The Apothecary's Poison (Glass and Steele #3)(87)

"Put your weapons down!" Mr. Pitt shouted. "Both of you!"

Mr. Baggley set the pistol on the desk to his side and put his hands in the air. He begged me to do the same. "Please, sir, let us go," he said. "Or at least allow the lady to walk free."

Pitt ignored him—or perhaps didn't hear him, such was his focus. He shuffled to the side, keeping us and Matt in his sights. Matt lowered his weapon to the floor without taking his eyes off Pitt. Cold fury banked in their depths and kept his body rigid. He looked ready to spring at the first opportunity.

But Pitt gave him none. "Come with me, Miss Steele," he commanded. "Walk in front of me to the door. Anyone come after us, or try any heroics, I'll shoot her dead. Understand?" He pushed my sore shoulder. Pain from my bruises flared and I hissed air between my teeth.

Matt stepped toward us. "Let her go!"

Pitt pressed the gun to my temple and Matt stilled. His chest heaved with deep breaths and his nostrils flared. But he did not come after us. I stumbled forward, uncertainty gripping me. Was Pitt bluffing? Would he really kill me? Why didn't my watch do something more than merely chime? Perhaps I wasn't holding it right.

And where was Oscar Barratt, the foreman and packer? I didn't dare wonder.

"This is madness." Matt's words could be heard clear across the room. "Let her go!"

"And allow you to catch me? Not a chance, Glass." Pitt urged me forward, through to the front reception room then outside. Our hack driver gasped and gathered up the reins.

"Belgrave Square," Pitt ordered, pushing me into the carriage. "And fast."

Belgrave Square! Did he mean to visit Lord Coyle?

I landed awkwardly across the bench seat, almost letting go of my watch. Pain ratcheted up my side, momentarily distracting me from thoughts of escape. The door slammed shut and the hack sped off. For one brief moment, Pitt lost his balance and fell on the other seat. He sat up quickly, however, and trained the gun on me again.

I glanced behind me through the rear window, just in time to see Baggley, the editor, watching us, looking desperate and in despair. Matt was nowhere to be seen. My stomach rose to my throat, and I choked out a sob.

"He won't risk coming after us." Pitt wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His forehead glistened with sweat. "I'm sorry about this, Miss Steele, but it's necessary. If you hadn't stuck your noses in, none of this would have happened. You should have left well enough alone."

I loosened my grip on my watch and smoothed my thumb over the warm silver instead. It throbbed to my touch, but did not leap out and wrap itself around Mr. Pitt. I silently willed it to choke him. "The police accused Mr. Glass of murdering Dr. Hale," I told him. "We had to intervene or he could have been arrested."

The cabin rocked as we slowed, the traffic ahead thickening. "Blast it," Pitt snarled. He thumped the cabin roof. "Move!"

"What have you done to Mr. Barratt and the other newspaper men?"

"The two workers are simply knocked out and tied up. I had no beef with them. Barratt, however, is a fool. He wanted to interview me today, about Jonathon, for an article that will reveal the existence of magic. Can you believe the stupidity of the man? I was prepared to let him go if he agreed not to write it, but he refused." He shook his head. "He had to be silenced or the whole bloody world will find out, and then where would we be? Chaos, Miss Steele, that's where."

My mouth went dry. "You killed him?"

"I don't even know if I hit him, to be honest. He fell, I know that much. The machines were too loud to hear his reaction. That's why I took him down there. That hellish noise even drowns out gunshots. I would have checked his condition if Glass hadn't surprised me."

I closed my eyes and prayed Mr. Barratt was all right. But he had not followed Matt out of the printing room. Bone-chilling cold crept through me. Mr. Pitt was far more ruthless than we imagined.

"Why did you kill Dr. Hale?" I asked.

He relaxed his grip on the gun a little. Perhaps it was my trembling voice that put him at ease, or the fact that no one followed us and we'd picked up speed again. Belgrave Square couldn't be far away. "He was also a fool. The world is full of them, Miss Steele. We'd known about each other's magic for years, and one day we got to talking about combining our magic into a medicine in the hope that a double dose of spell casting would make it last longer. It did not. Still, the magic lasted a little while in some bottles of Cure-All and we managed to do quite well out of those so that the medicine's reputation quickly spread. I wanted to leave it at that and end our experiment. He did not. He grew greedy, not for the money but the attention. With his name attached to the Cure-All, he became the public's darling. He got the job at the hospital on the back of it, I suspect. And then Barratt came sniffing around." He sneered at the name, as if he could hardly bare to speak it. "He wanted to write about Jonathon. He showered praise upon him, flattering him, and Jonathon lapped up every word. And then, when that patient seemed to come back to life, both Barratt and Jonathon had their angle for the article. It was the opening Barratt needed to get his editor to print it."

"But the article only alluded to magic. Only people who are aware of magic would have read anything into it, not the general public. The article didn't share any secrets. Why did it make you fear exposure?"