Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dammit, Clarice! Here? Now?!” This is when Pax tosses my hand aside and leaps up.
“You said you’d get us an appointment inside his penthouse.
The blueprints can only get us so far—we need to see the actual layout of his place.
” He’s pacing the creaky wooden floors of Julia’s Bureau, gnawing on his thumbnail: the very picture of exasperation.
Spirit offers me the image of a bear trap, its metal jaws open, teeth bared.
My jaw tightens, and ice creeps through my veins. Blanck. Here. NOW.
Clarice tosses her mane of glossy blond hair and fake-laughs. “Pax, darling. I tried. He would not allow that, but he agreed on coming here to interview you.”
“Where is he?” Kiyoko asks. She rushes over to start making a cup of tea. She’s adjusting our plan. Smart.
“Outside. He stopped at the stables next door to place a bet on some ponies. Thank God he did, too, or you would’ve had no warning.”
“Okay, okay,” Pax says. Watching him become so unnerved rattles me. I look to Kiyoko, to William. William nods at me, We’re okay. We can do this.
I breathe. Swallow the bile in my throat.
Okay, think. I’m actually relieved we’re meeting Blanck here, on our turf.
I know the reasoning behind meeting at his apartment: get a feel for the place, scope it out, match it to the blueprints we’ve memorized.
But I can’t imagine how overwhelming that might’ve felt, meeting my sister’s murderer for the first time in his own, lavish penthouse.
Surrounded by things purchased with his blood money.
No, Julia’s Bureau has become a great comfort to me, a home away from home. I scan our small, lovely storefront.
The light, the tinctures, the tins, the incense.
Yes, I love this place.
We’re okay. We can do this. I steady my shaking hands.
But Pax… the wrath emanating from him is an inferno. William talks Pax into stepping outside. He feels the rage roiling off Pax, too. Rage of that magnitude cannot be contained.
“We’re going to the back alley,” Pax says. He reaches for my hand, and when I give it to him, he clutches it to his chest. “Nirav, William, and I. It’s for the best, don’t you think? I don’t believe I can…”
He doesn’t finish that thought.
“Yes. You should go.”
Pax clutches my hand, the very hand he was just cradling, tickling, whispering into. “Are you sure? I—I—” His eyes are a storm, his aura a tornado of worry and fury. My heart aches.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“If you need anything, just—”
“Scream.” The thought makes my stomach queasy. The incense turns against me. “Okay.”
Pax reaches forward, cups my face. I lean into him and press my forehead against his, our breaths steadying together. This gesture—it feels like a wave passing over me, pulling through me, then… calm.
I lean back. There is no time. “Go.”
Clarice juts her chin in the opposite direction of us and tucks her hair behind an ear.
Pax, William, and Nirav slip into the alleyway, those silvery green eyes locking with mine as he eases the back door shut. Snick.
The bell above the front door chimes again.
My sister’s murderer enters my domain.
I don’t know what I expected of Max Blanck, physically.
Horns and a tail, perhaps? But instead, he’s an overly buttoned-up fellow—vest, tie, jacket, black bowler hat.
Perhaps those horns of his are beneath his chapeau.
He’s an average-looking forty-something wearing a rather smug expression, and he keeps his hat on. Rude.
Clarice greets him with a loud “Max! Darling!” and a kiss on each cheek. “You caught up.”
I am immediately sickened. Did I honestly think I could just casually meet with my sister’s killer? Sour bile floods my mouth.
Don’t do this, Stella.
This isn’t wise or good or kind or smart.
Kiyoko must notice I’m fighting to hold it together, because she steps forward. “Won’t you take a seat, Mr. Blanck?” She motions to the only chair in the room, one we’ve borrowed from the stables next door. Its upholstery smells a little horsey, but it will have to suffice. “Have a cup of tea.”
“No,” he replies. “This won’t take long. Your friend here insisted I take this meeting, but I’m not interested in including your… brand of entertainment at my soiree.”
Is he scared of what we might uncover? Quite likely.
Clarice licks her teeth and taps Blanck on the lapel of his jacket. “Silly Max. You know parlor readings are all the rage right now! Your party will be the absolute talk of the town if you include a couple psychic mediums.”
While Clarice patters on about why we should be included alongside her own genteel party tricks, Spirit offers me an image I’ve never seen before: a steaming bowl of cooked rice.
But the bowl tilts, and inside, a flash of a sleek straight pin.
A pin among grains of rice. It would be so easy to miss.
This is Blanck, I realize. He looks like he could blend in, but the rest of the world is soft, and Blanck is too sharp, too sleek, too shiny. Dangerous.
Spirit is not offering me anything I can use. Just signs of danger. My stomach roils.
I snap back to the here and now. Blanck sputters on about hosting this party in his own home. “We’d rather do this in a hotel, of course. But with the waiters’ strike going on, that’s impossible. Damn labor unions.”
My fingernails dig into the palms of my hands.
Kiyoko approaches him with the teacup. “Are you sure I can’t interest you in a nice cup of tea?”
I plead silently, Take it. We really need him to drink that silly tea, now that we don’t have the advantage of scoping out the items in his apartment.
Blanck grunts. “No. I appreciate the hustle, ladies, but one huckster is more than enough for my party,” he says, and he smacks Clarice on her rear end.
“And I’ve only included her because Doyle insisted.
” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he means. Blanck chortles as he squeezes Clarice tightly around the waist. I see her stiffen, her smile tighten.
She’s doing this for us. Well, for Pax, perhaps. But she’s disgusted by Blanck, too.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t be hosting this gathering at all, were it up to me. My wife, she…” He pauses here. He doesn’t seem like the type of man who measures his words often. “She feels this event is necessary to maintain our standing.”
Ah, yes. She wants to save face after all her husband’s bad publicity. Pax has said that members of high society will do anything maintain their status. We’ll be destroying her as well.
Something about that idea—destroying someone so thoroughly that the pain is felt throughout an entire family, perhaps even for generations—makes an odd tang of power seethe through me. It’s the same pain Blanck himself has foisted upon me.
To my great surprise, Spirit whispers at that moment:
Romeo.
And it offers me an image of a small dog. A Scottish terrier.
I clear my tight throat. “Did you have a dog named Romeo?” I ask Blanck.
He blinks. A small grin lifts one side of his mouth. How is it that sometimes the very worst people have a soft spot for animals? “Yes. I did.”
I listen, and Spirit gives me another detail.
“And when you’d call him inside, you’d shout, ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ Your mother enjoyed that quite a lot.”
Blanck’s whole demeanor shifts. His posture loosens, and his face softens. “Yes.”
I can’t continue. I can’t watch him become human before me.
I will lose my nerve for our plan. My eyesight grows shadowy at the edges with the magnetized pull of the Dark Trio.
My eardrums scream, like I’m under leagues of seawater in the Dark Legion’s presence.
Of course they are here, now. My blood freezes, my insides turn to ice. I start to fall…
And then I feel it. A spider, crawling on the skin of my leg.
Then another, on the nape of my neck. I look at my hands, my arms. I am covered in hundreds—thousands?
—of huge, hairy spiders. They crawl over my clothing, they creep underneath it…
I am paralyzed by this illusion. I cannot scream and jump and lose our shot at getting into this party.
I cannot sweep them free from my skin. Max Blank would think me mad.
I am mad. I squeeze my eyes and will this hallucination to go away.
Kiyoko lays a hand on my shoulder. It anchors me to this moment, the here and now. “Romeo, yes!” Her voice sounds tinny, far away. “What a scamp! He would steal your father’s pipe and gnaw it if it wasn’t properly stored.”
Blanck inhales sharply, steeling himself against these gentle memories. “Parlor readings, you say?” he asks Clarice. “They’re popular?”
“Hedda Hopper will positively eat it up.” Clarice offers a coy smile and laces her arm in the crook of his elbow. “Would I lead you any other way?”
Blanck squints at me. “I want you to really play it up, then. The ridiculous shirts and the jewelry and the turban and all that. Dress like a full-on fortune teller, right?”
“Yes, of course. That’s all part of what we offer.” It is now.
He’s already walking away. “Arrive at five p.m. sharp to set up. Not early, not late. Five p.m. The party begins at six. You’ll be paid at the end of the evening.”
His instructions make it clear: We’ll have one hour to prep for our shenanigans. Will it be enough time?
Just as he’s walking out the door, Clarice punches Blanck abruptly in the sternum, knocking the breath out of him. She snaps her fingers with one hand and grips his chin tightly with the claws of her other.
“Eyes up here,” she barks. Blanck is so startled, he obeys.
“You will not remember the name Julia’s Bureau—not when you leave here today, not ever. You will not remember where this place is.” She snaps once more in front of his face, then pushes him, hard, between his eyes. He stumbles, but rights himself quickly.
He says nothing of this treatment. They leave. The bell overhead tinkles far too gently for this abrupt departure.
We did it.
“We’re in,” I whisper.
Spirit offers me an image of a skull and crossbones, the distinct markings on a bottle of poison.