Just at that moment, Leena rested her foot on a loose floorboard and a loudcreaksounded. She froze, then cursed herself when she was met with silence behind the wall. She’d no choice now but to make her presence known. Opening the door fully, she was met by the impenetrable faces of St. Silas and Mrs. Van. He bowed to her.
“Have we disturbed you?” St. Silas asked, the previous fury extinguished so completely from his voice that it almost convinced Leena that she’d misheardit.
Then his gaze slid down from her face, his eyes widening, and only then did Leena realize that she was wearing her old nightgown, so thin that it was almost transparent in the candlelight. His throat moved and he tore his gaze away just as she dived behind the door. Utterly mortified, it took all her courage to poke her head back out.
St. Silas’s voice was rougher than usual, his eyes still focused on the ceiling. “My apologies, madam.”
“You’re awake,” Mrs. Van said in the long awkward silence that ensued. The housekeeper’s body was unnaturally still, like a scorpion before the strike.
“I had a strange dream,” Leena replied, her loose hair cascading across her shoulders as she continued to hide behind the door. “Then I awoke to the sound of arguing.”
She didn’t miss the quick look shared by St. Silas and Mrs. Van. No one asked her what the dream was about. For a wildly paranoid moment, Leena thought it was because theyknew.
The Saint showed his teeth, his tone persuasive and smooth. “A minor disagreement about household manners. Nothing that should trouble you.”
Mrs. Van remained silent.
Perhaps it was the time of the day, or the tendrils of sleep that still clung to her eyes, but the house suddenly felt like a prison, St. Silas and Mrs. Van its guards, and the night a fortress. Leena stared at the long shadows flung from the candlelight, expanding and moving like quivering creatures only brought forth in the dark. Suddenly, she swerved her gaze to meet Mrs. Van’s, and the dream came back to her in tidbits. The black, fathomless eyes, the accusing question, the general feeling ofun-rightness…There was something very wrong with Mrs. Van. Something that didn’t belong in this world.
She tried to shake the disturbing thought away, but she knew that if ghosts could exist, if those ledgers could exist, then whatever creature—or monster—Mrs. Van was could, too.
“I would like a lock on my door,” Leena said firmly, her eyes unwavering from Mrs. Van’s face.
The Saint replied without hesitation. “Done. First thing in the morning.”
There was nothing else to say. Leena knew that she could not bring up her suspicions without sounding ridiculous, any more than they could convince her that everything was as it should be. Because it wasn’t.
Nothing was right within this house.
—
In the morning, the dream had blurred in Leena’s mind the moment she awoke again. Just as she’d given up hope of recalling the dream, a familiar phrase swam before her eyes:
How long must he survive this?
Mustwhosurvivewhat? St. Silas? He wasn’t surviving; he was thriving. He inspired both awe and dread, his business was heaving with confessors, and he was obviously swimming in wealth.
But he wasn’t satisfied with any of it.It was an odd thought—one Leena could not dwell on, for it was her agreed-upon day for meeting Rami. St. Silas had not said anything about the change in date; nor had Leena asked. She thought it was one of those times when it was more prudent to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. She left at dawn. Yet by the time noon arrived, morning had come and gone and Rami had still not appeared.
All thoughts of Saints and the Wake and Weavingshaw had vanished from Leena’s mind. Usually, by lunch at the very latest on the day after a fight, Rami would be walking in, whistling and swinging a bag full of coins. Leena lingered inside her childhood home in the New Algaraa District, sweeping the floors again and again in agitation as she waited for her brother to arrive.
But he didn’t come.
Rami fought for the worst men in Golborne—the Black Coats—and was completely at their mercy. Working for St. Silas had been a lesson for Leena; she now understood the brutality that existed within the underbelly of the city. Perhaps Rami had displeased the Black Coats, lost money for them—
Perhaps they’d hurt him.
A slow horror spread through her and she tried to swallow the panic down.
Margery didn’t know where Leena’s brother was, either. The old woman, Tar staining her lips black, only asked Leena if she still carried the timepiece that Margery had given her.
When Leena pulled the gold watch out of her bodice to show her, Margery’s eyes fluttered closed, the effects of the drug making her near comatose. “Good. Keep it with you always.”
As night fell across the city, fear dogged her steps. She trudged back to St. Silas’s residence, hoping that Rami might have misunderstood and would be waiting for her there instead. But only the ghost of the boy dressed in white haunted the steps of the Saint’s shop—the same phantom that had led Leena to St. Silas on that first fevered night. She averted her gaze from the boy’s right browbone, which had been shattered in his living life. He ignored Leena’s questions about Rami, turning away from her in irritation.
It was time to knock on the Saint’s study.
He had been there all day, and the door swung open after a long moment spent waiting on the threshold. In that interim, all her panicked thoughts roared through her with force. St. Silas would not help her; she was sure of it. She had interrupted his sessions spitefully. She had not yet found Lord Avon’s ghost—the very reason he kept her close.
