The Spirit Bares Its Teeth E-Book

Andrew Joseph White

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 465

Beschreibung

This instant New York Times bestseller is a visceral Victorian gothic horror of a young autistic trans boy who can commune with spirits, forced into a haunted sanitorium. Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all. London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he'll be married by the end of the year. It doesn't matter that he's needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing. After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton's Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton's innards and expose its rotten guts to the world—as long as the school doesn't break him first.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Letter from the Author

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

One Year Later

Note on Historical Accuracy and the Representation of Medical Experimentation

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Available from Andrew Joseph Whiteand Daphne Press

Hell Followed with Us

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

Compound Fracture

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First published in the UK in 2024 by Daphne Press

www.daphnepress.com

Copyright © 2023 by Andrew Joseph White

Cover artwork by Evangeline Gallagher © Peachtree Teen

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-83784-072-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-83784-073-1

1

For the kids with open woundsthey’re still learning to stitch closed

—A. J. W.

LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

One of the cruel injustices of the world is that survival hurts sometimes. Open-heart surgery, for example, looks a lot like murder. Amputation before the advent of proper anesthesia was just a bone saw and a rag to bite. On that note, I will make this clear: The Spirit Bares Its Teeth contains transphobia, ableism, graphic violence, sexual assault, discussions of forced pregnancy and miscarriage, mentions of suicidal ideation, and extensive medical gore.

But I will also make it clear that this book is not a necessary procedure. You don’t have to endure it. You can get off the operating table and walk away at any time. I won’t blame you.

For those still reading—do you have a rag to bite?—I want to make note of some context. Ghosts and mediums and alternate histories aside, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was inspired by Victorian England’s sordid history of labeling certain people “ill” or “other” to justify cruelty against them. Threats of violence enforced strict social norms, often targeting women, queer and disabled people, and other marginalized folks. I have included another note about these realities at the end of the book, including some that this book does not cover. True history is often much more heartbreaking than any horror novel can depict.

So, if nothing else, I hope this story means something to you. I hope the scalpel is kind to you. I hope your sutures heal clean. You deserve that much; we all do.

Yours,

Andrew

CHAPTER

1

The last time I spoke to my brother was six months ago. I remember the date exactly: the twenty-second of April, 1883. How could I not? It’s burned into me like a cauterized wound, an artery seared shut to keep from bleeding out.

It was his wedding, and I was on the edge of hysterics.

I wasn’t being difficult on purpose. I wasn’t, I swear. I never mean to be, no matter what Mother and Father say. I’d even promised it would be a good day. I wouldn’t let the too-tight corset send me into a fit, I wouldn’t tap, I wouldn’t fidget, and I certainly wouldn’t wince at the church organ’s high notes. I would be so perfect that my parents wouldn’t have a reason to so much as look at me.

And why shouldn’t it have been a good day? It was my brother’s wedding. He’d just returned to London after a few months teaching surgery in Bristol, and all I wanted was to hang off his arm and chatter about articles in the latest Edinburgh Medical Journal. He would tell me about his new research and the grossest thing he’d seen after cutting someone open. He’d quiz me as he fixed his hair before the ceremony. “Name all the bones of the hand,” he’d say. “You have been studying your anatomy, haven’t you?”

It would be a good day. I’d promised.

But that was easy to promise in the safety of my room when the day had not yet started. It was another to walk into St. John’s after Mother and Father had spent the carriage ride informing me I’d be married by the new year.

“It’s time,” Mother said, taking my hand and squeezing—putting too much pressure on the metacarpals, the proximal phalanges. “Sixteen is the perfect age for a girl as pretty as you.”

What she meant was, “For a girl with eyes like yours.” Also, it wasn’t. The legal marriageable age was, and still is, twenty-one, but the laws of England and the Church have never stopped the Speakers from taking what they want. And it was clear what they wanted was me.

It was like the ceremony became a fatal allergen. While Father talked with a colleague between the pews and Mother cooed over her friends’ dresses, I dug my fingers into my neck to ensure my trachea hadn’t swollen. The organist hunched over the keys and played a single note that hit my eardrums like a needle. Too many people talked at once. Too loud, too crowded, too warm. The heel of my shoe clicked against the floor in a nervous skitter. Tap tap tap tap.

Father grabbed my arm, lowered his voice. “Stop that. The thing you’re doing with your foot, stop it.”

I stopped. “Sorry.”

On a good day, I could stomach big events like this. Parties, festivals, fancy dinners. Sometimes I even convinced myself I liked them, when George was there to protect me. But that’s only because a legion of expensive tutors had trained me to. They’d molded me from a strange, feral child into an obedient daughter who sat with her feet tucked daintily and never spoke out of turn. So, yes. Maybe, if it had been a good day, I could have done it. But good days had suddenly become impossible.

In the crowd, I slipped away.

Sometimes I pretend my fear is a little rabbit in my chest. It’s the sort of rabbit my brother’s school tests their techniques on, with grey fur and dark eyes, and it hides underneath my sternum beside the heart.

Mother and Father are going to do this to you, it reminded me. I pressed a hand against my chest as I searched the pews to no avail. The church was long, with stained glass stretching up like translucent membranes. And when they do, you’ll cut yourself open. You’ll pull out your insides. You promised.

I stepped out into the vestibule, and after all this time, there he was. My brother with his groomsmen, friends from university I’d never met. Stealing a drink from a flask. Swinging his arms, trying to get blood to his fingers. Bristol had changed him. Or maybe he’d just matured while I wasn’t there to see it, and it’d be better if I turned him inside out and sewed him up in reverse so I no longer had to watch him age. At least, now that he was back, he’d be serving the local hospitals and nearby villages, and he wouldn’t be so far away from me. Nothing all the way out at the coast, not anymore.

I said, barely loud enough to hear, “George?”

My brother met my eyes, and his first words to me in months were, “That’s the dress you picked?”

Right. I’d tried awfully hard to forget what I was wearing. The corset was specifically made to accentuate curves and the dress was gaudy, with a big rump of a bustle as was the fashion. Or Mother’s idea of the fashion. I’d studied diagrams from George’s notes of how tightlacing corsets could deform bones and internal organs, memorized them until I could draw them on the church floor with charcoal. Flesh and bone make more sense to me than the people they add up to.

“It was Mother’s idea,” I said plainly, resisting the urge to chew a hangnail. “May I speak to you? For just a second?”

George flashed a grin at his groomsmen. “Sorry, lads. The sister’s more important than you lot.”

So he broke away from the flock, even as his friends groused and jabbed their elbows into his ribs—and then he led me to a quiet corner in the back of the sanctuary. Away from the people and the noise.

Without Father to snap at me, I couldn’t stop fidgeting. My hands wrung awkwardly at my stomach, and I bit my cheek until I tasted blood.

It’s pathetic you ever thought you’d avoid this, the rabbit said.

George got my attention by putting a hand in front of my face. “In,” he said. I scrambled to follow his instructions, breathed in. “Out.” I breathed out. “There we go. It’s okay. I’m here.”

As soon as you were born with a womb, you were fucked.

I couldn’t take it anymore. The mask I’d built to be the perfect daughter cracked. The stitches popped. I began to cry.

George said, “Oh, Silas.” My name. My real name. It’d been so long since someone called me my real name. I clamped a hand to my lips to stifle an embarrassing gasp. “Use your words,” George said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I didn’t mean to do this at his wedding. I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t, I swear.

I said, “I need to get out of that house. It’s happening. Soon.” I started to rock back and forth. George put a hand on my shoulder to hold me still, but I pushed him away. I had to move. I’d scream if I couldn’t move. “No. Don’t. Please don’t. I just—I don’t know, I don’t know what to do.”

“Silas,” George said.

“If I get away from them, I could buy a little more time.” Could I, though? Or was I just desperate? “Don’t leave me alone with them, please—”

“Silas.”

I forced myself to look at him. My chest hitched. “What?”

Then, one of the groomsmen, leaning out to the pews, bellowed: “The bride has arrived!”

“Shit,” George said. “Already?”

“Wait.” I grabbed for his sleeve. No, he couldn’t walk away now, he couldn’t. “George, please.”

But he was backing up, peeling me from his arm. When I remember this moment months later, I recall his pained expression, the worry wrinkling his face, but I don’t know if it was actually there. I cannot convince myself I hadn’t created it in the weeks that followed.

“We can talk about this later,” George said. “Okay? Sit, before someone comes looking for you.” Nausea climbed up my throat and threatened to spill onto my tongue. “Afterwards. I swear.”

He walked away.

I stared after him. Still shivering. Still struggling for air.

What else was I to do except what I was told? I never learned how to do anything else.

I scrubbed my eyes dry and found my place with our parents. Mother smiled, holding me by the shoulder the way surgeons used to hold down patients before anesthesia. “How is George doing?” she asked me, and I said, “He’s well.” The organist ambled into a slow, lovely song, and the sun shone through stained glass in a beam of rainbows. George stood at the end of the aisle. He met my gaze and smiled. I smiled back. It wavered.

The bride herself, when she walked in on her father’s arm, was tall, with honey-colored hair. She was not the most beautiful woman in the empire, but she didn’t have to be. She radiated such kindness that it was as if she were made of gold.

But.

She had violet eyes.

And a silver Speaker ring on her little finger.

The rabbit said, Soon, that will be you.

When I was younger—ten, I think, or maybe eleven—I dreamed of amputating my eyes. It seemed easy. Stick your thumb in the socket, work it behind the eyeball, and take it out, pop, like the cork in a bottle of wine. If they were gone, I reasoned, the Royal Speaker Society would leave me be. They came over every Sunday to savor cups of Mother’s tea, talk with Father about ghosts and spirit-work and economic ventures in India, and calculate the likelihood of their children having violet eyes if they had those children with me. “You’ve never played with a ghost, have you?” a Speaker said once, teasing my sleeve. “Because you know what happens to little girls who play with ghosts.”

And it has never stopped. It has only gotten worse, louder and louder as I grew into my chest and hips. Now they kiss my knuckles and run their hands through my hair. They wonder about boys I’ve been with and offer ungodly sums of money for my hand in marriage.

“Is she lilac, heather, or mauve?” they would ask my mother, holding my jaw to keep my head still. Sometimes they gave me their silver Speaker ring to wear, just to see how I’d look with it one day. “Oh, Mrs. Bell, when will you let her marry?”

Mother would just smile. “Soon.”

I’d grown out of the juvenile fantasy quickly enough. The eyes were a symptom, not the disease. If I wanted to resort to surgery, I’d have to go to the root: a hysterectomy, a total removal of the womb. Until my ability to continue a bloodline is destroyed, these men don’t care how many pieces of myself I hack off—but that doesn’t mean I haven’t popped the eyes out of a slaughtered pig just to feel it.

George’s wife had violet eyes like mine.

He was doing to a girl everything that would be done to me.

I got up from the pew. Mother hissed and reached for me, but I stumbled into the aisle, clamping a hand over my mouth. I slammed out the front doors and collapsed onto the stairs.

I spat stomach acid once, twice, before I vomited.

Father came out behind me, dragging me onto my feet. “What are you doing?” he snarled. “What is wrong with you?”

It will hurt, the rabbit said. It will hurt it will hurt it will hurt.

*   *   *

George has not been able to face me since.

He knows what he did.

CHAPTER

2

November descends upon England, dark and uncaring like consumption, and I’m almost grateful; after all, it is easier to be a boy in the winter.

I fret in front of the vanity mirror as embers gleam in my bedroom fireplace. Darker tones are blessedly more fashionable in the later months; heavier fabrics and long coats break up the silhouette, obscuring more feminine features. There’s nothing to be done about soft cheeks and pink lips, but with my hair tucked into a cap and a scarf wrapped round to conceal the pins, I just about pass for a boy. A feminine, baby-faced boy from the poor side of the city—funny, then, that my bedroom is full of fine dresses and imported rugs—but a boy nonetheless. Very Oliver Twist. I think. I’ve never been one for stories.

Still, my chest aches as I fill out my brows with powder stolen from Mother’s vanity. How cruel is it, that I only get to be myself as a costume? I do not get to savor the masculine cut of my clothes, or the illusion of short hair, or the fleeting joy of my skin feeling like mine. Instead, I have to worry if my boyhood is convincing enough to keep me safe.

There is no joy in that. Only fear.

You think you’ll fool them? the rabbit chides as I work. So many men would do terrible things for you. So many of them have begged for the chance. They’d know your body anywhere. Look at the trousers bunching at my full hips and the linens tied around my breasts that never feel tight enough. See? You’re nothing more than a little girl playing dress-up.

And you’re going to walk right into their lair.

The rabbit is right. If I have any time left, it’s not much. Mother and Father have nearly decided on my husband. That’s what they’re doing at this very moment: perusing the Viscount Luckenbill’s annual Speaker gala with a list of names. This year’s costume theme is literature, so they’re busy in whatever inane outfits Mother has devised, cross-examining the men who have fawned over me all my life. I can nearly hear them weighing the advantages of each potential marriage contract. How many connections do they have? How much money? How much power?

So, yes, it would be safer to stay home. But tonight is my best, and maybe my only, chance to escape.

Because a young medium is set to receive his spirit-work seal at the gala tonight—and with any luck, it will be me. The plan is simple enough. Go to the gala, get the seal, and run.

I close the tin of powder and remind myself to breathe.

I do not give a shit about being a medium. I want nothing to do with the Speakers, or spirits, or hauntings, or any of it. But if a silver Speaker ring marks you as a member of the brotherhood, a medium’s seal grants you the freedom of a king. Violet eyes make spirit-work possible, and a seal makes it legal. Speaker money will fund your travels and businesses. Opportunities rise up to meet your feet. Of course, England regulates its mediums brutally, but to be officially recognized as one with that mark on your hand—it might as well be magic, the way the empire will bend for you.

So I’ll take the seal, proof of my manhood branded on the back of my hand, and go where no one knows my face. I’ll enroll in medical school and begin my life in earnest. Nobody will know I had been a daughter once. I won’t need Mother and Father. I won’t need George; I won’t need any of them.

I’ll be . . .

My heel clicks again, tap tap tap, but it’s not enough to get rid of the tension creeping up my trapezius muscles. In a burst, my hands flutter, and I shake myself out until I’m calm enough to breathe again.

After this, I’ll be free.

I’ve forged my invitation to the gala. According to Mother’s friends, the young man who is supposed to get his medium’s seal tonight, who has eyes like wisteria and traveled all the way here from York for the chance, has fallen ill. Nobody has met him in person, so I’ve borrowed his name for the evening. I will take his place, and his seal, and I will be gone before a soul learns the truth.

It’s just that if I’m caught, if they figure out who I am, that I was born a girl—

They’ll fucking hang you.

*   *   *

The gala is not far. I slip down the front steps of my family’s townhome—not nearly as impressive as some of the other houses of London, but still grand enough to reflect well on the family—and huddle into my coat. Despite the cold, I refuse to hail a cab. I need to walk. It’s the only way I can reliably clear my head these days. Especially since I don’t let my hands flap in public. “You look like an imbecile,” Father said once, which was far more effective than any of my tutors’ attempts to get me to stop. “You look stupid, girl.”

I tried telling my family the truth exactly once. When I was younger, back when I thought they still cared, I told them I did not ever want to be married. Stories that took the shape of fairy tales sounded like Hell to me. My eyes would give me a good marriage and a life of privilege, a life of plenty, if I’d only let them. But wedding dresses, big bellies, the miracle of childbirth? I’d rather cut myself open. I told them I didn’t want any of it. I told them I was scared.

Mother called me silly, and Father told me to get over it. I knew what they really meant, though. The rabbit translated for me. Entitled. Selfish. How dare I ask to be treated differently than anyone else? Every man and woman in England has a duty, and I couldn’t expect to escape mine just because I was scared.

I don’t think scared was the word I should have used.

It doesn’t take long to find the South Kensington Museum. It’s a grand cathedral of art and finery, lit up so brightly against the dark night sky it looks like it’s been set on fire. The Speakers have swallowed it whole. Violet banners hang from the marble façade, framed by thousands of lavenders and lilacs woven into wreaths and ivy arches, all of which will shrivel and die in the cold as soon as the event is done. Carriages wait obediently in the street, horses huffing and puffing while the drivers try to catch a nap. It’s almost as if the Royal Speaker Society will dissolve into violent chaos if they don’t spend half their taxpayer funding on decorations and overworked servants.

At the entrance, a violet-eyed doorman blows into his hands to warm them. He has a seal, but only a small placeholder design, a circle freeze-burned onto the back of his hand. This is an indentured medium: a man who couldn’t afford his full medium’s seal and so signed himself away to the Speakers in exchange for the funds. It’s a nasty deal, but there will never be a shortage of people willing to take nasty deals in exchange for a better life. This indentured medium will get the rest of the seal, an intricate eye, once his debt is paid off—as long as the hand doesn’t succumb to gangrene first. At least he gets to wear a fancy ring while he waits.

Through the twin sets of double doors, I hear laughter. It’s muffled, as if underwater. I’m late.

“This is a private event, boy,” the doorman drawls as I approach. There’s a thrill at being accepted as male, but I refuse to let myself linger on it. It doesn’t matter nearly as much if they’re seeing the wrong boy.

“I’m aware,” I say, and produce the invitation.

The doorman frowns, skimming the forged document up and down. His eyes are droopy and his hands seem to be permanently stiff. “Roswell? My, uh, sincere apologies. Glad those rumors about you being ill were just rumors.” He doesn’t sound particularly glad. “Well, they haven’t started the ceremony yet, so you’re in luck. Mors vincit omnia and all that. Come in.”

He opens the door.

I hate that anything having to do with the Speakers could be beautiful. Inside, a towering ceiling looms toward marble balconies; gas lights flicker, turning everything gold. Irreplaceable works of art have been brought out for the occasion, placed behind tables overflowing with purple bouquets. The air smells of liquor and pollen and ozone. And the costumes—a woman with cheeks painted pink in homage to Heidi. An Edgar Allan Poe carries a model heart. Some bored-looking man has opted out of the theme by carrying around a portrait of a horse, claiming to be one character or another from Black Beauty. So many glimmering silver rings, a smattering of seals, too much drinking and laughing and noise. It is so overwhelmingly jovial in comparison to the sick feeling in my stomach. The mismatch makes me want to dig my nails into my arms. It’s just like the wedding all over again. I hate it, I hate it.

Just walk away, the rabbit says. You don’t belong here and you know it. Leave. Go.

But I don’t leave. I can’t. As I step into the museum, I imagine the branding iron so cold it smokes in the air. It will crackle and hiss as it touches my skin. The pain will be worth it in exchange for the freedom it will grant.

I have to do this.

The doorman steps in behind me, ushered by a gust of air so frigid that I turn to make sure a spirit hasn’t followed him.

“George Bell?” he says. “The Roswell boy showed up after all. He’s yours.”

The sickness in my gut blossoms into nausea.

My brother, holding a flute of champagne just inside the door, stares as if he’s uncovered a medical cadaver only to find my face looking back at him.

He has a Speaker ring on his little finger.

*   *   *

Did you know that someone like me had once been a surgeon?

It sounds like a myth, but it’s true. His name was James Barry. George told me about him when I was young, offhandedly, as if he knew something about me that I didn’t. Barry was a right prick with no sense of decorum or tact, but brilliant doctors have no use for either. He was a high-ranking military surgeon, George said, who improved conditions for the poor and sick all his life—and when he died, it was discovered by a nurse that he’d been a woman all along.

“Though,” George continued, “you’d think someone like Barry would’ve wanted to make a fuss about that on his deathbed. Fuck you all, you’ve been bested by a woman, rot in Hell, all that mess. But he didn’t.” He didn’t look up from his studies. “You think, perhaps, he was happier as a man? And that nurse should have left his damned body alone?”

I’d said nothing in return, but I hadn’t had to. He snuck a chest of clothes under my bed that night. Formalwear, patched linen trousers fit only for poor street boys, and everything in between. The accompanying note read: Some of this is mine, some of it not, but hopefully all will suit you one day. I’m wearing those clothes now.

I wish I could feel anger. I wish that, when I was upset, I could scream and yell and rage, do anything other than cry. I would feel so much more like a man than a little girl playing pretend. But there I am, shaking, my eyes burning with tears.

He left me.

He joined the Speakers and left me with them.

The doorman says, “You all right, Bell?”

“I—yes.” George bobs his head in a jerky nod. He has a moustache now. That’s what I focus on. He has a moustache now, and it looks very strange on his face. “Yes. I’m fine, just relieved I don’t have to rework the schedule is all. And, yes, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Roswell.” He plays the part well. I struggle to do the same. If I’d known George would be chaperoning the boy, I never would have come. I would have found another way; maybe I would have faked the seal, I could have carved it into the skin myself. “Why don’t I show you around? Come with me.”

He gestures for me to follow him as the doorman leaves to deliver the news of my arrival. I tuck close to his side despite the lead weight in my stomach. No matter what he did, I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow the instinct to use him as shelter.

George, after a second of hesitation, puts a hand on my shoulder.

There are so, so many people at this gala. A man with blue eyes boasts of the number of indentured medium contracts he holds, though I heard from Father that he feels as if he was cheated out of violet eyes—and, therefore, spirit-work itself—thanks to his mother’s infidelity. An older, lavender-eyed gentleman with an ivory cane rubs his seal as he discusses his time as a medium in Prince Albert’s private service decades ago, traveling to hauntings across the world. I recognize nearly all of them. That one, the rabbit says as we pass a brown-eyed bachelor set to inherit his father’s shipping company, didn’t care how old you were when he tried to kiss you in the parlor. Men will do a lot of things to weave spirit-work into their bloodline. If they cannot have violet eyes themselves, they will find ways to control those who do. Marrying them, fathering them, hosting their contracts—whatever’s most convenient.

But there are more dangerous people at this party than men with God complexes. I skim the crowd for Mother and Father. I’m not sure what they’ve dressed up as. Mother loves any opportunity to make a scene, so maybe I should be looking for the most ostentatious outfit in the room, but it’s all just a blur of bright light and shades of purple and servants, marble statues and oil paintings and alcohol. I hate alcohol. The smell makes me ill.

George drains his champagne, places the flute on the tray of a passing butler without slowing down, and ducks his head to hiss, “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.” I ball my hands together so they don’t do something they shouldn’t. “You said you were working in the countryside today.”

“I was, but now I’m not,” George says. “Now, let me ask again: What are you doing here?”

“I’m getting my seal.”

George makes a noise like I’ve put a knife in his gut.

“No,” he says. “No. Have you gone mad? Mother and Father are here, you know that.”

“They can’t stop me.”

“They can if they recognize you,” George says, as if I am not fully aware of that. The rabbit reminds me: They’ll hurt you they’llhurt you. “You’ve done none of the reading, taken none of the oaths, attended none of the chapter meetings—Oh, don’t look at me like that. When would you have had time, between sneaking into operating theaters and cutting up slaughterhouse rejects?” I breathe carefully to steady myself. Like he taught me. “And then you have no money to pay the dues—”

I say, “Roswell already paid, and I took the deed to my dowry. It’s the country house. I’ll pay him back with it.”

“The country house?” George splutters. “Christ, Father really is desperate. So, you’re going to run away? Trade the deed to some ne’er-do-well for a few thousand pounds to pay back a man you’ve never met, then what? Take a train or ship to wherever will have you? If James Barry was found out, you will be too, and you know what will happen if you are.”

We stop by one of the pillars holding up the balcony, my back to the cool stone. We always end up like this. Because of me. I wrap my arms around my stomach and stare past him, over his shoulder. Looking anyone in the eye is gut-churningly difficult.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

“If the Speakers catch you—” George chokes on his words. “I have had lots of bad days, but seeing you at the gallows would be worst of all.”

What stings the most—out of everything, out of all of this—is that George had been on my side once. When I was little, he was the only one who understood me. He ate the food I couldn’t stomach so Mother and Father wouldn’t snap at me for leaving my plate half full; he let me hide in his room when we had company over, and tapped three times on the doorway when it was safe to emerge. He indulged my curiosity and defended my stubbornness until I learned to hide it. I thought it was the two of us against the world.

Now, we are this. Whatever this is.

My lip wobbles. I’m crying. Again. Like I always do. And here I am, still trying, still begging him to see reason. Because it’s still him, isn’t it?

“Fine.” I try to force my voice level but it doesn’t work. “If you truly don’t want me to do this, then help me.” He pinches the bridge of his nose as if I am a child pitching a fit for attention. His glasses go crooked. “It’ll be more difficult without the seal, but I can still do it. All I need is to get to Edinburgh. Even to York, or Leeds—I can make it from Leeds.”

He says, “No. I can’t. Elsie . . .”

That name makes a spark of rage flash behind my eyes. Of course. Elsie. Over and over, Elsie. It’s his wife, always his wife, never me. Ever since she came into his life, he has been distant, and he never answers my letters, and he’s never home when I visit, and every attempt to ask for help ends with him hemming and hawing about how it will affect her.

And maybe I’m jealous of her too. I am jealous that she got to pick her husband. I am jealous that she did not have to marry someone before her body had even finished growing. I am upset that I will never get the chance for a marriage based on love like everyone else. Why does Elsie get to be happy when I don’t?

I regret it before I even finish the sentence, but I can’t stop myself. “Can you leave her out of this for once?”

Something snaps in George’s expression. His nostrils flare. He slams a hand into the pillar by my head.

“She just lost a child!”

The noise of the gala disappears into a low, droning hum.

A child.

His statement, corrected for a medical context: a miscarriage. Or an early stillbirth, maybe, the dead fetus expelled from the womb like the body rejecting a splinter. This sort of thing is hardly talked about. It is described as a cold, an unwellness, something to be brushed away and hidden from polite company.

And if I were Elsie, I would be relieved. So terribly relieved, sobbing, thanking God that the awful thing was gone.

Is that cruel of me? Am I monstrous for being unable to understand why someone would want to subject themselves to a parasite? For being disgusted that my brother would dare to put her in that position at all?

My tutors would say so.

“Is that what you want to hear? Is it?” George’s hazel eyes flash with a horrible thing I do not recognize. I think he might be crying too, or maybe it’s just the flickering of the gas lamps. “I didn’t want to tell you, I didn’t want to tell anyone, but here we are. And maybe you don’t care at all—I know you hate her—but do you want to be the person to put her through this now? When she’s ill?”

I don’t hate her. I don’t. I hate what she means. Like she is a metaphor, not a living person.

“No,” I say. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

George’s lips draw into a thin line.

“Nothing is as black and white as you think it is,” he says.

It’s been a while since someone has called me slow to my face. The rabbit tells me I deserve it.

Behind us, in the grand atrium of the museum, someone taps their fork against a glass. George tears his eyes from me. I peer around the column, arms wrapped around my chest. It always feels like there’s an anvil on my sternum whenever someone is upset with me. The chatter of voices slows, then stops.

At the front of the room, the Viscount William Luckenbill—host of this party, president of the Royal Speaker Society, and the most forgettable man I’ve ever seen—stands at a podium in silly safari attire, flanked by ancient statues that were once carefully excised from their proper resting places, wrapped in linen, and brought to London. His face is devoid of any distinguishing features, and his eyes are a muddy every-color. He fiddles with his ring. I can smell the champagne and imported cologne from here.

His green-eyed son, about my age or perhaps a little older, stands beside him, inspecting his nails with a pouty lower lip.

His son is as sharp and striking as a scalpel.

“Your attention, please!” Lord Luckenbill calls. This man is not a scalpel at all. He is dull forceps, or a tongue depressor. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for spending your Sunday evening with me. I will, of course, spare you a lengthy second welcome—we have better things to be doing.” A ripple of polite laughter. “Tonight, we have the honor of performing one of the Royal Speaker Society’s most sacred of traditions: welcoming a new brother into our fold.”

As if on cue, two butlers carve through the party. One carries a bouquet of lavenders and lilacs; the other, a branding iron in the shape of an eye.

“Sixty years ago,” the Viscount Luckenbill says, “when the Lord gave us our first children with violet eyes, we were a baffled people, but a grateful one. How blessed were we, to be graced with this new beauty?” He sweeps his hand grandly. “But when the Veil began to thin, we realized the deeper truth of this blessing. These violet-eyed sons had been sent here to keep us safe. To help us navigate the strange new reality we’d found ourselves in, where the dead are now just a breath away from the living.”

That is why I am doing this. If I cannot escape their system, I will use it. And why shouldn’t I? I have reached into the Veil before. I have put my hand to a haunting without realizing what I’d done, before I grasped the punishment that would befall me if I was ever caught. I was only curious as to why the world warped and shone. I was a child then, and it was nearly effortless, even if I hated how it felt. Whatever the test is, it can’t be that hard. Can it?

Lord Luckenbill steps away from the podium. His footsteps echo off the tile, going up, up, up to the ceiling. This story must be recounted at every meeting the same as prayers at church, or the Hippocratic oath at the end of a doctor’s training: I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm. . . .

“And so the Royal Speaker Society was created,” he says. “To support those who guide us through God’s new world, to provide brotherhood for our guardians, and to punish those who would do them harm.”

He pauses for dramatic effect. It feels as if the entire world is leaning in.

“We further that purpose here tonight,” Lord Luckenbill says. “Mr. David Roswell?”

It’s now.

It’s happening.

I raise my trembling hand—before the rabbit can scream, before I can stop myself, before my mind can work through all the possible, terrible consequences of failure—and say, “I’m here.”

CHAPTER

3

I said it.

I’m here.

Every head in the room turns to pin me with their eyes, but all I can think of is freedom. I’ll take the seal and disappear, leaving my parents with nothing to remember me by except the dresses hanging in my wardrobe. I’ll cut my hair, take a new last name—maybe Barry—and make my way north. I’d like to visit the Edinburgh Medical School before I apply.

The Royal Speaker Society will never get to have me.

But the rabbit howls. It says, Your parents are here. It says, They made you, they raised you, they’ll recognize you no matter what you PRETEND to be.

At the center of the atrium, standing with the butlers, Lord Luckenbill narrows his eyes, lifting his chin as if that will help him see across the crowd.

“Mr. Roswell?” he calls. “You must be quite short, my boy, where are you?”

George nudges me forward. You wanted this, the rabbit translates, rabid with fear. So go.

I do. The pale crowd parts like a wound as I step toward him, opening a path between us. The rabbit tries to convince me everyone is picking me to pieces, looking for parts of my body that will identify me as a liar. If my hands are too small, if I walk too daintily, if I breathe from the chest like a woman instead of from the belly like a man. Do those distinctions actually exist? Or am I creating them to fuel my own anxiety, a closed loop feeding on itself?

“Roswell!” Lord Luckenbill claps his hands as I approach. His demeanor puts my teeth on edge. “Oh, I’m so glad you were able to make it; what a blessing that you’re feeling better. I would have hated to have to reschedule all this, you know. And, Lord, you’re such a little thing! Take after your mother, I presume. No matter, you look wonderful, come up, come up. Mr. Bell, is that you there with him?”

George clears his throat. Yet another reminder that I don’t know my brother anymore; since when would a viscount know him by name? “Yes, my lord,” he says.

But.

At the edge of the crowd, near the front, there they are.

Mother and Father.

My vision blurs when I see them. Their faces are screwed up in mutual confusion, as if trying to remember if they’ve seen me before, and if so, where. Father seems incredibly uncomfortable, having refused to don any costume for the occasion, while Mother has found a horrific green dress: taxidermy birds sewn between flowers and feathers like a fairy or some kind of goddess. Her corset is cinched so tight I could span her stomach with my hands.

They’ll hurt you they’ll hurt you they’ll hurt you.

When I get close enough—I’m so nervous I could vomit—Lord Luckenbill takes my hand in his and holds it up high. I never considered myself a particularly small person, but his fingers make mine look frail in comparison.

“May the ceremony be swift and may the branding iron treat you well,” Lord Luckenbill says. “Mors vincit omnia!”

And the crowd echoes, Mors vincit omnia, one voice, one cadence. Death conquers all. Everyone will die and there is not a soul who can escape it. The phrase is inscribed on the inside of every Speaker ring, written at the bottom of all official correspondence, carved above their doorways so it can never be forgotten. One day, when I am a surgeon myself, when I open my own practice—where I will accept every body as it is, with kindness, without question—I will do the same. “Not because I am one of them,” I will explain, “but because it is true. Not even a surgeon can defy the will of God. Isn’t that a comfort to know?”

Lord Luckenbill says, “Bring out the traitor!”

. . . the traitor?

One of the inconspicuous doors along the side of the museum atrium swings open with a tremendous bang, and two mediums—big men, violet-eyed men, with a seal etched into each of their large right hands—drag a tattered woman onto the cold tile floor. She is dressed in rags, eyes swollen and whirling. The bruises on her bare arms and throat are dark wine stains against her white skin. Her lacerations border on septic.

A gasp rises from the audience, as if this is some sort of performance. Mother covers her mouth with her hand, scandalized.

The woman’s irises are violet too. They remind me of orchids.

A million possibilities stretch out in front of me, and all of them are monstrous. I glance back to George, but with the barest twitch he shakes his head. He doesn’t know what’s happening either.

“This woman,” Lord Luckenbill bellows, “has been found guilty of violating the 1841 Speaker Act, for the crime of practicing unlicensed spirit-work and falsifying Speaker documents.” The woman picks up her unwashed head, staring at the twisted expressions around her. I take a half step back, but George catches me. You wanted this. “Miss Neuling, stand up straight, please. Give yourself some dignity. You had so much gall before; where is it now?”

All I can think of is that man who said, “You know what happens to little girls who play with ghosts.” Miss Neuling digs her feet into the floor, but they just scuff and slide against the tile. Her body is made of sharp angles, edges pressing against her prisoner’s dress.

It’s written there, in the 1841 Speaker Act, section 3, paragraph A, that women are prohibited from practicing spirit-work: reaching into the Veil, using speaking tiles, or even being allowed near hauntings at all without the presence of a chaperone. I am not a woman, but as long as I am seen as one, I will be forced under the jurisdiction of the law all the same. It is, of course, for our protection. If violet-eyed men are a gift from God, violet-eyed women are an unfortunate side effect. We are prized for giving our husbands violet-eyed sons and hated for our weakness of mind. For us to tamper with the dead will make us unstable, unfit, dangers to ourselves and others. In the interest of preserving the peace and stability of the empire, those who violate this law are to be either locked away for the rest of their lives or—depending on the severity of the crime—summarily executed.

(It’s no wonder, then, that the Indian accountant Father once employed sent his newborn daughter away in a panic when she was born violet-eyed; he saw England stacked against her and made the only choice he could. It’s no wonder the rage that erupted in the colonies when the law was passed. It’s no wonder that English soil was the only place the law was accepted with applause.)

Miss Neuling rasps, “You are a rancid, disgusting piece of shit.” Her voice is misshapen, like something in her throat has been broken. “All of you.”

Her eyes slide right over me, as if I am the same as all the rest of the men staring down at her, the same as the Speakers who have doomed her. She does not recognize what I am.

No. No, I’m not—

How would she know? the rabbit says. If you want so badly to be a man, you don’t get to object when you’re mistaken for one.

“Right,” Lord Luckenbill says. “Let’s not delay this any longer. We have a test to finish.”

I need the seal.

The lights are dimmed, gas lamps tightened to only a trickle of flame. Everyone hurries to sit, crowding the tables dotting the room, some bachelors standing in the back. George stays close, refusing to meet Mother’s eyes. The doors are locked. I turn my gaze to the roof of the museum to look somewhere, anywhere else.

The delicate joints of the architecture move as I watch. A haunting. A place where the Veil is so thin you can see the edges of spirits distending the fabric of the world. Where a medium can tear it, if they want, to reach through to the other side.

“It’s a simple way to go,” Lord Luckenbill explains as he brings me forward. He gives me a single item: a piece of a statue, about the size of my palm. It warps and changes in my hand. This chunk of stone is, like the ceiling, a haunting. Holding this feels like plunging my arms into ice. “And it is a peaceful way to go too. We’re a merciful brotherhood, Mr. Roswell—I detest hangings with a passion. They’re barbaric and prone to miscalculation. All you have to do is open the Veil, and the gentlemen here will place her head through. Simple suffocation. It won’t even be long enough for her to catch frostbite. Are you ready?”

If I don’t speak now, I won’t be able to say anything at all.

I need the seal.

I say, “Yes, sir.”

But I’m not ready. This is the test? This? Not just opening the world and reaching through to the other side, something every damn person with purple eyes can do, but to see if you’re willing to kill for the brotherhood? Committing a public execution?

I bite the inside of my cheek until the mucus membrane pops between my teeth.

“Godspeed,” Lord Luckenbill says, and backs away.

I stand at Miss Neuling’s head now. Readjust my grip on the stone. She’s only a few meters away, close enough that I can smell the mustiness of her prison cell, the vague smell of decay. She’s in her thirties, maybe. She has no wedding ring.

“You’re a child,” she says when her attention lands on me. The weight of her gaze is horrible. “They make children perform executions now?”

It’s just suffocation. Suffocation isn’t painful, right? So long as you can breathe out? She won’t feel it. She can’t.

I peel at the edge of the world around the piece of statue. It comes too easily. With just a gesture, the world ripples the way a puddle would when you step into it, thrums like the bobbing of a swallowing throat.

The air shifts. It changes.

I hate how intangible the Veil is. How ethereal it is against my hands. What’s behind the Veil begins to show through: emptiness, sheer emptiness, and the vague shape of a person-thing. Like most spirits, it has no face, only a caul-like membrane and a jagged slash-mouth. And another one. Another. Most are strange, elongated, recognizable. One, though, is dark around the edges, as if charred, proof that it pressed too hard against the edge of its world and burnt itself in the process. What was it trying to reach? How many souls are bound to the works of art in this museum? How many mediums wander the halls beside the patrons, keeping them quiet, keeping them hidden so London never knows the suffering this place enacts on the dead? I’ve never bothered to count them. I should have.

Then the Veil opens entirely. Ripping apart with a sound like bones breaking. It strains at the corners, and a gust of cold air screams through the room. Something hisses, loud and low.

This is what all these men reach for. The dead no longer have reason to lie, so they never do. They carry the knowledge of their life, of their times—warped by perspective and time and rage, sure, but it is always truth. That medium in the service of Prince Albert called upon the dead for accounts of what the world had once been and what it may be one day. Capitalists shell out pound after pound for mediums to keep dead workers from rattling factory windows until they shatter. Rich men travel thousands of miles to hauntings guarded jealously by British rule, to locations irreversibly warped by death or suffering, hoping that a ghost will whisper some secret and change the world. A haunting can never be destroyed, only hidden or quieted. A haunting can never be owned, either, but that has not stopped the empire from trying.

I don’t want this. I want meat and bone, vessels and blood, things I can touch and know. I want to stitch together a person’s body, not dissect their soul. Not this.

The mediums pull Miss Neuling closer, grab her by the hair, shove her across the floor. She struggles, throwing her head back with a snarl. One of them clocks her on the temple. Her eyelids flutter.

Once they get the head through, they’ll hold her there until she chokes to death. Asphyxiation can take minutes. I have to keep this open for minutes. Painless minutes, but they’ll still be dying minutes, and she’ll know what’s happening when her vision begins to blur and her head starts to feel a bit too light.

Spirit-work. Falsifying Speaker documents. She did what I’m doing right now.

You came all this way, into the mouth of the beast, to object on moral grounds? You can’t always feel things so strongly. Sometimes you need to do the dirty work.

I can’t.

Everyone else can do it, why not you?

I don’t know why people do the things they do. All I know is that I can’t.

I drop the piece of statue and close the Veil.

It’s a thunderclap, the world stitching itself back together with a crack of air. Or maybe it’s the stone hitting the tile floor. Snap. Just like that. It startles one of the mediums so badly that his hand slips from Miss Neuling’s arm.

She yanks herself from him, and from the apron of her prison dress, she pulls a sharpened piece of metal. Roughly filed with a strip of cloth wrapped around one end.

She jams in into his stomach.

It’s quick. In through all the layers of cloth right under the ribs, and then a rip, cloth and flesh all at once. She throws her whole weight into it to tear through the vest and undershirt. Through the epidermis. Through the subcutaneous tissue. Through the muscle, into the belly, where the blood is so thick it turns black. Snap. Lunge.

There is a moment of uncomprehending silence from the crowd.

The first person to move is the other medium. He grabs Miss Neuling by the throat, takes her head, beats the side of her skull. Thud thud thud. The makeshift knife clatters to the tile.

But the medium with the ripped stomach puts his hand to the wound. Stares at his hand when it comes away red. Whispers, “Oh, hell.”

He falls.

The party starts to scream.

My vision narrows to the smallest point: the wound. I’ve snuck into hospitals and watched doctors from the balcony of the operating theater. I’ve straddled dead hogs behind the abattoir with a surgeon’s kit at my knee. This is what I was made for. Not the Veil. Not the Speakers or the children they expect me to bear. This.

George and I start for him at the same time.

I get to the medium first. I start yanking the buttons of his vest, pulling up his shirt, getting to the skin as quickly as possible. George stumbles down beside me but the medium grabs him. George hisses through his teeth.

“Sir, I’m going to need you to stay still,” George says. “I know it hurts.” Then, to me: “What’s going on down there?”

I can’t tell. The wound ebbs and flows with his breath, opening and closing as his lungs expand and contract. It reeks too. Just from the smell—rancid, half-digested food—I can guess what’s been hit, but I yank off my jacket and sponge up the blood to get a better look anyway. The medium thrashes. George grunts and grabs his wrists.

You did this, the rabbit says.

Shut up. Let me focus.

“It’s open to the abdominal cavity,” I say. “Perforated large intestine.” Inside, the guts writhe like worms. Everything is alive, struggling and squirming. Then it all fills with blood again, and it’s gone. “Nearest hospital?”

“St. Mary’s,” someone offers in a shaky voice. “Ten minutes to the north, by carriage.”

“Does he have ten minutes?” I ask.

“Not when he’s bleeding that much, Christ, organs like to bleed,” George says. “Does anyone have a sewing kit! Are there any other doctors!”