Soulbound (4 page)

Something flickered in Eliza’s deep, brown eyes. Fear? A realization? He didn’t know. But he drove his point in. “If you have any care for your own skin, do not let Mab know you’ve seen me.”

E
liza had thought that, having lived in Boston, she knew city life. Watching the endless stream of cabs, carts, omnibuses, pedestrians, peddlers, beggars, and urchins from behind the window of Mab’s well-appointed carriage, she realized she knew nothing. This was a true city, with its maze of avenues crisscrossing each other, buildings looming on either side in seemingly limitless supply. Coal soot and smoke had painted the buildings a dark, gloomy grey. That was, the small bits of buildings that weren’t papered in advertisements. London was absolutely covered in billings and posters promising this and that. Only the boys who slapped them up with a quick brush of wet paste did so in a haphazard fashion, covering old adverts with impunity, so that one slogan bled into the other. One might read of “Mr. Solomon’s hair tonic, guaranteed to be” “the finest dinner you shall ever serve your family!” Or of “Olly’s ladies face cream” to promote “quick and lustrous hair growth.”

London was ugly and foul and vibrant and beautiful all at once.

“What has you smiling, child?”

Mab’s curious question had Eliza turning from the window and pushed her thoughts away from bearded ladies. Mab, her aunt and savior, sat opposite her. Mab who tortured men in her basement.

“London, I suppose.” Stiff with doubt, Eliza gestured toward the grimy streets. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.” As if to punctuate that fact, a man in lime green plaid velvet stomped down the street. On stilts.

Mab’s pretty face wrinkled. “It’s horrid. Too congested. One cannot properly breathe in this infernal place.”

“Then why do you remain?” Eliza knew Mab had a home in the countryside. Several homes, apparently.

Her aunt’s gaze slid away. “I’ve business here at the moment.”

Eliza’s fragile hold on levity crumbled. Did Mab mean Adam? Eliza did not want to picture him chained up, his body ravaged, his eyes filled with pain. He was there for a reason. Mab had shone her nothing but kindness, opening up a world of freedom and independence, while Adam had kept her prisoner for months without an ounce of remorse. Yet the itchy, ugly feeling within her remained.

He’d been tortured. Eliza hadn’t the ability to justify that and live with herself. And she found herself studying Mab again. There was a soft, green glow about her that grew brighter when she was content. After Eliza had died, she had begun to see the glow surrounding persons.

“You glow,” she found herself saying.

Mab’s red brows lifted with amusement. “Pardon, dearest?”

Eliza flushed. “I see a greenish glow about you at times.”

Her aunt watched her in silence before answering. “And out there” – she waved a slim hand towards the streets – “do you see anyone else glow?”

“Yes.” Eliza did not need to look. “All the time. Greys, blues, reds, and yellows.” Every color of the rainbow, actually. Everyone she encountered appeared to have a colorful glow about them. The hues changed, though some were similar. And it was enough to give Eliza a headache if she focused too hard on them. She’d learned, by sheer will, to let her gaze go soft or to focus on objects instead. It made it easier to bear.

Mab leaned in, resting her elbow upon her crossed leg. “You are seeing the light of a person’s soul.”

Eliza glanced at the window. Yes, she saw the light of souls. But that wasn’t the only thing she saw. Spirits, wavering misty grey forms drifted here and there, moving through solid objects. Moving through people. Ghosts. She suppressed a shiver and turned back to Mab.

“I see spirits as well.”

It was Mab’s turn to shiver. Her gloved hands clenched. “Do you now?” Mab glanced about as if fearful there was one nearby.

“All the time. All over London.” Truth be told, they were in greater numbers now. And always watching Eliza, as if pleading for her to hear them. Oddly, they did not frighten her. But they filled her with sorrow. Why did they linger when others did not? Where, for example, were the souls of her family? Did she even want to see them? No, she did not. It would be too painful when she could not truly have them in life.

“A word of caution, dear child,” Mab said tightly, her creamy skin pale. “Do not engage the spirits. Fae are not meant to interact with the dead.” Fear crept into Mab’s eyes. All the more shocking because Mab never quailed.

“Do I see these things because I died before?” she asked Mab.

A moue of distaste marred Mab’s cool beauty. “No. It is the demon’s doing.”

Eliza’s shoulders hit the cushioned squabs. “He did this to me?”

“You are essentially GIM without the disgrace of a clockwork heart. No doubt, he thought to do you an honor.” Mab’s eyes darkened in disgust. “Or perhaps he figured that, as you were already chained to his side, he did not need to control you by means of your heart as well.”

Eliza stared blindly down at her lap. Her hands, covered by the finest kidskin gloves money could buy, were clenched into fists. GIM, but not. She wondered if her spirit could leave her body as well, but did not want to try it. Horrible visions of being unable to get back into her flesh made her breath quicken. He’d made her as he was?

“He’s never tried to find me,” Eliza blurted out. Because Mab had been insistent that Adam would try. It was the sole reason Eliza was constantly watched by one of Mab’s servants whenever they went out. Only now Eliza knew that to be a grand lie. How could he come for her when Mab already had him?

Across from her, Mab showed not the slightest hint of discomfort. She merely shrugged. “Demons are mercurial beings, pet. Best not to dwell on it.” She gave Eliza a bright smile as she leaned in and squeezed Eliza’s hands with just a bit too much force. “You have my word that he will never touch you again.”

It was easy to bite her lip and nod, affecting the countenance of a girl much relieved and not a little frightened. Easy, Eliza thought, to lie.

“Come now,” Mab said brightly. “Enough talk of distasteful things. We are here, and we shall have a lovely time at this party, meeting new people and eating sweetmeats, just as you wanted.”

Eliza hadn’t wanted to go to this garden party. All the tittering and social niceties made her head ache. It had been Mab’s suggestion. Hadn’t it? Frowning, she let herself be handed out of the carriage by a liveried footman and took a deep breath of smoky London air. Her bodice squeezed back in protest. Eliza smoothed a hand down her skirts, made of pure white silk foulard. The fabric cost more than most laborers made in a year.

“Eliza, dearest.” Mab gave her a small smile, the gesture managing to look both welcoming and impatient. “Let us join the party.” She turned, without waiting to see if Eliza followed, her grass-green skirts swaying as she made her way up the front stairs of the grand town home.

Follow Eliza did, she had little choice. Endless parties. New gowns. And Eliza falling deeper and deeper into Mab’s debt. Was that what Mab wanted? For Eliza to be beholden to her. Well, she already was, now wasn’t she?

It was difficult to stand idle when everything inside of her screamed to turn and run, to get away from Mab, from London even.

Damn the demon, he had put this suspicion and fear into her. Her agitation did not improve as they made their way through the fine London townhouse and into the garden, a lovely English garden with meticulously trimmed hedges and beds of newly blooming flowers marching in orderly rows.

Around her, women swarmed and converged into little groups to chatter. Mab loved this, the attention, the laughter and adulation. Eliza had long since noticed that Mab seemed to soak these things in as a flower might the sun. Oddly, when it was all done, Mab would return home and indulge in her more private proclivities. It was as if these social outings gave her the energy to fuel her hidden cruelties.

Run away.
That is what Adam had advised. Eliza did not want to believe Adam. Not truly. And yet she felt ashamed. She knew precisely why she stayed with Mab. Until this moment, her entire life had been composed of “have nots,” forced to live on meager sums, clothes that needed constant reworking, winter nights that left her shivering because coal supplies had to last for months, until, finally, she’d been too poor to feed herself and she’d done unforgivable things. Deep inside of Eliza, there was a hateful, shameful lust for luxury.

From an early age, she’d coveted fine things. Sparkling jewels, silky textiles, luscious foods, costly items that she could never hope to possess, all called to her. Mam had called her a magpie. She used the moniker with affection. But Grandda Evernight had always frowned upon her roving eye. Only once had she heard him mutter that Eliza was too much like her grandmother. As she’d never met the woman, Eliza couldn’t feel offended on her behalf, but it stung nevertheless. It made her feel wrong and unsettled.

Was Mab truly her grandmother? And the fae queen to boot? Eliza snorted softly to herself as she walked along the shadowed path, the air fragrant with the scent of loam and sunshine. It all seemed so normal here. When her life had become anything but. Fairies, demons, men who could raise the dead, and men who could turn to shadows. Tales, if told around normal folk, that would have her packed up and sent to Bedlam. And yet she’d seen it all with her own two eyes.

As she drifted past the gentlemen’s beverage table, laden with all the tempting drinks deemed too strong for weak women, Eliza plucked up a glass of champagne and drank it down, letting the cool, tartness of it sooth her parched throat, not caring if anyone saw her do it.

“Swallowing nearly an entire glass of champagne?” said a male voice at her side. “I’m shocked.”

Eliza knew that voice and found herself smiling. St. John Evernight returned it. “And in public, no less.” He glanced around, taking in the crowd, all dressed in their finest as they ate their picnic food off of china plates and used silver to cut their fruit. “What will these crows think?”

“Perhaps they’ll banish me from ever attending another function,” Eliza said hopefully. And then she touched his arm. “It is good to see you again, Sin. It’s been too long.” Months, in fact.

When he’d first introduced himself to her, he’d called himself “Sinjin.” Or that’s what she’d heard him say, yet most of their acquaintances called him Sin. Later he’d explained that the English pronounced the name St. John as Sinjin. Thus, his friends and family called him Sin. An apt nickname, for he was constantly seeking out some form of mischief.

“English society is a bore,” Sin answered now. “If it were up to me, I’d be rid of it completely.”

“I’d hardly call the fast crowd that runs with Mab proper society.” Eliza thought of the disturbing dinner Mab has hosted last night. “In truth, I’m fairly certain you could do anything in her house and she’d not turn a hair.”

At her snide tone, Sin’s green gaze searched her face. “What troubles you, cousin?”

In a distant way, they were cousins, his grandmother being first cousin to her grandfather. Only she’d grown up in Boston, and he in Ireland.

She edged closer, hesitation warring with a need to confide in the only person she trusted. “I saw
him.
”

Sin, along with Will Thorne, had been the one to rescue Eliza from Adam. Instantly Sin’s nostrils flared. “Did he come after you?” He looked around the sunny garden as if expecting Adam to jump from the hedgerow and attack.

“No, nothing like that,” she assured. “He cannot harm me. He’s injured. In fact he’s —”

“Stop,” insisted Sin. “Don’t say another word.” Sin’s skin took on a pasty hue. “Not until I explain one thing.” On unsteady feet, he came closer. “I’m bound, by a vow, to tell Mab if there is a danger of you consorting with Adam.”

“What?” Eliza’s voice rose too high, she knew. A few heads turned, censorious frowns shooting her way. Sin hissed his displeasure, and Eliza struggled to temper her tone. “Why? And what do you mean you ‘vowed’?”

But Sin merely shook his head. “If you do not want her to know, do not tell me.”

Eliza frowned. If she wanted Mab to know she’d found Adam, Eliza would have gone directly to her and asked why he was chained and tortured. But Eliza hadn’t said a word. For the first time, she looked upon Sin anew, taking note of the agonized guilt that shadowed his eyes. Perhaps he’d finally let her see it.

Her insides turned. “Sin,” she said carefully, “ought I have a reason to hide things from Mab?”

He grimaced, a mere twitch of his lips, before pasting a pleasant, carefree expression upon his face. He picked up a glass of champagne and made a show of taking a sip. “At this moment,” he answered as though speaking of the weather, “I’ve no reason to believe Mab would cause you harm.”

That did not mean she wouldn’t, Eliza realized with a racing heart. Inside of her silk gloves, her hands grew cold and damp. The urge to shout and cry nearly bubbled over. “Why,” she managed, “did you not tell me?”

He glanced away, his throat working. “I could not.” His pained expression returned to her. “I have watched over you as best I could.”

The sun came out, a rare occurrence for London, its rays a harsh yellow light, and Eliza blinked away a hazy blur of frustration and hurt. “I’d have preferred the truth.”