I let my power do its work before realizing it couldn’t.
I turned to Sebastian, searching for the gentlest words. “Sebastian, I need to heal Miss Chen. Her arm is quite broken.”
From the way Sebastian’s jaw tightened, it felt like I had told him I never wanted to see him again.
“Do you think you could move away, just to the edge of our range? There’s no one behind you.” Catherine and Rose were helping the others down from the carriage.
He looked to be sure I was right and took a deep breath before stepping back from us, counting the ten feet to make sure he stayed as close as possible.
Miss Chen’s eyes caught mine for a quick moment, and finally I saw the pain she was carrying with her. Even though she hadn’t lost a parent or someone she loved that night, she still saw that madness fly around the ballroom—and had been a part of it, too. Captain Goode cut through her carefully held control and forced her to hurt people. That would be devastating, even for the strongest of us.
“I’m sorry for … well, your losses. Both of yours.” She looked at the ground a little, clearly uncomfortable with expressing much. Or perhaps she simply was worried I might fall to pieces if she looked at me too long.
“Thank you.” I felt odd accepting her condolences, but I gave her now-healed arm a light squeeze.
“Evelyn.” A mournful little voice came from behind Miss Chen. Laura was being held protectively underneath Emily’s arm. Her hair was lank and plastered to her cheeks. There was no light of fervor in her eyes as there should have been. She didn’t look to be scheming or full of impossible plans. A deep twinge pulled at my heart. The poor girl. Her parents were gone, too.
And I had let Captain Goode do it.
“Oh, Laura, I’m so glad to see you.” I wrapped her in a hug, holding her thin body to me. “I’m so, so sorry.” She seemed to muffle a sob, and I held on longer, eyeing Emily over her shoulder. Rose fussed at a bruise on Emily’s arm.
“Emily, you are injured?” She shook her head but didn’t take her worried eyes off Laura. I took some comfort in knowing that Laura had not only her fierce older brother as a protector but her new friend as well. Rose shook her head a little at me, indicating that Emily was fine.
“Here.” Mr. Kent tossed his hat to Sebastian, distracting him with the task of transferring his disguise. I walked back and took his hand, hoping it made him feel a little more comfortable.
“Pull the hat down over your ears. Take the pince-nez, too. The mustache sticks on. Should last long enough to get on the train.” Mr. Kent didn’t quite catch Sebastian’s eye as he said it. But Sebastian raised no argument, not even to the hideous mustache. He just gingerly pressed it above his lip. It almost looked real.
Catherine and Rose helped Laura and Emily into their coats as Mr. Kent paid the driver. The carriage clattered away, and we stood for a moment in a malformed circle, the silence between us anything but comfortable. My stomach sank again.
Wrong, wrong—leaving like this is wrong.
“It seems we’re all ready then,” Mr. Kent said with a decisive strike of his cane.
I tried one last time. “Are you sure we shouldn’t stay and quickly kill Captain—”
“No, off we go.” Mr. Kent cut me off and headed toward the station, the others following.
“This is truly what you wish to do?” I asked Sebastian as we lingered behind.
“Yes.”
I tried to be cheered by the fact that he had now said at least five words. Maybe leaving would help him see that he did not need to blame himself.
“You don’t need to punish yourself,” I said carefully. He grimaced a little harder. “It was Captain Goode’s fault.” I silently wondered if that would end up being my most oft-repeated phrase. Maybe it would even be engraved on my tombstone.
He ignored me. I sighed and I gripped his hand as we entered the busy station. Two policemen in dark uniforms stood near the door. I turned Sebastian slightly to the right. He ducked his head and leaned closer to me. We wove cautiously through the crowds, Mr. Kent leading the way.
“The train leaves in a few minutes; we shall have to move swiftly.” Catherine turned to us, consulting a watch tucked into her jacket.
“To track three.” Mr. Kent veered left and we followed.
“Do we not need tickets?” I tried to keep pace with him.
“I bought them early this morning,” he said, a little smug, which was greatly annoying.
“With what money?”
“You don’t have emergency funds stashed away in case you accidentally anger the entire city?”
“No, I try to stay on the good side of entire cities.”
“Well, now you know how hard that is.”
Every step forward we took felt heavier. We were leaving Captain Goode here to do God-knows-what with God-knows-whom. I could not conscience it. The need to destroy him was itching me like uncomfortable woolen underthings.
But I didn’t have an argument to persuade the others. Hundreds died because they had the unfortunate luck of being caught between Captain Goode’s rage and us. Because of the selfish decision I had made. And if I had it my way now, it would hurt Rose, Sebastian, and everyone else who wanted to leave.
The great black train belched smoke as we came to the tracks. Shouts and mechanical noises clamored and competed for attention between the shrieking bursts of steam, calls from porters, and loud conversations between companions.
I looked around as surreptitiously as possible, my heart beginning to pound. This was it. We were leaving.
The train gave another loud scream, sounding somehow more final than the others.
Sebastian pulled me up behind him, my shoes slipping a little on the black steps, my nerves buzzing. For just a moment, the grief on his face cleared a bit, and he frowned at me in consternation. “Are you all right?”
That little sign of awareness, his concern for me briefly outweighing his pain, made my heart skip slightly. Of course I was not all right. Neither was he. But we were here.
Together.
“Yes.”
Rose and Catherine led us past the first-and second-class carriages. Sunlight split through the windows, illuminating the little picnics that were being unearthed from hampers, the children jumping around in their cramped compartments. It was a strange place to be given our somber mood.
We found our compartment near the front of the train and everyone climbed inside, shaking out of coats and settling skirts around ankles. The screech and rumble announced our departure. We had made it, but only barely. An awkward silence lingered between all of us.
I settled against the window and peered outside. I watched as the station drifted by and the train’s chugging grew more rapid against my best wishes. I watched as an unlucky couple emerged from the opposite end of the platform and hurried through the crowd to catch the leaving train. I watched as they ran so fast their hats flew off and they managed to leap onto the car in front of ours just before we left the station. The woman paused on the step, looking straight at me through the glass. A shiver tore through me, and the train felt colder all of a sudden. The woman, wrapped in a big blue coat, had a bit of a glow about her. A literal glow that I had seen before.
When she was encasing my feet in blocks of ice, deep belowground in the Society of Aberrations prison.
Chapter Three
I FROZE BEFORE realizing that’s exactly what she would want me to do.
“Mr. Kent,” I strained a whisper through my teeth. “We’re being followed. Please get us to a first-class compartment right now.”
His eyebrows went up. “And how—”
“Full blackmail privileges,” I replied. “Go.”
Like a cat, he slid out of his seat and opened our compartment door, pulling Laura and Emily behind him. Miss Chen, Catherine, and Rose followed him, shooting me looks of concern and confusion.
Sebastian stood up, but waited in the narrow corridor, eyeing me as though he expected me to run off somewhere without him.