He was in London.
He was free.
The ghost-hold on his limbs vanished. Sebastian’s breath left him in a rush and he began to tremble. He stared at the painting, his pulse in his throat, and took deep breaths, willing the shaking to pass.
Libre, he reminded himself.Free.
Maybe someday he’d believe it.
Rain was dotting his window, not the pelting of a tropical downpour but a lighter, misty cold rain that came with fog. He concentrated on the soft sound of droplets against glass as he ran a hand over his face, finding his skin clammy and soaked with sweat despite the chill.
He’d been free for four months. He should be over this by now.
But the blood terrors still came, seizing him on random nights with no warning. If anything, they were getting worse as autumn came in, when the stove went out overnight and his drafty room turned cold. The night there’d been frost on his window had been the worst of all.
Rise and shine, de Leon.
The slithering memories coiled around his brain like tentacles from the deep, nowhere he wanted to revisit. Forget going back to sleep anytime soon.
Sebastian relit the stove’s pilot light, and then pulled on a shirt to slip into the hall and fill his kettle from the tap in the bathroom. He boiled the water on his stove to make instant coffee with powdered milk. He overdid the sugar, and the coffee was cloyingly sweet, but it was hot, and it would keep him from drifting back into sleep.
He left the stove on to warm the room and sat back on his bed with his mug, tugging the blanket around his shoulders. He stared at the painting of San Juan and willed the early memories to come. Not the years with Baron Zeppler—definitely not those—and not the war years in Europe, but the childhood before that. Sun on his skin and wind in his hair as he sprinted through ocean waves and sand to launch a kite for his little brother. The soft coos of pigeons, tame enough to hand-feed at the little courtyard park by the beautiful old stone church. The flash of metal in light filtered by palm leaves as his tío let him tinker with the engine of the new Model T.
The hand holding the mug was trembling. Sebastian’s magic literally weakened other magic. Auras too. He could stop almost any other paranormal, could send the nonmagical crashing uselessly to the ground. Before the Puppeteer, there’d been no one he thought he needed to fear.
Now, to be betrayed by his own blood that couldn’t remember it was free—that woke him up in dread and panic, night after night—
I should be over this by now.
But the blood terrors disagreed.
Sebastian let himself stare at the painting only until his mug was empty, then he forced himself to his feet and went to shower and dress. There was a paranormal killer loose, and Zhang and Jade’s friend, Lord Fine, could be in danger. After he got Molly and Isabel to the train, he’d need to find a way to help.
After breakfast and several increasingly tiresome telephone calls, Wesley had Marcus, his driver, bring the car around front to take him to his first appointment. As Wesley strode down the front steps, he glanced each way down the quiet street.
An absolutely foolish moment of weakness, and Wesley ought to know better. But yesterday, he’d been in the backseat of his Bentley, and he’d caught a glimpse of someone walking on the street across from his house. Not one of his neighbors—old-fashioned, upper-class English like himself, top hats and crisp suits paired with walking sticks—but a younger man, his well-tailored clothes stylishly casual in the modern trend, bundled in a coat and scarf despite it only being September.
Wesley hadn’t been able to see most of his face—farsightedness didn’t let him see beneath a flat cap—and he’d blinked and the man had gone. But the fleeting impression ofhandsome manhad stuck in Wesley’s head, the glimpse fusing itself to his memories and refusing to be shaken like one of those American jazz tunes one heard everywhere nowadays.
Granted, Wesley was cursed with remembering thingstoowell; he’d never been able to live in cushiony forgetfulness the way others did. The man probably hadn’t been anything special. More likely, Wesley hadn’t bedded a man in so long that his flytrap mind was cataloging mirages as if they were memories worth keeping.
Ugh, this was exactly why he didn’t like handsome men. Hadn’t he learned anything from the travesty he’d made of things with Arthur? Six months he’d slept with the man and he’d barely known who Arthur really was, because every time they tried to talk they fought like bucks on a proving ground. But Arthur was outrageously beautiful, and Wesley had convinced himself that maybe, with enough time, he could learn to like him, that his own unfeeling heart might have hidden a single soft spot that could belong to another person.
More the fool him, then. It turned out Wesley was just another shallow idiot who thought with his cock. His heart of stone was impregnable, and he’d discovered he was an inattentive and self-absorbed partner, to boot. The handsome mirage had good sense to keep his distance.
The Bentley rolled up to the curb. Wesley kept his eyes resolutely on the car and didn’t indulge in another glance down the street. He was putting the man out of his mind. The world was what it was, as cold and colorless as it seemed; there was no point wishing it was more.
He would focus on the decisions ahead and the charity appointment he had today. Nuns this time, Christ.
After the train ride to Kilburn, Sebastian stopped at an A.B.C. tea shop on the way to Molly’s boarding house. He awkwardly clutched the paper bag in one hand as he started up the fire escape to her window.
The room under Molly’s belonged to a friendly scullery maid who worked for a lord’s household. Sebastian clearly hadn’t been climbing as quietly as he’d hoped, because Olive the maid leaned her head out the open window as he passed.
“No boys, house rules,” she teased.
A house rule apparently made by someone blithely unaware that some girls liked girls, but Sebastian played his cover role. “Our secret?” he said innocently.
Olive grinned. “Only if you find me a man who looks and sounds like you.”
