Weather Witch

could have powered the entire city with the steam rolling out of her ears as she was encouraged to leave the Astraea household! “No use to dwell on such nonsense,” she finally said. “Such a thing’s certain not to work and dreams and fancies never got people nowhere quick feet couldn’t.” She looked at Lady Astraea being carried so tightly and raised a finger. “Hold one moment.” Hitching the hem of her skirt into her waistband to keep it from sopping up water, she dodged away to the large greenhouse that lorded over the estate’s gardens. She returned a few minutes later, grunting as she pushed a wheelbarrow. “Here. Gently now. Place it in here.”

John did as he was bade and Chloe arranged her cape over the top of her ladyship’s body before they made the bumping descent down the Hill’s long slate staircase and into the more frantically paced center of the city and the Below.

The quiet and stiffly proper feel of the Hill on nearly any evening was juxtaposed with the lively bustle that greeted them at its base. People jostled each other on the streets as they jockeyed for position, a steady stream of them heading to the Night Market, scents of fried dough and smoking meats thick and welcome in the close press of flesh.

“We going to the Market, Miss?” John asked, his eyes on the crowd.

Chloe shook her head. “Not tonight,” she said. “What I wouldn’t give to be there eating delicious foods and watching the wildest of entertainment instead of…”

Beside the Night Market’s main entrance a cat did a merry jig for a man holding a hoop he lit on fire. The cat gave a shrill cry before bouncing through the burning ring, landing atop a tall hat that it tipped over to collect coins tossed from the clapping crowd.

Chloe’s voice picked up again. “Our job is an important one. Come now.” She slipped her hand beneath his elbow and urged him to bring the wheelbarrow more quickly, finding a twisting path through the press of people.

Through the mass of humanity they went, weaving a path beneath old Bendicott Bridge, where ragged- looking men around campfires raised haunted faces and watched them scurry past.

“This feels ill to me, Miss,” John confided, quickening his pace. “There is darkness here that goes beyond nightfall.”

Chloe too lengthened her stride, her jaw tight.

“Who were those men?” John asked, casting a glance over his shoulder.

“Survivors.”

“It don’t look like that’s much surviving going on under that there bridge…”

“Survivors of the war.”

“This war? The Wildkin War?”

“No, the other war,” she corrected softly. “1812. Those men fought to keep us free, John. You saw the one missing his leg?”

“No, ma’am. Saw the one missing his arm, though. And the one with the bandana over an eye.”

“Those are our good veterans,” she said. “That is their fine reward for fighting in our stead so that we might go on serving tea and biscuits for the lords and ladies of the Hill.” She paused at a crossroad, rubbing her chin. She looked up one street and down the other. Here the houses were even smaller than in the Below, each only the tiniest bit wider than a single door and stacked so high in shambles of architecture that one might easily imagine an entire block tumbling down like so many dominoes.

“The Burn Quarter,” John realized.

“Yes.”

The one place the city watchmen, constables, and fire companies had orders to let burn if ever it caught fire. And, as the fire companies had aligned with the gangs, the likelihood a place would burn while they fought each other was high. Still, the Burn Quarter was the one place they could find the particular skill they sought.

A forbidden skill.

“Miss, this be the place of—”

“Hold the course, John. Steady now. What we do is for the good of our family.”

“No good comes from such places,” he muttered.

A cat screeched like it was being murdered and Chloe thought perhaps that was the truth of the thing. She touched her hip, feeling the little kitchen knife she always carried nestled in one pocket. Small comfort, that, probably only good for a poke or two. Only enough to make a thing angry.

Still, small assurance was better than none at all.

She counted the rambling houses with an outstretched and bobbing finger and paused, pointing to the single house sporting a fence and gate. The one spot in the awkward block with a yard, odd though it seemed. “That one.”

John swallowed so hard Chloe heard it. Running her fingers along the wheelbarrow’s lip, she pressed forward, toward the house … seeking some confirmation she had the right spot.

John found it first. “’Neath the roof’s edge … Be that a skull with stormlight eyes?”

Her answer sounded through the softest of breaths. “Yes.”

“Lord, Lord,” John murmured, looking in distress at the bundle between them, realization slow to dawn. “But … Lord almighty.” He scrubbed a hand over his hoary head. “Miss Chloe, this man…” John shook his head. “This man be a…” Still the words eluded him. He groaned. “A bad sort. Takin’ money and grantin’ life—and not a life like any of us might reckon is worth livin’, neither.”

“A person’s life is not for me to judge. Not its quality, nor its nature, nor its worthiness of being. Nor is it mine to judge who is good and who is bad,” Chloe insisted. “Be it as the Bible charges, Judge not—”

“—lest thee be judged?” John asked. “Surely I wish not to be the first to cast stones, Miss Chloe, though I daresay I built my house not of glass but on the Rock. Still…” He eyed the house, puckering his lips. “I feel safe volunteering that the good Lord may judge me as critically as I might judge this man whose services you wish to contract.”

But, although Chloe heard him, she listened to none of his words of warning. Instead her senses focused on the look of the entire place, from its shaggy and overgrown exterior yard to the way the slats in the fence slanted first one way and then the other like a mouthful of broken teeth. “This is home to a Reanimator.”

“Is a place without love,” John whispered. “Look it. No love for the land—how we ’spect there’s love for life here?”

The moon slid out from behind the last remaining clouds and threw a glow about the place.

“Hush,” Chloe demanded, slipping past him to undo the gate and enter the yard. Plants snagged in Chloe’s skirts as vines crawled from one of the rolling and uneven walkway’s sides to its other. Behind her, John hefted the lady and followed.

Chloe tripped over the tilted threshold, her raised fist slamming prematurely onto the door’s rough surface and cutting her knuckles.

“Bad omen, that,” John said. “Blood calls to blood.”

“What does that even mean?” Chloe asked, but the door opened suddenly and she balked—coming face-to- face with a leering mask. The man who wore it was tall, slim, and graceful.

From the holes designating the mask’s eyes, the Reanimator glanced at them both, peering at the shape held in John’s big hands. Then he looked up and down the street beyond.

Chloe dug her voice out of the pit of her stomach and asked, “You the Reanimator?”

He snorted as if she’d delivered a surprising smack. “Some call me that. In dark alleys and under bridges and in taverns, I suppose.”

“I got your name from none of those—”

He stepped back, hugging the shadows. “My name? You got my name?”

Chloe shook her head. “No, good sir—I mean your location. Technically.”

His exhale was amplified behind the mask’s comically painted lips. “Come in,” he said with a slow nod. He waited until they were inside, looked outside once more, and remained silent until the door was shut behind them and latched with two bolts. Only then did he speak again. “Who is it and when did it die?”

John spoke up, anger tinting his voice. “She is—”

But Chloe put a hand on his arm and silenced him. “She is a lady who passed barely an hour ago.”

“What lady?”