“Wonderful. I quite like your face, and I’m not sure that it could handle another one of your attempts.” Slipping his hand from her shoulder and down to hold hers, he pulled her toward the writhing shadows. “Whenever you’re ready.”
At her heels, Gundry gave a low whine. Signa cast a cursory glance at the parchment beneath his collar—ensuring it was still secure—before she gave his head a gentle pat and stepped forward.
It was a familiar feeling to let the shadows pull her from one place to another, like slipping through a lake and emerging dry. Strange and a little unsettling, but also deceptively peaceful, given where they’d ended up.
No longer were they in Signa’s bedchamber but in a too-small room with such little light that, at first, Signa thought her sight had been spirited away. Only because she was a reaper did her vision normalize, the darkness soon giving way to reveal the outline of a small cot. A chamber pot. And, eventually, a man huddled on the cold stone floor, knees drawn into his chest.
Signa started toward him before Death’s grip tightened. “Remember that you are a reaper right now. Mind your touch.”
Signa backed toward a wall with her arms wound tight around herself. “Are we in the prison?” She was glad she wasn’t human in that moment, for the stone splitting from the ground was caked with so much dust that she feared for her ability to breathe. It felt like one wrong move was all it would take for this place to come shattering down upon them.
“Yes.” Death spoke in the placating tone he’d used with Lord Wakefield and other restless spirits, and though Signa recognized the tactic, she also appreciated it. “No light is allowed in the cells. The idea is to blind the prisoners—to never let them see each other or their surroundings, so that they might feel entirely alone. I’ve picked up far too many people from rooms just like this one, driven to madness from the isolation.”
As she looked at Elijah, Death’s words cut deep. “Go to him,” Signa whispered, summoning the hound to her side. Gundry took one look at her before he bowed his head and padded the few short steps toward Elijah. The shadows swirling around his protruding ribs slipped from him with every step, shedding from his skin until his body filled out and he was nothing but a common hound with a gentle whimper.
Elijah startled at the sound, jerking his face toward it. The left side of his face was bruised and swollen. His hands and clothing were covered in the grime of the room, stained a sooty gray. Signa covered her mouth, scrutinizing the cut along his brow, to the bone and begging for an infection.
“Who is that?” he croaked, trying to squint through the darkness. “Is someone there?”
Signa squeezed Death’s hand, keeping herself grounded. She could only watch as Gundry nudged Elijah’s leg, still and calm even as Elijah pulled away. “Gundry? Can this truly be you?”
Gundry pressed his snout into Elijah’s leg, and with trembling hands Elijah reached out to pet the beast. The moment his fingers curled into Gundry’s fur, Elijah’s voice croaked with a hoarse laugh. “It seems I have gone delusional.” He stroked down Gundry’s back and then back up again, stopping when his fingertips brushed the slip of paper tucked beneath the hound’s collar. Elijah stilled at the sound, glancing at the door once before he tugged the note from Gundry’s collar.
He held it up, though there wasn’t enough light to read it, especially where some of the letters had smudged. His hands shook as, ever so slowly, he scooted toward the cell door and held the note up to the keyhole in the iron lock, squinting to read one letter at a time with only the barest hint of light.
Is there a suspect?
It took such a painfully long time that Signa had half a mind to go back and fetch him a lighter. But the idea had hardly formed in her head before the cell door rattled. Elijah shoved the note into his mouth and swallowed as the door swung open, nearly hitting him. Elijah’s eyes flew at once to Gundry, but the hound was nowhere in sight, already back at Death and Signa’s side and concealed in the shadows.
Hideous was the only way to describe the man who stepped inside the cell. His face was too small for his body, round and oily, and he wore a gruesome grin that Signa longed to wipe from his chapped lips. She looked at once to his knuckles—scabbed, which answered the question of what had happened to Elijah’s face.
“Get up, Hawthorne. This ain’t a gentleman’s club.” Signa hadn’t realized how tightly Death was holding her back until he squeezed her hand.
Steady, Little Bird. The words were a gentle buzz in her mind. Steady.
If not for Death’s presence, such a thing would have felt impossible as the man gripped Elijah by the collar and hauled him to his feet. As awful as it was to watch, Signa was glad that Elijah didn’t fight back. Who knew what might happen if he dared to make a move against these men.
The guard threw Elijah a mask that looked like little more than a sack with slits for eyes. Elijah put it on without protest, though a moment before he slid the monstrosity down his face, his eyes trailed to the back of the cramped cell, right to where Signa stood pressed against Death. She stiffened, though as he continued to search, it became clear that he couldn’t see her.
“Byron did not speak on my behalf.” Elijah’s words were so quiet that the prison guard cupped an ear.
“What was that, Hawthorne?” The hideous man stepped forward, yanking the mask the rest of the way onto Elijah’s face. “You got something to say?”
Signa could hardly see the pleading eyes that searched for her, but she knew enough to understand. Elijah said nothing more as the guard hauled him out of the cell, though his message was loud and clear: Byron Hawthorne had lied when he said he’d done everything he could to protect Elijah.
Which meant that Signa had a prime suspect in Lord Wakefield’s murder.
SEVEN
SIGNA BARELY SENSED THE SHIFT AS DEATH DREW HER FROM ELIJAH’S cell, through the shadows that leached any returning warmth from her skin and back to the safety of her suite at Thorn Grove. Her mind was a deluge of thoughts, all of them about Byron. She tried to steady herself against the edge of the vanity only to forget what form she was in, stumbling as her hand slipped through it.
Why might Byron be involved in this? Did he still want Grey’s? Was he capable of murdering for it? She’d believed that he’d finally come to terms with separating himself from the business, as he’d taken quite an interest in eligible women this season. It had seemed that he would find a wife and settle down.
Signa held her stomach, fighting the sickness that gripped her every time she pictured Elijah’s bloodied, beaten face. She could kill the man that did that to him and thought of the way she might do it. She could return to the prison. Follow him out into the dark of the night and wrap her hands around his throat. He’d be dead in an instant, and as for his soul… Oh, how she wished to destroy it. To form her shadows into a scythe and slice through the man until his very essence was wiped from the earth.
As if able to sense the bitter thoughts festering within her, Death drew Signa close, smoothing his hands down her arms. “I understand what you’re feeling and have acted on that impulse more times than I can count. Rarely is it worth it, Little Bird. Awful as that man may be, he has a family. One he does not treat so poorly, and who rely on him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we do not get to play God. We do not get to tamper with Fate, especially when he is breathing down our necks.”
Signa wished that Death had not spoken, and that those few words alone weren’t enough to plant the idea of that man’s family in her mind. It was for them that she shut her eyes and willed her mind to ease away from such vicious thoughts of death.
God, what was happening to her?
“Byron told us that he tried everything,” Signa whispered, forcing her mind elsewhere. Onto a new puzzle in need of solving.