“You’re the brute who struck my sister.”
He raised his brows at her accusation. “What? That?” He took Mary’s chin in his hands and turned her face so her bruise faced them. “Yeah, might have done. But it’s only half of what she deserves for leading you lot here. Only I’m going to assume you’ve come to make amends.” Mary kissed the palm of his hand before he let go of her chin. The disturbing exchange made Edwina’s head reel. Something was so very wrong.
Edwina’s cheeks blazed with shame and embarrassment at Mary’s indiscretion. Her sister hadn’t been meeting with George. The man Mary had described was this conceited dandy still too young to grow a full beard. A thief who robbed people in broad daylight. What was she thinking, taking up with this common back-alley rake?
“Amends?” Ian asked. “For what, not letting your gang of reprobates rob us blind?”
“Nah, mate.” Nick took a step closer so the light from the firepit put the heat of recklessness in his eyes. “For not doing the courtesy of dying proper-like when you should have done.” He removed a knife with a staghorn handle from his pocket, the collapsible sort that flicked open with the release of a spring. The same knife that had flashed in the stolen memory Mary had held in her hand.
“That was you on the shore that night.” Ian looked down at Nick’s boots while the young man ran his thumbnail over the blade. Brogues with a stitched toe. “And it was you in the alley. You murdered Jake Donovan.”
“You?” Edwina watched Mary put her arm around Nick’s waist and lean her chin against his shoulder. The sight of them touching so blatantly frosted her blood.
Nick grinned, knowing the tragic conclusion they’d come to. “Ah, now, that right there is why my girl had to pop your brains out and take her trinket,” he said to Ian. “See, me and Mary got a nice thing going. Suits us both.” He looked at Mary and gave her a squeeze. “What’d you call it again?”
“Symbiotic,” she said, pressing her finger against his lower lip before sitting down beside the boy again.
“Isn’t going to work having you lot coming around and mucking it all up for us then, is it?”
“You mean murdering people?” Ian very subtly changed his stance.
“Aye, well, that part’s for her, innit. We used to just crack ’em on the back of the head and clean out their pockets. Done all right for ourselves, too, with only the one bloke what croaked. Ain’t that right, lads?” He snorted when they nodded and banged their clubs against their hands. “Until our Mary showed me a better way. The kind that don’t leave no witnesses to go crying to the coppers.”
“What about all the people who live here?” Edwina asked. “They know what you are. They’re all witnesses now.”
“Them?” He laughed. “None of ’em’s got a word to say against us. There’d be nothing on the table but a stale loaf of bread if it weren’t for us. Feed ’em meat and gin once a week. Ain’t that right?” he yelled to the closed doors.
His fellow residents answered with silence and dark windows that should have long been aglow with a lamp burning bright behind the glass.
“By the way, I know what Mary is,” he said, closing and opening his knife as if he enjoyed the sound of the blade springing to life. “I even know she talks to me dead brother, Ben. Gives him messages for me, she does. And him to me.” The boy nodded in agreement as he listened beside Mary. “And I know what you are too.” Nick’s voice dropped as he pointed the tip of his knife at Edwina and Ian. “The both of you.”
“Mary, I think you should come home. Now.” Edwina lowered her voice to match Nick’s threat and sang, “I know the compulsion you feel, but there are better ways to bring it to heel.”
Mary crossed her legs and leaned back on the bench. “You should gag her now or she’ll sing you all to sleep before you know it.”
The dandy crooked his finger at the thug with the gray eyes. Before Edwina could utter her next word, a filthy rag came over her head, digging into the corners of her mouth as the cretin tied the ends in a knot at the back of her neck. Bony, vile hands gripped her forearms so she couldn’t flee.
Ian, too, had been grabbed from behind. His right arm was bent up at an excruciating angle until his fingertips reached the top of his shoulder. He yelled out in agony as he tried in vain to struggle free.
“Don’t gag him just yet,” Mary said before they could slip the rag over his head. “We still need something from him. And I don’t think his voice is as devious as my sister’s.”