Chapter 26
Luna’s lodgings were within walking distance of The Arcane Bouquet. This much, at least, Nigel knew.
What he did not know was how very far of a walking distance it was.
Even by taxi, the journey took over half an hour, what with traffic and snow and Green Yule exuberance on every corner.
In those terrible shoes of hers, it must have taken Luna the better part of an hour each way. In the ice. And slush. And muck.
Nigel’s nails dug into his palms as he looked out the dirty cab window at the shady blocks passing by his view.
Lower Eastside was not considered an upscale part of Ballycastle, but the shops district was pleasant and clean enough to attract a good clientele.
Even chic figures like Lord Bruxley or Luna’s Silly Young Things were more than happy to make the trek to the intersection of Addle Street and Pembroke for a jaunt and a cuppa.
But once the taxi rattled over the train tracks, bleakness set in fast. The streets were brown with snow-muck, and only the broadest roads had been cleared by snowplows.
All the side avenues and alleys were piled up with brown snow and ashy ice, with a few hand-shoveled furrows between the gray, grimy buildings.
Dubious characters loitered on every corner.
Not charming vagabonds like the street fiddler—no, these distinctly lacked any trace of charm.
While no doubt Luna would find room in her heart to worry for their suffering, Nigel couldn’t help it if his primary concern was for Luna herself.
Walking home. Every night. Passing by these dark alleyways where unsavory forms lurked and lounged.
The taxi dropped him on the corner of Bootblack Alley, demanded an outrageous fare, and sped away in a spew of dirty snow.
Nigel stood a moment, feeling rather conspicuous in his nice coat and hat.
A huddle of three miserable beings of indiscernible sex stood one street over, watching him through long trails of cigarette smoke.
He wondered, suddenly, if he’d done Luna a favor in gifting her those nice new boots after all.
They would make her dangerously conspicuous in these parts.
And still—still!—even here, in this sorry pit at the bottom of the city’s drain, he could not escape the Green Yule carols.
As he strode down the icy, rutted, broken sidewalk of Bootblack, his ears were assaulted by the wails of a drunk in the alley, happily yowling the “Gronk Cat Boogie.” An old lady sitting on a sagging bench muttered, “Green Yule is here, oh, what fun!” over and over again while rocking herself slowly.
He passed by the filth-crusted windows of a seedy bar, only to hear strains of the old hymn, “In the Still of Winter’s Night,” reimagined with primal drums and jazzy rhythms, filling the air.
Inebriated voices sang along, though it was just a little past ten in the morning.
Nigel felt as though his skin was trying to crawl right off his skeleton. He turned up his collar and hurried on.
At last he stood before No. 27: a cold edifice, bedecked like a Winter’s Heart Tree with frozen laundry dangling off fire escape rails.
Half the windows were boarded up, and broken glass littered the extremely dirty snow in front.
It sagged as though it needed the support of the two buildings on each side to keep it from sinking to its knees.
The patch of snow in front of the left-hand building was stained yellowish brown.
The patch of snow in front of the right-hand was red. Bright red.
At least there was a sign over the lintel—Mrs. Boggs’s Boardinghouse for Young Women of Good Character—so he knew he’d come to the right place.
Nigel gritted his teeth, lurched forward, and rang the bell of No.
27. An eruption of barking burst on the far side of the door.
Though “barking” might be stretching a point; those tiny, yapping, yeowling, squeaking noises were hardly dog-like in Nigel’s opinion.
He put his hands behind his back and formed a sigil of protection moments before the door flew open, and he was surrounded by little rat-faced terriers, all scruffy chins, beetling eyebrows, and needle teeth.
They couldn’t burst through the sigil, but circled him in savage formation, searching for an opening.
A woman appeared in the doorway, bellowing in a fearfully polished voice: “Down, Dasher! Down, Prancer! Down, Donnie and Blitzen!”
Surprised to hear such a refined accent in such a squalid setting, Nigel took his first look at Luna’s landlady.
The estimable Mrs. Boggs was a woman of advanced years, very straight and narrow in both bearing and spirit.
She wore black from chin to wrists to ankles, adorned only with a single brooch, also black, at her throat.
Everything about her bespoke quality and breeding, fallen tragically on hard times.
Against all odds, she held onto Respectability, like the ghost of a long-ago life.
Her sharp eyes looked Nigel up and down, taking in his nice coat and silk scarf. “My girls do not receive gentleman callers,” she declared.
Nigel removed his hat and bowed deeply, solemnly.
“Mrs. Boggs,” he said, summoning all the refinement at his disposal, “your standards do you credit, and I congratulate you on the upkeeping of this fine establishment. It does my heart good to know that . . . that . . . that my fair young cousin, Miss Luna Talbot, is under your quality supervision while dwelling in this city, which I have always considered a foul nest of iniquity.”
It was the nest of iniquity that did it.
The hard lines of Mrs. Boggs’s face positively melted.
She fingered her brooch and blushed, almost girlishly.
“Oh, it is kind of you to say so, sir! It is a hard fight, keeping these girls on the Moral Path, when so many temptations seek to lure them away. But I endeavor to do my part, in honor of the Green Mother.”
“And on this, the eve of the Green Mother’s most holy day, I must commend you,” Nigel said, and made another bow, more sweeping than the last.
Mrs. Boggs fairly swooned. “And, ahem!” she tittered softly behind her fingers. “Does sir have a message to deliver?”
“I do indeed. A message from Father Clutterbuck, the priest of our dear family parish back home in Sokehamshire. But,” he added, lifting a finger, “he has charged me to deliver these words of holy injunction personally. So, if you would be so good as to ask my fair cousin to step down and see me?”
Mrs. Boggs’s face closed up. “Miss Luna Talbot, did you say? She cannot come down.”
Nigel’s jaw tensed. “Why not?”
“She’s sick. Sick abed. Can’t get anything out of her this morning.
Rent due, you see, and I went up to collect, and the stubborn girl would not answer me a word, not even to tell me where the money was at.
I told her she has until midday tomorrow to pay up—I am a charitable woman, after all, and .
. . and . . . Sir? Sir! What are you doing?
You can’t go up there! Down, Dasher! Down, Blitzen!
Sir, this is an outrage! Come back down those stairs at once! ”
The garret. She lived in the garret, according to her note. Which meant upstairs. That’s all he knew. But it was enough.
With dogs at his heels, and the furious voice of Mrs. Boggs echoing in the stairwell behind him, Nigel ascended, taking the treads two at a time.
Up and up he went, until he ran out of stairway.
Then he chased down a dingy passage, pulled open a creaking door, where he discovered yet another, narrower, gloomier stairwell than the one he’d just exited.
Mrs. Boggs was at least two flights behind him, and he met no impediments as he mounted to the top of the building, where the roof sloped drastically, and everything smelled of damp.
A door stood right at the top of the steps, and he grabbed the knob, expecting resistance.
There was none. It turned; the door opened.
He stepped through.
The garret was cold. Cold as an icebox. And dark.
An old radiator, apparently disused, sat rusting under a square, west-facing window, through which little light could penetrate.
Directly across from him stood a door with the words FIRE ESCAPE posted above it like a threat.
Sounds of dripping met Nigel’s ear, and the floorboards creaked even before he set foot upon them.
A holey rug covered a portion of the floor, and women’s clothing hung on metal racks, like wafting phantoms. A thaumatic kettle sat on a tilting table, and a few small grocery oddments were stashed here and there.
But Nigel’s gaze went to the two narrow beds, which stood at the far end of the space. One was empty, the bedclothes left all in disarray. In the other—the one tucked under the low-slung ceiling—he could just discern a bundle of limbs, huddled under a too-thin blanket. Shivering. Coughing.
He was across the room in a second and knelt beside the bed.
“Miss Talbot?” he whispered, peering at her in the shadows.
There wasn’t enough light—he couldn’t see her clearly.
Casting about, he found a single thaumatic bulb hung above the other bed.
He pulled the chain, and a thin, weak glow pushed back the worst of the shadows.
Nigel turned to the bed again, took a look at Luna’s face.
She lay with her eyes closed, her skin as pale as the pillowcase on which she rested. Her cheeks looked sunken, her lips very thin and chapped with much coughing. Her breathing sounded like knives scraping up and down her throat. Little white puffs of air escaped with each labored exhale.
“Where is her roommate?” Nigel demanded, whirling on Mrs. Boggs, who had at last heaved her way up the final flight of stairs. “Where is Miss Braithwait?”
“Gone home for the holidays,” Mrs. Boggs replied, panting.
“So Miss Talbot is alone here? You just left her? Like this?”