“Get up,” said Stephen. He adjusted his grip on the knife—casual, but not too casual, just enough to make the thief aware of its presence. “Pick up your friend.”
That process involved some grunting. “’E’sheavy,” the young man said.
“That’s very unfortunate for you,” said Stephen. “Now walk.”
At knifepoint, the two thieves went out the door, through the hall, and down the dark staircase. Stephen followed closely behind, as did Mina, who had stopped briefly to re-arm herself.
At some point, Stephen thought, he’d just have togiveher a poker, perhaps one with her initials on it. Certainly she looked as natural holding the thing as anyone could under the circumstances.
At last, after a dim and silent journey that was mercifully free of further incident, they reached the back door. Stephen stepped forward and jerked it open, then gestured to the small street beyond, where a gas lamp barely cut through the growing night. “You’d best be getting on your way, hadn’t you?”
The young burglar started forward, moving slowly under the weight of his older companion. As they crossed the threshold, Mina spoke again.
“I’m going to send for the police now. I’ll tell them I saw someone lurking around the house. It’ll take them”—she looked off down the street and did a few mental calculations—“oh, about ten minutes to get here, I should think. If you move fast, I might just be a silly girl spooked by the fog.”
Then she shut the door.
“I don’t suppose,” she said, looking up at Stephen, “that this sort of thing happens often?”
“It’s the first time of it to my knowledge,” he said and then cleared his throat. “I’ve you to thank for making sure they didn’t do worse or see more. You had no reason to risk yourself the way you did.”
The flush on Mina’s cheeks deepened, and she shrugged. “A hundred pounds seems a fair reason to me. I don’t go back on a bargain.”
Being tactful, she didn’t addwhateveryoumayhavethought.
She was looking down again, Stephen noticed, and her hair fell across her face. Tired? Worried? He stopped at the foot of the stairs and put a hand gently on her shoulder. “Is anything wrong? Other than the obvious, I mean?”
“I—no. Not really. Um…” She took a breath and then gave a what-the-hell sort of shrug.
Oh, this was going to be good.
Thirteen
“What happened to your shirt?” Mina couldn’t believe she was even asking. “What I mean to say is, well, you were fully dressed last time I saw you. And you’d just transformed then. So I was wondering if everything was all right, or you’d had to turn back quicker than normal—”
But why would Stephen have speeded up his transformation now, if he hadn’t the first time they’d met? Mina’s mind caught up with her mouth and left her momentarily silent.
Of course, he’d already fought off the shadows when she’d first seen him transform. He must have known then that Mina wasn’t a threat. He hadn’t known anything earlier that night except that she was alarmed.
Not that Stephen would have rushed things for her sake. The thought made her feel slightly dizzy. No, there was no reason for him to take Mina into consideration, and if he had, it had only been out of obligation or chivalry.
Why was she eventhinkingabout it?
Why wasn’t she finishing her sentence? Stephen was starting to look amused.
Mina grabbed for the dangling ends of her thoughts. “—or if there was something wrong. Besides housebreakers.”
She said a brief and silent prayer that it was too dark for Stephen to notice her blushing. Then she realized that it didn’t matter. Her voice had gone up substantially over the course of her question, and a broad grin was spreading itself over Stephen’s face.
He hadn’t taken his hand off her shoulder, either. It was resting there very lightly, probably the gentlest contact Stephen could manage, and yet a good half of Mina’s awareness was focused on its weight and its warmth, even through her clothes.
The other half was conscious of Stephen’s smile, the way his eyes turned up at the corners—and the bare expanse of his chest rising pale and firm from his dark trousers.
“A new shirt, I should think,” he said, looking down at himself for a second, as if only now considering the situation. “The problem with being a gentleman in this day and age, truly, is that you’ve got a fair bit of clothing, and most of it looks the same.”
The girl from Bethnal Green saidweshouldallhavethoseproblemsinside Mina’s head, but it was the professor’s secretary—and the woman looking for distraction—who spoke aloud. “What do new clothes have to do with it?”
“The law of contagion. No’ germs or anything—” he added, as Mina’s eyes widened. “The magical meaning’s older than that. It says if two things—or people—have much to do with each other, they start being part of each other. So if I wear something often enough, the magic thinks it’s a part of me, and it transforms back and forth. If I don’t, the transformation destroys it.”
