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

Chapter Fifty Six: Kill John Danvers, Kill the World

Headington, Oxford, 1882:

Robin sat on the floor of his room in the lodging house, watching rain spatter against the window pane. He was balancing Gram in his hands, resting the blade on one palm and the handle on the other.

For the past half hour, he'd been counting the notches carved into Gram's handle, reciting the names of the victims they represented. He had no idea why. It couldn't calm Gram's remorse, because Gram wasn't troubled by remorse. But it felt like a kind thing to do for his oldest friend – the kindest thing he could do now, since he'd given up cutting people.

They'd been strangers for almost a year – albeit strangers who understood each other perfectly. Ever since he had woken up in the ice house last July, Robin had been distant with Gram. He still felt his moods and his hunger – they were almost as irritating as his own – but he ignored them.

Gram felt the hunger, but not the consequences of it. He couldn't feel his victims' pain rounding back on him. He couldn't see it coming from the moment it was let loose, like some hellish boomerang. And he couldn't understand Robin's admiration for Ellini. None of the things he did these days would make sense without that.

Right at this moment, Robin hated it – whatever it was that had wormed under his skin while he'd been dead, and made him see that he was bad, without giving him the strength to amend it. The damned imperfect revelation that had made him yearn for things he couldn't get, and wouldn't have known what to do with if he could. What was the point in giving a man half an epiphany?

Still, he couldn't deny that he'd been happy in his delusions, for a while. Lambeth had been the longest, strangest stretch of peace he'd ever known. He had enjoyed fending off the advances of the maid-servants. He had enjoyed puzzling Ellini, as she was every day disappointed in her expectation that he would attack her. He had enjoyed mentioning Jack and watching her flinch.

None of it had been part of Myrrha's plan. He had locked himself in his study, run his hands over the spines of the books on his shelf, and made-believe that they meant something to him. He had taken all those pointy surgical implements out of his bag, thought about the terrible things he could do with them, and revelled in the thought that he wasn't doing it.

And he had revelled in Ellini: her coldness and exasperation, her growing strength. The delicious knowledge that, while she was here before him, Jack was writhing in the torments of his own personal hell.

He had known it wouldn't last. She was no tormentress and he was no doctor. She couldn't hide from her merciful nature any more than he could hide from his murderous one. But it had been fun, while it lasted.

All that time, he'd been conscious of Gram the way an amputee might be conscious of a missing limb. He had felt aches and tinglings that weren't precisely part of him, but were too intimate to belong to another.

He had taken Gram out of his jacket and tried to explain that everything was different now – people were people, even though they were horrible, and murder was murder, even though it was pleasurable. But he didn't understand. It probably didn't help that Robin barely understood it himself.

"Gram?" he said, breaking the silence that had prevailed between them for months. "I know you hate me. I know you think I've starved you, neglected you, and betrayed you. Maybe I have. I just want you to know that you're the only reason I'm not afraid. You're my life. I know that, because I couldn't die as long as she kept you. You don't have a soul, I think..." 

He hesitated, because he thought he detected a sullen note in Gram's silence. "That's not a bad thing – at any rate, not for me. It means, if we die and go to hell, it won't be hell, because we'll be together. And if I somehow manage to get to heaven, it won't quite be heaven, because you'll be gone from me. I could never believe in an afterlife of extremes, but I could believe in one of small imperfections or small consolations. I could make my way in a world like that."