I stepped into the street to pass him with a wide berth, but he spun around and walked alongside me. The hair on the back of my neck rose. I forced myself to keep walking, hoping he’d just doubled back on some forgotten errand, even though I knew it was too late for wishes. I glanced at my boot, where a knife was hidden, a trick I’d learned from Montgomery.
“Spare a quid, miss?” the man asked, suddenly right at my side, in a voice that seemed unnaturally deep. His bare fingers reached out, the missing middle finger leaving an unnatural vacancy.
I jerked away. “Sorry, no.”
“With those fine buttons? Come on, miss. Just a quid. It isn’t safe out here, alone on the streets. Not safe for a girl at all.”
I saw his arm twitch a second before he grabbed my coat. I ducked out of his grasp and pulled the knife from my boot, then shoved him against the curb at the right angle for his ankles to catch. He fell, off balance. I collapsed on top of him, knee digging into the soft center of his chest, knife at his throat, as I checked the alley to make certain we were alone.
His cap fell back off his head, and I started as shoulder-length red hair tumbled out around a surprisingly pretty face. A girl younger than me, disguised as a man, which explained the put-on deep voice. That was good—a girl I could scare off. A man I might have had to inflict some damage upon.
“I know it isn’t safe,” I hissed. “What do you think knives are for?”
I pressed the knife closer against her neck, watching the flesh wrinkle beneath it. Her eyes went wide.
“I didn’t mean nothing!” she said, voice substantially higher now. “Please, miss, I swear, I just wanted them buttons!”
I narrowed my eyes at her, digging my knee deeper until I felt a rib, and then gave an extra jab before climbing off of her.
I jerked my chin toward the opposite street. “Go on,” I said. “And next time put some shoeblack on your face to look like a beard, and for god’s sakes wear some gloves; they gave you away instantly.”
She scrambled to her feet, brushing the muck off her clothes, and stumbled away at a run. I sheathed the knife in the boot holster, then wiped a trembling hand over my face, breathing some life back into my cold hands.
I took off at a brisk walk, still shaken, the afternoon clouds overhead the only witness to the incident I couldn’t forget fast enough, until at last I saw the shining lights of Covent Garden.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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FOUR
THE MARKET WAS FILLED at all hours with a vast range of people, and I gladly plunged into the safety of their midst. Ladies in fine dresses shopped for Christmas presents for their well-dressed children, scullery maids swarmed past the wrinkle-faced vegetable women, tailors and seamstresses haggled in the textile quarter. In my fine coat and boots no one gave me a second glance, until I slipped into the meat section of the market. Few fine young ladies could stomach these narrow passageways. Eels as long as my arm twitched on hooks above lambs’ glassy dead eyes, and stray cats licked up the salty blood pooling on the floor. By the time I reached Joyce’s Choice Meats, I was getting nothing but strange looks.
Jack Joyce, however, gave me a smile.
Joyce, an Irish ex-boxer who’d turned to the meat trade in his old age, cracked a broken-tooth grin as I approached. His previous profession had left him not only minus a few teeth, but with a permanent squint eye that never seemed to be looking in the same direction as the other. A small black dog with a white spot on his chest, notable only in his ugliness, wagged his tail as I approached.
“Hello, Joyce,” I said, and then knelt by the dog to scratch his bony head. In general, I did my best to stay away from animals. They only reminded me of my father and the dark experimentation he had done. That’s why I limited myself to plants. Roses couldn’t kill, or maim, or betray.
“And hello to you too, boy.” I picked up the dog, though he was heavy in my arms. “He’s put on a pound or two, I believe.”
“Aye. Soon enough he’ll be fatter than the queen’s old lapdog, if you keep buying him scraps. And just as lazy.” Joyce took his knobby old hands away from his fire and dug around behind the counter until he came back with some chicken bones that he tossed to the dog.
The dog had started following me around town ever since I’d first come to Joyce’s Meats six months ago. It was the meat in my pocket he smelled, and the only way I could get him to keep from trailing at my heels was to pay Joyce to keep him well-fed on scraps, a task that despite his grumbling, I suspected the old boxer rather enjoyed.
“Let’s see,” Joyce said, digging around beneath the counter. He came up with a package wrapped in butcher paper and tied with twine. “Here’s your order. Two pancreases, one liver. Couldn’t get my hands on the deer heart you wanted. I should have it next week.”