“It would have been an unsuccessful experiment, madam, if you hadn’t participated so readily,” he pointed out mildly. “Do not deny you have spent weeks watching me in the hopes you will find some sort of weakness that you can exploit.”

  Leena’s cheeks flushed, but she met his eyes steadily. “I do not deny it.”

  Her honesty seemed to catch his attention. He leaned forward on the chair. “And what have you learned?”

  Nothing.

  Nothing of use. She’d learned he somehow cursed his customers, but she knew that even this knowledge would not sway his confessors. People would still line up to reveal their secrets for the promise of coin—and he did pay well.

  Leena still had not found any explanation for why he extracted the most hideous of emotions, or what he gained from it. Every new tidbit of knowledge she gained about the Saint of Silence only served to reveal the magnitude of his power—and her ignorance.

  He read the expression on her face. “Disappointing,” he said, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Shall I tell you what I’ve learned about you?”

  “I do not care to know.”

  He continued despite her objection. “Think of it as an employment review.” This was one of the few times she’d seen Mr. St. Silas reveal more than he intended. “You have been a great disappointment.” His eyes were heavy-lidded with displeasure, and his fingers continued to tap with obvious impatience. “Within this period I’ve spent with you, you have proven yourself to be insubordinate, without discipline, obstinate, an immeasurable nuisance—”

  Leena’s teeth gritted.

  “—and full of temper.” Without waiting for a response, he continued, “I have given you multiple chances, Miss Al-Sayer—more than I have given anyone else in recent memory. My patience wears exceedingly thin.”

  “Your patience wears thin?” she cried incredulously. Every day, Leena battled feelings of panic and dread while sitting in those consultations, while searching for Lord Avon, while returning to her chamber alone and more desperate to free herself by the minute. All these emotions rose to the surface now, and she could not stop the words tearing from her tongue. “Oh, how I loathe you.”

  There was a moment of loaded silence, his eyes glacial as they bored into her, before he continued silkily, “How unoriginal, Miss Al-Sayer, even coming from your pretty mouth. If you insist on remaining useless, at the very least be more interesting.”

  The door slammed open just as Leena was about to reply.

  A man entered.

  In her fury, it took her a moment to recognize him as the same Black Coat who had confessed to betraying the rebels. He had changed drastically within the fortnight since she’d seen him last, his cheeks scratched raw by his own nails, eyes hollowed, mouth flaky and jagged like a scar. He did not sit in the wooden chair again. The same ghosts followed him—a silent death march.

  She instinctively crouched lower upon seeing him again.

  Mr. St. Silas, his attention drawn away from her, rose slowly to a standing position.

  The man swallowed. “I-I keep seeing things after my confession—”

  “I warned you, did I not?” Mr. St. Silas interrupted cuttingly. “Must I be blamed for your decision to seek me?”

  The man trembled, his movements jerky and untethered, as he pointed a pistol at the Saint.

  Leena’s heart slammed against her rib cage.

  “Demons visit me in my mind. You’ve cursed me.” He held a necklace depicting the Saint of Healing—the idol of a woman holding a heart—in a fierce grip, while his other hand jabbed the pistol right at Mr. St. Silas’s own chest. “You’re the demon, Saint. You lure us in, you feed on us.” Then, as if he noticed Leena’s presence for the first time, he swerved the gun to point at her, his eyes wide. “Don’t look at me!”

  Leena was suspended, unable to move or drop her gaze. The barrel of the pistol seemed to be pinning her in place as the man took a step toward her. She was so focused on the weapon that she did not notice Mr. St. Silas’s quick, lethal movements as he reached the man in a single step. The knife in his hands was a flash as it angled toward the Black Coat’s neck, slitting his throat without a moment’s hesitation.

  Leena was still staring at the pistol as hot liquid from the man’s severed artery splashed across the room, a few droplets hitting her cheek.

  It all happened within seconds.

  St. Silas allowed the man’s body to crumple. The glittering red knife was still between his fingers. The blade had also caught the Saint of Healing necklace, and it swung back and forth on its string. She wondered if that was the same knife St. Silas used to slice the mouths of confessors who lied to him.

  “Unfortunate business,” St. Silas said evenly, eyes flickering toward his coat which was left hanging on the arm of his chair. Distantly, she could see the gleam of a pistol poking out of the pocket.

  Standing there, a dead man by his bloodied boots, the ruined icon necklace hanging from the tip of his weapon, a cursed ledger lying on the desk, St. Silas looked every inch the demon he’d been accused of being. Leena could not avert her gaze, her breath coming hard and uneven.

  He caught her stare and lowered the knife by inches. “What is that expression in your eyes?”

  It was the shock that loosened her tongue. “For a moment, you looked like one of those demons depicted on the stained-glass windows of old cathedrals.”

  Leena had seen them in the churches, too. The Morish demons did not look like the monsters or jinns depicted in Algaraan tales, with powerful arms and unblinking eyes. Rather, they looked human—or a form of human, allowing them to walk the earth undetected, leaving behind minds putrefied with nightmares. She knew why the Black Coat had carried the idol of the Saint meant to ward away these unholy beings.

  Why St. Silas should find that amusing, she did not know. “Can you stand on your own?”

  Leena didn’t hear his question. Her shaking fingers touched her own cheeks, pulling back to see the man’s blood on her fingertips. “Is he…Is he dead?”

  It was an utterly foolish question, and she knew it.

  The man did not stir. His corpse was being drained of blood even as they spoke, the acrid smell pooling in the room and overpowering the lavender she’d put into her hair that morning.

  St. Silas did not bother answering. He strode toward her, holding out his hand.

  Leena did not take it.

  The cooling, longer nights and the subtle hint of frost in the air always welcomed the Festival of Demons.

  On the proceeding days, Leena watched as lights lit up the winding streets, stretching from here to New Algaraa District, then all the way to the bricked factories in Ridgeways. She could smell the hints of kerosene mixed with the oils from frying food that permeated the streets, and the resulting smoke caused a thin mist to weave between the roads. Every block would already be teeming with caravans selling services and wares: doughnuts fried to golden perfection, fortune-tellers decked in scarves, palm-readers, fire-eaters and jugglers, perfumers who swore to be able to bottle desire.

  Night had not yet fallen, but she could see the revelers making their way down to the festival through her bedroom window. They dressed in masks to hide their identities, ranging from grotesque depictions of demons with snarling faces to coquettish ones with exaggerated red lips and crimson cheeks. She saw a man wearing the long flowing garb of the Saints as he tried to hail a hackney, an idol swinging from a chain on his chest, reminding her with a shudder of the Black Coat whose throat had been slit by St. Silas. She knew that this man, unlike the rest of the revelers, would not join the festivities, instead spending the night in prayer in one of the cathedrals.

  Every year Leena wondered how this once-holy festival—a way for the Mors to celebrate the Saints’ triumphant massacre of the demons—had turned into an excuse to get roaring drunk and pursue every form of debauchery known to man. She knew the history—back when Golborne was a tiny settlement that herded sheep, any misfortune that had befallen it was blamed on the demons. A child dying young from pox? A mind turned with madness? Lustful thoughts? All demon-cursed.

  Then the Saints cropped up, offering blessings, curing the ill, and—most important—banishing the demons. Nowadays, Leena thought wryly, instead of blaming demons for their misfortunes, people often looked toward the aristos.

  A note delivered by Mrs. Van told Leena that the Saint required her presence for the festivities. It had been a week since the Black Coat’s death, and Leena would be seeing Rami tomorrow. She could bear a night with the Saint for that.

  The housekeeper had laid out her garments—a stiff high-collared dress in a shade of emerald green with a simple half mask, in the form of a skull, that revealed her mouth.

  One of Leena’s earliest childhood memories was attending the festival with Baba and Rami. Algaraans often wore their traditional dress—the only time it was not frowned upon by Morish society—and Leena usually wore a long, loose kaftan with a delicately embroidered belt. When Mrs. Van left, rather than reach for the petticoats, garters, and whalebone corset, Leena found the white kaftan her father had bought for her birthday years ago.

  Wearing the dress felt like home—a return to another life, to another Leena with far less worries. She tied the golden-flossed belt around her waist, then loosened her long curls until they fell down her back. She observed the effects in the mirror, unsure whether Sweeper’s Cough had left any lasting traces on her face.

  Her eyes, she thought, would always remain the same: brown like her mother’s, large like her father’s, speaking of other lands, like her blood. The rest of her—the cheekbones that rose high above her lips, the mouth that had a tendency to quicken into a smile as much as a frown—hadn’t altered much. She wanted—Leena could not suppress the thought quickly enough—to look more carefree. And yet, even in the mirror, she looked burdened.

  She pinched her cheeks before setting the mask carefully over her face.

  * * *

  —

  Leena and St. Silas stepped out of the carriage in New Algaraa District.

  Night had descended and the revelers were in full swing. Leena stood for a moment taking in the scene before her. Children weaved through the throng holding ribbons with cutouts of paper demons. A young man started playing a fiddle, the music filling the crowd with an excited buzz. The juxtaposition of bright colors coupled with the demonic disguises gave the festival an enchanted aura.

  Ahead of her, a woman wearing a bone-white mask began dancing to the music, and a man in a smiling demon disguise joined her. Leena paused to watch for a moment, until the dance became wild and sensuous. Then she turned away quickly, feeling embarrassed without knowing why.

  She focused on following her employer, his decisive gait cutting through the crowded street with ease. Like her, he didn’t wear a demon disguise but a mask with lupine eyes that left the contours of his sharp jaw exposed. He hadn’t shared his purpose in attending the festival with Leena, despite her questions in the carriage. Nor had he chided her for her change of outfit.

  He led her away from the revelers, toward a cathedral that stood frowning over the festivities. It had been left abandoned for years, the structure weak, the roof caving in. In the quiet courtyard, the noise had dimmed to a low hum, the stone walls and the sullen statues of the Saints guarding them from view.

  A man stood beside a bronze sculpture of the Saint of Silence.

  Another Black Coat.

  He didn’t wear a mask. His watchful eyes were pinched over his bulbous nose; his frame was large, the muscles stretching the fabric of his jacket. He hadn’t noticed them yet, although he kept turning to peer over his shoulder uneasily.

  St. Silas’s hand on her elbow stopped her by the iron gates just before they entered the courtyard. “That is Basil Richards. Do you see a ghost by him?”

  By now, she knew there was no point questioning St. Silas’s motives.

  Leena trained her eyes on the courtyard. Yes, there was a flickering of movement directly behind the Black Coat: a gaunt man dressed in the striped uniform of the incarcerated.

  Leena nodded at the Saint and reached for her copper coins as the phantom prisoner eased away from the Black Coat and drifted toward her, but she didn’t strike them together yet.

  As the phantom approached, she could see he was clearly Algaraan, his brown skin no fainter after death. When he turned around, she noticed a knife buried deep in his spine. Leena tried as best she could to describe him to St. Silas. “There are initials on the knife inserted into his back—B.R?”

  “Basil Richards keeps busy, I see,” St. Silas murmured, his smile thin, eyes alert on the nothingness beside her. “Good.” He turned back to Leena. “Anything else?”

  “There’s also inking on the prisoner’s wrist.” Leena paused, assessing the phantom slowly. The ghost watched her with searching eyes. “No, not inking. A brand—” Her breath hitched when she saw the seven brutal letters burned into his skin. “The Wake,” she whispered.

  St. Silas’s head tilted toward her as if in confirmation. “Ah.”

  He stepped toward the entrance, but Leena moved to stand in his way. Her pulse thrummed in her neck. Waves of images flashed through her mind—of Mama pleading with Leena to save her father from the Wake.

  St. Silas took in her defiant eyes, the harsh tilt to her chin. “You want to question Basil about the Wake?”

  Leena gave a firm nod.

  He seemed to consider this, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. “You may do whatever you please after my business is concluded.”

  Leena stepped out of the way.

  They walked into the courtyard, leaving the phantom behind them, the echo of their steps lost in the distant noise of the festival.

  “Basil.” St. Silas nodded at the man. His tone was pleasant, but it drew a shiver out of Leena. “You said it was urgent. What do you have to report?”

  Basil bowed jerkily, his eyes flickering to Leena briefly. Then he took out a match, busying himself with lighting a cigarette. Leena noticed that his bulky fingers trembled.

  “You’ve not been followed, sir?” There was a trace of apprehension in the large man’s voice.

  “I got rid of my shadow a fortnight ago,” was St. Silas’s laconic reply. Leena could not forget the beaten man in the Saint’s study, and she wondered if that was the shadow he was referring to. “The only news I care to hear from you is whether your boss received my message.”

  Basil heaved a sigh. “Two Black Coats dead within the span of a few weeks. That’s a lot even for you, sir.”

  “In which case”—St. Silas smiled—“Orley should not have sent his man to spy on me, posing as a confessor. I will not ask again. What do you have to report?”

  Basil’s cigarette drew shadows on his face. “Mr. Orley does not want a war. The two men you, er, disposed of…had also been taking bribes from an Algaraan gang in exchange for Black Coat information about Tar shipments. Overall, Mr. Orley’s pleased by the outcome and sees no need for retaliation.”

  A dangerous frown twisted St. Silas’s face. “It matters little to me what Orley’s motives were for ridding himself of his two spies. If your boss decides to send anyone else to attempt to collect information on me, I would not hesitate to bury a hundred Black Coats, and retaliation be damned.”

  Basil nodded wearily. “Aye, sir. I think the boss has received your message very clearly.”

  St. Silas didn’t immediately respond, watching Basil with a wolfish intensity, light glinting off his mask. “As matters stand, Orley should be more worried about spies in his own circle.”

  Basil tensed, and the hand holding the cigarette shook. “Mr. St. Silas, you know Mr. Orley would slit my throat in an instant if he knew I was sending reports to you—”

  “Not just me, though, is it, Basil?” St. Silas’s laugh was cutting. “Certainly being an agent for three organizations simultaneously must have vast rewards for you—and in truth,” he continued, as smooth as the pistol that appeared suddenly between his fingers, “I cannot fault you for trying to sell information about both myself and your boss to a higher bidder.”

  Basil dropped his cigarette.

  “Come, Basil, confess. You have also been spying for the Wake. The question I have for you is what it was you chose to divulge about me.”

  Basil eyed the gun fearfully. “I would never—”

  The pistol clicked. “I do not take kindly to liars, Basil. Tread carefully.”

  Basil took a wary step back. “I have not—”

  “I know many things about you,” St. Silas interrupted easily. “For instance, in addition to spying, you also trade prisoners for the Wake—and when you are ordered, you execute them.”

  Basil opened his mouth several times before managing to croak out, “H-how did…did you…You couldn’t have known…How…?” He continued pleadingly, “Only a few Algaraans—criminals who would’ve got the rope anyway.”

  Leena’s heart raged. To Basil, these prisoners—a few Algaraans—were not human enough to deserve a proper trial or a fair outcome, but a currency to line his pockets with. Who knew why the Wake wanted these poor men dead or why they traded the living ones, but it was a certainty that people like Basil Richards profited hugely from this business.

  “Who runs the Wake?” Leena cut in, her breaths heaving painfully from her chest.

  Basil eyed her once more with distaste, and for a moment she was sure he was not going to respond. She wanted to throttle the information out of him.

  “Answer her,” St. Silas commanded.