shoulder. With each breath, she inhaled the stink of carrion and brimstone. She concentrated all her effort on pacing backward as she deflected the fiend’s blows, pulling it away from the unconscious boy.
The rain began to fall in earnest, sheeting across the square, running into Elisabeth’s eyes and blurring her vision. Another flash of lightning transformed her circling opponent into a stark etching of light and shadow. A second flash, a third. Had Nathaniel missed the other fiends? There should have only been two of them left. As she spun, searching, she saw more silhouettes creeping toward her, their eyes shining like embers through the curtain of rain. Too many of them to count. In her horror, she faltered.
There was no pain—but suddenly the world turned sideways, and the paving stones rose to meet her, cold and wet and grimy, slamming the air from her lungs. The bar skidded out of reach. She struggled to breathe, feeling as though a vise had clamped around her chest.
A lightning bolt split the air so close by that for a stunned moment she was certain it had struck her. Then the steaming body of the leader collapsed at her side, the light dimming from its single red eye.
“Steady on, Scrivener.” Arms lifted her from the ground, gathering her onto Nathaniel’s lap.
“The boy,” she croaked.
“His family has him,” Nathaniel said. “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine.”
But we won’t be. There were too many fiends. They were surrounded. She gazed up at Nathaniel’s gray eyes, wondering if his face was the last thing she would ever see. Rain dripped from his nose and clung to his dark eyelashes. This close, she thought that his eyes did not look as cruel as she had once imagined. She had been so frightened of him before that she hadn’t spared much thought for how handsome he was, which now seemed like a terrible waste.
Nathaniel’s brow furrowed, as though he saw something in Elisabeth’s expression that troubled him. He looked away, squinting against the downpour. “Silas?” he asked.
“Yes, master?” The servant’s voice was little more than a whisper in the storm.
Somehow, Elisabeth had forgotten about Silas. She struggled to keep her eyes open. And there he was—impeccably dressed, balanced effortlessly on the edge of a rooftop high above them. He gazed down at the scene with detached, pitiless interest. The pounding rain left his slender form untouched.
How did he get all the way up there?
Shadows advanced from every side. They loomed at the corners of Elisabeth’s vision, permeating the fog with their carrion stench.
“We could use some help down here,” Nathaniel said, “whenever you’re finished admiring the view.”
Silas smiled. “With pleasure, master.” He removed first his right glove, then his left, and neatly slipped them both into his pocket. Then he stepped from the edge of the rooftop, out over a four-story drop.
Elisabeth couldn’t see him after that. Her eyes sagged shut on the sliver of now-empty sky as all around her there came a chorus of yelps, and crunches, and howls, punctuated every now and again by the sound of something limp and heavy being flung against a wall. All of that came from far away. Her thoughts had stuck on a single image: the sight of Silas’s hands when he’d taken off his gloves.
He didn’t have fingernails. He had claws.
“Elisabeth?” Nathaniel asked, and the sound of her name chased her into the dark.
TEN
ELISABETH WOKE SURROUNDED by sunlight. Though she had no idea where she was, a peaceful sense of well-being enveloped her. Silken sheets whispered against her bare skin as she stirred. When she turned her head, her bright, blurry environment resolved itself into a bedroom. The walls were papered with a pattern of lilacs, and the delicate furniture looked as though it might break if someone accidentally leaned on it too hard, which Elisabeth supposed meant that it was expensive.
She wasn’t alone in the room. Porcelain chimed soothingly nearby. She listened for a moment, then sat up in bed, a down comforter tumbling from her shoulders. Puzzled, she inspected herself. She had on her spare nightgown, and a bandage had been neatly applied to her arm. Not only that—someone had bathed her and brushed her hair.
Her head throbbed. A light touch revealed a knot on her scalp, sore beneath her fingertips. Perhaps that explained why she couldn’t remember a thing. Across the room, Silas stood with his back to her, presently in the act of lifting the lid from a sugar tin. He was dressed, as usual,