There was something very wrong.

  Leena watched as the ghosts that surrounded him became frenzied, the decayed tendons of their hands outstretched toward the Black Coat to hurt him, but their touch was like water. Leena feared that they might turn and direct their anger at her—the only one whose body seemed to respond to ghostly attacks—and she hunched lower. Her hand snaked to her pocket to hold her copper coins, feeling only marginally comforted by the metal in her damp palm.

  Mr. St. Silas did not miss her shrinking movement and raised his brows coolly at her. His expression shifted slightly when he realized that she was not deliberately trying to interrupt his session, but rather had reacted involuntarily. His lips curved upward, and she remembered what he’d said once: Everything affects you. Leena detested that her own unchecked response had proved, once again, that his sharp analysis of her was correct.

  Shakily, she wrote the new information of the ghosts’ actions and handed it to Mr. St. Silas, who read it quickly.

  He turned back to the Black Coat, now with a new acidic interest.

  “Indeed?” he asked softly. Leena had seen the way the Saint rooted out liars. His technique was as precise as a surgeon palpating for tender spots, but instead of repairing the weakness, he only pressed more firmly. “Now, did you lead the soldiers to the meeting house yourself when you betrayed your rebel comrades, or did you merely pretend to be asleep somewhere and let the soldiers wander in by themselves?”

  Leena whipped her head round to look at him.

  The ghosts likewise reacted to Mr. St. Silas’s statement, halting their movements as if they had been called. Leena felt the room’s temperature drop a degree, but it went unnoticed by the two men.

  The Black Coat’s eyes widened. Shock had rendered his words nearly unintelligible. “How could…You couldn’t have…but—”

  He rose up suddenly, his face now markedly paler.

  “Sit down,” the Saint ordered idly. “I have not finished.”

  Slowly, the Black Coat sat.

  The ensuing silence now carried its own claws, and Leena saw the way it ripped into the man, leaving him in tatters. He shuddered beneath its battery, slumping with his head in his hands. “The King’s soldiers paid well.”

  Leena’s eyes flickered to the phantoms. By the Saints, they were young. One still carried the gangliness of childhood. She couldn’t look away, staring unblinkingly at those smooth faces that would never fold and wrinkle with age, the tragedy of it all a sudden burden.

  She heard Mr. St. Silas’s fingers tapping loudly on the oak desk, wrenching her out of her near trance.

  Mr. St. Silas looked as if he were about to say something to her, but he refrained at the last second. Instead, he turned to write the Black Coat’s secret in the ledger.

  Instantaneously, the transformation was visible. Leena watched as it drained the Black Coat entirely of his color, his broad face contorting into a pain that was both coarse and devastating. Once more, he looked as if he’d been struck repeatedly, although no one had touched him. As he stumbled forward toward the Saint, taking the payment slip with trembling fingers, he looked as though he had one foot in the grave already.

  Once the door shut behind the Black Coat and his phantoms, Leena turned to Mr. St. Silas, no longer able to contain her searing need to know. “What are you doing to cause such agony to these confessors?”

  Mr. St. Silas barely lifted his head from his accounts. “Nothing they have not agreed to.”

  Leena remembered how desperate she had been when she’d knocked on the Saint’s door, how she would have agreed to nearly anything if it had meant safeguarding her brother’s life. Although Mr. St. Silas had never written her secret in those cursed ledgers, Leena knew she would’ve had no choice but to bear it if he had. Not only was the Saint taking advantage of the most desperate of souls, Leena was now aiding him.

  Sometimes during the few weeks she had been in his employ, to make herself feel better, she had told herself that it was charity—that the Saint was giving money to those who needed it in exchange for a single secret. Except, it wasn’t, not really—not when the price to be paid was the confessor’s humiliation, their total degradation.

  “How do you profit from this?” Leena whispered again, unable to think past all the terror she had witnessed him evoke, over and over. It all felt pointless. All these phantoms, the young and the old, did not gain any justice leaving the confession room. She hated to admit to herself that a small part of her had hoped that she could at least find that for them. “I have never seen even a single coin pass into your hands.”

  Finally, Mr. St. Silas put down his pen and turned toward her with irritation. “I wonder, Miss Al-Sayer, what must I do to gain some silence? Should I, do you think, wear gauze over my mouth?”

  “No, sir.” This time it was Leena who stood first, giving a stiff curtsey, barely restraining the mumbled, “For that would indeed deprive me of your charm.”

  She heard his chair scraping behind her.

  “Prepare yourself; this afternoon we are visiting the boarding school that Lord Avon attended.”

  Leena could not dismiss the perpetual fear that Lord Avon had long since passed on with no way to call him back, thus entrapping her in this contract forever. She shook her head, as if that would be enough to dispel her anxious thoughts. There was still Weavingshaw, she told herself. Surely more visceral clues as to Lord Avon’s whereabouts would make themselves known there.

  Yet, after this, Leena began to have a recurring dream that it was she, and not the Saint of Silence, who had gauze wrapped chokingly over her mouth.

  Leena lay on her bed fully dressed, the visit to Hardwick’s Boarding School yet another useless and tiring endeavor. She’d developed a throbbing headache from how hard she’d squinted at every phantom (and the old school was riddled with them!), and also studying every portrait, every room, every scholarly statue, desperate for any sign of Lord Avon’s ghost.

  When that had proved to be fruitless, Leena had returned to her own chamber and tried to call forth Lord Avon’s phantom the moment she heard the clang of cathedral bells chime midnight. Perhaps within the hours of noon or midnight—bewitching hours, where the cloak between the living and the dead was at its thinnest—Lord Avon might come. She had never tried this before, but perhaps…

  But nothing stirred at Leena’s summons. A disappointing, frustrating nothing.

  Leena tried to cast these feelings aside, as she needed to focus on her next task of this never-ending night—to find a way to see Rami.

  As the clock struck one, Leena stood up, brushing down her maroon skirts. She opened her bedroom door and stood listening for a moment, her heartbeat thumping, before taking her first steps out into the hall once she was sure that it was empty.

  She crept down the stairs slowly, her blood freezing every time a floorboard creaked, the sound echoing tellingly throughout the still house.

  As she descended, she could see light slitting from below the closed door of one of the rooms that usually remained locked during daylight hours. Just before her foot reached the landing, a sudden harsh thump from behind the door sent her jumping. Her new heeled boots lost contact with the step and she fell back with a loud humph.

  The door suddenly opened then closed firmly again, and when Leena dared to look up, Mr. St. Silas was leaning against the frame, silently watching her attempts to scramble up.

  “Miss Al-Sayer.” Mr. St. Silas gave her one of his short, graceful bows. Although his voice held no anger, his sharp eyes bored into her like a hook. “I see that you, too, are in the habit of enjoying midnight…activities.”

  Another shattering crash from behind the door caused Leena to startle again in spite of her best efforts. Worse, the thumping was followed by a choked male scream.

  He noticed her alarmed eyes pivot toward the room, and a slow, caustic smile spread across his face.

  “May I inquire as to what caught your interest at this time of night?” Although his tone remained conversational, there was no mistaking the hint of menace.

  “It is my own time; I am free to come and go as I please,” Leena replied, sounding more steady than she felt—especially as the guttural sounds continued. “Guest of yours?” she asked, trying to match his tone, but the clenched hand on the banister gave her away.

  “A confessor,” he corrected mildly. “A confessor who lied to me.”

  The door swung open again. Leena instinctively took a step back into the safety of the darkness as Mr. St. Silas moved aside to allow whoever was in the room to exit.

  Two men emerged, one battered, gouged, and butchered, with an X slicing his salmon-pink lips and blood dripping from his mangled mouth. The other was dragging the battered man. Leena gasped silently when she saw that the unharmed man wore the uniform of a high-ranking King’s soldier.

  “Aye, these confessors never learn, do they, Mr. St. Silas? Thought he could run,” the soldier said, a chuckle in his voice. “He won’t make the same mistake next time.”

  “My deepest gratitude,” the Saint murmured. “If you can so kindly deposit him away from the shop, I’ll have Arthur bring you a token of my appreciation in the morning.”

  The soldier laughed again over the battered man’s moans. “Always generous, sir.”

  Leena remained still even after the soldier had pulled the man out the front door, leaving blood splatters on the hardwood.

  After they left, a deep silence hovered over them. Leena’s voice finally came thready in the dark. “If you hold power over the men of the law, then—” Her mouth dried.

  Mr. St. Silas’s expression didn’t change. She knew that he had informants within the constabulary, the judges, and even the House of Commons, but the mere fact that some of the most powerful men in Golborne were answering to him in the middle of the night seemed beneath his notice.

  “Where were you going?” His tone remained pleasant.

  Leena descended the last steps slowly. Several scenarios played out in her mind. She could tell him the truth, but she was desperate to try to keep Rami’s name out of her plans as much as she could.

  She decided to tread the line between the truth and a lie. “I won’t be gone long, sir. A mere hour or two, certainly back in time for tomorrow’s appointments.”

  As she’d expected, his brows rose.

  She pretended to look down, lashes covering her eyes in an expression she hoped looked bashful, even if her shaking hands remained tightly folded behind her. The house still swallowed the echoes of the man’s screams, and she was half worried he had died along the way and stood somewhere waiting for her. She longed to reach for the copper coins nestled in her pocket.

  Mr. St. Silas didn’t prompt her, merely waited.

  “There is a…a special friend of mine who lives near this district. I do not often get a chance to see him, although he made an effort to visit when I lived back home. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen each other since my…employment with you began.” She kept her gaze pinned steadily on the banister, her cheeks burning, a trace of defiance in her voice. She knew her eyes would reveal her—and her painful lack of experience in that regard.

  A moment’s stilted pause.

  “Look at me.” The command was a knife’s edge, lingering on the borders of something cutting.

  She didn’t obey.

  She heard his swift step, followed by a firm hand under her chin. He tilted her gaze up. The glint in his eyes was unmistakable, as was the not-smile touching his lips. “If you ever lie to me again, Leena, I will personally see to it that your tongue will remember the value of truth.”

  Her spine stiffened.

  She pushed his hand aside in a hard swipe before she could curtail herself.

  “I did not give you leave to call me by my given name,” she seethed. “And how are you so certain that I am lying, sir?”

  “All right, Miss Al-Sayer.” His tone didn’t change. “It is late for games, but I’ll play. Nothing is more apparent than the fact that you obviously live a hermetic and isolated life. I am left in no doubt that your special friend is none other than your tedious brother. Which is”—he waved a dismissive hand—“quite sad, even for you.”

  He was right.

  Leena’s former school friends were all engaged—most were even now happily married—but her own life had stalled instantaneously when ghosts began to seek her out. For how could she find any romance when women with gouged eyes or men with slit necks trailed her day and night? Once or twice, the neighborhood boys had tried to court her, and it had ended in nothing short of disaster.

  Still, she had never supposed that her lack of any romantic experience was so evident.

  Mr. St. Silas did not give her a moment to regain her bearings before continuing. “You may visit your…er…special friend in a fortnight’s time, in the morning, when there is less chance your throat will be slit a hundred different ways just for venturing out. With Lord Avon yet to be found, I cannot yet risk your inconvenient demise.” The dismissal as he turned to go was accompanied by a prolonged bow, a deliberate play at formality. “I will expect you back by noon on that day. I bid you goodnight, Miss Al-Sayer.”

  Leena did as she was told, taking the steps back into her chamber with growing desperation.

  His permission tasted like ashes in her mouth.

  * * *

  —

  A knock sounded on the door of the confession room.

  It was Arthur, the bruiser who stood over the crowds most mornings. He grinned at Leena, bowing low to her as if she were a lady. “Boss, there’s a man who was asking for you. Says he has a score to settle over something that happened last week with a friend of his.”

  Last week? Leena thought. Was that the man whom Mr. St. Silas had marked with the X past midnight?

  Displeasure curled Mr. St. Silas’s lips. “Then go deal with it.”

  Arthur rolled his shoulders. “I did, boss—too well. He is on the steps of the shop, and it has got some of the ladies agitated and wailing. Don’t know if he’s still breathing.”

  St. Silas stood up, taking his coat and leading the way out of the room, his steps firm on the wooden floor. “This whole situation has become a headache…” She could hear his voice drifting farther and farther away as he barked out instructions.

  Leena dropped her paper, wasting no time in jumping from her chair, knowing that this might be her only chance to discover how St. Silas was eliciting so much pain from his customers. She was certain that it was those black ledgers that caused such dreadful changes in his confessors.

  She had to know why, with certain customers, Mr. St. Silas didn’t document anything at all—like the young mother, a wisp of a girl, barely older than Leena, who’d come in that morning to confess that she could not bond with her baby. Her sobs of shame had broken Leena’s heart. The ledger had stayed closed, and the young mother looked relieved as she left the room, as if this was an act of release rather than reckoning, holding a slip in her hand with the Saint’s compensation. Although Leena had tried to glance at the paper, she did not catch the number he had written.

  Leena reached for the black book.

  The moment her finger grazed the pliant leather, she understood why he guarded it so obsessively.

  It was a shockwave. Worse—it was like the hacking of an ax, cleaving skin from bone. Every bad thought she’d ever had, every shred of shame, every morsel of grief concentrated in her sternum and burned her from the inside out. She reared back, and her breath came out in gasps. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  She stumbled as far into the corner of the room as she could, upturning her chair in the process, sliding onto the floor. She scratched her own skin trying to rip that feeling out of her body. It was a death. And she’d only touched the cover momentarily.

  She couldn’t even bear to open the book.

  Slowly, the feeling dissipated, leaving behind only its essence like a festering rot. Tears continued to stream down her face, and she could not stop them. What was that? Those ledgers were as preternatural as her ghosts. Rapid, paranoid thoughts filtered through her mind, and she wondered if the Saint was cursing his customers.

  What is he gaining from this?

  She looked up suddenly to see Mr. St. Silas standing in the doorway, watching her. Wordlessly, he strolled toward his chair. Ignoring her quivering form, he took off his coat and sat behind his desk once more.

  “I wondered how long it would take until your curiosity got the better of you.” His tone was light, and his gaze fell on the ledger that was now out of place and tilting precariously on the edge of the desk. “Try as you may, these ledgers will never give away their secrets.”

  What Leena had previously eschewed as superstition now seemed very real.

  “These are no ordinary books. Have you cursed them somehow to inflict such evil?” She knew she had severely overstepped her place, but it was too late to go back now. She had to know.

  The look he gave her was chilling. “Needless to say, Miss Al-Sayer, you have failed my test.”

  “Test?”

  He leaned back on his chair, regarding her detachedly. “I wanted to see what you would do if I left you alone with the ledgers after I explicitly forbade you from touching them.”

  Leena reared up; feelings of rage and powerlessness spat and crackled across her skin. At this moment, she hated him more than words could say. “Is it not enough that you have trapped me here? You are compelled to experiment on me as well?”