Jackaby (Jackaby #1)(34)
Across town, Mr. Henderson—the man who had heard the banshee’s silent scream—spent the evening dying. To be more accurate, he spent a very brief portion of the evening dying, and the rest of it being dead.
Chapter Seventeen
I awoke in the morning to the sound of dishes clattering somewhere below me. For just a moment I was back in my parents’ house, my mother making breakfast in the kitchen. I was safe and everything was normal. The faint smell of something burning brought my eyes open, and my disoriented mind tumbled back into a strange, messy room, thousands of miles from home. For all the work Jenny and I had done, every corner was still cluttered with surplus chairs and old desks, their surfaces busy with ornate candlesticks or wooden masks. We had concentrated on the collection crowding the bed, first—and it had been all I could do not to simply collapse into it once its surface was clear. When I finally did, I had barely touched the soft linens before slumber took me.
I had slept in my underthings again, having laid out the sad, green walking dress to air. With the dawn light peeking in through the curtains, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and reached for it. My dress was gone. My suitcase was still at the foot of my bed, where I had left it. I hefted it onto the mattress and clicked it open with a sigh.
Several underskirts and one very rigid corset later, I stepped out into the hallway in a red evening gown, a gift from my mother for my sixteenth birthday. The bodice was constricting, the buttons were snug, and the neck was high and tight around my throat. The hem swept the floor, and I felt like a porcelain doll with the layers of lace around my collar—not to mention the ridiculous, full sleeves that puffed out so much at the shoulder that they actually restricted my peripheral vision. Even through all the layers, I could feel the oversized bow bobbing up and down on my backside with every step. I considered returning to the room and emerging instead in the filthy work pants—but no, I had spent enough time in those ruddy trousers to know I would be no more comfortable in them.
I navigated the stairwell carefully and found the door to the laboratory ajar. Jackaby was inside, humming tunelessly and shuffling an iron skillet over a small burner. He snatched a pepper mill from amid the jars and bottles around him, and gave it a few twists into the skillet. The counter was littered with eggshells and bits of vegetables, and dusted here and there with powders of various hues. I pressed into the room, and Jackaby turned as the squeaky door announced my entrance.
“Ah, good morning, Miss Rook. Omelet?”
“Er—perhaps in a bit. Thank you, Mr. Jackaby.” I pulled out a chair to sit, awkwardly navigating the inconvenient bustle and bow into the seat, and tucking the skirts beneath me. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my other dress, have you?”
“No, although Jenny mentioned something about laundry this morning. She’s quite good with the wash . . . all the more impressive given that she can only physically interact with relics of her own belonging. I believe she wears an old pair of gloves for the exercise. It would be nice if she would remember her little impairment and wait for assistance when rearranging my things, but she is impossible to reason with. You can have a look out back and see if it isn’t on the line.”
I shuffled to the window and peeked out. My simple dress, indeed, hung on a clothesline outside, along with my stockings and handkerchief. The petticoat looked crisp and white, and the green skirt had lost its cloudy hem of dust along with the dark oval tea stain from last night, but they were still visibly damp, and dripping lightly into the grass. In this cold, I would be lucky if they were dry by sundown.
“Drat,” I said. “That is to say, very kind of her. I should be thankful.” I turned back, and my sweeping hem caught the leg of the mannequin’s base, suddenly spinning the fabric figure toward a rack of glassware beside my employer. I reached to catch it, far too slowly—but Jackaby’s reflexes were fortunately much sharper. He stalled the figure a few inches from the expensive beakers and pipettes with one hand, then righted the mannequin and glanced down at my bulky red gown for the first time.
“What in heaven’s name are you wearing?” he said. “I do hope you do not intend to dress in such a manner while we’re working.”
I swallowed. My cheeks felt hot and the satin collar was growing tighter about my neck. “That’s just it,” I said. “This sort of thing is all I have. Well, and a few boys’ things—some trousers and the like—but I obviously can’t walk around town in those.”
“It seems you can barely manage to walk around in that,” Jackaby said, turning back to his cooking. He picked up two identical red containers and sniffed at each of them. “If you need some ladies’ things to wear, you might ask Douglas to help you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Douglas used to wear ladies’ things?”
“Not that I’m aware of, no—although I would much prefer to see him in a frock than in feathers these days. He keeps a record of my previous cases, including ledgers. I received a chest of clothes some time ago as payment from a client with no money to speak of. They belonged to the fellow’s late wife, I believe, or possibly his mother. Just ask Douglas—I’m sure he’ll remember. Does this smell like paprika or gunpowder to you?” He stuck one of the red containers under my nose, and I sniffed experimentally at the holes in the top.
“Paprika?” I guessed, never having had occasion to handle either.