Seven for a Secret (2 page)

“I read she’d come home to die. Now that it’s safe for her to set foot in London again.”

“With the Prussian government’s kind permission,
officer.” It was still an effort to recollect that Germany had become Prussia again, even though that military transformation was the reason he had been able to bring Abby Irene back to London—and, in truth, the motivation behind their return.

“I don’t trust revolutionaries.” The Schupo shook his head, as if deciding to drop the subject before it turned into the sort of discussion that might require paperwork. “You’ve come a long way tonight, Doctor Chaisty. All on foot?”

Yes, the officer’s English was quite good; he handled contractions with ease. Nearly as good as the German the wampyr was not admitting to. He would not have expected such fluency from a member of a force of occupation.

“All on foot,” he admitted. He extended his hand for his papers. For a moment, the officer seemed hesitant to return them, but his face twisted slightly and he nodded. “All right. These are in order, and you may go. But Doctor Chaisty?”

“Yes, sir?” The wampyr tucked the documents away again.

“Be careful where you walk at night. This city isn’t always safe for honest men.”

As he watched the officer walk away, it occurred to the wampyr that Jack would have had something to say to that, also.

Ruth’s heart raced with the kiss. In the cold dark,
Adele’s mouth was soft and warm. She smelled of lily-of-the-valley, a rich waxy sweetness at odds with Adele’s coiffed hair and pressed uniform. Ruth wanted to press against her, unpin her dark-gold hair, feel the tumble of it across her fingers. Instead, there was only the resilience of chilled skin through her gloves, the tenderness of Adele’s breath against her face.

“I wish we didn’t have to go back,” Ruth said, knowing as she said it that she was only mouthing nonsense.

“Silly,” Adele said. “Where would we go? Where else would we have a chance to make our mark under the
Chancellor’s eye?”

Ruth didn’t want to think about that, so she kissed Adele again, until Adele made a sound like a kitten, questioning and pleased, as soft and warm as her mouth. Their lips would chap, kissing like this in the cold, but Ruth didn’t think it mattered. It was worth it to stand here in the street kissing her girl like the soldiers did.

But the soldiers didn’t care if they got spotted. Nobody would interfere, or think less of them, though the girls who kissed Prussian soldiers sometimes got fruit or eggs thrown at them. And Ruth had to care, for her own sake, and for Adele’s. And for their families. So when she heard the voices at the bottom of the street, the German one and the one that sounded English, Ruth darted back from Adele and held her at arm’s length, pulling her farther into the shadows. “Schupo,” she whispered, a hand across Adele’s mouth. She could smell the men now, as the wind shifted. One wore damp wool and smelled of fennel sausage. The other smelled of cologne and something cold, and not very strongly of himself at all.

Adele, who was quick and brave, nodded and shook her head free. “Come with me,” she murmured, her hand linking tight around Ruth’s wrist. “There’s not another way out, but the alley goes back.”

“We’ll be late,” Ruth whispered. If they got stuck here long, they’d miss the last train. Curfew loomed suddenly, a formerly comfortable margin of safety shaved very fine.

Adele moved surely through the darkness, away from the voices, and Ruth followed her footstep on footstep.
Her gloved hand rested on the cold butt of her revolver. Adele’s hair glimmered in whatever faint light lost its way within the narrow confines of the alley, but her uniform vanished into the darkness. So long as they took care to walk quietly, the Schupo should never know they were there.

As Adele was leading, Ruth strained her ears to the
conversation they left behind. Ruth’s ears were very good and the men spoke as if they had no fear of being overheard, the Schupo crisp and Prussian, the other man pleasant and English. Ruth heard him say the name, and the Schupo reply with the name of his employer, and wondered.

What had he been doing by the mouth of the street? What had he done to interest the Schupo? Had he done it on purpose, to draw attention from Adele and herself?

Did that mean that he had been following them? And if he had been, why? And why had she not noticed him?

And why was it that she could barely now detect his scent, even with the looming walls to concentrate it?

They pressed themselves against the wall between the railings of two sunken yards, and Adele reached out to take Ruth’s hand and squeeze it. It seemed like forever until the scents, the footsteps, and the voices moved away, while Ruth worried that cold sweat was freezing on her neck.

She worried all the way back to the barracks. Now, she and Adele walked quickly, heads down and collars turned up, hands shoved deep into their greatcoat pockets. As predicted, they missed the last train—they reached the underground station just as the porter was drawing the gates across the entrance. Ruth cursed under her breath, German words she was not supposed to know.

“We’ll have to take a cab,” Adele said. She sounded excited at the prospect; even the tiny maintenance Herr Professor allowed them was a fortune to Adele, the seventh daughter of a coal-miner.

A crescent moon had risen high enough to show between the brick and stone cliffs to either side. Ruth found herself glancing at it nervously, imagining she could feel it’s streetlamp-washed rays on her face like Adele’s fingers.

“We’ll still be too late,” Ruth said, but she still lunged out into the street, one hand raised, to hail a beetle-black taxi.

And she was right. Despite the cab, Adele put her key in the barracks door six minutes after curfew by the watch on Ruth’s left wrist. Ruth forced herself not to rest her hand on her gun or slip a thumb underneath the holster strap to feel the outline of the wolf-fur belt she wore beneath it, prickly-silken, the heads of seven iron nails warm against her skin. She knew who would be waiting for her and Adele inside, and she was pretty sure he knew they would be expecting to see him.

She could smell him through the door.

Lady Abigail Irene Garrett had not expected Sebastien to return before dawn, but she was nevertheless only nodding over a book in her chair before the gas fire when the key rattled in the lock. She awoke with a start, hands clenching on bentwood arms, her spine popping as her head jerked up. She paid for the reckless motion in the protests of muscles along the left side of her neck and back, but as the door swung open, she found the wheel rims with her palms and spun the left one back, the right forward.

She had grown so light that the chair spun in place without marking the old wood floor. Phoebe has taken up the carpets to make it easier for Abby Irene to move herself around. They had converted the back sitting room, which would have been Sebastien’s once upon a time, into a bedroom so she never had to manage the stairs. He would not hear of hiring a nurse to baby-sit her, and after a fashion she was grateful for that. If someone must witness the humiliations of old age, at least it would be someone from whom she had no secrets.

She composed her hands on the arms of the chair. By the time the door opened and Sebastien’s dark, narrow body stood framed against the night, she was certain she looked as if she had only just glanced up from the monograph she had been failing to read for several hours now.

He smiled tightly when he saw her, locked the door behind himself and shot the bolt, and dropped his key in a crystal bowl at the top of the hall. “Abby Irene,” he said, and covered the distance like a blown leaf to kneel beside her chair.

He had not aged an instant, in the near-on forty years she’d known him. She should have envied him that immortality, she knew, but when she watched the expressions cross his face she felt only affection, and a tired sort of sorrow on his behalf. The pity had worn out years since, thank God. She did not wish to pity him.

She laid a papery touch on his hair, marveling at how her nails grew long and curved now that she did not work with her hands so often. When she had been younger, and trying to be beautiful, she would have paid a great deal for unchipped and elegant nails.

Sebastien said, “You are more beautiful than ever, my dear.”

He might cast no reflection, but she could pick her own out of his glossy eyes. The skin drawn taut across her cheeks, the hollows under her eyes. Hair white and dry as feathers, carefully dressed away from her face.

“You are one hell of a strange wampyr,” she answered, and leaned down to kiss his cool forehead. She had to steady herself against his shoulder to sit upright again, but he was a rock, unbending. “Where have you been? Did you find supper?”

She knew from his pallor and chill that he hadn’t. There was more in that cold than the winter night.

He shook his head, and stood—not turning away, though he moved closer to the fire. “I am still building a court in London,” he said. “I met Phoebe’s young friend the surgeon. Perhaps he will serve. Perhaps he has more personality when he’s at ease. But we parted ways after leaving the club.” He shrugged. “There is no great hurry. Abby Irene—”

The tone of voice that only preceded a serious question, one requiring concentration and the application of intellect. She focused her wandering thoughts and said, “Yes, dear?”

“What sort of magic would make a young girl smell of wolfskin?”

“Wolfskin?” She didn’t really need to repeat it for confirmation, and he knew that. His curt nod of response was however a little courtesy. “I seem to remember a vampire telling me once that there are no more werewolves.”

“It was,” he admitted, “my first thought as well. And
as quickly dismissed. Also, what do you know about magic relating to sevens?”

She snorted. “What magic doesn’t?”

He smiled, warming her. Ageless as ever, and still handsome. Every old woman should be so lucky. “Would you like me to fix you a drink?”

“Brandy,” she said, and wheeled her chair closer to the fire again while he poured and brought it to her. “We’ve met with wolves before.”

“The ghosts of them.”

In France, in 1903. When they had encountered the revenants of a pack of wolves that had terrified medieval Paris, and young Jack Priest had met an abrupt ending. She saw the implications of that memory reflected across Sebastien’s face momentarily, before he stilled it.

Abby Irene cupped the snifter in her left hand. With her right, she idly rubbed the faded scarlet tattoo between her breasts. It itched a little, as it still sometimes did when she considered magic. Honoring the tradition among sorcerers, while the strength of her body waned the power of her magic had only waxed greater. “Tell me more about the girl.”

“Girls. Two of them. Collaborationists, in the uniform of the Alliance for English Girls. Lovers.”

“The Chancellor,” Abby Irene said, tasting her brandy, “would be unlikely to approve. Are you certain?”

Sebastien smiled tautly. “They certainly kissed as if they were fond of one another. Anything beyond that is, of course, conjecture.”

The alcohol stung her palate and sinuses pleasantly, but in truth, beyond that she could barely detect the flavor. Inevitably, all her senses were deserting her. “The Prussians have been known to engage in thaumaturgical experiment,” she said, at last, unwillingly. “The sort of things most sorcerers would find unethical. But they consider very little beyond the pale when it comes to reclaiming their
Urheimat
—what they consider their rightful ancestral homeland.”

“Ah.” Sebastien bent before the fire, extending his hands to warm them. He would not feel a chill, but others might notice the cold of a December night in his hands. “Yes.
I see.”

Abby Irene folded her aching hands. “It is just possible,” she said softly, “that this is the opportunity we have been waiting for.”

Sebastien’s thin mouth tensed. He had known before he spoke to her of it, she saw. And he was too much the gentleman, still, to point out that we in this case meant Abigail Irene Garrett, and the wampyr who indulged her insane schemes.

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