Sam knew Hel was right before Mr. Bishop could even answer. The edges, they were too regular for gashes torn by a wild beast, splintered at the bottom as if something heavy and broad, like the head of an axe, had been wrenched out of them. It might have been an attack by a human, but given his energetic obfuscation... Well, let’s just say that Sam knew what it was to pretend to be normal even as you felt it slipping through your fingers.
“Didn’t you?” Hel said, turning her gaze to Mr. Bishop.
“Do you always ask questions you know the answers to?” Mr. Bishop said.
“Only when the man I’m asking is trying to deceive me,” Hel said dryly.
“Wouldyoutell the truth to you?” Mr. Bishop said. He took a sip of his absinthe, making a moue of distaste. “The mountain of a man behind you has the look of a fellow who wants to lock up everything he doesn’t understand. Tell me he doesn’t, and I’ll believe you.”
“Me?” Jakob said, as if that weren’t exactly what he was. Well, until recently. “I’m on your side.”
“You didn’t nearly beat down my door like a man on my side,” Mr. Bishop said, examining his glass with studied insouciance. “Now. We can continue with this foreplay all night, or you can tell me what you really came for.”
“Well enough,” Hel said. “Your quarrel with the Vespertine?—”
He groaned, lolling his head back over the couch. “Not this again. I wouldn’t have let you in if I’d thought you were going to be boring.”
“Oh, enough,” Jakob said, exasperation threading his voice. “Listen. Your man Detective Lynch is dead, so?—”
“Detective who?” Mr. Bishop said as Hel speared Jakob with a sharp look. “If I had a man, do you really think I’d be opening the door like this?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, drop the act,” Jakob exploded. He turned to Sam and Hel. “He didn’t do it. He’s a Unionist spy. Sent by the Special Branch to infiltrate the separatists.”
“What!” Sam exclaimed, rounding on Jakob. “And you didn’t say anything?”
“Me? A spy?” Mr. Bishop laughed. “That’s absurd. A spy is supposed to be unremarkable. Do I look unremarkable to you?”
“I expect that’s exactly why you make a good spy. No one would believe it,” Jakob said. “And I imagine you fit in with the Vespertine just fine.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Mr. Bishop said, bitterness lacing his words like a poison. “The Vespertine wants nothing to do with me.”
“They only wanted you for your rituals, did they?” Jakob said, all false sympathy.
“Don’t try to be funny,” Mr. Bishop said irritably. “It doesn’t suit you.”
Hel gave Mr. Bishop a knowing look. “They were never going to accept you. You had to know that.”
Mr. Bishop sighed. “But I had to try, didn’t I? I thought perhaps, if I did something so spectacular, so brilliant, that they could not look away... But alas, you have the right of it; they were never going to let me in, and now I’m going to die for it. Satisfied?”
“Rarely,” Hel said.
“Grand,” Mr. Bishop said. “Now, I’ll repeat my question?—which I don’t think is an unfair one, considering the three of you invited yourselves into my house apparently to interrogate me?—who are you?”
“We’re with the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena,” Jakob said before Sam and Hel could stop him. He seemed to truly believe Mr. Bishop was on their side. “We’ve been called in to put a stop to the murders perpetuated by the Wild Hunt.”
“Fine, fine, supposing I am?—who you say I am,” Mr. Bishop said, giving Jakob a narrow look. “Though I’m still not clear on how you came to that wild assumption.”
“I told you, it was Detective Lynch,” Jakob said.
“And I told you, I don’t know who that is, but we moveon,” Mr. Bishop said, lifting his glass of absinthe. “Supposingyou’re right, as I told you before, if you do not already know whosheis?—”
“You mean the Mórr?—”
“Shhh,” Mr. Bishop hissed, his eyes going wide with alarm, darting to the rents in the walls. “What, are you trying to call her down on us?”
“You just said?—” Jakob said through gritted teeth.
“I know what I said. But you have no idea?—”
