Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s been trouble. Come as soon as you can.

Silas glanced over the note one more time—left for him nearly a month ago, judging by the degree to which the ink had bled—and tucked it into the pocket of his coachman’s uniform. Then he looked up at the storefront and permitted himself a small shudder.

Behind a veil of lightly falling snow, the shop’s woodwork was painted black and silver; its shining windows, the largest of which read Lady Tremayne’s in silver cursive, displayed a garish assortment of gowns and lady’s accessories, all of them charmed to levitate in midair. The young men passing by on the street nervously quickened their steps as the girls on their arms sent yearning backward glances at the glittering display.

Bracing himself for the inevitable, Silas entered with a tinkle of the door’s bell and a swirl of cold air.

“Silas!” came an operatic cry from the back room, and Lady Tremayne swept into view in a dazzle of costume jewelry and emerald satin. To a mortal accustomed to perceiving a human’s body rather than the burning flame of their soul, she was a glamorous woman in her early thirties, with a striking bone structure and a magnificent spill of glossy red hair. Her ruched gown of shining green brocade was reasonably well tailored, if one could tolerate the appalling new style of voluminous leg-of-mutton sleeves.

She exclaimed at the sight of him, as well she might. Reflected in the parlor’s many mirrors, his black half-cloak made him look like a visitation from death standing among the bouquets of peonies and pink velvet settees.

“You’re driving coaches now?” she exclaimed, enveloping him in her cloud of floral perfume. “No, no, don’t answer. We all know you would rather swallow hot coals than answer a single innocent question from a friend. But really—coaches? Darling, there’s always work for you here if you need it, even if you are an incorrigible tyrant about plaid.”

“Good afternoon, Lady Tremayne,” he replied, his own whispering voice a stark contrast to her effusive countertenor. “If there is any plaid on the premises, I will gladly dispose of it without charge.” In saying so, his eyes drifted toward a balloon-sleeved gown of white and pink stripes displayed on a cloth mannequin. His opinion must have shown, because she whisked a curtain shut to hide it from view, rings chiming briskly across the rail.

“I see you aren’t acquainted with the season’s latest fashions,” she said, her eyes sparkling.

“Let us hope I remain so,” he replied with feeling.

“You’re doomed, I’m afraid. Those lace bonnets will be everywhere by spring.” Suddenly, her sparkle faded. She hesitated, then said in a huskier voice, “I was getting worried, you know. It isn’t like you to disappear for so long. No word, not even a note.”

“My absence was not by choice,” he answered, seeing no way around the truth. “I fear I was indisposed.”

This received a startled look, for Lady Tremayne had deduced on their first meeting that he was not human. What she believed he was, he could not guess. They never spoke of it. At first, the fact that she had seen so readily through his disguise had unsettled him, but now that he knew her it came as no surprise. Like him, she was an outsider, accustomed to seeing the truth of things beneath the artifice of fine stitching and a well-tied cravat.

She sent a surreptitious glance at the pair of seamstresses in the corner, who weren’t paying attention, too busy giggling over a young gentleman passing on the street outside. The intensity of emotion on her face was unexpected. But to his relief, she didn’t try to embrace him or otherwise make a scene.

“You wrote to me that there was trouble,” he prompted, hoping to forestall the tears forming in her eyes. He had been cried on a great deal this past week, and did not think he could endure another round, particularly if he returned home smelling as though he had been drenched in half a bottle of Madame Beaumont’s Violet Elixir. Master Thorn would never let him hear the end of it. “Has the problem resolved itself since?”

Her face collapsed, which was all the answer he required. “Let’s take this to my office.”

‘Office’ was an aspirational term for the room from which Lady Tremayne conducted her business affairs. At least the main parlor could be called tidy, if Silas had no other words in its defense. But the office was a chaos of lace trimmings and paper sewing patterns strewn over every available surface, its scalloped baroque desk nearly invisible beneath a heap of half-finished silk flowers. Gowns were piled multiple layers deep on the overstuffed pouf in the corner, and gauzy bolts of lavender tulle draped the rose-colored armchair behind the desk. An enchanted tape measure appeared to have escaped from the back room; it floated whimsically through the air, occasionally bumping against the window, whose central panes were fogged with warmth and outer edges etched with patterns of frost.

Lady Tremayne immediately set about gathering up the gowns and stuffing them into the painted armoires lining the walls. Either she still harbored suspicions that Silas was a spy for a rival dressmaker, or she feared that if he set eyes on them, he would have to leave the room.

Turning back around, she let out a small scream at his proximity. “Bloody hell!” she exclaimed, pressing a hand to her chest. “Black is a ghastly shade for your complexion, Silas,” she said, recovering both her composure and her accent, which had briefly slipped into the working class. “You look like a cadaver. Put this in your button hole, at least. I can hardly stand to look at you.”

He accepted the yellow carnation with a faint smile. “Black is a practical color, Lady Tremayne. It hides a multitude of sins.”

She rolled her eyes as she slipped behind her desk. “How many years have we known each other? I wish you would call me Annabelle.”

Silently, he took the note from his pocket and placed it on the desk. Seeing it, she collapsed into her seat, silk petals flouncing as she dropped her head to her hands. “God, it’s just awful,” she said, muffled. “Your timing is terrible—or perfect, I suppose. There’s been another murder. A death in one of the factories; a fourteen-year-old girl. The sixth one this month. And the constables have written it off as an accident, like all the others.”

“What makes you certain they were murders?” He knew the conditions of the factories of which she spoke. When she glared at him between her fingers, he bent his head in apology. “I believe you. I only wish to understand.”

“Machinery doesn’t cause these kinds of wounds. You might see a scalping”—she paused to touch her red curls—“or a mangled hand or arm, or even worse if a child’s clothes get caught in a wheel, which is unspeakable enough on its own, but these… they look like—like maulings, by an animal. Like the bodies have been chewed.” Her eyes flicked away from Silas, as though afraid she might glimpse more information on his face than she was prepared to see.

“I am sorry to hear it,” he said softly. His voice was full of compassion, which he could not feel, but was practiced at imitating for the comfort of those around him.

“The police are blaming the deaths on carelessness. Carelessness!” she burst out in a sudden fury. “As though employing children, underfed, exhausted, working twelve-hour shifts, isn’t careless! The girls are terrified. They already live such hard lives. All they can do is wait for the next ‘accident’ to happen, knowing no one will help them—that no one gives a damn.” As she gazed through the window at the snow, her costume necklace shimmering with each impassioned breath, her face afforded a brief glimpse of the child she had once been. She had never spoken of her past, but Silas could see it upon her as clearly as he could smell her perfume.

“Why did you call upon me?” he asked.

“Whatever’s hunting these children can’t be an animal. It would have to be the size of a bear. But it can’t possibly be human, either. Those wounds weren’t made by a weapon. As far as I know, that only leaves one possibility. I thought someone… like you might be able to help. Someone of your…” She groped for words.

“Talents,” he suggested.

Her eyes flicked to him, a glimmer of hope in their depths—and riding the hope, a spark of fear. She was no fool. She knew that her uncharacteristic fright a moment ago had been her body’s instinctive reaction to danger. “Was I right, then? You can deal with this sort of thing. But if you’ve been ill—”

Sensing her questions, he lifted a hand to stay them. “I am recovered enough for this.” Then he paused to think. He wasn’t in the habit of assisting mortal acquaintances out of the goodness of his heart, but at the back of his mind, an inkling had begun to stir.

“I must warn you,” he continued at last, “it is no small matter to call upon one such as I. Where I go, death will follow.”

“I understand,” she said, and he saw that she did.

“In that case, I am at your service.”

Chapter Text

Silas and Lady Tremayne strolled side by side down Lacebrick Lane in the snow. It had begun to fall more thickly now, transforming the street into a scene from a painting, the trees and lamp posts reduced to brushstrokes of black ink, the carriages passing by muffled to a soft, otherworldly jingling of harness and tack. The shops here were affluent enough to afford enchanted decorations for the holidays, each striving to outdo its neighbors with lights and window displays that glittered like jewel boxes in the flurrying white.

They walked arm in arm, for no matter Tremayne’s crimes against fashion, she was yet a lady. They passed a store advertising enchanted bouquets that bloomed for weeks on end, its door wreathed in roses spelled to withstand the cold. Next door, a pastry shop released an aroma of baking raspberry tarts as a patron stepped inside, unappetizing to Silas’s senses, but welcome for the blast of humid warmth that accompanied it.

Halfway down the street, Lady Tremayne paused to frown through a window whose scrolled silver lettering read Fauntleroy’s Beauty Boutique. Beyond a frosted fir garland twinkling with lights, the pink velvet poufs and tufted chaises arrayed around the cosmetic counter looked suspiciously familiar.

“That wretched man,” she declared, her eyes narrowing to green slits. “He’s copied my style.”

“There is no accounting for taste,” Silas replied, ignoring the way her venomous gaze slid in his direction. He was too busy planning his next outing. He wouldn’t stoop to vandalizing Lady Tremayne’s—in part because she would suspect him at once—but he saw no reason not to sharpen his cat’s claws on her competitor’s settees.

Reflected in the window, the two of them made a strange pair: Lady Tremayne glamorous and glittering beneath a fur stole lined with aubergine silk, tall for a woman, which drew even greater attention to her vivid mane of copper hair. She was the type who stood out in a crowd, and preferred it that way. Beside her Silas was slight, white-haired and very pale, his coachman’s livery stark black save the yellow carnation in his button hole, which matched the color of his eyes. Yet their bizarre partnership drew no attention on the sidewalk. As young couples hastened past with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, breath pluming in the cold, the two of them received not a single curious glance in passing.

Walking onward, Lady Tremayne swiftly grew cross. “Whatever you’re doing, I wish you would stop. I spent months on this gown, and I want it to be noticed.”

Silas, who was trying his best not to notice it himself, said, “Consider it a kindness, Lady. Supposing you're right that these sleeves of yours are destined to catch on, it seems only merciful to spare the public a day longer.”

“Honestly," she groaned. "If a person didn’t know any better, they would assume you woke up one morning and traveled here straight from the seventeenth century. Just because something is new doesn’t automatically make it hideous.”

“There is style, and there is spectacle. If I wished to see costumes, I would buy a ticket to the opera.”

This earned him a whack on the shoulder from the end of Lady Tremayne’s stole. Falling into a familiar pattern of bickering, they turned down an intersecting street lined with stately townhouses, windows lit gold behind snow-powdered hedges. The buildings grew shabbier the farther south they walked, until at last one could spy the threads of smoke rising from the factories and warehouses along the river, their rooftops a grim maze of chimneys fading into the snow. Silas never ceased to be struck by how quickly the city’s character changed, beauty and squalor dwelling side by side, separated by the difference of only a few blocks.

Brassbridge’s industrial district was a place of raw misery, snow churned to icy mud on the cobbled streets, its lamps not yet updated from sorcerous flame to gaslight. He felt Lady Tremayne hesitate as they approached a group of brick layers waiting at a coffee wagon, their faces dispirited and sallow in the lamps’ greenish glow. The snow that had so delighted the shoppers on Lacebrick Lane here meant chilblains and frozen wash-pails, more small torments heaped atop a pile already too high to measure.

The suffering that pervaded the air was as sweet to Silas’s senses as the bakery had been to mortals passing by. He ruthlessly suppressed his hunger, remaining alert for signs of a demon. But the new-fallen snow covered a great deal, and any smell was obscured by the fug of Lady Tremayne’s perfume and the competing stink of the tanneries farther down the river.

At his side, Lady Tremayne had fallen silent, holding tightly to his arm. The hungry ghosts of her past watched her from stoops and alleys. She wordlessly paused to buy a bundle of matches from a street urchin; the child gaped at her as she slipped a gloved hand into her velvet reticule, then fled clutching the silver coin she gave him almost in terror, his frail soul flickering like a candle-flame. The coin would do him little good; Silas could see that he wouldn’t survive the winter. But he said nothing to Lady Tremayne, merely supported her arm as he helped her step down from the frozen curb.

The mill blocks were a row of brick buildings arranged like a prison complex, blank-faced except for the uniform rows of windows stamped across their facades. One great chimney belched forth steam, the slate rooftops beneath it streaked with soot. As they entered through a narrow avenue enclosed by brick walls on either side, the earth vibrated with the ringing and clattering of the machines. A group of workers stood clustered in the damp on their meager lunch break, some no older than eight or nine years of age. A few dull glances traveled toward them, but that was all. Those affected by his glamour would see only whatever they expected to see: a pair of workers like themselves, or a downtrodden husband and wife visiting the mill manager to arrange their child’s indenture.

Normally Silas would have been able to sense the location of a recent murder from some distance away, but there was too much iron here: iron in the walls, the earth, the air, gnawing oppressively at his diminished strength and deadening his senses.

Fortunately, Lady Tremayne knew the way. “That door there,” she said quietly in his ear. “It leads into the room where her body was found.”

Just as they were about to cross the threshold, an overseer paused on the iron skyway bridging the two buildings above. His life force was a low, dull-burning flame, sullen and oily, so unlike the scintillating brilliance of Lady Tremayne’s that it might as well have belonged to a different species.

“Oi,” he called down, rapidly descending the ladder. “You aren’t allowed in there.”

Silas resisted the urge to take the man’s elbow and guide him into the nearest alley. “There seems to be a misunderstanding,” he replied, stepping forward with a modestly lowered gaze. Nearness would strengthen his glamour, and he wasn’t certain he could make himself heard over of the noise of the machines—though he regretted the necessity, for it granted him an intimate view of the overseer’s unwashed neckcloth. “We are scheduled for an inspection. I am surprised you were not notified of our arrival.”

“Inspection? Of what?” Suspicion rippled along the contours of his soul like grease igniting on the surface of a pan. Silas’s weakened abilities were enough to turn the man’s attention from his and Lady Tremayne’s incongruous clothing, but little more.

“The new looms, which are believed to be unsafe. Concerns have arisen at the manufacturer following the number of accidents these past weeks.”

The overseer spat onto the cobbles. “Workers caused those accidents. Layabouts, the lot of them. I would’ve remembered an inspection…” He began to reach for the papers tucked into his waistcoat.

Silas didn’t have enough spare power to impress the full force of his glamour upon the scene, and could sense the workers pausing to stare. It was patently obvious to them now that he was not an engineer, and more pressingly, he could no longer turn their gaze from Lady Tremayne, whose hair and gown were as conspicuous as a bonfire in the drab, dirty lane.

Forcibly, he tightened his glamour’s hold. “Would you prefer I speak to the mill manager? I do not think you would. How grieved he would be to discover that you have been altering the accounts.” Silas filled his voice with soft, cold pity. “And what would he think of what you have chosen to do with the stolen money?”

The overseer reared back. Fear shone within his eyes—fear of something he didn’t understand. “No,” he muttered, jerking his head. “No, get on with it.” He shouldered past them and disappeared inside. A moment later, his voice called out, and the machines’ ground-shaking cacophony rattled to a halt.

Lady Tremayne peered around the doorway, thankfully, for the effort of glamouring the overseer had left Silas’s own vision pulsing red around the edges. “All clear,” she said at last, gesturing them through. “How on earth did you know he was embezzling?”

“His shoes and waistcoat were expensive beyond his means. A guess only, but his kind is tiresomely predictable. One might accuse such a man of nearly any petty crime and strike true.” The heat produced by the mill’s furnace rolled over him as he followed her inside. He resisted the urge to briefly close his eyes, though he wasn’t certain why—in relief from the cold, or in despair of the banality of human evil.

“I suppose you’re right.” She turned sideways to make room for her appalling sleeves. “But that doesn’t explain how you somehow managed to convince him you were an engineer. You were doing the same thing from the street, weren’t you? I hope you’ve never done that to me.”

“To some extent, I am always doing it. For your part, you need not worry. You are too strong-willed for my influence to have a lasting effect.”

Lady Tremayne gave him a backward glance. “And here I thought you were going to finally admit that we’re friends.”

Silas was saved from having to reply by their entrance into the mill’s spinning room. His first impression was that it was a purgatory of iron. The monstrous looms were fixed by wheels and pulleys to a gridwork of rails above, with countless moving straps and spokes and shuttles—all halted now—in which a human’s hair or clothing might become entangled. Harsh gaslight lit the space from above, natural light being in short supply: the lower two-thirds of the windows had been papered over so that the workers might not become distracted from their labor.

Drawn faces watched them from among the machines, too drained to express any emotion but wary resignation, wondering only how this interruption would bring further suffering down upon them. Their souls bore the same marks of depredation as the seamstresses in the dress shop’s parlor. Silas had suspected it before, but he was certain of it now—Lady Tremayne recruited her workers here, snatching the girls one by one from the jaws of destitution.

Of this being their eventual fate, there could be no doubt. The despair in the room’s close, hot air was intoxicating. Most demons would not have been able to control themselves, save by binding command from their masters.

A cough broke the silence; it seemed to jolt Lady Tremayne to action. “This way,” she murmured, straightening her back as she passed the rows of silent looms. A group of nearby girls exchanged whispers, newly enough arrived at the mill that their souls still burned without flickering. Later they might argue whether the hair of the woman they had seen was red or brown; perhaps one, with a fading sparkle in her eyes, might recall the emerald gown as though remembering a distant dream.

Even with his senses deadened, Silas felt when they drew near the site of the murder. Sawdust had been swept over the floorboards to soak up the blood, which lingered as a dark stain stretching some five paces across, a portion of it having spread beneath the loom nearest the far wall. The workers stationed there uneasily drew back, giving them space.

Reaching the edge of the stain, Silas bent with a sudden cough. He managed to retrieve his handkerchief in time; when he drew it back from his lips, a vivid spot of blood bloomed upon its snowy linen.

“Are you all right?” Silas neatly crumpled the handkerchief in his gloved hand as Lady Tremayne’s hand alit upon his shoulder. “You’re so cold,” she added in dawning alarm. His first instinct was to remove her hand from his person, but he remained still, allowing the contact, which kept her distracted as he folded the square of fabric one-handed and tucked it away inside his coat.

“A passing spell. Iron is oppressive to my kind, and there is a good deal of it here.” He didn’t need to tell her more than that, and fortunately she accepted the explanation, her hand slipping reluctantly from his shoulder. “What do you know of what happened here?”

“Her name was Edith. She had only been working in the spinning room for a few months. She dozed off at her post, and the overseer on duty made her stay behind after dark to wax the floor in punishment. No one else was supposed to be inside.”

“In that case, the looms…”

“Weren’t operating, no. The foreman insists she must have jostled a lever crawling beneath it and turned this one on accidentally. But the girls who found her the next morning swear that she was partially—” She clapped a hand over her mouth, made a low sound, and turned away. “I’m sorry,” she said between her fingers.

“Do not rush on my account, Lady.”

His soft voice seemed to reassure her. “Partially devoured,” she finished, swallowing thickly. “And then of course they were disciplined for telling tales.”

“But you believe them.”

“They had no reason to lie. The truth of what normally happens here is bad enough. There isn’t any need for stories.” Her eyes fell bleakly on the loom, which to all appearances remained in operation, small shoe prints criss-crossing the sawdust underfoot.

Silas inclined his head in agreement. “Pardon me,” he said, and then bent to discreetly sniff the floorboards. Any workers watching from a distance would assume he was inspecting the floor, but Lady Tremayne could see perfectly well what he was doing, and her eyebrows nearly rose to her hairline.

“Do you do that often?” she asked, sounding a trifle ill.

“Only when my services are required,” he said with some asperity. The words were difficult to form; the presence of death was dizzying. “I assure you, I don't consider this a hobby.” At last, nearly lost amid the heady scent of human blood, his nose detected a familiar unpleasant musk.

Rising, he said, “The creature who killed her is a type of lesser demon called a goblin. They have an unusual resistance to iron, and use this to their advantage. Only a sorcerer or another demon is capable of hunting them down—and both would have difficulty pursuing them here.” Lady Tremayne watched him follow the goblin’s trail to the door by the papered-over windows. “It entered the room from this door.” He tested the knob and found it locked.

Her gaze lingered on the keyhole. “Could it have…”

“Goblins are intelligent enough to turn a knob, but not enough to use a key—or pick a lock, for that matter.”

Her voice was tight. “Someone unlocked the door for it. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I fear that may be the case. Do you know of anyone who might have wished Edith dead?”

Hard tears glittered in Lady Tremayne’s eyes. “Only the whole world. This awful city. Everyone wishes her dead and every girl like her without knowing it, every time they buy a box of matches or a new pair of gloves from the department store—and yes, I’m aware of the irony.” Bitterly, she touched the wrist of her gown. “If girls died for this, I might as well make it beautiful.”

“There is a child here who will remember it,” Silas said, and her face crumpled. For a moment he feared he would need to comfort her. But she was stronger than most of her kind, and the tears didn’t fall. Instead she tightened her jaw and stared defiantly at the covered window-panes, as though by will alone she might see through.

He offered her his arm. “Come, Lady. I have an idea of what to do next. Let us leave this place.”

Distance from the iron was welcome; the return of the cold was not. Silas considered their surroundings in the falling snow. The goblin would be making its den in a building similar to the mill, perhaps an abandoned factory or warehouse, where the iron would offer protection. In a city like Brassbridge, the possibilities were nearly infinite.

Lady Tremayne twisted around for a final glimpse of the mill before its grim angles passed out of sight, her worries plain.

“The demon will not return for some time,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?"

A snowflake landed on his cheek, and as they walked, it didn’t melt. “He will know that I was here.”

Chapter Text

The shop’s bell chimed. As the door swung shut behind them in a whirl of snow, Lady Tremayne flipped the sign to Closed.

The seamstresses, gathering up their belongings on their way out, shot Silas a few furtive glances and erupted into giggles. When he sent a reproachful look at Lady Tremayne, she smiled in the midst of shrugging off her stole.

“Better for them to think we’re having a secret dalliance than the truth. Well—what’s your plan?”

“No doubt you recall the arrest of Chancellor Ashcroft this past autumn.”

“I don’t live under a rock. But what could he have to do with this? The last I heard, he was locked away in prison for life.”

“He employed a number of lesser demons to do his bidding, many of which remain unaccounted for following his arrest. I suspect our culprit to have served him as a butler named Mr. Hob. There is a chance, of course, that we have run afoul of a different goblin, but I feel the timing too close to be a coincidence.”

“So…”

“Using traditional means to track the goblin would require some time.” Silas paused, weighing how much to reveal. “I’ve taken the day off from my employer. He will grant me additional leave if I ask, but I would rather resolve this matter without his knowledge, and swiftly.”

Thoughts flickered behind her eyes. “You mentioned that you have an idea. I’m not going to like it, am I?”

“If you are willing to take us somewhere private, I would like to summon a demon.”

“Summon a demon?”

“She won’t be able to harm you, and is likely to have information. This method would be expeditious,” he added.

“However do you manage to make ‘expeditious’ sound so threatening? Very well. Let’s go upstairs.”

He knew that her breezy reply was not as careless as it sounded. She cast him an assessing glance over her shoulder as she led him past the back room to the narrow set of stairs that ascended to the building’s second and third stories. The worn treads creaked beneath her steps, but made no sound beneath his own.

The second floor was used for storage; bolts of fabric spilled from an open door to pile on the landing’s motley collection of spare chairs and footstools. The third floor formed Lady Tremayne’s apartment, and entered into her crowded, unlit sitting room.

She would have difficulty hosting more than two or three guests in this space, which barely fit a threadbare velvet divan and an armchair upholstered in faded sage-colored silk. It was papered in stripes—pale green on blush—with diamond-paned windows that looked out on a view of snowy rooftops. A stack of fashion magazines rested on the divan’s side table, including the December issue of the abominable Governess. Beyond the sitting room, an open door offered a glimpse of Lady Tremayne’s bedchamber, lace-curtained, furnished with an antique vanity and armoire. The air was delicately perfumed with lilac-scented soap, lavender sachets, and an underlying miasma of Violet Elixir.

Despite the apartment’s snugness, a quality of loneliness pervaded. The air was silent enough that one could hear the snowflakes tapping against the window-panes; a few stray hairs on the armchair attested to the existence of a cat who was presently making itself invisible. Like Silas’s own room on the fourth floor of Thorn Manor, this was a place where visitors were seldom permitted. Lady Tremayne’s whirlwind life of glamor and excitement was in many ways only an illusion. He understood the trust she demonstrated by allowing him here, and wasn’t certain he approved. It wasn't wise for a mortal to trust any demon, even himself.

“Well, what do you need?” she asked briskly, lighting an oil lamp on the sideboard. A warm glow spilled across the room, illuminating additional cat fur on the rug and throws.

“Five candles and something with which to draw on the floorboards. Chalk would be ideal.”

“Oh, wonderful,” she said dryly. “I think I left my occult supplies in the top cupboard. Make yourself at home while I look, but if you dare lay a finger on those magazines, I’m kicking you out onto the street. I know how you feel about The Governess.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, reluctantly discarding his plans. He waited until she passed out of sight into the kitchen, shooting him one last narrow-eyed glance of suspicion on the way, and then went to snoop in her powder room.

It was as tiny as the rest of her apartment, tiled in pink and green, with a window that looked out on the blank brick side of the florist’s shop, painted shut to seal its woodwork from drafts. Her spare wigs hung from the back of the door like a cluster of fox pelts, and a cloth dress form held one of her customized corsets, strategically tailored to enhance the appearance of a feminine figure. Neither came as a surprise; he had smelled the enchanted draughts on her breath their first meeting, just as she had seen through his human glamour. She would not have invited him upstairs if she thought there was any chance he didn’t know that the world hadn't always considered her a woman, or any possibility that he might disapprove.

As predicted, her crystal bottle of Madame Beaumont’s Violet Elixir rested on the shelf in a place of prominence among the jars of cream and rosewater tonics. With an ear for her muffled swearing as she rummaged through her cabinets, he retrieved the bottle within the folds of his handkerchief and bent to wedge it the tight space behind the copper tub. With any luck, she wouldn’t find it for weeks.

He was installed in the sitting room once more by the time she returned with the supplies, and together they moved the furniture and rolled up the rug. Then she perched on the end of the divan, watching him draw the circle on the bare floorboards. Her intent gaze tickled over him as he worked.

“Standing on those symbols doesn’t do anything to you?”

“No, for I am not the object of their summoning. They will contain the demon we call forth. You must take care not to touch the circle—not that I imagine you doing such a thing, Lady. But crossing the line will place you at her mercy.”

She shuddered, even as she leaned down for a closer look. Silas knew without glancing up that she wasn’t looking at the glyphs, but rather at his hands, which were bare for the first time in her presence. He made no effort to conceal his claws—a pointless endeavor, since he needed to use them for the summoning’s next step.

“This demon of yours… are the two of you friends?”

A smile touched his face at the very idea. “Not as such,” he replied. She would see for herself soon enough.

After lighting the five candles at the pentagram’s points, he slid back his left cuff and lightly scored his wrist. In the past, the wound would have closed nearly as soon as it was made; this time, several seconds passed before his flesh grudgingly began to knit. Filing away the discovery’s implications for later, he lowered his wrist to the floorboards, pressed a dab of blood to the wood, and spoke the demon’s true name.

Allowing a mortal to hear it verged on blasphemy. The names of highborn demons were kept a careful secret by the sorcerous families they served, passed down through the generations like priceless heirlooms. His own was known by only two humans alive. But if Lady Tremayne chose to summon one of his kind, she would do so with a full awareness of the consequences, and would likely have a good or at least interesting reason. Regarding most other mortals, Silas couldn’t say the same.

The sound of the snow ticking against the windows faded, and a heavy pause held the room in suspension, as though the world were holding its breath. Then a breeze ruffled the pages of the magazines on the side table and snuffed out all five of the candles in unison.

The chalk circle no longer sat empty. A pale figure huddled at its center in the cool, snow-filtered light. She was nearly naked, clad only in a wisp of cloth, her face hidden by a fall of glossy black hair and her knees drawn up to her chest like a child. She looked up slowly, beseechingly, her crimson eyes brimming with false vulnerability—and then she saw Silas and screamed in fury.

She moved in a blur, rebounding from the circle’s barrier with a force that rattled Lady Tremayne’s windows, and fell to a bony sprawl, her clawed fingers raised to hide the blistered, smoking ruin of her face, which looked as though it had been pressed to the cooking surface of a hot stove. Even so, the damage healed more rapidly than the cut on Silas’s wrist, almost instantly filling back into its flawless porcelain beauty.

“Silas!” she spat, letting her shielding hand drop. “I should have known it was you, you sanctimonious little eunuch. Have you summoned me to gloat? Does seeing me like this make you feel better? Well, it shouldn’t. You look ghastly.”

“Good afternoon, Lorelei.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s vile. What are those?” Her attention had fixed on Lady Tremayne’s sleeves, which she was gazing at in undisguised horror.

Despite himself, Silas took a perverse pleasure in informing her, “I am told it is the newest fashion.”

“Please tell me you’re going to kill her.”

Lady Tremayne had turned quite pale, but said with a trace of smugness, “It’s too late for that. I’ve already submitted fashion plates to The Governess. What?” she added at their expressions, which Silas had to concede were likely very similar. “If my sleeves can offend a pair of demons, they’re obviously getting noticed.”

“You keep dreadful company, Silas.” Lorelei looked away with a disinterest that he knew was feigned. A tremor ran through her as she rubbed her bare arms. She wasn’t cold; she was frightened, and very hungry. Lady Tremayne’s vibrant soul was irresistible even to demons who didn’t share his own peculiar tastes. “Well, what do you want? Make it quick.”

Silas explained the situation with Mr. Hob, while she pretended not to watch Lady Tremayne out of the corner of her eye.

“Well, he hasn’t been back to the Otherworld,” she said when he was finished. “Someone would have told me.”

“Were any of the mortals in Chancellor Ashcroft’s employ aware of Mr. Hob’s true nature?”

“There were two servants Ashcroft let on to the demons. Having people on hand who knew the truth was necessary for certain jobs. Naturally, you already know about the first.”

A dirty alley. A knife flashing in the dark.

“Blood is impossible to get out of silk, and I can’t tell you how many times my servant has had to wash questionable stains from this cloak.”

“And the second?” Silas asked.

“A man named… oh, what was it?” Lorelei’s gaze briefly went blank. To most demons, humans were little more than sheep, names and faces nearly indistinguishable. “Bernard Shaw,” she recalled at last. “He handled odd jobs. He was there to keep the other servants quiet if they noticed anything strange. Brown hair, a scar above his eyebrow…”

“A filthy neckcloth?”

“I see you’ve met.”

“Yes,” Silas said. “And I expect we will meet again.” He lifted a match to relight the nearest candle, which would dismiss her from the pentagram.

“Wait,” she said quickly. “I’ve done you a favor.” Her eyes darted to Lady Tremayne. “I wouldn’t ask for much. Just a little taste.”

Silas struck the match. “Farewell, Lorelei.”

Her face twisted in the flame’s light. Rapidly, she hissed like pelting sleet, “Just because you’ve chosen to live like a monk doesn’t give you the right to judge the rest of us. Everyone despises you, you know; they’ll tear you limb from limb given half the chance. Why side with mortals? They’ll never like you. Never trust you—”

Silas touched the flame to the candle’s wick, and Lorelei vanished in a wisp of smoke.

Lady Tremayne was looking at him.

“After the Chancellor’s arrest, it seems likely that Shaw perceived an opportunity to use Mr. Hob for own ends. Such partnerships typically involve payment in the form of human life—hence Shaw arranging for the workers to be left alone after hours. He will know where to find Mr. Hob. I will visit him tonight for information, and finish the job tomorrow.” He rose from beside the circle. “Goblins are nocturnal; Mr. Hob will be weaker by daylight.”

“Silas,” Lady Tremayne began, her eyes shining in the dimness. Lorelei’s parting words hung in the air between them. He glanced at her, and she reluctantly held her tongue.

“It would be better if you remained here. What happens next will not be fit for a lady’s eyes.”

“And presumably you can work faster without a human slowing you down,” she mused, catching on at once. “Let me walk you to the corner of Lacebrick Lane, at least.”

Arm in arm, they returned outside. An early winter twilight had begun to fall; the lamps shone as diffuse golden spheres through the snow. A group of carolers trooped up the street, singing in breathless voices as they passed the stalls selling roasted chestnuts and peppermint tea. It was no Royal Opera, but privately, Silas enjoyed their performance all the same.

Tremayne stopped outside Fauntleroy’s dazzling window display, the garlands’ enchanted lights sparkling in her eyes. “Come back when you’re finished,” she said, touching his sleeve.

“I am in no danger,” he replied.

“Still. It would make me feel better.” Her eyebrows rose incrementally. “And it would be the polite thing to do.”

He sighed. She had him there.

Without Lady Tremayne’s presence to conceal, he was able to move through the mill blocks as a ghost, unseen. The guards posted by the door to watch for runaways did not see him, only felt the hair rise on their arms and a shivering instinct to look away.

Inside, the looms filled the sweltering air with their deafening clamor and rattle. Bernard Shaw did not see Silas approaching, but the workers did. They glanced at his face, paused for a moment, and silently moved away to busy themselves with other tasks. If they failed to recall exactly what had happened to Shaw when the manager questioned them, it would not be due to the effects of Silas’s glamour.

Shaw soon noticed the nearest worker’s desertion. “You over there!” he called out harshly, in a voice raw from shouting. “Nobody gave you permission to leave your post!”

The girl’s shoulders tightened, but she pretended not to hear. Turning to take in the rest of the room, Shaw’s face darkened with angry confusion—and then eyes fell upon what the workers had seen: a visitation from Death come in from the cold, face bloodless white, black cloak dusted with unmelted snow.

Another man might have succumbed helplessly to fear, but Shaw had dealt with demons before. He seized a wrench and gripped it at his side. Silas’s steps didn’t pause. When Shaw saw that he didn’t plan to stop, he retreated a step toward the clattering loom at his back.

Silas used his glamour to impress his whispering voice upon Shaw’s mind. “You have dealings with Mr. Hob. Where does he make his den?”

Shaw’s face twisted into a snarl; his eyes darted around, seeing no escape. “The old clocktower on Staircross Avenue,” he ground out, “behind the clock face.”

Staircross Avenue wasn’t far from Hemlock Park. Dealing with Mr. Hob would be a simple task. Silas could take care of it tomorrow on his way to pick up the groceries. He took another step, and Shaw took a corresponding step back, perspiration shining on his brow.

“Isn’t that what you wanted? You got what you came for. If you are what I think you are, you don’t care about the rest.”

Silas didn’t reply, though he was close enough now that he didn’t need his glamour to make himself heard. Shaw took another faltering step, nearing the edge of the machinery’s churning wheels. His wrench clattered to the floor.

“A fellow owes a man money,” he pleaded. “You know how it goes.”

“Yes. I know. I have seen it play out time and time again. I have seen it by candlelight and gaslight, and by the light of stars now dead. Rarely does the ending change.”

“What are you?”

“The end,” said Silas.

An emergency bell clanged in the air as Silas walked through the snow, adjusting the silk carnation in his button hole. Men dashed past, none sparing him a glance as they raced toward the scene of the accident. They would arrive too late to help Bernard Shaw.

At the corner of Lacebrick Lane, Silas paused, his senses snapping to alert. Later it would strike him that had Lady Tremayne not secured his promise to return, he would have turned to take a different route home, and it was this that saved her life.

She was no longer standing outside Fauntleroy’s; he hadn’t expected her to be. By now, she should have returned to her apartment. But his eyes caught on a single small detail out of place: a long red hair, snagged on the brick edge along the corner of the building’s alley.

It was possible that the strand had blown there on the wind, but Silas didn’t think it likely. The evening was unusually still, the snow falling like sifted flour. He teased the hair from the brick with his thumb and forefinger, gave it a cursory inspection, and cast his gaze toward the alley. There—in the snow, a telltale drop of blood.

He knew then that would not find Lady Tremayne in her apartment or anywhere else on Lacebrick Lane.

Chapter Text

Silas had failed to take every possibility into account. He had assumed that Mr. Hob would stay far away from any place or person associated with his scent; he had not anticipated that a demon, realizing it was hunted, its obliteration in this realm nearly assured, might resort to such futile, self-destructive scrambling in its desperation.

At some point over the past few hours, the goblin had discovered that Silas was on his trail. Perhaps he had been watching near the mill, his presence disguised by snow and iron, or Shaw had had a nagging feeling about their visit and warned him. Seizing Lady Tremayne as a hostage wasn't a rational response, but goblins weren’t known for their intelligence. Backed into a corner, it seemed that Mr. Hob was willing to try anything to prolong his stay in the mortal realm.

However this had come about, Silas cursed himself for not preventing it. He disliked the occasions in which his orderly plans fell to ruin, and he was left to clean up the inevitable mess that followed.

Far behind, the strand of red hair glimmered in the snow beneath the street lamp. A few minutes ago, a bystander might have noticed a coachman standing on the corner, only to blink and find him gone. Silas was no longer pretending to be human.

He leaped effortlessly across the rooftops, his footing sure and his black cloak streaming behind him as he sprang from building to building. The frosty air smelled of woodsmoke and coal fire; lit windows glowed in the dark, showing fleeting vignettes of humanity beneath the snow-blanketed shingles. A family setting the table for supper, a woman singing her infant to sleep; a couple dancing slowly to the melody of an out-of-tune piano drifting through the wall, played by a solitary old man in the apartment next door. Even the poorest tenements displayed some small festive token of the season—snowflakes cut from paper, or a fir branch draped along the sill.

It wasn’t long before the famous clocktower of Staircross Avenue came into view: a gothic spire towering above the slanted rooftops, set with a giant, jewel-like astronomical clock dial made up of interlocking spheres of indigo and gilded brass.

This would seem an unlikely place for a goblin to make his den, if not for the fact that the tower had been abandoned for nearly a century. Due to some quirk of the city’s topography, wayward magic had a tendency to accumulate in Staircross Avenue from the run-off that seeped from the Old City and the historic sorcerers’ manors in Hemlock Park. Street signs swapped names without warning, flowers bloomed out of season, and perhaps most notoriously, the district’s clocks exhibited a stubborn tendency to run backward or keep foreign time. The astronomical clock was no exception, and had been left alone after decades of futile attempts to bring it back into service. Since then, it had continued operating without being calibrated or maintained. Some insisted that it was sentient; that its seemingly random months and moon phases were in fact prognostications in code. The clock’s most ardent devotees had even established a society to study its secret messages. Silas had once passed the headquarters and glimpsed an army of white-haired, bespectacled widows transcribing numbers on sheets of paper so long that they curled in rolls across the floor.

Nearing the tower, he sensed that the society might not wholly deserve the mockery it received, for the building’s stone held the same impression of sentient watchfulness as the Royal Library and Thorn Manor. He took a running leap from the nearest rooftop and began to climb, requiring only the cracks in the masonry as handholds. A disgruntled gargoyle coughed a pellet of ice at him, only to realize what he was and swiftly tuck its head beneath its wing. Silas spared no thought for the long fall beneath, which would be perilous even for a demon: the river shone coldly far below, its banks rimed with ice. From this vantage one could see all the way to the spires of the Magisterium reflected on the water, and the Bridge of Saints, with its misty lights marching like a procession of the dead into another world.

He climbed until he was one story below the clock face, then slipped inside through a broken casement. Pigeons warbled sleepily at his intrusion, shuffling aside as his feet soundlessly came to rest on the bare wooden landing. The level contained only the continuation of the switchback stairs rising to the top, their rails crusted white with bird droppings. A precise, metronomic ticking echoed from the room above.

Silently, Silas flowed up the remaining steps and through the ceiling’s open hatch.

This room housed the mechanisms of dial’s operation. The wall across from him was made up almost entirely by the inner face of the clock dial itself, some thirty feet in diameter, set in a cast iron framework. Moonlight had broken through the clouds to shine through its blue glass, illuminating the room’s dusty planks and casting attenuated shadows of its colossal numerals and snow-dusted hands across the floor and walls. At the center of the room, a weighted pendulum swung within a system of moving gears, its ticking filling the space like a heartbeat.

There could be no doubt that this was Mr. Hob’s lair. A heap of stolen clothing formed a nest near the gears, and the air was thick with the stench of goblin and old blood—along with an unmistakable whiff of Violet Elixir.

The clock’s minute hand ticked upward, releasing a puff of snow. A huddled shape within the shadow of the VII shifted, raising a tousle of red hair. “Silas?”

“I am here.”

“Don’t—” she began urgently, just as Mr. Hob stepped from the darkness beside the hatch, his huge fists crashing down on the spot where Silas had just stood. The rail splintered like dry kindling beneath the blow. He stared for a moment in stupefaction, as though trying to puzzle out whether Silas had transformed into a pile of broken wood, and then slowly raised his head to fix his gaze on where Silas now crouched in the rafters, his huge, pale eyes reflecting the light like a pair of unblinking moons.

Goblins were not an attractive species of lesser demon, and Mr. Hob was no exception: nearly seven feet tall, powerfully built but slump-shouldered and gaunt, his exposed skin lavender in color and drooping with fleshy wattles that resembled melted globules of candle wax. He still had on the same suit that he’d worn while disguised as Chancellor Ashcroft’s butler, now rather the worse for wear.

But not all the smell of blood in the room belonged to the dried gore crusted to his suit. Silas’s thoughts dwelled on the scarlet blot in the snow beneath the street lamp.

“Are you injured, Lady?” he asked, knowing that she couldn’t see him, and the whispered question would seem to float from the sourceless dark.

“Just a scratch,” she replied in an admirably steady tone. “I don’t think he meant to do it.” Yet, her sideways glance added.

“Won’t hurt her,” Mr. Hob said in his thick, garbled voice, as though his tongue didn’t quite fit in his mouth. “You go away.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible,” Silas replied, folding his gloves and slipping them into a pocket. He allowed himself a brief moment of mourning for his clean, well-manicured claws. “It is time for you to return home, Mr. Hob.”

He dropped from the rafters, slicing out with his claws. The goblin bellowed and clapped a hand to his neck, wheeling around with an ungainly stagger to find Silas nowhere in sight. Blood seeped between his purple fingers.

Another pass, another cut—Mr. Hob roared and stumbled around again, this time squeezing a bunched fist of his trouser leg.

Silas guided him in a precise dance to the relentless ticking of the pendulum, careful to lead their steps away from Lady Tremayne, who could be killed in an instant by a stray blow. All the while, he felt the cold leaching pull of the surrounding iron. This was not how he would have liked to test himself for the first time since his return—Mr. Hob at his fullest advantage, with the added liability of a mortal’s life in the balance. But a goblin still wasn’t anywhere near his match. After the slow whittling down of Mr. Hob’s strength left him weak, uncertain, afraid, Silas would be able to finish him with less effort than setting the dinner table.

After another unseen slash lopped off a section of his left ear, Mr. Hob shouted in rage and clumsily lunged for Silas, only for his arms to close on empty air. Taking a reeling step for balance, he collided with the gears of the pendulum array. Grunting in anger, he tore a stack of wheel-sized cogs from their shaft and hurled them in a heavy, spinning arc across the room.

The first flying cog would have removed Silas’s right arm at the shoulder had he not ducked below it; the second lodged in the wall, carving straight through the beams to the masonry beneath. The third crashed through the clock dial, shattering a door-sized hole in the glass and flooding the room with howling, snow-flecked cold. Mr. Hob charged without pausing to observe his handiwork, seemingly insensible to the steam rising from his palms, which had been singed by the touch of iron.

Silas evaded the charge by dipping past low to the ground, and took out Mr. Hob’s hamstrings on the way. The goblin collapsed with an impact that shook the floor, prone but grasping wildly; Silas stepped back from his grabbing hands. The larger part of his attention was focused on the hole in the clock dial, where Lady Tremayne clung to the twisted struts of iron framework, dangling halfway outside.

She swore in a fashion that would have made a tomcat’s fur stand on end, scrabbling for a better hold. “Don’t mind me,” she gasped out. “I’ll manage.”

Silas neatly evaded another swipe, wondering whether her strength could hold out for long enough for him to strangle Mr. Hob, which would unfortunately take some time. “There is a nine-story drop below you, Lady.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“I fear your gown would not survive it.”

“In that case,” she said tensely, “perhaps you could be a gentleman and offer me a hand.”

He was at her side at once, lifting her up, placing an arm around her shoulder so that she wouldn’t cut herself on the broken glass or twisted iron. She took a cautious, crunching step onto the floorboards. Then her eyes widened, looking past him. “Silas—”

He moved quickly, but not quickly enough. Instead of shoving him through the opening and out into the night, Mr. Hob’s rush slammed him against the dial’s broken edge. There was a thin, cold pain, and Silas looked down to see one of the bars protruding from his stomach, the blood on its surface sending up threads of steam.

Mr. Hob stared at him unblinkingly, as though he couldn’t believe or understand what he had done. The falling snow and city lights reflected in the pale saucers of his eyes. Slowly, almost in a trance, his hands rose to fasten around Silas’s neck. Then he stopped, his arms frozen in mid-air. A lady’s boot had bounced off his shoulder. Across the room, Lady Tremayne was furiously unlacing the second.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she hissed to Silas. “These heels are custom.”

Bracing himself against the iron’s numbing weakness, he wrenched himself free, steam spilling from the wound. It was time to dispense with decorum. He grappled Mr. Hob to the edge, over the dizzying plunge of rooftops and frozen river, and tore out his throat with his teeth. Mr. Hob mouthed something—perhaps a “no”—before his muscles began to slacken. Silas released him, watching his body tumble end over end down into the waters of the Gloaming. Spitting a mouthful of foul blood after it, he retrieved his handkerchief from his pocket to clean his mouth, which he subsequently dropped after the rest. Only then did he turn around.

He took three steps and put out a hand to steady himself, only to realize that there was nothing he could touch that wasn’t iron. He sank to the floor and pressed his hand to the wound in his stomach instead. From a distance, he judged that the cloak could perhaps be salvaged, as the pleats would hide the mending, but the coat beneath was beyond repair.

Lady Tremayne sprang upright to help him, the laces of her remaining shoe still untied.

“Stop,” he said, in a rasp that barely sounded like himself.

“I’m hardly going to let you bleed to death on the floor!” She was very pale, and her soul was a merciless blazing flame, the light of heaven shining upon the damned.

“If you approach me now,” he said, “I will do to you as Mr. Hob did to Edith on the factory floor.”

She paused. After a long moment of studying him, she slowly sank back down. “Are you going to die?”

He closed his eyes, bracing himself against the smell of her blood. “No. I will heal within a few minutes.” He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. “Perhaps longer,” he allowed, recalling the cut on his wrist.

“From that wound, maybe. You really haven’t recovered from whatever happened to you, have you?” If the fact was obvious to Lady Tremayne, Silas despaired of his chances of hiding it from his master and mistress. “There isn’t anything you can do? Some sort of—demon cure?”

He looked at her.

“Oh,” she said. “How many….”

He couldn’t devour a human’s life force without first securing a bargain, but mortal flesh and blood still provided nourishment, simply in a less pure and concentrated form. Such appetites were normally the province of lesser demons. But having taken only a day of life from his master and mistress each, it was the only option if Silas wished to regain his former strength—which, to his relief, he found that he did not.

“A considerable number, I imagine,” he replied.

“Right. Well, thank you for not making me the first,” she said, turning her head to swipe away a tear.

“As you have said yourself, it would be no use. You have already submitted fashion plates to The Governess.”

She let out a humorless bark of laughter.

“You aren’t afraid,” he observed.

“Oh—well.” For a moment, her eyes looked as ancient as a demon’s. “I’ve seen worse things than you.”

Silas could argue with her, but perhaps she was right. He had killed too many people to count—women, children; infants in their cradles and grandfathers in their beds. But he hadn’t killed so many as hunger or the cold. If he did not feel remorse for the things he had done, the city in its endless unfeeling hunger did not even know the word.

“Is there any way I can help?” Lady Tremayne asked.

Softly, he said, “Tell me what is worse.”

She thought for a moment. “I grew up in a workhouse,” she began finally, and continued as the snow stopped and the moon came out again from behind the ragged, silver-edged clouds. By the time she had finished, Silas was able to stand and limp with her assistance down the stairs. Arm in arm, they hailed a carriage on the street below, and the driver saw only a pair of lovers returning from the brightly lit shops on Staircross Avenue, who had spent the evening admiring the lights and listening to the carolers, and perhaps had a little too much to drink.

Chapter Text

“You aren’t really a coach driver, are you,” said Lady Tremayne, sliding the mug of hot chocolate across her desk as she sat down. Outside the window, the moonlight made a silver wonderland of the snow-covered street, overlain with lacy patterns of frost. Silas sat across from her on the office’s pouf, feeling conflicted. She had insisted on placing a blanket over his lap, which was pink, embroidered with roses, and to his dismay, extremely comfortable.

“Coachmen’s uniforms are not difficult to obtain in this city. These days, a demon doesn’t even have to kill a man to acquire one.”

She rolled her eyes. “Drink your hot chocolate. I paid for that.” She blew vigorously on her own, startling the enchanted measuring tape from its sleepy coil among the silk flowers. “Also, I need the mug back by nine o’ clock,” she added grudgingly. “I borrowed it from the vendor.”

Aware that there was no use in resisting, he took a judicious sip. The chocolate tasted of nothing but ashes, but he had to admit it was warm.

The ensuing silence offered a clear invitation for Silas to explain what he was if not a coach driver, but he instead commented on the gowns they had seen in the window of the new department store on Staircross Avenue, and they spent a pleasant few minutes disparaging the garments’ cheap fabric and disgraceful stitching. Department stores were one of the few topics upon which the two of them agreed.

Afterward, Lady Tremayne glanced at him thoughtfully over the rim of her mug. “Why did you agree to help me?”

In this, he owed her honesty, though revealing the truth would come as yet another blow to his already wounded dignity. “Last year, I killed a man to protect two mortals who are dear to me. He was not the first, nor will he be the last. Mr. Hob was another shadow of that time—a shadow that might darken the door of those I love. They would be able to deal with a matter like this themselves if necessary, but it would trouble them.”

“As it doesn’t trouble you.”

He inclined his head in a slight bow. “I would have them live in the light for as long as they can.”

“Would you like to know what I think?”

“I trust I have little choice in the matter,” he replied.

She snorted. “I think you wanted to help me, and you’re making up excuses.”

Silas took another sip of his tasteless hot chocolate instead of dignifying that with a response. A small smile flitted across Lady Tremayne’s face before she covered her mouth with her hand.

As he prepared to leave, she hovered in the parlor by the door, wanting to help him and holding herself back. Earlier, she had insisted on at least bandaging his wound until he had finally given in, unbuttoning his waistcoat and untucking his undershirt to show her the unblemished skin where the iron bar had pierced his body.

“Are you really all right to leave?” she asked.

“The layers will hide the damage, and the blood won’t show in the dark.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I am not dying, Lady Tremayne,” he said softly. “I am not what I once was, but perhaps that is for the best.”

“These mortals of yours—they’ll take care of you?”

“If need be.”

She gave him a searching look. “And they know what you are?”

“Comprehensively,” he replied, suddenly awash in a memory of his master at the age of twelve, curled fast asleep in his father’s armchair by the fire, and how warm and limp and trusting he had felt when Silas had picked him up and delivered him to bed. And then of his mistress burning with fever in the carriage beside him, the words “You’re a proper monster, Silas,” still hovering in his ears. With his hand on the doorknob, he paused.

“What is it?” Lady Tremayne asked.

“I have never told you why I walked into your shop that first day. A demon sees not only a human’s physical body, but also its life force, what you might call a soul. Yours is of remarkable brilliance. There are only a handful in this city that can match it, out of tens of thousands. The mortals around you will recognize it—it is only a matter of time. And not very much time, I suspect.”

Reflected in the door’s glass amid a spangle of lights, her expression was stricken.

“You are not destined for loneliness,” he continued, “and the things that have happened to you have not tarnished the brightness of your spirit. A hundred years from now, two hundred, your name will be spoken in history classes and written down in books. If I notice any errors, I will make sure to send a choicely worded letter.”

She stood frozen for a long moment, still staring at him, and then she pivoted and strode away into her office. He waited patiently as the sound of her muffled weeping carried into the parlor. She returned with brisk, rapping steps three minutes later, her eyes rimmed in red but her makeup flawless. “Here.” She pressed something into his hand—a card, printed with Lady Tremayne’s in silver foil. “If you ever need a favor, you only need to ask.”

Silas tried not to let his eyes stray toward the striped gown behind the curtain. “Let us hope it never comes to that. Happy holidays, Lady Tremayne.”

She gave him a look.

“Annabelle,” he relented, and bent to kiss her hand.

He stepped outside into a perfect winter’s evening, everything still beneath the silver moon. Most of the pedestrians had fled with the shops’ closing, but a few mittened revelers still clustered around the roasted chestnut stalls, shivering and stamping their feet. In the distance, too far away for mortal ears to hear, the carolers were at a doorway singing.

As he passed the florist’s window, he paused, studying the wedding bouquet at the center of its display. Then he smiled and continued onward, his next plan already taking shape in his mind.