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“Well, confronting her wouldn’t do any good. If she’s got some nefarious plan, she’s not going to confess it straight out. ” Mei watches as a portly Brother shepherds an old woman toward the nurses. She’s small and stooped and dressed in a fine mauve cloak with white rabbit fur at the wrists.
“I’m going to find out what it is. Inez has already hurt enough people. ”
Mei nods absently, her attention elsewhere. The old woman coughs so hard that strands of iron-gray hair tumble down around her face. The Brother taps the head nurse on the shoulder, interrupting her conversation with Mrs. Jarrell, who steps away. He lowers his booming voice, but snippets of it still carry: “My mother . . . wretched fever . . . see to it that she gets . . . ” The head nurse nods and hurries off with the old woman in tow.
Mei scowls. “How do you like that? The rich get prompt treatment—and a private room, no doubt!—while the poor have to wait in line to die. ”
The Brother sees us staring and doffs his hat. “Good afternoon, Sisters!” he says, crossing the room to join us. “Here to do a bit of nursing?”
Mei casts her face down as I nod. “It is our privilege to help the less fortunate,” I parrot.
He wrinkles his bulbous nose, fishing in his pocket for a handkerchief. He pulls one out and presses it to his face. I can smell the pungent, piney scent. “I don’t know how you can stand the stench,” he confesses. “I wouldn’t set foot in the place except my mother’s come down with the blasted thing. ”
Mei peers up at him through her spiky dark lashes. “I’m surprised you didn’t call for a private physician. You’re obviously a man of means. ”
“That I am. ” He smiles proudly. “But private physicians haven’t got what Ma needs, do they? She’s got to see Brother Kenneally straightaway. ” He winks one dark eye at us. “Can’t have people like us coming down with a thing like this just because some river rats don’t know their place! I say we should set up a quarantine till it passes. Keep them all down by the river where they belong. ”
He is not particularly quiet. I glance around the crowded ward, where women of all ages are racked with coughing and flushed with fever. They’re sick, but they’re not deaf. A skinny woman with hair like cornsilk is glaring at us, and if looks could kill, we’d all be dead.
“What a marvelous idea,” Mei says through gritted teeth.
“I thought so. ” The Brother grins as his mother reappears, shuffling down the hall. He doffs his hat again. “Well, I’ve got to be going. Take care, Sisters!”
He saunters away, and I stare at Mei in horror. “I don’t—what an awful man. ”
Mei grabs up a bag of fresh laundry. “I’m not even surprised anymore. ”
• • •
Hours later, we stagger home through the twilight streets. Mei sniffs hungrily as we pass a bakery and the delicious smell of bread wafts out. We missed teatime and dinner. “Are you still thinking about Inez?” she demands. “How can you think about anything but food or bed right now? I’m half starved. ”
My stomach is rumbling, and I’m longing for my bed, too, but I have been dwelling on what we saw in Covington’s hospital room. Even as Mei and I changed sheets, dispensed suppers, and made patients comfortable for the night, Inez hardly left my mind.
I was able to calm the more excitable patients, abate their fevers, and ease their breathing, but I couldn’t heal them entirely. The fever is tricky; it evaded my magic, shifting away no matter how I tried. I hope my efforts will be enough to set them on the road to recovery—but not so miraculous that a canny nurse notices how our visit coincided with a marked improvement. Doing magic at the hospital is riskier than at Harwood, where the nurses cared precious little for their patients.
It’s such a waste. If we were free to practice our magic openly, we could help so many more people. And it wouldn’t be dependent on whether they could pay us or not.
“I can’t wait for it to be warm. ” Pearl shivers into her cloak, her buckteeth chattering. “You know what I’d like right now? A tomato and cheese pie. ”
Mei groans, and Addie presses her snub nose to the window like a street urchin, her breath fogging the cold glass. “Is that a beef pie? It looks delicious. That’s what I’d like. ”
“Let’s get some, then. ” I fumble in my bag for coins. “My treat. Four beef pies?”
“Bless you,” Mei says fervently.
I smile as they rush into the warm bakery. All the stores in the market district are open late this week for holiday shopping. The display windows are decorated with pine boughs, and the spicy scent mingles with succulent meat and oniony gravy and fresh bread.
Father’s told us how, when he was a little boy, he and Grandfather cut down pine trees, brought them inside, and decorated them with handmade ornaments and strings of popped corn. They put a feathery angel on top and stacked presents beneath. The year he was ten, though, Christmas trees were forbidden. Too pagan, the Brothers said, like the caroling that neighbors used to do, traveling from house to house with hot cider and song. Christmas Day is for venerating the Lord’s birth—for church services in the morning, followed by fasting and quiet contemplation—but at least the Brothers haven’t stopped people from feasting and exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve.
It will be a strange holiday this year, away from home, barely speaking to Maura.
• • •
It’s late when we get home. We scrub our skin until it’s red, and Mei volunteers to boil our dresses. When I pop into the sitting room to look for Tess, Vi tells me she’s already retired for the night and doesn’t want to be disturbed, even by me. I’m tempted to check on her anyway, but she does need her rest. So do I, for that matter. And yet . . .
My other sister is huddled with Parvati, Genie, and a few others around the pink settee. It seems Alice has fallen permanently into disfavor. Maura switched rooms again—with Livvy this time—in order to share with Parvati. But Alice seems happy enough now that she and Vi have made up. They sit squashed together in a blue armchair, paging through a fashion magazine from Mexico City. Livvy is playing a lovely sonata on the piano. Sachi is sitting on an ottoman by the fire, while Rory lies on her stomach on the red hooked rug and Prue reads a novel nearby. Pearl is knitting another soft gray scarf—for convalescents in the hospital, sweet girl—while Mei decimates Addie in a game of chess.
Contentment washes over me. Despite Finn—despite Inez’s scheming—despite the Brothers’ cruelties and the uncertainty of our future—I am not unhappy here. I never dreamed I would have friends like these. Three months ago, I didn’t think I could trust anyone in the world save my sisters.
How wrong I was, on both accounts.
I want to fold my tired limbs into a chair and watch Mei maneuver her queen across the board, or throw myself on the floor next to Rory and laugh my worries away. Instead, I cross the room to Maura.
“May I speak with you a moment?”
“You can speak freely in front of my friends,” she says, smoothing her sapphire skirts.
“I really can’t. ” I try to keep my voice pleasant. “It’ll only take a moment. ”