I ignore all those temptations and head straight to the shelf of texts that might be of interest to a budding forensic scientist. I pull out a translated French book. A General System of Toxicology, or, A Treatise on Poisons by Mathieu Orfila. I resist the urge to open it and instead lay it on the desk, ready to grab if I hear anyone.
I’m easing out the desk chair when a whisper comes, like an opening door, and I’m on my feet, book clutched in my hands.
Silence falls again, but as I stand there, holding the book, some sliver of awareness tickles down my spine, the same one I’d felt earlier today, standing near Rose’s body and wondering whether the killer could be in the crowd.
With the book under one arm, I slip to the door. I glance down at the leather-bound tome and weigh its use as a potential weapon against the chance this is just a member of the household. I don’t want to be found sneaking around holding a fire poker. Nor do I want to come up against the killer while armed only with a book on forensic toxicology.
Damn it, I should have brought my knife. I back up to the fire and grab the poker. Book in one hand, weapon in the other. That will make sense if I explain that I’d been getting something to read when I heard a noise.
I slide into the hall. As I creep down it, I check each room, but the drawn drapes make it impossible to see more than the shapes of furnishings. I reach the hall and consider and then head for the stairs. As I set my foot on the first one, a creak sounds, one that doesn’t come from under my feet. I peer down into darkness below. Nothing.
I wait another moment, ears straining. When it stays quiet, I remind myself that this is an old house, prone to creaks and groans.
Uh, no, Mallory, this town house might be a historic building in your time, but it’s fifty or sixty years old in this world. With the solid construction, it’s no more given to creaking than my condo at home.
Still, any house can be subject to noises, and that must be what I’ve heard, because it’s gone quiet, and it’s staying quiet.
I continue down the stairs, poker in hand, hearing nothing more than a creak or two of the floorboards under my own feet. At the bottom I pause to look both ways, and then I stride to the front door. I check it. Locked. Walk to the back door. Also locked.
Good. If there’s anyone about, it’s only one of my housemates, getting a glass of water or using the water closet.
I return to the library, and I’m pulling open a desk drawer when I am certain I hear a clack from somewhere in the house. I freeze. Then I rise with my book in hand. Halfway to the door, I realize I left the drawer open.
I hesitate but force myself into the hall, where I listen. Listen and hear nothing.
Okay, now I’m being paranoid. The doors are locked. There’s no one here. With these high ceilings, I probably heard the echo of the damn drawer opening.
One last peer down the dark hallway, and I retreat to the desk. I reach into the drawer, where I know Isla keeps paper. Next comes the pen, plucked from a holder on the desktop. It’s a gorgeous engraved-silver combination dip pen and mechanical pencil that I can imagine my father salivating over. That’s the second time I’ve thought of him in the last hour, and each nudge brings an affectionate smile followed by a surge of panic.
My dad would love this pen.
When I get home, I should find one in an antiques shop for him.
What if I don’t get home?
What if Catriona is in my body?
What if I never see my parents again?
Deep breaths to calm my racing heart. What’s the saying about long, dark nights of the soul? The witching hour for all my worst fears to toil and boil forth, from a killer in the house to never seeing my parents again.
I cannot control the last part, except in the sense that solving Catriona’s murder might be the key to unlocking the gate. Maybe I was brought through time to stop her killer before he struck again. Except it’s no longer the same guy, and I’m doing a really shitty job of stopping him.
I press my fingers to my temples, return to the desk, and sit again.
I lift my pen over the blank page to be frozen exactly as I was upstairs. Where to begin? What’s the starting thread? The current murders? Catriona’s initial attack? Or her second attack—the one I’d faced, which requires the killer knowing she’s helping Gray and McCreadie?
Stop. It doesn’t matter where I start. Just write it all down.
Current murders. First victim, Archie Evans, chosen because the killer wanted information from him. He knew something—
Wait.
Wait right there.
We’d been checking out Evans’s housemates trying to determine what the killer wanted from him. What he’d been tortured for. It had seemed connected to his housemates’ anti-immigrant efforts. Except that wouldn’t interest a modern-day killer. Whatever his own beliefs, he’s not going after Evans to extract information on a nineteenth-century anti-immigration movement.
What did he want?
He killed Evans within two days of arriving in this world. He’d barely arrived. What would he want? What could he want?
I let my mind drift back to my first day here. Waking in the bed upstairs. Waking in a world and a body I didn’t recognize. What did I want?
Answers.
Who am I? Where am I?
I’d gotten them by asking Gray, under the guise of mental confusion.
The killer isn’t going to grab a random guy on the street and torture him for information that he could get by feigning a blow to the head until someone took pity and answered.
Where am I? What year is it? What day is it?
Hell, he could get those answers by finding a newspaper stand.
What couldn’t he find as easily?
Who am I?
The man whose body the killer inhabits knew Evans. He was connected to him in a way that meant he had the information the killer needed.
Who am I? Where do I live? What do I do for a living?
He wouldn’t need to torture Evans for that. Fake a blow to the head and ask, and if Evans got suspicious, then he could kill him. Torture meant he needed more.
What more did I need when I arrived?
Everything. It was like being dropped into a foreign country where you barely speak the same language.
How do I wake up in the morning? What are my duties? How do I perform those duties—where is the mop, the water, the soap?
I’d had my safe cocoon, a houseful of decent people who made allowances for me. Yet I’d needed more, so much more, all the things I’m still figuring out, including information on this body I’m inhabiting. Luckily, I have Isla now, but those early days had been a constant cloud of fear that I’d be found out because I didn’t know the first damn thing about Catriona and “memory problems” only got me so far.
The killer had two choices. Live as the person whose body he inhabited or start over. Living as that person meant having a home and belongings and a job, but it also meant understanding that person’s life in a way I’d skipped with Catriona.
This is what he wanted from Evans. Not just “who am I?” but the crux of that question—tell me everything about myself so I can fully inhabit this life.
Where am I from? What do I like? How do I act? Who do I know?
That’s why he needed torture. He’d captured Evans with the intention of getting as much as possible from him and then killing him, both to cover his tracks and to renew his pursuit of serial-killer fame.
This means that Catriona’s would-be killer knew Evans. Knew him well enough that the killer recognized him as a source of invaluable information.
I need to learn more about Evans. He lived with students. Was he also a student? Part-time, maybe? Wait, McCreadie said he was English. Maybe he came for school in Edinburgh?
He wrote for a newspaper. The Evening Courant. Was that something done in an office—with colleagues—or freelance? I’ll need to ask Isla.
I’m writing feverishly when I catch the distinct sound of footsteps.
I grab the poker, stride to the door, and peer into darkness. It’s quiet again.
Goddamn it. Are my nerves working overtime or is someone actually out there? I walk into the hall.
“Hello?” I say, because by this point, if it’s just Alice sneaking around to see what I’m doing, I’d rather deal with that than keep being interrupted.