“What do we do?”
I had heard of Dresden even before Phineas had mentioned him. Known for his tenacity, a terrier who brought peace and justice at any cost. Although he was reported to be a by-the-book investigator, he had been reprimanded more than once for his tactics in extracting information. As long as the bad were punished and the good saved, he was reputed not to care if the means justified the ends.
He was not the kind of man one wanted to be noticed by.
But then neither was Noble. For all that Dresden might want to toss us in the nearest cell for existing below his moral code, Noble was far more dangerous in other ways.
He abruptly smiled, as if he had heard my thought.
“What?” I asked warily.
“The wind whispers.” His palm curved around to caress my neck. “As to whatweshould do next, I do remember saying something about what position you might find yourself in at the end of the night.” One long finger touched my cheek. “Over a pub table? Up against an alley wall? In a carriage—windows open, the wind blowing through as we race down the streets and you ride me to the end?”
The pounding in the vow marks stuttered, my heart forgetting its rhythm.
“Yes, I think I like all of those images.” His finger trailed down the side of my throat. “I can see your head thrown back and that long, smooth neck exposed to me in all of them. Your eyes are even more smoky and sensual—from the inside out now, rather than the outside in. Shall we see what happens when that knowledge fully blooms?”
I swallowed, then swallowed again.
A muffled cry shook the night, and he yanked me behind him. The echoes continued from a darkened street west. Held flat to his back, he pulled me carefully forward with him. The connecting alley revealed the source.
A man, reedy with menace, was hitting a woman. The right side of her face was swollen and bloody in the faint gaslight.
Noble moved before I even registered his release. A sickening crunch echoed in the alley, and the reedy man howled—swearing at the woman, at Noble, at me.
Noble wiped his hands on his trousers as if the mere touch to the other man’s wrist had left him with remnants of the plague. “Shame about that arm.”
The man charged. Another unnatural crack sounded—an arm now snapped in two places. The swearing turned to gibbering.
Weirdly powerful for anon, indeed.
“Do keep trying. It would be a pleasure to watch you eat without the use of both hands for the next three months.” He leaned down, and the man instinctively shrank away. “I will find your address and happilyfeedyou every bite.”
The man cradled his mangled arm and stumbled from the alley. His beating footsteps retreated, leaving the lane in silence.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” the woman said. “Eugene will be real mad once he stops being piss scared.” Her chin trembled.
Noble flicked out two fingers holding a spelled card. “Go here. Ask for Peg. She will help, if you want it.”
The woman grabbed the card, eyes weighing, no trust in sight, then turned and disappeared the same way the man had gone.
“Will she go?” I asked, still in shock—something in the woman’s eyes prompting the question.
“Perhaps. Some do, some don’t. One has to want to be helped. Come.”
Gabriel Noble stretched out a hand to me. I took it.
Chapter 9
MARIETTA
He stared challengingly at me across the table a week later.
“I don’t trust you with it,” I said.
