Chapter 14 Mr. Orley
That night, after returning from Lord Avon’s house in town—the night before she was due to meet Rami—Leena awoke to whispers.
She had dreamed of Mrs. Van.
The housekeeper had appeared in a monstrous form. Her eyes, normally cool and impersonal, were forceful—the pupils blown, the black entirely overtaking the white. Her fingers, always so unnaturally long, were wringing themselves.
“Do you wish to harm my master?” Mrs. Van demanded.
Leena felt as if she was being torn apart beneath the housekeeper’s glare. She wanted to fall to her knees, but a cold prickle on her neck kept her upright. Gritting her teeth, Leena gathered her strength. “Not if he does not harm me first.”
“What are you trying to do, girl?”
Leena didn’t answer, but lurched forward. The power shifted between them. There was a sliver of fear in Mrs. Van’s face as she took a few uncertain steps back. “Don’t—don’t touch me.”
Leena reached out a hand. There was a secret imprinted on the woman’s skin…something essential to know.
Mrs. Van staggered, her long fingers covering her face. “Protect him, please protect him. Find Lord Avon. How long must he survive this?”
And when Leena touched the housekeeper’s forearm, she understood what bound Mrs. Van to St. Silas. A hidden memory: a woman sweeping the floors before a small, sleepy-eyed boy runs in, crying over a scraped knee.
Mrs. Van disappeared and Leena jerked awake.
By then, the dream was only a subtle aftertaste in her mouth, a lingering taste of rot.
She blinked, her eyes adjusting to the dark.
The only ghost who haunted her that night was a shoemaker who wept as he held up a leather heel to the moonlight, but he stayed beyond the circle of salt.
Dim lights flickered through the crack beneath her door, and a sudden fear gripped her. Why was her door ajar?
Had someone been in her room?
Horror tightened her stomach.
Whispered arguments and the sound of pacing carried from the hallway. She listened intently, not daring to move.
“…leave her be.” A harsh voice filtering in and out—St. Silas, uncharacteristically furious. “You should have sought my permission—”
Another voice responded, pleading. Mrs. Van. “It had to be done…”
Leena strained her neck but could hear no more. Quietly, she slipped from her bedcovers and crept toward the door until she could hear the housekeeper’s voice once again.
“…she took something from me.”
The pacing stopped. She heard his disbelief. “From you? How is that possible?”
Just at that moment, Leena rested her foot on a loose floorboard and a loud creak sounded.
She froze, then cursed herself when she was met with silence behind the wall.
She’d no choice now but to make her presence known.
Opening the door fully, she was met by the impenetrable faces of St. Silas and Mrs. Van. He bowed to her.
“Have we disturbed you?” St. Silas asked, the previous fury extinguished so completely from his voice that it almost convinced Leena that she’d misheard it.
Then his gaze slid down from her face, his eyes widening, and only then did Leena realize that she was wearing her old nightgown, so thin that it was almost transparent in the candlelight.
His throat moved and he tore his gaze away just as she dived behind the door.
Utterly mortified, it took all her courage to poke her head back out.
St. Silas’s voice was rougher than usual, his eyes still focused on the ceiling. “My apologies, madam.”
“You’re awake,” Mrs. Van said in the long awkward silence that ensued. The housekeeper’s body was unnaturally still, like a scorpion before the strike.
“I had a strange dream,” Leena replied, her loose hair cascading across her shoulders as she continued to hide behind the door. “Then I awoke to the sound of arguing.”
She didn’t miss the quick look shared by St. Silas and Mrs. Van. No one asked her what the dream was about. For a wildly paranoid moment, Leena thought it was because they knew.
The Saint showed his teeth, his tone persuasive and smooth. “A minor disagreement about household manners. Nothing that should trouble you.”
Mrs. Van remained silent.
Perhaps it was the time of the day, or the tendrils of sleep that still clung to her eyes, but the house suddenly felt like a prison, St. Silas and Mrs. Van its guards, and the night a fortress.
Leena stared at the long shadows flung from the candlelight, expanding and moving like quivering creatures only brought forth in the dark.
Suddenly, she swerved her gaze to meet Mrs. Van’s, and the dream came back to her in tidbits.
The black, fathomless eyes, the accusing question, the general feeling of un-rightness…
There was something very wrong with Mrs. Van.
Something that didn’t belong in this world.
She tried to shake the disturbing thought away, but she knew that if ghosts could exist, if those ledgers could exist, then whatever creature—or monster—Mrs. Van was could, too.
“I would like a lock on my door,” Leena said firmly, her eyes unwavering from Mrs. Van’s face.
The Saint replied without hesitation. “Done. First thing in the morning.”
There was nothing else to say. Leena knew that she could not bring up her suspicions without sounding ridiculous, any more than they could convince her that everything was as it should be. Because it wasn’t.
Nothing was right within this house.
—
In the morning, the dream had blurred in Leena’s mind the moment she awoke again. Just as she’d given up hope of recalling the dream, a familiar phrase swam before her eyes:
How long must he survive this?
Must who survive what? St. Silas? He wasn’t surviving; he was thriving. He inspired both awe and dread, his business was heaving with confessors, and he was obviously swimming in wealth.
But he wasn’t satisfied with any of it. It was an odd thought—one Leena could not dwell on, for it was her agreed-upon day for meeting Rami.
St. Silas had not said anything about the change in date; nor had Leena asked.
She thought it was one of those times when it was more prudent to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.
She left at dawn. Yet by the time noon arrived, morning had come and gone and Rami had still not appeared.
All thoughts of Saints and the Wake and Weavingshaw had vanished from Leena’s mind.
Usually, by lunch at the very latest on the day after a fight, Rami would be walking in, whistling and swinging a bag full of coins.
Leena lingered inside her childhood home in the New Algaraa District, sweeping the floors again and again in agitation as she waited for her brother to arrive.
But he didn’t come.
Rami fought for the worst men in Golborne—the Black Coats—and was completely at their mercy. Working for St. Silas had been a lesson for Leena; she now understood the brutality that existed within the underbelly of the city. Perhaps Rami had displeased the Black Coats, lost money for them—
Perhaps they’d hurt him.
A slow horror spread through her and she tried to swallow the panic down.
Margery didn’t know where Leena’s brother was, either. The old woman, Tar staining her lips black, only asked Leena if she still carried the timepiece that Margery had given her.
When Leena pulled the gold watch out of her bodice to show her, Margery’s eyes fluttered closed, the effects of the drug making her near comatose. “Good. Keep it with you always.”
As night fell across the city, fear dogged her steps.
She trudged back to St. Silas’s residence, hoping that Rami might have misunderstood and would be waiting for her there instead.
But only the ghost of the boy dressed in white haunted the steps of the Saint’s shop—the same phantom that had led Leena to St. Silas on that first fevered night.
She averted her gaze from the boy’s right browbone, which had been shattered in his living life.
He ignored Leena’s questions about Rami, turning away from her in irritation.
It was time to knock on the Saint’s study.
He had been there all day, and the door swung open after a long moment spent waiting on the threshold.
In that interim, all her panicked thoughts roared through her with force.
St. Silas would not help her; she was sure of it.
She had interrupted his sessions spitefully.
She had not yet found Lord Avon’s ghost—the very reason he kept her close.
And worse still, she had told St. Silas, in no uncertain terms, that she loathed him.
Then, salt into wounds, she had held a gun to him.
Leena was sure at this point that St. Silas would derive great pleasure from knowing her brother was missing or dead.
Not for the first time in her life, Leena wished she had more sense and less propulsion to push forward in spite of the consequences, but her foolhardy ways would likely see her in Newtorn Prison—if she survived this contract.
“You are late,” St. Silas noted. His quick bow was perfunctory, his tone chilling. “How is your special friend?”
“I do apologize for my lateness.” Leena barely curtseyed back. “I must ask, have you seen my brother?”
“If I had seen your brother, believe me, Miss Al-Sayer, you would be the first to know.” He sat back down at his desk, attention already drifting to the assortment of parchments before him.
She leaned over the desk, ignoring his taunts. She tried to force his eyes away from the ledgers and back to her.