The Heartless City (22 page)

“I’ve never felt fear like that,” she said, her breathing sharp and shallow. “And it’s not only fear, but shame―murderous shame. Like he… loathes himself.”

He nodded again. “I know. And I don’t understand it at all.”

She tilted her head, her lips parting. “That’s why you haven’t told him about your empathy,” she murmured. “You don’t want him to know you know.”

Elliot nodded. “He’d feel betrayed. Not to mention even more ashamed than he already feels.” Guilt swarmed his stomach. “Perhaps he’d be right; I betrayed him just now.”

“No,” she said. “You helped me to understand him, to see his heart. Think about how different the world would be if we could all do that.” Elliot glanced away, and she craned her head to meet his gaze. “Elliot, I’m telling you―it’s a gift, not a curse.”

He let out a breath, suddenly much too tired to argue about it. “I’m just glad for Cam’s sake that the Lord Mayor didn’t catch us.”

Iris sighed as well. “I’m glad for Philomena’s sake, too. She told me that if her mother discovered she’d snuck out of bed again, she’d hire one of the parlor maids to be her personal guard.”

Elliot furrowed his brow. “Her personal guard? What do you mean?”

“Someone to stay in her room with her at night and keep her from leaving.”

A strange and hopeful plan began to take shape in Elliot’s mind. “Come on,” he said. “We need to go and talk to Philomena. If her mother wants someone to guard her, I know exactly who it should be.”

lliot persuaded Philomena to agree, but only after assurances that Jennie wouldn’t really prevent her from going wherever she wanted, only stay in her room at night and pretend to be her guard. He didn’t tell Philomena or Iris why he wanted to make the ruse; when they asked, he simply said he would be grateful for the favor. As he’d expected, Philomena’s mother was overjoyed, and once she’d agreed, he went to find Jennie and tell her the news himself. At first she was stunned, and then she merely curtsied and said, “Yes, sir,” but both her heart and eyes were swimming with gratitude and hope. Elliot knew the arrangement wouldn’t protect her from harm forever, or make any difference to the other female servants, but it made a difference to Jennie, and that would have to be enough.

For the next few days, Elliot’s father suspended his corpse snatching duties, paying a medical student to go out with Milo instead. He wanted him to be present during the study sessions with Iris, which took place in the mornings before the official workday began, down in the secluded privacy of his laboratory. He, Elliot, Cam, Andrew, and―of course―the Lord Mayor, watched her heal from deeper flesh wounds, make her heart rate undetectable, raise and lower her temperature, and even lift sofas and tables off the ground all by herself. As breathtaking as her feats were, and as much as Elliot liked being near her regardless of them, he didn’t really understand why his father wanted him there. But then one morning, after the session was over, he found out.

Everyone else had just left the lab―Iris to rest and the Lord Mayor, Andrew, and Cam to go about their day―but just as Elliot stepped out into the hall, his father called him back.

“Elliot, a moment.”

He turned back around, his heart stilling. Since his affliction, his father hadn’t sought out his company unless he absolutely had to. Even now, as he beckoned him closer, his fear and apprehension were enough to make Elliot shiver.

“I need to know what Iris has been feeling during these sessions.”

Elliot’s lips parted. Now he understood why his father had wanted him around, but he couldn’t imagine why he cared how Iris had been feeling. She was a fascinating subject to him but a subject nonetheless, and during the sessions, all he’d felt toward her was clinical interest.

The answer to the question, however, was equally confusing, and it had been bothering Elliot since the study sessions began. He understood the rage Iris felt toward the Lord Mayor―by now, he felt the same way himself―but he didn’t understand why she felt equal rage for his father. She hid it perfectly, of course, and Elliot had respected her privacy and refrained from asking, but over the last few days, it had begun to weigh on his mind. Still, there was no question as to how he would answer his father.

“She feels a bit nervous sometimes, but mostly she feels honored and eager for answers, like everyone else.”

His father searched his face, and Elliot’s pulse began to race. According to Cam, he held the title of World’s Most Terrible Liar, but he held his father’s gaze and looked as innocent as he could. Eventually, his father gave a satisfied nod and dismissed him, but Elliot felt the uneasiness that lingered in his chest.

At the top of the stairs that led to the lab, Elliot stopped and paused at his mother’s old door like he usually did. With a heavy breath, he reached out and pressed his palm against it, aching with the familiar combination of longing and grief.

“What’s in there?” a voice asked, and he gasped and spun around to see Iris walking toward him. She’d been given a gown that fit by then―a simple day dress of checkered grey―and her hair was smoothed back and gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck.

“I’m sorry,” she said when she saw him jump. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s just―I thought you had gone to your room to rest.”

“I tried, but I couldn’t. I suppose I’m feeling restless.”

She was, as well as curious, and he knew she’d seen the reverent way he’d pressed his palm to the door.

“This was my mother’s room,” he confessed. “The one I told you about, where she painted and kept her supplies.”

“The one you used to sneak inside and paint in. I remember.” She paused and took a step closer. “Are her paintings still inside?”

“Some. At least I think they are. I haven’t been in there in years.”

She looked at him, her interest swelling, and Elliot stared at the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t have to show me. I know it’s painful to―”

“No, it’s all right.” He took a breath and looked back up. For years, he’d been longing to go back inside, but the prospect of the pain had always been too frightening. So far, however, being with Iris made things he’d once considered daunting somehow bearable. If there was ever a time to take the chance, this was it. “Wait right here,” he said. “I’ll go and get the key.”

The first thing that hit him the moment they opened the door to the room was the smell. It was musty, as the place hadn’t been cleaned in a number of years, but the sharp, metallic scent of paint still permeated the air, and it shot through Elliot’s veins and stirred his blood like nothing else, quickening his heart but also setting his teeth on edge. He swallowed and flipped a dusty switch, filling the room with electric light, and Iris sucked in a breath as she slipped through the doorway behind him.

Except for the dust, the room looked as lived-in and cozy as it used to. Blank squares of canvas were stacked in a pile against the wall, and worn, paint-spattered sheets covered the furniture and the floors. An empty easel stood near a table of brushes and tubes of paint, and hanging on the wall beyond them were Elliot’s mother’s paintings. Immediately, Iris walked toward the mounted frames, and Elliot closed the door and followed.

There were only three, though Elliot knew she’d painted more than fifty; he had no idea why these were still here or what happened to the others. The largest one, which hung on the left, had intrigued him most as a child, as it was a sweeping landscape of a dark and stormy bay. In thick swirls of grey and blue, the waves rose and crashed against a row of jagged rocks, their arcs so vivid and full of motion that Elliot used to think he could see them rolling across the canvas.

The painting in the center was a still life: a glass of red wine, a dusty pink rose, a piece of paper, and a quill arranged on a white tablecloth. The objects were typical for a still life, but also slightly off. A bit of the wine had spilled and was trickling down the glass, a few of the rose’s petals were torn off and strewn across the table, the piece of paper was balled up and crumpled in a wad, and the quill was dripping with ink and staining a spot black on the tablecloth. Still lifes were supposed to be clean, symmetrical, and perfect, but Elliot’s mother had called this one “true” and “unflinchingly itself.”

To the right of the other two was the smallest painting of all, a framed canvas about the length and width of the average chest. Iris moved toward it as if drawn by a hidden string, and Elliot followed her gaze and stepped beside her, but then his throat closed. Before them was the portrait of a boy.

A portrait of him.

He remembered the picture vividly, though he didn’t remember his mother painting it, as he’d only been two. Like the still life, it wasn’t exactly a standard child’s portrait. Usually, the child would be posed with an object, like a toy or a book, dressed in their best and sitting up straight as they stared out of the frame. In this one, however, Elliot was crawling beneath the sheets of a bed, peeking his head out from under the fabric and laughing up at the ceiling. His mother had told him that some mornings he would slip out of his nursery and crawl up into his parents’ bed. According to her, those moments were some of the very best of her life.

“Is this you?” Iris murmured, glancing back.

Elliot nodded.

She blinked and turned back to the painting. “It’s brilliant,” she said. “All three of them are. I haven’t really seen a lot of paintings in my life, but these… they make me
feel
when I look at them. You know what I mean?”

Elliot swallowed and glanced at his feet. His mother had always said the same thing―that art was for feeling, for moving hearts, not decorating walls. Maybe that was part of what added to London’s desolation; without art, its people were stifled, their hearts closed off and tucked away like the room he was standing in.

“Are any of yours still here?” she asked, turning to face him again.

“No. I threw them out years ago. Once I realized how much it hurt to paint, I wanted them gone.” Pity flooded her chest, and he cleared his throat and went on. “The morning after I met you, however, I passed this room and thought of painting again for the first time in years.”