“Yes.” Her brown eyes shone with so much earnestness, I could not meet them direct. “I am so sorry, I was trying to be so careful.”
“Stop.” I shook my head. “No need. ’Tis fine. As long as there’s nothing of the serum within, keep it all. Just give me this.” I raised the paper.
“It’s yours.”
It was the contents that would have been all the more upsetting to lose, anyhow. The stuff was designed, or so my father had claimed, to turn me into a revenant. Mad St. Croix had insisted it would remove me from my own body, allow the spirit of my mother to inhabit it as if it were her own. Even the Veil had suggested it.
Ridiculous.
Yet not wholly farfetched at the root of it. There were drugs, medicinal creations, that could make a body so pliant as to do what another suggested. Concoctions to strip the will and leave behind a vacant memory. It’s possible that my father’s madness had transformed the fact of its use to something his crazed mind could understand. The answer to his desires.
If this serum was like that, maybe stronger, that would be bad enough.
Regardless, the Veil would not benefit now.
I stood. “Thank you, Maddie Ruth. You’ve been helpful.”
She smiled. “I’m glad to.”
“Then I’m to go.” I folded the paper, tucked it into another pouch. “Be careful, Maddie Ruth.”
“I will.” She smiled happily at me, all traces of her earlier concern wiped away by my simple acceptance. To be so young. “Will you come by tonight?”
“Ah.” I shook my head. “No. I’m exiled, now. I won’t be back again.”
“What?” Shock abruptly claimed her smile. “Exiled? Why?”
“Never fear. I am eager to leave.” More so, now, than I’d ever been.
And if Maddie Ruth bought that lie, I would be so much closer to believing it myself.
“You can’t go!” she said earnestly, leaning over the desk as if to impress upon me the intensity of her distress. “What of the sweet tooth? What of Haw—” Her eyes widened. As if catching herself, her lips sealed shut.
I could not summon the will to feel shame. Or anger. Everybody, it seemed, knew my business. Except me. “‘Tis time I end this farce. I’m off to collect the Ripper, first. The tooth will follow.”
“Two? You’re after two murderers?” Her eyes were big as saucers. “That’s too much for one collector.”
I did not go into further detail. If I had, if I explained that one of those murderers was a collector himself, I imagined that she’d never allow me to leave without fuss.
I could not afford the attention that would bring.
“Spare me the counseling,” I said, rather terse for her concerned sentiment. “I do what I do because I must. Have you an alternative?”
“Bring help,” she replied promptly.
I almost laughed, were it not for the certainty that it may come out too close to a fractured sound of dismay. “There are no more friends to ask,” I said, not without some kindness. “The Veil has declared all efforts to cease. No, this is how it should be.” How it should have been all along. “All will go on as it was without my presence, Maddie Ruth.”
Her nose wrinkled, nostrils flaring as if she took a breath to say something, but she only grunted a sound wholly unladylike.
My smile felt too brittle, and so I turned, prepared to climb the ladder that would take me back to the surface.
“Wait.”
I looked back to see her hurrying to a shelf half-hidden by the protrusion of the brass fixture bracing the fans she’d told me of. I realized I hadn’t gone to see them. A shame. Aether engines of this magnitude were usually only found on the large sky ships.
“If you can’t find a friend in flesh, take one in metal.” She picked up the net-launching device from the shelf, shouldered its weight and hauled it to me. “She’s a mite temperamental in the damp—and Lord knows it’s always damp—but she’s solid.”
“Maddie Ruth.” The gesture was kind, but the cost too dear. “I can’t take that. You made it. ’Tis yours.”
“I’ll make another,” she said, shrugging. Before I could demur again, she pushed it into my arms. I was forced to hold it, or let it fall. “Long as you retrieve the net each use, you’ll be fine. I bet you can even make your own nets, given time.”
I’d wager I could too. I smiled over the heavy burden, the polished brass reflecting back the curve I only felt as far as my features allowed. It did not warm the ache I nursed, or the empty hollow fisted inside me.
Still, she charmed me, this eager young girl.
“Thank you.”
“I’m just sorry...” Her own smile flipped crookedly, and she jammed her hands behind her back, leaving the thought unfinished. “Please be safe, right?”
“I can’t promise,” I said with simple honesty. “Could you?”
“I suppose not.” She hesitated. “Will I find you somewhere?”
I hesitated, slinging the device over my shoulder. Shifting it into place, I thought for a moment. “No. I think not.”
Her lower lip protruded a touch, but she firmed it before it could tremble. “All right.”
That was that. Simply
I had one more task before I departed these grounds forever.
They’d taken Black Lily to the sweet’s quarters where she could convalesce in familiar surroundings. Once she healed, I wasn’t certain that the Veil would allow her to stay there.
The servants lived elsewhere in the grounds.
I entered the familiar parlor, removing my hat out of deference to the hushed atmosphere and setting the net-launching apparatus by the door. All remained as I remembered it, although a fire had been kept bright in the hearth, this time, and the curtains drawn to keep out the daylight. At this hour, most of the sweets would be abed. The stillness within the shrouded parlor gave credence to this habit, though two sweets were still awake.
Neither was Zylphia, much to my relief.
Delilah sat upon an arm chair, her straight black hair and pale skin painted gold by the fire she read beside. Her feet remained tucked up under her nightclothes, but she looked up from her book and afforded me a small smile.
Perched on the floor by Delilah’s chair, a sweet with midnight black skin looked up from her sewing—a needlepoint, of all things—and cocked her shorn head. Unlike the last I’d seen her, she wore no exotic feathers, no fanciful apparel. Her bedclothes were simple, plain cotton and without added decoration. I could not recall her name, but she was often the quiet sort.
Delilah touched her index finger to her own lips. “She’s asleep,” she whispered, deducing that I’d come to see Lily.
“May I see her?”
The sweet glanced at the figure occupying the sofa, as if weighing the options.
“I won’t stay long,” I assured her. I had only come to see for myself what damage her attacker had caused—to glean from it what morbid clues I might.
Delilah nodded, then, her features settling into sad lines. “She’s been in and out of nightmares. We’re all taking turns here.”
I shifted my weight from foot to foot. Nightmares, I understood. “How is she?”
The other sweet raised her head from her work, her brown eyes uncomfortably direct. “Who wants her
