“So, they set you to net a werewolf. Because a werewolf cannot get you pregnant.”
“See why I didn’t fight it? One moment, one stupid, stupid choice, with one stupid man, and this becomes my only option.”
“I become your only option.”
She shook her head, desperate for him to understand. “I still wanted something more, something better. Although I know I don’t deserve it.” Faith could feel her voice cracking, breath hitching. I’ll not cry any more this evening. Enough of that.
“Not that I think I’m worth any form of loving. I just didn’t want my existence to end as well, there, like that, with the baby. Do you see?”
“Oh, Lazuli.” He tried to reach for her again. His face was pained and pulled into harsh lines. Ice cracked open under stress.
She held out her hands, palms forward – wait. This was like lancing a boil and she must pour out all her confessions like pus, ruining herself in his eyes forever. I don’t want your pity!
“I wanted you. You know I wanted you. You were not a second choice, or my only option. You’re glorious and perfect, and grumpy, and angry all the time, and secretive with your past. There are horrors there. I know there are. But it’s different for you. It’s different because you’re a man. And you’re immortal. And you have a pack. You still have everything. No matter what happened to you, don’t you see how lucky you are?”
She looked down at her hands, struggling to keep the tears in. “And my baby died, bled out of me and taken away, stealing all my futures alongside. And I wanted you despite that, just a taste of what might have made it all worthwhile, do you see? Because I couldn’t imagine anything after that. I couldn’t imagine anything being good or kind or decent or whole ever again.”
“Lazuli, I am none of those things.”
She was fierce at him all of a sudden. Feeling her grief shift into something much easier to handle – rage, power, defence of that which she found worthy.
“No. You’re not. You’re not good or kind. You aren’t decent or whole – but that’s the point. Don’t you see? I think we could be those things for each other. Us. Together.” Her shoulders sagged. “Although I would understand now if, knowing all this, you don’t want me anymore.”
He snorted. A moment of his old arrogance, the tilting curl of a sneer that had first pulled her towards him.
“Wanting is not the problem, Lazuli.” He cocked his head. “May I touch you now?”
She nodded.
He pulled her close and cradled her against him, and pressed his face hard into her neck, inhaling her scent. He did not kiss her. His hands were chaste even as they rubbed her back.
Faith had never felt such comfort.
STEP NINE
Small Tokens of Your Affection Are Always Welcome
Teddy interrupted them and there could be no more confessions that evening.
Faith and her cousin hailed a public conveyance to get home. Faith spent the drive vibrating with repressed wanting, and shared fears, and nerves too tight. She thought, slightly hysterically, that Channing might pluck out a tune upon her. He could once have been a musician, before he became a werewolf. All those with excess soul had gifts that must be given up with the bite; what had Channing sacrificed? Too much, she suspected.
Faith felt purged and free, empty and weak, and terribly needy. She was so many things all at once, it was a wonder she did not collapse.
Fortunately, Teddy somehow understood. She sat close and clutched one of Faith’s hands in both of hers. Silent for a change. Faith wondered at that; in all their months of intimacy, she had never known Teddy to be silent for more than five minutes together.
At home, Teddy shepherded Faith upstairs and saw her delivered safely into Minnie’s worried care.
“I will explain everything to Mums,” said Teddy, closing the door behind her.
Faith wondered what that meant, exactly, and what form such an explanation might take.
“Oh, miss,” said Minnie, “you look awful.”
Faith gave a dry chuckle.
Minnie also looked somewhat shaken. She moved awkwardly and her cap was pulled full forward over her head, so it shadowed her eyes. Maybe she, too, had been crying, or was exhausted and overworked.
“I’m fine, Minnie dear, a little upset by some things that happened tonight and definitely ready for bed. Are you all right?”
“Yes, miss, just tired.” Minnie began to help her with her dress. Her hands shook a little.
“Minnie, are you sure? You can tell me anything, you know. I won’t judge. And I’ll help you in any way I can.”
“I shouldn’t, miss, not when you’ve had a bad night yourself, but I’m sorry, I have to tell you something.”
Faith suddenly remembered before the gallery, what her mother had said. “I should warn you. Mother is looking for you. She’s annoyed about you working for a seamstress. I don’t know why. She might come to see you tomorrow. Unfortunately.”
“I know, miss. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Never say she tracked you down already? She must have gone straight to yell at you after yelling at me. I’m so sorry.”
“No miss, not her. Your father found me.”
Faith was utterly flummoxed. “Papa? But why? You mean he came to see you, at the modiste? What…”
It made no sense. Papa had never set foot in a modiste’s in his life. He didn’t involve himself in the domestic running of a household. What on earth was he doing, tracking down Faith’s maid in her secondary place of business?
“Please, miss. Just let me speak. If I get it all out now, then maybe I’ll actually say it all. But if you interrupt me…”
Faith nodded, eyes wide, mouth firmly closed. An evening for confessions, I see.
Faith had her nightgown on now and was sitting on the edge of the bed while Minnie paced in front of her in nervous agitation.
“Miss, did you know my father was killed by vampires?”
Faith shook her head.
“During the war. He fought for the Union and didn’t make it back. They found him, drained and punctured. It forced me into service. Before he died, he earned enough for me not to have to work. But after…”
Faith nodded again. Ashamed she had never asked about her maid’s circumstances. She knew some of the generalities but not the particulars.
Minnie took a deep breath and blurted, “Your mother came to me with a task. She gave me something and asked me to deliver it, well, them, to a business associate of your father’s here in London. Anti-vampire, she said.”
Minnie lifted her sewing kit then. Faith knew it well; she herself had given it to Minnie several years earlier. It was one of the hatbox-shaped models, designed for high-end seamstresses. It had special extra-sharp scissors in varying sizes, a fancy iron (one of the self-steaming models), and all the best micro-gadgets to come out of the European domestic service inventors over the past decade. It hadn’t come cheap, but Faith knew how much Minnie loved to sew.
“Your tool kit?”
Minnie nodded and set it on the floor to pop it open, lifting out the accordion shelves. It was constructed like a sewing basket but modified heavily to specific technologies. It had lots of nooks and crannies to stash both gadgets and supplies and was Minnie’s pride and joy. It also had a hidden compartment that only Minnie, Faith, and the original maker knew about.
Minnie popped open this secret drawer and pulled out what looked to be two or three dozen tiny bobbins, each one loosely wound with yarn.
Minnie handed one to Faith to look over.
The yarn was clearly a disguise, because the small bobbin was far too heavy to be a real bobbin, and not shaped at all correctly upon close inspection. Faith pulled off the yarn. Underneath, it looked like an elaborately filigreed version of…
“A bullet?”
Minnie nodded. “Sundowner bullets.”
Faith gasped and dropped the deadly little thing onto the bed. “Oh, Minnie.”
Faith stared down at it, innocently resting on her coverlet, horrified. There before her was the only thing that could reliably kill a vampire or a werewolf. It was the standard brass color of most bullets (not that Faith had a great of familiarity with projectiles), only this one was pretty and jewelry-like – caged, patterned, and cored with threads of grey and shards of blond. Incredibly expensive and complicated to produce, a Sundowner bullet incorporated both silver and rowan wood, yet could be loaded and shot like any other .36 caliber. Sundowner armaments were strictly patented and production was tightly controlled, even more so in England than in the Union. In fact, only a few people in all of Britain were authorized to use them, let alone make them, and most of those were supernaturals themselves.