Chapter Thirty-Nine
THIRTY-NINE
Gray will catch up. He knows where I’m going. And the relief at that makes me almost giddy. I can be reckless—we both can be—but I hated to chase a desperate witness when he’s being stalked by a killer.
No, apparently, it’s more than being “stalked,” because I slip out that hidden back exit to see Rose racing along the tracks, with Freddie a few dozen strides ahead. There’s a train coming—I can hear the rumble of it—but it’s still out of sight.
Rose is about a hundred feet ahead of me, and I don’t have much chance of catching up. However, she also doesn’t have much chance of reaching Freddie. He’s beside the tracks now, but he’ll be able to veer into the city soon, and Rose can no more race through the city streets than I can.
Just keep my eye on her. That’s all I can do. Forget Freddie. He’s not catching this train, so that gives us time to find him again. In his flight, he’s abandoned his carpetbag, and he’s just clueless enough to swing back for it later … not expecting someone to be lying in wait.
Get Rose. I can manage that. Freddie will swerve into the city, and she’ll slow, too focused on him to hear me coming up behind—
Freddie trips. It’s not a little stumble either.
It’s a full-out fall, his boots sliding as he tries and fails to catch his balance.
He slams down on his back beside the tracks, and before he can scramble up, Rose is on him, screaming like a banshee.
She grabs his hair in both hands and yanks him toward the tracks.
“Rose!” I shout. “No!”
She slams his head down onto the metal rail. There’s a crunch, and Freddie goes still, and my heart stops, but then I see him blinking, dazed, his mouth opening and shutting as if he can’t find words.
“Rose!” I say before she can slam his head down again. “If you kill him, you will hang. I’m watching, and Dr. Gray is on his way.”
“I will hang anyway,” she says. “Might as well take this lying whoreson with me.”
As I move along the tracks, I feel the vibration of the oncoming train.
“Rose?” I say. “Tell me your story. I will listen. We just need to get away from these tracks before—”
“Tell you my story? You will listen? Oh, how grand.” She sneers at me as I grow closer. “Stop there, or I will smash his head again.”
I stop.
“He deserves it,” she says. “Deserves this and more.”
“I’m sure he does,” I say, my voice low. “I just need you to pull him from the tracks before you get hurt.”
“I’m already hurt. Betrayed by this rake.
Doesn’t seem the type, does he? That’s how he lured me in.
How he lures them all in, I’m sure. I’m no fool.
I don’t listen to pretty words from pretty boys, but look at him.
So earnest. So sweet. Stumbling over himself.
He’d never lie to get under my skirts, would he?
” She snorts. “He told me I had the gift. Showed me that I could speak to the dead.”
“He tricked you. Like he tricks his sister.”
She shakes Freddie, who only stares up, either still dazed or not daring to speak. “Even she sees it, this silly chit who fancies herself a detective. She’s too silly to realize the great Dr. Gray only wants the same thing you did, but she still sees how you tricked me.”
Tears spring to her eyes and she angrily sniffs them back.
“He said I had the gift. Promised to teach me how to use it. Said his sister needed an apprentice, and that could be me. He’d marry me, and she’d train me, and then we’d set off on our own while she popped out bairns for that rich husband of hers.
Such a grand plan. But you see through it. Just like she did.”
“Nellie,” I whisper.
“Tried to warn me, she did. We were friends, more than I dared let on. She needed a friend after hers died.”
“She told you about Mary.”
“Another silly girl. Got all worked up over a poem. But Nellie wouldn’t believe it. She said something else happened, and she was going to find out what.” An ugly twist of a smile. “Another girl who fancied herself a detective.”
“Nellie told you about her investigation.” I soften my tone. “Is that why you went to the bog?”
“She wanted to show me. Said maybe if I saw the spot, I might have some ideas she missed. But she really just wanted to get me away in private, so she could talk to me about him.” She kicks Freddie.
At a sound, I look up to see the train. We’re a few hundred feet from the station, and it seems to be slowing down, but even as I think that, I remember stories about the early railroads.
About how many people died, hit by a train right near the station, because they couldn’t conceive of something that big moving at the speed it did.
That train is coming, and it cannot stop.
“Rose, get out of the—”
The conductor blows the whistle, clearly seeing the obstacle on the track. But Rose doesn’t hear it. Doesn’t hear me.
“Turns out Nellie was a decent little detective,” she continues.
“From those books she read. She’d been suspicious of Freddie, and so she asked to sit in on one of our sessions.
She figured out how he was doing it. Said she could demonstrate.
Said we could get him to do another one, and she’d unmask his trickery. ”
“Rose, you—”
“She wanted to help me. Like a good friend.” Rose’s eyes fill. “But all I saw was that she was trying to take something from me. Take Freddie. Take my gift. I thought she was jealous, and I would not let her get away with it.”
The train blows its whistle, and it’s there, coming slow but relentless, the stink of it filling the air.
“Rose—”
“I thanked her and said yes, I wanted her help, and in return, I could help her. I said I thought I knew what happened with Mary, and I needed to try something. If she would lie in the water, the way they found Mary, I could…”
She trails off. We both know what happened then. She held Nellie down until she drowned.
I say, “And then, at the séance, you pretended to be her ghost, asking for Dr. Gray.”
She stares. “Why would I do that? It was Nellie. She came back to—”
The roar of the oncoming train drowns out her next words. Freddie starts to struggle, as if returned to his senses, hearing the train and feeling the vibration, knowing it’s right there, bearing down.
I cover the last few feet, waving my arms, shouting to be heard over the train. Freddie’s mouth opens in a scream. And Rose? Rose meets my gaze and smiles.
She does hear that train. She knows it’s right there. And she doesn’t care.
I grab Rose. Yank her backward and hope she drags Freddie with her. Instead, she drops Freddie and lunges at me. Her fists hit my stomach, the air whooshing out, my feet flying out from under me. I’m falling. Falling toward the tracks, the train right there—
Hands grab me. I’m heaved into the air and spun away from the tracks. I hit the ground, a weight dropping on me, covering me, the smell so familiar my insides spasm in relief and joy.
Gray holds me down, his body over me as the train rushes past with a gust that steals my breath.
The roar of it swallows any other sound and I just lie there, clutching Gray, my head buried against his shoulder as I catch my breath.
Then hands clutch my face, pulling it from his shoulder, his panicked eyes locking with mine.
“Fine,” I manage. “I’m fine. I’m still me. Still Mallory. I just … cut that one a little close.”
He lets out a choked laugh and crushes me against him.