“Don’t touch me,” he spat. The woman made an obscene gesture and stepped toward him again, this time with her fists up. I pulled Dominic behind me.
“He didn’t mean any offense,” I said.
The woman bared her teeth at me like a dog, and for a moment I thought she might actually bite me. Then she laughed. I had never heard a sound with less amusement in it.
“Best o’ luck to you, dearie,” she said. “They’re never much fun on their first time.”
We hurried away. Three blocks later, Dominic’s face was still burning. The neighborhood didn’t grow any more pleasant as we went farther. Dingy laundry hung across the narrow streets, which were little more than a muddy slush of excrement. The smell was horrible, piss and vomit and other waste I tried not to identify. We passed more gin shops, more drunks, more ragged prostitutes, and a shop that seemed to be selling rats and birds out of cages. For what purpose, I shuddered to imagine.
No one paid us any further attention. We turned, at last, down a particularly narrow alley. Sharp’s Alley. Advertisements for syphilis cures plastered the walls. They were all mercury based, and therefore all poison. My mother had made sure I was aware there were no cures for syphilis that didn’t kill you nearly as quick as the disease itself.
Twelve Sharp’s Alley was a tenement building with sagging eaves and ill-fitting windows. The front entrance was unlocked, and inside we found a set of steep stairs, one going down and one going up. The smell in the hallway was more damp than the alley, but little different otherwise.
“So does he live up in the fire trap or down in the plague hole?” asked Dominic.
I laughed nervously, but Dominic remained stone-faced.
“You do not like it here at all, do you?” I said.
“Do you?” He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets.
“Of course not, but you seem to hate it more—” The word that occurred to me was intimately, but I hesitated to use it. “More,” I finished.
Dominic shrugged, seeming to shrink into his coat as he did so. “My father died in a place like this.”
“Not here, though?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “In St. Giles?”
“Yes, in St. Giles,” he said. I opened my mouth to say something sympathetic, but he cut me off. “Up or down, Thea?”
“I don’t know,” I said. But I couldn’t picture Will going down the stairs into that dark, dank cellar every day, so I allowed my optimism to guide me. “Up. Let’s try up.”
Dominic didn’t question it. We climbed the stairs, which creaked so noisily I was afraid they might not support our combined weight. A low doorway, no taller than me, perched at the top of the steps. My hand trembled as I knocked.
There was no answer. I knocked again.
Several conflicting fears warred within me. The first was that he was not here, that he would not open the door because he had moved on, and that we would not be able to find him. But almost as bad was the idea that he would open it. I had pictured this address, 12 Sharp’s Alley, a hundred times. I had not pictured it like this. I knew he had fled from Germany and was hiding without much money left, but I had never imagined Will living in poverty so ugly, so abject. This was not a place where people lived, it was a place where they died. I needed to find Will here. But, oh God, I didn’t want to.
I knocked again, and heard a movement inside—something hitting the ground.
“Will?”
I put my ear to the door and heard a slow, quiet footstep. Someone was hovering behind the door, hesitating.
“Will, it’s Thea,” I said. “Thea Hope.”
“Bee?” came a quiet, incredulous voice, followed by a low cough. The door cracked open, and I caught a glimpse of his face in the semidarkness behind. “What are you—” He opened the door a touch farther, then saw Dominic. “Who is with you?”
I didn’t like the way his voice sounded from behind the door, strained and sharp with suspicion.
“He is a friend of mine. His name is Dominic. We need help, Will. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know where else to go.”
There was quiet a moment. I could hear his breathing. It sounded wrong. It was too labored, and at the same time too shallow, as though he had been running. But he hadn’t. There was no room to run here.
“Is it really you?” he asked.
“It is,” I said. “I swear.”
He finally opened the door fully. “You’d better come in then.”
We went in and paused while our eyes adjusted to the dim light from the fire. I was relieved to find that there was one, at least, with the familiar brazier standing over it. A chest sat open a few feet away, with base metals and a crucible inside. I glanced at Dominic, who was staring at it.
“An alchemist?” Dominic asked in a low voice. “You didn’t say he was an alchemist, too.”
“Everyone I know is an alchemist,” I replied.
“I’m not,” said Dominic.
“Then you are the only exception,” I said. “And not much of one.”
Will had turned his back on us and gone toward the fire. I stared at him, trying to make out what had changed. Disappointment was uncurling inside me like a waking animal. He didn’t want me here. Even Will didn’t want me.
He turned back toward me and ran his hand through his blond hair, cut ragged around his ears. Now that he stood by the fire, I saw what I had already heard in his voice. He was thin, much too thin. His face was hollowed out and shadowed in ways it hadn’t been before. His cheeks and chest had sunken in. The room was cold and damp despite the fire, but Will’s forehead shone with sweat. He coughed, pulling out a handkerchief as
