Chapter 3
A grubby urchin, shirt too big and the knees missing from his trousers, caught Analise in the street, passing her a note from Morgan.
She stared at the piece of paper, the child holding his hand out for a coin she didn’t have to give him.
He flexed his fingers and she shook her head, earning a scowl.
She had the night off, but she didn’t know what to do without work.
Sensing someone watching her, Analise lifted her head.
He was on the opposite side of the street, watching her with obvious hunger, his gaze making her skin crawl and her magic tingle in her fingertips. People moved around him, ignoring him.
How could they not see the skin hanging from his face?
How could they not see the grey hue to his sunken cheeks, the black eyes and the bloodless lips?
Analise fingered the hilt of her blade, watching him as he watched her.
A carriage thundered past, too fast for a dark street, and when it moved on, he was gone.
There was something predatory and intense in his stare.
Even after being raised by nuns, Analise didn’t want to acknowledge that she knew what haunted her.
A Familiar, a servant of Asmael, the Fallen One. He shouldn’t be here, shadowing her steps. Familiars only kept watch on those who made deals with the Devil—Analise had done no such thing, and never, not even in her most desperate, darkest moments, considered it.
Tucking the note away, she hurried towards Blackcoln Road.
She needed a drink, and her fingers brushed the hilt of her blade as she walked.
The knife was a gift from Morgan. It made Analise smile.
The only way the man could show he cared was to give her a weapon.
It had saved her, more than once. A drunkard in an alley didn’t really want to get his face slashed up.
If they knew what she was, they’d never have approached her in the first place.
A group of unionists were gathered on a street corner in a sea of hats and pin-striped jackets, and at the skin market, a pimp led a collared woman like a horse before a group of men.
Blackcoln Road was always busy and as The Black Lion came into sight, the doors were flung open and a man tossed into the street, hitting the cobblestones.
‘And stay out.’ Lira appeared in the doorway; behind her was the barman, Jack, wiping his hands free of blood.
The drunk climbed awkwardly to his feet, clutching his face.
Blood leaked from between his fingers, staining the front of his shirt.
He pointed a shaking finger at Lira and Jack, but before he could say anything, Lira raised her eyebrows and stepped outside.
Lira was slightly built, with midnight hair and eyes that sparkled golden in the darkness. She put her hands on her hips; Analise saw her fingers twitch. Lira was never without a blade— or three—and the last time this happened, Analise had ended up helping Lira and Jack dump a body in the river.
The drunk man, a factory worker judging by his boots, muttered under his breath.
‘Got something to say to me?’ Lira demanded.
‘Fuck off, bitch,’ he snarled.
Lira withdrew her switchblade and flicked it open. Behind her, Jack cracked his knuckles, grinning.
The man with the broken nose spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. Even people in the Credges weren’t sure how to deal with a woman who not only ran her own pub and dressed like a man, but who could hold her own in a knife-fight.
The night Analise met Lira, the Familiar had been following her and Analise stumbled through the first set of doors she came to.
A glass of whiskey had been thrust beneath her nose, the hand holding it obviously female.
A woman was safe, mostly. Analise returned to the pub often and a friendship had slowly taken root.
Lira was fierce, protective, and kind. Analise had never forgotten how kind Lira was when they met.
She’d never mentioned it, not knowing how.
Analise didn’t understand what made people tick, why they did the things they did.
She understood on a rational level—people worked jobs they hated so they could feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads.
But on a deeper level … she didn’t know.
She was an outside observer, even though she was in the slums with them.
She didn’t fit in and didn’t know how to change that.
Analise kept telling herself that Lira was different, that one day she’d open up and share her secrets.
Fear thrummed constantly in the back of her mind.
Her magic was a death sentence, and the one thing the nuns drilled into her was not to let anyone know.
When the witches began being hunted down, it was more important than ever that Analise kept her secret.
So she held herself apart from the world, moving through it, but not in it.
She built walls around herself, much like the ones that kept her safe as she grew up, but she didn’t know how to bring these walls down.
Catching sight of Analise, Lira grinned.
‘No bodies for you tonight, promise.’ She tossed her smoke away and ushered Analise inside.
The lamps were burning low, the air thick with smoke and loud conversation.
The floor was tiled, the mahogany panelling on the walls adding to the darkness, and it was mostly standing room only, with a handful of tables and chairs tucked close to the walls.
‘Something I meant to tell you,’ Lira said as Jack poured them both a drink. ‘The Gendarme has been down here. They gave the pimps a roughing up.’
‘Good.’ Analise grinned into her drink. ‘Did they come in here?’
The smile slipped from her friend’s face. ‘Briefly.’
‘What did they want?’
Lira shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual. After their bribes, and enjoying themselves tormenting me. Be nice if something stopped that from happening,’ she mumbled under her breath, then swiped the empty glass from Analise’s hands, replacing it with another.
The Devil’s Credges was the sort of place to disappear, or be disappeared.
Dark and gloomy even in the middle of the day, the streets were filled with a human sea of drab brown, faded blacks, and greying whites.
It was common for people to carry steel, and anything from swords to dinner forks were acceptable weaponry.
Analise had seen the damage a well-placed piece of cutlery could do, and learnt that violence didn’t care how it was done, only that it was.
The Credges were rough, but it was that roughness that protected them, and they looked after their own.
Only last week, fighting erupted in the streets and Analise and Morgan had three bodies to deal with. One of the dead had been in Maddog Pierce’s employ. The unofficial King of the Credges had come himself to collect his man from the morgue.
Despite being over six feet tall with an intimidating glare, he didn’t frighten Analise. Maddog had given her an unreadable look from under his dark brows, his claimed dead already whisked away.
‘Tell Lira to keep her head down,’ he’d said before he left.
Analise never passed the message on, and had no idea how Maddog knew about her friendship with Lira.
Maddog’s club was notorious: violence, bare-knuckled boxing, gambling, and a rather not-so-secret black market.
For the right amount of coin, you could find anything in his back rooms. Maddog’s people were the type to end up on Analise’s slab—cut-throats and assassins for hire, thieves, and those desperate enough to fall into Maddog’s waiting hands.
Lira left to deal with an argument between the gamblers in the corner of the room.
A man dropped onto the stool beside Analise.
She studied him from the corner of her eye as she sipped her drink.
Tall, broad shoulders, lean torso, strong legs.
Shaven jaw so sharp it could cut glass. His white-blond hair was swept back.
Not the usual type of man she encountered—he didn’t have a bleak air of depression hanging over him.
He was tidy and neat, his clothes clean.
He turned to her, and she let him look while Lira placed another drink on the bar, her eyes flickering between Analise and the stranger.
Several times he opened his mouth then closed it again.
Analise downed her drink, and when she set the empty glass down purposefully and gestured for another, he did the same.
The stranger’s knee bumped against hers as he shifted on the stool, the contact warming her blood. She nudged him back, felt rather than saw his lips twitch. He angled his body towards hers, enough to be casual; close enough to be an invitation of something more.
Could she? Should she? He was handsome enough, definitely tempting. His hand rested close to hers on the bar. She stretched out her little finger and touched him. So gentle it was featherlight, his finger stroked hers.
That decided it.
When she left, he followed. She didn’t look at him as they walked, and they didn’t speak when she led him along the back-alley path to her lodging house, startling some street dogs who bared their teeth at them.
He ignored the garbage and stepped over the open sewer that ran down the middle of the street.
He followed her up the grimy stairs, standing patiently behind her as she unlocked the door.
He inspected her home with the same scrutiny he’d given her face, but he still didn’t say a word.
His fingers were clenched by his sides, stance wide, measured. Controlled.
Kingsguard? she wondered. He was alert. Ready to flee, or fight. It should have worried her, but she was too drunk to care.
Analise stumbled into the kitchen, fumbling with the tap. She cupped her hands beneath it, gulping water that tasted of soot and ash. When she straightened, the man was there. He pinned her between his body and the bench and slowly tipped her face up to his.
She tried not to look. She never looked at them too closely, not wanting to remember their faces in the morning, not wanting to pass them in the street and know who they were. But tonight, she was compelled to look.
His eyes reminded her of an oncoming storm—blue collided with grey and green.
Heat radiated from his body, and she could smell the smoky essence of him.
Her breath caught as he reached over and undid the knot of her hair, letting it fall over her shoulders.
His hand slid into her hair, the other curling around the flesh of her hip.
She licked her lips when his gaze fell to her mouth.
Analise pushed her body close to his. ‘You don’t finish until I do, understand?’
‘Won’t be a problem.’ His voice was low, soft, melodious.
‘Sure of that, are you?’
‘That I can get you to come before I do? Absolutely.’ His breath brushed her mouth. ‘Have we met? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before. What’s your name?’
‘You don’t talk either.’ She inched closer to him, to those lips. ‘I don’t like talk.’
‘No talk—got it,’ he murmured. His lips brushed hers, so lightly she wasn’t sure he’d kissed her at all.
Analise’s fingers crept up his torso, dancing over the sharp line of his collarbones.
His thigh edged its way between her legs as she stroked the nape of his neck, unable to help it, unable to help pressing herself closer.
‘And you’re gone before morning,’ she managed.
He nodded, then kissed her properly. His tongue swept the inside of her mouth, making her groan and slide her fingers into his hair.
He kissed her until she felt like she was floating, and she wasn’t sure anyone had ever kissed her like that.
Whoever he was, he knew how to kiss, and part of her would be happy to let him kiss her all night, but it wouldn’t be enough.
Without breaking the kiss, she undid the buttons on his shirt.
He lifted her against him, walking towards her unmade bed where, once he let her down, she practically tore his clothes off.
There was a tattoo on his arm; it snaked around his elbow and forearm, but she couldn't figure out what it was meant to be and didn’t have a chance to think about it any further. They were a tangle of limbs and lips, his mouth on hers, the weight of his body covering her.
When Analise woke to another dreary day, she was alone.