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Chapter 13
JarvisrodedowntheLondon streets in his carriage a few days after he left the house party. He’d spent time in his favorite fencing club, had coffee in his favorite coffeehouse. However, nothing exciting was happening in the city, especially since most of society was still at the house party, celebrating the Duke of Kensington’s wedding.
Jarvis knew he was being watched. Somebody, or several somebodies, watched his every step. That was why he made every effort to be out in the open. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck in some back alley with people who were pursuing him.
However, he was getting tired of hiding in plain sight. He needed more excitement than coffeehouses and fencing clubs could offer him. So he opened the lid of the seat in front of him and took out the sack he’d stuffed there earlier this evening. He had a flicker of doubt, but he squashed it immediately and directed the driver to take him to the Hades hells.
As the carriage lurched to a halt, Jarvis jumped out of the vehicle and headed toward the entrance. He was let in, and a moment later, stood in front of the private halls.
“What would you like today, sir?” a beautiful, provocatively dressed woman asked, eyeing him from top to bottom in a way that made him uncomfortable in his own skin.
“Observing chambers, please.”
The proprietress of the private chambers smiled slyly and tilted her head. “Follow me, please.”
They walked through the dark corridor, walking past a few doors.
“Is this your first time here?” the woman asked.
“No.”
“Good, then you know that the participants in the rooms you’ll be observing consented to being watched. You can stay there as long as you want, just make sure not to make any noise that could… spoil the mood. After you are done, just slip the key on the door handle and leave the premises via the door down the corridor. It will lead you to one of our secret passages from which you will not be observed leaving.”
“Thank you.”
The proprietress took the ring of keys off the wall, unlocked the door to a hidden chamber, and handed Jarvis the key. “Happy watching.”
She left just as Jarvis entered the room. He looked around and locked the door behind him.
The room was small, just enough to fit in a chair and a small table with a few cloths and a pitcher of water.
There were a few holes in one of the walls from which he could peek into the private chamber. The noises coming through the wall made it obvious that the room was occupied. The rhythmic banging of the bed against the wall made the water vibrate in the pitcher.
Jarvis stood for a moment, his eyes closed, trying to calm his mind. His body was reacting to the suggestive sounds coming from the adjacent room and he couldn’t ignore it.
He took a deep breath and quickly took off his clothing.
He opened the sack he took from under the seat of his carriage, took out the Shadow attire, and donned it.
After he was done, he put his regular day clothing into the sack and placed it under the chair. The sounds in the chamber behind the wall didn’t abate.
Good for them.
Jarvis quietly sneaked out of the room, locked it, tied the key to his baldric, and slunk out of the hidden passage.
This was the only way he knew of to fool the people watching him. They saw him entering the building, but they would never know he’d ever left the Hades hells.
Jarvis grabbed the stone wall of the building and scaled it up to the roof. It was safer traveling that way in his Shadow attire. Less chance of bumping into anyone and a faster means of travel, jumping from roof to roof, rather than skirting the alleyways.
There were other advantages to traveling on tops of the roofs, Jarvis had to admit to himself. For one thing, he could see everything happening down on the ground without anyone spotting him. People very rarely looked up, he observed. For another thing—and that was a very important point—the stink of the city didn’t rise as high, and he could actually breathe easily atop the roofs.
Jarvis wasn’t certain what exactly he was trying to accomplish tonight, aside from antagonizing Erebus more than he already had. He secretly wanted to reach the end of his patience and see what he’d do. During his last attempt to go on a hunt, Jarvis had found out that Shadows were watching him. Which was curious, since he’d never come across other Shadows before. Which meant one thing. There were people who knew Jarvis’s true identity within the Shadows, besides Erebus, while he didn’t know anyone.
The unfairness of it, the vulnerability of trusting a group of people whose identity he didn’t know, while they knew everything about him, didn’t escape Jarvis’s notice. And with bandits knowing his identity too, he was in a bind. He could not trust Shadows nor bandits not to expose him any time they wanted. He needed to act smart if he wanted to get out of this situation unscathed.
Perhaps tomorrow he would. Today, he just needed the thrill of the chase.
Jarvis turned toward the rookeries and jumped from roof to roof. The first thing he needed to do was to check on the Lykai orphan house. He was almost certain that in his absence, Erebus had assigned someone else to watch the place. After all, children’s lives were in danger.
