Wayfarer (Passenger 2)

The Belladonna’s jaw worked back and forth beneath her veil, eyes flashing. “All right, beastie. I suppose it’s time to move this shop again, anyway. But know, my dear child, that you have asked and received far more of me than any man. I will not be pressed further.”

“Understood. The transaction, then,” Nicholas said, trying to clear the dust from his mouth and throat before he swallowed it. “How do we complete it?”

Nicholas had noticed in passing that she wore an abundance of gold and silver rings on each of her fingers. They stacked up past her knuckles, some as thin as veins, some seemingly as thick as the finger itself.

Now the Belladonna drew one off her ring finger and rose on creaking bones, shuffling through the fallen plaster and glass to the other side of the desk, carrying the whole room forward with her. Nicholas took the small gold band from her, surprised to find it so cold after being on her finger.

Under her gaze, he slid it onto the ring finger of his right hand, and waited. Not a permanent mark on his flesh, thank God, for he’d enough scars for a dozen men. But a sign of ownership all the same, however temporary.

Something inside of his heart began to sound in warning, like a ship’s bell at the edge of a storm.

No. I have come this far, and there is still too much ahead to stop now.

“Our agreement is thus: a favor of my choosing for information on the last common year and the Thorns,” the Belladonna said. “‘I swear to abide by our agreement, or my life will be forfeit. That is my vow.’ Repeat it.”

He did, and no sooner did the word vow leave his lips than the ring seemed to flare with heat, tightening around his skin. Nicholas took a generous step back as he pulled away from the woman’s clawlike grip. Not wanting to alarm Sophia, he clasped his hands behind his back and attempted to pull the damned thing off, or at least twist it to relieve the sudden pressure.

It did not move.

Selene retrieved her bone once more, her teeth clacking against its battered form. The Belladonna returned to her seat, sinking slowly into it.

Sophia leaned both hands onto the desk and said, “Let’s have it, then.”

The Belladonna’s veil rustled again. How someone so old could have the laugh of a young girl, he would never know.

Horror was a beast of a thing. It devoured everything it encountered. Hope. Faith. Expectation. Nicholas felt a chill stinging along his spine.

“Ma’am…?” he began, forcing his voice steady.

“Sweet beastie,” she said, “for all of your talk, for all of your thinking you were clever enough to weight this deal in your favor, it never once occurred to you to specify that I needed to provide the information before you completed my favor. ‘The future,’ of course, can mean centuries or seconds, minutes or hours.”

Nicholas gripped the edge of the desk so tightly he heard his own knuckles crack. “That is dishonorable—unconscionable!”

Sophia was more plainspoken. “You deceitful witch!”

The Belladonna’s eyes were so harrowing, they nearly sent Nicholas’s soul retreating from his body. “Such a thing to say.”

“That is outrageous!” Sophia hissed. “They stole it from me! They beat me to take it—they left me with—”

She pressed the heel of her hand against her eye patch and swore again, spinning away, stalking back toward the passage.

“Hardly a tragic tale,” the Belladonna called after her, “when it has created the woman you are now. You’ll be of great help to him in this task. One eye will be enough.”

Sophia stopped just for a moment, her posture rigid. “I don’t need any eyes to tear you to shreds.”

“You made it sound as though you weren’t entirely certain what you would ask of me,” Nicholas managed to get out between gritted teeth. A deal is a deal. He never, not for one solitary moment, would have agreed to this favor had he known it would eat up the one currency he didn’t have: time.

“I’ve only just decided you were right for this particular one. It should not take you long, provided you are as industrious as I’ve heard.”

Another faint stirring at his core. He squared his shoulders, meeting her delighted gaze.

“It’s quite simple, really,” the Belladonna said. “I would like for you to kill Cyrus Ironwood.”

IT OCCURRED TO ETTA THAT perhaps the passage itself wasn’t cold; it was simply breathing out the frosty air of what lay on the other side of it.

She opened one eye slowly, half-amazed by the fact that she was still vertical. The passage had tossed them out at alarming speed after seeming to spin them head over heels, but…she’d landed. Landed solidly, as if she’d taken the jump out of it herself.

“There are you are,” a voice said over the rattling moan of the passage. There was a slight pressure on her wrist, and the shallow daze ripped away, jolting her back into the moment. Etta forced herself to take smaller breaths, sipping at the freezing air, cooling her lungs and pounding temples. At their backs, a wave of pressure burst from the passage, and she didn’t need to turn to know that the last two guards had finally come through it.

Etta swung her gaze around; when she’d traveled with Nicholas, she’d learned quickly enough that survival meant assessing her surroundings, determining the year, and figuring out how best to blend into the scenery. The lance of panic that went through her dissipated as her mind caught up to her instincts.

They had taken a passage on Russian Hill in San Francisco to Russia itself, which struck her as too big of a coincidence to be an actual coincidence. Her mind would never truly accept this, how her heels could be crunching through loose gravel one moment, then sinking into the soft earth of a forest in the next. But trees sheltered them from all sides, their leaves shot through with fiery shades of red and gold, and the silence of this place made it feel more like a memory she rediscovered than a moment.