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I was so light—almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Malcolm could barely remain at the table for the few minutes it took to eat dinner. In fact, he had seemed impatient when, hours after the sun had set, Lucie had pointed out that they needed to eat. She suspected it had been a long time since Malcolm had had a houseguest. And probably, he rarely bothered to sit and eat a full meal at his dining table. Probably he just magicked himself up some food whenever he got hungry, wherever he was.
Though he had grumped about it, he eventually produced plates for them of what he explained was simple but traditional Cornish fishing village fare: pilchards—a sort of tiny fish—grilled over a wood fire; great hunks of bread with a crust you could break teeth on; a creamy round cheese; and a jug of cider. Lucie had torn into the food, feeling as though she hadn’t eaten in days—which, she realized, she hadn’t.
Jesse had eyed the pilchards warily, and the pilchards had glassily eyed him back, but eventually he had made his peace with the situation and eaten a few. Lucie was so caught up in watching Jesse eat that she nearly forgot how hungry she was. Though he must have eaten during the time she’d been sleeping, it was clearly still a revelation to him. With each bite he closed his eyes; he even licked spilled cider from his finger with a look that made Lucie’s insides feel muddled.
Halfway through the meal, it occurred to Lucie to ask Malcolm where exactly he had gotten the food, and she and Jesse exchanged looks of dismay when he admitted he had nicked it from a local family who had been about to sit down to dinner. “They’ll blame the piskies,” he said, which were apparently a type of mischievous local faerie.
After a moment of guilt, Lucie had considered that it wasn’t feasible at this point to return the table scraps, and tried to put it out of her mind.
The moment their plates were empty, Malcolm leaped up and departed again, leaning back into the dining room only to tell them that they should feel free to put the kettle on, if they wished, and then leaving so quickly that the front door rattled on its hinges as he slammed it closed behind him.
“Where does he go, I wonder?” Jesse said. He delicately bit the edge of a treacle tart. “He’s off most of the time, you know. Even while you were unconscious.”
“I don’t know where he goes exactly,” Lucie said. “But I know he’s trying to find out more about what happened to Annabel Blackthorn.”
“Oh, his great lost love?” Jesse said, and when Lucie looked surprised, he smiled. “Malcolm told me a bit. That they loved one another when they were children, and her family disapproved, and he lost her tragically, and now he doesn’t even know where her body is buried.”
Lucie nodded. “He always thought she had become an Iron Sister, but it turned out that never happened. That’s just what her family told him, to stop him looking for her.”
“He didn’t tell me that part. He did tell me that I shouldn’t worry, because the Blackthorns who lied to him were only very distant relations of mine.”
“Oh, dear. What did you say?”
He gave her a wry look. “That if I were to be responsible for the poor behavior of my relatives, I had bigger problems closer to home.”
The reminder of Tatiana made Lucie shiver. Jesse looked immediately concerned. “Shall we go into the drawing room? There’s a fire on.”
This seemed a fine idea to Lucie. She had brought her notebook and pens down from the trunk in her bedroom and had thought she might try to write a bit after dinner.
They went into the room, and Jesse busied himself finding Lucie a shawl to wrap herself in, before going over to the fireplace and kneeling down to prod at the glowing embers with a poker. Lucie, for once feeling no desire to pick up a pen, curled up on the settee and watched him. She wondered if she would ever stop marveling at the realness of this new Jesse. His skin was flushed from the heat of the fire; he had pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, and the muscles in his forearms flexed as he moved.
He rose and turned toward her. Lucie breathed in sharply. His face was beautiful—she had known that, of course she had, it was the same face as always—but before it had been washed out, faded, distant. Now he seemed to glow with a pale fire. There was texture and depth to him that had not been there before, the sense of something real, something that could be touched. There were the faintest of shadows below his eyes, too—had he not been sleeping? Sleeping must be so strange to him; it had been so long since he’d done it.
“Jesse,” she said softly. “Is something wrong?”
The corner of his mouth curled a little. “You know me so well.”
“Not that well,” she said. “I know you seem bothered, but not why.”
He hesitated a moment, then said—in a reckless sort of way, as if he were throwing himself headlong into an unknown darkness, “It’s my Marks.”
“Your—Marks?”
He held out his bared forearms to her. She stood up, throwing off the shawl; she was quite warm enough. She came closer to him; she had not really noted the Marks before, since nearly everyone she knew bore them. On the back of Jesse’s right hand was the old scar of a failed Voyance rune, and inside his left elbow, a rune of Angelic Power. There were four more, she knew: Strength, on his chest; Swiftness and Precision, on his left shoulder; a new Voyance rune, on the back of his left hand.
“These are not mine,” he said, looking at the Voyance and enkeli runes. “They belong to dead people—people Belial murdered, using my hands to do it. I always wanted runes, since I was a child, but now I feel as if I am wearing the marks of their death on my body.”
“Jesse. It’s not your fault. None of it was your fault.” She took his face between her hands, forced him to look directly at her. “Listen to me. I can only imagine how awful it must feel. But you had no control over any of it. And—and when we get back to London, I’m sure the runes can be removed, and you could have new runes put on, ones that would be yours, that you chose.” She tilted her head back. Their faces were inches apart. “I know what it is like, to be gifted by Belial with something you did not ask for, did not want.”
“Lucie—that’s different—”
