He shook his head, hooded eyes returning to the portrait.

  Her heart sank. She’d hoped that she might be able to find Lord Avon waiting beside a loved one. Now she didn’t even know where to start.

  “Why do you seek him?” Leena asked, no longer able to mask her impatience. She felt exasperation at his reticent answers. In theory, they were both on the same side. Surely more information would only help achieve their common end faster?

  When he finally did give her an answer, Leena had to hide her surprise, trying to keep her face neutral so as not to show her ricocheting emotions.

  “He owes me something, and I intend to take it back.”

  Mr. St. Silas didn’t strike Leena as someone who accepted theft with grace. His words—and the memory of his previous secretaries—sat uneasily with her. Yet his answer was not enough, not really even a start, for Leena to use in any way. She opened her mouth to voice this, but he cut her off.

  “Miss Al-Sayer, you’ll be shown to your room. Ready yourself for tomorrow.” It was clear from his voice that their conversation was over. With a flick of his hand, he rang the servants’ bell that sat on his desk, the single clatter echoing a finality.

  Leena had never worked for an employer who held such a menacing quality without once raising his fist to her. There was her most recent laundry Warden, who had slapped Leena for the slightest provocation, even though it was never her fault. The desperation for money in a time of gnawing hunger across the country had kept Leena’s throbbing jaw locked and raging eyes lowered.

  But it was not just the laundry Warden. There were also the ones before who strutted through the factories, who either growled and spat between missing teeth or leered from their seats at the women passing by.

  Sometimes, they more than leered.

  Those Leena had fought—tooth and nail and sometimes with broken shoe heels. All she had to show for those fights were days without bread, her starvation a bitter trophy for her dignity.

  But Mr. St. Silas, Leena thought, looking at him now, was the opposite of dumb, brutish force. He instead had that sort of vicious presence that made one feel like exposed prey—uncertain where to step next, uncertain where the attack will come from and when.

  Even if his body stood still, his eyes stalked—watchful, impatient, prowling.

  He had that effect now as he looked at her with his hands in his pockets. Tall, powerful frame leaning back against the desk lazily, his posture deceptively relaxed while his eyes shone with sharpness—someone who always got what he wanted in the end.

  It was far more lethal.

  Leena would be a fool to underestimate the Saint or even to think that, underneath all that civilized attire and cultured accent, he was less of a threat to her than all her previous employers combined.

  Here was a man who was not afraid to cause her real pain, and they both knew it. Already he had deceived her, indentured her, and separated her without a care from the only life she knew, throwing her into a perilous task from which she could not be certain she would emerge unharmed—or even alive.

  A knock on the door thrust Leena from her bitter musings. It was Mrs. Van, summoned to lead her back to her new bedroom.

  In truth, she was ready to leave the presence of Mr. St. Silas. Her day had been long and taxing before she even stood on his doorstep.

  Leena was especially ready to leave the portrait of the last Avon, the golden lord who seemed to reject the very idea of death.

  In her new chamber, everything was built for comfort. The bedframe was made of rich mahogany, and a fireplace—a luxury she couldn’t even begin to fathom—was swept clean of soot. Even the thick walls allowed privacy. No whispered fights bled through, no drunken shouts, no loud snores. It was utterly soulless. Anyone could inhabit this room, sleep on the soft mattress beneath the thick covers, and leave in the morning without having made any dent in it. It was a bedroom designed for transience.

  Her suitcase waited for her in the wardrobe. Not bothering to unpack, she found her nightgown and shimmied into it. She drew out her Guide to Botany, rifling to the few remaining blank pages at the back. She took her time now, writing down everything she’d learned today in the smallest possible handwriting: about the Wake, Weavingshaw, and Lord Avon, as well as her mother’s warnings.

  Demon-kissed.

  It was very little to go on—almost nothing. But it was a start.

  Leena’s first day attending the Saint’s consultations was wretched. So was her second. And her third. She knew she’d eventually succumb to the misery of this job, that it would become routine, but her heart was not hardening quickly enough.

  Mr. St. Silas’s shop was organized with an impersonal hand, perhaps seeking to separate itself from the very personal stories told within those walls. Or perhaps he simply did not care.

  The confessors were usually led through the entrance, which opened up to a single eerie hallway, by one of the Saint’s many bruisers. The hallway was long and straight, and contained several locked doors. Leena had no idea what lay behind those doors. Likely torture chambers.

  In the early morning, the Saint unlocked the confession room—a claustrophobic space with red-bricked walls and a single shuttered window. Inside was a fireplace, a large writing desk that curved between her and Mr. St. Silas’s chairs, and one last chair in the center of the room meant for the confessor. Mr. St. Silas’s and Leena’s seats were made of pliant leather, while the confessor’s was wooden—the very same kind Leena imagined prisoners sat on while awaiting trial in the dock. Either an allusion to the courtroom or a mockery of it.

  The consultations always ended exactly at half past noon, with lines of people forming at dawn for a chance to trade their secrets. At these consultations, the Saint was unyielding and exacting—a timepiece in one hand, a pen in the other. All the secrets he heard—all the terror they brought, all the heartache—seemed to affect him not at all.

  On that first day, it was the sterility of the entire process that drove Leena nearly mad.

  She watched as Mr. St. Silas tugged on a pair of leather gloves before withdrawing one of the black ledgers that she had seen lining the shelves of his study, and opening it to a fresh page. He glanced at Leena disinterestedly, his first acknowledgment of her that morning. “Never touch the ledgers.”

  “Why not?” Leena asked, already feeling stiff and uncomfortable in her chair.

  Mr. St. Silas raised a brow at her question. “Because I command it, Miss Al-Sayer.”

  Leena swallowed a grimace at his order, said in tones that not only expected her total obedience but took it for granted. He handed her parchment and a dip pen, instructing her in a low voice to watch well and report exactly to him.

  That first morning was a blur.

  Leena’s body tensed each time the door swung open, unsure what would meet her on that threshold and what secrets would be released from the darkness and into the light, stirring phantoms in their wake.

  Yet the confessions she heard in those first few hours were…nothing.

  Little more than gossip. A young man who admitted to stealing his mother’s clothes to sell at the market for Tar, leaving his mama with only her underthings to wear.

  A middle-aged woman who told them that her youngest child was not actually her child at all but birthed by her unmarried daughter.

  A musician who had broken the fingers of his rival during a drunken brawl confessed he had not been drunk but had known exactly what he was doing.

  Margery had been wrong—the Saint of Silence not only accepted schoolroom scandals, he also paid for them.

  Leena sat there in the stifling room, the morning coffee Mrs. Van had brought during the break steaming in her hands, and it was all she could do not to look at her employer. Finally, she could not help it, and she gazed at him askance. Absentmindedly, he was stirring two teaspoons of sugar into his coffee while his eyes remained on his ledger, before swallowing it down with a twist of his mouth.

  Putting down the cup, he met her look with one of his own. “A problem, Miss Al-Sayer?”

  Even now, within the small confines of the room, he had a way of disconcerting her with a single look, just as she’d seen him do with all his confessors. There was a tempered menace about him that forced itself to be felt, that naturally overtook and bludgeoned any space to bend to his will. Perhaps that was why all the confessors had left the room looking as if they’d been battered although they’d never once been touched by him; they must have been absorbing the teeth of the Saint of Silence’s presence.

  Leena straightened, not wanting to begin her employment with a show of fear. Mr. St. Silas caught her movement wordlessly, and a slow, derisive smile spread across his lips. Nothing seemed to escape him.

  She said carefully, “Only that I am surprised that you would pay precious coins for such trivial secrets.”

  “All secrets have value. What may seem trivial to you could be someone else’s ruin.”

  “But why?” She tried not to sound demanding, already knowing the Saint did not take kindly to being questioned. “What can you possibly gain from it?”

  What she really wanted to ask, but dared not, was: Where do you get the money for such a grim exploit?

  “It is not for you to question, Miss Al-Sayer.” His response was reticent, just as she should’ve known it would be. “Not when you still have not informed me of any ghosts following the confessors throughout the entirety of this morning. Try to be of some use to me.”

  Leena swallowed down her own bitter coffee just to have something to dampen her frustration. There had been no ghosts to report, and she sensed her employer knew it. Still, Mr. St. Silas seemed to clock her sullen temper and derive pleasure from it. “Anger is a very useless emotion and does not become you, madam.”

  “On the contrary, sir, I am not angry.”

  “You are,” Mr. St. Silas returned easily. “It is clear that everyone and everything affects you.”

  Leena could not deny that he was right.

  Even in this they were ill matched. While anything could move her, almost nothing seemed to touch him at all.

  She ignored his observation, and it took all her best efforts to keep her voice steady, but the toll of the morning had had its impact on her already. Her blood surged with the need to be free of this wretched house and its equally wretched master. “Sir, would my time not be better spent searching for Lord Avon’s ghost? I am sure my presence here is not adding that much to the profit of this business.”

  Any delay to finding Lord Avon gnawed at her insides.

  Mr. St. Silas had lost interest in the conversation, turning back to his ledger. “I regret if I have not made myself clear, Miss Al-Sayer. Your time was given to me the moment you signed that contract. Whether you feel it is better served elsewhere is no longer your concern.”

  Leena had expected this answer and, with a final withering look at his bent head, she turned stoically toward the door, waiting for the next confessor to walk in.

  At least this customer was the last of a very long morning. It was an elderly Morish man, with liver-spotted skin and eyes a clear blue. He sat on the chair, his weathered hands skimming across his trouser legs with nervous energy. If he noticed Leena, he did not comment, only glanced at her warily once before turning away.

  Disinterestedly, Mr. St. Silas introduced her as his secretary before sliding a waiver across the desk toward the confessor, with Leena ironically now acting as the witness to its signing.

  Then…the silence.

  Mr. St. Silas leaned back in his chair, idly watching the confessor, without once speaking. Leena had begun to notice the way the Saint manipulated silence as a tool, discomforting those who faced him into revealing more than they intended. Still, knowing his tactics didn’t stop her from shifting again in her own chair, so quiet she could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. She could see the effect this had on the old man, the way he opened his mouth several times, before finally managing to croak out a whispered, “I have a secret.”

  “Clearly,” an unimpressed Mr. St. Silas drawled.

  The silence dragged on longer than it had with the others. Leena would’ve gladly revealed another confession just to have something to fill the stark emptiness.

  It was the man who spoke first, stilted and low. She could see the hesitation play across his face, the way his fingers twisted a wedding band round and round the knuckle. “I…I used to own a factory that specializes in converting cotton fibers into fabric.”

  A tradesman. Leena should’ve noticed the superior quality of his clothes, although worn and a little shabby, the fashion dated from a decade ago. His accent, however, still resembled Leena’s, his words lilting, the Rs overemphasized—hallmarks of her own poorer district.

  Still, no response from Mr. St. Silas.

  Now the utter stillness was unbearable. She saw the way the old man leaned forward to fill it of his own accord. “Ten years ago, the factory went up in flames.”

  Baba used to work in a cotton factory. Leena knew the dangers of even the smallest match catching near the filaments. Her nightmares were filled with images of her father trapped in an inferno. With a sinking heart, she knew exactly what this man’s revelation was going to be.

  “I lost everything in the fire; the entire factory was burned to nothing. I could not return on my investments.” The man continued when he saw Mr. St. Silas still did not speak. The rest of it came out in a rush—a sudden expulsion of truth. “I know ten years ago is a long time, but my wife is…She is now very sick, and I can no longer afford the medication to keep her well, therefore I have come to call upon you.”

  It was only when he uttered the word fire that Leena saw the flicker of movement from behind him, emerging from thin air.

  Leena closed her eyes briefly in hopes the image was not real. But no, it remained. A phantom now hovered by the man, the first ghost she had seen in Mr. St. Silas’s confession chamber, and she could not tell how young the woman was beneath the blackened and ashy skin. The smell of burned flesh filled her nose, even though Leena was sure it was only her imagination creating such an acrid scent.

  In some odd way, this was one of the few times Leena was glad she could see these beings and bear testament to a suffering that would otherwise go unnoticed. Never once had the old tradesman mentioned the dead factory workers. Only the fire and how it had affected his investments.

  The question spilled from Leena’s own now-parched throat before she could stop it, her eyes never leaving the charred phantom. “Were there any casualties from the fire?”

  She did not know why it mattered that she asked that question, for she knew that the tradesman’s confirmation that the fire had resulted in death would not be enough to save this woman from her ensnarement to this world. Yet Leena had never shaken off that part of herself that desperately wanted to release these phantoms from whatever kept them here, although she had learned not to give in to it. Very rarely was she successful in freeing these ghosts, and the bitter sting of her failures always made her feel useless.

  Rami was right, Leena thought to herself; she was now far more submerged in the emotions of the dead than the living.

  She saw Mr. St. Silas half tilt his head toward her, his dark eyes shuttered, his mouth a thin line of irritation at her interruption.

  Jerkily, the man nodded.

  With one final warning look toward her, Mr. St. Silas shifted his focus back to the man. No longer did he use silence as a weapon. Now the interrogation was callous. “How many dead?”

  A staggered breath from the older man. “In the hundreds.”

  Leena’s eyes flickered to the burned woman once more, wanting to see if this would finally release her, but it did not.

  “Do not waste my time. A factory fire that occurred ten years ago is not uncommon knowledge,” St. Silas said, every word a strike. “What is your secret?”

  The old man released a breath. “Back then, thieves used to run rampant in my factory. To prevent the pilfering of precious merchandise, I-I…” He stuttered, swallowing the words, before continuing in a whisper. “I locked them all in.”

  It took Leena a moment to understand.

  There was no curiosity in Mr. St. Silas’s face. It was clear that while Leena’s disbelieving mind could not grasp the reality of the tradesman’s words, Mr. St. Silas understood perfectly and was not surprised by it.

  “Locked you in?” Leena demanded, appalled, staring once more at the phantom behind his shoulder. Then she realized her slip. “I-I meant…who is it that you locked in?”

  She knew, even without directly looking at him, that Mr. St. Silas had pounced on her slip of the tongue, his eyes narrowing again.

  With trepidation, knowing she would answer for it momentarily, Leena instead focused on the man’s shuddering voice. “My workers, as I did not know who among them was responsible. When their shift began in the morning, I’d lock the doors until they were released home in the evening, with every person searched before their release. This ensured”—his voice broke—“that they could not steal material from under the nose of the foreman.”

  The images roared through her mind—the fire licking at the cotton wheels, the workers pounding at the locked doors. This was why her father had wanted a union. She could not tear her eyes from the phantom, hovering with half her face unrecognizable from the fire.

  In Leena’s peripheral vision, she saw Mr. St. Silas document the secret in his ledger, and in that moment she hated him more than she’d thought possible. She hated that he made her sit here and listen to such heartbreak, and she hated that he remained so unaffected by it.

  “You may leave.” Mr. St. Silas dismissed the man, handing him a slip of paper with the amount he was to be paid. “Knock on the second room on the right, and Jeremy will settle your account.”