She flinched, the blow striking her in the center of her breastbone. Slowly she gathered her cloak and wrapped it around her. Clutching it like a shield, she approached him. He stood perfectly still, his eyes on her face as she came to him.
“All this time.” She stopped before him. “From the moment you recognized me”—for she could remember that moment too, the way he’d suddenly grown cold and distant—“I thought it was because of how Lucien and I were together.” Her teeth clicked. “You made me think that,” she ground out. “Made me feel like a whore.”
His gaze was impassive, as if he were merely listening. As if he weren’t even there.
She got closer, and her voice dropped. “When it was never that.”
“Oh, I hated seeing him touch you.” His retort was a soft whip. “Never doubt that.”
So cold. So very Talent.
“But that isn’t why you recoiled,” she snapped. “No. All this time, all these years of strife. It was out of guilt! For killing me.”
“Yes.”
Her hand met his face with a ringing slap. He didn’t flinch. But she did. He broke her heart.
“I would have forgiven you, Jack.” She stepped away from him. “Isn’t that ironic? I would have done it in an instant. You were a boy. A stupid, ignorant boy. And I ran into you, really.” She laughed low and ugly before tossing a glare over her shoulder, back at his pale, implacable face. “What I cannot forgive is that you held your own guilt over me. For years. You made me feel as though I were in the wrong. Deliberately.”
“Yes.” Weaker now. A ghost of a whisper. Pitiless. Hollow.
“Good God, I was so very wrong about you,” she said. “I thought you were redeemable, that there was hope for you.”
“No, there was never any hope for me,” he said. “Now you understand. There is only ugliness inside of me.”
Though her insides were shaking, she drew herself up and pretended that he hadn’t just run her over anew. “You don’t even care who you hurt.”
She got all the way to the stairs before he answered. “That is the only thing I do care about now. More than you’ll ever know.”
But it was too late. And he didn’t try to stop her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Holly’s new laboratory was a frigid cellar with low, arched ceilings that seemed to press down upon her. Stone and grit scuffed beneath her boots whenever she took a step, and the cold permeated her bones. She shivered once again, drawing her heavy smock-coat closer, and the shackles around her wrists rattled. Holly ignored them. If she thought about how she was chained to the wall… She took a bracing breath. Calm. Keep your wits, girl.
That rotter Talent had at least thought to provide ample light, by way of hundreds of candles in the three thick iron rings that hung from the ceiling.
“Quite adequate for the fifteenth century,” she muttered under her breath as she bent over the worktable and studied the infernal device she’d just created. Holly had never been accused of being ignorant. This electric prod that bastard had forced her to create, she knew exactly what the device would do to any GIM who felt the business end of the thing. And it made her ill.
Talent and Mary’s dislike of each other was well known. Regulators were taking bets as to who would do the other in first. All in good fun, of course. As much as people tended to stay clear of Talent and his foul moods, no one truly thought he’d harm Mary.
Holly’s throat burned when she thought of him turning that weapon against Mary now. And Holly would be an accomplice. She wanted to scream, rage against the iron bars at the cellar door. Those iron bars clattered now, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
The man she knew as Jack Talent walked in, only the moment he came closer, she realized it wasn’t him at all. He had the look of Talent, true, similar eyes and build, but he’d shifted again, revealing a face pitted with decay. He wore no shirt, only rough trousers, and his torso was as ravaged as his face. The true horror, however, was the center of his chest, where, beneath the exposed bones of his sternum and ribs, a shriveled and blackened heart beat weakly.
A ringing sounded in Holly’s ears, her head going both heavy and light.
“The lovely Miss Evernight,” he said with an evil smile, making the pockets of puckered raw flesh ooze pus. “Hard at work, I see. Excellent.”
The ringing grew louder, and her limbs numbed. “Who—who are you?”
“I am pleased you asked, my dear. You may call me Master.”
Something dangled in his hand and dripped upon the floor. He moved, holding his hand up higher as if allowing her to get a better look. Holly was sorry when she did. Several clockwork hearts, still attached to arteries, dangled in his grip. Blood oozed from golden gears, and a drop landed on the ground with a splat. “I have another assignment for you.”
Jack stood before the glossy black door to Mary’s flat. The large stone of regret that lay in his chest seemed to grow, pushing against his ribs and making each breath he took a painful effort. For a long moment, he simply stared, noting the fine striations the painter’s brush had left in the lacquer and the tiny rust spots at the edge of the brass NO.6 that hung on the door.
For years they had tried to make him beg, to plead for forgiveness. He could all but feel those long-ago grains of rice boring once more into his knees, and the shafts of agony driving through his flesh. Jack had never begged. Not even when they’d nearly killed him.
He swallowed hard, willing himself to move, to speak. This was different. This was necessary. He could do this. Because he had to. His hand shook only a little as he lifted it and knocked on the unforgiving iron-plated door. The sound echoed in the empty hall. Nothing stirred.
Blood rushed through his ears as he waited. But silence crushed down on his shoulders, and the stone within him grew heavier still. Jack cleared his throat, the sound over-loud to his senses.
“Mary.” He cleared his throat again. “Mary, open the door.”
Sweat bloomed over his skin as sharp pricks of sensation crawled down his neck. The memory of another door, the dark chasm of a hall at his back, threatened. His childish voice haunted him. “Mama, please.” Rough hands grasped his upper arms, yanking him back. And the door receding as they tugged him away. Don’t you be bothering the mistress anymore, boy.
Jack blinked, forcing his focus on Mary’s door. “Mary.” His fist slammed into the door, shaking it now. “Let me in. I made hash of it this morning. I should have explained.” He could smell her. He smashed his fist against the thick iron.
The empty hall pressed in upon him, his blows on the door rattling and mocking. “I know you’re there. I know…” Jack’s chest heaved as he braced his forearms on the door. “I can hear you.” Her heart ticked and whirred. So loudly it might have been right on the other side. “I can feel you, Mary.” His throat worked painfully, his mouth too dry. “I’ve always felt you…” His breath came out in a hard pant, his forehead pressing into the hard surface. “I always have. From the first.”
Still nothing. Only her scent and the feel of her vibrating around his soul. He traced a scar in the door as he spoke past the tightness in his throat. “I was a bastard. Worse than that. A despicable idiot. An ass.” He ground his forehead into the door until it hurt. “Whatever you want to call me, I agree.” His hands flattened on the cool lacquer. “I know I ought to slink away like the dog that I am. But I can’t. I… shit.” He ground his teeth and closed his eyes. It ought to be easy, saying the truth. It ought to be a balm to his soul. It wasn’t. It hurt like hell. “I need you. I don’t remotely deserve you but…”
He couldn’t say any more. No matter how much he wanted to, his mouth didn’t seem to obey. Wincing, he clenched his fists and tried again. “Mary. Please. Let me in. Let me protect you. Or provide some comfort. I know you are hurting. I can feel that too.”
She did not come. Something black, and hot, and sick welled within him. He tasted blood. His breath seared his throat. “Goddamn it! Open the bloody door, Mary!” His fists slammed into it. Again and again. The blows echoed around him. “I am not leaving, do you hear? I’m not going!”
Two dents formed beneath his fists, and the thick iron creaked ominously. But still she did not come. Jack shoved off and paced, raking his fingers against his skull. His vision blurred, and on a curse, he slumped against the wall. “I don’t know what to do to make it better,” he said to no one in particular. God knew Mary didn’t seem to be listening. “I don’t know what to do, all right?” It was a shout now, directed to the implacable door. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he looked up at the sooty hall lamp. “I’ve never known. I tried to stay away and make you hate me. Because it seemed better.” A short, bitter laugh left him. “It’s not. God, it’s not.”
He blinked down at his battered knuckles. “It’s tearing me apart,” he said quietly. “Every day, for four years, I’ve felt like half a man. Small. Unfinished.” He sighed. “No, that’s not right.” His fingers curled, digging into his knees. “The night I left you on those wet cobbles, I lost my soul. I left it with you, tarnished thing that it is.” His head was unbearably heavy, and he rested it against his forearms, drawing himself up tight. “Every time I looked at you, I knew it. That I had become what they accused me of being. Soulless.”
He ought to go. She wasn’t going to come out. Yet he had no place to go. He knew that now. There was no longer any place to hide from himself. Or the knowledge that she was his happiness, his purpose. She had cracked him open, rent him in two. And the exposure was an agony he could not live with.
“I don’t know what to do.” He wasn’t sure if he actually spoke the words that clattered about in his head. His blood and uneven breathing roared in his ears, drowning everything else out. He didn’t know how long he sat there, but a sense of emptiness eventually stole upon him, and he realized that she was no longer in her flat. She’d slipped out some other way, leaving him behind.
The tiny ticking of Director Wilde’s pocket watch filled the silence. Mary sat with her back so straight she feared it might crack and stared at the rough surface of the meeting room wall. Someone, at some point in time, had covered the hewn stone with a thick layer of pale yellow paint. Combined with the lumpy texture of the wall, it called to mind bile.
Her hands rested, unnaturally heavy upon the folds of her drab wool skirt. She did not shake. She did not feel. It was better that way.
The chair beneath Wilde’s frame creaked as he sat up. “Where the devil is Master Talent?” he burst out.
She swallowed once. “I do not know.” Nor did she want to. The idea of facing him, hearing his voice, had her fingers going cold and her chest constricting. She was a coward, slipping out of her back exit, leaving Jack behind. His pain, so raw and exposed, had nearly destroyed her. But she hadn’t been able to face him. He’d opened up an old wound, and his secrets had torn into ones that she’d kept too. Ones she did not want to speak.
“He’s twenty minutes late,” Wilde groused before pinning a hard stare on her. “Have you any progress to report, Mistress Chase?”
“No.” Her pulse thrummed an insistent tell him, tell him, tell him against her throat. And what would she even say? Jack Talent is the Bishop. He’s a killer, and a liar, and it is all I can do not to rise from this chair and go to him.
Cold sweat trickled down her spine as Wilde’s eyes bored into her and his mouth turned down at the corners. He broke their stare off with a harrumph. “You are a fount of information this morning, Mistress Chase.”
A surge of irritation and discomfort had her back trembling, but she didn’t cower.
Wilde’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “This case is charging downhill. I’ve been informed that Lord Darby has gone missing, which means yet another shifter may be dead.”
“I—”
“The bodies of the regulators assigned to watch over him were found in the mews behind his home,” he went on in heated fervor. “Mistress Evernight is still missing. The Archbishop of bloody Canterbury has sent a complaint to the Queen, stating that Jack Talent attacked him.” At this he paused to expel a hard breath. “And I have to wonder… what the bloody hell is going on?”
Before Mary had the chance to reply, the door opened. Her entire body lurched within her skin. But it was merely Director James, who poked her head in and took a look around. The woman’s thin face grew pinched, and her words came out clipped and cold. “A word, if you please, Wilde.”
“I am conducting a meeting, James.”
“I realize, and if it weren’t urgent, I would not have interrupted.” Her dark brows rose as if to add, “now would I?”
Wilde sighed. “My apologies.” He glanced at Mary. “Give us a moment, Mistress Chase.”
“Of course.” On wooden limbs she rose and passed Director James, aware of the woman’s cool eyes upon her.
“And if Master Talent decides to grace us with his presence,” called Wilde as she left, “do let us know.”
It would be the very first thing on her mind, Mary thought bitterly. Once out in the dim stone corridor, she paused and released a sigh. “Bloody hell.”
The end of the hall opened to the common rooms. The chatter of her coworkers echoed along the walls, a happy sound that somehow managed to depress her. Not wanting to meet another person, she moved toward the small alcove just ahead, where Wilde liked to make delinquent regulators wait before he served punishment.