Jenna, too, was trembling, so violently she could scarcely keep her feet where she crouched beside the bed.
Marcus glanced up, eyes dark and frightened. “I have never seen the visions come to her so powerfully. Please, I beg of you, be careful with her.”
Jenna found herself lifting Ianira’s cold hands to warm them. They shook in Jenna’s grasp. “Lady,” she whispered, “I’m not much good at killing. But they’ve already destroyed the two people I cared about more than anything in the world. I swear, I will kill anything or anyone who tries to hurt you.”
Ianira’s gaze lifted slowly. Tears had reddened her eyes. “I know,” she choked out. “It is why I grieve.”
To that, Jenna had no answer whatever.
* * *
Dr. John Lachley had a problem.
A very serious problem.
Polly Nichols possessed half of Eddy’s eight letters, written to the now-deceased orphan from Cardiff. Unlike Morgan, however, whom nobody would miss, Polly Nichols had lived in the East End all her life. When she turned up rather seriously dead, those who knew her were going to talk. And what they knew, or recalled having seen, they would tell the constables of the Metropolitan Police Department’s H Division. While the police were neither well liked nor respected in Whitechapel, Polly Nichols was, despite her infamous profession. Those who liked and respected her would help the police catch whoever did to her what John Lachley intended to do to anyone who came into possession of Eddy’s miserable little letters.
God, but he had enjoyed carving up that little bastard, Morgan . . .