Wicked Gentlemen

Chapter One Night

The night hung in tatters. Gas streetlamps chewed at the darkness. Candles cast dull halos through the dirty windows of the tenements across the street. Heavy purple clouds pumped up from smoke stacks and patterned the sky like ugly patches on a black velvet curtain. A few fireflies blinked from what corners of blackness remained.

A pair of them invaded the darkness of my rooms. I watched them flicker, darting through their insectile courtship. They swooped past my face, circled, and then alighted inside the fold of my shirtsleeve.

They crept close to one another, brilliant desire flashing through their tiny bodies. Their antennae touched and quivered. The female firefly reached out and stroked the male. He rushed into her embrace. Holding him close, she crushed her powerful mandibles through his head. Their flickering bodies blinked in perfect unison as she devoured him.

Some romances end more badly than others.

I had to admire the firefly for her neatness. She ate every scrap of evidence and then lounged on my sleeve with an innocent ease that could have fooled an Inquisitor. At last, I flicked her off my arm and rolled up my sleeve. I had my own ruinous affair to cultivate.

Hundreds of small scars cut across the thin muscles of my bare arm. They wound up from my wrists, marking inch after inch of my body with mechanical precision. The scar tissue was as pale as the rest of my skin, but shinier and slightly sunken, like delicate embossing. The scars had faded enough over the years that, given enough darkness or drink, a man might not notice the holy verses carved into my body.

Only the flesh on the inside of my elbow stood out. The white skin and underlying blue veins were buried under a patchwork of bruises and red needle marks. The deep shadows of night could not disguise my ugliness, but beauty was hardly the point. I wanted to be undone, swallowed whole and dissipated into a thoughtless existence. I did not long to be lost in God or Glory; I just wished to be lost.

It hurt when I pushed the needle in through a half-healed scab. But the pain was momentary and it hurt less than going without the ophorium. A feeling like warmth and honey gushed through me. It spilled through my veins, flooded the black chambers of my heart, and slowly burned me away from the inside out. My arms drooped down against the armrests of my chair. The syringe and needle fell to the floor, and I closed my eyes.

For a moment I felt so warm and sweet that I could have been a different person.

I opened my eyes and watched the sky swirling outside my window. Violet ribbons and indigo wind tinted the darkness. Tiny bats swept between black chimneys. Heavy odors of magnolia and rose mingled with the scent of raw sausages. The smell reminded me of the Gold Street whores and those thick perfumes they poured over their sour bodies.

I waited to see what this summer night would bring me.

More often than not, I waited in vain. Still, there were those rare evenings when men came to me. Each had his own kind of desperation. Each had a reason for wanting to draw close to a devil from Hells Below. Some were sweet and sincere; others just couldn't do any worse. It made no difference to me, so long as they could pay.

I wasn't surprised when there was a knock at my door. I drifted from my chair and walked through the room as if I were wading through deep water. A second, far sharper knock followed the first. I didn't hurry. I took in a deep breath, drawing in the scent of my visitor. The smells of birch soap, leather, embalming fluid, and gun oil rushed into my mouth. I paused at the door. The scents entwined but never resolved into a single perfume. After the third knock, I opened the door. Bright light poured in from the hall. I stepped back to evade the sudden illumination. Two men stood in the doorway.

The Inquisition captain caught my attention at once. Just his uniform sent a skittering rush of panic through my languid muscles. A deep desire to slam the door and bolt it shut swept through me. But even when I was drugged to a stupor, my contrary nature arose. I looked the captain over as if he were a mere curiosity. He was a lean man. His black uniform made him seem even more compressed and hard. He wore gloves, as if he did not wish to leave even a fingerprint to attest to where he might have been. His hair was hidden under his cap.

Two silver eyes stared forward from either side of his high black collar, silver emblems of the House of Inquisition. Their harsh metallic gaze burned with reflected light.

The captain's companion was also dressed in the color of his occupation. He wore a white physician's robe and looked nervous. His bare hands clenched together as if offering each other protection from my presence. A gold band gleamed from around one of his fingers—a wedding ring. There was something almost charming about the physician's discomfort. He had the perfect features and strong body of a man who was born with natural beauty. His nervousness made him seem easier to approach; easier to entrap. It made me feel suddenly stronger. If this man had some reason to fear me, then I still had some power, regardless of the Inquisition captain's presence.

"You are Mr. Belimai Sykes?" The captain, in his armor of black cloth and silver emblems, spoke first. He read my name from a tattered business card. The card was almost translucent from age. An edge of the paper cracked off and fluttered to the floor. It looked like a fleck of gold leaf.

I could hardly recall when I had ordered those cards. Had I truly believed that I could slip into good society with nothing more than seventy business cards, a bottle of nail bleach, and a cotton suit? I still had that suit in a drawer in my bedroom. I had been glad to forget which drawer.

I wondered where the captain had come across the card and how long he had been holding it. He carefully placed the card back into a thin silver case and slipped it into his breast pocket. He waited for my response.

"Yes, I'm Belimai Sykes," I said at last. "And you are?"

"William Harper, captain in the Brighton Inquisition." He turned to the physician. "This is my brother in-law, Dr. Edward Talbott."

"How do you do." Dr.Talbott extended his hand. There was a slight alarm in his eyes as he did so. The reflexes of his good breeding had suddenly betrayed him, forcing him to present the bare flesh of his open hand to me.

Dr. Talbott didn't meet my gaze. Perhaps this was the first time that he had come face to face with a living descendant of a demon. Doubtless he had seen amputated limbs and withered cadavers of my kind on his dissection tables. Dr. Talbott had probably even held a Prodigal's tiny black heart in his hands, but a living specimen was a different kind of creature. Clearly, my black nails and dead pallor did not alarm him as much as my hot breath and attentive gaze.

I smiled at Dr. Talbott. His nervousness made me want to come closer. My ancestors once entrapped the souls of men as blonde and succulent as this one.

"Won't you come in?" I asked.

"Yes, of course. Thank you." The physician lowered his hand and stepped into my rooms.

The Inquisition captain paused a moment and then followed his brother in-law inside. I closed the door behind the two of them, locking out the intrusive light of the hall lamps. The two men stood in the darkness of my room. I walked back to my favorite chair and watched the two of them, knowing they couldn't see me well.

"So, what can I do for you gentlemen?" I asked.

"My wife—" Dr. Talbott began, but the captain cut him off.

"I would like your word as to the confidence of this matter." The captain had, of course, dealt with Prodigals before. He knew how to proceed. There was an ancient history of bargains between our two races, and an even longer history of deceptions. Times had changed, but the etiquette remained.

"I have to know what you want me to do before I can swear to do it," I replied.

"We need you to look into a matter for us," the captain replied.

"Just investigation?" It had been a long time since anyone had offered me that kind of work. Years.

I wondered why these two men chose me and how they had found my card. My natural fear of anything linked to the Inquisition weakly roused itself but then was lost a moment later under the pulse of curiosity and ophorium.

"All right." I agreed just to hear what they might say. "You have my word that I will only reveal what I discover to you. So long as I am in your hire."

"I also want your word that you will take no actions without first receiving approval." Captain Harper took a step toward me, but only one.

At this I paused, not because he asked for something odd, but because of what it suggested. He had reason to think that I would take some action. That alone caught my interest. My heart began to beat a little more quickly, a little more deeply. My curiosity opened up like a hungry mouth.

"You have my oath on my name and blood that all I do will be with your consent," I told them, "so long as you agree to the terms of my payment."

"Those listed on your card?" Captain Harper asked.

"Yes." I might have been idealistic when I was younger, but even then I had not offered myself cheaply.

"We agree," Dr. Talbott said. He clearly did not care about money. I guessed that he was the wealthier of the two men. There was something about the scent of his cologne and the fine weave of his suit that assured me that Dr. Talbott could afford my services. The delicate flush of his skin and intensity of his voice hinted that even if he had not had money, Dr. Talbott would have paid me in other ways. I liked that sense of sacrifice and desperation in a client.

"Very well," said the captain. He dropped three gold coins onto the tabletop. It was a small gesture, but binding. Captain Harper did not trust me, which was just as well. I am not a good person. I am naturally inclined to lie. Even my mother had thought so. It was wise of the captain to put his trust in the value of his gold and not in my good faith. Still, I resented him for such insight into my character.

"Come, sit down, and tell me what I can do for the two of you," I said.

They would be clumsy in the dark, but I didn't light a lamp. It was my petty revenge for the hundreds of times bright lights and sunshine had blinded me as I struggled through an appointment in some respectable office.

Dr. Talbott stumbled down onto my old green couch. Captain Harper seated himself in my oak chair. He navigated the room with irritating ease. He must have memorized the furniture arrangement while the light from the hall had illuminated the room. I suppressed my alarm at how observant the man seemed to be.

"A day ago," Dr. Talbott said, "my wife was abducted."

"Certainly the Inquisition is well suited to pursue any criminal matter," I began.

"I would rather not start an official investigation," Captain Harper said. "It is a matter of some delicacy."

"I see." I leaned back in my seat. "If you want my help, it would be best if you were honest with me, even if it does involve a crime." I addressed Dr. Talbott. I liked looking at his wide eyes as he gazed into the shadows, not knowing exactly where I was.

"It's nothing like that." Dr. Talbott clenched his hands together. "No one has done anything wrong. It's just that we want to protect Joan. If anyone were to become aware of her involvements, it could ruin her."

"Involvements?" I prompted.

"Yes." The captain sighed. I could tell from his tone that he disliked revealing information. "My sister has always been inclined toward suffrage for both women and Prodigals. Before she married, Joan was a member of the Good Commons Advocacy Association. She wrote pamphlets and flyers—nothing of any importance. She left the group five years ago, but she remained in contact with one of the members."

"I see," I said.

"It's quite dark in here, isn't it?" Dr. Talbott said suddenly.

I shrugged, though I doubted that either man could see me well enough to tell. The darkness made me feel so much more powerful than either of them, but I knew I shouldn't add to the physician's discomfort. Not if I wanted him to speak openly to me.

I moved silently from my chair and went to the flint lamp beside Dr. Talbott. He gazed blindly in the direction of my empty seat. With a quick snap of my black nail, I scraped the flint. A tiny spark skipped up into the chamber of the lamp, and the wick burst into flames. Dr. Talbott was almost jolted off the couch.

Captain Harper simply watched me. The pupils of his eyes were still adjusting to the burst of light, so I doubted that he had been able to make out my form in the dark. Somehow he had known where I was. He must have been listening intently. I thought that instead of two eyes emblazoned upon his collar, perhaps Captain Harper should have had an ear. I smiled at the thought.

"You quite startled me." Dr. Talbott laughed nervously.

"I'm sorry, I thought that you'd be more comfortable if there were a little more light." I returned to my seat.

"Oh. Well, thank you. This is better actually." Dr. Talbott glanced around the room. "This is an interesting residence you have. Quite a few books. Do you have a particular area of study?"

Clearly, he hadn't expected that a Prodigal's rooms would contain the same pathetic souvenirs of a life spent in restless solitude that any natural man's might. My shelves overflowed with sheaves of drawing papers, newspaper clippings, broken quills, and stacks of books.

"None at all." I disliked the turn the conversation had taken. "Perhaps you could describe the circumstances of your wife's abduction."

For a moment, Dr. Talbott looked overwhelmed by sorrow. I could taste it. He wanted to talk about anything else.

Dr. Talbott gazed down at his hands mutely. Captain Harper took over.

"Yesterday, Joan and Edward arrived at the Church Banks just a little past two. They went in and set up an investment fund." From Captain Harper's cold tone I would never have thought that he knew either of the people he mentioned. "An acolyte at the Bank recalled that they left the premises less than an hour later. When they reached their carriage, they discovered that someone had used a knife to pry open the door. Joan's silk vanity purse had been stolen. Edward then decided to send Joan home while he walked to the nearest Inquisition House and reported the break in—"

"Mrs. Talbott rode home in the carriage that had been broken into?" I asked.

"Yes," Dr. Talbott said softly. "She insisted that she go immediately and that I report the incident. I was worried about the latch of the door being broken, so I locked it from the outside. Joan had the spare key with her. I thought that she would be fine..." Talbott trailed off and closed his eyes miserably.

Captain Harper leaned forward and patted the other man's shoulder. The gesture did not look quite natural. It seemed like something Captain Harper had seen once in a play and stiffly emulated.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Talbott said. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter. "When I returned home, Thomas, our driver, met me at the gate. He told me that Joan hadn't responded when he called to her. He and the groom, Rollins, thought that she must have fallen ill. They pried the door off, but Joan wasn't inside. She had just vanished from inside the locked carriage."

"Did the driver stop anywhere along the way?" I asked.

"No." Dr. Talbott shook his head. "He took her straight home. It was only a few minutes ride. Our house is just across St. Christopher's Park from the Church Banks. Fifteen minutes at the most."

"Have you received a ransom notice?" I asked. A giddy interest bubbled through me.

"No," Dr. Talbott said. "All we have are the letters from Mr. Roffcale."

"Mr. Roffcale?" The name sounded like a Prodigal's. "He would be the member of Good Commons that your wife kept in contact with?"

"Yes." Dr. Talbott looked surprised that I would guess as much.

"Mr. Roffcale had been sending Joan letters." Dr. Talbott frowned as he said this. "She said they were nothing, just news about her old friends at Good Commons. I never thought anything of them. But after she disappeared, William and I went through them." He seemed unable to go on.

Captain Harper again took up where Talbott left off. "The letters could be seen as incriminating. We discovered warnings that she might be abducted in transport. Another letter described tortures inflicted upon women in graphic detail. Roffcale wanted Joan to return to Good Commons. He claimed that they would protect her."

Harper stood and opened his long black coat. I caught sight of the white priest's collar at his throat as well as the pistol holstered beneath his left arm.

That pairing fit the Inquisition perfectly. The white band proclaimed the captain's authority to judge and redeem the souls of those awash with sin. The pistol embodied the very earthly duty of each man of the Inquisition to enforce and uphold the law. Salvation became far more appealing when damnation was faced at gunpoint.

Captain Harper withdrew a bundle of letters from the inner pocket of his coat and handed them to me. His leather gloves brushed against my fingers, and I felt the slight sting of the holy oils used to cure the hide.

Captain Harper was close enough that I could see his eyes and smell his breath. His eyes were dark brown with deep blue shadows beneath them. His breath was nothing but tobacco smoke and coffee. I guessed that he had not eaten recently, nor had he slept.

"These are the letters." Captain Harper stepped back from me before I could catch a deeper impression of him.

"Do you have any idea where Mr. Roffcale might be now?" I turned the bundle of letters over, checking the postmarks and return addresses. All of the letters came from Hells Below.

"He's in custody at the Brighton Inquisition House," Captain Harper said.

I frowned at the thought. It was an unpleasant place to be for anyone, but the worst tortures were reserved for Prodigals. The prayer engines were a particular horror. The scars on my chest and arms burned from just the memory.

"I'm not sure what you could need me for, then. If he's in your power already, I'm sure you'll be able to extract all the information you'd like to have."

"Right now, I'm just holding him. If I have him taken in for a confession, then everything he says goes down in the confessor's records. I would rather not have his name mixed with Joan's if it can be helped," Captain Harper said.

"If it can't be helped?" I asked.

"We will do anything that is required to see that Joan is returned unharmed." Dr. Talbott's low voice trembled with conviction.

Captain Harper gazed out the open window behind me. He studied the empty blackness for several moments and then turned his attention back to me.

"All we want is for you to go in and talk with Roffcale. He's more likely to relax with one of his own. Hopefully, he'll let something slip to you that he wouldn't tell me."

"You're paying quite a bit, just to have me chat a man up," I replied.

"I'm sure I can find more for you to do if that isn't enough," the captain replied.

I glanced up at him. I had no doubt that there was more he would have me do. I glanced out the window. Pairs of fireflies flashed and chased each other across the darkness.

"I suppose that you'll want me to go to the Inquisition House to speak to this Roffcale?" I knew that would be the case but still asked, hoping that somehow I'd be wrong.

"Tonight would be best." Captain Harper buttoned up his coat.

"Yes, I suppose it would," I said.

"Thank you so much." Dr. Talbott stood quickly.

I nodded and picked my coat up off the back of my chair. As I pulled it on, I remembered my fallen hypodermic. I glanced down quickly, wondering if the captain might have caught sight of it. Fortunately, it had rolled under my chair. The only thing on the floor that the captain might have seen was a single, tattered insect wing.

Chapter Two Silver

Dr. Talbott had a patient who needed his attention and so parted company with Captain Harper and me at Baker Station. Captain Harper and I rode the carriage in silence to the Brighton House of Inquisition.

The big stone building was clean and furiously lit. The doors separating the long halls were etched with blazing silver eyes. Pairs of eyes glared from the walls and stared down from the ceiling. Lime lamps were lit inside them so that the pupils shone like searchlights. Every reflective surface caught the light and ignited to white fire. I flinched from the searing illumination but couldn't find a dim corner or dark shadow. Silver light slashed through my thin eyelids. I held my hand up to shade my eyes. From beneath the shadow of my hand, I stole glances around.

The bare intensity of the light burned the color out of everything. Beside me, Captain Harper's black form looked like a moth-gray shadow. His face was like a ghost's: so white that I could hardly distinguish one feature from another. Only the deep shadow that his cap cast over his eyes remained. It lay over his features like a velvet mask.

"The silver must be burning you quite a bit now," he said as we walked through another set of doors. His tone was neither pleased nor sorry. He said it as if it was simply something to talk about as we walked.

"Yes," I replied. "This particular House seems very well-designed to that purpose."

"The light makes it easier to control Prodigal offenders. Turn right here. There's only a little farther to go." He turned and I dimly stumbled after him. I could imagine the power Captain Harper felt, having me so completely helpless. I decided that no matter what we discovered from Roffcale, I would make it my business to take the captain with me to Hells Below. I would find some reason that we would need to descend into that wet blackness and see how the man fared out of his element.

Murky, gray tears filled my eyes. The light stung and seared every inch of my uncovered body. The tops of my hands turned pink. This was not the first time I had been in a House of Inquisition, and this was far from the worst pain I had endured in such a place. This was only the malevolent gaze. It was a look that could sear and blind, but alone, it could not kill.

Death came by slow degrees on the hard metal tables of the Confessional rooms. It was done with simple questions and endless patience. Unlike the depictions in protest flyers, the Houses of Inquisition did not flow with rivers of blood. The walls were not stained with gore or hung with rusted hooks. The Houses were holy places. They were quiet, clean, and bright. Even the Confessional rooms were subdued and calm. The Inquisitors and Confessors never taunted or screamed threats. They asked politely for everything. The silver knives, nails, and prayer engines were merely devices with which they sought absolute truth. All they demanded was complete honesty.

That was the true horror of the Inquisition's inner chambers. It was there in every pair of those unwavering eyes. The Inquisition would expose every inch of you. They discovered every function and flaw of your naked, shaking body. They dug every fear and shame out of its safe darkness. Sweet, private secrets and half-forgotten crimes, even those petty lies of vanity—none of them could be hidden. The Confessors extracted desire and illusion like rotten teeth.

And then perhaps you would die.

Some confessions were easier to make than others.

"Here." Harper stopped. "We just put him in a holding cell."

Captain Harper unlocked a door and we stepped into a cool dimness. The lime lamps in the room had been lowered. Someone had misted the room with rosewater. The humidity eased my burning skin, but the perfume only partially disguised the smell of urine and blood emanating from Roffcale's corpse. Harper stared at the body in shock. I turned away, preferring the blinding lime light to the gutted remains that lay in the shadows.

Chapter Three Red Me

After discovering a handsome young man with his bowels cut out and his genitals sliced like sandwich meat, I had no desire to remain in the Inquisition House. I closed my eyes and waited while Harper reported the murder and checked the visitor ledger for entries. No one unusual had come to see Roffcale before Harper and me. Far down the hall, I heard Harper's muted exchange with an acolyte. I only caught the last few words: "Well, he didn't do it to himself, damn it. Someone had to have gone in to see him."

The smell of Roffcale's mutilated body drifted over me. The fecal reek of spilled intestines and the sharp odor of blood churned under a cloud of rose perfume. Nausea bubbled up through my stomach as acolytes carried buckets of Roffcale's remains past me. Acolytes wrapped larger sections of his body in cloths and carried them out like newborn infants.

"Captain." I caught Harper as he strode back toward the cell. "There doesn't seem to be much sense in my remaining to talk to Mr. Roffcale at this point."

"No." Captain Harper scowled. "Let's get out of here, before you start to blister."

"That would be good."

I followed Captain Harper through the halls and back out into the night.

"Come on." He beckoned me down the street. "I owe you a drink after all of this."

The idea of gin appealed to me. I certainly wasn't going to turn in for a night's sleep with the memory of Roffcale's corpse so fresh in my mind. I followed Captain Harper.

He led the way through the narrow streets and cut across alleys, moving more like a cutpurse than a captain of the Inquisition. I followed him, pleased that we were sinking into an environment that suited me.

The roads were muddy and piled with trash. Puddles of filthy water pooled over the walkways and mixed with the heavy smell of horse shit that permeated the streets. None of the buildings were well-marked. Harper turned to a squat heap of soot-stained bricks and disappeared down a flight of steps. As I descended after him, I noticed a faded painting on the right wall of the stairs. It looked like the head of a growling mastiff. The door at the bottom of the stairs was painted with the same dog. A circle of flames wreathed its neck like a collar.

I followed Captain Harper into the heavy scent of cigar smoke, spilled beer, and sweat. Inside, the breath and bodies of the men packed into the rooms filled the air with hot animal odors. Warm condensation dampened the walls. The rumble of voices rose and dropped through a constant murmur. The men's faces were thick and awkward, like the dried remains of mudslides. They hardly glanced up when Captain Harper came in. I only received one fat splatter of spit hacked at my feet. Captain Harper chose a table in the back.

We sat drinking in silence for some time. The easy collapse into an alcoholic haze made relations between Captain Harper and me simple. It became a matter of proximity. We were there together, but we were not there for each other. We were there for the drinks. It was the same with every other man in the cramped bar. In a way, it was deeply pleasant to share the sense that in this place no one wanted your concern or tactful conversation. It was a lazy community of mutual disinterest and alcohol.

Captain Harper drained a pint of red ale and immediately started on a second. He drooped forward slightly, leaning his forehead on one of his gloved hands while he studied the contents of his glass.

"It would be easy to get out of a carriage if you had the key," he said.

I didn't reply. I wasn't even sure he was talking to me.

I gulped back a shot of blue gin and quickly poured myself another from the bottle.

"If she unlocked the door on the far side, while Edward was locking the other, she could have slipped out before the driver pulled away." Harper turned toward me. At some point he had pulled his cap down even farther over his face. I could only see his mouth.

"But this with Roffcale... " Harper shook his head.

I wasn't sure if it was the third shot of gin or my self-destructive nature, but I was suddenly very interested in getting that damn hat off of Harper's head. I leaned in a little closer.

"I don't want you to tell Edward about Roffcale, all right?" Harper told me.

"No?" I lowered my head so that I could peer in under the brim of Harper's cap. His brown eyes were almost closed.

"I paid you and I made you give me your word. You're in my hire, not his."

"So that's how it is," I said.

"Yes, that's how it is." He sighed, then closed his eyes. For a moment I thought he might pass out, but he pulled himself back upright. "We're going to have to look into some filthy places, and I don't want Edward getting mixed up in it."

"It's your money," I said.

"What are you doing with my hat?" Captain Harper demanded as he felt my fingers slide up and grab hold of it.

"Trying it on," I replied. Then I whipped it off him and slapped it crookedly onto my own head.

"So, do I look like a captain in the Inquisition?"

"Not by half." Captain Harper smiled. His hair was a little longer than I had expected, and lighter in color. "Those black claws of yours would give you away in a breath."

"Not if I had a pair of gloves." I glanced down at Captain Harper's gloved hands.

He laughed at that and then finished his ale in one long drink. I poured myself another shot of gin but didn't drink. I held the shot glass up and watched the way the liquid distorted the image of Captain Harper's face. There was something fascinating about the way it flawed his features. It only took a tiny shift, just a curve of glass, to ruin him.

"So," I said, still watching Captain Harper through the shot glass, "you think your sister just got out of the carriage herself?"

"I thought so, but..." Captain Harper broke off and stared at his gloved hands. "But finding Roffcale like that...I don't know, now."

"Why were you holding Roffcale if you didn't think he abducted your sister?"

"I thought she had run off with him." Captain Harper picked up my gin bottle and turned it slowly in his hands. "They were lovers when they were in Good Commons. Edward never knew about that. I wanted to save him from finding out." Captain Harper shook his head. "I figured that if I took Roffcale in, Joan would show up on her own."

"That doesn't seem to have been the case." I held my full shot glass out to Captain Harper.

Captain Harper stared at the glass in my hand, then took it. They say that blue gin can strip paint. He swallowed it like medicine. Then he poured out another shot and pushed the glass over to me. Briefly, the memory of Roffcale's delicate features and the filthy chasm of his belly came to my mind. I took my shot of gin and shoved the glass back to Captain Harper. He filled it slowly, with deliberate care.

"What was done to him was exactly what he'd written about to Joan. I think he really was trying to warn her." He closed his eyes. "God only knows what's happened to her."

"Drink up," I said.

Captain Harper frowned at the glass. "I don't usually drink the hard stuff, you know."

"It gets easier as you go," I assured him.

"I know," Captain Harper replied. "That's why I don't do it often. It gets too easy."

"I'd be the last man to criticize." I warmed to Captain Harper slightly at the thought that he had spent nights swilling drunk on blue gin.

"I suppose so," he replied.

Captain Harper tossed the shot back. Then he rolled the empty shot glass across the table to me.

"I think I might have gotten the wrong impression of you when we first met." I filled the shot glass.

"Oh?" Captain Harper asked.

"I expected that you'd be stiffer," I said.

Captain Harper smirked at my choice of words.

"Mr. Sykes." Captain Harper leaned in closer to me. I could smell the thick scent of ale on his lips. "Don't be taken in by a priest's collar. We in the Inquisition dance with devils more often than most whores in Hells Below."

"Well, if I ever need a partner, perhaps I should look you up, Captain Harper." I swallowed my shot and placed the glass in Harper's gloved hand. He filled the glass, drank, then poured another and placed it in front of me.

"We're already partners of a kind, aren't we, Mr. Sykes?" he asked.

"Of a kind," I agreed.

"Of a kind," he repeated, as if there were some other meaning in the words.

I matched him and he downed another. Steadily, we made our way through the entire bottle. We gave ourselves up to the act of going on. We drank shot after shot of searing gin. Sinking down into drunkenness, the constant rhythm of passing the glass and drinking became our purpose.

When you drink like that, it isn't for pleasure. It's because your thoughts have become diseases. You do it because it's the only easy cure you can find.

Captain Harper moved slowly and carefully, as if his body had become a mechanism that required all his concentration to navigate through the bar. His eyes were hardly open. He leaned against me and moved with my steps as I steadily lead him out of the dark solace of the bar and up into the city streets. The night was wearing thin. I could feel the golden light of the rising sun streaking the horizon with its heat.

Behind us the bar owner peered out between his doors, pretending that he was locking up. He watched to see what business there could be between a Prodigal like me and a man of the Inquisition.

"You know, Captain," I whispered, "staggering drunk down the street with me can't do much for your reputation."

"Fuck em," Captain Harper slurred softly into my ear, then pulled his cap off of my head.

I let him have it back. His breath brushed against the back of my neck. His lips just touched my skin for a moment as he sagged into me. It had been months since I had taken a lover, even for a night. It had been too long, I realized. I sank back into my temptations. Captain Harper didn't seem to care, and at the moment neither did I. By my nature, I am a creature caught in the grip of my desires. At times they make me unwise, but it has never been in me to deny them.

I led Captain Harper back to my rooms and peeled off his black coat and his priest's collar. Slowly, I worked his gloves off, exposing his long fingers. His nails were as pink and glossy as the insides of a seashell. Each was tipped with a perfect white crescent. I kissed the soft skin of his palm. His stainless body was everything my own would never be. I hungered for that perfection.

I slipped Captain Harper's pistol out of its holster and had all that I wanted of Harper that night. I did not worry over the next morning or the lies we muttered as our bodies twined together. For one evening, the gin had cured us of our thoughts—that was enough.

Chapter Four Old Ink

Roffcale's letters smelled of dried blood and very cheap cologne. I pulled in his scent while my fingertips brushed over the clumsy lines of his reform school script. He was young and passionate. He poured himself into each word with absurd intensity. With every letter he set down, he fell in love and was overwhelmed with rage. His odes to Joan Talbott's beauty were terrible. Roffcale stacked cliche upon cliche until they achieved a staggering tower of artless adoration. Roffcale's miserable poetry acquired poignancy with its absolute conviction. He meant every word.

Roffcale's desperate warnings to Joan were just that: attempts to protect a woman he could not even approach in public. Joan Talbott was from good society and Peter Roffcale was an underage con man with nails as black as any demon's.

I leafed through the pages of his letters, touching the paper where Joan's hands had moved over Roffcale's words.

Roffcale had pressed his palms into the pages to hold them still as he wrote. He had run his fingers under difficult words, checking his spelling. Joan had carefully pulled pages close to hide the contents from anyone else. I felt the faded places where she had run her fingers over his words again and again. Every piece of paper had carried his touch to her. Many of his letters were stained with a pale pink tint where Joan had pressed her lips to his closing signature.

The sweetness of them both made me sick and slightly jealous. I searched ahead to the details that Harper had mentioned. Roffcale was more skilled at writing about murder than he was at love poetry. He was familiar with the sight of beaten corpses of whores and cum beggars. He described the bodies in the same simple way that he might have given directions to a bakery.

Her belly was slashed under the ribs and then down to her crotch. That was a mess. All sliced up and the inside pulled out. Lots of pieces of her were missing. Her guts were all spilled out of her. The bastard who did it rooted through her insides like he was looking for hidden treasure. Rose was the third one and I don't want to see it done again. It was ugly work just looking at it. Come back.

I'm begging now. Please come back.

Roffcale had described the condition in which Harper and I had found his own body quite well. I felt a slight coldness seep up from the page of Roffcale's letter. It had the sharp sting of premonition. Roffcale had feared he would die this way; perhaps he had even known it. I turned back to the first page of the letter.

Roffcale had scrawled a few lines in the margin. I had mistaken them for poetic gibberish at first glance. Now I realized that he had written them in the only empty space there was left after the letter had been finished. The writing was worse than usual.

I had a dream

that I was the fourth one

laying there

with Lily and Rose

all cut apart

Come Now.

It struck me as odd that he would constantly ask her to come to Hells Below. The murders seemed to have been taking place there or close by. Why would he want Joan Talbott to come there for protection when she would have been far safer in her husband's home? If Roffcale knew he could not save his own life, what protection did he think he could offer Joan, I wondered. I frowned and gazed at the lines of old ink.

I'm begging. Please come back.

It hardly sounded like a promise of protection. In fact, it seemed like the opposite. Suddenly, a thought came to me. What if Peter Roffcale had not been offering his protection, but begging for hers? I glanced at the date on the letter. It was quite recent, only a day before Joan Talbott had disappeared. I folded the pages back into a bundle and slid them into their rough pulp envelope. The postmark on the envelope showed that it had gone out the next morning. Joan Talbott would have read it only a few hours before she vanished.

"So?" Harper's voice caught me off guard. I almost jumped, he was so close behind me.

"So, what?" I replied as coldly as I could. I turned back to him slowly.

Harper had located his clothes and dressed. Only his cap was missing. I caught his puzzled glance toward my hat rack. I smiled at that. The night before I had stuffed his cap into one of the spider-infested filing cases under my bed.

Harper's hair tangled around his face like a thorn briar. His eyes were red, rimmed, and bloodshot from the excesses of the evening before. Without a cap shadowing his features, his exhaustion and youth were easy to see. He seemed vulnerable despite the hard black lines of his Inquisitor's coat. That almost made up for him surprising me.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"I think that we need to go to Roffcale's residence at Good Commons." I stood up, grabbed my coat and smoked-glass spectacles, then glanced back at Harper. "Are you hungry?"

"Not right now," he replied.

"Badly hung-over?" Perhaps I sounded a little too pleased, but Harper didn't seem to care. Perhaps taunting was what he expected of my kind, even after a night spent together.

"No." Harper pushed his fingers through his wild hair. "I just haven't had much of an appetite lately."

Of course not. His sister was missing and quite possibly dead. It was no wonder that I had been able to get him so drunk, so easily. He probably hadn't eaten in days.

"It'll only get worse if you don't eat something." I reluctantly found myself picking up my own black wool cap and tossing it to Harper. "We'll stop in at Mig's. They have decent beef pies there."

Harper turned the cap over in his hands and then put it on. It fit about as well as his old one had, though this cap was more scuffed. It smelled lightly of my hair. I wondered if Harper noticed.

"Before we go..." Harper adjusted the cap so that his eyes were once again shadowed.

"Yes?" I was already at the door with one hand wrapped around the knob.

"About last night..." Harper shifted slightly. "I think it would be best if we got it clear between the two of us—"

"I have no intention of telling anyone, if that's what you're worried about." I smiled so that Harper could see my long teeth. "And I don't think you're likely to be bragging about it, so what's left to say?"

"No, I meant between us.. .We were both pretty drunk. I just wanted you to understand that..." Harper paused, unwilling to go on. Steadily, the pause began to spread into a lingering silence. He seemed unable to make himself speak of the night before. It amused, but didn't surprise me.

"You wanted to make it clear that it was just a drunk fuck?" I filled in for him at last.

"I'm not sure those are the words I would have used," Harper replied.

"It was a good tumble, Captain. But rest assured, I haven't fallen madly in love with you. Just forget about it, and let's get on with our business." I turned the knob experimentally, feeling the latch slide free and then slip back. Discussions after sex always ran the chance of turning ugly. Or worse, sentimental. I pulled the door open just a crack.

"I just wanted to make sure we were of the same mind," Harper said at last.

"Well, I've told you what I think. So, are we agreed?" I asked.

"Yes," Harper said.

"Then that's all there is to say about it," I said.

Harper nodded and I opened the door with a sense of relief.

It was pleasant to find another man as willing to let go as myself. Others had lingered in my bed and concerned themselves with the syringes scattered across my desk. They had clung to me as I descended into ruin. Some had attempted to save me. I had been wept on, slapped, and pulled into a dozen chapels by men who had mistaken me for their true love.

None of them had understood that my moments of sweetness were pure ophorium. Everything that they seemed to love about me came from the needles they detested. The man they desired was an illusion, an ugly stone made briefly beautiful by a trick of the light. In their own ways, each of them had fallen as deeply in love with my addiction as I had. None of them had known how absurd they were, begging me to leave behind the drug that was the source of all they loved most about me. My kindness, my calm, even my careless ease. Ophorium made me their perfect lover because it erased the truth of what I was.

When it coursed through my body, I burned free of thought and memory. That radiant absolution was far more consuming than any number of desperate climaxes against another man's sweating flesh.

I doubted that Harper concerned himself with any of this, but at least he didn't care. We descended into the evening with a comfortable distance between us.

Chapter Five Ghosts

The sun sat back against the horizon like a bloated foreman refusing to end the day. It poured its yellow heat across the city streets, baking the horse shit and mud into a steaming soup. Flies, dogs, and filthy children zipped through the hot muck while horse carriages and wagons stirred it into a seeping river. It stank in a way that fans and perfume-soaked kerchiefs couldn't begin to disguise. The radiant sunlight only made things seem worse. It illuminated each fetid detail of day around me. The bare ugliness of everything under the sun repulsed me.

I strode toward the staircase ahead. A massive granite arch rose up over the wide stone steps, which lead down into humid blackness. It was one of the thirteen gateways that lead down into the Prodigal ghetto. The actual gates had been removed, but the engraving in the archway remained: They who were lost shall be found.

I imagined that the men who wrote those words had higher aspirations than most of us who passed beneath them into the city below.

Some optimistic bishop had christened the place Hopetown. Anyone who had ever gone there called it Hells Below. That summed it up well enough.

It might have been beautiful three hundred years ago when the Covenant of Redemption had brought my fallen ancestors up from Damnation. They abandoned their great kingdom of endless darkness in exchange for the promise of Salvation for themselves and their descendants.

The walls of the staircase were adorned with mosaics of the Great Conversion. Ashmedai, Sariel, Satanel. The pride and glory of hell had come in their robes of fire, in their chariots of beaten gold. Some were adorned with jewels, while others wore the polished bones of the angels that had fallen beneath their blades. They had each bowed down before the Silver Cross and submitted to baptism at the hands of the Inquisition.

The brilliant glazes were darkened with lamp smoke and factory grease now, but the images were still discernable. Some-where among the glittering host of demons, one of my own ancestors stood. They all looked fierce and beautiful. I found it difficult to imagine that I could have descended from such creatures.

The blood had certainly thinned.

The carved temples and catacombs that had once been a city of hope had decayed into dank ghetto. Hundreds of tunnels riddled Hells Below now. City sewer pipes and massive gas lines invaded every space and dripped with condensation. The lattice of temple walls had collapsed. Now, vast caverns gaped wide with tenement houses and ore sluices. The children of hell's greatest lords had been bred down into coal miners.

Relegated by law to the confines of the capital city, few Prodigals even attempted to leave Hells Below. They stayed down where they at least had each other for company, as well as the comfort of cavernous darkness. Only the worst of our kind lived in the city above. Criminals, exiles, and addicts. I supposed I fit all three descriptions at one time or another.

"Did you want me to carry this beef pie around for some purpose?" Harper asked.

"I thought you might want to eat it," I replied, though in truth I had just wanted to get rid of it.

"One was more than enough." Harper suddenly turned and rushed back up several of the steps. He stopped in front of a woman who had been working her way up the stairs and handed her the pie. Then he strode back down beside me.

"Well, that takes care of that," he said.

"Was she a Prodigal?" I glanced back quickly at the woman, but the sun from above burned out most of my vision. All I had noticed as she passed me on the steps had been the numerous lace shawls that hung over her back and arms. She moved slowly, as if she were either extremely old or extremely drunk.

"Bright yellow eyes and fingernails blacker than yours," Harper commented. "I couldn't see her ears, but I don't doubt they were pointed. Her teeth sure as hell were. She hissed at me too." He seemed amused by this.

"She probably thought you were handing her poison." I looked meaningfully at the silver eyes of the Inquisition that glinted from either side of Harper's collar.

"Not every man joins the Inquisition just to burn Prodigals. We uphold the law as well," Harper said as we continued down the stairs. "Sooner or later, some of you are bound to figure that out."

"I wouldn't bet my bread money on that." I had to glance away to suppress the flare of anger that rushed through me. I knew quite well how the men of the Inquisition dealt with Prodigals. I had been burned once myself, but that was long past and none of Harper's business.

"We are a surprisingly stubborn bunch," I said.

"So you are." Harper smiled.

We stepped down into the heavy darkness of Hells Below. The warm air hung over us in swathes. The thick flavors of so many Prodigals living so close saturated every breath with a taste like a heavy chemical perfume. The scents rolled into each other, smell-ing by turns of violets, sulfur, urine, and fragrant lamps. It wasn't easy to take in. Each breath was like a long drag from a cigarette. I had forgotten how familiar its taste was.

Harper coughed and had to take several slow breaths before he adjusted to the air.

As we walked, I noticed the skin on his exposed cheeks began to take on a pink flush as though it was sunburned. His eyes seemed irritated also. Harper just pulled his cap a little lower and continued moving as if it was no trouble to him at all. In fact, he seemed as familiar with the place as he had been with the bars of Brighton.

He strode through the narrow streets with the natural ease of a man who had been here before. He took alley shortcuts without glancing up to check a street name or number.

"Do you come here often?" I asked as we trudged down a narrow side road. The gaslight of the streetlamps flickered. Drops of condensed breath, sweat, and steam spattered down on us from the cavern ceiling far above.

"Have I surprised you?" Harper glanced sidelong at me.

"No." I didn't like the smugness of his tone. "I just thought that you would be more acquainted with Brighton than Hells Below."

"I did my first three years of foot patrol down here." Harper stepped onto a walkway of planks. I followed him. Oily liquid lapped up from just below the wooden boards as we walked over them.

"Did you make many Prodigal friends while you were here?" I asked, knowing that he couldn't have.

"Of course not." Harper looked back at me. "Did you ask just to hear me say so?"

"That could very well be the case." I grinned, showing Harper my long white teeth.

"You really are quite unique, aren't you, Mr. Sykes?" he said.

Harper's words satisfied me strangely. If he had complimented my wild black hair or my butter-colored eyes, I would have thought he was mocking me and hated him for it. If he had called me twisted or perverse, I would have secretly thought of jabbing him in the eye. But somehow he had known just the right words to give me a burst of warmth. I glanced ahead to the street number on one of the gray shale houses, deliberately ignoring Harper so that he would not know how his words pleased me.

"That's the one." I pointed to the hulking blue building just ahead of us.

"So it is," Harper replied.

The woman who answered the door looked at Harper intently for several moments before she let us in. She was tall, pale, and waxy. There was a transparency to her skin. The lamplight in the house seemed to glow through her. The shadows she cast were faint.

She walked us down a narrow hall and into a large, window-less waiting room in absolute silence. Her pale yellow dress didn't even rustle as she walked.

The waiting room seemed like it had been nice a long time ago. The chair I sat in rocked on its uneven legs. A dust of incense ash rose up from the upholstered arms. Harper seated himself on the high-backed settee across from me. Its red upholstery was dappled with faded shades of pink and brown. Dozens of mismatched candles covered the heavy wooden table in the middle of the room. Dried spills of wax drooped over the edge of the tabletop and clung to the carved legs.

There was a deeply familiar scent in the air. Something like mulled wine. I had smelled it before, a long time ago. I took a deep breath and held the taste in my mouth. It was smoky and warm. Tiny tongues of scent and heat caressed the insides if my mouth. It tasted like demonic conjuring. Uneasiness seeped through my muscles.

The woman who had shown us in pulled the door closed. She flipped the lock and stared at Harper, her waxen features melting into an expression of rage.

"So, Captain, have you brought this man in exchange for Roffcale?" She waved her hand at me. "Did you think that's all it would take for you to walk back in here and get out alive?"

"This is Belimai Sykes." Harper's eyes were once again hidden. His mouth was as expressionless as a gash. "He's a private consultant whom I have hired to investigate the circumstances of Joan's disappearance."

"And what about Peter, you bastard?" She raised her thin white hands. Her black nails glittered in the lamplight like chips of flint. "You said you'd have him back by morning. You said he'd be fine."

"I'm sorry about Roffcale, Mica." Harper's voice was flat, the same way it had been when he had first hired me. "There's an internal inquiry going on right now. We'll find out what happened and the guilty party will be punished."

"What? Is that another of your promises, Captain?" she snapped.

"I can't give you more than my word, Mica." Harper leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He steepled his gloved fingers beneath his mouth. "You know as well as I do that I didn't kill Roffcale."

"How do I know that?" Mica demanded.

"I wouldn't be here if I had." Harper let out a tired sigh. "Mica, someone got to Roffcale in prison, and the same person took Joan. I have to find out who it was. I need help to do that."

"I should tear you to pieces," Mica said.

"Help us find Roffcale's murderer," Harper said quietly. "Then you can rip me into as many shreds as you like."

"I just might, Harper." Mica glared at him, then glanced away. "So, what do you want? More of our people to sacrifice for your sister's sake?"

Harper didn't respond to the accusation. He simply answered her first question as if she hadn't said anything else.

"I just need to talk to Nick," Harper said.

"You honestly think he'll do anything for you, after this?" Mica asked.

"I'm the lesser of two evils. If he doesn't help me, then he ensures that these killings go on."

"You're a heartless bastard, Harper."

Harper said nothing. At last Mica turned the lock and opened the door.

"I'll get him." She left the room.

"You take me to the nicest places," I whispered to Harper.

"You're the one who decided we should come here." Harper leaned back into the padding of the settee.

"You might have mentioned that all the members of Good Commons were going to want to kill you before we walked in."

"What's life without a few surprises?" Harper flashed his hand up at me. "Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question."

"Are you still drunk from last night?" I asked.

"No." Harper smiled. "Having my life threatened always makes me a little giddy."

"Giddy?"

"I have to find my pleasures where I can."

"I'd be hesitant to call that exchange with Mica pleasant." I scraped at a droplet of wax on the arm of my chair.

"You ought to allow a man to retain his conceits, Mr. Sykes."

The slight smile on Harper's lips sank back to a flat line. "It wasn't pleasant. It shouldn't have been. I gave her my word that Roffcale would be safe in my care... He should have been safe."

"Yes, he should have been."

Both Harper and I looked up at the man who stepped through the doorway. I stared at him for several moments longer than his sudden entry deserved. It was strange to be startled, not by his silent appearance, but by the familiarity of his face and voice. He, too, seemed taken off guard by the sight of me.

I should have known from the moment I tasted the air in the room. The scent of conjuring melted with the musk of his sweat and the camphor oil he rubbed into his skin to give it a golden sheen. It was the singular essence of Nickolas Sariel.

He had hardly changed, despite the years. His eyes were still the color of opium poppies. His hair was like fire, winding through streaks of smoky red, yellow, and white. His black nails had grown longer, but they still gleamed with the same carefully filed edges.

I saw him take in a quick breath of the air as he stared at me. He would have expected to smell fresh ink and the must of old books lingering on me. But I was no longer the man he had known, and the scents of my body had become far more bitter.

"Belimai?" He whispered my name as he came closer.

There was an instant when I wanted to say yes. But a stinging pain flared through the prayers engraved into my skin.

"No." I glanced down at the wax spattered arm of my chair. "I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone else. I'm sorry."

That was all I had to say. Sariel would not allow himself to ask a second time. He immediately turned to Harper.

"So, Captain, Mica tells me you want my help."

Harper paused for a moment, looking between Sariel and myself. We said nothing. Harper shook his head and pressed on.

"I need you to reach Joan if you can."

"Are you asking me to use my powers as the presiding officer of Good Commons? Or were you thinking of something less in keeping with the law?" Sariel crossed his arms over his chest. "Because if it's the latter, I want you to understand that the price runs very high. I won't work for free, not for you."

"You're not the first devil I've dealt with." Harper gestured to me but Sariel didn't look. "I'm aware of the going rates." Harper reached into his jacket and dropped several gold coins into Sariel's hand.

I couldn't help but wonder where Harper was coming up with all the money. Perhaps Talbott was financing him. That, or he was bankrupting himself. It bothered me that I didn't know his nature well enough to decide if he would use another man's money or only his own.

Sariel studied the coins in his hand, then shook his head. "I was thinking of a little more, Captain Harper."

Harper handed Sariel more fistfuls of coins. Harper went through every one of the pockets of his coat and even gave Sariel his watch and chain. He did it in a matter of a fact manner. If there was any expression on his face, it might have been that look of slight amusement that seemed to pass over his lips at the strangest times.

"That's all I have," Harper said at last. "If you want more, you'll have to wait until I'm paid at the end of the month."

"All I wanted was everything you had." Sariel piled the coins on the table without even counting them. I counted them. He had taken almost ten times what Harper had paid me.

"I'll hold the summons here." Sariel pushed the door shut.

He walked around the table twice, moving the candles until they formed a series of circles within each other. He whispered softly to himself as he walked. I recognized some of the words from the curses he used to spit out behind teachers' backs at St. Augustine's reform school.

"...Ashmedai, your flame." He swept his hands over the outer ring of candles and the wicks lit up. The flames skipped like stones across water, lighting circle after circle of candles. "Sariel, father of my bloodline, your power..." Sariel went on.

The flames of the candles began to burst up into geysers of fire. Sariel continued circling. His eyes were open but not focused.

He whispered words so quickly that I could hardly catch more than hisses of his breath. Each time Sariel let out another string of incantations, the flames surged up, forming a rolling mass of blazing fire.

I couldn't help but glance at Harper. He sat still, watching Sariel with his fingers steepled and pressed against his lips.

"Lucifer, light bearer, lord of wisdom." Sariel came to a stop only a few steps in front of me. He raised his arms, then slashed the long talons of his left hand across the open palm of his right hand. A deep furrow of blood gushed up. Sariel thrust his bleeding palm into the fire. A scent of searing camphor choked the air.

"Show me this woman," he hissed as the tongue of fire surged up over his hand. "My will is greater than even your own." Sariel grasped a single flame and lifted it up above the rest.

"Show me," he commanded.

Suddenly the candles dimmed to mere sparks. The single flame in Sariel's hand leapt up to a blinding white heat. It twisted and rolled, growing larger and brighter. Slowly it formed the soft curves of a woman. Smoke rolled and wound over her, adding shadows and dark hollows to her luminous flesh. She floated above Sariel's outstretched arm, gazing out at the empty corner of the room.

"Joan." Harper came to his feet and stepped up to the edge of the table.

As the woman turned I studied her face. She was beautiful. Her dark eyes were wide and luminous. Her black hair had been pulled down and hung in long curls around her torn clothes. Her mouth moved, but only a curl of white smoke poured out. She looked frightened.

"Is she alive?" Harper demanded.

Sariel said nothing. His eyes were clenched shut as he concentrated. Tremors of strain passed through his arm. Slowly he nodded his head in answer to Harper.

"Where is she?" Harper asked.

"There's a man...a Prodigal..." Sariel pushed the words out between tight gasps of air. "He's dead...like the others...There's blood and broken glass everywhere...Someone else..."

Suddenly I felt the air change. An acrid bitter scent, like scorched limes, burst through the air. I knew the smell. It was demonic fury. At the same moment a ripple of darkness passed through the image of Harper's sister. Something black burst from inside her and exploded outward.

I lunged forward, throwing my body over Sariel's. He crumpled under me as I felt dozens of tiny blades slash through the back of my coat and shirt. The razor edges knocked me forward as they drove deep through my coat and skin. I stumbled down to my knees. I smelled my own flesh searing. A breathless shout of agony escaped me. Fires burst up along the edges of my torn coat.

Then suddenly a stinging wetness splashed across my back. The horrific burning stopped. I gasped for a breath and tasted something metallic. Liquid poured down my back, mixing with my blood. In a circle around me, glittering black slivers fizzed and melted into the pool of liquid.

"Are you all right?" Harper knelt down beside me.

"What did you do?" I asked, still too shocked to guess. From the stinging and the metallic smell, I should have known.

"Silver-water," Harper said. "I always carry a few vials with me, in case things get ugly. I'm sorry if it stung you, but I thought that would be better than what seemed to be happening."

"Yes, I think so," I said.

Beneath me, Sariel opened his eyes and swallowed slowly. He coughed and I moved aside so he could sit up. He pulled himself up-right and then leaned back against the wall. For several minutes he simply stared up at the ceiling and took in slow steady breaths.

"I believe," Sariel said at last, "that we have come to the end of this line of questioning."

"What about Joan?" Harper asked.

"If you had any sense at all, you'd let her go." Sariel clenched his burned, bleeding hand to his chest. "Didn't you see what just happened?"

"But she is alive," Harper demanded.

"Yes, for what that's worth. You have no idea of the kind of fury that gives rise to an attack like that one," Sariel said.

"Do you know where she is?" Harper pressed.

"No." Sariel shook his head. "But if you plan on pursuing this any further, I'd ask that you leave me out of the matter. I think that more than enough Prodigals have died for you and your sister."

Harper frowned. Then he stood and straightened his coat.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Sariel," he said. Harper walked to the door and then glanced back at me.

I could hardly think for the biting pain that lanced across my back. I started to stand but Sariel caught my hand. His touch caught my attention, for a moment overwhelming even my pain. His fingers were warm and gentle. I should have found comfort in that, but I couldn't.

"I forgave you years ago," he whispered.

"I know." I stood. "That makes it all the worse, really."

Sariel turned away from me. He wouldn't beg. I wouldn't have wanted him to.

I left with Harper.

Chapter Six Ophorium

The deep cuts in my back and the bubbling corrosion of the silver-water pooled into a single unyielding pain. I could not disentangle them. I could not separate the sharp stings of my sliced skin from the memories of older wounds. Each aspect of my pain touched another and bled into it until they formed a seamless fabric that enfolded me.

I didn't accept Harper's offer to clean me up. I turned him away at my door and stumbled up the stairs to my rooms in a daze. On the walk back from Hells Below, I had hardly seen or heard Harper. I recalled hazily that he had wiped away the foaming mass of blood that dribbled down my back. The rest of the world was lost to me.

My own hurt wound around me, weaving past into present. The jagged memories that I had carefully cut out of my thoughts suddenly poured their fury into my torn flesh. Inside my rooms I dropped to my knees and pressed my face hard into the cool wood of the floor. My muscles were shaking too much to let me stand, but I couldn't bear to press my back into any of my chairs or pillows. I knelt on the floor as time and memories bled into each other.

My suffering at the hands of the Inquisition had been far worse than this. But then, I had not known it could break me. I had believed in my own courage and my will. I had thought I was a strong man, incapable of betrayal. Then the prayer engines had begun their steady slicing into my flesh. Silver-water had been ignited in the bleeding furrows, searing each holy letter into my skin. Thousands of tiny white scars still traced the flesh of my arms, back, chest, and groin. They were marks of my cowardice, impressed into me like delicate watermarks.

I had thought that I was stronger than pain. Even stretched on the table, bleeding and burning, I had believed that I would never utter Sariel's name. But I had not known myself. I had not understood the Inquisition either, but they had certainly known me. They dealt in my kind. Thousands of us had come through their doors and been worked through like bank sums. I was no new mystery to the Inquisition; they simply slipped me into their mechanisms and opened me up like an oyster.

The prayer engines' needles had not always been packed with silver-water. Between days of burning agony they had given me sweet stinging pleasure. They had traced my body with rushes of ophorium and let me learn how deeply I loved its respite. In the end they hadn't needed to threaten me with pain; they had simply withheld my pleasure. I had given them Sariel's name.

Now I knelt on the floor and all I could think of were those long hypodermics sliding deep into my veins. Drops of blood wound down my ribs and spattered the floorboards. My back pulsed with the ache of Harper's silver-water and the remembered pain of those months under the prayer engines.

I hated it. I wanted away from every sensation of my body and every memory in my head. I wanted to escape, to somehow slip back into the furthest recesses of the past and forget every detail of myself. Slowly, I crawled to the desk where my needles lay waiting for me.

Chapter Seven Fire

Two hours later, the night blossomed. The sky unfolded in rich waves of purple and blue velvet. Breezes traced pale violet ribbons through the darkness. Tiny buds of glittering stars burst into brilliant illuminations.

I pushed my window open and leaned out. The moon spread its light across my face and bare chest. Wind rolled up through my hair and stroked my skin. When I had been a child, every night had seemed as lush and wondrous as this.

I glanced back into my room. The remains of my bloodstained shirt lay on the floor. My used hypodermic floated in an old cup of water along with a wilting dahlia. The choice between the night air and my filthy room was simple.

I shifted sideways and pulled my legs out so that I sat on the edge of my windowsill. I glanced down at the empty street below. Even the alley cats seemed to have gone to sleep.

Taking a deep breath, I threw myself out into the open air. Wind whipped over my bare skin and through my hair as I plunged down-ward. I smelled the filth of the ground below wafting up toward my face. A rush of terror and exhilaration shot through me.

With a twist of my body I veered up, turning suddenly from the mucky street and arching up into the vast sky. Giddy pleasure shot through my body. I swept up over a factory roof and caught hold of one of the tin chimneys. My momentum whipped me around it twice. When I let go, I went spinning off like a top.

I was well out over the butcher district before my momentum ebbed and I began to drift on the gentle night winds. For a while I rolled onto my back and stared up at the stars and moon. They seemed close enough for me to reach out and scratch my initials into their shining surfaces.

When I had been very young, I had snuck up from Hells Below to drift up into the open night. I had thought that it was my kingdom. For a few weeks I had thought that perhaps I was the secret child of an angel. I had floated up into the frigid mists of clouds and imagined that the moon, shining above me, was my promised halo.

When my mother noticed my frostbitten ears, she knew exactly where I had been. She sewed lead-shot into my nightshirt and told me that the heavens were not for my kind. We Prodigals were cast from hot molten fires, far below the realms of Man. The fact that a few of us could soar into the frigid heavens was simply a joke that God played upon us, tempting us to our deaths. But I had not been able resist the skies.

A low wind pulled me along past the window of a town-house. I peered into a dim room. There were two little white beds, and I could make out the sleeping faces of the children tucked into them. I floated past the window and up to the roof. Beneath me, the family dog barked wildly. A man shouted at the animal and then slammed his window shut.

Once I was up on the roof, I took another dive, feeding the rush of my fear into a surge of flight. I zipped out across the White River and caught the updrafts over the water. I spread out my arms and hung above the city, just watching its dark mass. The factory district looked like an ugly rash that had spilled up from the insides of the earth. A sickly smell drifted off of it.

But above the White River, the stars cast glittering reflections over the rolling waters. Moored fishing boats silently swayed with the currents. I drifted, riding the wind up toward the Crown Tower Bridge. I felt a strange twinge as I drew closer to the massive structure. Across the west side of that bridge, Joan Talbott had been abducted.

I had no feeling for her. My only contact with her had come through the men around her. I had read Peter Roffcale's letters, listened to Edward Talbott's despair, and joined Harper in his search for her. I only felt her presence in the ruined wake of her disappearance. Roffcale had died. Edward Talbott had been willing to spend every coin he had to see her returned. Harper had hardly eaten or slept. I wondered how she could have inspired such love. What kind of creature was she?

I remembered her luminous eyes and long silken hair. Even conjured from wisps of smoke, she had been strikingly beautiful. I supposed that it would only be natural for men to adore such a woman.

I felt a burst of disdain and envy. I couldn't help but think that her life must have been pleasant and easy. Recalling Peter Roffcale's gutted corpse, I supposed Joan's life wasn't all that pleasant for her now, if she were still alive. It was petty of me, but the thought made me feel better.

Across the west side of the city, cathedral towers and ornate houses dominated the view. Suddenly I caught a flash from one of the city watchtowers. A searchlight ignited. A moment later, the piercing light swept across the cityscape. I dived quickly down, pressing my body against the supports of the Crown Tower Bridge. The last thing I needed was to end up netted by the Inquisition.

The spotlight swept past me and shot out over St. Christopher's Park. Two more lights split the night and turned to the park also. The lights swung through each other and across the air, searching. I kicked off the iron beams and glided down to the west end of the bridge. I ducked under the eaves of a house when a light slashed through the darkness near me. I knew I should drop back to the ground and just walk home.

Instead, I floated even closer in toward St. Christopher's. I couldn't help it. I wanted to know what other Prodigal had dared to take to the wind. Only a few Prodigals could fly. We were rare and growing more so with each generation. Sariel had been the only other Prodigal I had known who could soar into the dark sky. We had flown out of joy and instinct, believing that we were too high for any hand to reach. Neither of us had known how to evade the searchlights or nets. We had both ended up in St. Augustine's School for the Reform of Prodigal Youths.

One of the searchlights swept across the elegant houses on the south side of the park. For a moment, a black silhouette was captured in the light. The thin figure seemed frozen, pressed against a window. Then it dived. Four more searchlights cut through the air beneath the first. The Prodigal veered between them and fled into the wooded paths of the park. Another three lights came on. They closed in over the park. Below the search-lights, I could see lines of Inquisition men working through the bushes with their lime torches. The darkness was ripped into tatters as light after light sliced between the branches of trees and across the plots of flowers.

I dropped to the rooftops and ran across them, jumping from one to the next as I went. The closest watchtower stood only three roofs away. Once I passed it I would be in the circle of searchlights. I knew it was not my nature to run to the rescue of some idiot child. Still, I rushed in as if it were my own life I was saving.

The Inquisition men were already deep into the park. They were well ahead of me, but I had the advantage of the night itself. I could see into the shadows that they mistook for branches and twigs. I knew exactly where I needed to go. It was only a matter moving between the dozens of Inquisition men and their piercing lights.

A tense excitement pulsed through my body. I moved in behind one man, matching my steps to his. As he turned, I slipped up to the man just ahead of him. I was so close I could see the short hairs at the back of his neck. I could have slit his throat before he knew I was there. I held my breath. As the Inquisitor passed another of his own men, I switched off again. I moved with each of them, pairing and parting like a spreading disease.

At last I stopped. Slowly, I knelt down. The little Prodigal had been smart enough to know that the Inquisition men were expecting to find her up in the tree branches. Instead she crouched low, camouflaging her form in the lush shadows of irises and tulips.

She froze absolutely still as I knelt in front of her. She was small and filthy. Her short hair was caked with mud and her clothes smelled like rotting leaves. Tiny flickers of red fire moved through her dark eyes as she watched me. She looked like the kind of girl who bit men's fingers off. I held out my hand, letting her see my long black nails clearly. Then I raised a finger to my lips and stood back up. The rest I left to her. If she chose, she could remain hidden where she was. I was willing to offer her my help, but I wasn't going to force it on her.

As I began making my way back across the park, I glanced over my shoulder. She was following me. I didn't slow down for her or wait when she fell behind. I took care of myself. My attention circled between the movements of the men around me and the slashing searchlights overhead. I darted into shadows, then bolted from them moments before the sweeping lights burned them away.

All I offered the Prodigal girl was a chance to learn what I knew. I showed her the way out, but it was up to her to get through. She had to be quick and silent. One step in the wrong place and she would be trapped under dozens of hook nets. Then the Inquisition would have her. She had no second chances.

When I reached St. Christopher's Cathedral, I bounded up into an alcove of sacred statues. A cluster of sleeping pigeons broke apart and flew up into the eaves. I leaned back against one of the weathered stone angels and watched the Inquisition's search. The lights continued to probe through the lines of trees and flash up into the cloudless night sky.

I didn't really expect the girl to follow me. When she floated up into the cranny next to me, I said nothing. I kept looking out across the park. I wondered if Harper lived in one of those houses.

"Do I know you?" the girl asked.

"I doubt it," I replied.

She was small, but older than I had first thought. Her expressions were hard and suspicious. I noticed the hilt of a knife jutting up from her belt. Her fingertips remained close to the knife as she watched me.

I turned my attention up into the dark sky. Above us, the stars still shone like jewels. Their luminescent colors shimmered and twisted with the distortions of the winds. The night was still deep and beautiful, but I couldn't seem to lose myself in it.

I watched a bat swoop through the air and snap up a firefly.

"Why did you help me?" the girl asked.

I didn't answer.

It was none of her business. She wasn't really the one I had wanted to save from the nets. My kindness had nothing to do with this girl, here now. It had just been a drug-addled attempt to comfort my own past. No one had come to my rescue when I had been trapped by the Inquisition. No one had been there for Sariel. So, years too late, I had come, as if I could somehow redeem either of us by saving this girl. I felt disgusted by my own sentimentality.

I scratched one of my black nails hard against the tip of a stone angel's wing. It left a white scrape, but nothing more.

"Are you a member of Good Commons?" the girl asked. The fissures of red fire in her eyes pulsed wider.

At the mention of Good Commons, I knew my escape into the sweetness of ophorium and the depths of the night had been futile. I couldn't out-distance the world that surrounded me. At every turn it seemed to close in over me. Still, I refused to abandon my night of thoughtless beauty. I pointedly gazed up at the North Star. Its blue brilliance burned into my eyes.

"Look at it." I pointed into the sky. "All it has to do is shine. Simply hang there in the sky and shine."

"Is this some kind of game?" the girl demanded.

"No."

"Are you drunk?" she asked suddenly.

"I wish I were," I said.

"You aren't with Good Commons?" she asked again.

I gave up. This girl just wasn't going to go away. I had made the great error of being kind to her, and because of that, she doubtless felt that there had to be some connection between us.

"I helped you because I thought it might have been a good thing to do for another Prodigal. I had no other reason beyond that," I said.

I frowned at one of the cathedral angels. Its face and shoulders were thick and distorted from the months of accumulated pigeon shit.

The girl studied me intently for a moment, then let her fingers fall back from the hilt of her knife. She looked out over the park. Inquisitors still searched the trees and undergrowth. She smiled, watching them.

"Do you know why I came here?" the girl asked.

"You came to do harm," I replied.

The girl's eyes narrowed. "What makes you think that?"

"You're carrying one knife in your belt and another in your boot." I took a small sniff of the air between us. There was a strong scent like that of scorched limes: sweet, bitter, and burning. "You're sweating vengeance. But what gives you away the most are your eyes. They've split. Red fires are shining through the cracks."

She looked surprised. She instinctively lifted her hand to her dirty face, then stopped. There was nothing she could do about it now. Slowly, she turned back to watch the movements in the park.

I looked back up into the sky. The ophorium ran thin through my bloodstream now. Flight and concentration had burned it to little more than vapor. I felt strangely cold, and everything around me seemed slightly ugly.

The shifting breeze caught the reek of rotting fish and sewage from the edge of the river. The moon seemed to have yellowed and cracked like a rotten tooth. Even the North Star took on the tawdry shine of costume jewelry.

"They murdered my friends," the girl said quietly. "One after another. Lily, Rose, Peter—"

"Peter Roffcale?" I asked softly. I knew it had to be him.

"Yes. Did you know him?" she asked.

"Just in passing," I replied.

"They strung him up and gutted him." The red fissures in the girl's eyes spread, swallowing her dark irises. Blood-red tears welled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. "They gutted him like a fish. Like an animal. They did the same thing to the others, to Lily, to Rose..." She wiped her tears, smearing bloody slashes across the back of her hand. "I tried to stop them tonight, but I got there too late. They murdered Tom. He was just a boy." More bloody tears dribbled down her cheeks, and she scrubbed at them angrily.

"I'm sorry," I said. The girl hardly heard me.

"They'll pay. I'm going to make them pay. I don't care if I have to go to hell to do it. I'm going to kill them all." She stood up and glared down at the Inquisition men in the park. Slowly, her gaze moved on to the houses on the south side of the park. I remembered that I had first seen her floating just outside the window of one of those houses.

"Does one of them live there?" I studied the elegant building.

"No." Her expression softened momentarily. "The man who lives in that house has never done anything wrong to anyone. His only crime was to marry a coward."

Fury began to burn through the tones of her voice. "A weak, lying bitch who should never have been born. She should've been wiped off the face of the earth."

I felt the change in the air as the girl spoke. The smell of burning lime intensified to the sickening scent of acid. The familiarity of it made the wounds across my back shudder with remembered agony. The same sharp scent had come just before the attack against Sariel's conjuring.

"If you want to do a good deed tonight, you'll make sure that the Inquisitors get him out of that house."

The girl didn't spare me a glance. She whipped out her knife and spat on the blade. The steel blade turned instantly black and flames sprang up. She hurled the knife out into the sky. It streaked through the air and slashed through a window on the second story. An instant later, yellow flames exploded up, shattering the glass and tearing through the shingles of the roof. Black and violet clouds of smoke curled up into the air.

I glanced at the girl, but she had already kicked off the cathedral and swooped up into the night sky. The Inquisition men rushed to the fire. I watched. They pulled men and women out of the house, most of them servants. The timbers of the roof began to collapse, and a huge geyser of fire leapt up into the open air. I floated up on the hot currents.

Even through the thick smoke and waves of heat, I recognized the last man to be dragged from the burning house. For a moment, I lingered on the searing currents. Below me the searchlights uselessly raked the thick walls of smoke. Down in the midst of the confusion and shouting, Edward Talbott stood in his nightshirt, watching the flames consume his home.

Chapter Eight Smoke

I knew nothing about Joan Talbott except that her Prodigal friends were dying. Now her husband's house was in flames. Violent devastation seemed to encircle the woman, sweeping away those nearest her while she remained a mystery at the center of it all.

The smell of fire and smoke permeated my clothes. It hung in my hair, mouth, and nostrils and lay against my skin like a sheen of perfume. I wiped my face and kept walking. I wanted to think, clearly and calmly. Too much was happening, too quickly.

I needed to know more about Joan Talbott. Why had she inspired such hatred from a single Prodigal girl? Where had she gone, and how was she tied to Peter Roffcale's murder? I needed to find out what she had actually done in Good Commons.

All of these questions churned through my thoughts, but I couldn't concentrate on any one of them. They aroused flickers of my curiosity. But I was tired and too disconnected from them. They seemed like they should fit together, like they did, but I was missing just the right angle to slip them into place.

I toyed with possibilities, not because I thought I could solve anything, but to distract myself from another thought. I took in a long breath. The flavor of burning wood and the heat of full, rich flames rolled up through my thoughts. The smoking remains of Edward Talbott's house lay far behind me. The scent and sensation arose from my own memories of Sariel. Everything about fire reminded me of him. Now the scent of burning clung to me like a ghost, and I could not stop thinking of him.

I had kept memories of him buried for so long and so well that I had imagined that I had forgotten about him altogether. It had been a lie I wanted desperately to believe, and so I had.

But now, the very air seemed saturated with his presence. There was some detail in every object that I touched or passed that recalled a memory of Sariel.

The hiss and gurgle of the gas lamps reminded me of the way he had whispered curses constantly behind the backs of his least favorite teachers. He had also whispered, in that same quiet way, after he had fallen asleep in my arms. The low moaning of cats made me remember suddenly the first night we had made love. It had been in an alley, and neither of us had known very well what we were doing.

The smell of him seemed to rise through the wind. I closed my eyes and took in another deep breath. Above the reek of the horse shit in the street, there was that deeply familiar scent. I opened my eyes. It wasn't simply my haunted imagination; Sariel's presence twisted through the wind. He was nearby.

Unconsciously, I had been wandering toward him. I had followed his scent, all the while attempting to think about something else. I supposed it was in keeping with my deceptive nature that I should have lied even to myself.

The thin wisps of cigarette smoke drifted up against the dark sky. I followed them easily. Even among my own kind, my sense of smell was powerful. I found Sariel long before he caught sight of me. He strolled up Butcher Street as if it were his. A cigarette hung between his fingers. He exhaled, whispering softly as the smoke blew past his lips. His long green coat flapped slightly in the breeze, and the dark scarf he wore waved back behind him. The smoke rolled ahead of him, and he followed it.

He was beautiful. I had taken that for granted when I had known him before. His languid motions and bright eyes had been so familiar to me that I had not really known how rare he was. I had never understood why the headmaster at St. Augustine's insisted that Sariel keep his tempting glances to himself. He had simply been Sariel, and I had loved him. Now I realized how handsome he truly was. At the same time, I did not overlook Sariel's wickedly sharp black nails or his fixed expression of superiority.

He took a long drag off his cigarette. The fire in it burned bright red. After a moment of gazing up at the sky, Sariel released the white smoke in a long whisper. I felt him say my name; the pulse of his breath washed over me.

The exhaled smoke rushed up from Sariel's lips. It shifted and twisted as the wind moved through it, but it always wound its way back to the rooftop where I sat. Sariel watched it move, and at last he saw me. He came forward slowly, his outward calm betrayed only by the words he had burned into the air with such intense force.

The tongues of Sariel's smoke curled over me. They were warm and smooth, like delicate fingers. Wisps rolled over my bare stomach and shoulders. Sariel smiled at me and then soared up to the rooftop.

"Hello, Belimai," he said, and he flicked his dying cigarette back down to the muddy street. "Mind if I join you?"

"Do as you please," I replied.

Sariel sat down on the roof tiles and leaned back against the brick column of the chimney. We watched each other in silence for a few moments. He lit another cigarette.

"How's your back?" he asked.

"It's all right, so long as I don't think about it."

"You always were tougher than you looked." He frowned, then took another drag off his cigarette.

I watched the smoke he exhaled rise and twist up into the night sky.

"Were you looking for me?" I asked at last.

"Was it obvious?" he asked, and then he went on. "I wanted to say something to you."

"Oh?" I cocked my head slightly. "What?"

"Something. Anything. I just wanted to see you again, to say something more than goodbye," Sariel said.

I couldn't think of a response that didn't sound clever or cruel, so I kept quiet. Sariel smoked and at last crushed out the butt of his cigarette against the roof.

"You aren't going to make this easy, are you?" Sariel asked.

"What do you mean?" I watched the last thin streaks of Sariel's smoke turn on the night air.

"Don't do this, Belimai," Sariel said. "If you're angry at me, then say so. Scream at me if you want, but don't treat me like a stranger. Don't pretend that I'm some stray off the street who you've never seen before."

"I thought it would be better for both of us this way," I said at last.

"Better?" Sariel shook his head. "I'd rather have you beat my head in. At least then I'd know that you still felt something for me."

"I'm not going to beat your head in. I'm not even angry at you."

"How could you not be?" Sariel looked at me as if I were lying.

"I'm just not," I snapped. "What happened was my fault. How could I be angry with you?"

"It never occurred to you that I got you dragged into the Inquisition in the first place?" Sariel pulled a cigarette case out of his coat pocket, took one of the cigarettes, and lit it with a snap of his black nails. "If I had gone straight right after school, like you did, it never would have happened. We could have set up house, and maybe you would have gotten into that school..." He paused to exhale a long swirl of smoke. "What was it called?"

"I don't remember," I replied.

"Like hell you don't remember." Sariel stretched out onto his side and looked out at the sky. "It was the Downing Academy, wasn't it?"

"It's old history, Sariel. It doesn't matter what school. There's no point in trying to get me mad at you about something that's long past."

"You've avoided me for six fucking years, Belimai." Sariel jabbed his burning cigarette in my direction. "You're barely speaking to me now. It's not over. It's still going on right now between us. You think that I'm furious because you turned me in. And I think you hate me because...well, you're acting like it."

"I don't hate you, and I don't think you're furious at me." I shook my head.

"Then why did you stay away so long? Why did you leave Hells Below?" Sariel demanded.

"I changed." I knew that didn't make much sense, but there was no way that I could describe what had happened to me in the Inquisition. It hadn't just been the matter of a few scars and twenty pounds. I had been brought in as a proud youth, and I came out a pathetic addict. I might as well have been killed and my name given to a mongrel who resembled me around the eyes and jaw.

"You changed?" Sariel blew a hot tongue of smoke into my face and I glared at him. "Same nasty look, same vicious glare. You don't seem changed."

"I don't.. .Look at me, Sariel." I thrust my upturned arms out at him. "Open your eyes and actually look at me."

Sariel stared into my eyes for several moments. Slowly, his gaze moved over my dirty face. He glanced to my bare chest and at the white scars there. He followed the white letters over my shoulders and then down my arms. His expression was gentle until the moment he caught sight of the bruised, deep furrows that years of needles had left on both my arms. He looked away, but not before I saw an expression of revulsion flicker across his handsome face.

I folded my arms back in across my chest. I had invited his gaze to force him to admit that I was a wreck of what I had been. Still, the moment he glanced away from me, rejection knifed through me like a deep wound. It was what I had expected-demanded, even—but still it hurt me.

"You just need a bath and some rest," Sariel said, but he couldn't bring himself to look into my face.

"I know what I need, Sariel. In fact, I need it more than I need you." My bitterness at him made my words come out more harshly than I had wanted. "Don't patronize me with that 'all the boy needs is a bath, a bed, and a hot meal.' Save it for your Good Commons gatherings. I know perfectly well what kind of man I am."

"It isn't who you are; it's only what the Inquisition did to you." He was sitting up now, his red eyes glowing almost as brightly as the cherry of his cigarette.

"They took you in three times before they came after me, and you're the same as ever," I responded as coldly as I could manage.

"That's because I just confessed. I told them what they wanted to know, and I paid my fines." Sariel glared at me. "What were you thinking, trying to hold out?"

"I promised you I wouldn't betray you."

"It was only a fucking fine, Belimai!" Sariel was shouting now. "Fifty coins! Didn't you think I would have paid fifty coins just to not have you hurt? Did you think I was that cheap?"

"I didn't know what the charges were," I snapped. "I didn't know, and I didn't want you to end up roasting at the stake because I—" I cut myself short, realizing that this whole thing was going wrong. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. All of this was over. It had come and gone. Screaming at Sariel now wouldn't alter even a moment of the past. Not even his one glance of repulsion could be taken back, now.

"I'm too tired to fight with you, Sariel. And I don't want to, in any case," I said.

"Neither do I." Sariel leaned back again. "Fighting is about the last thing I want, honestly."

He took a drag off his cigarette, and I looked up at the sky. The stars were still shining brightly, though a pale blue light crept up from the horizon.

"It's a nice night, isn't it?" Sariel asked at last.

"Yes," I agreed.

"Can we start over?" Sariel asked, and I knew he meant more than the conversation.

I wanted to tell him that we could. But the past could no more be forgotten than it could be undone. It would always be between us. When I looked at him, I could not help but remember who I had been and how low I had sunk since then. No matter how many years passed, I knew that I would never be able to think of him without recalling my time under the prayer engines. He would think of the same things when he saw me.

"No," I said. "Let's just go on."

A few more moments of silence passed. Sariel blew smoke rings, and then as a thick plume of smoke floated up from between his lips, he whispered the word, "Moth." The smoke curled into the form of a gypsy moth. Its wings beat against the breezes, dissipating as it rose up.

I smiled. Creating smoky moths had been the first magic Sariel had accomplished. He had shown them to me on a night much like this one, when the two of us had snuck up to the roof of the school. I remembered how his young face had been flushed with exertion and pride. He had singed his hair and burnt one of his fingers, but that had hardly mattered to him. Now he made it look as effortless as breathing.

Sariel leaned languidly on one elbow, as if he were on the edge of sleep. He watched me, but from the shadows of his lowered eyes. I didn't catch the word that he whispered, but the smoke that rose from his mouth whirled up into two slender forms. They circled each other, the thin trails of their bodies winding together. At last they drew into an embrace that swallowed them both.

Sariel looked directly at me then. As much as he wanted to return to the past, I needed to leave it behind. The man I was could never reclaim that time of trust and pride. I no longer fit into it. I looked past Sariel to where black walls of smoke still hung over Edward Talbott's house.

"Did you know Joan Talbott very well?" I asked.

"I knew her," Sariel said, "but we weren't associates outside of Good Commons. She was never willing to get her silk gloves that dirty."

"Tell me about her."

"What do you want to know?" Sariel looked slightly unsure of the turn of the conversation.

"What connection she had to Peter Roffcale and to a woman named Lily and another named Rose."

"So, Captain Harper really has hired you for his investigation." Sariel frowned. "I thought he might have just brought you along with him to protect himself."

"He hired me," I said. Whether to investigate, to provide a buffer from others of my own kind, or just to waste his money, I didn't know.

"Mica might have killed him if you hadn't been there." Sariel moved a little closer to me. "She raised Peter from the time he was nine. When we heard that he had been murdered, she.. .Well, you saw how she was. She's almost wasted away to nothing."

"Did Mica know Joan also?"

"Oh yes, they were fond of each other. I think Mica believed that eventually Joan would come back to Peter. She used to say that the girl was just scared. She needed time." Sariel shook his head. "Joan wrote a lot of our speeches, some of the best ones. But she never had the courage to deliver any of them or to attend any of the demonstrations. Peter and Lily read most of what she wrote. Rose took the vitriolic ones.

"Rose had a sweet look about her that let her say vicious things without losing the crowd. Peter did six months of labor for one of Joan's speeches. Lily spent ten months in a reformatory for Prodigal women. Rose was charged, but I think the judge couldn't bring himself to give her more than a fine. Even I've given speeches that Joan wrote. I was charged for public indecency for one." Sariel smiled briefly at this. "Joan, on the other hand, never even stepped into an Inquisition House unless it was to take a lunch to her half-brother—"

"Half-brother?" I asked.

"Captain William Harper," Sariel said, as if I should have already known that. "His father was some Inquisition abbot who got his head ripped off during the mine riots. Joan was the child from the mother's second marriage."

"I see."

"They're a rich family. Though you wouldn't know it from the captain. They own a huge estate house out past St. Bennet's. Before she married, Joan had a house up near the banks all to herself. She hired Peter on as an under-gardener. He carried her speeches down to us in Hells Below. I suppose he provided other services as well. It must have been quite nice for her. She could express her displeasure with the society around her while still enjoying its amenities."

"You sound like you hated her," I commented.

Sariel frowned a little, thinking about it.

"No," he decided, "I'm just bitter; perhaps, jealous. She had so much that the rest of us didn't. She was in a position to help many of us, but she was never willing to risk her own comfort. It's easy to get angry at her for that. But if I had been in her situation, I don't know that I would have done more. She did try to take part in a demonstration once."

"What happened?" I asked

"We broke into the Taylor Shirt workhouse and released twenty Prodigal children who were being rented out from a reformatory and forced to work. One of the shift foremen pulled the fire siren and the Inquisition rushed in on us. Joan was grabbed along with about ten others of us, but when we reached the Inquisition House, she was gone."

Sariel lifted his cigarette, then realized that it had burned down almost to his fingers. He flicked it to the street below.

So, the woman had disappeared more than once. I found that interesting.

"Do you think that Harper got her out?" I asked. It struck me as something he'd do.

"He could have." Sariel shrugged. "In any case, she didn't come back down to Hells Below. About three weeks later we found out that she had gotten married to Dr. Edward Talbott. They'd been engaged for a few months, but none of us had known. That was the last we heard from her."

"Peter Roffcale wrote to her," I said.

"I suppose he would have." Sariel looked down at his hands. "He never blamed her for leaving, but anyone could see that it tore him up to know she'd married another man."

"He mentioned that Rose and Lily had been murdered in one of his letters. Were there others?" I asked.

"Dozens. Members of Good Commons have been going missing or turning up in pieces for nearly a decade. One or two a year." Sariel flipped out another cigarette. He lit it and took a deep drag. "Recently, it's gotten worse. We used to make reports of missing persons. But since Peter was killed in custody, I think it's obvious that the Inquisition abbots don't give a damn."

Sariel's voice almost trembled with anger, then he stopped speaking. He simply stared up into the sky and drew in breath after breath of cigarette smoke. He had probably known all of the Prodigals who had been murdered. They would have been his friends and companions in Good Commons.

"I'm sorry," I said.

The words were embarrassingly worthless. My sympathy was as little good to Sariel as his forgiveness was to me.

"It happens," Sariel replied.

"Are you safe?" I couldn't help but ask. There was nothing I could offer him if he wasn't.

"No." Sariel smiled and shook his head. "None of us are ever safe, really. I've heard there's a sorcerer who sells potions made from Prodigal's bodies. He lures children away with candy and then chops them up and cooks them. There's also supposed to be a lord's club that requires every new member to kill a Prodigal as proof of his valor. Then there's always the Inquisition, over-zealous nuns, and simple, sick bastards. A lot of people seem to want Prodigals dead. The only protection we really have is each other." Sariel glanced over to me. "So, I'm safer than you, aren't I?"

"Maybe." I realized that I had made a mistake in asking after Sariel's safety. I shouldn't have left the impersonal inquiries about Joan Talbott.

"You never had any sense about how to look after yourself," Sariel went on. "You've gotten yourself into the company of an Inquisition captain. You're living alone, above ground—"

"Sariel, I've been living like this for six years. I've learned how to take care of myself."

"You can't always do it alone, Belimai. Sooner or later you're going to need someone else to help you." Sariel pulled himself a little closer to me. "Come back to Hells Below. There's room for you at Good Commons."

"You want me to join Good Commons?" I couldn't quite believe that Sariel was serious. Hadn't he understood what I had said to him, how deeply I had changed?

"You'd have friends there. You'd be involved in important work. We could help you come clean." Sariel placed his hand on mine.

A cold, almost nauseous sweat broke out across my skin. It wasn't just the thought of being with Sariel, constantly knowing that I had failed him. As a member of Good Commons, I would doubtless be brought into an Inquisition House again.

The well-oiled whir of the prayer engines hummed through my mind. The slashes across my back began to pulse with pain. The scars that covered my body ached. I pulled my hand from Sariel's.

"No, I think I'm a little too settled in my present life," I answered quickly.

I didn't care if he thought that my choice was a sign of the depths of my addiction. It was better than having him know the truth. Once, I had loved him enough to destroy myself for him. But I was no longer the same man. I was no longer that strong.

"It's nearly morning. I should go." I stood and walked to the edge of the roof.

"So, it's goodbye again?" Sariel asked.

"It has to be said sooner or later." I stepped off the roof and let myself drop lightly to the ground.

I heard Sariel's quiet goodbye from high above me, and I whispered my own in return. It was all that I had left to say to him.

Chapter Nine Gloves

Morning light streamed into Harper's sitting room and reflected across his clean white walls. I flinched from the brightness, even behind the smoked lenses of my spectacles. Harper handed me a cup of coffee and sat down in a straight-backed chair across from me.

His hair was damp and clean. His clothes looked crisp. The freshness of his surroundings only exaggerated his exhaustion. Deep blue shadows stained the skin under his eyes. His lips were pale. Oddly, exhaustion seemed to suit him. I was growing used to seeing him looking worn out. It gave me a sense of knowing him to realize that I had expected to see him this way.

"How's your back this morning?" he asked.

"Not too bad." The cuts still hurt, but there was no point in dwelling on them. I drank a little of the coffee. It was bitter and too strong.

Harper poured cream into his coffee and then added three spoonfuls of sugar. He picked up the small, silver sugar spoon easily despite the black gloves that encased his hands. Sunlight glowed at his back, cutting a hard white line around his dark form.

"There was a fire at Edward's house last night," Harper said. "He was lucky that there were a dozen or more Inquisitors in the area when it broke out."

"It wasn't luck."

"What do you mean?" Harper asked

"I was there. I saw the girl who did it. She told me she wanted to make sure Edward got out of the house alive."

"What?" Harper stared at me in shock. It was pleasant to see such a strong reaction on his features. A moment later, and the expression was gone.

"Who was she?" Harper asked.

"She didn't tell me her name." I drank a little more of the hot, black coffee. "She was small. At first I thought she was a child, but when I got a good look at her, I realized she was full-grown. I think she might have been a member of Good Commons. She mentioned Lily and Rose, the same names that were in Peter Roffcale's letter to your sister."

"Lily Abaddon, Rose Hesper." Harper closed his eyes and rubbed his gloved hands across his forehead as if he were attempting to soothe a headache. "She probably was a member of Good Commons. What else did she say?"

"Not much. She wasn't in the best shape—"

"She was hurt?"

"Not physically, but she didn't seem too far from crazed." I poured several heaps of sugar into my coffee. "She said she tried to stop another murder but got there too late. A boy named Tom. Do you know anything about that?"

"Thomas Mills." Harper frowned. "We found his body last night, about an hour before the fire at Edward's house. The body had only been partially gutted. The girl must have interrupted the murderer before he could finish up."

"Murderers," I said. "She said they killed Tom. So that's more than one murderer."

"But she didn't mention any names?" Harper asked.

"No. She seemed to have other things on her mind."

I stirred my coffee while I thought about the Prodigal girl. Edward was blameless. If she did not want to harm Edward Talbott, then what had been the object of the fire? I wondered if she had known of Joan Talbott's disappearance.

"Was anyone harmed in the fire?" I asked Harper.

"Mercifully, no." Harper frowned just slightly. "In a way, I suppose that it's good that Joan is missing. The fire started in her empty room. If she had been there, I don't know how she would have survived."

"Do you think that could have been a coincidence?" It seemed unlikely to me.

"The fire starting in Joan's room?" Harper took another drink of his coffee. "I don't know. I've been too tired to think about it."

I didn't believe him. I hadn't noticed exhaustion keeping him from thinking about anything else. Still, if Harper wanted to keep his thoughts to himself, that was his right.

I had my own suspicion as to why the Prodigal girl had burned Edward Talbott's house. She wanted to punish Joan, to make the woman pay for abandoning the members of Good Commons. I wondered if the girl had believed, as Peter Roffcale seemed to, that Joan Talbott had some protection she could offer them.

"So, were you up all night?" I asked.

"Yes," Harper sighed. "After finding Thomas Mills and the fire, I couldn't sleep. I just spent the rest of the night going through old records."

"Perhaps you should try to get some sleep now." I set my cup of coffee down.

"No." Harper shook his head. "I managed to find one thing last night while I was looking through the records on Thomas Mills."

"He was in Good Commons?" I guessed.

"Yes, he was," Harper said. "But he also had a legal counselor by the name of Albert Scott-Beck."

The name meant nothing to me. I let Harper go on.

"Scott-Beck counseled Roffcale also. In fact, he visited him in his cell just an hour before you and I arrived."

"Do you think he murdered Roffcale?" I couldn't keep from leaning a little closer to Harper. The prospect of a solution drew me.

"Perhaps. I couldn't find any direct connection between Scott-Beck and Lily or Rose, however both women received legal counsel from his firm. Scott-Beck's partner, Lewis Brown, defended Lily when she was brought up on charges last spring. Brown also advised Rose a few months before that."

Harper drank a little more of his coffee.

"The firm takes on a good number of charity cases, mostly Prodigals who have no other means of legal defense at their trials. Almost every Prodigal in Good Commons has been defended or given counsel by Scott-Beck or Brown."

"Did either of them know your sister?" I asked.

"Joan?" Harper shook his head. His light hair was beginning to dry into loose curls. "She was never involved in any demonstrations or public readings. No charges could ever have been brought against her."

"So she had no connection to this Scott-Beck or his partner?"

"None," Harper replied. "To be honest, I don't even know that we're following the right trail to find Joan. But I can't just let these killings go on."

"It all seems too interlaced for your sister not to be somewhere in it," I commented.

"Perhaps."

There was something in the way Harper said the word that caught my attention. I wasn't sure if it was his tone or the word itself, but it reminded me of the night when we had first met and I had thought that Harper knew more than he was saying. I tried to study him, but the brilliant morning light burned at the fine details of his expression as well as the subtle scents that might have drifted off his lips. Some nights, if I concentrated, I could taste lies in the cool air.

This morning, all I had was a feeling of unease. I knew little about Harper, less about his abducted sister. The fact that she was abducted, while other members of Good Commons had been out-rightly murdered, should have meant something. Yet I couldn't figure it out. There was something, a simple word, a small fact, that kept the matter from making sense.

I wondered if that word had been on Harper's lips when he held it back and offered me an oblique "perhaps."

I doubted that Harper was the only person who knew. I re-called the Prodigal girl's cracked eyes, her bleeding tears, and the smell of her. It was a horrific scent in comparison to the perfumes that had lingered on Joan Talbott's letters. Her hair had looked like it had been hacked off in a blind fury. Her clothes had been filthy ruins. I knew she hadn't burned Edward's house for nothing. She had known something about the murders and about Joan Talbott.

"So, will you go?" Harper asked, and I realized that I had not been listening to him.

"Where?" I asked, though it annoyed me to be caught so obviously adrift in my own thoughts.

"To Scott-Beck's office." Harper scowled at me. "You weren't listening at all, were you?"

"I was," I lied. "I just wanted to be sure."

"It wouldn't seem suspicious if a Prodigal like yourself were to ask some advice of his legal firm. It would be much simpler than convincing my abbot to give me a warrant for search. He doesn't believe that any of the Good Commons murders are worth our time." Harper frowned at his cup. "Some days I don't even know why I bother going in."

"The pay?" I offered.

Harper laughed at the suggestion.

"If I had joined the priesthood for money," Harper said, "I would have chosen one of the Golden orders, not the Inquisition."

I squinted at Harper through my dark spectacles, blurring his image. Most of the Bankers I had seen were soft pillows of men. They traveled in chubby little clusters like summer clouds drifting across the sky. I tried to imagine Harper dressed in the white robes of a Banker, his light hair forming a thin halo around shaved dome of his head. The image didn't hold beyond a moment's amusement.

I couldn't alter him, not even in my own mind. His lean body cut a hard, dark form against the light. He was a jarring blackness set against the white walls and polished elm of his home. Harper looked out of place even here in his own house.

It shouldn't have been important, but I knew Harper was keeping something from me. He seemed to be keeping something from the entire world. Even handling his own dishes, he wore gloves.

What was it that Harper wanted to hide so badly that he wouldn't even reveal himself in his own home? There were no personal photographs or paintings on the walls. There were no telling details, no books or childhood keepsakes, anywhere that I could see.

The only thing in the room that expressed Harper's presence was his own body. I stared into his brown eyes and wondered who he truly was. Harper stared back at me.

"I've lost you again, haven't I?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "I was just thinking that you haven't actually told me much about either yourself or your sister."

"There really isn't anything to tell." Harper stood up. "We ought to be on our way. I'd like to get you in to see Scott-Beck as soon as possible."

"That was a quick change of subject." I slowly pulled myself up from the chair.

"I'm too tired to be clever about it," Harper replied.

"Will you let me see your hands?" I asked.

"What?"

"Your hands." I pointed. "The things under the gloves. I'd like to see them."

"Why?"

"Because you want to hide them." I shrugged. "It's just the sort of person I am."

"You've already seen my hands." Harper lowered his voice, as if someone else might overhear us. "And a lot more of me."

"Then what's the harm in showing me again?" I asked.

"Why is it suddenly so important?" Harper asked.

"Your hands themselves aren't," I said. "Whether you show them to me or not, is."

"It's some kind of test?" Harper asked.

"Perhaps." I enjoyed using Harper's own word, though he didn't seem to note it.

Harper shook his head but went ahead and pulled off his gloves. He held his bare hands out in front of me. I studied them.

Very little about Harper seemed holy, but his hands were those of a saint. Pale and utterly flawless, they could have been cut from pearls. His long fingers stretched out in graceful curves. They were like virgin bodies, utterly untouched, even by the sun.

The urge to drag one of my black nails across the back of Harper's hand brushed through my thoughts. When I reached out and carefully touched one of Harper's fingers, I almost expected to see a dirty yellow stain left behind, but the skin remained flawless. I placed my palm against Harper's. His skin was warm and soft. I couldn't feel a single callus.

I glanced up to see his expression. He stared at me intently, waiting for my appraisal.

"Perfect." The word slipped out from me.

A smile flickered across Harper's lips. Gently, he slid his fingers down against my palm. He stroked the tender curve of my wrists and then curled his fingers up against mine. The lightness of his touch sent a shiver through my arms, and I caught another of his quick smiles.

"Your hands are perfect. Why would you want to wear gloves?" I asked, trying to draw my concentration away from the sensation of Harper's hands stroking mine.

"I don't know," Harper said. "My father always did."

"Did your stepfather wear them also?"

If I had wanted to catch Harper off guard, I couldn't have chosen a better way. For one brief moment he simply stood, frozen in place, looking as if I had sent an electric shock through him.

"I actually meant my stepfather," Harper said. "But how did you find out about him?"

"A friend mentioned him to me." I let Harper draw his hands back from mine without comment. When just our hands had touched, there had been an openness between us. We shared the honesty of simple physical pleasure. Sensation alone was easy to accept. It asked nothing. Once even a single question was raised between us, any illusion of trust fell away.

"Did your friend mention anything in particular about him?" Harper picked his gloves up from the tabletop.

"No. Should he have?"

"No," Harper replied firmly.

I had the distinct feeling that the conversation was at an end.

"It's time to go see Mr. Scott-Beck." Harper pulled the gloves over his hands and flexed his fingers against the black leather. His open palm closed again into the black fist of an Inquisitor.

Chapter Ten Five flours

Of course, I couldn't just see Mr. Scott-Beck. Not without a reference. I had to wait until he had an opening between his regular appointments. I slumped on a green loveseat in his waiting room. Other Prodigals passed me on the way in and then back out from their appointments. The wall clock chimed out a popular tune every half hour, and steadily I grew to hate it. I had nothing to do but wait and brood over the disassembly of that happy little clock.

I hoped that Harper was as bored as well, but I doubted it. He had decided to wait for me in the teahouse across from Scott-Beck's office building. When I looked out the window, I caught sight of him. He was talking to some blonde waiter. I frowned down at them for several minutes, then returned to my seat.

In the full face of boredom, I longed to drag up some scent of terror or bloodshed. For the first two hours my anticipation of danger kept me nervous and wary. I watched every movement of the secretary, every exchanged greeting and goodbye, as if it were a prelude to murder. But steadily, as I witnessed the flow of Prodigal after Prodigal through the firm's doors, my excitement waned into reason.

The fact that all of the murdered members of Good Commons had gone to this particular firm seemed damning until I realized that almost every living Prodigal seemed to use this firm. I wasn't even sure that any other legal office offered services for Prodigals. People came for dozens of different reasons. Some had wills, others needed contracts notarized, while still others were clearly criminal. I imagined that most of the population of Hells Below had come and gone through the firm's doors.

The clock on the wall rang out its sweet, happy melody, announcing yet another hour of my life wasted in this room. The waiting room exuded benign tedium. The chairs and loveseats were spread out in a loose circle along the walls, allowing clients just enough distance from each other to keep them quiet. A set of pallid watercolors hung on either side of the window, and on the wall behind me there was the incessant tick of the wall clock. The place exuded the palpable sensation of devouring hours that I would have rather spent doing almost anything else.

I gazed out the window. The blonde waiter was at Harper's table again. I couldn't see the waiter's face, but Harper gave him a slow, deep smile that made me think he must have been attractive. Fleetingly, I wished I had a rock to hurl at him.

I turned to the only other person in the waiting room with me at the moment. The office secretary looked back at me with all the charm of a halibut. I tried to study him with interest, imagining that somewhere behind his murky green eyes there might be the flicker of dark murderous longing. The secretary blinked and then returned to sorting the stacks of paper on his desk. His only deep desire seemed to be for proper filing.

No matter who came through the door, the secretary seemed to have a form for him to fill out. I had completed mine in the first minute of entering the room by simply leaving the questions unanswered and printing my name at the top of the page in the kind of deformed, clumsy script that screamed of illiteracy.

At the time, I had thought I was clever for so deftly eluding the paperwork, but now I regretted it. At least filling the form out would have used up a little of the empty time I now had.

I might have been able to amuse myself by writing in deliberately obtuse answers and a few outright lies. Instead I jabbed quietly at the cushion of the loveseat with my hard, black fingernail, slowly gouging my initials into it.

When the clock chimed out its bright little tune for the tenth time, I realized with annoyance that I had the song memorized. At his desk, still sorting papers, the secretary hummed the tune aloud without seeming aware of it. I clawed at the loveseat with a little more force.

A man and wife came in together, both dressed in their church best. They eyed my attack on the loveseat and then seated themselves as far from me as possible. They peered at me but looked away before I might make eye contact. The secretary brought them a sheaf of papers to fill out. The couple complained about the trouble all this was and how it didn't seem right that they, who were the wronged party, ought to have to do so much. The secretary apologized without much feeling and then drifted back to his desk.

Every few minutes the husband or the wife stole a glance in my direction. They obviously believed themselves innocent in whatever legal matter had brought them to this office. I, on the other hand, clearly had the look of a hardened criminal of some kind. I heard the soft whispers of their speculations.

I leered at them and they pressed closer to each other, ignoring me with all their concentration.

"Sykes?" A middle-aged man called out from the door just past the secretary's desk. "Belahhh...Is there a Mr. Sykes here?" he asked, unable to make out the brutish scribble that I had given as my first name.

"Here." I stood and went to the man.

He was shorter than me by a few inches, but heavier. His shoulders and chest bowed outward in a thick mix of muscle and fat that reminded me of a bulldog. His animal physique looked odd packed into such an elegant suit. The image he cut was almost amusing, except that I got the distinct idea that the man could snap me in half if I laughed at him. Powerful men could dress however they liked.

A smell on him burned at my nostrils. It bothered me, but I couldn't pick it out from beneath the thick waves of cologne that hung around him like mosquito netting. As he shook my hand with a firm military grip, I noticed that two of his fingers were bandaged.

"Cats," he explained, though I hadn't asked. "I'm Lewis Brown,

Mr. Scott-Beck's partner. I've gotten through all of my appointments today, so Albert asked me if I could run you through the first interview." His voice was slightly too loud and, like his handshake, too assured to be natural.

"Thank you," I said when I realized that he was waiting for as much. I smiled to make up for my belated response. The only thing that truly pleased me was the prospect of escaping the waiting room before that clock went off again.

"Come along." Brown turned hard on his heel and strode back through the doorway. I followed him through, then up a steep flight of stairs. He moved quickly, as if reaching the top of the staircase was a venture to be relished with healthy enthusiasm. I lagged behind.

"I had a late night," I said after Brown turned and noticed that I was still several feet below him. "I'm still a little tired."

"You work nights, do you?" Brown placed both his thick hands on his hips and looked down at me from the top of the stairs.

"No, I was up with a girl." It pleased me to mislead Brown while telling him the truth. I reached the top of the stairs and followed Brown into his office. The room was large but filled with shelves of record books. Brown's desk was near the one window in the room. Late afternoon sun poured in between the curtains. I sat down across from Brown and shifted the chair so that I wasn't staring straight into the light.

"Well, let's begin with these questions first." Brown set the unanswered form with my scribbled name at the top down on his desk.

"Very well." I smiled to cover my lack of enthusiasm. The burning scent that had clung on Brown's gray suit seemed now to be drifting out from some corner of the room.

"Your full name," Brown said.

"Belimai Sykes," I replied, still half-lost attempting to recognize the smell.

"No middle name?" Brown asked.

"What? Oh, yes. Rimmon." The scent was distinctly coming from above the bookshelves. At first it almost smelled like rosewater, but the longer I remained in the room, the more I began to pick up sharp, searing undercurrents.

"Rimmon." Brown paused after he had written my name in on the form. "I assume that's your lineage name."

"I suppose." I forced myself to turn my attention back to Brown.

"Now let me see..." Brown thumped the back of his pen lightly against his chin. For a moment he looked as if he was reading from some text at the center of his empty desk. "Clothed in the darkness he came beside Sariel, his body white as the lightning, his voice a terrible thunder, and he was called Rimmon, and he too knelt before the cross..."

I just looked at Brown.

"Book of Prodigals," he said. "It's a hobby of mine, keeping genealogies of all those fallen princes. It's very telling, you know."

"Is it?" I wasn't really sure of what else to say. If I had had a genuine legal problem, I might have been annoyed by this digression. As it was, I thought it might be better than filling out the form. I let Brown go on.

"Yes, indeed. You may think that genealogy has little importance in this modern age, but many Prodigals still carry traits of their ancestors in one form or another." Brown looked me over for a moment. "You, for example, I would guess are one of those rarities, a flyer. You have a strong affinity for the air, either moving through it or smelling and tasting it." Brown made several marks on the form. "I'd also guess that you're pretty solitary, even among your own."

"All that from just a name?" I asked, neither acknowledging nor refuting the description.

"From just the name," Brown assured me with a look of pride. "Of course, there are well over a hundred names and attributes to keep straight in your head. I know most of the higher demons, but it's Albert who has all of them memorized perfectly."

"Mr. Scott-Beck?"

"Yes. The man has the memory of a mastodon." Brown turned back to the form. "Family?" he asked just as I had again begun to draw in curious tastes of the air in the office.

"No," I replied.

"None?" Brown seemed unable to credit this. "Certainly you have parents?"

"Both dead."

"Oh. Was it the Inquisition?" Brown asked with an unnatural gentleness in his voice. I could imagine him practicing that tone at night while flipping through the evening paper.

"No," I replied, though it was half a lie. "My father was killed after a mine collapse." The explanation had been my mother's way of lifting the criminal nature out of my father's execution for sabotaging the Wellton mining company. "My mother drowned during the sewer floods twelve years ago."

"And you have no one else?" Brown pressed.

"May I ask why you need to know?" I didn't mean to sound irritated, but the elusive smell in the room and the memory of my mother's bloated dead body had twisted into a single presence. Repulsion and sorrow for a moment made me wish to just get up and leave the room. I held my breath against the smell in the air and the feeling passed.

"We need someone to contact in case you're summoned to court and we can't find you," Brown explained.

"I see." I frowned. "I can't think of anyone. You'd just have to leave a word at my residence."

"And where is that?" Brown skipped down several spaces on the form.

"For now, the Good Commons Boarding House, in Hells Beow." I watched Brown carefully as I gave my answer.

"Good Commons." He smiled just slightly at the corners of his mouth as he wrote the name. "Yes, I believe I know where that is." He didn't pause long enough to take a breath before asking, "So, do you already have a criminal record?"

"Yes."

"Then let's have a look, shall we?" He stood up and went to his shelves. I watched as he slowly paced past the first two shelves and then whipped one of the thick, black record books out.

"It would be under Sykes, would it?" Brown asked.

"Yes." Though I could see what he was obviously doing, I couldn't quite believe it. I glanced again at the shelves and shelves of record books that filled the room.

"Here it is." Brown sat back down behind his desk with the big book open. "Hmm, flying and resisting questioning." Brown looked curiously at the page and read on a little. "All that trouble just to keep your friend from getting a trespass fine." Brown looked up at me. "It took them quite a while to get his name out of you, didn't it?".

"You have a copy of my legal record?"

"Yes. Albert and the Brighton abbot are old school friends, so the abbot has been kind enough to let our firm keep copies of the records involving Prodigals." Brown flipped the page and then turned it back. "You don't have much of a record. It looks like you've managed to keep a step ahead of the law for the most part."

"For the most part, yes," I replied.

I knew in the back of my mind that there had to be records of my birth and education, even my arrests and time under the prayer engines, but I had imagined that all those things had been filed far away in some dark basement. I hated the idea that my life could be fingered through by a stranger at his leisure.

"You are quite the specimen, aren't you, Mr. Sykes?" Brown turned the book so I could see it. He taped his thick finger on a small tracing of a photograph. It took me a moment to recognize my own body stretched out on the table. I stared down at my own furious gaze without interest. My memories of that time were sharper than any smudgy drawing could ever be.

As quickly as I could, I read through the dozens of comments and tracings of my effects at the time of my arrest. I wanted to know what Brown or anyone else with access could know about me. The page was clotted with trivialities: my shoe size, fingernail lengths, a tracing of my business card, and a long string of initials where one officer or another had checked the record out. W.J. H. appeared a dozen or more times.

It only took a moment for me to realize where Harper had come across my business card. He would have known all of this about me before he even walked through my door. It shouldn't have surprised me.

Brown turned the book back to himself and read over it for a few more moments.

"His uncooperative nature and refusal to testify have put us in a position to assume guilt...Still no statement...Questioning with silver-water...Ah, and ophorium." Brown made a little clicking sound with his tongue. "Just to keep your friend from getting a fifty-coin fine? I'm not sure I would believe that myself. Were you holding out on something else?"

I stared at Brown flatly.

"I suppose if you wouldn't talk, then you won't just tell me now." Brown seemed amused. "You know, Mr. Sykes, if our firm is to represent you, it's in your best interest to tell us the full extent of anything you've done."

"I'll keep that in mind." I managed to get the words out civilly. The deep desire to slash Brown's face had seized me the moment he began reading from my record. Those months had been my ruin and he read over them as if they were prices on a menu. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself.

The scent and taste of acidic sickness, something between excrement and bile doused in heavy rose perfume, washed into my lungs. I coughed and Brown pushed the record book to the side of his desk.

"It's getting late," he said.

"Should I be going?" I started to stand but Brown held up his hand for me to stop.

"No, I'm sure Albert will want to speak with you." He smiled at me as if we were friends. "No, I was thinking that I ought to get a little something in me. I'll send Tim out for some supper. A little snack for you too." Brown stood and started for the door. "It'll be my treat. You just wait here. I won't be long." He stepped out and closed the door.

I waited a moment, then checked the door. Brown had locked me in.

Chapter Eleven Blue glass

Just the fact that I had been locked in made me immediately want to escape. I walked to the window. It was painted shut, but the glass was thin enough to break through.

I stopped myself. Crashing through the second story window would be an act of desperate panic, a last resort. I wasn't sure that the situation merited that.

There were reasons other than murder that Lewis Brown would want to keep a Prodigal from roaming freely through the building. Brown could have just wanted to keep me from bumbling in on another interview. It was equally likely that he kept the door locked out of habit.

My instincts urged escape. I could easily knock out the glass with Brown's chair and be out. But my instincts weren't paying me to be here in the first place.

I looked down at the street and wished I could see Harper. The second story only provided me with a view of roofs and the tops of a dozen or more hats. Below me people made their ways back home. Offices and shops were closing. It would be night soon. The darkness drifting in over the sky calmed me.

I decided to investigate Brown's office and the disturbing smell that hung in it. I took a deep breath and spread my arms out. As I blew the air out of my lungs, I slowly drifted up. I continued to rise until my head lightly bumped into the ceiling.

The air near the ceiling was rank. I nearly gagged, and when I opened my eyes, they stung. The tops of Brown's shelves were filled with rows of blue glass jars. Some were large apothecary jars; others were smaller, perfume bottles. All of them were filled with dark thick liquids.

I drifted closer to the jars. The smell was nauseating. I squeezed my nostrils closed with one hand and read the pieces of paper that were attached to the rows of blue bottles. One big container read, Strength Beyond Numbers: Abaddon. Another was marked, Power to Churn the Waters: Rahab. I frowned and scanned across the multitude of labels: Beauty, Wealth, Control of Fire, and even the Lordship Over Insects was cited, and a name written beneath that. Many of the bottles were nearly empty. But the one nearest me was completely full.

I picked up the small bottle, hardly larger than an ink vial. It was sealed with a waxed lid. Its paper label was crisp and white, still untouched by time. It said, Prophecy: Roffcale.

Holding the vial in my palm, I sank back down to the floor. I broke the wax seal and almost choked on the smell that seeped up. It was the same pungent scent that had pervaded the cell where Peter Roffcale had been murdered. Rosewater poured through the soured smell of his blood, urine, and shit.

Magic potions made from the bodies of Prodigals. Wasn't that what Sariel had said?

The door opened behind me, and I shoved the vial into my jacket pocket. I quickly turned to face the man who had entered the room. He was much taller than Brown, but just as muscular. His hair and beard were white, but he seemed youthfully fit in spite of that. His skin was tanned and flushed with a healthy glow. He smiled at me as if I were his favorite nephew.

"I'm truly sorry about the delay in meeting you, Mr. Sykes." The big man held out his hand. "I'm Albert Scott-Beck."

Out of habit I took his hand. He smiled even more brightly and didn't release my fingers from his tight warm grip.

"May I ask you a question, Mr. Sykes?" He was close enough that I could smell the blood and rose perfume on his breath. His fingers felt like steel shackles encasing my hand.

I remembered that the blue glass jar marked Strength Beyond Numbers had been nearly empty. I wondered how much of it Scott-Beck had running through his veins.

"Who sent you in here?" he asked.

His hand crushed brutally around mine. I slashed my free hand up and drove my long nails into the flesh of his throat. His skin was like horse hide. My claws barely cut into it.

In an instant, Scott-Beck stepped aside and twisted my hand violently. Cracking pain burst through my arm as a bone in my wrist snapped. He twisted my hand farther and I stumbled on my feet, dropping to one knee.

He kicked me hard in the chest. My ribs cracked inward. My lungs crushed in as the air was forced out of them.

"Who sent you, Mr. Sykes?" He was still smiling as if this had just been a friendly tussle.

"You're going to kill me whether I say or not, aren't you?" My voice was barely audible.

"Of course." Scott-Beck squeezed his fingers around my broken wrist. "But it's up to you, how I do it."

"Please, don't." I closed my eyes as if that would hold out the pain. "The man who hired me..." I carefully dropped the fingers of my free hand down into my coat pocket. "He didn't tell me his name, but he wore an anatomist's pin. He was blonde and young." I closed my hand around the vial.

"An anatomist?" For a moment Scott-Beck's attention shifted from me to the man who hired me.

I lunged forward, smashing the vial into Scott-Beck's groin. The delicate glass shattered and Scott-Beck howled in agony. I jerked my hand free of him and scrambled for the window.

A brutal weight slammed into my back and crushed me face down to the hard wood floor. I hadn't seen Brown come in after Scott-Beck, but I recognized the smell of him on top of me. I tried to twist out from under him, but his weight on top of me was immovable. He seized a fistful of my hair, jerking my head up. The tendons of my neck strained as he pulled my head back so that I was looking up at him.

"It seems that you still don't know how to answer a question properly, Mr. Sykes." Brown's face was flushed deep red. His expression was one of pleasure, almost arousal. He slammed the side of my face down into the floor. A deep explosion of pain and dizziness rocked through my skull. He pulled my head back up and slammed it down again. I fought against him. Brown threw his weight against my straining neck and my head cracked into the floor again.

My throat and shoulders spasmed with tearing pain. Blood welled out from the side of my head where my skin had split upon impact with the floor. My vision wavered as a ripple of darkness passed through my consciousness.

Brown lifted my face again, and this time I hung limply in his grip.

"What about it, Albert?" Brown asked. "Shall I split his little skull?"

"We want to know about the girl first." I heard Scott-Beck walk up on my left. "Ask him who she is."

"Well, then?" Brown shifted his weight on my back, rocking his groin against me as if I were a two-penny whore. "Where's the girl you've been working with, Sykes? What's her name?"

"I think it might be something like...Fuck You!" I could hardly think for the pain, but it didn't make me any more cooperative.

"Listen, Sykes. I can make you wish you were back in the Inquisition House." Brown pulled my head back a little more. I could see Scott-Beck out of the corner of my eye. He stroked his thick white beard and studied me. In my beaten state, I suddenly thought that he looked a great deal like a painting I had seen of Father Christmas. He considered me as if it pained him to see that I would be going down on his naughty list. "I don't know how far you're going to get with him—" Scott-Beck's words were cut short by a sharp rap at the door.

Scott-Beck walked back out of my view, but Brown remained on top of me. I heard Scott-Beck open the door.

"What is it, Tim?"

"There's a man from the Inquisition here." The secretary sounded slightly flustered.

"What does he want?"

"He says he's looking for a Prodigal named Belimai Sykes." The secretary's voice dropped to a whisper. "He won't go away."

"How inconvenient." Scott-Beck walked back to where Brown had me pinned. He dropped down beside me and took a firm grasp on my throat with both his hands.

"Lewis," he said to Brown, "you and Tim go down and get rid of the Inquisitor. I'm afraid that we're not going to have all the time we would have liked with Mr. Sykes."

As Brown rose off of me, Scott-Beck lifted me by my throat. I scrambled to gain my footing. Brown caught my arms and jerked them back behind me. Pain seared through my broken wrist.

"I was hoping to have a little longer with him," Brown said.

"Next time," Scott-Beck assured him. "Perhaps with the girl."

"Fair enough." Brown retreated back through the door with the secretary.

Scott-Beck sighed and then shoved me back against the desk. His expression was resigned, not even slightly perturbed. I knew from the sheer number of bottles on the shelf above us that he had murdered many Prodigals before me. If it had ever troubled his conscience, he was long past that now. Like the Confessors who had tortured me in the Inquisition, he was utterly at ease with himself and what he did.

I hated Scott-Beck for that.

Rage gave me a burst of strength. I kicked him as hard as I could and shoved against him. Scott-Beck stumbled but caught himself before I could twist free. He slammed his fist into my bleeding head with professional ease.

My vision went entirely black. Blind nausea swelled through me, enveloping all other sensations of my body. I rolled back into a senseless darkness and collapsed onto the desk.

Often in the last six years I had thought of my own death as a comfort. I had thought of it as I slid a needle into my soft flesh and imagined that it would be as easy and restful as the ophorium that poured into my blood. But now I knew I didn't want to die. Too much had been taken from me already. My life was all I had to claim.

A burst of stabbing agony brought me back up. Scott-Beck was leaning over me with one hand planted directly on my throat. My shirt and vest had been torn aside, and a bowl was tucked up next to my bare chest. With his free hand, Scott-Beck continued to slice a scalpel deep into my stomach.

Fury surged through my body. I had never felt anything like this before. A deafening roar ripped up from my throat. The sound of it was like a thunder clap. The window exploded. Scott-Beck took a stunned step back, the scalpel falling from his fingers to the floor. For a moment I thought my scream alone had caused all the blood to drain from his face.

Then I felt the heat of flames bursting up across the floor. I turned my beaten face and saw the Prodigal girl from Saint Christopher's Park hovering just outside the open window. Scott-Beck took another quick step backwards.

The girl moved forward, crouching on the windowsill. Her cracked red eyes followed Scott-Beck's every motion. I didn't think she was even aware of my presence.

"I can smell his blood on you," she said to Scott-Beck. "You murdered Peter."

Scott-Beck started for the door. The girl was faster than him. She sprang into the air and hurled one of her black-bladed knives. Scott-Beck dropped to the floor. The knife whipped over his head and drove into the wall. Flames burst up from the blade and spread across the wallpaper.

Scott-Beck barely paused. He lunged to one of the far shelves and snatched a box off of it. The girl rushed after him.

I rolled off the desk but didn't have enough strength to support myself. I slid down onto the floor. Flames climbed up the desk and consumed the wall behind me. I glanced back at the window, but there was no way I could get through the fire to reach it. I grabbed the back of a chair and pulled myself up. The motion sent bursts of pain through my body, but I forced myself past it. Already the heat of the growing fire distorted the air. Smoke caught in my lungs. If I didn't get out, I was going to be burned alive.

I stood in time to see Scott-Beck grab the girl's leg as she sprang at him. He slammed her into the floor with a brutal, practiced force. Then I saw what he had gotten from the shelf. He had a pistol.

If he killed her, there was no chance I would get out of the burning office. I grabbed the scalpel Scott-Beck had dropped. Its metal body was searing hot, but the burn hardly registered against the waves of pain that ran through the rest of my body.

I hurled the scalpel so hard that I almost fell again. The blade sank deep into Scott-Beck's neck. He stared back at me in utter shock.

All it took was that moment. The Prodigal girl drove one of her knives into Scott-Beck's arm. The pistol fell from his hand and a shot rang out.

Then there was a second and a third. I realized that they had come from the stairs. The door burst open and Harper rushed into the room.

"Belimai!" he called, then he stopped dead still at the sight of the girl. "Joan?"

The girl didn't even look at him. She leapt back out of Scott-Beck's grasp and then hurled another blade into his chest.

"Joan! No!" Harper caught her and pulled her back from Scott-Beck. Even with Harper's holding her, the girl didn't spare him a glance. She kept her eyes on Scott-Beck alone.

The hilt of her knife jutted up from Scott-Beck's ribcage. It glowed as if it were molten. Scott-Beck grasped it, desperate to pull it free of his body. Flames burst up over his hand. For a moment the smoke in the room smelled strongly of roasting meat, and then geysers of white-hot flame exploded up through Scott-Beck's chest. The man's mouth opened as if to scream, but only flames came rushing up into the empty air.

The Prodigal girl smiled as if she were at a carnival.

"You'd better get your friend out of here, Will." She pulled away from Harper. "He's been hurt rather badly."

I thought Harper was going to say something more to her, but then he rushed forward to me.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

"A little." I swayed on my feet. The heat of the fire all around us was astounding. The smoke was beginning to bother my eyes. It was good that Harper had only been in the room for seconds. His body wasn't made to withstand this kind of heat and smoke. He coughed and wrapped his arm around me.

"Lean on me," he said.

I did. We got out of the room as fast as we could. The Prodigal girl just watched us and then floated up to the top of the shelves. I heard the sound of bottle after bottle smashing. Harper all but dragged me down the stairs. Halfway down he had to kick Brown's body out of his way. The secretary, Tim, lay with a bullet hole through his head at the foot of the stairs.

"Good shot," I muttered, but Harper didn't seem to hear me over the rising wail of the city fire sirens.

When we reached the street, dozens of Inquisitors were already gathered as well as Sisters from the Order of the Flame. Water pumps clanged and roared while the fire sirens continued to scream. Above us, explosive bursts of fire gushed through the windows and roof of the building. The smoke that poured out reeked of burning meat and rose perfume.

Harper laid me in the arms of one of the Sisters and turned back toward the burning building. I caught his arm, gripping it with the same hard force with which I clung to consciousness.

"You can let go now, Belimai," Harper said softly. "You're safe."

I dug my claws into Harper's coat sleeve, pulling him closer.

"She's gone," I whispered to him.

"You don't understand. I need evidence—" Harper was cut off as one of the Sisters pulled him back from me. I let go before my nails cut his skin.

Another of the Sisters moved in beside me. She hardly glanced at my face. To her I was only an assortment of wounds. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of my slashed stomach.

"He's losing blood." She pressed her hand over the wound. "Get me morphine and needles." Two young girls in white brought what she asked for immediately.

I realized, as the Sister to the left of me began to fill a syringe with morphine, that Harper had gone.

"Harper..." My voice barely carried above the chaos around me.

Inquisitors shouted at people to stay clear. Others barked orders to subordinates. The wheels of the water hoses and pumps chugged like train engines, and above it all the sirens continued to wail.

In their white caps and robes, the Sisters of the Order of the Flame closed around me like a wall. One of them lit a small lime torch. I flinched from the sudden brightness. A novice gently cradled my head back so that I was staring up into the sky.

I felt the familiar sting of a needle piercing my arm. The circle of Sisters closed in over my stomach. I distantly felt their fingers moving across my skin. I could hear one of them giving rapid orders, but the words themselves eluded me.

The pain and chill of my body began to slip away. I stared up into the night. High in the sky I thought I made out a thin black silhouette. A star shimmered behind her, and for a moment she seemed to flicker against the darkness like a single firefly.

I wondered if Harper saw her, or if she was looking down at him. Either way, the sight was not meant for me. I closed my eyes and let it go.

Chapter Twelve Stitches and Alcohol

The Sisters' threads were so thin and their stitches so tiny that it was hard to imagine how they alone had barred death from my body. The scars that remained after the stitches were removed were white and faint. The one that ran up my stomach was hardly visible. Only a dull ache lingered from my broken wrist. It seemed that my body longed to erase any traces of Scott-Beck's crimes.

The editors of the newspapers had done much the same. Their stories read like a tragedies. A man of deep compassion, Albert Scott-Beck, as well as his associate, Lewis Brown, and his secretary, Timothy Howard, had perished in a terrible fire. Scott-Beck left behind a grieving wife, two children, and many friends from all walks of life. Hundreds of Prodigals held a vigil in his memory, and many attended the services in his honor.

The world, the papers said, was a darker place for his loss.

I clipped out an article, scrawled the word LIES across it, and then added it to my most recent scrapbook. I should have been immune to the sinking feeling of futility by now, and yet I wasn't. I was half-sick thinking of Prodigals weeping for a man who had murdered their children and friends. Scott-Beck was on his way to being remembered as a hero to our kind.

I wondered what Harper thought of all this, then regretted it. I hadn't seen nor heard from Harper in nearly three weeks. He had gotten what he needed of me, though I doubted it had been to his satisfaction, and now he was gone. That was to be expected. I shook my head, disgusted with my own loneliness. I had never expected things to work out with Harper. There could be nothing between us once my job was done. That was simply the way the world was. Somehow, it still cut into me deeply.

The night outside was hot and thick with insects. My rooms seemed to resound with emptiness, despite the stacks of book and papers. They were only evidence of my solitude. In any case, I was out of ophorium and had been for a day. I had to go out sooner or later.

I trudged out and wandered the streets. The darkness hung around me, but it was not enough to allow me to forget myself. I wandered farther until I found a familiar staircase. I remembered the dog's head painted on the wall and descended down into the ale house. I knew I was hoping to see Harper there, but I didn't want to admit that, not even to myself.

When I didn't find him, I couldn't just turn around and leave. It would have brought my half-recognized motivation up into brazen acknowledgment. I bought a bottle of blue gin and sat down at one of the tables far in the back of the room. The gin tasted like paint thinner. I took a long drink straight from the bottle, just to catch myself up with the other men who swayed in their seats throughout the room.

Once the gin started to erode my senses, I began pouring my-self shots and tossing them back at a more refined rate. I remembered that my mother had drunk this way right after my father had been executed. At the time I hadn't understood it.

Now, I thought that she had been a fool to ever stop.

"Belimai?"

I was a third of the way through the bottle when I heard Harper's voice.

I turned too quickly and almost looked right past him.

He looked as tired as ever, but he wasn't wearing his uniform. Instead, he had on a collarless work shirt and dark gray pants. He looked thinner than I remembered, and more pale. The strangest thing about his appearance was that his hands were bare.

"I'd offer to buy you a drink, but you seem to be well ahead of me," Harper said when I just continued staring at his hands.

I drew back slightly and studied Harper without responding. I had no idea what he was doing dressed like this.

"Would you mind if I joined you?" he asked.

"You can do as you please," I said.

"Good enough." He took the chair across from me and poured himself a shot of my gin without asking.

"I didn't think you'd be up and about so soon," he said.

"Apparently I'm harder to kill than you'd think."

Harper frowned and took another shot of gin.

"I didn't think Scott-Beck would go after you." He rolled the empty shot glass between his fingers. "I'm sorry to have done that to you, Belimai."

"It was what you paid me for." I hated the way my skin pricked when he said my name in that quiet, rough tone. I hated the fact that just an offering of a few words could make me want to forgive him.

"So, how is Mr. Talbott taking all this?" I asked, just to get off the subject.

"He's pretty broken up."

"Did you tell him the truth?" I asked.

"It wasn't mine to tell," Harper said. "Do you know what I mean?"

"I think I do, yes." I poured myself a shot and filled Harper's glass also. "It was your stepfather's secret, then Joan's. It wasn't your right to tell it to anyone." I had felt the same way about Sariel. No matter how small of a secret I had been trusted with, I had not wanted to betray it.

But, of course, I had. Harper had not.

"So, where have you been these past few weeks?" I asked.

"In questioning." Harper shook his head. "My abbot wasn't terribly happy with my ignorance as to who shot Mr. Lewis Brown and Mr. Timothy Howard. Nor was he pleased with the fact that I didn't recall your name or description."

"They didn't put you under a prayer engine?"

"No," Harper said quickly. "God, no. If they had, I don't think I could have kept my mouth shut. It was bad enough standing around naked and answering questions for days on end."

"So, what did you say?" I asked.

"I had a surprisingly poor memory of the entire matter." He smiled, but in a bitter way. "The abbot dropped the whole thing once I brought up Scott-Beck's access to Peter Roffcale while he was in custody." Harper took another shot of gin. "We finally reached the understanding that as long as I don't investigate Scott-Beck's life, the abbot won't pursue further questioning of his death."

"So, we all keep our secrets."

"For the time being." Harper ran his bare hand through his hair.

"Are these the clothes they gave you on your release?" I had thought they looked familiar.

"Indeed." Harper touched the front of his rough work shirt. "The very finest in custody-release apparel."

"So, you came straight to the bar?" I smirked.

"No." Harper glanced down as if he were slightly embarrassed. "I went to your apartments. But you weren't home, so I came here."

"Did you think I'd be here, or were you just hoping to drown your sorrow after missing me?"

"That's an interesting question," Harper responded, and then didn't answer it.

I smiled.

"So, why did you want to find me?" I asked.

Harper eyed the bottle of gin and my shot glass.

"I was thinking that I might want to get drunk with you again," he said at last.

There was a moment, as I thought briefly of all that Sariel and I had done to each other, when I could have said no, and that would have been the end of it. But I had grown tired of having only the darkness to keep me company through the night. The gin bottle was still half-full.

I filled Harper's glass and then my own.