“Careful with him, he’s delicate!” the doctor warned.
Checking herself, Emma gave me the gentlest of hugs, then sat on the edge of the bed next to me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. They said you’d be out for hours more …”
“It’s okay,” I said. “But where are we? How long have we been here?”
Emma glanced at the doctor. He was writing in a small notebook but obviously listening. Emma turned her back to him and lowered her voice. “We’re at a rich man’s house in Devil’s Acre. Someplace hidden. Sharon brought us here a day, day and a half ago.”
“Is that all?” I said, studying Emma’s face. Her skin was perfectly smooth, her cuts faded to thin white lines. “You look almost healed!”
“I only had a few nicks and bumps …”
“No way,” I said. “I remember what happened out there.”
“You had a broken rib and a torn shoulder,” the doctor interjected.
“They have a woman here,” Emma said. “A healer. Her body produces a powerful dust …”
“And a double concussion,” said the doctor. “Nothing we couldn’t handle in the end. But you, boy—you were nearly dead when you arrived.”
I patted my chest, my stomach, all the places I’d been pummeled. No pain. I lifted my right arm and rotated the shoulder. No problem. “It feels like I’ve got a new arm,” I said, marveling.
“You’re lucky you didn’t need a new head,” came another voice—Sharon, ducking to fit his full height through the doorway. “In fact, it’s a shame they didn’t give you one, because apparently the one you’ve got now is full of sawdust. Disappearing like that, running off without a clue where you were going—and after all my warnings about the Acre! What were you thinking?” He towered over Emma and me, wagging his long white finger.
I grinned at him. “Hello, Sharon. Nice to see you again.”
“Yes, ha-ha, it’s all smiles now that everything’s rosy, but you nearly got yourselves killed out there!”
“We were lucky,” Emma said.
“Yes—lucky I was there! Lucky my gallows-rigging cousins were available that evening and I was able to catch them before they’d had too much Ditch lager at the Cradle and Coffin! They don’t work for free, by the way. I’m adding their services to your tab, along with my damaged boat!”
“Fine, fine!” I said. “Settle down, okay?”
“What were you thinking?” he said again, his awful breath settling over us like a cloud.
And then it came back to me, what I’d been thinking, and I kind of lost it. “That you were an untrustworthy lout!” I fired back. “That it’s only about money with you, and you probably would have sold us into slavery the first chance you got! Yeah,” I said, “we looked into it. We know all about the shady things you peculiars get up to around here, and if you think for a minute we believe that you”—I pointed at Sharon—“or any of you”—I pointed at the doctor—“are helping us purely out of kindness, you’re nuts! So either tell us what you want with us or let us go, because we’ve … we’ve got …”
A sudden, crashing wave of exhaustion. My vision unfocused.
“Got better things to …”
I shook my head, tried standing up, but the room had begun to spin. Emma held my arms and the doctor pushed me back gently onto my pillow. “We’re helping you because Mr. Bentham asked us to,” he said tersely. “What he wants with you, well, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”
“Like I keep saying, Mister whoever can kiss my mmmff—”
Emma clapped a hand over my mouth. “Jacob’s not feeling himself at the moment,” she said. “I’m sure what he meant to say was, thanks for saving us. We’re in your debt.”
“That, too,” I mumbled through her fingers.
I was angry and scared, but also genuinely happy to be alive—and to see Emma whole and healed. When I thought about that, all the fight leaked out of me and I was filled with simple gratitude. I closed my eyes to stop the room from spinning and listened to them whisper about me.
“He’s a problem,” said the doctor. “He can’t be allowed to meet Mr. Bentham like this.”
“His brain is addled,” Sharon said. “If the girl and I could just talk with him in private, I’m sure he could be brought around. Might we have the room to ourselves?”
Reluctantly, the doctor left. When he was gone, I opened my eyes again and focused on Emma, looking down at me.
“Where’s Addison?” I asked.
“He got across,” she said.
“Right,” I said, remembering. “Have you heard from him? Has he come back yet?”
“No,” she said quietly. “Not yet.”
I considered what that might mean—what might have happened to him—but I couldn’t bear the thought. “We promised to go after him,” I said. “If he can get across, so can we.”
“That bridge hollow might not have cared about a dog getting across,” Sharon butted in, “but you he’d peel off and toss right into the boil.”
“Go away,” I said to him. “I want to talk to Emma in private.”
“Why? So you can climb out the window and run away again?”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Emma said. “Jacob can’t even get out of bed.”