Page 104 of The Business of Blood

I ached everywhere. My bones, my guts, my head.

My heart.

Nights were a paradoxically welcome nemesis. Too dark to reveal how pale and gaunt I’d become, but also a lonely void in which I had to keep company with my worst enemy.

Myself.

I’d haunt my own hallways like a ghost. A shade of grief and regret. My entire world, this grand, endless city, had been pared down to my narrow walls.

Autumn slipped into winter. Somehow, I failed to notice. I was already so cold. Most days, my fingers hurt to bend. My skin hurt to touch, often riddled with waves of prickly goose pimples.

Every moment felt as though a demon danced on my grave.

Nola stood vigil over me as best she could. She consulted every spirit within her domain. She read cards and plied me with broth. After a while, she wrung her hands and asked when I was going to get up.IfI was going to get up.

“You can’t be a spirit yet, Fiona,” she reproached as she cleared away yet another untouched breakfast. “They say you’ve work to do. You’ve secrets to uncover. You can’t lose your wits, orhewill win.”

He? Jack?

What did it say about me that a confirmed lunatic worried after my sanity? How could I tell her that I’d uncovered enough secrets to last a lifetime?

“You were right,” I told her with no inflection, then held up my hand before she corrected me. “Theywere right about the Hanged Man.”

Her soft eyes welled with tears. “I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t see her again for a while. Polly brought me my toast the next morning.

Several days after Aidan’s death—I couldn’t tell you how many—a note arrived scrawled in rather rudimentary script, accompanied by an article neatly cut from a paper.

St. Michael’s Cathedral had burned in a mysterious fire.

I’d stared at the photograph. A greyscale skeleton of ancient stone. The beloved priest and local philanthropist, Father Aidan Brendan Connor Fitzpatrick likely perished in the blaze, though no remains had been uncovered.

So, that’s how they’d done it.

An efficient disaster, was fire. It saved nothing but cleansed everything.

The note had simply read:

I have his ashes if you want them.

~Aramis

I heard nothing from Jorah.

I imagined his wounds healed faster than mine. But not his pride. He was likely once again the Hammer, at least to me.

Condolences came to me in the form of other notes, some accompanied by flowers. Dr. Phillips’ arrived first. Then Aberline, Oscar, Hao Long, others I’d employed, and a few people who remembered me from home.

Aidan’s mother wrote to me.

I was certain her heartfelt letter full of pride and regret would have left me in a soggy, sobbing heap on the floor. But I discarded it on the growing pile with similar apathy. She’d expressed her secret wish that he’d married me instead of joining the clergy. She wished she had a grandchild to remember him by. But he was never the same after he returned from the war. He’d needed the love of Christ more than the love of a woman.

I wasn’t convinced. I didn’t think a woman would have told him to torture anyone to death.

Depended on the woman, I supposed. There were the Katherine Riley’s of the world…

I’d read the concise script on Dr. Phillips’ perfunctory note and thought about the livers I’d promised him. The lecture would have been over by now. I’d completely forgotten. And, even if I’d been capable of working, I couldn’t have faced the Hammer or the Blade just yet.