Chapter Three
Later that night, as Felicity flipped through the illuminated manuscript in search of a spell that would repel vampires, she remembered the cocky smile on Mr. Drake’s face when he’d lifted the latch on the hall window.
As if it were so easy to enter the museum.
Well, perhaps it was, but the most valuable items in their collection were in the main hall, where the guards were now on a staggered schedule thanks to the gap Mr. Drake had pointed out.
She shouldn’t have felt grateful. Yes, he had unlocked the door to her exhibit when it had slammed shut, but it had been his fault they’d become trapped to begin with. She turned a page so aggressively that it tore. Now he’d made her damage the centerpiece of her collection!
She huffed. Thinking about him irked her. She was certain they’d met before, but every time she tried to recall where, she became strangely disoriented.
“There you are!”
Felicity straightened as her employer, Mr. Blackwood, entered the room.
He was a man in his late fifties with thinning, black hair and a pair of thick, circular spectacles perched on his bulbous nose.
He was not an unattractive man, and given his unusual bachelor status, she suspected he would have liked to become better acquainted, but she’d lost all interest in marriage the night she’d watched her parents die.
He looked around the room. “It is rather less impressive than I expected. Are you certain our visitors will be interested in these”—he picked up a carved, wooden statue of a bat and wrinkled his nose—“artifacts?”
Felicity set the illuminated manuscript aside and exhaled slowly to cool her rising anger.
She hadn’t worked so hard for so long to be stymied.
After weeks of deflecting Mr. Blackwood’s sharp words and probing questions, she had a much better idea of what she needed to do to put his concerns to rest.
The first thing she grabbed was a newspaper sitting atop a stool. She unfolded it, flipped to the page she needed, then held it out before the curator. “Look at this.”
She tapped an article describing several dollymops who had recently been found drained of blood in Whitechapel.
There was no mention of bite wounds, but the unusual brutalization of the bodies meant the perpetrator was either a vampire or a particularly deranged human. She was willing to bet on the former.
“What does this have to do with your exhibit?” Mr. Blackwood asked, using a patronizing tone that made her hackles rise.
He was about to launch into a lecture about how he had agreed to hire her as assistant curator, despite there being no other women in similar positions in the city.
It apparently didn’t matter that she’d successfully organized several tremendously successful but mind-numbingly boring exhibits before this one, each of which had earned the museum substantial revenues.
She had earned this opportunity, but all he could see was a woman involving herself in a subject he considered inappropriate.
It was already scandalous for an unmarried lady to be unchaperoned, let alone for her to be employed.
Getting past those concerns had required several reminders of her undesirable state as an orphan and the donation of a Sorrow family artifact, a diamond necklace previously owned by Marie de’ Medici.
Clearly, the newspaper was not going to convince Mr. Blackwood.
She would have to find another tactic. She spun around and grabbed the centerpiece of her collection.
Even without considering its contents, the manuscript would have sold for thousands of pounds at auction for its beauty and age alone.
She stopped at a detailed depiction of the streets of Paris.
Mr. Blackwood leaned forward and adjusted his spectacles. “Remarkable.”
“With the attacks lately, our guests will be titillated by the idea of a vampire killer. And there’s more.
” She flipped to a sketch of a dark-haired man with a prominent nose and then tapped the caption, which read, Marcus Deville, 1707.
Extreme danger. Do not approach. “It’s the Earl of Kingsbury!
When our guests see this, the gossip alone will sell tickets. ”
Mr. Blackwood’s lips pressed into a thin line, but to her relief, he did not comment.
Her obsession with the earl had been a point of contention between them since she’d proposed the exhibit.
The curator’s belief in supernatural creatures did not extend to accusing a lord of being a vampire.
It had taken weeks to convince him that the earl was unlikely to care about a tiny exhibit hosted in a museum primarily visited by the working class.
She’d clung to the lie so stubbornly that she’d almost convinced herself.
“I suppose,” he said, and she could tell from the change in his posture that there was nothing more he would say on that topic.
He flipped the newspaper back to the front page. “Have you seen this?” He struck his fingers against the front page, emblazoned with the words: ART THIEF STRIKES AGAIN.
She sighed. Every week, the old man insisted there was a new and pressing problem they had to address immediately.
Mr. Drake’s demonstration had been alarming, and she could not discount the possibility that he was the thief described in the paper, but it didn’t matter.
The museum could not afford to hire additional staff.
“Paris is very far away, Mr. Blackwood, and we are hardly a target.”
“I am not so confident.” He furrowed his brow. “Perhaps we should consider more security.”
She almost asked if he’d been talking to Mr. Drake but held the words back.
She’d had more than enough of arguing with men for one night.
With tremendous force of will, she resisted telling him they had no budget with which to hire anyone and instead spent several minutes persuading him to drop the matter.
When he finally left, she returned to the illuminated manuscript and read until she found a spell that would suit her needs—a protective ward.
She took careful note of the herbs she’d need, then tucked the manuscript into a crate and slid it beneath a table.
She didn’t want to leave the artifacts unprotected, but it was safer for them to remain where they were than for her to risk being ambushed while transporting them home.
With her eyes growing heavier by the minute, she exited the Sloan House onto the street to find a cab to take her back to the Sorrow base.
She could have found her own accommodation, of course.
Several other ladies employed at the museum had even recommended an affordable boarding house nearby.
But moving out of the home she’d shared with her extended family for the past six years felt too much like giving up.
While she remained in residence, she had easy access to the Sorrow archives, training area, and supply room.
If she lived elsewhere, she might be tempted to forget about hunting and move on with her life.
She couldn’t let that happen. Not until she was certain the vampire who had killed her parents was dead.
With few clues as to the woman’s identity or location, the best she could do was use her exhibit to force as many vampires out of hiding as possible.
The demons were highly territorial. If the black-veiled woman lived, she was still in London.
A cab rattled to a halt in front of her. She gave the driver the address, accepted the man’s jovial assurance that he would transport her in good time, then settled inside.
Perhaps she was foolish to be so fixated on the vampire who had slaughtered her parents when her brother and uncle had been taken from her more recently, but her Great-Uncle Ezra’s edict meant she couldn’t directly pursue the Earl of Kingsbury without risking a bloody war.
The cab stopped in front of a narrow, brick townhouse on the edge of the fashionable Mayfair district.
She paid the driver and then walked around the building to the kitchen rather than risk being cornered by one of her cousins.
They knew how much she longed to join the patrols and so, likely on Great-Uncle Ezra’s orders, took every opportunity to stress how much she didn’t belong within their ranks.
As she passed the second floor, she heard thumping and raucous laughter, confirming her cousins were home.
She briefly imagined herself throwing open the doors to the library and tossing the severed head of a vampire into the center of the crowd.
That would show them she was serious…and get her kicked out of the house.
She reached the door to her room and pushed it open.
The cramped space was barely large enough for a dressing table, a chest of drawers, and her bed.
A narrow window let in a sliver of moonlight, casting a square of silver on the wooden floor.
She crossed the room and gazed at the house beside hers.
As usual, the curtains were drawn, and there was no sign of light or movement.
She might have thought it was abandoned were it not for the frequent visitors.
Movement caught her attention. A man in a top hat and burgundy suit strode purposefully up the steps and pounded on the door. It opened immediately, blocking Felicity’s view of who was on the other side.
That was when she noticed the envelope waiting on her dressing table.
She rushed to it, tore open the top and spread the contents across her desk.
This was one of the few tasks Great-Uncle Ezra had entrusted to her.
Each night, one of her cousins recorded the vital details of every vampire they tracked and killed, to the best of their ability, and sent them to her to record in the ledgers.
Her parents had been two of the best hunters in London, and she was a blasted scribe.
She sighed, then sat down at her desk, opened a thick, leather-bound notebook to the latest page, and began writing in a careful script.
The hunting patrols had been successful over the past several days, eliminating a dozen vampires. Although none of the descriptions matched the creature that haunted her dreams, at least the city was slightly safer. Not that anyone in London knew of or appreciated their efforts.
Another reason she had to continue with the exhibit.
Even if Mr. Blackwood disapproved. Even if her own family would disown her if they discovered she’d taken artifacts out of storage. If there was even a slight chance that she could flush the monster that had killed her parents out of hiding, it was worth it.
When she finished her work, she was too restless to sleep. She set the book aside and made her way to the basement, where the familiar scent of rosin and metal enveloped her like a warm embrace. The empty practice range beckoned, but she strode past it and entered the supply room.
Her younger cousin Theresa was currently responsible for restocking the hundreds of herb-filled glass jars. Theresa was also prone to sleeping late and kept the key to the supply room hanging on a nail on her writing desk.
Felicity gathered the materials she needed to cast a protective ward in the Sloan House, then closed the door and left the key in the lock.
The next person to come for supplies would likely assume Theresa had left it by mistake.
At worst, Felicity’s cousin would be chastised for her forgetfulness and reassigned to a different duty.
With her task complete, Felicity took up a position at the end of the practice range, removed a dagger from her belt, and took aim.
Steady.
She synced her breathing with the thump of her heart. Her fingers were light but firm on the thin, metal grip.
She whipped her arm behind her head and forward in a smooth motion, sending the dagger flying with a soft whistle.
It plunged into the target, two rings away from the center.
She frowned, picked up another dagger, and threw again.
As she practiced, her mind drifted to the thief who had invaded the museum.
His cocky smile. His confident swagger. The way he’d smelled of earth and decay, like fallen leaves left to rot.
She would have to instruct the guards to expel him if he returned.
Perhaps she’d make sketches of his face and distribute them to the staff.
The next time he tried to skulk about, he’d be spotted and thrown out.
She could almost see the shocked look on his face and hear him sputtering in protest as two burly guards tossed him onto the grass.
That would teach him to barge into her space.
A dagger plunged into the target just outside the center ring.
She was getting sloppy.
She strode down the range, grasped the dagger’s hilt, and tugged. The cork was tougher than wood. Every mark outside the target was a visible record of failure.
She tucked the dagger back into her belt and returned to the throwing line.
Great-Uncle Ezra wouldn’t let her join the patrols, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t defend herself. If another vampire breached the museum walls or dared to make themselves known to her, she would handle it the way she wished she’d acted the night of her parents’ murder.