Chapter 10
GHOSTS AND GLAMOURS
“Cemeteries are quite beautiful this time of day.”
Victor stopped beneath the iron arch guarding the Rusholme Road Cemetery to stare at Persephone.
The sun had already passed below the rooftops, and the skyline glowed bright pink, an almost impossible color that faded into purple, blue, then the deep insistence of a star-studded navy. Night was coming. Victor shivered.
“Beautiful?” He huffed. “Nothing but loss and grief here. How can you call that beautiful?”
She shrugged, moving into the cemetery with none of his hesitance. “We’re so careful with these people we love. See those trees over there?” She pointed to a long row of them along the western edge of the cemetery. “The dead don’t need them, but they’ve been planted here nonetheless.”
He caught up with her, hands in pockets, all glamours cast aside.
He’d been himself as they’d taken a long way here from the library.
He’d been himself as she’d pointed out places from her past and little details of alchemist culture that—she said with stoic ease—if he told anyone else about, she’d have to kill him.
He didn’t really care about anyone else, so that wouldn’t be a problem.
Well, there was Jane. But she likely knew everything already, considering who she’d married.
“Your argument kicks in your knees,” he said, twisting at the waist to look into her face as they walked.
Evening shadows hid her expression. She’d been so open with him always, so damn free with every word and emotion.
He could not stand to have the shadow hide her from him.
He wanted to scoop her up and carry her back to the well-lit street where glowing fairy lights would show him all of her again.
“Because if the dead don’t need the trees, they don’t need grave work. ”
“You miss my point, your grace.”
Oh, he was in trouble now. She’d started calling him Victor after their second physical escapade, and now she was your gracing him. She fairly boiled over with outrage. “And what is your point, Sephy?”
“That cemeteries are designed with love. Those who are left behind need to know that those they love are comfortable. The trees, the grave work… even if you do not believe in an afterlife, heaven or hell, or ghosts, you must believe in the living human heart. And it needs these things even if the dead do not. So yes, the cemetery is beautiful.” She stopped beneath a tree and sat primly, back needle straight, skirts puffing up about her folded legs.
“And I cannot believe I’m going to help you chip away at that.
Think of the widows, Victor. The ones who will show up to mourn and find their husband’s grave work gone.
The husband might never know, but she will. And her heart will break.”
His heart did something odd. Stuttered. Tripped. Felt, actually, like an old rusty chain had somehow slipped about it and was squeezing tightly. He rubbed his chest and sat next to her, leaning against the tree and stretching his legs out in front of him.
They sat in silence, watching darkness settle over the world like a child’s blanket, pulled up to the very nose, only the eyes peeping out.
When Persephone was only a warm silhouette by his side, he said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
She laughed. “Yes, I believe I do.”
“I suppose I should take your word for it. You’ve spent much time in places like this.”
“I sense an objection on the tip of your tongue.”
“Yes, but I can’t quite articulate it.”
“I think what’s there is fear,” she said. “You do not want to believe in ghosts because you know that after tonight, they’ll haunt you terribly for what you’ve done.”
“What about you? Will they haunt you too?” He winced. Bad idea to remind her she was here against her will.
She stood and brushed her skirts off, then she strode away from the trees and stood in the middle of the cemetery, looking up at the pale moon.
He joined her, that rusty chain squeezing his heart again. She was ethereal in the moonlight, her face shining and her hair a wild mass of untamable curls atop her head, the very edges of which seemed to glint silver.
Take her back to the hotel. Lay her on the bed. Make love to her. Forget everything else.
Mad ideas. Tempting, too. Too bad he couldn’t give in.
He took her hand. It was cold, and he wanted to chafe it warm, to cup it and blow warm air into the little nest he’d make for it between his hands.
He only squeezed it, though, and as footsteps entered the cemetery behind them—mourners come the only time they could, when they weren’t laboring—he said, “Which way to the alchemist vaults.”
The words were wrong. Entirely wrong for a beautiful woman beneath a moon, a woman who stirred him and challenged him and who was like a little ball of fire hurtling through the atmosphere to spark alive that now tormented organ inside his chest. But they were the only words he could say.
She pulled her hand out of his and watched the silhouette of a stooped woman walking through the graves. The woman hummed, a tune low and sad.
Persephone turned away from the moon and laid her palm on Victor’s chest. “No.”
Such a vague little response. Not a clear answer to his request—where are the vaults? But he knew her meaning anyway.
“You have to,” he said, the words so very difficult to push through his throat.
“I do not have to. I came along only to watch over souls living and dead, to save them from you. Then I realized your soul needed saving too. And I tried—” The words crashed to a halt, became a little helpless cry.
She inhaled, exhaled, and in the moonlight, he saw her lick her lips.
“I tried,” she said, steadier this time, “to convince you, to help you see there are other ways. But you’re too damn stubborn.
I should know better than to try and fix a man. ”
He stepped away from her, leaving her palm hanging in the air for a moment before her arm dropped heavy to her side.
He felt heavy everywhere. Especially in his chest. “What do you want of me, Persephone? To live as you do? In squalor? Always hungry, always worried, often sick? I cannot. I have people to care for, a legacy to rebuild. And damn it, you don’t have to live that way, either!
” He didn’t want her to live that way. The idea of her returning to that rickety, crowded, loud building with paper-thin walls and sagging ceilings—he shivered.
He’d rather… he’d rather… hell, hard to know, but he’d rather anything other than that.
“No.” She took off for the entrance.
He stomped after her. “Persephone!”
She swung around, arm thrown out to stop him.
Her palm hit his chest again, and he flinched to catch it, to press it more firmly against him and keep it there, but she took it back immediately and hissed, “Keep your voice down. This place is not about you, your grace. Hell!” She threw her hands up, spun in a circle.
“Most do not choose the life I live, but I did.”
“What?”
“I chose it. Had I shown up on my parents’ doorstep, they would have thrown my mistakes in my face, but they would have taken me back, knowing well they could marry me off again, make an alliance.
But I chose ‘the squalor’ as you put it, because I deserve it.
I dig to have coin for food, yes. But also.
.. I dig to atone. I failed Percy in life.
My actions caused his death. He had nothing to take with him into his grave. ”
“So you throw yourself into the dirt with him? That’s madness, Persephone.”
“It’s my truth.”
“It’s your excuse.”
“You’re a hypocrite.” She turned on him, walked away.
He caught her arm before she got too far. “Me? A hypocrite?”
“Yes!” She snatched her arm away. “You act as if this is your only option, but I showed you an option at the library. But that looks a little too much like work, doesn’t it, your grace.
And while you’ll lower yourself to rob the graves of hard-working men, you won’t lower yourself enough to work as hard as they did. ”
His jaw was too tight to say a damn thing.
When he didn’t answer, her head bobbed, slow steady little dips of her chin to her chest as she backed away from him.
“I thought I could do it—keep you in line, teach you to behave, to care. But I can’t.
I can’t help you rob the dead, either. It dishonors them.
It dishonors Percy. It dishonors me. I do not possess much, but I have that. ”
“Honor?” The word bitter on his tongue.
She nodded. “It’s too expensive for a man like you. It costs comfort. It requires risk and sacrifice. One must pay an entire soul for it.” She backed away farther. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, but I will not help you take it.”
He let her slip into the darkness though every inch of him screamed to run after her.
They’d spent three whole days together, and she’d been right by his side, making him laugh, making him burn with desire, making him think.
It had been a long time since he’d felt so light, so free from despair, and now it all crashed back onto him.
And she was on the streets. At night. Alone.
He ran after her, but when he got to the gate, he stopped, one foot outside of the cemetery. He couldn’t go after her. He had work to do.
But he couldn’t do it without her. No alchemist to open the vaults.
“Fuck,” he hissed, storming back inside the cemetery. “Fuck.”
He made his way toward the back corners. That’s where the alchemists’ vaults had been in London. And there they were—glowing white marble in the moonlight. What good were they to him now? Still he entered.
And wished he hadn’t. From down the long, fairy-lit corridor, a ghostly humming echoed. A door was open on the right side, and he approached it carefully. He paused just before it and peeked around the frame.