Page 69 of The Business of Blood

“Who is gutted?” Croft demanded.

“They’re at parliament. Didn’t you hear them?” She regarded us as thoughwewere the senseless ones. “So angry. They’re throwing things. They’ll kill each other. You’ll have to wash the organs off the pavestones.”

“Aunt Nola, where did you hear this?” She never left the house, and an active riot wouldn’t have made it into the newspapers just yet. “Did Oscar tell you something?”

She speared me with eyes as sharp as jade daggers. My father’s eyes. My eyes. “You know whois there.”

“Who?” Croft asked.

She regarded him oddly. “Why, Jack, of course.”

Croft pressed the handle of the umbrella into my palm, eyeing both of us as though we were venomous serpents who might strike at any time. “I’d better be off.”

Because of how Nola had just found us, I couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze. Had Inspector Grayson Croft just offered to warm my bed?

We didn’t even like each other. Did we?

“Good day, Inspector.” I dismissed him as I herded Aunt Nola back inside.

“Take care, Miss Mahoney.” His civil words were delivered with the immensity of a threat. “Until Comstock is found. I’m not convinced you’re safe.”

What an absurd thing to say. I watched him from beneath my umbrella until he hailed a hansom at the end of the block.

No one was safe. Not in London. Not anywhere.

15

The devil wrote you a letter.

Aunt Nola’s whisper echoed off the white and silver marble of my entryway and followed me into the dark wood of the more expansive foyer, fracturing into a thousand ephemeral warnings.

I’d barely had time to stow my umbrella in the wrought iron stand before she shoved the little note into my hand.

I stared down at the sealed paper through spectacles spattered with rain, struggling to swallow—to breathe—amidst the strangling pressure in my throat.

Nola paced before me, her feet only ever touching the dark squares on the floor.

Only the dark squares or it would be a dreadful day. “Don’t you think the paper reeks of brimstone? Wouldn’t the devil write in blood?”

“It’s not blood. It’s red ink.” This, I already knew. I tested the weight of the note, no more than a feather. I sensed the immensity of it, as vast as a destiny.

The devil wrote me a letter.

During the Autumn of Terror, there had been many letters. Some sent to the police. Others to the press.Hundreds. Written by those whowould behim. Who admired what he did but never had the nerve, the will, the brutality, the hatred, the… true evil to carry out the deeds of Jack the Ripper.

Only a few letters had been truly notable. One had accompanied part of a human kidney, delivered to George Lusk. Lusk was the chairman of the East End Vigilance Committee, a rather militia-like organization of neighbors formed in Whitechapel after the police had proven their inability to stop the Ripper from killing.

The committee proved as futile as the police in preventing the last two Ripper murders. And, it seemed, the various writers of the Ripper letters enjoyed taunting the Vigilance Committee every bit as much as they did Scotland Yard.

Catherine Eddoweshadbeen missing a kidney, among other organs. But, ultimately, there was no way to tell if the kidney delivered to George Lusk belonged to her. Only that it was human.

It could have come from anybody.

Any. Body.

Then there was what we all called theDear Bossletter, in which Jack the Ripper had titled himself. He’d signed it:

Yours truly, Jack the Ripper