“Fast. You can only fool them for a second.”
She didn’t have a choice. She willed herself into the disguise of Jeanie from her boarding house, who had deep brown hair and heavy freckles. Meanwhile, the four beings stood around Martha’s body had become very still.
Her captor whispered to her again. “I’m going to let you go now. Stay silent if you want to live.”
Slowly, he lowered his hand from Ilsa’s mouth, and with a whisper of metal, drew a weapon. She barely kept from crying out as she pressed herself into the crates, as far from him as she could manage, but it seemed Ilsa wasn’t his target. He slipped past her more easily than he should have been able in the tiny space.
“Something’s wrong,” said two of the others simultaneously, and their stillness gave way to a flurry of agitated movement.
“We’ve been tricked.”
“Where’s the other girl?”
Four pairs of eyes suddenly swung to the gap where Ilsa and the stranger were concealed, but there was no time for them to attack. The stranger tossed aside the pallet that separated them, and slipped among the attackers so fast Ilsa did not see it. All she knew was that one minute they were hidden between the crates, the next, he had driven a long blade up through the woman’s abdomen, and the pallet was clattering to the floor.
More blood mixed with Martha’s. Before the woman even hit the ground, the stranger knocked down the second with a sweeping kick and kept him there with a knee on his chest as he buried a throwing knife in the skull of a third. No one had so much as drawn their weapons before the last one standing was gutted, and dropped to his knees. The stranger raised himself to his full height and sank his blade into the chest of the one on the ground, who flailed like a pinned bug before going still.
It was over in seconds. Ilsa squeezed through the gap and stumbled out of its reach, too stunned to run. She thought she had witnessed horrible things, but stood over five bodies – one of which was her closest friend’s – she learned how innocent she’d truly been. Two hazel eyes, so like her own, stared up from the bloody ground. Ilsa’s knees buckled and she sank against a crate.
“Put your disguise back on,” said the stranger. He lifted one of the bodies like it weighed no more than a bag of flour, and threw it on top of another. He was piling them up; Martha lay untouched. “There’ll be more if we’re not fast.”
Ilsa hadn’t realised she’d slipped back into her body. It took so little effort these days to maintain another form, but shock could still jolt her concentration. She became Jeanie again.
“Wait here,” he said. “Don’t make a sound.”
Before she could protest, he disappeared. Not like the little boy had, and not like she could, but in a way she recognised nonetheless. He was fast; too fast to see.
He was back before it hit her – his pace marred a little by a wheelbarrow full of bricks. It was the way his long black coat fluttered behind him as he came to a standstill that jogged her memory.
“You were in the theatre.”
He glanced up from under his hood, and the light of the strange little lamp caught his features. He looked human; taller than most, and powerfully built, but human. He was young, his eyes were an unremarkable grey, his skin lightly tanned, and the hair that hung around his face was the same deep brown as Jeanie’s. He was handsome, even – a model of normality. If she hadn’t seen the things he could do, she would never know to fear him.
“I’ve been looking for you for three days,” he said, and he lifted the four bodies one by one and placed them on the wheelbarrow. The one he had sliced across the stomach was spilling his organs as he was moved, and Ilsa retched once, twice, and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the blood-soaked ground.
When she lifted her head, trembling uncontrollably, the stranger was regarding her warily. “Gather yourself, please. If we’re not fast, we will only be caught by the others.”
That shook her enough that she clambered to her feet and backed further away from the pool of blood seeping towards her. “Who are you?” she said, shooting a glance over her shoulder to find her best escape route.
“My name is Fowler, my lady. I’ve been engaged to find you.” He had finished balancing his load on the barrow, cleared his throat and faced her purposefully. “I’m about to sink these bodies in the Thames. I’d like to do the same with your friend, but if you would rather I didn’t, we can leave her here.”
“Leave her?” A chill spread through her. Nothing made sense. “No.”
“The water, then?” he said sceptically.
“No! We got to… I don’t know, fetch someone.” Ilsa didn’t recognise her own voice, choked and thin as it was.
Fowler placed his hands on his hips and looked about in exasperation. “I see.” He took a step towards her and Ilsa took two back, stumbling slightly in her hast to keep some distance and raising a hand like she could ward him off with it. But Fowler only crouched over Martha, and gently lowered her eyelids. When he looked up, his expression was gentle but serious.
“You need to come with me,” he said.
Ilsa’s incredulity manifested in a laugh. She shook her head fiercely. “ I ain’t going nowhere with you.”
Fowler sighed, and as he got to his feet he produced a length of cord. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Ilsa realised what he meant to do the moment before it happened. In the space of a heartbeat, he stepped over Martha’s prone body and pinioned Ilsa’s wrists. She tried to yank them back but he didn’t give an inch to
