Chapter 10 #2
The cheekbones of the woman were crushed, but there was something very familiar about her. Her brown hair was matted, but I could see a pearl comb hanging from a tangled lock of hair.
“Interesting cuts around her necklace—”
No.
“—emeralds, do you think? Someone with money.”
It couldn’t be.
“As if someone was outlining it. Taunting? Maybe a gift from a lover?”
A gift from her rich father. Flaunted and taunted. The report from my investigator had said she’d never parted with it even after the family money had dwindled away.
A forehead was wiped free of blood, a pointed chin. The sheet slipped to the side to reveal the emerald-and-gold necklace lying heavy and dull at her throat. Covered by blood and set on a crusted red riverbed.
Crash. A small table toppled on the floor next to me, its contents spilling across the floor.
I had to get out of here.
I stumbled from the room, barely registering Marietta clutching my hand asking if I was ill.
“Poor bloke! Best get him home, mistress. ‘Tis a ghastly sight.”
One of many faces I had hoped never to see again. Not that I particularly cared that she was dead. I hated her. Hated them all. But I had separated myself from my past long ago.
“Gabriel?” Marietta whispered.
Her voice came from far away, though there was a hand on my arm and another around my waist. I forced my eyes closed, then opened them again slowly as I’d been trained to do. To show no emotion. To show no affect.
I straightened. The hallway stretched in front of me toward the staircase. “Upstairs.” Better to keep communications short until I could untangle my thoughts.
Where was my father? When had Lucian’s break begun? Where had my investigator gone? I hadn’t received a report in…over a month.
No.
It could be a coincidence. Or a nightmare. I had to see the sketches from the other murders.
I pounded against the door that read Franklin Lewis.
Frank opened the door, eyes widening. “Master Noble! I received your note. Are you unwell?”
“I’m not unwell, Frank.” I pulled Marietta in behind me as he closed the door. “I need a favor. I can pay.”
“‘Course you won’t pay! My last favor didn’t pay my due. What can I do for you?”
Marietta’s hand was clutching mine, and the tendrils attached to her vow marks pulsed strangely in my chest. “Can you obtain the sketches of the Vein Ripper’s victims from Coroner’s Court?” I tried to keep the desperation, the abject terror, from my voice.
Frank looked thoughtful. “For how long will you need them?”
“Five minutes.”
“Then, of course. That shouldn’t be a problem. I can have them here and back before anyone notices. And there’s a bloke who owes me in case I can’t. Now’s the best time, while everyone is in a tizzy. Give me my own five.”
Frank exited the room, leaving me alone with Marietta.
“What happened downstairs, Gabriel? I couldn’t see around your shoulder well, but what I did see was gruesome.” She shuddered. “Nightmare inducing.”
“Yes,” I said absently, thoughts coiling and refusing to connect.
“Gabriel?” She touched my chin and turned my face toward her. “We can leave. I’m sure we can come back later.”
A fierce surge of something passed through me. She was trying to shield me. “I’m fine. We need to do this before Dresden puts a halt on our ability to move freely.”
Spirits. What if my ugly suspicions bore fruit?
Frank hustled back inside. “It’s mayhem down there. I think five minutes is about all we can spare.”
I nodded and took the sketches. Cold fear crystallized as I looked at the first one. Older and mangled, but I could fit the shape of her hands to my memories, my nightmares. I flipped to the next.
The crystals turned to ice.
I fiddled with the edge of the paper. I didn’t want to see the last one. To confirm.
From the corner of my eye I saw Marietta watching me.
I flipped the page. The image wavered in my view, then broke. I placed the sketches on the desk before my shaking hands could scatter them to the floor.
The three images combined with the fourth body made identities simple.
The one identified victim had been a woman with a surname that caused no alarm. Phineas would send a note from the records office any day now confirming her natal name. Forester. Iris Forester, not Sinclair.
A rushed wedding, Marietta had said. But I should have known. The man I paid to keep track of the six of them should have told me immediately that one of them had changed her name.
Where was he? Why hadn’t he sent anything?
What would I have done had I known the first victim’s original name earlier? Before the investigation had begun?
“Master Noble?”
“Yes. Thank you, Frank.” I forced a smile. “This was very helpful.”
Helpful in the way that someone helped you dig a grave in a cemetery plot that just happened to have your name on the headstone.
“They are still working on the identities,” he said. “I’ll let you know when they pop the second.”
“Why is it taking so long to identify them?” Marietta asked. Her hand reached for the sketches.
Frank put his hand on the pages. “Destroyed their magic. Ripped out their spiritual veins. We use those to identify each other, to find connections, so them being gone...” He shook his head.
“I wouldn’t look, mistress. Their faces, well, there’s a reason they’ve been waiting to release pictures to the public for identification.
Even the personal effects have been withheld.
Gruesome thing, a family realizing their loved one is a victim from a public outing. ”
“But they need to be identified. At some point—”
“It’s just time, mistress. A potion that can piece together broken magic has been used on each body. The second victim’s potion needs another five sunrises to mature. Then we will know.”
“What if there’s a fifth victim before that?” she asked. “The killer is going faster. They must know there is a timeline.”
I shuddered. Indeed.
“The magic requires that time.” Frank lifted the death sketches, mouth turned down. “Terrible business.”
“Thank you, Frank.” I forced the steady calm I had mastered to deal with any situation involving them. “We must leave before Dresden arrives, but please let me know if there is anything I can help you with.”
“It was no problem, Master Noble. Always available to help with your cases—especially the ones like mine. The ‘Protector,’ we call you.”
Would I retain that goodwill were my past to become common knowledge—with four dead women from it lying in the coroner’s office on a table or in a pot?
I forced a smile. “The mistress will tease my arrogance for a week.”
Frank smiled at Marietta. “I’m sure that whatever you need help with will be resolved soon. Problems always are when Master Noble is involved.”
Such faith. I had developed the network to make sure those who sought help would not find themselves in the same position I had once found myself.
Helpless.
I covered another involuntary shudder by gripping the door handle. Everything was coming full circle.
I strode from the room, Marietta following behind.
“Did you learn anything from the sketches?” she asked, completely in the dark, trusting me like they all trusted me—not knowing that she could be the first I betrayed.
“Age, physical characteristics—anything that might tie the victims together.” It wasn’t a lie.
“And?”
“They mostly look to be the same age. I will see if I can get someone to copy and discreetly circulate sections of the sketches to discover more about them.”
I wasn’t sure I was going to do any such thing. I didn’t want anyone to recognize the victims. I couldn’t believe no one had yet, even though, at the same time, I would have been hard pressed to identify them myself if I hadn’t been presented with pictures of the matched set.
The Vein Ripper was making them unrecognizable.
“Shouldn’t Dresden be doing that?”
“Maybe he is. Spells used for obfuscation are hard to break. And most people want to pretend this sort of crime can’t exist.” The murders were gruesome to a people who prized magic and hereditary markers, both. Ripping the spiritual veins from a person was akin to destroying their soul.
Why hadn’t anyone claimed them missing, though?
I should have received word concerning Iris’s marriage immediately. And her going missing? What was my investigator doing?
I balled my fists. The man was paid exorbitantly to keep track of their whereabouts so that I could forget all about them—unless one was up to her old tricks.
I had dealt with those swiftly and financially.
Which was a reason a few of them might not have been missed yet—tossed from society and penniless as they were.
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn’t see the man step forward until I trod on his foot. I cursed when his face came into view, moving to sidestep him.
“Going somewhere, Master Noble?” Arthur Dresden’s expression wavered between satisfied and enraged.
“Finally figured it out, Dresden? Congratulations. Now, if you’ll pardon us.” I reached a hand behind to Marietta and stepped around. The main door and freedom were only twenty paces away.
The inquisitor stepped in my path again. “I don’t think so. I have questions, you see.”
“How extraordinary for you. But you can’t detain us here. We’ll be on our way.”
“You think I cannot detain you?”
“I know you cannot, inquisitor.” Some people might be scared by an inquisitor and the tactics they used, but I knew all their codes. All the laws concerning them. Unfortunately for the man in front of me.
Dresden’s gaze was scorching. “I’ve heard all about you. Using the law as you desire. Bribing people to do your justice. The law is not to be trifled with. I will be watching you, Noble, make no mistake.”
“I’m touched by your interest. Now if you wouldn’t mind moving out of our way?”
He hurried to keep up as I pivoted both of us around him. “Trying to free your brother, Lady Winters? Admirable as that sentiment may be to some, how does it feel to obstruct the workings of the law? Rather apparent that the two of you were the ones to orchestrate the postponed trial.”
I moved my body between them, so he couldn’t address her further, continuing toward the door. “Your detective skills are keen, Dresden. How anyone is denied justice with you on the case is baffling.”
“The most pernicious part is that you believe you are helping others. By skirting the laws and obfuscating justice to your own demands.”
“More pernicious is that you believe in your own world of hypocrisy, Dresden.”
It was the wrong thing to say, if I cared about such things, as Dresden’s skin reddened in blotchy rage. “If I can lay any of this at your door, Noble, I will. As for you, Lady Winters, your older brother will be keeping your younger brother company very soon.”
Her hand tightened in mine and fury ran through me at the bullying tactic. But our best move was walking out the door.
Dresden leaned around me toward Marietta. “If you weren’t a woman, you would be joining them posthaste.”
A monumental mistake to underestimate an entire half of the population. Or any woman at all.
“How terribly insightful.” This time when Dresden got in the way, I shoved him to the side and kept moving. The sound of his body hitting the floor was satisfying.
He roared my name.
I pushed through the doors and hurried down the steps, Marietta held firmly in my wake as I strode through the crowd, paving a path. More people were filling in the spaces around the court, onlookers trying to discover advanced news they could pass on to their neighbors.
We finally made it through and reached the carriage. I was never so glad to be enclosed. I leaned back against the seat and shut my eyes. What a disastrous morning. Perhaps I would awaken and discover Billy’s knock and all the subsequent discoveries to be merely a horrendous nightmare.
A sound across from me forced my eyes open. Marietta’s lips were pinched together, her hands clutched in her dress. I tugged her onto my seat, tucking her head under my chin. Her silent sobs shuddered against my chest.
“They won’t release Kennen.”
There was nothing I could say in response.
Dresden would advocate the spin—casting it as a joint spree between brothers, or the second copying the first in an attempt to free him.
It didn’t matter which version prevailed.
If public opinion turned, the jury would be influenced, and the judge would shape the questioning.
“We will begin our own campaign to sway the public and free your younger brother.”
The problem was that if my footman had successfully hidden her elder brother, his disappearance would lend credence to Dresden’s tale. It would look as if Ferris Winters was hiding to escape the murder charge. Marietta could lose both brothers.
And if my awful suspicion, my awful fear, proved true…could I sacrifice my family in order to save Marietta hers?
The murderous puzzle turned sharply. Gone were the faint sides and rounded corners. Sharp spines and fanged teeth lined the edges now. That I was working this case…
I didn’t believe in coincidence. I drove action and turned it onto others.
I just had to find the play.
“What if they capture Ferris?”
I hugged her closer. In all of this madness, she was innocent. Innocence needed saving. “The murderer has refused to accept the gift of your younger brother’s arrest. He will likely kill again. If Ferris is arrested and then another murder occurs, they will have to release both your brothers.”
Unless they tried to pin it on Marietta. Or on me, acting as her agent. If the authorities started to dig around in my background…they could pin the whole thing on me. Or on my family—which would hurt immeasurably more.
The smart thing to do would be to drop the case flat. To turn Marietta out and try and salvage my own stake.
I shut my eyes tightly. Were all of the people I had helped and the network I designed not enough? I had paid my penance—was I still required to pay more?
“You are going to let Ferris get caught?”
“No. We will take our chance that the case against Kennen is lessened by this. But if your other brother is caught, take comfort in my previous statement. The killer is still out there.”
Marietta clutched my collar, her face pressed against my neck. Her tears wound down my throat and into the fabric beneath. I stroked her hair, my thoughts colliding over what I should do—about her, about the situation.
And if I did the wrong thing, would one more sin damn me? I was already a ruined man.
I had been since I was sixteen.