They fit perfectly.
Then she reached again for the serrated knife the Ram had left behind, consciously telling her fingers to close around its grip, and stepped to the door, slumping against it with a sigh of relief.
“No,” she told herself. “No time… for rest.”
She pushed herself off the door and saw the pitcher of water the Ram had given her. It was still half-full. Flick dropped to her knees and gulped it down—half of which drenched her shirt because her hands refused to cooperate.
Her gaze cleared a little then. She forced deep breaths through her lungs and tried the knob, but the door was locked from the other side. She couldn’t pick a lock, not with the way her hands shook. No, she would wait, and whoever came through that door would find their reckoning.
What if it’s the Ram?
What did that matter anymore? In these walls, Lady Linden and her daughter didn’t exist, because the Ram wore a mask and her daughter—
Well, Felicity Linden was dead.
27ARTHIE
Arthie snatched the last pair of cuffs as they followed a defeated Shaw down the corridors. Beside her, Matteo and Jin were quiet. For two different reasons, she suspected. Arthie didn’t need to ask to know they were heading to see one of the Siwangs’ sins for themselves.
Her skin still crawled with that unsettling sense that they were being watched. Arthie knew vengeance well—the smell of it, the feel of it. And the eyes that tracked them from some of the cells they passed were exuding it.
“There you are.”
The four of them froze.
“Overseer Bloodworth,” Shaw said.
Arthie snapped the cuffs around her wrists, positioning her fingers in place to undo them and reach for her pistol at the first sign of trouble. The overseer drifted closer, and he looked just as she had suspected: an eerie man, more bones than flesh, his dark eyes gaunt. They looked hungry, and Arthie wasn’t sure it was a hunger that might ever be sated.
“Where are you going?” Bloodworth asked.
“To see you,” Shaw replied. “Horace said you were in the Ripper room and I had no reason to believe otherwise.”
Ripper room. Arthie hadn’t seen a room marked as such in Matteo’s sketches, but she vaguely remembered it being mentioned in the letter they’d found.
Bloodworth hummed, circling around them. Was this what the Siwangs had to deal with for the past decade? He eyed Jin untilArthiefelt the need to squirm.
“Is this not the one you were given for testing?” Bloodworth asked, his gaze missing nothing.
“Have you tried speaking to him directly?” Jin sniped.
Bloodworth leaned toward him. “That would be beneath me.”
Arthie could see every fiber of Jin’s being winding up to ram his head into Bloodworth’s before he rocked back on his heels.
“Shaw?” Bloodworth asked, still staring at Jin. “I want to know why these three are here in our sanatorium, and why this one, in particular, is awake.”
Arthie knew the look on Shaw’s face. She’d seen it before when Jin would occasionally make calculated, spur-of-the-moment decisions he hadn’t previously discussed with her. The percentile in which they succeeded was excruciatingly low.
“His vitals are far higher than the majority of the vampires sent here,” Shaw said. “He’s never been inoculated. Sora and I decided he’s much more suited for Ripper testing.”
He spoke with an alarming level of confidence. It was believable—even to Arthie’s ears. Which made her wonder how much of what he had told them was actually true. But he hadn’t yet outed them to Bloodworth, so Arthie held her tongue—and held her hand back from Calibore.
“Is that so?” Bloodworth asked. He scrutinized Jin more closely, looking between him and Shaw until Arthie feared he recognized the resemblance. How much of the Ram’s schemes was he aware of? Did he know of Jin? “I’ve never seen you work with this new methodology. Locking them in canisters sounds quite like canning the fruits of the season, no? I’d very much enjoy watching.”
Canisters? Shaw paled even more.
“What is he talking about?” Jin asked quietly.
