Ring. Sister. Piano (Book 4 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Fourteen: Luminous

"Jack," she said quietly, nodding in greeting. Her voice was quite steady, her face expressionless. It was only if you paid attention to her neck and collar-bones that you could see how much this steadiness was costing her. Was that why she had left her neck and shoulders bare, he wondered? So they could say things that the rest of her couldn't?

Jack had no plan for this meeting. He was torn between gaping and grinding his teeth together. How could she look him in the eye like that, knowing she'd spent the past seven months torturing him? How could he look her in the eye, knowing he'd stabbed her through the chest? 

He tried to yank his voice into some semblance of steadiness. "You let me think you were dead," he said slowly. "For seven months."

Ellini shrugged. "When you stab someone through the chest with the sole intention of giving them a slow and painful death, I don't think you're entitled to be kept informed of their recovery."

Jack bit back the swear-words he was longing to hurl at her. "You didn't have the slightest inkling that I might be upset?"

"You stabbed me through the chest," said Ellini. "I'm sorry to repeat myself, but I really think that explains everything."

He shook his head in disbelief. He couldn't tell her, that was the worst of it. He wanted her to know what she'd done, but he didn't want her to know that he'd been broken, helpless, tearful and suicidal. Well, perhaps suicidal was OK. That at least implied some agency. But the others were qualities he never wanted her to associate with him. 

It was exactly the same reason why he couldn't tell her that he'd been the eight-year-old boy she had saved in the church of St. Michael in Camden Town. He didn't want her to see him as a boy, especially not that boy – the one with the permanent black eye and the clothes that smelled of William's whisky.

"This is bollocks!" he burst out. "You knew exactly what you were doing. You wouldn't have kissed me if you hadn't wanted me to suffer."

"Perhaps I thought it wouldn't make much difference," she said tartly. "You weren't exactly unrecognizable as an amnesiac."

"You don't know what you did."

"You don't know what you did!"

"Of course I do! You keep saying it!"

"And do you think I just walked it off?" she said, taking a step towards him. The floorboard creaked, and for a moment, he had a feeling of panic. He thought about the three floors of splintery wood she would crash through if she lost her footing. But he elbowed this thought out of the way, as being incompatible with his mood. She would be fine. She was the twinkly-toed dancer on rooftops. And besides, she deserved to fall through three floors of splintery wood.

"Do you think it was a couple of hours of excruciating pain and then it was over?" Ellini demanded. "It took months to heal – months of stabbing pains and shortness of breath and seeing people wince and stare whenever they looked at me! The wound reopened and started bleeding whenever I wasn't taking care not to think about it! And then I had to see it – still have to see it – every time I get undressed at night. How easy do you think it is to forget when your own skin reminds you?"

"I'm sure it was all those things, and worse," said Jack, though clenched teeth, "and it was still not as bad as what you did to me."

She punched him.

It was a proper punch, not a slap. He could feel her knuckles against his cheek-bones. He had been hit much harder, of course – twice a day between the ages of five and eight, except for those magical times when William slept off the booze long enough for the pubs to reopen – but it still knocked him backwards. He rocked back on his heels. He turned his head so fast that the tendons in his neck twanged. And when he brought his hand up to his mouth, very slowly, he saw blood on his fingertips.