Page 19 of Hexbound

"Who?" Guthrie's fingers twitched.

And Verity froze. "I-I don't know. Someone put some kind of memory hex on me."

"A compulsion," Bishop added, and all of a sudden every eye in the room was upon him.

"This is Mr. Bishop," she said, mentally cursing him. "We're working together to discover who betrayed us."

"And who the fuck are you?" Guthrie's gaze locked on Bishop.

"A friend of Verity's," Bishop replied calmly, as if the tension in the room hadn't just ratcheted up ten degrees.

"Seems awful convenient, Verity." Guthrie focused those shark's eyes on her. "Murphy cuts you in on a deal that he doesn't mention to any of us, then you go missing and he winds up dead, and all of a sudden you can't remember anything."

"Convenient or not, that's what happened."

"Show us the wound."

She paused. "I can't. Mr. Bishop healed it."

Guthrie sank back in his chair as if her words proved her guilt.

"Merce," she said, drawing her friend's attention. "We need to know what happened to Murphy. Were they men wearing blank masks?"

"Mercy belongs to me now, Ver." Guthrie's hand closed over her friend's fist, and Mercy looked away.

Verity's eyes narrowed, her mind chasing down all of the potential meanings to that and coming across one that chilled her. "What do you mean? I paid her debt. That's what this entire job was about! She's free to come and go as she pleases."

Guthrie arched a brow. "Seems there's been some kind of mistake. I've been through Murphy's ledgers. There's no payment, Verity. Mercy owes a hundred pounds to the Crows."

No! Verity's hands crashed on the desk, and she leaned over it. "That's bullshite and you know it. The debt stood at eighty-eight pounds three weeks ago, and if I did this little job for Murphy then the debt was clear—"

"Interest," Guthrie spat. "Debt's a hundred quid. And it's your word against ours. If Murphy made such a promise, then why is it that none of the others have heard about it? Murphy told Betsy and Conrad everything. He wouldn't keep this a secret."

A secret….The words shifted a memory in her head, of Murphy settling those smoke-stained hands over a letter and toying with the edges of it."Can't nobody know, Verity-lass. This one's top dollar, and dangerous. You're the best and they've asked for the best...."

Verity blinked. That conversation had happened right here in this room, the night before she set out to observe Bishop's house.

She looked around. "He mustn't have written it down in his ledger. Said it was a secret. Top-dollar gig."

Guthrie simply smiled and she wanted to punch him in his smug face. This was wrong. Mercy wouldn't look at her, as if ashamed.

I bloody well told you to stop gaming!

"I've never lied in my life, not to the Crows," she told them all. "All I ever wanted... allweever wanted was to...."To be free. "To pay our debts." She looked desperately at Mercy, knowing that their dream was crashing into dust, right here in this room. Every time they came closer to earning their way free of the Crows, someone hammered another nail into the coffin. There was always something: food, board, a roof over their heads, weapons training.... As if they hadn't been the best things that Colin Murphy had hauled out of that workhouse. "I can pay her debt. Just... I need time." Time to think. Why did Murphy not write it down? He wrote everything down!

"Tick tock," Guthrie said. "Every day earns extra interest."

How the hell was she going to get the money?

"Or..." Guthrie drew the word out. "You could come back and work for me. Do some high-risk jobs, fetch in some coin. Maybe we could offer special terms of interest to see the debt cleared quicker. And yours too, I might add." Guthrie flipped open a ledger. "I believe you're almost within fifty quid of being free."

"You son of a bitch," she whispered, seeing the noose all of a sudden. This was what he wanted. Because Verity's debt was so close to being cleared, so close she could almost smell it, and Guthrie had always wanted to own her. He'd never let her see that debt paid. Not now when he was trying to consolidate his hold over the Crows. "How do we know that you didn't kill Murphy, just so you could fill his shoes? Just so you could trap me like this?"

Guthrie's eyes narrowed.

"Because the air smells like brimstone," Bishop murmured, pressing his fingertips to the ashy smear on the wall and then rubbing the residue between his gloved fingers. "A demon was here, not too long ago."

Everybody looked at him, as if remembering he was in the room.