beer. They were part of a traveling carnival troupe following the winter fair circuit, and were the only patrons sharing the inn with us. A scraggly-haired woman finished telling a ghost story with a loud belch, and the others roared with laughter.
I didn’t realize how tensely I was holding my muscles until Montgomery leaned in. “Ignore them,” he said.
“It’s nonsense,” I muttered. “Telling ghost stories. There’s enough in this world that’s frightening. Only the ignorant would scare themselves on purpose.”
Overhead, a floorboard creaked and I sat straighter, watching the ceiling, wondering how Edward was doing. Days had passed, and yet I hadn’t come to terms with the fact that he’d poisoned himself. He had tried to end his life before—misguided attempts to kill the monster inside him—but the Beast had always been too strong. It hadn’t been until the very end, when Edward and the Beast had nearly melded into one, that he’d been able to force arsenic down his own throat. He’d have been dead in hours if Montgomery hadn’t stolen drugs from a chemist’s shop outside of Liverpool to counterbalance the worst of the poison’s effects. It wasn’t a cure, but it was a chance.
Now, overcome by delirium and fever, he was caught somewhere between life and death, between being Edward and being the Beast. Lucy was up there now, tending to him at his bedside, while Balthazar stood guard outside the door.
The floorboards stopped shifting, and I relaxed. I leaned forward, letting my hair screen my face, and toyed with the ring on my finger.
“Ignorant, are we, lass?”
I tossed back my hair to see the speaker—a thin man with a potbelly gut that stretched his cheap green satin tunic. The leader of the troupe, I assumed. The room had gone silent, save the sounds of the fire popping and the barmaid cleaning glasses. None of his troupe was laughing now.
“It was a private conversation,” I explained. “You shouldn’t have listened in if you didn’t want to hear what we had to say.”
The thin man’s eyebrows shot up in surprise that a young woman would speak to him so boldly. He dragged his wooden stool next to mine, leaning in so close that I could smell the sour beer on his breath. “You’ve a fine accent. City folk, are you? If you’re smart, you’ll turn back.” He dropped his voice to a theatrical hush. “Strange things happen this far north. Flashes of colored light. Pools of black water. They say half the women smell of witchcraft.”
He was trying to frighten me, and it wasn’t working. “It’s probably the smell of soap,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d recognize that particular odor.”
The barmaid snickered.
Montgomery’s hand tightened over mine. “The last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves,” he whispered in my ear.
He was right. I started to turn away, but the thin man grabbed my stool with surprising strength and dragged me over until my face was only inches from his. “If you’ve a better ghost story, then by all means, lass, tell us.”
Montgomery let out a sigh.
I narrowed my eyes. I should go upstairs. I should leave it be. But my nerves were agitated, and my patience was a prickly monster. If this man thought I didn’t have my own horrors to tell, he was wrong.
I started to open my mouth. I could tell him about a madman banished to an island who twisted animals until they spoke and walked on two legs. Or a murderer stalking the streets of London who left behind white flowers tinged with blood. Or I could go upstairs and unlock Edward’s door and let the Beast’s six-inch claws show these carnival performers what real terror was.
“We’ve had a long journey,” Montgomery answered for me. “Our nerves are frayed. We didn’t mean to offend.” His words had a finality to them that sent the man grumbling back to the fireplace, where the old woman let out another belch.
“I could have handled it on my own,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “By dumping your soup in his lap, most likely, and starting a brawl. I told you, we need to remain unnoticed. Now I should check on the horses while there’s still a bit of daylight. Eat that soup before it goes cold. You need it.”
He pulled his oilskin jacket over his shirt and disappeared into the freezing rain. Alone at the table, ignoring the din from the carnival troupe, I watched the steam rise from my soup while I calculated the distance to Ballentyne Manor. We’d been riding for three days, but the rain and snow and a broken strut had slowed us, so it might be another full day before we arrived. Not much time to keep Edward’s fever stabilized until we could find a cure.
Footsteps approached, and a man sank into the seat that Montgomery had vacated. I jerked out of my calculations, frowning. He wore the same gaudy green tunic as the rest of the carnival troupe, but I hadn’t seen him earlier. I certainly would have remembered if I had. His skin and hair were brown, marking him as a foreigner from Africa or the Americas. I narrowed my eyes.
“I already told your leader that you won’t get any stories out of me,” I said.
“It isn’t a story I want.” His voice was deep and raspy, with traces of a faraway accent. “It’s you, pretty girl.”
I raised my eyebrow, ready to fulfill Montgomery’s fears and dump the soup in the man’s lap, but he only set a deck of fortune-telling cards on the table.
“Or rather, it’s your fortune.”
I rolled my eyes. I suppose to him I must look the perfect gullible victim: a young girl dressed in wealthy clothes far from home. “I think you meant it’s my coins you want, but I’m sorry to say I don’t believe in fortune-telling. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” I started to stand.
His mouth quirked in a smile. He flipped over the top card. I tried not to look at the symbol it displayed, but my curiosity won.
The Fool. It depicted a man on a journey, bag slung over one shoulder with a dog following at his heels.
I paused. The dog looked a bit like my little black mutt, Sharkey, and I was on a journey, though logic told me it wouldn’t be difficult to infer that a girl at a travelers’ inn was on a voyage. “Why did you choose that card?”
“I didn’t choose it. It chose you.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Does anyone actually fall for such dramatics? They certainly don’t work on me.” I turned to go. I should check on Edward and relieve Lucy and Balthazar of their watch. It would be a long day of travel tomorrow, and we’d all need our sleep.
“You claim not to believe in fortunes,” the man said, hand hovering over the next card. “Yet you are intrigued, are you not? Come, pretty girl. One more card.” Though I knew it was a trick, my feet didn’t move. I jerked my head toward the deck begrudgingly.
“Go ahead, then. One more.”
He flipped the card. The Emperor, an arrogant-looking man with white hair and a foppish crown. “Your thoughts are consumed with a man,” the fortune-teller said. “A lover? A brother?” He studied me. “No, a father.”
I sank back into the chair, every sense alert. The fire crackled while the carnival folk whispered among themselves. I could feel my own heart beating. I knew it was nonsense, but suddenly I was very curious to know what else the fortune-teller might say.
Amusement flickered over his features. “Ask me the question that is on your mind. Then you can judge for yourself if fortunes are real.”
I swallowed, glancing around the room almost guiltily. I didn’t believe any of it, of course. Science had long ago disproved fortune-telling. And yet I slid a coin across the table, dropped my voice, and tried to pretend I wasn’t desperate to know what he would say. “Yes, it’s about my father. I want to know …”
But I couldn’t continue. Memories of Father were a hand around my throat, silencing me. The fortune-teller’s gold-flecked eyes met mine,