“What other option do I have to keep you safe? I can endure their taunts, but if they fall upon you again … Please, Jane.”
They ran together.
The kitchen was dark and empty and the shadows of it were unfamiliar, drying herbs hanging from the ceiling reaching for her head. “Chalk and salt,” Augustine muttered. “Chalk and salt.” He let go of her to pull open drawers, searching frantically. Jane retreated farther into the kitchen, then froze.
Sitting on the central table was a black doctor’s bag, cracked from heat.
“Where is the damned salt!” cried Augustine, slamming another drawer. They were running out of time; out in the hall, the lights began to blink out, one by one. Augustine hauled open another drawer, then stopped, going very still.
“Jane,” he whispered, turning to face the door. “Jane, do you hear that?”
Jane heard nothing at all.
“Mr. Renton,” Augustine whispered, taking a step back. “Can’t you hear him? I hear his screams, his begging. Jane. Jane.”
She took hold of Augustine’s hand, pulling him close to her, back toward the center of the room. She heard nothing from the hallway, but she gasped as the first figure appeared, a solid silhouette, an unnatural shape. Its carved crescent head filled the doorway.
Augustine let out a low moan, and though he tried to stand strong in the face of the creature, she could feel him trembling.
Two more figures appeared in the threshold, all inhumanly tall with distorted proportions and malformed heads, featureless faces. They approached no closer, simply watching. Waiting.
“Mr. Renton,” Augustine whispered. “Mr. Renton, and the Maerbeck boy, and Mr. Aethridge. All of them, here. Please, please, I’m so sorry—”
Jane kept hold of his wrist, keeping him upright when he tried to sink to the floor. “No, Augustine,” she whispered. “It isn’t them.”
“Look!”
“Augustine, this is not what you think. Those aren’t your patients. They’re something else, something else entirely.”
He turned to look at her, frantic, and then he froze.
The light in his eyes changed. He swore and took her head in both his hands. She jerked back, but he held fast, peering into her eyes.
“Jane, look at me,” he said.
She strained against his grasp. “One of us needs to keep an eye on them.”
He moved one of his hands to her throat, pressing his thumb against her pulse point and counting, numbers whispering over his lips. She began to feel light-headed from the pressure, and she tried to jerk away. Elodie had held her that way. And then, as suddenly as he had grabbed her, he pulled away. He left her, reaching for the table behind her. She heard the click of something opening.
The medical bag.
She spun around, eyes widening. The burned medical bag that Mrs. Luthbright had surely disposed of. But now, open beneath his hands, the insides gleamed, clean and new and whole. Or was it Vingh’s bag, lost to the house just two days before? Either way, Augustine now wore the look he had when he performed surgeries: focused, cold, analytical. He held a polished lancet in his hand.
“Put that down,” she said, taking a step back and glancing toward the creatures. “Augustine?”
“Why didn’t you tell me? About the headaches? The fatigue and nausea? I know I haven’t given you reason to trust me in most things, but this—you should have told me, Jane.” He had something else in his hands, but in the gloom, she couldn’t make it out. The lancet and the statue-like figures took all of her attention that wasn’t focused on his face.
“Augustine, I am quite well.” She’d had headaches, yes, but they came from stress, not illness. “We don’t have time for this. You must focus!”
“That is how the fever works,” he said. His voice softened, gentled, as if he were speaking to a spooked horse. “You feel as if you are on the mend. You think you will recover entirely. But you don’t.” There his voice cracked. “A few days of seeming relief, and then the end comes on swiftly.”
He was describing the fever that had taken Elodie, and with a sickening lurch she remembered the bite of the scalpel into her fingertip. The cut had healed but was still visible, a faint pink line. Vingh had said the whole bag was fouled. Vingh had said—
“Augustine, I am well,” she said, forcing the wild panic aside, gaze darting between him and the figures. “I will submit to an examination in the morning, but Augustine, the creatures!”