A Thousand and One English Nights (Book Three of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Twenty Eight: Now Entering Hell on Earth

Edinburgh, 1870: 

Edinburgh was a city wedded to the darkness, in more ways than one. It wasn't just the labyrinth of grey-stone streets and passageways, full of dark corners you could duck into if you didn't want to be seen. It was the line of black railings dividing the everyday Edinburgh from its twin, the Demon Republic, and all the tantalizing possibilities that place held.

True, you didn't see much of the new-breeds on the other side. Occasionally, an elegant lady or a man in a top hat would stalk across the cobbles, but Jack had never seen them breathe fire, or sprout wings, or pick a fight with one of the hapless humans on the other side of the rails.

Still, there was something. The entire city was on edge. A tang of gunpowder lay over the salt smell of the harbour. 

He felt as though he'd come to a city on the precipice of civilization – which, for Jack, was like being on the precipice of a fantasy. The idea that people might stop being polite and civilized at any moment. New-breeds – his own people – just on the other side of those rails. And, for the first time ever, Baby Jane wasn't dogging his heels, pouting and wheedling and caressing, dissolving his soul one inch at a time.

It was too good to be true. Surely that bright, civilized world was just behind him, waiting to swoop down and tie his arms behind his back.

He knew Baby Jane wouldn't take the insults he'd offered her lying down. Surely she'd be after him any day now, dragging Henry and perhaps a couple of policemen in tow? Could she force him to marry her? Was that legal? Decency laws were always biased in favour of the man, but money and influence would have to count for something. Baby Jane had both of those in spades – in wheelbarrows, even. And every penny Jack earned belonged to the Tilneys, because they had paid for his education. He was nothing on his own.

So he played his concerts as if he only had a few days left to live. He poured in all the nervous energy engendered in him by Edinburgh's dark streets. He powered through the sheet music and then kicked away his stool, bowing before the last bars had died away – before the stunned audience could even work out it was over. 

Then the applause would wash over him, and he'd straighten up, still panting, and glower at them – at the city that was so beautiful it was going to be the last beauty he'd ever see.

For some reason, this made them clap even harder.

And then he would give himself over to the adoring crowds – let them shower him with gifts and kisses, drag him to bars and opium-dens. He attacked it all with the same angry enthusiasm with which he attacked his piano, drinking his new friends under the table, suggesting a different bar, or a champagne breakfast at six o'clock in the morning.

He had been playing and drinking as if his life depended on it for three nights when suddenly everything changed.

It was after midnight. He was half-walking and half-staggering down Princes Street, trying to make his way back to his hotel, when he passed the face that had filled his nightmares for the last ten years.

Jack sobered up instantly. He stopped dead on the pavement, his back ramrod straight. He couldn't believe it. It had been ten years, and yet the cat-faced man looked exactly the same – just as handsome, symmetrical, pearlescently pretty. It was as though he'd just stepped out of that night in Camden, the fogs of London still clinging to his back.

Jack swivelled on his heel and searched for the man over the heads of the crowd. Part of him wanted to run, but the other parts were screaming at him not to waste this chance. This was his only lead in ten years – his only hint of the dark-haired girl from St. Michael's. Would she still be with him? Would she even be alive?