Where Serpents Sleep

The light from the branches of candles on the chipped marble mantelpiece flared up warm and golden, showing him two more dead women.

The Cyprian lying near the settee was unknown to him. Turning her over, he found himself staring into wide, vacant blue eyes. Her hair was the color of cornsilk, her teeth as small and white as a child’s. A spill of blood trickled from the corner of her open mouth to pool on the carpet like a misshapen black rose. Beyond her, near the base of the staircase, he found Miss Lil.

Sebastian crouched down beside the Academy’s abbess. She lay curled on one side, her hands thrust out as if she’d sought to fend off her assailant. He touched her cheek and watched her head loll unnaturally against her shoulder. He didn’t need Paul Gibson to diagnose the cause of death.

Four dead. Sitting back on his heels, Sebastian lifted his gaze toward the first floor above. Surely one of them had cried out in alarm or terror before they’d died. Had no one upstairs heard? Or were the inhabitants of this house so accustomed to the sound of screams and shouts that no one had paid any heed?

Pushing to his feet, he was about to mount the steps when he became aware of another scent hanging in the air, mingling with the odor of blood and decay. The hot, pungent scent of a quickly extinguished candle.

His gaze shifted to the lacy alcove to the right of the hearth. When he’d been here before, the alcove had been lit by a candle that had shown him the wraithlike silhouette of a woman and a harp. Now all was darkness and silence.

He crossed the room with rapid strides to snatch back the lace curtain. The alcove smelled of hot wax and charred candlewick and raw fear. The harp stood abandoned in the center of the alcove, the low stool beside it overturned. Just inside the curtain, a tall, gaunt-faced woman pressed her back to the wall, her hands splayed out beside her as if she could will herself to disappear into the paneling.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gently. “You’re safe.”

The woman’s thin chest jerked with her ragged breathing. “God have mercy on me,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “They’re dead, aren’t they? All dead.”

Sebastian studied her pale face, the straight brown brows and sharply edged bones so obvious beneath the inadequate flesh of cheek and forehead. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her speech was cultured, her gown rigorously high-necked and modest. And judging by the milky-white glaze that obscured her eyes, she was quite blind.

He said, “How long ago did this happen?”

“A minute. Maybe two. Not long.”

Sebastian’s gaze lifted to the stairs. He had walked the length of Orchard Street, the Academy always in his line of sight. If anyone had left the house a minute or two before his arrival, he’d have seen them. He felt his body tense. “Where did they go? The men who did this, I mean. Upstairs?”

Even as he asked the question, he heard a thump from overhead followed by a woman’s high-pitched laugh and the lower tones of a man’s voice.

“No,” said the harpist, her spine still pressed flat to the wall. “Down the hall, toward the back of the house.”

His gaze shifted to the darkened hall that ran along the back of the stairs. “What’s there?”

“The kitchen,” she said. Her head lifted suddenly, her face turning as a more pungent scent of smoke overrode the lingering wisps from the candles. “Do you smell that?”

He smelled it. He could hear it, too: the crackling of flames, the roar of ancient timbers catching, flaring up. “Bloody hell,” he swore, grabbing her wrist. “They’ve torched the place. Come on.” Jerking her from the alcove, he raised his voice to shout, “Fire! Everyone out! Quickly! Fire! ”

“No,” she said, squirming from his grasp to dart back behind the curtain. “My harp.”

“Bloody hell,” he said again as she struggled beneath the instrument’s weight. “I’ll bring the bloody harp.” Already he could see the faint reddish glow from the rear of the house, hear the screams of the women, the excited shouts of the men, the thump of running feet on the stairs. “Just get out of here.”

She refused to leave without him—or, more accurately, without her harp. “Be careful,” she cautioned as he staggered beneath its bulk. Squealing, half-naked women and men with bare pink flesh that glowed in the lamplight pushed past them in a scrambling rush for the door. A middle-aged man with a hairy, sunken white chest and flaccid phallus kept bleating, “I say, I say, I say.”

The clanging of the firebell reverberated up and down the street. Already a crowd was forming at the base of the house’s front steps. Buckets appeared, passed hand to hand. Swearing softly beneath his load, Sebastian pushed their way through the shouting throng and turned toward Portman Square. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand, Miss—”

“Driscoll,” she said, hovering protectively about her harp as the crush of men, women, and children rushing toward the fire increased. “Mary Driscoll.”

“Miss Driscoll.” The sounding board of the harp was beginning to dig unpleasantly into his back. “Why didn’t those men kill you?”

“They didn’t know I was there. I put out my candle and quit playing the instant I heard them in the hall with Thackery.”

“You know who they were?”

“No. But I recognized their voices. They came to the house the night Hessy Abrahams died.”

Sebastian studied her gaunt, strained features. “You recognized their voices? How many times have you heard them?”

“Only the once.” She must have caught the doubt in his own voice, because an unexpected smile curled her lips. “When you’re blind, you learn to listen very, very carefully.”

He could see his curricle now, Tom at the chestnuts’ heads trying to quiet them as they sidled nervously, their manes tossing, nostrils flaring at the scent of the fire. Sebastian said, “Tell me about the men. How many