I watch as she riffles through the drawer. She pulls out a silver brush and lifts it into the firelight, turning it this way and that. Then, with a grunt of satisfaction, she replaces it. That brush might be the most valuable thing in here. She’s not looking for anything to steal, then. She was making sure it didn’t belong to her master or mistress.
Alice tugs the drawer all the way out and reaches inside. With a crow of discovery, she pulls out a letter. It’s not until she starts to tug the paper from the envelope that I remember what it is: the letter from Lady Inglis to Gray.
Oh hell, no. We all need to learn our birds and bees sometime, but that is not the way I want this kid doing it.
“Stop right there,” I say as I stride in. I snatch the letter from her hand. “That is not addressed to you.”
“It is not addressed to you either,” she says tartly. When I shift, she flinches, expecting a smack, but she stands firm and lifts her chin. “It belongs to Dr. Gray.”
“It does,” I say, “and therefore neither of us should be reading it. Apparently, I stole it, though I have no idea why. It is simply a letter from a friend.”
When I reach to put it back, she flinches again. I stop and set the letter down. Time to get this out of the way.
“I hit you, didn’t I, Alice? Before my accident.”
She says nothing, just tightens her jaw.
“I did,” I say. “I must have, though I don’t remember.” I back up and sit on the end of my bed. “I won’t do that ever again. If I do, then…”
I sigh. “Well, if I do then I’m back to being the old Catriona, and if that happens, hopefully Mrs. Ballantyne will fire me. Otherwise, you should tell her. No matter what Catri—I said, you should always tell a grown-up when someone hurts you. A grown-up you trust, and I presume you trust Mrs. Ballantyne.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Do I seem like myself, Alice?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Because I’m not.”
“Or because you’re pretending you’re not. You tricked the master, and now you’ve tricked the mistress. Mrs. Ballantyne is a good woman, and she wants to help, and you’re giving her what she wants. That’s what Mrs. Wallace says.”
“Mrs. Wallace is smart,” I say. “Yes, it makes more sense to give someone what they want and lower their defenses.”
“You admit it then?”
“I admit it would be a good strategy. But why not employ it sooner? I have a feeling I was always nice to Mrs. Ballantyne. Am I right?”
“You tricked her. Right from the start. Tricked her and then lorded it over us.”
I lean back, arms braced on the bed. “Well, then I’m not sure how to prove I’ve really changed now. I do seem changed, don’t I? I don’t remember much of my past, and that makes me a different person. Very different.”
“Too different,” she says. “You seem altogether another person, and Mrs. Wallace doesn’t like it, so I don’t either. Either you are lying, or you are possessed.”
“Possessed?” I stifle a laugh, half at the idea and half at how, in its way, this is far more accurate than Alice could imagine. “Have you ever heard of a possessed person being better than they were before?”
“Perhaps you are a changeling then. That is a fairy child put in the bed of a human one.”
“Oh, I know all about the fair folk. My nan told me stories. If I were a changeling, I’d be the human returned, wouldn’t I? The fairies stole me as a baby and replaced me with a wicked fairy child, but now I have come home and banished her.”
She considers this and then looks at me.
“Is that what happened?” she asks, in all seriousness, and I bite back a smile by reminding myself just how deep the belief in fairies runs here, in this land, at this time.
“I have no idea what happened,” I say. “Only that I am not the person I was, and this one seems better, so I will keep being her for as long as I am able. And if I turn back into my old self, I have warned Mrs. Ballantyne to send me away.”
“Did she agree?”
“She did, and so you’ve nothing to fear from me. If I do hurt you, then it is the old me, and you should tell Mrs. Ballantyne straightaway. Understood?”
She nods, wary gaze on me.
“Now,” I say. “I presume you were looking for proof that my personality change is a trick. I’m not sure what you hoped to find. A journal of my confessions perhaps? You are free to continue your search. So far, I have found a pouch of money, sweets sent to Mrs. Ballantyne by a hopeful suitor, and this letter. You may search away.”
She continues eyeing me.
“I mean it,” I say as I back onto the bed and pick up a book. “Search to your heart’s content. You may find more evidence that the old Catriona was a scoundrel and a thief, but none that I am telling lies now.”
She watches me for another moment, and then she begins to search.
TWENTY-SIX
I am pleased to say that Alice finds nothing. Not pleased because I feared she might, but pleased to have my searching skills pass the test. It’s obvious that Alice has hidden a thing or two in her life, and she spends well over an hour going through my room. She misses the loose floorboard. While she checks the floor, she fails to see the telltale signs, and I show her afterward. Having no plans to turn thief, I’m not the least bit concerned that she knows about Catriona’s best hiding spot. Also, I’ve been drinking, so my judgment may not be at its best. At least I’m not drunk enough to tell her the truth about myself.
She leaves satisfied that I’m not an imminent threat to her family-in-service, and I head to bed. That doesn’t mean I get much sleep. Even if the raven killer hasn’t realized I’m not really Catriona, he still targeted me. He knows I’m Gray’s housemaid. He could come to finish the job. And if he’s from the twenty-first century and thinks I know he is, too? He’ll definitely try taking me out.
I can’t stop thinking about Isla saying Mrs. Wallace only locks the doors at night. Does she ever forget? No one’s likely to know if she did, or if she decided to leave it open for Gray. I last saw Gray at dinner, and I have no idea whether he’s still out.
The point is that whoever attacked me may try to finish the job, and I’m not exactly sleeping in a house with double–dead bolts and a security system.
I put the switchblade under my pillow.
That’s part of what keeps me awake. The rest is this puzzle.
Is it possible that the raven killer is the serial killer who tried to strangle me in 2019 Edinburgh? I itch to grab my phone and start jotting down notes, working through the case for and against that conclusion. I should have taken extra paper from Gray’s office, but I hadn’t wanted to push my luck. I think of the library downstairs, where there must be paper and pens, but I barely avoided being sacked today. I can’t afford to be caught skulking about at night.
Let’s start with potential arguments against my theory. The most obvious is the one I considered earlier. How would he survive in this world? Figure out whose body he inhabits? How would he blend in? It’s not impossible. I managed it. I’m still weathering the bumps, but I am managing. Therefore, he could do the same, especially with the twin advantages of being in a male body and being from Edinburgh.
I struggle to find solid arguments against the killer being from the modern world, so I switch to the other side temporarily. Signs he could be the twenty-first-century killer.
First, the rope. It’d caught my attention the moment Gray lifted it from Evans’s body. Something inside me jumped in recognition. I’d easily explained it away, but it still remains a piece of evidence in favor of my theory. Both that killer and this one like to strangle with rope.
The trap is the next obvious factor in favor of my theory. I’d been lured into a dark alley, following sounds of a woman in danger. Might not Catriona then be pulled in by the even stronger lure of a child in distress?
Then there’s the moment during our fight when he seemed to recognize me. Recognize the real me, as the victim who’d fought back in the modern world. I’d been fighting for my life and not caring whether I was talking or acting like a Victorian housemaid. That modern talk caught his ear, as the modern self-defense techniques caught his attention. A moment of déjà vu for both of us.