He should’ve healed by now.
He’d been back several days, but he still wasn’t right. He’d started to tremble the moment Mr. Coulton brought him into 23 Nickel Street West, and Mrs. Harrogate, observing it, had put him to bed at once. That first night, she’d sat up with him, and he’d told her everything, surprised at her gentleness. No part of him wanted to trust anyone but it was hard, very hard, after the strangeness of all he’d seen, to go on not needing anyone. But after that night, he’d not spoken of the litch again.
It helped that he’d seen no sign of it since. Not in the house, not in the way Mrs. Harrogate talked. But Coulton had gone back out almost at once, his chesterfield buttoned fast against the fog, his gun in his pocket, and was hardly ever around, even after that other one—the woman, Miss Alice—had arrived, so that Charlie knew the man was out hunting for the litch in those terrible dripping alleys.
Where he lay now, in the bedclothes, he could feel the new boy breathing beside him. Marlowe, he was called. He hardly spoke when the adults were nearby but when they were alone he would talk about his life in the circus, his huge tattooed guardian, and he even spoke a little about something that had happened in a rooming house in New York, an attack. He talked about how alone he felt and how afraid he was of the city and on their third night he told Charlie about his adopted father, who was at Cairndale, and waiting to meet him. All this Charlie listened to with his eyes hooded and he said nothing about his own experiences, his mother, his father whom he’d never known and never would. And the kid watched Charlie closely, as if he had any kind of answer, as if he knew something about the world they were stumbling into, as if Charlie could keep him safe. He was still little, that kid, though he acted like he didn’t know it. He wore his shoes on the wrong feet sometimes. One morning he forgot to button his fly.
Maybe it was the horror of what he’d suffered, the litch, its claws in the rain, maybe it was the feeling of being lost in a city as vast as a world. Whatever it was, when Charlie was brought back and was alone, he did something he didn’t ever do. He took a letter opener from Mrs. Harrogate’s desk and cut into his leg, ignoring the pain, and rooted around in the meat of his thigh until he found the silver wedding ring that had belonged to his mother. It was neither delicate nor effeminate, and he thought, now, it was maybe a strange ring for a bride. And while his wound closed over, he rubbed the ring clean and ran his fingertips over the markings and slid it onto his finger. It was tight, almost too small except for his second finger, and he’d taken it off again and looked at the strange crest, the twin crossed hammers and the fiery sun, thinking about his mother and the monster that had attacked him, and trying to imagine the cold fortress of Cairndale in the north, where he was bound. He knew his father’d had something to do with it, this ring was the proof. There was a truth buried there about who he’d been, what had happened to him. And Charlie swore to himself he’d find it out.
Since that night, he would lie awake, the ring turned inward on his finger and cutting into his palm like a talisman. It was on such a night that the new boy, Marlowe, whispered at him in the darkness, interrupting his thoughts.
“Charlie?” he whispered.
Charlie lay very still.
Marlowe wasn’t fooled. “Charlie, I know you’re awake.”
“I’m not awake,” he whispered. “Go to sleep.”
“I can see you blinking.”
Charlie shifted and turned his face. Marlowe was staring at him.
“I’m not awake,” he muttered.
“Then how come you’re talking right now?”
“I do that,” he said, “when I’m sleeping.”
“You’re awake,” said the boy.
Charlie sighed, closed his eyes. He could hear Miss Alice out on the landing, talking to Mrs. Harrogate in hushed tones. He knew she had started sitting up in the night, watching them. He was grateful for the sound of her presence, and hated it, both. But he didn’t sleep when she wasn’t there.
The boy made a small noise in his throat. “Charlie?” he whispered.
He opened his eyes again. “What.”
“Are you going to Scotland too? Are you going to the institute?”
“You know I am.”
“Mrs. Harrogate says my father’s there. I’m going to meet him. Maybe yours is there too.”
“My father’s dead. I told you that already.” Charlie grimaced, rolled up onto one elbow, holding his mother’s ring tightly. “You never met your father before?”