Chapter 13

PADMA

H yde mansion looms dark and dreadful under a shroud of silence so deep it makes my ears ring even before I press the doorbell, shattering the uneasy equilibrium with its shrill scream.

No one answers. I use the knocker, banging urgently in three lots of three, but once again, there’s no answer.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” Edwin says.

“Oh, she’s home, all right. Just avoiding us. She knew I’d find out about her little book coup and come knocking.” I circle the house and find the large earthenware pot parked at the side of it. “Lucky for me, I know where she keeps a spare key.”

Edwin’s boots crunch on the gravel behind me. “She told you?”

“Heck no. I watched her for days before I approached her.” The key is just where I know it should be. We use it to let ourselves into the mansion.

It’s claustrophobically dark in the hallway because all the drapes are closed so no moonlight can get inside. But I’ve been here plenty of times, and mapping spaces is one of the skills we’re taught in the Order. It also happens to be one of my fortes. Edwin falls in behind me as I lead him through the darkness, down a side corridor and a flight of steps to where I know Harriet likes to work and where my many transfusions have taken place.

I call it her dungeon of doom.

She calls it her laboratory.

But it houses two cells, so dungeon seems more apt.

The studded door is closed, but I’m too pissed off to do the polite thing and knock, and considering I’ve already broken into her home, politeness seems redundant.

I shove the door open, calling out her name as I enter her workroom.

She stands by her workbench, lined with glass orbs and tubes, where liquid bubbles and drips to create goodness only knows what. She has her back to us, swirling some purple concoction in a test tube.

“I was wondering how long it would take for you to come knocking,” she says. “Although I would have thought you’d have the courtesy to wait to be let in.” She turns to us, and I take an involuntary step back at the sight of her face, all sharp angles and bone. And her eyes…Yellowing eye whites and slitted pupils.

Edwin draws his blade, falling into a defensive stance, but I hold up my hand to stall him because this woman is responsible for saving my life.

I need her. “What’s wrong with you?”

She makes an awful grating sound, and it takes a beat to recognize it as laughter. “I could ask you the same thing.” She downs the liquid in the tube and doubles over for a moment, coughing violently.

“Padma…?” Edwin inches closer to me, his tone filled with warning, and also a question.

I shake my head slightly, hand moving to the hilt of my blade, then relax as she looks up at us. The awful visage is gone. She’s herself once more.

She smooths back her dark hair, tucking tendrils that have come loose from her bun behind her ears. “I apologize about that. I wasn’t planning on sharing this part of my life with you so soon.” She pulls a pack of smokes from her pocket but doesn’t draw a cigarette. Instead, she places it on the counter, tapping it with her fingernails, and I realize she’s waiting for a reaction.

“What are you?”

“I’m human, like you, but I’m afflicted. Infected. Tainted, whatever you’d like to call it, just like you.”

My pulse leaps. “You survived a mullo attack too?”

“Mullo? Oh goodness, no.” She lets out a breathy laugh which dies quickly. “My sickness is something else. Something…ancient, and I’m afraid there is no cure, only methods of control.”

“That stuff you drank?”

Her smile is wry and jaded. “Yes. Although it has become less effective of late. I’m working on modifying it. Your friend’s donation has helped.”

My friend? Wait… “Orina’s blood?”

She nods. “Potent stuff.”

“What? Why?” Edwin asks. “Orina is human. There’s nothing special about her blood.”

Harriet stares at us for a long beat and then lets out a surprised laugh. “Oh, she’s more than human. But it’s obvious to me now that you don’t know that.”

My scalp prickles. “Why don’t you tell us.”

“There’s not much to tell. Her blood is potent and brimming with latent power waiting to be accessed. I’m not sure how, or what she is, but I’m surprised the Order sent her to this godforsaken place when…” Her mouth makes an ‘o’. “Unless they don’t know what she is either…” She throws back her head and laughs. “Oh my, this is entertaining.”

I’ve had enough of her speculation. “Forget Orina. I want my books back.”

She rolls her eyes. “There is nothing in the books that can help you.” She crosses the room to a shelf and grabs three slender volumes. “I read them through, twice.” She hands them to me. “But please, be my guest.”

“Why did you take them?”

A shadow passes over her eyes. “Honestly, I planned on destroying any evidence that might save you.”

“What?”

“The other in me was strong at the time, but don’t worry, I changed my mind.”

Her tone is light, as if the fact that she planned to fuck me over doesn’t matter, and I’m about to unleash on her when I notice the dead look in her eyes. It’s a flash, barely there really, but it resonates with me because I’ve seen it before. Many times over the past week.

Every time I look in the mirror.

Loneliness.

The kind that comes with the knowledge that there is no one else like you. No one to truly understand or empathize. “You thought you could keep me as your infected buddy, didn’t you?”

She shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know.” Her gaze darts away. “But even after all this time, the desire to cure is strong in me. As much as my alter ego wants to destroy, the core of me, the part that is still Harriet Jacq wishes to preserve and save.”

But there is no cure in these books. No clue. No fucking hints.

My heart sinks. “What now?”

“More transfusions until they become ineffective or…” She looks across at the nearest cell. “We let nature take its course and work with what develops.”

“What about Orina’s blood?” Edwin asks. “Can that help her?”

“No. A transfusion needs to be with compatible blood. Miss Lighthart’s blood would likely kill Padma.”

Silence stretches for long seconds, pregnant with the knowledge that I’m royally fucked. In that moment, all I want more than anything else is to be home with my parents, maybe in the kitchen with Ma as she kneads the dough to make my favorite meat-filled parathas, or playing backgammon with my father by the fire. I miss them with an ache so deep it brings tears to my eyes, but I can never go home. Not now. Not like this.

There’s nothing left to do here. “I’ll be back in a few days for my transfusion.”

“Don’t forget to bring payment,” she calls after me. “Either the usual or a vial of your friend’s blood.”

I head for the door, wanting to be away from her, from this room and the cell that looks like it might be my ultimate fate.

“Do you think Orina knows she’s…different?” Edwin asks as we head out the front door of the mansion.

“I don’t think so.”

“Should we tell her?”

“Undoubtedly.”

It isn’t until we’re back in the carriage on the way to the chapter house that it hits me that Harriet never did tell us what her affliction was.