Dearly, Beloved Part 26

Only years of practice with arm control kept my saucer from clinking against my cup. Carefully, but quickly, I decided on a course of action. "Who did this to her?"

"Oh, don't you know about the Murder?"

"No," I lied. "Who are they?"

Opalina glanced down the room toward the adults. From what I could make out, they were talking about winter fashions. Satisfied, the girl whispered, "They're young men of the aristocracy, reclaiming the streets for the living. Making the dead sorry they ever set one foot outside the grave."

Yaeba found this description hysterical. I, myself, went stiff. "Aren't they afraid they'll get caught?" I wasn't quite sure what I was fishing for. Michael had yet to give me any details; he had only confirmed my suspicions. He'd natter on for hours about the exploits he'd seen, but he was now infuriatingly silent when it came to his own plans. Often my texts went completely unanswered-like today. It was starting to drive me mad. I'd had a chance to listen, and now I cursed myself for not taking it.

"They wear masks and change their voices. To look like carrion crows, feasting on the dead. They don't share names. They meet in different locations and communicate via real paper letters that can be burnt."

That was more than I'd gotten from Michael. "How do you know all this?"

"My brother tells me." Opalina giggled, officially the creepiest sound I'd ever heard.

I managed a smile for her. "Fascinating."

"Isn't it just?" She launched into a similar piece of gossip. I tuned her out halfway, my imagination spinning. Was their brother one of them?

There was only one way to find out.

"Pardon me," I said, rising. "I'm afraid I must visit the powder room."

"Oh, it's down the hall, on the left," Yaeba said. "Do hurry back. I think Mama means for us to play croquet outside. The field is finally dry."

"I should like nothing more," I a.s.sured her as I hurried away.

My guardians turned to look at me as I pa.s.sed, sending me warning glances. Lady de La Mosca caught sight of me and swallowed her tea, calling out, "Miss Mink, dear girl! You must play! We have the new pianoforte, and oh, you play like an-"

"She does not play for anyone," my mother interjected. "She does not like to show off. The more accomplished the girl, the less you should see of it."

Curtsying to Lady de La Mosca, I mumbled something polite and continued on my way, seeking out the powder room and then locking myself inside. There, I sank to the marble floor in front of a wall-length, gold-edged mirror, my heart pounding.

Maybe I didn't need Michael after all. If he'd ever talked to his fellow Murder members as he talked to me that first night, maybe they would know what he had planned. If Opalina was right, they wouldn't even know I was asking after him, just a particular plan. Gathering information that way might actually be safer than continuing to hound him, all things considered.

But why was I doing this? Why the urge to chase this particular dragon? I hated zombies, I despised Dearly, and I still had nightmares about the night I'd had to put my faith in Roe. And frankly, now that I knew that every word he'd spoken that night in my house was true, I was terrified of what Michael might do if he figured out my real intentions. Really terrified.

So why was I doing this?

Looking into the mirror, I met my own gray eyes. Thirteen years ago, when Lord Mink found me nestled between my parents' dead bodies, my eyes had been blue. Sightless, but deeply, deeply blue. I had a photograph to prove it, a single faded photograph I kept in a safe deposit box registered under a pseudonym, never to touch Lady Mink's hands. It was a little bit of my ident.i.ty she could never erase, a window onto my past that she could never close. They had taken me from my birthplace, given me a dead girl's name, fortune, and gray eyes, but they couldn't kill the old me completely.

There was my answer.

Moving fast, I arranged myself. I pulled the sheer scarf out of the V-shaped neckline of my blue-dotted Swiss visiting dress, revealing a bit more skin. I bit my lip and pinched my cheeks, then climbed onto the sink and removed one of the frosted gla.s.s shades from the gas lamp above it, helping myself to a bit of the lampblack gathered within. With this I made my lashes darker, a little bit longer, holding my bangs out of the way.

Then I went in search of Rupert de La Mosca.

Rupert was nineteen, and apparently had nothing better to do with his time than supervise a trio of servants as they set up the croquet course for his mother on one of her visiting days. This told me all I needed to know. I caught sight of him through a set of French doors during my explorations, and stepped outside.

Noticing my approach, he stopped tossing the blue ball from hand to hand and bowed slightly. He was an ugly brute, with a bulbous, squashed nose and piggy blue eyes. "Miss ... Mink, isn't it?"

"Yes. Forgive me, I didn't know you were out here." I curtsied before drawing closer, hoping my heartbeat wasn't audible. "Is the field ready? Miss de La Mosca mentioned playing a round, and I thought I might check and save everyone the bother."

"I guess so." He looked me up and down. "Fan, are you?"

"I have a mania for games of all sorts."

"I bet you do." He whipped the ball at the court, chuckling lightly when it bounced up and bopped one of the servants in the chest. He returned to the patio and picked up a green velvet jacket that had seen better days from the back of a white wrought-iron chair.

"So, how have you been spending your time since the Apocalypse?" It was simple enough to think of things to say. A lady had to know how to entertain, carry a conversation, collect needed social information. Really, this was no different.

"Is that what you call it?"

"Among other things." I folded my arms behind my back, lifting my chest slightly. "You must be terribly busy. Are you not reading for the law?"

Rupert pulled his jacket on somewhat forcefully. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, your father-"

"Is very busy. As am I." He brushed down his sleeves. "You're a girl. You wouldn't understand."

"I'm sorry if I'm being a pest," I said. "And I do believe you are right-well, when it comes to other girls. I've always found the company of young men to be so much more stimulating than the company of young ladies."

Rupert raised a brow. "Oh?" he asked, every suggestion in the world contained in a single sound.

"Of course! Men lead such interesting lives." I needed something to do with my hands, and went for the rack of mallets, selecting the red one. As I hefted the thing, I decided to go for it. "For instance, your sister was just telling me about a certain group of young men, the marvelous things they're doing."

"Like what?"

I took a practice swing. "Punishing those who deserve it."

That got his attention. He came closer to me, and I could smell some sort of strong, nauseating soap-or ghastly cologne. I wasn't sure which. "What did she tell you?"

Affecting perfect innocence, I looked into his eyes and said, "Only of a girl in town caught with her dead relative, and some zombie overtaken on the streets." I laughed. "The gall of them, wandering about as if they had any right to exist."

The words were easy to say, for on the surface I meant them. Rupert didn't respond right away. I breathed through my mouth until he did. "At least one pretty girl knows the correct way to think."

"You flatter me." Doing my best to act as if the idea had just come to me, I ventured, "Speaking of which ... no. It'd be silly." Hanging the mallet up again, I indulged in a sigh. "And it's clear you can't tolerate a girl's silliness. I ought to go inside."

"I can tolerate it when it amuses me." Rupert smirked. "What is it?"

"Well, there's this girl I have a long-standing feud with. I have it on good authority that she not only has her eyes on a dead boy, but that she lives with the dead, eats with the dead. Why, it's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard of. And I was just wondering-do you think those who've been punished are picked at random?" I let my eyelashes flutter upward. "Or do you think someone might ... put in a word for them?"

Rupert's smirk melted away. "What would possibly make you think I know anything about that, Miss Mink?"

Flicking a sausage curl over my shoulder, I wracked my brain, trying to figure out how to put it. "I don't 'think' anything. I'm just saying, if this group does exist, I could use-"

Rupert interrupted me by invading my personal s.p.a.ce and squinting at me as if I were a slide under a microscope. His breath was horrid, and I stopped breathing altogether. "Let me give you a bit of advice before you say one more word. You are a young lady, and you should not concern yourself with such dark matters."

For a moment fear took over, and I thought of fleeing the field, heading for the nearby man-made forest of trees. This was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And yet, I tried to feel my way through. "Are you certain? For I've heard of living girls being ... singled out."

"That was an accident," he said sharply. He looked at me for a tick, before leaning closer. "What are you really doing here?"

Honestly, I didn't know. And so I called it off with, "Being foolish, obviously."

"Good girl. But I do thank you. I clearly owe my sister a chat."

He didn't step back. Neither did I. My heart was fluttering, my thoughts a blur. I hadn't gotten a thing, and what's more, now I'd lost Opalina and her need to brag. I wasn't as good at this game as I thought.

But then Rupert surprised me. After his fleshy mouth moved in a slow circuit, following the orbit of a thoughtful tongue, he said, "Keep an eye on the news. An ear to the grapevine. Whatever it is you females do."

"When?" It came out far too quickly.

"This weekend." He raised himself up. "Consider it an ill.u.s.tration of what might happen to you if you don't keep your mouth shut."

Despite his rank breath, greasy hair, and thinly veiled threats, Rupert was now my knight in shining armor. He'd at least given me something. I touched his arm as I pa.s.sed by him, allowing the outward swell of my skirt to brush his thigh. "Thank you."

"The pleasure's all mine," he said, turning to watch me go.

Without looking back, I made my way into the house and rejoined my group. It worked. It actually worked.

Twenty minutes later we were back outside, Rupert lingering to watch. I tried to quietly encourage this by manipulating the cant of my body, the fall of my hair. I wanted him to remember me fondly, maybe even to grow interested-it'd cut down on the risk of him overthinking our encounter, wondering if perhaps I had a motive other than bringing a compet.i.tor to ruin.

Lady Mink noticed Rupert's attentions. At one point she leaned in and hissed at me, "You're shaming yourself. I forbid you to even consider it. You could do so much better."

I knew I could. I knew I would, as soon as I got back to my computer.

22.

BRAM.

"I'll kill him."

"No you won't. I will."

Sitting behind the bushes at the tearoom had only been humiliating, at first-but the moment Allister showed up and opened his mouth, it became excruciating. Nora forbade me to make a move unless the situation went thermonuclear, and so I remained seated, an obedient beau and bodyguard, having to listen to that moron prattle on about how he could "protect" her. The longer he'd gone on, the more condescendingly he spoke to her, the greater my anger had grown.

Then he insulted her and her father. In a funny way, that offered me some rea.s.surance. I'd heard the words, and they occasioned a wave of nearly debilitating anger, but I hadn't ripped his tongue out. Progress. I'd become a regular New Victorian gentleman.

Wherever Coalhouse had gotten off to, he'd not taken Sam's car. I directed it through the EF. "Telling you how b.l.o.o.d.y innocent he is, how he never did a wrong thing in his life-do you think he actually believes that? Is he deluded?"

Nora pulled her gloves off and pressed her hands to her face, leaning back in the pa.s.senger seat. "I have no idea. We didn't get anywhere, did we? That was stupid."

"Very, very stupid," I concurred. "Because now I'm just going to obsess over what it'd feel like to pop his head off for the rest of the day."

"Don't write checks your conscience won't let you cash."

"Says the girl who came up with the idea in the first place."

"Guilty as charged."

"His tone when he was telling you why he thinks he did the horrible things he did, like you should just smile and go, 'Oh, I never thought of it that way, I guess you're a good guy after all, tee hee!'" I pulled into the driveway. "I wanted to lay him out."

"Welcome to my world. Oh, and this is why you've ruined me for all other boys."

Parking, I looked at her. "So, you think he knows anything else?"

Nora sighed. "He sounded like he was telling the truth. It got a little weird at the end. If he cares so much about me, why didn't he sit right back down and quiz me about the hijacking?"

And that was the kicker. "Are you sure you didn't know he felt that way about you?" I hated sounding like a jealous lover-snarly or not-but I wanted to know.

"G.o.d, no." Nora stuck out her tongue. "Not before the whole thing on the airship. I mean, today was probably the most expressive I've ever seen him. He ran away before I could verbally eviscerate him. I was trying to get info first."

"He finds you 'fascinating,'" I mimicked. "But you 'compromise' yourself." Good G.o.d, I wanted to punch him in the face again. Just one good, solid, honest, knuckle-itching punch.

Nora opened her door. "Calm down. He's not the last person who's going to say stuff like that about us. You said so yourself. Just forget about him."

I had, and I knew she was only reminding me of the truth. But hearing it from him had set me off.

Once we were inside, an irritated Renfield intercepted us. He'd changed his clothes, at least, throwing a waistcoat over a clean shirt, though his hair was still rumpled. "Where did you two go?"

"To meet up with Allister," I told him, yanking my jacket off.

"You were with him?" Renfield asked, agape. "I didn't know! I would've texted you!"

"Texted? Why? Mind explaining what the h.e.l.l you're on about?"

Renfield looked uneasily between both of us, his eyes flashing. "Yes. Come with me." And with that, he turned and headed up the stairs.

Nora and I shared an exhausted look before falling in behind our skinny strategist. He led the way up to the attic. Father Isley was nowhere to be seen, and Renfield's multiple computers were humming along industriously, his little steam "holographic" projector hissing away beside them. The largest computer monitor, edged in tooled bra.s.s, showed a series of virtual chessboards.

Ren gestured earnestly with both hands. "This is going to sound wild, but stay with me." He glanced at Nora. "Vespertine Mink is contacting me through ACL."

"What?" Nora demanded. "She e-mailed you?"

"No. Not e-mail." He returned his attention to me. "I think she knows something. Something that could get her into trouble."

"Something about Allister?"

"Indeed." Ren took his seat. "A few days ago I started getting a ton of e-mails warning me my account at Aethernet Chess Live would be deleted if I didn't start logging in again. I haven't had a chance to play since the whole airship debacle. So the night I gave you the background checks, I came back up here and logged in, and almost immediately a new account friended me. AllSeeing12."