dust. One might as well put the hook in one's heart oneself. You'd better go along, Abby Irene. I shall join you tonight, and tell you what Jack has uncovered in his travels. He's out among the lower element, seeking the provenance of the 'paddereen.'"
He must have observed her shock as she came back to him; he arched his brows and tilted his head in silent query. "I thought you were keeping secrets," she said. Anything more would be a confession of eavesdropping—as if he didn't already know. But he'd just more or less told her that Mr. Priest associated with the Fenians, without telling her anything in a way she could not deny.
But then, she was already a wampyr's lover—and that was illegal, too.
He smiled, and kissed her mouth without touching her elsewhere. "I am."
He cares for me, she thought, with a kind of amazement. And the next instant, brutally pitied him.
* * *
The raisin-sized nugget rested in the middle of a white linen handkerchief, surrounded by candles, a goblet of water, a goblet of wine, a dish of salt, and the magnetized blade of Garrett's arthany. With her silver-tipped ebony wand—just the length from elbow to fingertip—she made passes in the air above it, and pronounced the requisite words.
The table was of a size for eight, without the leaves in place, though she'd pulled the chairs away for unfettered access and gotten Sebastien and his manservant Humbert to roll up the rugs so she could cast a circle in salt.
The paddereen looked ridiculously tiny on Garrett's improvised altar in Sebastien's dining room. Inaptly named, perhaps, except obviously someone ate there. Mr. Priest?
In any case, the little lump of preserved flower petals showed no signs of having been magicked, not even with a trigger or a focus spell. No sorcery had been cast on it or through it, in other words, though there were lingering traces of an ancient Catholic blessing, layered and relayered so many times that it clung to the bead like lacquer.
It also revealed no traces of poison. Not that she'd expect it to—she'd only handled it with gloves, but Mr. Priest had touched it bare-handed and come to no harm.
If she had suspects, she could write their names on slips of parchment, array them around the edges of the altar-cloth (or Sebastien's handkerchief, as the case might be) and see which one was drawn into the center. No proof positive of ill-will, not with the bead apparently innocent, but it could have directed an investigation.
As it was, the thing was utterly inert, and might as well be useless. She made a cutting gesture with her wand, severing the circle of protection, and dropped the ebony stick beside the altar. Her hair was lank with sweat. She wiped it from her forehead.
"The carriage is ready, Abby Irene," Sebastien said from the doorway. She had not an inkling how long he'd been standing there, waiting for her concentration to break. He was that silent. "Have you any luck, mi corazón?"
She swallowed uncomfortable dryness at the unprecedented endearment, trying not to remember that he'd been as affectionate to Mr. Priest when she was not meant to overhear. How could he feel anything for her that was any greater than the casual affection for a pet, the fondness he already betrayed for the orange tomcat? She'd be gone as if in instants, she realized, dead to him between one breath and the next.
Not that he breathed.
"Thank you, Sebastien," she said, and began bundling her tools into the bag. He crossed the circle, stepping over the rolled-up carpet and scuffing the salt with his foot, and stayed her with a hand when she would have lifted handkerchief and rosary bead. "Leave it, por favor," he said. "Unless you must maintain it for evidence? I think that Jack may find a use, before the week is out."
"Of course," Garrett answered, and kissed him on the cheek before she drew off her white gloves.
* * *
It had been kind of Sebastien to loan her his carriage again—"I won't need it until sunset"—and though it rattled her teeth, Garrett was grateful not to brave the crowded subway. She had long since stopped finding it ironic or eerie that the city at large paid no attention to a murder, whether the victim was a prominent citizen or a guttersnipe.
And in all reality, it shouldn't. Life went on; there were apples in the markets now, and squash, and cabbages and potatoes to set by for