“Thanks,” Damon said begrudgingly as he tried on the hat. Far too big and sliding over his eyes, it was the ideal way to hide his features. “Ladies always do such a good job of finding the most appropriate outfit for the occasion.”
Cora’s mouth twisted as though she was resisting the urge to smile. She had already spent quite a bit of time with Damon, back when she was being compelled by Samuel. I imagined she’d gotten used to his dark, occasionally sarcastic humor.
“I know where we can go,” Cora said. “At least for a bit.”
“Do you? We’d be most obliged if you shared that information with us,” Damon said in an exaggerated show of politeness.
Cora leaned toward us, resting her elbows on her knees. Her arms were spattered with blood from tending to my wounds.
“Once we get off the train, just follow me,” Cora instructed, keeping her voice low and glancing at the cabin door. “I can’t tell you where. I don’t want anyone to hear. We can’t be too careful. Isn’t that right?” Cora asked, her tone challenging Damon to disagree.
“Well said,” Damon muttered acquiescently. I was pleased by Cora’s foresight and her ability to manage my brother. She may have seemed innocent and naïve, but she had a backbone of steel.
Cora nodded tightly and went back to looking out the window. I studied her. In addition to the crusted blood on her arms, she also had red splotches on her blue cotton dress. From a distance, it looked the fabric was patterned with roses.
The train whistle blew three short blasts. We were minutes from the station.
“Grab your coat,” Cora reminded Damon, as though she were a mother speaking to her child on a snowy day.
Damon shrugged his shoulders into the oversize gray jacket, which looked almost like the Confederate uniform he’d worn more than two decades ago.
“Good,” Cora said. “Now, Stefan, take up the rear and make sure no one notices or follows us.”
“Of course,” I said abashedly. I’d thought we’d have to protect Cora, but it seemed Cora was protecting us. Did this dependence on a human to lead us to safety mean we were worse off than we thought? Or was Cora the good luck charm I’d asked for? Either way, I trusted her.
2
Soon enough, the train chugged into Paddington Station, trailing a cloud of black smoke.
The three of us moved swiftly and stealthily off the train and through the bustle of the platform. As we headed toward the exit, my eye landed on three policemen huddled in the center of the station. One turned toward me, his gaze resting on my face for a moment before moving on to scan the rest of the crowd. My shoulders relaxed. No one was suspicious of us.
The area surrounding the station was a world away from the ornate buildings Damon preferred, all gilt and gleaming marble. These buildings were crowded together and boarded up, and no one seemed to be around. The air felt heavy, as if it held all the city’s dirt suspended around us.
Dark clouds were gathering overhead. “Looks like it’s going to rain,” I said. I shook my head as soon as I said it, disgusted with my attempt at small talk. I sounded like a farmer talking to my neighbor.
Simple Stefan, I imagined a smooth, dulcet voice teasing. I shook away the thought of Katherine.
“I suppose so,” Damon said in his maddening noncommittal drawl, as though he was still in Virginia and had all the time in the world.
“Are you boys just going to stand there, or are you ready to follow me?” Cora asked, putting her tiny hands on her hips.
Damon and I glanced at each other and nodded. “We’re ready if you are,” Damon said.
Cora quickly got her bearings, then took off through the winding, sprawling streets of West London toward the sludgy, slow-moving River Thames. I used to think the Thames was majestic, flowing into the Atlantic Ocean and connecting London to the world. Now, it looked murky and malevolent. I followed a few steps behind Cora, alert to any signs of Samuel, outraged citizens, or the Metropolitan Police. Every so often, I’d see a tumble of chestnut- brown curls cascading down a slim back and would glance quickly away. Even now, when I had so much on my mind, Katherine haunted me.
As we continued to walk along the river toward the pedestrian bridge across the Thames, familiar sights of London loomed before us. I could see the domed chapel of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and farther down, Big Ben. Beyond that were warehouses that abutted the river. The warehouses where Samuel had held Cora under compulsion and where Violet had been turned into a vampire. London was a study in contrasts, with the church spires that reached toward the heavens masking the hellish underbelly that we were steeped in.
Soon, we found ourselves on the Strand, the street closest to the Thames and one of the city’s commercial epicenters. I caught a few people staring at us suspiciously. I wasn’t surprised. In our bloodstained, dirt-caked clothes, we looked worse than the beggars who often hung about the city squares.
“We’re almost there,” Cora said, also sensing the sideways glances of passersby. She smoothed her dress, put back her shoulders, and marched across the bridge without a backward glance.
“She’s a good one to have around,” Damon observed as he fell into step beside me.
“She is,” I agreed. For once, my brother and I were on the same page.
On the opposite bank, Cora neatly turned down a set of winding stone steps leading to the edge of the river. The area under the bridge housed nothing apart from a giant hole in the ground, covered over with wooden planks and iron beams. This must have been a construction site for an Underground station. I remembered George Abbott telling me about these trains. The plan was to connect all of London via a web of underground train tunnels. The city’s goal was to have a functional line by the turn of the century. But judging by the state of the hole, the crew wasn’t in any hurry. The area looked abandoned.
I trailed behind Cora like an obedient puppy as she picked her way through the site. A KEEP OUT sign was tacked on a nearby post and a low post and wire fence surrounded the hole. Some worker had made a halfhearted attempt to cover the opening with a sheet of canvas, but I could see the top of a thin wooden ladder poking out. Cora stopped nearby.