Consciousness came and went on a pendulum swing. Johnathan drifted between the past and the present, chased by shadows and the constant chatter of teeth. Memories bled into dreams, a tangle of night terrors. Strung like cobwebs through his mind, they snared him until he couldn’t tell up from down, truth from lie.
Sir Harry held him tight, one hand wrapped around Johnathan’s slender throat as they settled in for a day’s rest. “Never betray me, sweet one.” It was an order and a threat. A code he lived by, and no matter how many misgivings and moments of hesitation he experienced, Johnathan never once forfeited that trust.
Never.
Memory shifted, the pendulum swung up, his face thinner, older. The knife handle was slippery in Johnathan’s fingers. Slick with the blood rapidly cooling against his skin. Had he killed someone? No, he never took a human life on his own.
“You must strike the heart,” instructed a voice from the shadows, chill and slippery as the blood on the icy stone beneath his feet. The man’s face remained in shadow but for his spectacles, glinting orbs that floated in the dim light. He gripped a weathered wooden cross, tapping it against his thigh, looming behind Johnathan. “Strike true and leave your blade there. Or I’ll be picking you out of his fangs.”
Johnathan’s heart thundered a furious rhythm, an off-tune beat to the soft, impatient tread behind him. He raised the blade overhead. Sir Harry opened his eyes. This hadn’t happened before, no. Sir Harry’s eyes had stayed closed through that terrible moment. Johnathan met the accusation in that stare, all sound scrubbed out, replaced by a high-pitched ringing in his ears, like the long drawn-out echo of a scream.
His hand throbbed. Not memory, but an intrusion of the present.
Johnathan gasped and clasped his wrist, his eyes riveted to the center of his unmarked palm. The skin blackened as he watched, festered and charred where it burned from within. Was this real? Was he awake or still dreaming?
“Hmmm, you’ve done it now, boy,” Sir Harry murmured in his ear, that low voice piercing straight through the high-pitched ringing. Grave-tinted nails slid along his jaw until iron fingers collared him.
The pendulum swung down. The choking grip of the dream faded, and reality surged forward. Johnathan rode the momentum to consciousness, finally peeling his heavy lids open. He was in a bedroom now, surrounded by the calming earthy tones of russet and hunter green. The bed beneath him was a study of contrast, soft feather down and refined cotton, a true comfort. The previous night was a foggy murmur at the back of his thoughts. The high-pitched ringing in his ears was still there, which is why it took him so long to realize he was not alone.
Alyse Shaw sat on the edge of the bed. Her gaze was not on him, but the door, expectation in the set of her shoulders. He took the moment to study her. In the trailing afternoon light that shone through the windows, he wondered if it were a trick of the mind to draw such similarities between the murdered girl and Alyse Shaw. But the resemblance of their appearance was uncanny. It went beyond shared superficial features of dark hair and eyes. Vic thought he’d recognized her face in the dead woman as well, and Johnathan couldn’t dismiss his unease in her presence. The shades of his dreams haunted him even now.
The moment passed. Alyse shifted and turned her dark gaze on him. “You’re awake.”
He swallowed, and heat flushed up the back of his neck. He was indeed, and the inappropriateness of the situation didn’t escape him, alone with a young lady on his bed. To his great relief, he still wore clothing, although he cringed to think of his travel-filthy clothes on Vic’s sheets.
Where was Vic? It struck him once more how little he knew about his host, such as the man’s last name. Hard to think on that with the young lady so close.
Alyse anchored his attention. He tried not to shrink away from her innocuous presence. His experience with the fairer sex was severely limited, particularly once the Society got their hands on him, but he still knew the basics of manners. Her presence here, alone, simply wouldn’t do. He sank further into the mattress. Her gaze turned puzzled.
He cleared his throat, or attempted to, caught off guard by how dry it was. It felt as if he’d gargled with cotton and sand. His eyes watered as the coughing fit took him hard.
“Got grit in your throat?” Alyse asked. “Would you like me to fetch the water pitcher?”
He rolled to his side and covered his mouth, unable to answer her. The soft rasp of a cloth bandage met his lips. He jerked his hand away and blinked through tears at the neatly wrapped dressing on his wounded palm. The wound that didn’t bleed. Carefully, he eased the bandage higher, wincing as he exposed the edge of the puncture wound. There was still an unsettling lack of blood, though the skin around the hole appeared puffy, almost bruised, but numb to the touch. He dragged the bandage back in place, wondering and fearful that the strange puncture would become infected.
An infection would certainly slow him down. Johnathan’s train of thought derailed when a cup was shoved between his hands. Miss Shaw knelt on the floor beside him, holding the water steady for him.
Johnathan took a long drink, the chill liquid a balm on his parched throat. The coolness spread through his system, like a soothing ripple through his veins. It cleared the fog from his head, where his mind began to simmer.
“Thank you,” he rasped.
“Ah, he does speak.”
Johnathan ducked his head, thoroughly discomfited by Miss Shaw’s presence. “Where is Master Vic?”
Her brow rose as she settled on the bed next to him once more, clearly unaware of personal space. “Master Vic needed to attend to a few errands,” she said. There was a note of sarcasm and amusement in her tone. “You’re the man he hired.” It wasn’t a question.
Alyse’s fingers tapped the jug of water in her hands. Johnathan couldn’t quite decipher the expression in her dark eyes, but it made him feel uneasy. Her attention made him feel naked despite the reassuring texture of his roughshod clothing. He shifted beneath the covers, seized with the laughable urge to cover himself. Johnathan doubted he’d ever add enough layers not to feel exposed to that stare.
“Apologies for waking your residence so early this morning,” said Johnathan. The words stumbled out his mouth, but the intensity of her silent observation was worse.
“I assure you my father was relieved for the mistake,” said Miss Shaw. She finally looked away to refill his mug. He was grateful to be free of such scrutiny. “Why would Vic hire a scrapper pup like you?”
Johnathan choked on his own spit. “I beg your pardon?” he managed to gasp out.
She pursed her lips as she peered at him. “You’re certainly big enough to be mistaken for a man, until you sleep. I bet you aren’t a day over sixteen.”
“I’m at least twenty,” Johnathan shot back, and immediately regretted the admission.
She blinked at him. “At least? You don’t know?”
Here he’d talked himself back against another conversational wall. He couldn’t very well explain to the nosy chit why his actual age was a matter of contention. He could be anywhere between eighteen or two and twenty, though he suspected he was somewhere between. Instead, Johnathan curled his limbs away from her, flustered by the entirely improper Miss Shaw.
“How old are you, then?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you have a chaperone?”
Miss Shaw’s incredulous expression broke into a grin. “Look at you blushing. I’m three and twenty, practically a spinster, and I don’t think a chaperone could keep up with me.”
“Truer words than scripture.” Vic’s voice announced his arrival before he entered the room. Johnathan felt an invisible weight lift off his shoulders, relieved to have an ally against the insufferable woman. That feeling dissipated slightly as Vic’s cool gaze slid over him. There was a hard question in his stare that Johnathan didn’t understand and possibly imagined, gone from one second to the next as the corners of his eyes creased with good-natured crow’s feet. The appearance of those lines surprised him, placing Vic’s age higher than Johnathan first surmised, or hinted at a harder life than he’d imagined.
“I think you’ve tortured my guest enough for one evening, Alyse. We have matters to attend,” said Vic. The afternoon sun fell on the master of the house with a loving caress—it painted his pale skin in golden hues and offset his silvery gray eyes like sea glass. The sight banished the last vapors of tension. Something unknotted in Johnathan’s chest, a final doubt laid to rest that he didn’t realize he still carried.
Vampires didn’t wither in the sun, but the natural light revealed too much of their inhuman nature. One would never invite such casual exposure.
A hazy memory flashed through his thoughts, of a smooth white thigh, the details frustratingly blank. Johnathan frowned, the image churned in the frothy sea of his subconscious. Was that even real? He shook himself as Alyse perked up.
“What matters?” Alyse set the jug down hard on the night table. Vic’s expression turned evasive. “Oh, don’t you dare clam up now!”
Vic crossed his arms, but his hands began to fidget. It was the first time Johnathan saw him as anything but cool and collected. Apparently, Miss Shaw had that effect on everyone. Vic hemmed. “We are paying Stebbins a visit—”
“I knew it.” Alyse stood, braced for an argument. “I want to come.”
“No!” Vic and Johnathan blurted in tandem.
“A morgue is no place for a lady,” Johnathan muttered, his retort a match on kindling as Alyse spun on him.
“No place for a child either,” she snapped.
He could feel his face color at Vic’s puzzled expression. The other man appeared to tuck away the jab to unpack later. Gliding across the room, he set his hands on Alyse’s heaving shoulders.
“I don't want you to see this. You don’t realize how bad it was, worse still when I believed it was you.” Vic’s quiet tone squelched the fire in her. She sagged into his hands, and Johnathan suddenly felt like a voyeur.
“I’m still here, Vic, and I’m not to be coddled,” said Alyse, but she didn’t fight when he attempted to usher her to the door.
“Come, let’s speak of this in my study and give Johnathan a chance to wash up.” Vic cast a meaningful glance over Alyse’s shoulder. “Johnathan, there’s a wash basin on the side cabinet. If you would excuse us.” Vic steered the unruly woman from the room, which left Johnathan alone to face the rising riot in his mind.
He swung his legs off the bed with care and sat with his injured hand cradled in his lap. Finally alone, he tried to process the jumble of memory that plagued his sleep. It had been months, months since he’d dreamed of Sir Harry, especially that particular incident. Johnathan glanced toward the ceiling, tempted to ask the higher powers why such memories made a resurgence now, here, when he needed his wits the most. His final test was quite the smashing success thus far, and he had the sinking sensation this wasn’t the worst of it. His bandaged hand curled into a fist, the pads of his fingers pressed against the strangely numb center of his palm.
Johnathan didn’t want another young woman to die on his watch. He had barely begun to delve into what plagued Cress Haven, but there was a sense he was already too late. He rubbed his middle finger along the bandage, a keen awareness that he’d stumbled onto something much more in the rough-hewn town of Cress Haven than what Dr. Evans led him to believe.
It would take but a moment to send a post to the Society. To hand off the whole affair to senior agents who would ensure no more torn-up girls in the streets. The temptation was there. But it wasn’t curiosity or pride that drove him now. Cress Haven had become his responsibility, its citizens under his care. This mystery was his to solve, and he would solve it because that was his duty.
He would not fail.