she’d come to know.
“Step out into Reed’s light, love,” Falsteed’s voice directed her from his cell. “Let me see your color.”
Grace did so, though Falsteed remained anonymous in the dark, light flickering off the iron bars that separated them. “Well enough, then,” he grunted. “You’ve not got a fever. Reed, take the filthy clothes out and come back with a stool, if you can pilfer one. I don’t think a bite of food would come amiss to the girl, either.”
“Grace,” she said, her name bubbling up from her mouth into the dimly cast rays of Reed’s light. She spoke toward Falsteed’s voice, her own stretching out wearily toward his to bridge the gap. “My name is Grace.”
“Hello, Grace,” Falsteed said, a smile evident in the twist of his words. “And welcome to my asylum.”
Silence hung in the air while she reasserted her grip on the smoothly polished river rock that he had called her voice. She found it, the words tripping over it roughly as they scratched their way upward. “Your asylum?”
“Yes, love. You’ll find that Reed here keeps me well apprised of the comings and goings above our heads, the matters that happen in the light. Meanwhile, I pull little strings like a cunning spider and wait for the throbs to come back and let me know what’s about. And speaking of what’s about, Reed, how goes the convalescent in the men’s ward?”
“Still not so much of a flicker of his eyelids, sir.”
“And there was no fall, no injury to the head?”
“Not that anyone knows.”
“Next time you get a chance, bring me a clipping of his hair. I’ll give it a whiff. If something’s gone amiss inside his skull, that’ll tell me all I need to know.”
“Yes, sir. And I’ve brought you the pillowcase of the newest, a girl what claims there’s spiders in her blood.”
“Give it here, then.” Falsteed’s hand appeared between the bars, and Reed handed over the linen, his features briefly in the light. Reed wasn’t much older than Grace, but his face was already lined with the weight of life. The sound of Falsteed breathing deeply filled the air, and Grace listened intently for his recommendation, intrigued after he’d learned so much from her scents.
The linen sailed back through the dark, landing neatly into the waiting hands of Reed. “What do you think, Dr. Falsteed? Any hope for her?”
“That one is lost. She not only claims her veins are full of spiders but truly believes it. And once we are convinced of something, no matter how ludicrous, it becomes a fact. If you cut her she’d see eight-legged creatures pour forth rather than a crimson tide, and who is to say that we are only all agreeing on the same perception when we say it is blood, and not arachnids, moving through us?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir.”
“Do you believe in God, Reed?”
“Yes, I do. And our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
“As I said, you are convinced and so it is fact. When in reality, I am your savior, the one who cut the abomination from your side and gave your life back, to live and to love and to make your children, is that not true?”
In the meager light from his lantern, Grace could see Reed’s cheek muscles jumping as his teeth gritted. “You did, sir, saved my life and rightly so. Yet you are not the son of God.”
“Unless I believed myself to be so, and then it would be so. To me, at any rate.”
“I’m not sure what you’re wanting me to say, sir.”
“Say that you’ll bring Grace a stool, and be on your way. I’ve taxed you enough for the day. And when you send for Dr. Thornhollow, ask that he may stop and pass the time with me as he goes about his bloody business.”
“Dr. Thornhollow, sir? The surgeon over at Mayfaire?”
“Yes, Reed. We’ve come to that time again. Grace’s arrival says the Board is coming. We’ve a new patient whose screams smell of delirium and by the scent of Heedson’s blood he’s nigh in a panic. He’ll call for Thornhollow. He’ll call for the one that wields the knife.”
NINE
The girl with spiders for blood came into the cellar like a typhoon, her screams breaking the companionable silence that Falsteed and Grace had established. In her own panic, Grace moved the low milking stool Reed had brought her from the stables next to Falsteed’s cell, her hand groping for his in the darkness. The iron bars pressed cold against her