He hits me. My fault for getting cocky. He hits me in the stomach, enough to wind me, but I’m lunging at him when boots thunder down the lane.
“What’s that?” someone says. “You there!”
“Oh, thank the lord,” I begin, in a girlish voice. “I have been—”
My attacker drowns me out, backing into the shadows, hands raised as he bellows, “She tried to rob me. Promised a bit o’ fun and then stabbed me.”
Two men stride down the alley, their gazes fixed on me.
I try again to speak, only to have my attacker drown me out once more, ranting about how he’d been attacked by this “wench,” how I tricked him, stabbed him, look, see his arm?
One of the men grabs for me. I backpedal, and hit the wall. He snatches my bodice and pins me, leaning in, breath reeking of beer. He’s big and brawny, built like a damn blacksmith.
My attacker babbles some more. Then he scoops something from the ground.
“Knife!” I shout. “He’s got a knife!”
“I’vegot your knife, girl,” the blacksmith’s friend says, waving the switchblade. “A wicked little piece, covered in that poor man’s blood.”
I open my mouth. The blacksmith slams me against the wall, my head snapping back into stone. I black out for what only seems like a moment, but the next thing I know, there’s a constable there and my attacker is long gone.
“Wh-what’s happening?” I manage, my head throbbing. “Where is he? He’s the killer. The raven killer.”
“Raven killer?”
Peals of laughter.
“There’s a feather,” I say. “A peacock feather. There on the ground. Look.”
The constable does look. So do I. There’s no feather. That’s what the killer had been grabbing—not the knife but the feather. He also scooped up the paper with Catriona’s name on it.
The blacksmith lifts me off the ground, forearm at my throat, making me choke and sputter.
“You stabbed a man,” he says. “Lured him into this lane and stabbed him. Do you know what happens to girls who think they can bat their lashes and then murder a man for a few bob? It’s the gallows for you.” He leers down at me. “Unless you’d like to give us a reason to let you go.”
“Now, now,” the constable says. He’s around forty, broad-shouldered and whiskered. “There’ll be none of that. She will pay for her crime in the proper way.” He strides to the blacksmith. “Help me escort her to the police office.”
The man hesitates as his gaze drops to my neckline. The constable pulls out a wooden baton, keeping it at his side, a subtle threat.
“Let her go, Bill,” says the blacksmith’s friend. “We don’t want trouble.”
Bill turns his head and spits. Then he backs up, letting me crumple to the ground.
“You want her, take her,” Bill says, strolling away, waving for his friend to follow. “But you’ll need to get the little she-devil to the police office yourself.”
The constable watches them go. Then he turns to me. He doesn’t say a word, just lifts the billy club in warning. I resist the urge to argue my case. I don’t consider fleeing. I wouldn’t get far, and it would only make this worse.
I rise and lift my hands. “Just tell me where you want me to go.”
He points his club down the lane, and I start walking.