August blinks at her, eyes round and boyish. “But how—oh. The oath.” His hand makes a concerned gesture toward his own lips, as if he’d like to check the condition of his tongue.
He recovers with visible effort. “Still. I wish I’d been there to protect you.” He looks at her through the pale haze of his lashes, warm and handsome, perhaps a little expectant. She says nothing.
The longer she says nothing the more troubled his look becomes, like an actor whose leading lady is departing from her script, refusing to play her part. Now is the moment she’s supposed to fall weeping into his arms. She’s supposed to be distraught, delicate, undone; he’s supposed to comfort her in her hour of need, and in her gratitude—well, who knows?
Agnes imagines leaning close and sinking her teeth into his lip, biting until the taste of blood overcame the taste of tears on her tongue. She’d been so taken by him, so seduced by the admiration in his eyes. But she should have known no man ever loved a woman’s strength—they only love the place where it runs out. They love a strong will finally broken, a straight spine bent.
August’s hand moves to cover hers on the bed and she pulls away. “I think you should leave.” Her voice is so far past cold it might qualify as glacial.
“What did I—why—” He recoils, his face so baffled and hurt that a familiar fear brews in her belly. Will he leave when she asks, or will he linger, wheedling and wanting?
She wets dry lips and wishes for a pocketful of nettles. “Get out.”
He does, pausing only for a sorry-looking dip of his head. Agnes sighs shaky relief.
She carries her plate back to the table. It’s only as she reaches for the newspaper to wrap the remains of her pies that she sees the face staring up at her from the front page: sharp teeth and wild eyes; a doubled trail of dark ink running from her nose; a stranger’s fist snarled in her hair, baring her throat before the camera like an animal before the knife.
Juniper.
Juniper sleeps. At first her dreams are all witch-tales and towers, but then they’re simply home: the honeysuckle taste of the air and the undersea shadows of the woods in midsummer; the hollow boom of thunder on the far side of the mountain and the clean taste of creek-water on her tongue. She didn’t know cleanness had a taste before she came to New Salem and saw the Thorn sludging past, its waters clotted with gray froth and refuse.
Now that water seeps from the stone walls of her cell and trickles into her dreams. She is standing in Mama Mags’s house, the light prisming through rows of Mason jars, the smell of witching on her tongue. Mags is there, her hair its usual nest of bone-colored bracken, her eyes like river-stones. She’s asking Juniper a question—The locket, girl, where’s my locket?—and then there’s water around Juniper’s ankles, cold and grease-slick, rising fast—
Juniper wakes. For a bleary second she thinks her own dream woke her, or the furtive splishing and rippling from live things in the shadows of the cell, but then she sees the glow: lantern-light, growing brighter. Someone is coming down the steps.
Her heart clangs against her ribs. They can’t be back yet. The hours run strangely in the Deeps, but Juniper can tell by the weight of silence above her that it’s very late, long before dawn. Surely she has more time.
But the light swells like a scream. Someone is coming.
She isn’t ready. The first time, two officers held her arms while a third delivered timid, random blows to her body, seeming half-afraid that she would transform into a serpent or a harpy. They asked her questions—Who were her co-conspirators? Where did they meet? When had she last lain with the Devil?—and seemed spooked by her silence.
The second time, they’d brought a professional with them, an expressionless man in a leather apron who did not seem afraid at all. He placed a finger against the iron collar around her throat and whispered a word. Then he merely waited while the iron grew hotter and hotter, steaming in the damp, drawing red lines of blisters around her neck. He stopped only when she begged.
He left without asking her any questions at all. The cooked-meat smell of her own flesh lingered for a long time after.
The lamp-light rounds the final turn of the stairs. Boots slosh in ankle-deep water. A face moves toward her, glowing pale in the darkness of the Deeps.
Gideon Hill. Alone, except for the dog walking like a collared shadow beside him.
He stops outside her cell, lantern raised in one hand, watery eyes watching her. She looks back at him and slouches purposefully back against the damp stone of the wall, arranging her bad leg across the rusted iron of the bed-frame. “You gave me a scare,” she drawls. “For a second I thought it was somebody important.”
She expects him to snarl or spit or curse her as a sinner; she can’t figure why else a city councilman would be ruining his suit in the fetid dark of the Deeps.
He laughs. It’s a genuine laugh, low and appreciative. It sends a chill prickling down Juniper’s spine, like a warning.
“Excuse my delay. It’s so difficult to make time to visit the condemned, during the middle of a campaign.” His voice is fuller than she remembered it, round and rich. Maybe it’s just the echo of the walls around them.
She crosses her arms behind her head, speaking to the sagging ceiling. “It’s rude to come calling after supper, my daddy taught me.”
“I was concerned the presence of your jailers might inhibit your honesty. I wanted to speak more . . . frankly.”
“Well frankly, Mr. Hill”—Juniper does not look away from the ceiling, does not change her tone in the slightest—“you can go fuck yourself.”
Another low laugh. Then a sibilant mutter too soft to hear, the clink of a tugged leash.
Juniper startles at the sudden sloshing of boots beside her: Gideon Hill and his dog are standing inside her cell. The door remains closed and locked behind them.
Juniper feels the fine hairs of her arms stand on end. All the scathing swagger drains away from her.
He draws so close she can smell the fresh moonlight on his suit and feel the heat of his hound’s breath against her bare skin.
He smiles down at her. It isn’t the craven, cringing smile she remembers from the Women’s Association, or even the hearty, false one that beams from thousands of campaign posters. This smile is all canines and red gums. It seems to be stolen from someone else entirely; Juniper would very much like to know who.
“You girls have done very well.” Juniper wants to write the word girls on a ribbon and strangle him with it. “You chose nice, visible subjects, ideal for stirring up a fuss. It will cost the city a considerable sum to replace the statue of Saint George, by the way.”
Juniper doesn’t think she’s ever cared less about anything. She watches him through narrowed eyes, wary as a cat.
He shrugs at her silence. “I can’t say I’m sorry, honestly. It was always a terrible likeness. But what I want to know is—”
“I’m not telling you a single name. So why don’t you save yourself some time and slither on home.”
Hill flicks a disinterested finger. The gesture has more authority than Juniper thought Hill had in his entire body. “I’m not interested in names. Your friends are far more useful to me playing witch, putting the fear of God in the common folk. If I wanted them locked up with you, they would be.”