The Hungry Dreaming - Craig Schaefer Page 0,173

She almost believed his hesitance, his reluctance to inflict any more emotional pain on the woman he was carefully grinding under his heel.

“It was because of you.”

Arachne’s lips parted. She shook her head, gripping Patience’s soul tighter.

“Me?”

“It became known that Patience had taken to your worship, and the Sisterhood mistook her for some kind of rival witch. So they had her killed before she could pose a challenge, as they do. They all serve that barbarous creature of the crossroads, you know.”

“Hekate,” Arachne hissed.

“I prefer not to speak that name aloud,” Rime said. “They all say that New York belongs to her.”

One corner of Arachne’s mouth quivered, twitching. She drew herself up and pushed her shoulders back.

“We’ll see about that.”

Rime blinked, feigning surprise.

“Oh. Oh, would you…care to join me in this hunt? I’d be grateful for the help.”

Arachne looked down. Her thumb played gently over the silken skin of the cocoon.

“She wanted to be a weaver. Before she found me, she was scraping her pennies together, trying to buy her own loom. I was going to take her from this place. I was going to teach her everything. My apprentice. My little Patience.”

She raised her chin and stared Rime in the eye.

“No. I am not ‘helping’ with this hunt. I am leading this hunt. But first? Take me to the place where you found her body.”

“As I said, my men and I already investigated. If there was any evidence—”

“That’s not why.”

* * *

Madame Blanchette was a big woman, big voice, big fleshy jowls that wobbled when she laughed hearty and loud. She perched at the edge of the raucous bar and cooled her powdered cheeks with a paper fan.

“If you’re lookin’ for your husband, he’s not here,” she said. “If you’re looking for work, I’d say a pretty thing like you could do better uptown.”

“I’m looking for you,” Arachne said.

She was the center of attention in the smoky bar, every man eyeing her over their bottles and cups. She stood alone, carved from ice. Seelie watched from the corner of the common room, invisible, with Patience’s memory floating at her side.

“You’ve got my ear,” Blanchette said.

“Patience Foster.”

The madam squinted.

“Haven’t seen her. She moved on, don’t know where she went. Sorry.”

“She died here,” Arachne said. “Murdered. In your care. You took ninety percent of the money she earned, and you gave her nothing but a flea-infested mattress. When customers abused her, you did nothing. When they beat her, you did nothing. When she was robbed of everything she had—four times—you did nothing. When she was murdered, you did nothing.”

“Whores die,” Blanchette said. “It’s not a cushy job, your highness. And I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be lectured by some soft-handed stranger who dresses like she’s the goddamn maharajah. You’re nuttier than she was. Who do you think you are, coming in here and talking to me like that?”

“My name is Arachne.”

“I didn’t ask for your name, and I don’t care. I asked who you think you—”

“When you get to Tartarus,” Arachne said, “I want you to know who sent you there.”

She raised her arms. Flames, so hot they burned blue as sapphires, erupted in the curled cups of her fingers. More fire trailed her arms as they lifted, rippling like the wings of a phoenix.

“I want you all to know who sent you there.”

Alarms and bells rang out down the ramshackle street as flames licked along the rooftops. Windows burst, blown out by the heat, raining shards of razor-edged glass down on the muddy road. People were running, screaming, covering their heads like they were hiding from the wrath of God. Praying for mercy.

But a goddess was among them, and she had no mercy to offer. Where she walked, Holy Ground burned.

Over the course of the next week, as the city reeled from the fire that had devoured a third of Manhattan overnight, every single man who had helped murder Patience Foster turned up dead. Not at Arachne’s hands, but at Rime’s. One took a bayonet to the back; one had his throat slit. The last one Rime drowned in a horse trough, holding him under until his desperate thrashing stopped and his legs fell limp. One by one, he wiped out anyone who could tie him to Patience’s murder.

All but the last, who he met in a reserved room in a private club near Whitehall Slip. An exclusive place for drinks, conversation, and the trade of valuable goods. The company man slid a heavy pouch across the table

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