Corroded

he lifted his heavy bulk from the chair straining to hold his massive size. “Then we shall—”

“No.”

The men shouted, varying disagreements with my brisk temerity.

I stepped around the table, closer to him—close enough that eager ears could not so easily listen. Looking up into his yellowed eyes, I laid a hand upon his forearm and said urgently. “This is a summons to come alone. Anyone I bring will be in grave danger.”

His scowl was a fierce, belligerent thing. “Girl, that just means we go in numbers.”

“No. Ish, please,” I pleaded. “He’ll know you’re there, he’ll know we’re friends. It’ll be you he goes for, and even if all the Bakers in London rend him limb from limb, it’ll be you who dies first. He’ll stop at nothing to ensure it.”

Ishmael’s shoulders squared, like a mountain shrugging. “Even more reason.”

“Even more reason for you to stay,” I insisted, and this time, I did not hide the naked fear I felt. To look into his bullish features, imagine seeing them slack in death, was a pain that sheared through ice and emptiness. “I have lost too much to this monster. Friends, a husband—”

Surprise pulled at his expression.

I barreled on before he could ask. “I will not lose another. I know he took from you a man, and I will avenge him. I will avenge them all.”

“Menagerie justice.” It was a flat question, one that was not delivered as such.

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I spoke the truth. Regardless of anything I felt for Hawke, for the Veil, Menagerie justice was the worst I could envision. If I brought him to the Veil’s own doors, would the collector answer for his crimes against Midnight sweets?

I had to believe he would. If not...

If not, I wasn’t sure what I would do.

I opened one of my pouches, pulled out the journal. Within its pages, I placed the drawing Maddie Ruth had done of the cameo’s bits, and added the cloth-wrapped bit of glass with the remnants of the serum. “I need you to keep this safe, Ish.”

He did not argue as his large hands engulfed the precious remains of my life. But he did ask, “Why?”

“Because I’ll need that when I come back,” I said with a brevity I did not feel. “You’re the only one I trust to hold it.”

The only friend I had left, for all that.

“And I’ll owe you the value of your man’s life,” I added. “Coventry wasn’t to die.”

“You do owe it.” His other hand came down upon my head, flattening over the street boy’s cap I still wore. “We’ll ring the Chapel.”

“But—”

“We’ll stay out, but keep it watched,” he said over me, his deep voice filling the pub. “If it ain’t you coming out, it’ll be him, and we’ll wait for it.”

It was the best I would be offered. I was not so important to the whole of the gang that my needs would outweigh theirs. Yet even this much was a measure of confidence I didn’t know Ish had in me.

I nodded solemnly. “That’s a bargain.”

Mercifully, he did not spit in his hand when he offered it.

* * *

I entered the Whitechapel railyard alone.

The fog filled every crevice, painted the air with the foul stench of the factory smoke and the eye-watering remains of rot and refuse. Safe behind my protectives, I watched the peasouper shift—a roiling sea of yellow- tinged froth—and swallowed all of the last of my opium. It should have lasted much longer than a few hours, of course, yet I did not dwell.

In truth, I was not entirely sure I would escape this one with all my faculties intact. Victory or defeat, my rival would not go down easy.

The tar left a burning fist in my belly, but from that warmth, I drew strength.

My re-breather snapped once more into place, affixed firmly to my mouth and turning my own breath into a harsh whisper.

I had returned. Here, to the collection of abandoned trains emptied for the night’s service, the scattered bones of vacant tracks. Where I’d first faced the murderer who had taken my maid, the monster who had worked for my father. Who had killed and killed again, all in the name of something I could not wholly understand.

Here, where I would face he who had ended any hope of the life I’d chosen to lead.

I had expected the Ripper to lead me to him, but I was wrong. To my surprise, the challenge alone had been enough to bring my rival directly to me. I was doomed to forever misjudge the man, it seemed.

Tick tock, Miss St. Croix.

“Weep for the widowed bride,” I whispered, and the confines of my respirator swallowed the sound.

Tonight, we would see who wept.

My feet crunched on rock and gravel. The steady rains of late had saturated the ground, turning all to a damp, clinging sheet that crept beneath one’s protective clothing and sank cloying fingers into one’s skin. It was the common onset of winter below the drift, where the factory toxins combatted the rain to create a humid shroud.

I pushed through it, the yellow lens of my goggles outlining the looming thrust of train cabooses and empty stacks from the haze. I would not be caught unawares here. Not this time. I was prepared as I could be, with the net-launching device upon my back and the knives in my armored corset.

All I lacked was the long-gun Zylphia had borrowed from my butler the last time.

I missed its comforting heft, a sight easier than Maddie Ruth’s invention, but I knew even without understanding why it would not have mattered.

I needed to look this man in the eye when I delivered him to justice. Perhaps I’d even hear him beg.

The thought stuck in my chest. Twisted hard enough to force me to pause, pull in a deep breath.

Beg me, whispered Hawke’s voice in my mind.

Never again.

Bliss wrapped itself about my senses, turning the streaked fog to something stark and near tangible. As if I were clothed in fur. The pressure eased from me.

Hawke’s whisper did not. Beg me to defile you, Countess.

I slipped off the path.

Weep for the widowed bride!

They came at me from the cloud I forged through, voices spun from nothing. Perhaps I’d taken too much of the tar. Perhaps my intent translated into memories guaranteed to pluck chords of haunted fear from me.

I set my jaw, forced the haggard voices from my mind. I allowed the net-launching apparatus to hang by its leather harness for a moment, and wiped sweaty palms down my trousers.

“Where are you?” I whispered.

The railyard was silent. Echoes of my footsteps rang hollowly as I stepped over a track that ended not far to my left, its space taken by an empty rail car.

Cherry...

I hesitated, one foot balanced upon the rail, and cocked my head. A woman’s voice. My name?

No. Certainly not. Yet a woman’s voice nonetheless. That my mind, soaked in Turk’s bliss, chose to give the sound the shape of my name was simply a matter of mild delirium.

Fear and opium; a dangerous concoction if one was not prepared, as I was.

Again, it came. Cherry. Followed by a high-pitched shriek that sliced through my dreamlike state of understanding.

I spun, device gripped firmly in hand, and tried to pinpoint the sound. The fog distorted everything about me, turned distance into something malleable and uncertain.

I followed the rails, every sense straining to hear what I could.

When it came again, it was not the scream of a woman, but the rasped gurgle of breath trapped beneath liquid obstruct. I’d heard this sound once before. Crystal clear, the memory assailed me—pitch darkness, and the