Page 19 of If Looks Could Kill

And then one night, back in town, he knows. The time is now. The weather works. The harvest is this night. After midnight, when the city holds its breath.

The young woman. He knows where she is. He knows where she will be. He located her easily in his slum-roving. A sixth sense tells him she won’t be far from home tonight.

He dresses differently. This time he must play a role. The role of a would-be client. He dons a coat he picked up at a used clothing stall and a dark hat worn low over his eyes.

There she is, on Commercial Street. He knows her shape and her red-gold hair.

He approaches. “Evening.”

“All right,” she says cheerfully, turning around. More seductively, she purrs, “What have we here?”

It’s her.

“How much?” he asks.

She glances around him at something in the distance.

“What are you looking at?”

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “Fellow there makes me nervy, is all. Won’t leave me alone.”

He mustn’t smile. No one should make her more nervous than he. His disguise seems to be working. She doesn’t recognize him.

“How much?” he repeats.

“A shilling. Got my own room, you know.”

Yes, he knows. It’s part of why she’s perfect. But he must remember his role. “A shilling? Never mind.”

Her eyes flash with anger. “If you want cheap, you can find it anywhere you look.”

He swallows. “But they ain’t as pretty as you. Will you take eightpence?” He waits, but she says nothing. He adds, “You will be all right for what I have told you.”

She rubs her arms against the cold and peers around his elbow once more. Whatever or whomever she sees seems to make up her mind.

“All right, my dear,” she says more audibly. “Come along. You will be comfortable.” As if he’s not really the one she hopes will hear.

She steers him toward Dorset Street, turns, and makes for the entry to Miller’s Court. She glances over her shoulder more than once.

“Who is he?” he asks her.

She shrugs, feigning indifference. “Old gentleman friend of mine.” She reaches into her coat pocket, looking for something, then stops. “I’ve lost my handkerchief.”

Every delay is a torture to him. He pulls his own handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to her. Red silk may give his ruse away, that he’s no mere working man looking for a tumble after a night at the pub. It doesn’t matter. They’re nearly there.

She opens the door to her room. Ground-level, two windows overlooking the paved court.

She sings softly to herself. “Sweet violets, sweeter than all roses.” She lights a candle, then shuts the door behind them and removes her hat. “You’ve had a busy autumn,” she says conversationally. “Quite the celebrity, you are. Did you miss me?”

He blinks. He hasn’t been the only one playing a role.

She fixes him with her gaze. His hands reach for his knives, but it’s too late. Her wet eyes burn. Her hair slithers about. And still, carelessly, she sings.

“ Laden with fragrance, sparkling with dew. Did you think I would forget you?”

Her voice is different. Sibilant. A “th” sound sliding off her protruding tongue.

Forked and long and fluttering. Tasting his face.

Sending pinpricks of fire skittering across his skin.

More and more as her hair enfolds his head, the strands so close, and his head so frozen, and his vision so rapidly dwindling to a narrow point that he cannot see what they are. And yet he knows.

He knows.

Her lilting voice sings through his darkness: “I plucked them, my darling, for you.”