It was Arthur, the bruiser who stood over the crowds most mornings. He grinned at Leena, bowing low to her as if she were a lady. “Boss, there’s a man who was asking for you. Says he has a score to settle over something that happened last week with a friend of his.”
Last week?Leena thought. Was that the man whom Mr. St. Silas had marked with the X past midnight?
Displeasure curled Mr. St. Silas’s lips. “Then go deal with it.”
Arthur rolled his shoulders. “I did, boss—too well.He is on the steps of the shop, and it has got some of the ladies agitated and wailing. Don’t know if he’s still breathing.”
St. Silas stood up, taking his coat and leading the way out of the room, his steps firm on the wooden floor. “This whole situation has become a headache…” She could hear his voice drifting farther and farther away as he barked out instructions.
Leena dropped her paper, wasting no time in jumping from herchair, knowing that this might be her only chance to discover how St. Silas was eliciting so much pain from his customers. She was certain that it was those black ledgers that caused such dreadful changes in his confessors.
Shehadto know why, with certain customers, Mr. St. Silas didn’t document anything at all—like the young mother, a wisp of a girl, barely older than Leena, who’d come in that morning to confess that she could not bond with her baby. Her sobs of shame had broken Leena’s heart. The ledger had stayed closed, and the young mother looked relieved as she left the room, as if this was an act of release rather than reckoning, holding a slip in her hand with the Saint’s compensation. Although Leena had tried to glance at the paper, she did not catch the number he had written.
Leena reached for the black book.
The moment her finger grazed the pliant leather, she understood why he guarded it so obsessively.
It was a shockwave. Worse—it was like the hacking of an ax, cleaving skin from bone. Every bad thought she’d ever had, every shred of shame, every morsel of grief concentrated in her sternum and burned her from the inside out. She reared back, and her breath came out in gasps. Tears sprang to her eyes.
She stumbled as far into the corner of the room as she could, upturning her chair in the process, sliding onto the floor. She scratched her own skin trying to rip that feelingoutof her body. It was adeath.And she’d only touched the cover momentarily.
She couldn’t even bear to open the book.
Slowly, the feeling dissipated, leaving behind only its essence like a festering rot. Tears continued to stream down her face, and she could not stop them. Whatwasthat? Those ledgers were as preternatural as her ghosts. Rapid, paranoid thoughts filtered through her mind, and she wondered if the Saint was cursing his customers.
What is he gaining from this?
She looked up suddenly to see Mr. St. Silas standing in the doorway, watching her. Wordlessly, he strolled toward his chair.Ignoring her quivering form, he took off his coat and sat behind his desk once more.
“I wondered how long it would take until your curiosity got the better of you.” His tone was light, and his gaze fell on the ledger that was now out of place and tilting precariously on the edge of the desk. “Try as you may, these ledgers will never give away their secrets.”
What Leena had previously eschewed as superstition now seemed very real.
“These are no ordinary books. Have you cursed them somehow to inflict such evil?” She knew she had severely overstepped her place, but it was too late to go back now. She had to know.
The look he gave her was chilling. “Needless to say, Miss Al-Sayer, you have failed my test.”
“Test?”
He leaned back on his chair, regarding her detachedly. “I wanted to see what you would do if I left you alone with the ledgers after I explicitly forbade you from touching them.”
Leena reared up; feelings of rage and powerlessness spat and crackled across her skin. At this moment, she hated him more than words could say. “Is it not enough that you have trapped me here? You are compelled to experiment on me as well?”
“It would have been an unsuccessful experiment, madam, if you hadn’t participated so readily,” he pointed out mildly. “Do not deny you have spent weeks watching me in the hopes you will find some sort of weakness that you can exploit.”
Leena’s cheeks flushed, but she met his eyes steadily. “I do not deny it.”
Her honesty seemed to catch his attention. He leaned forward on the chair. “And what have you learned?”
Nothing.
Nothingof use. She’d learned he somehow cursed his customers, but she knew that even this knowledge would not sway hisconfessors. People would still line up to reveal their secrets for the promise of coin—and he did pay well.
Leena still had not found any explanation for why he extracted the most hideous of emotions, or what he gained from it. Every new tidbit of knowledge she gained about the Saint of Silence only served to reveal the magnitude of his power—and her ignorance.
He read the expression on her face. “Disappointing,” he said, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Shall I tell you what I’ve learned aboutyou?”
“I do not care to know.”
