The cabaret was closed until showtime, and the wheelchair couldn’t navigate the narrow alleys to the open back door. Even though I knew it was bad for Demi’s business, I had no choice but to bang on the door with my bare fist, howling, “Open up, y’all! Criminy’s hurt. Open this goddamn door!”
Blaise appeared, his face turning dark blue as he looked down at Criminy’s still body. “Poison, oui? Bring him to a bed, madame, and quick.”
We soon had Criminy laid out in Ahnastasia’s bed, as it was the closest one on the ground floor. If he’d been conscious, he would have loved the excitement of reclining on the silver fur coverlet where the queen of the Bludmen dreamed . . . and more. As it was, his wiry arms were limp, his face gone whiter than white. And Ahnastasia wasn’t pleased a bit.
“Once he’s not dead, I’ll get him off your royal bed,” I snapped when she’d sighed her annoyance one too many times.
“He can live or die, so long as he’s out of my chamber. With equal cheerfulness, I can wait,” she muttered, and Casper made for his little notebook but noticed the look of death in my eyes and left it alone.
Soon Reve arrived with Bea and Mel, and they took the heavy, blood-soaked bag with trembling hands.
“So zis is what’s left of ze great Sweeting, eh?” Mel said.
Bea shook her head. “As bad as Charmant. And just as dead.”
“And the world is better for it,” Reve said with great finality. “Let us work.”
The daimons, it seemed, kept their magic as secret as the Bludmen kept theirs. The Demimonde had a small kitchen with a butcher-block table, and the daimons took the tail there and urged me to stay with Crim and say my good-byes, just in case. I sat on a wingback chair pulled close to the bed, his bare hand limp and cold in mine, trying to come to terms with the fact that my ageless, fearless husband might actually die. As a human, I’d basically considered him a superhero. I’d seen him shot with arrows, scaling impossibly high walls, and fighting with animals that weighed ten times as much as him, laughing all the while. He’d never backed down from a fight—not with me, not with his customers, and not with anyone else. And now here he was, still and barely breathing, his face waxy and his fine gray eyes rolled back in his head behind purple eyelids rimmed in smeared kohl.
Demi came in with a tea tray and urged a cup into my hands. “You’re too new, Tish. You’re no good to him feral. You have to keep up your strength.”
“He is my strength. They’ll fix him, won’t they?”
She shrugged, put hands to her belly, and chuckled. “Oh, I was going to pull up my shirt to show you a scar, but I forget we’re always in these damned corsets here. Monsieur Charmant stabbed me in the back with a blade smeared in his tail’s poison, and I lived, so I don’t see why Crim wouldn’t. He’s a tough bastard.”
“Don’t I know it. He specifically said he was worried about me in there, and he’s the one who got hurt. And mangled his favorite boots, too. At least, if he lives, I’ll get to do the world’s best ‘I Told You So’ dance.”
Demi ran her fingers over the ripped leather where the fox’s metal teeth had done their damnedest to saw through his leg. “He’s going to be pretty pissed when he wakes up, isn’t he?”
“He was pretty pissed before he blacked out, too. But I know where the witch is. So I guess we succeeded. Cheers?”
I picked up a steaming teacup beribboned with melting pink foam and held it up. Demi picked up her own cup, and we clinked them gently and drank. She was right—I gulped down the entire cup almost instantly and licked the blood-tinged whipped cream off my lips. Elsewhere in the grand old theater, doors opened and closed, boots and heels stomped, voices called out in welcome and annoyance. But none of it touched me. I didn’t feel the crushing fear I’d known when he’d last tasted death, an arrow shot through his throat. My training as a nurse had informed my worry then, assuring me that he had no hope of living. But he’d popped up like a goddamn jack-in-the-box, his body healing, his skin resealing before my eyes.
No, this was something beyond my experience. A daimon’s poison wasn’t part of my nursing degree and training on Earth. And my Bludman’s heart felt removed, cold and detached in the way that only a creature with a long life can feel. He’d die or he wouldn’t. Nothing I could do would change it. Which made me want to crush things in my talons, clutch him by the shoulders, and shake him until his eyes popped open in rage.
And yet I was surprised when the porcelain cup shattered, because I was, in fact, crushing it with my talons in rage.
I opened my hand and bent to scoop up the sodden chips. “Sorry.”
“It happens more than you’d expect,” Demi said with an understanding grin. “The entire time I’ve been in Sang, I’ve never seen a nice, heavy mug. Not even one that says ‘World’s Best Boss.’ I looked, you know.” She inclined her head to the bed. “For him.”
Tears struck me, hot and fast, and I dashed them away.
The door opened just then, and a parade of daimons hurried in, with Reve at the front, her skin the bright fuchsia of sunsets and triumph and a black leather doctor’s bag in her arms. I hadn’t let myself look in a while to see if Crim’s breathing was slowing or worse, but now I looked hard, grateful that his chest still stirred.
“Did it work?” I asked, and Bea waved me away.
“Daimon magic is a secret thing. Wait outside, chérie, and we will see.”
“If you think for one cotton-picking minute that I’m going to leave his side, you’re—”
Demi grabbed me under the armpits, Blaise trapped my feet, and together they hauled me out of the room, kicking and spitting.
“Désolé,” Mel said, slamming the door in my face.
“What the hell!” I roared, fingers curled into claws around the doorknob.
I took to pacing the halls, my boots tapping on heavy wood planks and soft Moravian carpets. Demi and Blaise disappeared and reappeared, and I at turns put my ear against the thick door and punched the solid beams ribbing the walls.
I had just stopped to pummel a dent in the flowered wallpaper when Demi came up behind me and grabbed my wrists.
“Tish, seriously. You have to chill. You’re annoying as hell out here. It takes time. Only daimons know the antidote to daimon poison, and they don’t have to help him.” The corner of her mouth quirked up, so much like Criminy that it hurt. “Well, they do if they want to work here, I guess. But still. Let them do their work. You’re not going to help Criminy by pitching a damn fit.”
“Vraiment,” Blaise said. He reached for my hand, massaged the bruised knuckles, and kissed it with a gentleman’s flair. And then he grinned and held out my wedding ring, which I hadn’t even noticed he’d removed.
“Dammit, Blaise,” Demi muttered.
I took the ring back with a nod of respect. “You and Crim are going to get along just fine, if he lives through this.”
“Then my hopes are doubled, madame.”
When the door opened, it was softly. Not the exuberant bang of victory but the quiet click of a sickroom. I spun around to find Reve a lackluster mauve shadow of herself.
“What happened? Is he dead?”
She shook her head sadly. “It isn’t taking as well as we’d hoped. Sweeting was powerful. Who knows what potions he may have ingested to strengthen his vitriol? The fox’s teeth were also tampered with, according to the gash on your husband’s leg. His neck wound came straight from the stinger, and his ankle is swelling with a different kind of poison. I’m doing everything I can—we’re doing everything we can—but . . .” Reve looked down, and Demi put a hand on the daimon’s shoulder. “It doesn’t look good.”
“What can we do?” I asked. “What can I bring you? Is there a daimon witch, a chirurgeon, a goddamn miracle worker? Whose soul do I have to sell to get more powerful magic?”
The daimon’s skin flashed red as she drew herself up tall. “The problem is not my magic. I can’t work miracles on dead bodies. No one can.” She stalked do
wn the hall, the black bag swinging fiercely at her side.
Demi held out a handkerchief. “Uh, Tish? Just a pro tip. Don’t piss off daimons. They feed on good emotions and can’t work for shit when they’re upset.”
Rage boiled up from my toes, and I was surprised my own skin didn’t turn red to match Reve’s. “I don’t give a shit if they’re happy. If they can’t save Criminy, they’re no good to me.” I kicked the door, satisfied at the gasps that came from the other side. “I’m a nurse. If I can’t help someone live, I help someone die. And I can’t help him die. I have to do something. I can’t just sit here, helpless.” Demi grabbed my hands and pulled me away from the door and into a hug. I dug my face into her shoulder and bawled like a baby.
“I can put you to work in the cabaret. The floors always need polishing, and the harder you punish the wax, the brighter the wood will shine. The costumes need mending, if you want to stab something. And I’d consider it a great favor if you’d bug Ahnastasia until she has a hissy fit. Her tantrums are more interesting than our shows.”
I spluttered a laugh. “None of that’s real. Those are just reindeer games.”
“So go for a walk. Dress as a Pinky and buy a new parasol and feed the pigeons.”
“I can’t leave. What if he . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Not with “wakes up” and not with “dies.”
“Bea and Mel are here. I’m here. I’ll get Ahnastasia to read him a bedtime story in which all the children get eaten. There’s really, seriously, literally nothing you can do to help him. And frankly, what you’re doing now is just making it harder on everybody else.”
“I don’t care if it’s hard!” I shouted, and the entire building went so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Demi sighed. “Helping Crim is daimon business, and running this cabaret is my business. Your business is finding a way to deal with your frustration that doesn’t get in anyone’s way.”
“Fine!” I barked.
And for good measure, I grabbed Demi’s teacup and threw it against the wall.
Just for the satisfaction of seeing it shatter.
Much like Criminy, Demi had a way of pissing me off until I admitted, to myself at least, that she was right. No matter what my mouth said, my feet took me to the costume room and the faded old daimon who mostly ruled there.
“Quite a set of pipes you’ve got,” Blue said, looking up from her sewing machine with sharp, perpetually mournful eyes.
“Criminy taught me to project for a crowd,” I said, then choked when I realized I was talking about Crim in the past. “Can you dress me like a Pinky, please? I need to get out of here, and if anyone looks at me sideways, I’ll rip out their liver.”
Blue smirked and stood, her old bones cracking. With a ballerina’s long-standing grace, she walked to one of the dozens of racks and plucked out a bright red dress that matched my current anger. I took it behind a changing screen and violently ripped off the dress I’d been wearing, which I’d rather liked and which was now splattered with daimon blood, formaldehyde from the broken jars, and worse. I couldn’t help thinking about the first costumer I’d met in Sang, when I’d still been a human woman so certain that she was dreaming, utterly in ignorance of her powers—and of reality. Mrs. Cleavers, the caravan’s long-dead Bludman costumer, had possessed the face of a vulture and clever gloved fingers that had dressed me like a balky child, long ago. But Blue knew well enough to just toss me all the various parts of my outfit and keep a good distance. I knew my way around a corset and crinoline now, and I was much more likely to bite off her fingers than she was to bite off mine.
“Where do you plan on going?” Blue asked as she sat me down and brushed out my hair.
“I don’t know. Does Buckingham Palace have those funny guard guys in the furry hats?”
Her clawed fingers plucked something nasty from my hair and tossed it away. “No palaces in London. But I can give you the address of a fine milliner, if you’re wanting a new hat.”
“Ugh. No more hats. There’s no changing of the guards if there’s no palace to guard.” I slumped further down on the stool. It was always calming to have my hair done by someone else, but what was the point of getting dressed up if everyone thought I was a human and I wasn’t adventuring with Criminy? Part of me longed for a messy bun, a pair of gray sweatpants with worn-out elastic, and a bowl of ice cream to cry into.
“Look, kid. You can’t do anything about your man. Best thing you can do is go buy yourself a smile somehow. Take care of yourself. Find a treat.”
“I don’t wanna.” The brush ripped through my hair hard, and I jerked upright and growled.
“If you can’t stop being sad, might as well choose anger,” Blue said, her eyes twinkling in an annoying sort of way. “Anger gets things done. Anger has purpose and direction.” She jumped in front of me suddenly, pointed at my face, and shouted, “What do you really want?”
“Criminy.”
“What else do you want?”
“My grandmother.”
The quickness of my answer surprised me. But it was the truth.
Blue smiled, and I did, too.
“So go get her,” she said.
And now I had something useful to do.
Even though I was outfitted as a Pinky, I was still the wife of Criminy Stain. Back upstairs, I asked Bea and Mel for a moment of privacy, and when they left, I rifled through my husband’s coat for goodies. After six years with him, I still didn’t understand the complicated system he used for keeping the hundreds of pockets in his coats and the dozens of drawers in his desk in order, and whenever I asked about it, he distracted me with kisses. Luckily, I had noticed that he kept certain common magical ingredients in the most obvious, easy-to-reach pockets, including the powder that made cloaking puffs of smoke and the one that made shoe soles silent. And I also knew he kept sheathed knives in both of his boots when we traveled. Maybe I’d turned down a few weapons the last time I’d put on a costume, but without Criminy by my side, I’d take every blade I could carry.
By the time I kissed his cold, dry lips and whispered my love and apologies, I had one knife in my corset and the one in my boot and a reticule stuffed with coins and tiny bags of powder. Focusing on saving my Nana didn’t lessen the pain of seeing Crim like this, of leaving him behind. But Blue had hit the nail on the head. Anger could solve problems, while sadness accomplished nothing. If I didn’t hurry, I might lose the two people I loved most.
I slipped out the back of the cabaret and followed the alleys to a main road, where I hailed a horseless carriage and rode in silence all the way down to the gates of London. The guards gave me no trouble when I showed them my papers; they didn’t care so much who left. Large crowds always milled about down here, at the base of the city, and as a human, I’d been wary of the tinkers, lawyers, vagabonds, and ne’er-do-wells waiting to steal papers or coin. But as a Bludwoman pretending to be a Pinky with somewhere to be, I simply held my umbrella like a weapon and cut through their ranks like a shark in water, headed for the rocky rubble I’d seen in my glance on Mr. Sweeting. The circumference of the London wall had to be hundreds of miles, and yet I knew without a doubt that the particular boulder I was looking for was in this direction and not very far.
What I hadn’t seen, however, was the thief stalking me, the pale sun glinting off his slender blade.
15
Once upon a time, I would’ve been scared. My heartbeat would’ve ratcheted up, and I’d have looked around for a strong guy in a uniform to cower behind. Or I might have just clutched my keys aggressively and started yelling for help. Oh, but I had changed in the past week. As it was, I continued walking as if I wasn’t aware of him, which a normal human woman very well might not have been. Of course, a normal human woman wouldn’t have dared to leave the orbit of London’s protected gates without the company of a chaperone or, more likely, her man, her knight, her champion.
I was ready to be my own champion.
And I was
hungry.
Recognizing the correct boulder up ahead, I stalled, as if messing with my parasol, putting it up to shield my fair skin from the sun. All of a sudden, a gloved hand shot around my mouth, a fillet knife hovering just above my neck, which was protected by the high, stiff collar currently favored by Pinky ladies for this exact reason, among others.
“Not a squeak, sweetums,” the man growled into my ear. “Give me your papers, your money, and your jewelry, and I might let you live.”
“Is that how you sweet-talk all the ladies?” I muttered, grinning.
He smelled of leather and sweat and the pulsing, coppery tang of hot blood. If only the humans knew that a bald man was what most invigorated Bludmen, they’d all take to wearing even sillier hats and higher wigs, instead of bothering with gloves and cravats.
“It ain’t gonner be sweet when I slit your throat and take ’em anyway, Bessie.”
He used the blade to push down my collar, and the metal was a hot line of rage against my throat. I’d had just about enough, and it felt as if I were being taken over completely by a rabid dog, a feral beast intent only on blood and revenge. A wash of red fell over my eyes, and I opened my mouth against his hand and bit down hard on the meat of his fingers. I did not hold back, as a human would.
The blade sliced me, just a little, as he reeled away, his hand dripping precious blood into the dirt. I ran my tongue over my teeth. I could taste London in him, cold stone and coal and waxed newspaper.
“You’re going to pay for that, you are,” he said, head down like a bull about to charge as he flicked the blood away.
His knife drew pictures in the air, flashing and singing in the sunlight, but it didn’t sing like the beast inside me. My beast sang only for his blood. I would write sonnets with his screams and paint masterpieces with whatever I found inside him. When I laughed, low and dark, his smile faltered, and he took a step back in his cheap, patched boots. In the way of all kung fu movies, I held out my flat hand and beckoned him with curling fingers.