Corroded

hear it. I let the words glaze off me, unable to pick out a single helpful syllable from the lot.

None of it mattered. Fluff, worthless. As if in a daze, I said my farewells, stepped off the stoop and paid no mind when the door clicked shut behind me.

My rival had been here. Here. Before me.

How?

Was it him? Of course it was him. Greatcoat, bowler hat. Thin. In my occasional tussles with the man, I’d pegged him for a man whose build tended towards thin. I didn’t know how thin, or whether much could be attributed to athleticism, but he was not squat or stocky. As always when I met him, he’d worn a bowler hat pulled low and a large greatcoat, standing collar shading his face in every encounter. It frustrated me that Lusk could provide no greater detail.

Save that he was so polite. Bollocks!

My hands shook as I jammed them under my chin, my gaze pinned on the fog that I did not see.

He’d been here. I knew it. I could feel it. He must have found my challenge sooner than I expected; come to Mr. Lusk while I’d brawled with the Bakers and wasted time with Ishmael.

Had he learned something of the kidney? Is that why he’d counseled the man give it up as a hoax?

Had he hoped it would be destroyed before I arrived?

How recent had I missed him? I spun, ready to return to Mr. Lusk’s door, hammer at it until it came off its blooming hinges, but I stopped mid-turn.

Took a breath.

It stank of acrid air, of damp refuse and always of coal, but it cleared a path through my stormy feelings. Carved a swath of logic.

I could do nothing now. Even as I thought it, the bells of Westminster bonged faintly from up on high. Three, and then no more.

It had taken me too long to deal with the Bakers, and longer still to cross the London Borough of the Tower Hamlets. Small enough as each district seemed, they were a right devil to cross on foot with any precision or haste.

I could not waste the coin on a hackney.

For now, I had no choice. I could not stay within Baker land, and I could not risk anywhere else. Spent, frustrated beyond measure, I returned to the Menagerie.

If I was careful, quiet and blessed with a little bit of luck to offset my continued misfortune, I could slip into the sweets’ quarters and find a bed.

It would not end here. I would not let this go. I did not like the feeling of being one step behind my rival, and I feared what might happen were he to locate the Ripper before me. Everything I planned rested on my outwitting the monster.

I stepped into the fog. It swirled and danced about me, bloomed from the lamps flickering madly. Though I watched the shadows, half-expecting a rush from each pool of black I passed on my journey out of Whitechapel, no opponent made himself known—Ripper or otherwise.

If I was followed this time, I did not sense the trouble. Perhaps I should have listened to my own warnings. Opium to sleep—laudanum or smoke, resin or distilled—was one thing. This habit I’d developed of licking it direct might be turning into a hindrance.

I clenched the ball in my palm, hand fisted in my pocket, all the way back to the Menagerie.

I would ease back on the tar. Of course I would. Once the sweet tooth was finally caught, I would return to the medicinal use Fanny had worked so hard to mitigate.

In the interim, I would focus on the task at hand. No more sloppy collection work. No more jumping at shadows. The sweet tooth was in my grasp, and I’d be damned to perdition if he got another leg up on me.

Chapter Thirteen

I returned to find the Menagerie in an uproar.

There is an order to things—a way of doing—that is not so much apparent but enjoyed subconsciously by them what attend places as a pleasure garden or a circus. Things happen as per schedule, things are allowed to happen as per need, and then there are those things that happen as per misfortune and must be dealt with quickly by staff and without fuss.

Many would never notice the difference.

I did. I spotted it the instant I arrived near the gates to find not two but four liveried men waiting beside them, impeccably courteous in black and green. I did not enter the Menagerie by way of obvious routes, knowing as I did the ease by which I could climb a wall generally considered too dangerous to try, but I did mark the heightened force.

Men patrolled in the guise of footmen, the sweets walked in groups of three or more. What patrons I saw in my careful jaunt across the lantern-festooned grounds did not appear to notice anything amiss, yet there was a pall—a barely contained tension that I expected to crack at any moment.

I could not put my finger upon it. As I walked beneath hundreds of Chinese paper lanterns, each a different color and pattern, I kept my eyes sharp for anyone—anything—that might impede my progress.

I did not even look up to ascertain the truth of Maddie Ruth’s alchemical revelation.

Tonight, the circus tent was quiet and dark, its canvas still. Whatever displays the gardens offered, it did not involve the rings. Was it market night? Or perhaps the amphitheater attended—it could easily house an orchestra, or a full stage performance.

Or, I thought dourly, my cheeks flushing at the memory, another round at the Roman baths. The first time I’d walked full into one of the Menagerie’s more scandalous entertainments, I’d stumbled across Hawke looking so much more...more...

Rumpled. Relaxed?

No.

Desirable.

No. I wrenched the fog-protectives off my face, both the goggles and mask, and inhaled deeply. That night was the first I’d seen Hawke in anything but his ringmaster’s attire or working togs. His shirt had been left undone near half down his chest, and I remembered the expanse of golden skin bared for stroking by a pretty sweet at his side.

The heat, the laughter, the sounds of pleasure from deep within the bathhouse.

And his gesture to me. A challenge. Come.

I did not. I’d fled, the first I remembered doing so.

Now I fled still, but in a roundabout way. Into the Menagerie, not out. Under the very eyes of them what would own me, or cast me out.

I was doomed to be unwanted everywhere.

I ignored the ache that caused in my heart. It was a feeling I’d long since learned to live with. Neither Society by raising nor street poor by birth, I had lived on the fringes of too many worlds to feel the sting of a third.

I was fumbling for the remnants of the ball of opium—damn my previous concerns, I was a desperate woman—when a bit of pale shadow detached from the greater darkness beneath a delicate garden pavilion. Only the faintest light reached the colorless structure, and the silhouette became the shape of a woman wearing white.

“Cherry!” Hands seized my arm, causing the resin to slip from my fingers. “Thank God you’re—”

I cried out, dropping to my knees to pat the ground. “Don’t step,” I ordered tersely. My lungs stilled. My heart stalled. Where? Where had it fallen? “Not a foot out of place!”

It could be days before I landed the Ripper. It could be too long. I stared fiercely at the ground, scrabbling for any sign of the rock-shaped tar. Dark against dark; I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t see it!

Zylphia, whose face I only dimly recognized in my sudden fervor, knelt in front of me, reached out to pluck a