The Lost: Book Two of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 13

I hadn't expected Harper to return that night.

I had assumed that he would go to ground, to do what he was best at and run away, hiding out in one of his secret places, although who knew how many of them had been discovered by the Varúlfur in their hunt for the assassin who had betrayed them.

Instead, he had returned shortly before sunrise, a faint blush highlighting his cheeks and a guarded look haunting his eyes. Curled up in Benjamin's armchair, having ousted and despatched Lucius to bed some time before, I sat staring morosely into the flaming hearth, mulling over Garrick's words. The ghosts whispered all around me, but I dug my fingers into the arms of the chair and grit my teeth, desperately trying to keep them at bay by concentrating on what I had learned about Harper.

I could not judge him. How could I? The moral high ground beneath my feet was brittle enough as it was, one foot out of place and it was likely to shatter and send me plummeting. Harper insisted that he had loved Jenny, just as I would have sworn in a court of law with my hand firmly gripping the Bible that I had loved Brandon. And yet we had both fallen, both stepped willingly into the abyss, both courted temptation and let everything else be damned.

When Harper strolled back into the room and glanced in my direction, I wondered what he saw. I wondered whether every time he had crept into the basement and watched me crawling in the dirt, he had seen himself lying there. I wondered whether every cruel touch, every harsh word and every cold stare had been fuelled not only be revenge, but by looking into my face and seeing his own staring right back at him.

When it comes to the crunch, you and I are just the same, Megan.

The strange thing was that although a part of me still hated him for transferring his guilt onto me, somehow I understood him a little more now, as if I had burrowed under his skin like some kind of alien parasite and now saw through the eyes of my host. Everything seemed clearer, like switching on the light in a darkened cellar and realising that the only thing you had to be frightened of was yourself and your own fears. I despised him for inflicting pain on me in a bid to cleanse himself of the shame, but I could not condemn him for betraying Jenny because deep down I was no better. The question was, just who was this mysterious woman who had prompted him to knock Jenny off her shiny pedestal? When he had deserted his family for the woman he loved, when he had risked so much already, why would he jeopardise the most precious thing in his life just for some dirty, illicit bunk-up? Had he felt like me? Trapped? Suffocated? Weakened by the touch of another?

Garrick was at his desk, trawling through books as usual, furiously scribbling notes in his little tatty leather-bound journal and he looked up, his face tight and pinched when he saw Harper enter the room and head straight for me. Maybe he was expecting a storm to erupt after his little revelation or maybe for Harper to continue with his tirade about how I had drifted into Feeder territory. But as Harper seated himself in the chair opposite, neither of us spoke. In fact, I felt strangely calmed by his presence, in complete contrast to how he often made me feel on edge. I offered a small smile as he sat down and his brow furrowed in response, clearly surprised at my tentative welcome.

"How are you feeling?" he broached and it was my turn to be surprised. I shifted in the armchair, pulling my knees up to my chest as I watched him warily. I could detect the faint odour of blood on his breath and the scent of the kill on his clothes.

"Fine," I replied quickly; too quickly I realised when his eyes narrowed, scanning my face, searching beyond the lie that fell too hastily from my lips. My shoulders sagged as I relented under his stare. "Exhausted," I admitted. "Drained."

He sighed, turning his eyes towards the fireplace and rubbing his palm over his rough beard in solemn contemplation. "We'll find a way," he said, his voice barely above a gruff whisper. "There must be a way for you to bear this without resorting to .... extreme measures."