Page 136 of If Looks Could Kill
“Touch no woman again,” she cries. “Swear it.”
His high-pitched voice burbles, “I swear it.”
“We are anathema to you.”
He nods in terror.
“If you lay hands on another woman, it will be your death.” Pearl pauses. “Say it.”
“It will be my death.”
She releases his collar. His skull smacks the floor.
Jets of flame rise from the burning crates. New stabs of pain slice through her wounds. She doesn’t have long now. If she’s still alive when this man wakes, he will certainly kill her.
The cellar beams begin to sway. Her snakes fold up and prepare to die. Blackness steals around the edges of her vision. She lies down next to her prey, like the corpses of a man and his wife, side by side in death. It feels as though someone is there, in the cellar, with her. Perhaps it’s the ghosts of his former victims. Perhaps it’s an angel. Her own father, she hopes, come to call her home.
“Help me,” Pearl whispers. “Please.”
Greenwich Village, ManhattanTabitha—Stupid Questions(Early Morning, Tuesday, December 4, 1888)
The carriage ride uptown went all too quickly.
Rosie hounded me the whole way with questions about what I’d done to Joe, to Ira, to Dan. Where they were. Why they hadn’t come back. Why some of them had insisted one of us was a snake girl. Apparently, she’d tried to pump the Gorgon of Gotham for answers, but Giselle had been as helpful to her as she’d been to me.
It was the small hours of the night, when even New York pauses for breath. The carriage stopped before a door, and the two men with Rosie, whom I’d learned were called Mack and Zeke, shoved me out of it. I stumbled but landed on my feet. Thirteenth Street, the sign told me. The road to hell was a short one.
“Zeke,” said Rosie.
Zeke took me by my shoulders. I honestly thought he was helping make sure I didn’t fall.
“Don’t get ideas,” he told me, and slugged his fist into my stomach.
Pain exploded through my entire body. I couldn’t breathe. I buckled over.
Nothing in my life had prepared me for agony like this.
“That’s in case you’ve got ideas,” Zeke said, “of making noise as we go inside, see? Crying for help won’t do you any good. And that’s just a taste of what you’ll get if you try it.”
They prodded me up a narrow stair to a flat above another saloon. Even in the small hours of a Tuesday morning, patrons sat at the bar and watched this procession with bored eyes. Just another kidnapped girl, going to her ruin. Nothing to see here.
Up the stairs in the dark. Rosie turned on the gas jets and lit the lamps. A yellow glow flickered over a room full of couches and cushions.
“Welcome,” Rosie said, “to your new home sweet home.”
My voice was hoarse and dry. “Is this your crib?”
“Nope,” she said. “This is the brothel.”
God help me.
The men lumbered in and helped themselves to drinks, then splayed themselves out on the couches.
“Mabel,” Rose called. “Bring that peach-colored getup. Lizzie’s old one.”
The person named Mabel, dressed in next to nothing, wandered in with a bit of salmon-colored silk. It dangled from her hand like a scarf. She gave it to Rosie and drifted off again.
Rosie held it up and examined it, then eyeballed me appraisingly.
