran his thumb lightly along the blade of Der Vampir. For centuries, it had thirsted. Tasting a bit of human blood here and there as skirmishes and wars charged through Bavaria. But now it drowned in red. Would it be satiated or crave more?
Which would he?
Exhaustion tickled his lungs, brought the dreaded cough back. The telegram on the table taunted him. Because one task was not enough for them anymore. Perhaps because he had yet to succeed at it. Perhaps because they wanted to keep him busy. Perhaps because they assumed that withthis, at least, he could succeed, even if he was useless elsewhere.
Identify targets.
Targets. His nostrils flared. He could still smell it. Blood, every time he drew in a breath. They would expect him, require him to obey. To distance himself from everything that happened elsewhere. As a ghost should do naturally. Das Gespenst, that was all he could be. All he could afford to be.
But when he closed his eyes, the waters that drowned theBoyntonrushed over him again. His lungs ached. His hands were red. Itwasn’tas simple as obedience. Obedience had made him a ghost. And if he were dead already ... why obey onlythem? Why not obey his own thirsts too? They could do nothing worse than kill him again.
He struggled back to the surface, back to the blade dulled by red and the smiling Japanese face in the photograph and the game board sitting in its position of honor on the side table. Good strategy could harbor two goals at once. An attack here and a parry there.
Obedience could pair with revenge. Revenge on the ones who had done this to him. Who had made him a ghost.
A game. It was just a game. It didn’t matter if he was alone, if there was no Heinrich to tell him stories or Yurei to meet for tea. A ghost didn’t need brothers and friends. He only had towin.
10
They’d said that whatever drug they’d slipped into his veins would make the journey comfortable. They’d said that he wouldn’t even be aware of the trip, that he’d wake up in London and be on the mend. They’d said that rest was all he needed.
They’d lied.
Drake dug his fingers into the miserable cot under him and stared up at the ceiling of the ward in Charing Cross Hospital. It was white. Like all the walls. Like every ceiling and every wall in every hospital in the world, no doubt. All the more plain and stark because he well knew he’d be staring at it for days and weeks to come.
It didn’t hurt. Not until he moved. Or breathed too heavily. Or, heaven forbid, laughed at something another of the patients said to one of the nurses.Thenhe was keenly aware of the way that blasted German bullet had ripped through his insides.
